Ghosts Beneath Us: A Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery (Spookie Town Murder Mysteries Book 3) (31 page)

“With those two in jail and the mystery of the ghosts and murders most likely solved, I don’t see why not. It’ll be a sort of celebration. Another mystery solved.”

“And a celebration of your new novel being released soon, right?”

“Ah, you remembered.” Frank seemed pleased.

“Of course. I’m so proud of you. Your third published book.

“About Saturday, is it all right if I invite Kate to come over? I see her tomorrow so I could ask her then.”

“Sure. The more the merrier. You know how I love a crowd.”

She could see his grin even in the gloom of the porch. There was just enough light from the room behind them. It was then it hit her. She loved Frank and had come to depend on him. The kids respected and loved him. He was a major part of her life and she couldn’t imagine the future without him. Staring at him in the dark, she felt her lips curve up into a smile.
She loved Frank.

“So are you ready for our next adventure, Abby?”

Laughing this time, she answered, “Our next adventure? Let’s see…we’ve solved a thirty year old missing person’s mystery, a serial killer mystery and now a ghosts/land-grab/old folk’s murder mystery. What could top those? Aliens in city hall? Vampires in the town square? Dinosaurs running rampant in the streets of Spookie?” She laughed again.

“Who knows?” Frank stood up and brought her to her feet with him. “We’ll have to wait and see. Right now, though, I’m going home, but I will see you tomorrow at Kate’s. I’ve gotten addicted to her donuts and coffee and I love watching you bustling around waiting on the customers. You’re so cute.”

Abigail gently shoved him away. “Cops, waitresses and donuts. You just like the free donuts I give you.”

“That, too. Goodnight Abby. See you tomorrow.” He kissed her one last time and left.

Abigail waited until he was gone and went inside. She had a stack of bills to take care of and the latest recorded episode of
Supernatural
to watch before she hit the bed.

Because tomorrow was another day.

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Abigail and Frank

It was August. The air was a hot, muggy blanket that smothered the land, but on it there was the sweet scent of rain. Perhaps a storm was coming in later that night. The summer had been uneventful, calm even, in every other way. No ghosts in old ladies’ basements, women disappearing off cruise ships or unexplained murders. For that Abigail was grateful. She liked it when her days were normal and routine.

She’d begun a new commission painting the outside of Johnny’s Pizzeria. The proprietor wanted a wall mural of people eating a pizza at a table and an outside garden around them. It was an ambitious undertaking, painting a brick canvas fifteen feet high by twenty-five feet long in the ninety degree sun, but the wall was shaded part of the day and that had made it bearable. She liked the idea that people driving into Spookie would see her artwork as they drove down Main Street. So she worked hard to make sure the mural was a good one. It was coming along splendidly and she hoped to have it done by the weekend. Life was good.

Laura had worked the summer at Kate’s Delicious Circle bakery and she’d learned the secrets of how to make the donuts and run a business. On top of it, the girl had saved a decent amount in her bank account for college in two years. In September Laura would be a high school junior.

Nick had spent most of the summer out of town with two of his siblings, William and Penny, at his Aunt Bessie’s. He’d spent the sultry days splashing water in the local lake, turning brown, and playing with his brother and sister. Abigail had missed him, but had been happy he was happy. He’d be home next week. School would begin three weeks after that in September.

It was past suppertime. Laura was out with some of her girlfriends at the ice cream shop using up the last of the summer vacation.

Abigail was waiting on the front porch swing for Frank as the evening shadows slipped in. Finally it was cooling off and the breeze felt good on her skin. She had a slight sunburn from painting in the sun some of the day though she’d worn a hat and sunglasses. By tomorrow night she’d be as red as a tomato if she wasn’t careful. Long sleeves and pants might help that, though.

Frank rode up on his motorcycle around eight o’clock and she was excited to see him. He’d spent the last three days in court testifying against Leonard Britton and Sheila Mathis and she couldn’t wait to hear what had happened. He’d kept her up to date day by day but that afternoon the verdict had been expected to come down and she hadn’t heard the final news yet.

“How did it go today in court?” she asked as soon as his boots hit the porch steps.

“Just the way we wanted it to go.” He kissed her and sat down beside her, his arm going around her shoulders.

“And how was that?”

“They found them both guilty of every charge. They left fingerprints in the right places and their ultimate confessions did the rest. Britton had an extensive criminal history behind him. He’s been in prison for assault and various other heinous crimes numerous times. The story that went around the courthouse was he’d had a deprived, abusive childhood at the hands of a grandmother. He was sent to live with her at the age of ten when his parents both went to prison for drug offenses. Which explains his hatred of the elderly. Apparently his grandmother was a real nut case and used to lock him in closets and starve him when she thought he’d done something wrong. Of course, he was always doing something wrong in her eyes.”

“You think that’s a good excuse for growing up and killing old people for money?”

“I don’t. A person can rise above whatever their childhood does to them. In the end, everyone is responsible for what they do in life, how they live as adults. Britton, I believe, is a common psychopath. He makes excuses for everything terrible he does, feels little or no regrets, and always blames someone else. Mathis was just the brains of the duo. But she is as bad as he is; another psychopath. In court she didn’t look one bit sorry for what they’d done. Brought her down a peg, though, jail has. Her hair and make-up looked horrendous.” A soft chuckle.

