Ghosts Beneath Us: A Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery (Spookie Town Murder Mysteries Book 3) (11 page)

Tina loaded her plate at the buffet and joined her at the table.

“You need to try that roast beef, Tina. It’s so tender you don’t even need a knife.”

Tina used her fork to point at the roast beef slice in between the lasagna and the mashed potatoes. She bobbed her head. Today Tina had chosen a lavender pants suit to wear that she’d had in her closet for years. It was way out of style and threadbare in places. There was an orange scarf tied loosely around her neck and in her hair she’d clasped a series of barrettes in the shapes of tiny animals. Myrtle thought she looked better than usual. At least her hair was combed.

“In my opinion, though, the lobster tastes undercooked.” Myrtle kept yakking about the food and about the people laughing and munching down around them.

Her friend listened as she was eating and sometimes nodded her head, smiled or grimaced.

Tina didn’t talk too much. Most likely that was why Myrtle got along with her. It meant she could rattle away as much as she wanted and was never interrupted. Worked for her.

After supper the women toddled down to the Kit Kat Lounge and met up with the gang. It consisted of three old codgers and three old hens. None as old as her and Tina, but Myrtle approximated they were in their sixties.

Two were a married couple. The rest were single and, like her, taking the cruise for excitement. One of the women still worked part-time as a beautician, getting money under the table. One of the single men was trying to write a book about real life crimes or something, but Myrtle didn’t tell him she knew a mystery author. He’d be a pest then.

They were nice people on the whole. They had interesting life stories and liked to talk about them. They’d jokingly titled themselves the Gray-Haired Gang and they loved to play cards. Being all retired and living on budgets, they didn’t often play for big stakes. Dimes and quarters mostly. The pots weren’t allowed to be over ten dollars. That was good because Myrtle didn’t like throwing money away. It was hard enough to lose, but if it was under twenty bucks a night she didn’t feel too bad. She didn’t have to gamble to get her money, her investments were doing just fine.

Tina won big that night. She collected twenty-four bucks and a handful of change. The woman was tickled. But around eleven o’clock she informed Myrtle she wasn’t feeling so well, wanted to retire to the cabin and go to bed. She’d probably eaten too much at supper. Myrtle was having so much fun she told her friend to go on without her and she’d see her later in the cabin or in the morning.

It was their last night and Myrtle was resolved to squeeze every penny out of her cruise ticket she could get. Let Tina go to bed early. Not her. Besides one of the old men, a fellow called Wilfred, had been flirting with her most of the week and though it would end when the journey did, it felt good. Not that it could ever lead anywhere. At seventy-four, he was far too young for her and besides she was way past romantic involvements. She’d had the love of her life and no one could ever fill Oscar’s old slippers.

The card game went on past two in the morning and then broke up. Everyone was sad to be saying goodbye and there were hugs all around. Promises to keep in touch…which no one would keep. They never did. That’s the way it was on vacation trips. A person made temporary best new friends and left them behind when they went home.

Myrtle shuffled her way to her cabin, taking a minute at the railing to admire the sparkling night sea on her way, and let herself into the room. The cabin was empty. No Tina. No sign of Tina having been there. No clothes strewn in piles across the floor. Tina’s bed hadn’t been slept in. The covers were neat and flat over the mattress. There was no note. Very odd.

“Tina! Where are you? Tina?” Myrtle checked the bathroom. No Tina. Not on the balcony. No Tina bobbing around in the water below the balcony like an abandoned platypus. No Tina anywhere.

Myrtle telephoned for help and reported her friend missing.

And that’s when the nightmare began.

*****

      The next day Myrtle almost had to be dragged off the boat. She’d stayed on board longer than she was supposed to; trying to find out where her friend had gone and what had happened to her. The captain and his minions believed Tina, drunk or not feeling well as she’d claimed, had accidently fallen overboard the night before and had drown.

“It happens more often than you think,” protested Captain Milton, a middle-aged competent acting man with a mustache, who looked spiffy in his captain’s uniform. “The sea was cold and Mrs. Thompson was not a young woman. She couldn’t have fought the water for long. I’m sorry, but that’s most likely what happened.”

