A Dash of Murder (14 page)

“And I am too, sport,” my father whispered, now standing behi
nd us joining into the embrace.

“A
re we in trouble?” asked Tyler.

“Yes,” Fitzpatrick answered. Tyler started to get his now familiar scowl. His uncle continued, “But … I guess you had your reasons.” Tyler’s shock registered, and then he ran do
wn the remaining stairs to Leo.

“It was real scary up there, Unc
le Leo. I’m glad you found us.”

“I know,” he said as he tousled his nephew’s hair affectionately. “I’m glad I found you, too
.”

Somehow I felt he was not just talking
about the crime scene incident.

A light started sneaking in from around the corner, and I realized the film crew was now moving
with Howard into the hospital.

“And now we enter the fabled Johnson Tuberculosis Hospital.” Howard came around the corner with portable lights held up by the crew trailing him. His voice reminded me of a late-show announcer on the creature feature movie. His back was to us as he walked facing the camera. “Be on the lookout for apparitions, black shadows lingeri
ng in a room and poltergeists.”

“Boo!” squeaked George Beckman at the top of the stairs. Howard jumped, emitting a scream as he ran back out the door. The whole gathered group gathered at the stairs exploded in laughter.

An hour later, as we watched Howard on the television monitor, all of the emotions of the afternoon seemed to be haunting me. Leo really wasn’t a dad, but he was a decent enough brother to come to town to fight for his sister. Tyler wasn’t his son, after all. It was a lot to take in about him. The fact that he was single and not one of the many walking wounded of the relationship wars made him more appealing as well. For the first time in a long time, I started thinking of myself no longer in a one-person marriage with Barry, but as a single woman. I thought about those blue eyes peering into me, sharing his water on the back step of the hospital and the way he came to the aid of my own son. This could be a beginning and the kind of dream my life hadn’t had for me in a long while. Whose fault was that, really? I could have come out of my self-imposed fog years ago, but, like Miss Bo
yle, I was tortured by my trap.

Stanley came over, pulling earphones from his ears. “Betsy, after Howard finishes this part, we’re moving on to the walk you and Maggie are taking next. I need you to stay here near the
van until we’re ready for you.”

“Okay,” I answered. I looked around for Maggie. She had been passing out cups of coffee about a half-hour ago. We had returned the boys to the campsite and had finally settled down to some ghost hunting. I walked over to the van area, where I joined the Hair House Ladies but refrained from the contents of their cooler. I sat down on the grass and leaned up against the wheel of t
he van.

I yawned as the long day was beginning to catch up with me. I now knew who one of the people on Canfield’s calendar was. I also knew he met up with Fitzpatrick but still didn’t know who Roy was. I searched my memory trying to single out anyone with that name in this town. It reminded me of old cowboy movies. And then there was the question of the concrete. Why did Canfield have fresh concrete on him? Had he just put in a sidewalk? Had he just buried someone and put a concrete slab on the top? Why, of all places was he stuffed into a hole in the wall and left there? Who would
know that such a thing existed?

Stanley walked back over and sat down on the ground next to me. He bumped back his baseball cap, going for the “Ron Howard on a big film shoot” look. “So Betsy, I’ve been reading your Happy Hinter column in the paper e
very week. Very helpful stuff.”

Oh, maybe someone else was going to hire me to do an efficiency evaluation. Looked like my Christmas
fund was about to get a boost.

“I was wondering if you would be interested in doing a little fifteen-minute segment each week giving
helpful hints to our viewers?”

“Really?” I wasn’t expecting that. I had spent the last seven years avoiding the community at large, and now they wanted me in each and every living r
oom once a week? That was wild.

“Uh, I don’t know Stanley. I’m … uh … pretty busy with keeping up with my columns.” I stalled. I wasn’t quite sure how comfortable I was with the idea of being on television, even if it was cable access, which meant the viewing numbers were somewhat smaller than the local Elks me
eting. “Let me think about it.”

“Sure. I understand. You probably don’t know this about me, but I read all your columns.” He smiled, a little embarrassed. “I’m a bit of a homebody at heart. Great hint about separating egg whites from yolks only when they’re very cold, by the way. I fina
lly made the perfect meringue.”

“That’s good to hear. Did you stay away fro
m mixing it in a plastic bowl?”

Stanley saluted, tapping his ball cap. “Metal
or glass, just like you said.”

“Glad I could be of help,” I answered. It might not be all that terrible being on NUTV, I thought. “I’ll let you know.” I was getting stiff from sitting on the ground and stood up to stretch. “Let me go find Maggie. I think I saw her go around the corner. I kno
w she won’t want to miss this.”

I walked off into the darkness, clicking on my fla
shlight as I thought about
Stanley’s request. Could I actually fill up fifteen minutes of airtime once a week? It would mean more income for me and Zach, but it would also mean having to get out of my pajamas and show up somewhere every week. So much to think about. I looked around the back of the NUTV van but didn’t see her. Maybe she went back to the car to get something. I walked through the overgrown grass trying not to think of all the creatures who crawl out at night. She could have also been catching a little catnap. She wasn’t exactly a spring chicken, an
d we were way past her bedtime.

“Aunt Maggie?” I called out. My voice sounded small in the expanse of the night. “Aunt Maggie, are you in here?” I shined my light into the car, but the car
was empty. Maggie wasn’t there.

I turned around and searched across the grass with my flashlight. I could see the fire at the Scout camp but couldn’t see my aunt sitting on any of the stumps around it. I walked to the edge of the woods close to where my little deputy was sitting by Tyler at the fire. I called over to him. “Za
ch? Have you seen Aunt Maggie?”

