Beneath the Mall of Madness (A Jaspar Windisle Mystery Book 1) (10 page)

Obadiah Fry was buried in the Lutheran cemetery. As soon as I stepped into the place specters began popping up from the ground. Sparks climbed out of my pocket and started making friends. I tried to dodge the new specters. It was no use, they could tell that I could see them and started swarming around me. I was glad that my companions weren’t talking because the new information was almost too much. Everyone in the cemetery seemed to have a deep dark secret. I petted and soothed the individual specters and the roar of information settled into a trickle. I sighed.

“Does that happen every time you go to a cemetery?” Cecilia asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Why, did it look strange?”

“You sounded like you were trapped in a boring conversation with a lot of people,” Theresa said. “With a lot of uh-huhs and oh that’s interestings. And your hair and clothes were moving around like it was windy. Your hair is still moving around.” So much for looking normal.

“Well, I’m surrounded by specters,” I said. I reached up, and she was right. There was a specter sitting on my head. I petted it a few times and nudged it away. Like all specters, it was light as air and soft to the touch. “It’s a good sign. The cemetery is healthy, and the spirits are socialized.”

“What’s that mean, exactly?” Earl asked.

“You know all those movies where a bunch of idiots drive into a foggy cemetery at night to make sure someone’s still dead, and monsters eat them?”

“Yup.”

“That can’t happen here.”

“It can’t?” Theresa said.

“You could get attacked by bears, I suppose, but no supernatural evil, and absolutely no raising things from the dead. Specters are kind of like the frogs of the spirit world. They’re the first spirits to bail when things start going to Hell.”

“That’s good to know,” Cecilia said. “Now, how about Mr. Fry?”

As I’d expected, there was competition to see who could tell me the most about the late Mr. Fry.

“There is a tunnel out of town,” I said. “It was an old project started around the time the town was founded. It was meant to be an evacuation route under the mountains until they ran into something evil underground. The man who built it claimed all the land along the route, sealed up the entrance and told his family never to dig there again. Obadiah told Abner about it when they were younger, and they convinced each other it would be a good idea to open it up and see what was on the other side.” I listened some more.

“There’s a portal of some kind at the end of the tunnel. Obadiah thought it was an evil shrine. Abner was convinced it could grant wishes. After Obadiah locked the door and refused to open it again, Abner never forgave him. Oh, he really never forgave him. Obadiah died convinced that Abner killed him.”

“The medical examiner said he had a heart attack,” Earl said.

“He isn’t very clear on how Abner killed him,” I said. “Anyway, that’s your answer. There’s a mysterious, possibly evil magic thing under the mall. Obadiah didn’t know about the chupacabras since he never visited the above ground part of his property.”

“So the man I shot was wasting his time looking for that tunnel,” Earl said.

“Not necessarily. It was already sealed up when they found it the first time. It would be faster to unseal it than to dig a whole new tunnel.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” Steve asked. “An old tunnel might collapse on itself faster than you can dig it out.”

“I’ve seen his memories of the tunnel,” I told him. “I don’t know much about ancient tunnels, but the floor looks level, and it’s got supports. Parts of it even have electric lighting.” Cecilia nodded.

“I told you they’re convenient.”

“So, in addition to monsters and a mystical evil thing, there is an unaccounted for tunnel under my project, is what you’re saying,” Steve said. He sounded tired.

“It looks that way,” Earl said.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Steve said. “There was nothing about this on the bill of sale, and nothing on the surveys. It’s going to be lawsuits and voodoo dolls all around when I get back to my office.”

“Did your bosses know you dabble in the occult when they assigned you here?” Cecilia asked.

“I try to keep my work and my personal life separate,” he replied. “Hiring Jaspar is the most occult thing I’ve done during my tenure there.”

“Mr. Windisle?” Theresa yanked on my jacket.

“Yes?”

“Could you talk to Abner, too?”

“Why?”

“Maybe he really did kill old Mr. Fry.” She looked up at me with big, pleading eyes. “Please? I want to know.”

“I’ve got time if you want to,” Cecilia said. “He’s buried over in the Protestant cemetery.”

“Fine,” I said. “But I can’t guarantee good results in a different cemetery.”