They didn’t listen to Myrtle when she swore Tina didn’t drink and wouldn’t have gotten close enough to the rail to fall in in the first place, either.

“Not to Tina. She wouldn’t have slipped overboard for no reason. She was as sure-footed as a boat goat. Something has happened to her! Have you searched the other places on the ship and the cabins?”

“We will as soon as the remainder of the passengers disembark. My crew has already searched every other possible location and any empty cabins. No sign of Mrs. Thompson. I’m sorry. We will keep looking of course. We want to know what happened to her as much as you and the port authorities do.”

The captain tried to be as sympathetic as he could and comforted her. “I promise you there are boats out looking for Mrs. Thompson as we speak and they will keep searching until we decide there isn’t any chance she has survived.”

“How long will that be?” Myrtle had snapped at him.

“We look as long as we can.

“Mrs. Schmidt, please go on home and we’ll let you know if we find her or learn anything else. We’ll contact you. You can’t be of any help here. Go home,” the captain had dismissed her with a compassionate smile. Tina didn’t have any surviving family. Myrtle was all she had.

After delaying her departure as long as she could, she finally disembarked and took a taxi home–where another shock awaited her.

Someone had burned up her trailer. As the taxi drove up in front of what had once been her home, there was only a blackened metal hulk sitting before her and mounds of smoldering rubbish around it that had once been her treasures.

She got out of the taxi and stood there frowning at the remnants of her life. “Holy moly!” she grumbled. “Not only is Tina fish food, it looks like I gotta get me a new home, too.”

Then she climbed back in the vehicle and told the driver where else to go.

Chapter 5

Frank

Early Friday morning someone was banging on Frank’s front door.

He’d gotten up before he usually did because he wanted to get in a whole day’s writing so he’d have the weekend free to be with Abby, the kids, and to do a little housekeeping. He and Abby would spend the evening together at the family reunion and drive home later. It’d be a late night with the visiting and the trip back. Then he’d take Saturday, while Abby was working on the bakery renovations, to clean house and do his weekly shopping. Saturday evening he was having her over for a home cooked dinner. The weather was supposed to be warm, instead of chilly as it’d been all week, so he was planning on grilling steaks on the deck. Abby enjoyed barbequed T-bones.

It wasn’t often they had a weekend alone so he was going to take full advantage of it. Before dinner they’d maybe go see a movie. Abby had been going on and on about this one film she wanted to see. It was a horror flick about vampires. It sounded acceptable, had had good reviews, so that was what they’d see, though he wasn’t much for vampire films. Too bloody.

And Sunday before they had to pick up the children he thought a scenic drive out into the country to a nearby winery, with a picnic lunch, would be fun. He was looking forward to the weekend.

“Wait a minute, I’m coming!” he yelled as he made his way to the door. Whoever was on the other side was pounding on it like a mad person.

He opened the door and someone rushed in at him like a banshee. Myrtle.

“Frank! Someone killed my friend Tina. I need your help! Murder, it was murder!” The old woman was disheveled, her hair wildly disarrayed, her face agitated and she smelled like smoke. “She was there and then she wasn’t! They say it was an accident, but I know better. Then I get home and someone’s burned my house to the ground. It’s nothing but black humps and ash. That’s no coincidence I’m thinking. I–”

Frank took the woman by her shoulders and gently shook her. “Calm down, Myrtle. What are you talking about?” He guided her to the sofa and shoved her down to the cushions. “Start at the beginning.”

And she did. She told him everything about the cruise and Tina’s disappearance; her trailer’s fate. She confessed what she believed had happened.

“I’m so sorry about your friend Tina,” Frank said when she was done. “I’ll call the cruise line, look into it and see what I can find out. I’ll follow up on the situation.”

“That’s good of you. I’m devastated over what happened to her–if anything really has. If it has then it was
no accident
. Something’s going on and I know you and Abigail can get to the bottom of it. My home being set fire to is part of it, too, I’d bet. It’s a feeling I have.”

“Have you called the police about your trailer yet?”