Zach turned toward my voice. “Mom? Is that you?” He scrambled up from his seat by the fire and
ran over with Tyler behind him.

“Yes, it’s
me. Did Aunt Maggie come over?”

“Nope. We haven’t seen her since we left the haunted hospital.” Zach nodded and smiled. He was no doubt a legend with the Scouts now that he had entered a haunted place and penetrated a crime scene, all at the age of seven. They were probably building a statue of him out of Popsi
cle sticks at this very moment.

I sighed. Aunt Maggie wouldn’t be happy if she missed her chance to mingle with the spirits on camera. Besides, I wasn’t going on a walk down those hallway
s by myself, that was for sure.

Tyler jumped in. “Do you need us to help look for her? We are Scouts, ma’am, and tra
ined to do this sort of thing.”

Only because their members keep gett
ing themselves lost, I thought.

“No, I’ll fin
d her, but thanks,” I answered.

I trudged back to the “haunted hospital.” Stanley wa
lked part of the way toward me.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“No, and she
wasn’t over at the Scout camp.”

“Okay. Let’s check and see if she’s gone into the front part of the building. Maybe she was checking out some of the areas yo
u were going to be walking in.”

“Where was t
hat exactly going to be again?”

Stanley looked at a clipboard by the monitor. “Hallway C
and the tunnel to the morgue.”

I knew it. “I thought Ho
ward was going to do that one.”

“Yes, well he was originally slated to do it, but I switched it to you and Maggie. I wanted the best
screamers in the dead tunnel.”

Somehow I wasn’t in the mood to
appreciate his humor. “Great.”

“Howard just finished his segment. Let’s take a break on the filming and spread out to look for her. I’ll get Miss Ruby and the ladies to look on the other side. I bet they had no idea they would spend their night searching for lost people
who were alive,” Stanley said.

A few minutes later, I was inside the hospital with my flashlight as my only companion. Howard went upstairs to see if she was revisiting the crime scene, and I was walking through our assigned path, Hallway C and the dead tunnel. During the day, this hallway seemed much shorter and fairly harmless. Now, at night, every piece of peeling paint, every door hanging by one hinge, every shuffle of my feet seemed amplified. “Aunt Maggie?” How could it get so dark in one place? Somehow it had become da
rker than black. “Aunt Maggie?”

I started down Hallway C with a half-dozen doorways on each side of me. What if she had been walking around and tripped over some debris and hit her head? She could have gone into one of these rooms searching out some sort of flickering orb or shadow, tripped over an old ceiling tile and hit the floor. There were still some pieces of rusty and broken furniture in many of these rooms that she could have fallen into. My mind started racing as I flickered my flashlight at the door immediately to my right. If something dreadful was in here, if there was something otherworldly, it could jump out at me from any of these doors. Suddenly I wished my aunt had asked me to help her with a regular old-lady hobby like sewing a quilt top or planting a prize-winning rose garden. But no, my aunt had to go off ghost-chasing. My aunt had to risk both her bo
dy and soul to this crazy idea.

I took one step forward, and then way down the hall I thought I heard something. Had I heard the guttural sound of a throat clearing? “Aunt Maggie? I
s that you? Are you all right?”

I took another step and shined my light into the empty room with the handgun-bearing reflexes of a television cop. I scanned the room, only to be greeted by empty windows and part of a bed frame. No one was there. I walked over to the closet, its door hanging sideways. Also empty. I backed out just in case the ghosts that weren’t there were keen to jump me. I flicked my light to the other room on the other side of the hall and saw was an old curtain hanging from the window, stirring slightly with an evening breeze. Normally I would be through the roof to feel a breeze, but right now I felt a set of goose
bumps unco
mfortably spread under my skin.

I heard a shifting further down the hall, and then full-on footsteps. There was a raspy noise that rattled me. What was this? I seemed to be spending all my time chasing after someone I had never seen running through this hospital. The term “wild goose chase” was flashing through my head as I picked up my feet. I ignored the pounding in my heart and high-tailed it down the hall. I just had to hope against hope nothing popped out at me like a five-dollar ha
unted house visit on Halloween.

I ran down the hallway yelling, “Aunt Maggie? What is going on?” I turned the corner of the hallway, glad for once I didn’t hear the footsteps take the stairs, although running into Howard upstairs would have done a lot for my nerves right now. My flashlight beam now bounced against the walls as I ran, making shadows sway with each move. Who needed a fake haunted house when you could live it right here? The footsteps continued in front of me until I came face-to-face with one of the few closed doors in the whole joint. It was the door to the morgue. It seemed large and imposing as it had quietly waited for me at the end of the h
allway. I stepped back from it.

“Howard? Can you hear me? Stanley? Ruby? Ladies?” I wanted anybody in hearing range. I could faintly hear Maggie’s name being called throughout the hospital, but they couldn’t seem to hear me. As crazy as Maggie was about ghost hunting, I couldn’t believe she would go do
wn the dead tunnel by herself.

Even with the bats gone, there was no way I was going down this tunnel by myself. I scanned the area again with my flashlight. Maybe I could still get a volunteer to go with me. As I shined the light on the floor about three feet from the door, up against the wall, I could see a small black rectangular box. It was a walkie-talkie like the ones I had seen Stanley and
Howard using. I grabbed for it.

“Howard? Are you there?”

I was greeted with static and some indistinct voices. The red light that came on when I pushed the button grew more and more faint with every button push. The batteries were dying. I was about to turn around and physically go find Howard or Stanley to go down the tunnel with me when I heard it. A thin, piercing wail that I knew instinctivel
y – I heard Aunt Maggie scream.

It was time to go down the dead tunnel.