***

We drove over. The Protestant cemetery was closer to the freeway, behind the line of hotels. It didn’t have a church attached and didn’t have much of a parking lot either. According to the plaque on the gate, it was a historical site maintained by the town. None of the graves had flowers on them, and most of them were over fifty years old. There were far fewer specters here. They mostly wanted to talk to me about the war. ‘The’ war seemed to be World War I or II; there were a handful of memories of the Revolutionary war, and one memory that was either a Renaissance Fair gone horribly wrong or someone who was much older than their grave marker indicated. There was a lot of that going on around here. Abner was buried near the end of a row, out of sight of the parking lot.

Abner was a wealth of information. Much of it, I didn’t need. Cecilia and Theresa had been correct in their assessment of him; he had been a con artist all his life. He’d worked so hard to encourage tourism because everyone in town was on to his schemes, and he didn’t want to move. He also liked cupcake cakes, a black mark against anyone in my book. He didn’t want to move because he was sure that the cave he and Obadiah had found was worth a fortune to the right buyer if only he could get his hands on it. And to that end . . .

“He hired someone to kill Obadiah with magic,” I said. “He figured out how to unseal the tunnel and he contacted an evil wizard to kill Obadiah because he wouldn’t sell him the land. You might want to ask Obadiah’s sister-in-law about it,” I said to Earl. “I don’t know if she was in on the murder, but she and Abner were scheming together about something to do with land and money.” They were also sleeping together. I don’t share all the details I pick up from the specters, even when I’m being paid.

“Something?” Earl prompted me.

“I’m only getting bits and pieces,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense to me. For some reason Abner thought Obadiah would sell him the land much more cheaply than he would sell to you,” I nodded to Steve, “and when he didn’t, Abner thought it was worth killing over.”

“I never heard that Abner had been having money troubles,” Earl said.

“Neither did I,” Theresa said, “but he was always working an angle, wasn’t he? He couldn’t organize a picnic without finding a way to make it crooked. At least, that’s what my dad said. If he knew Abner had been sneaking onto our property, he’d be furious.”

“Oh, and Abner was murdered too. By something . . . I’m not sure what. Some kind of monster. What was he supposed to have died of?”

“A stroke,” Earl said. “He spent a couple months in the hospital doing rehab, but it didn’t help. After a while, he just faded away.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said. “He died in his living room. It’s hard to tell from his perspective, but I don’t think rehab was in his future.”

“That’s another mystery to investigate then,” Earl said. He stared at the grave for a minute or two; then he was back to business.

“How did Obadiah unseal the tunnel?” He asked.

“With a hex wrench,” I said. “A really big hex wrench, about the size of a giant novelty pencil and made of steel. Not the sort of thing that could be hiding in a piece of clothing. I’d say if no one saw him wandering around town with it, then it’s near the entrance of the tunnel.”

“Why a giant hex wrench?” Cecilia wondered.

“The seal is a big metal plate with a bolt in the middle. I’m kind of surprised one person could open it, let alone an old man you’ve all described as out of shape.”

“Perhaps that’s where Mrs. Fry comes in,” Earl said. “I’ll have to have a talk with her.”

***

Theresa was mostly silent on the way back to the hotel. As we were getting out of Cecilia’s van, she asked me

“What’s a hex wrench?”

“Have you ever assembled your own furniture?” I asked her. She shook her head.

“We live in the hotel. All our furniture is antique.”

“A hex wrench is a piece of metal shaped like a candy cane except it’s bent at a right angle, and it has six sides. They’re used to screw and unscrew bolts. They usually come free with self-assemble furniture.”

“Wouldn’t it be easy to copy?”

“If you were determined, I suppose. You can’t buy a hex wrench the length of a car off the shelf so you’d have to make it. I wouldn’t know where to start. I guess a blacksmith could do it.”

“I’m going to have to ask your father about looking for that tunnel,” Steve said. “I need to see what’s going on down there before I decide what to do about it.”

“I’ll be looking for that tunnel too,” Earl said. “If I’m not mistaken you fellas have a kill zone to map out.”

“Can I help you look for the tunnel?” Theresa asked.

“No,” Earl said. “You need to tell your dad what’s going on and help with that drill.”

“But Earl-”

“No buts,” Cecilia said. “He’s right. There are cultists roaming the woods again. You don’t want to get kidnaped, and we don’t want to quit looking for the tunnel because we have to search for you.” Theresa made a face and agreed. Steve and I headed back to the construction site.