“No. I had no way to contact them. I don’t carry those new-fangled cell phones around with me that everyone else has these days like some addictive talismans. Don’t cotton to them and they cost too much. Lordy, they want a hundred dollars a month and you have to sign two year contracts. And in the end you end up talking more on them than you do to real people. No way to live if you ask me.”

“Cell phones aren’t new-fangled,” he slipped in. “They’ve been around for a while.”

“I know that.” She sighed, rubbing her hands together. “I’m beat is what I am. I was up all night on that boat looking for my missing friend. I’m so upset and worried.”

“About your trailer, could there have been bad wiring? Did you leave something on, like a space heater, when you left last week?”

“No. I’m always so careful. I turn everything off, even the lights and the heat. As you know it hasn’t been that cold. But no matter,” she shook her head miserably, “my house is
gone
but it can be replaced. I’ll contact my insurance agent if you let me use your telephone and he’ll take care of everything. I have copies of all my important papers with my lawyer. It’s my life’s keepsakes, love notes from my Oscar, photographs, and stuff like that, and my treasures I’m grieving over. It took so many years to gather them all. Now they’re just grit and soot. Who would burn my place down?”

“We’ll have to find that out.” Frank had a thought who might have done it but kept it to himself.

“If I discover who did it, I’ll burn
their
houses down. See how they like it. The creeps.” Her face was flushed with indignation, her arms wrapped around her upper body. He’d seen that stance before. She was out for vengeance and blood and wouldn’t rest until she got it.

He knew it was coming before she spoke, so he beat her to it. “Myrtle, you’re welcome to stay here in one of my guest rooms until you get another place to live.” She’d stayed with him, Abigail too, the year before during their last danger ridden exploit. His cabin was large and he liked having people in it. It wasn’t a hard decision. She’d been an exemplary house guest, even if she’d eaten him out of house and home.

Her eyes went soft and she smiled for the first time since he’d let her in. “You’re a saint, Frank Lester. A pure saint. My suitcases are outside on the porch. Good thing I had my best clothes and toiletries with me otherwise I’d have to run around naked.”

“Yeah, a good thing.” He tried not to think about Myrtle running around in her birthday suit. It was one image he didn’t want bumping around in his head.

“I won’t have to stay long, you’ll see. I’ll find another home quick as I can. I do have money, you know.” This last was imparted with pride.

“Don’t worry about it. You know you’re welcome to bunk here as long as you need. My home is always open to you, Myrtle.”

He handed her his cell phone and she made the call to her insurance agent. The conversation was brief. Myrtle didn’t like talking on phones of any kind. When she was done she handed it back to him.

“I’m going to give the sheriff a call and report your house fire. He needs to know. Then I want to go over there to see the damage for myself.”

“I’ll come with you.” Myrtle jumped to her feet. “Would you mind if we run by Tina’s house first? Sometimes she does do cuckoo things and maybe, just maybe, she might have gotten off the boat without me seeing her and went on home? She was irritated with me because I wanted to stay in the lounge longer and she didn’t. So I need to go to her place and see for myself.”

Frank didn’t hold much hope for the missing woman to be found at her house but he could understand how Myrtle needed that final confirmation.

“Okay. Let me bring your suitcases in and get them up to your room, the same one you occupied last time; call the sheriff and we’ll go. If you need to use the restroom or anything, you know where it is.”

Frank took her luggage to her room and while she was in the bathroom he telephoned Sheriff Mearl. For once the man was actually in his office and agreed to meet them at Myrtle’s property in about an hour, which would give them time to go by Tina’s first.

So much for writing that day, he thought. Yet he didn’t mind. Real life always trumped the fictional life in his books. And tonight he was taking a road trip with Abigail. He could write tomorrow during the day. Of course living with Myrtle would be a distraction–she often was–but he could always retreat to his study in the basement and lock the door. It was soundproof.

Soon they were on the country road bouncing towards Tina’s place in his truck. It wasn’t far from Myrtle’s. Frank wasn’t surprised at that. He’d expected it, especially after what Samantha had told him at the newspaper on Saturday. The three old folks she’d interviewed about local vandalism also lived in the same area. Near Tina, Myrtle and the others. Frank wasn’t absolutely sure what that meant yet, but he was now sure it was all linked in some way.