We took Steve’s car, which was sleek and black and, most importantly, company owned. No killer vegetable was going to damage
my
car. We had free range of the field, as there were no construction workers or protestors to be seen. Caution tape was strung across the entrance to the construction site. We argued about whether to park as far away as possible to protect the car or as close as possible in case we had to run for it. We compromised and parked in the middle of the field. Steve took a can of spray paint and a clipboard out of his car. Zebulon Akeley pulled up next to us in a pick-up truck. He was dressed in green digital fatigues, a baseball cap, and an orange vest. He pulled something that looked like a rifle on steroids out of the back of his truck, along with a wand and backpack ensemble that I recognized.

“Those are illegal,” I told him.

“They are,” he agreed. “Earl would be cool with it, and the sheriff is busy elsewhere.”

“You’ll burn the forest down,” Steve objected.

“You’ll set yourself on fire,” I said. “I’m speaking from experience here.”

“You’ve set yourself on fire?” Zebulon asked.

“No, but I’ve seen it happen,” I said, “and that’s one of the better outcomes.”

He shrugged, unimpressed.

“Relax. If I have to resort to this thing, we’ll all have bigger problems. I’d rather hedge my bets.”

“So the elephant gun is your first choice?” Steve asked. So that’s what that was.

“No, dynamite is my first choice. But have you ever seen a dynamite launcher? And a grenade launcher would maim us all if I tried to use it in a small area like this.” Clearly occult interests weren’t the only odd thing about the residents of this town. Or maybe the heavy firepower was for dealing with cultists.

“So what’s your plan?” I asked him. He pulled a series of straps and hooks out of his truck.

“I’m going to climb a tree and cover you from above while you do your thing. If anything moves I’ll shoot it, and we all head back here as fast as we can and leave in my truck.”

“You aren’t going to be able to climb a tree with a flamethrower on your back,” I told him. He grumbled a bit and put it back in the truck.

Once that was settled, I set up my pendant. Sparks was shifting around a bit, and the pendant was wobbling, but that was because my hand was shaking. I started walking towards the flags marking where construction might begin someday with my arm held out in front of me. I hadn’t made it to the tree line before the pendant began jerking around in earnest. Sparks wasn’t even near it yet.

“That was about what I expected,” I said.

“We’re past the point where the protestors got killed,” Steve said. He marked it with paint anyway.

“I think they provoked it,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

After the tenth or so time, I backed up Sparks seemed to figure out what I was doing. He started flying back and forth from me to the danger zone. I was able to trace it by listening to the screams fade in and out. We were slowed down by Zebulon needing to switch trees every dozen feet or so, but we were done well before dark. When I checked my watch, it had taken only two hours thanks to Sparks.

“The edges are wobbly, but we made a circle,” Steve said, consulting his clipboard.

“A
big
circle,” I said.

“Yes. The entire mall would fit inside it.”

“You think so?” I replied. “Wouldn’t it have a corner sticking out somewhere?” Every mall I’d ever been to was L-shaped or had odd corners sticking out where they’d added more stores.

“Our mall is circular,” Steve told me. “With no outlying buildings. We’re making up the lack of square footage with more floors.”

“Almost like someone wanted it to fit inside the circle of killer ferns,” Zebulon commented.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It’s funny how that worked out.”

We made it back to the parking lot without incident. I’d put the pendant away and was getting ready to open the car door when Zebulon shouted something.

“What?” Steve called back as he opened his door.

“There’s someone in the back of your car!” Zebulon yelled. I jumped away from the passenger side. The door opened, and a hand reached for me. I turned and ran towards Zebulon’s truck. I could hear Steve cursing behind me, but he can take care of himself.

Suddenly there was a bang like the sound of every tire in an eighteen wheeler blowing out at once, and it felt like I’d been stabbed in the ears. I put my hands to my ears, relieved to find they were still attached. I couldn’t hear Steve anymore. I could see Zebulon and his mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. So I was deaf. No, scratch that. I could hear static, and a high pitched whine. It was like my ears were on strike and complaining bitterly about harsh working conditions.

Zebulon was pointing what appeared to be a handgun for a giant in my direction, so I put my hands up. He shook his head and took something out of his ears. He lowered the gun and pointed behind me. I looked.

Steve was going to need a new car, was my first thought. My second was that the first shot had deafened me so completely that I’d missed at least two more. The third was that the man who’d been hiding in the car was never going to explain himself now.

That made two people in a week who’d fired a gun at a target less than ten feet away from me. There were nice people in this town, but it had more than its share of trigger-happy lunatics.

I made eye contact with Steve over the top of his car. He looked as shocked as I felt. My hearing had returned a little by the time Sheriff Warren arrived, and I could hear other people if they shouted. Zebulon laughed at Steve and I as we answered the Sheriff’s questions. I guess I didn’t need to shout, but I couldn’t hear my own voice.

***

It turned out that Zebulon had killed
two
men who had been hiding in Steve’s car. The one who’d reached for me was missing most of his head. The other man’s corpse was in better shape, but the front of the car had done nothing to shield him. He turned out to be one of the state troopers who’d arrested me a few days earlier. I tried to guess what Earl and the Sheriff’s thoughts were based on their movements. I didn’t have much luck. They didn’t ask Zebulon many questions, and he didn’t act like a man concerned about having blown away a law enforcement officer.

Steve’s car was bleeding radiator fluid, so we rode back to town in Sheriff Warren’s car. I got to sit in front while Steve sat in the back. When we got back to the hotel Sheriff Warren told me to stay in town. Well, he yelled it.

“And try not to wander around,” he added. I could barely hear him, but he was loud enough that Jeremiah came running out of the hotel to see what was going on. “That’s twice now that someone has tried to grab you.”

“I thought they were after Steve,” I yelled. Then I remembered that there was nothing wrong with the sheriff’s hearing. “It was his car,” I said in what I hoped was a normal tone of voice.

“But everyone knew you and Zeb were going out there this afternoon,” he shouted. “And they weren’t hiding in the truck!”

“They didn’t sabotage it either!” Zebulon called out. “I think I was supposed to leave. Too bad I saw them from the cab.”

“Yeah, you’re a real hero,” Sheriff Warren said. “You’re lucky that guy wasn’t a real cop!”

“Wait, what?” His handcuffs had been real enough.

“The State Patrol had never heard of him or his partner. They weren’t real clear about who they thought was investigating the killings, but I think it’s safe to assume they didn’t call the FBI either.”

“Then what’s going to happen now?” Steve shouted from the backseat of the police car. They were going to take him to his place next. “If they were trying to hide something they failed. That chupacabra video was well on its way to 100,000 hits before we left, and it’s been reposted at least three times with dramatic soundtracks added.”

“I’ll call the FBI myself,” the sheriff said, “although I’m going to leave out the chupacabras. They can figure that out for themselves.” He left to give Steve a ride back to his house, and I turned to the hotel. Zebulon slung his arm around my neck. He smelled like gunpowder.

“Your hearing should be mostly back to normal tomorrow,” he shouted cheerfully. “I guess I should have had you two wear ear protection, huh?” I glared at him.

“What was that thing you were wielding?” I asked him.

“A Desert Eagle,” he said. “My rifle takes too long to reload, so I brought it as back-up.”

“You carry that thing everywhere,” Jeremiah said. He was frowning. “I can’t believe you actually used it.”

“It has a different effect in movies,” I said.

“Different ammo,” Zebulon explained. “They use blanks in the movies.”

“I would hope so,” I said. “Actors don’t generally have a small army of identical cousins waiting to take their place if their death scene needs another take.” He laughed.

“If you like I can show you how to use one later,” he offered. “Or something with a lower caliber.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. Not very hard though. I’d had some previous experience with guns, and it hadn’t been enjoyable. On the other hand, there was at least one more fake cop out there somewhere.

“Fiona left a message for you,” Jeremiah said. “She wants you to come over for dinner if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Thanks,” I said. I could use a hot home-cooked meal. I just hoped she didn’t want to finish taking down the plaster tonight. All I wanted to do was eat and go to bed. “Did she say what time?”

“Whenever you’re hungry.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Zebulon said. “The sheriff just said you’re in danger. Let me give you a ride.”

“How do I know you’re not part of a cult conspiracy?” I asked. “That could have been an elaborate set up to get me to trust you.”

“It’s not a setup,” Theresa said. I had missed her coming out of the hotel. “He knows Fiona made ham. We were both at the store when she bought it. Can I go too?” She directed that at her father.

“Of course. Just make sure you all get back in time.”

“I love you, Daddy!”