“Tina’s death they couldn’t tag them with. No evidence there. But three murders were all they needed to convict them. Their finger prints were found at Beatrice’s place, on a stick they used to bludgeon her in the basement, and both their shoes matched the imprints found in the mud where Alfred’s body was dumped. Same with Clementine, Britton’s DNA was found under her fingernails. She must have put up a fight.”

“But Clementine’s body wasn’t autopsied and she was cremated?”

“Well, I had a friend of mine down at the medical examiner’s office take some samples when Clementine was in the funeral home,” Frank confessed, “but before she was cremated, just in case. Turns out I was right to do that. Don’t worry, I had Kate’s permission.

“Anyway, they’ll be sentenced sometime next month. Britton will most likely get the death penalty and Mathis, possibly. She wasn’t the one who actually murdered the old people, he was, but she was an accomplice. At the least she’ll get life.”

Abigail clapped her hands. “Justice has been served. Thank goodness. How about the Lansing Corporation? Were they implicated or vindicated?” Thunder crackled somewhere in the sky far away.

“As I believed, they didn’t have a clue what Britton and Mathis had done. The two had acted on their own, greedy and impatient for the money and the bonus. Lansing was cleared of all wrong doing, except hiring the wrong people to work for them. That alone isn’t a crime.

“And wait until you hear this. One of their vice-presidents, Mr. Vincent, was in court to testify on behalf of the company and after it was over he waylaid me outside the courthouse to inform me their board of directors had decided, in a show of good faith and regret for the unauthorized crimes Mathis and Britton had perpetrated on our populace, to gift the houses back to anyone in the survivors’ families who wanted them and to donate the remainder, the unclaimed land, to the town to do with whatever it wishes. They have forfeited all claims and they are not going to build their new facility here.”

“Well, that’s generous of them. I wonder why they’d do such a thing? They must be losing a great deal of money.”

“They are. My take on that? They don’t want the negative press. It was bad enough to be dragged into this whole mess and they want their part in it forgotten. What better way than to pull up stakes and walk away from it? Clever, if you ask me. They’re a vast syndicate and the money is a drop in the bucket to them. They won’t miss it. Some of the land won’t be claimed. It’ll go to the town and I wonder what we’ll do with it. Any ideas?”

Abigail thought about it. “You know the town could resell the homes and land and use the money to improve the landscaping along Main Street? Or it could fix the roads or renovate some of the municipal buildings or some of the land could be turned into a town park?”

“All excellent ideas.” Frank hugged her. “You should present them to the city council at the next town meeting.”

“I just might,” she commented. “I’m only tremendously relieved it’s over and behind us.”

“I tried to get an address or an operating telephone number for Lansing from Mr. Vincent, but he said he wasn’t allowed to give out that information, smiled, walked away, and was instantly picked up and whisked off in a shiny ebony limousine. The number Britton had given me months ago no longer works, it’s been conveniently disconnected.”

“Ah, that company
does not
want people to know it exists or where it’s located,” Abigail concluded.

“Tell me about it. Even my friend Charlie can’t get a lock on their location or what they do. It’s so hush-hush and high security. I think it’s tied into our secret government. Maybe it handles the interplanetary alien problem or some such thing like in those
Men in Black
movies.”

“There you go again, Frank, with your hidden government and alien conspiracy theories.”

“Hey, there is a secret government, you better believe it. And they’re most likely hiding all manner of nefarious secrets from us. Darn, I really wish I could have followed the bread crumbs back to Lansing somehow. I’m dying of curiosity as to what the company really does.”

“I bet you are.

“Was Myrtle at court today?” Frank had told her the old woman had attended every day of the hearings and had testified earlier in the week about the night she heard and saw Britton and Mathis planting the bomb on her property.

“Every day. We often, well always, had lunch together. Tacos or burritos in this little hole-in-the-wall next to the courthouse. She was on this Mexican food kick. I paid of course.”

“Of course. How was she?”

“Like Myrtle. Eccentric and a model of high fashion.” Frank had an affectionate grin on his face. “You know she was wearing high heels and a hat today with her bright green dress. The hat looked like a flower garden. She didn’t look half bad, but kept tripping in her heels. That woman, what a character.

“Oh, and when she was on the stand, after her testimony was finished, she treated everyone in the courthouse to a booming rendition of Perry Como’s song
Funny How Time Slips Away
. She said it was in honor of her dead friends Tina, Beatrice, Clementine and Alfred. It brought tears to everyone’s eyes. They even let her finish the whole song. Let me tell you, it was an event.”

“She’s something, all right. But she’s a good friend, a courageous lady, and I believe she saved Laura from either injury or possibly death when that Mathis woman swerved onto the sidewalk and almost ran her over. If Myrtle wouldn’t have shot your gun at the car, it might have run Laura over. Now I owe that woman not only for my life but for my daughter’s as well.” Abigail hadn’t forgotten how Myrtle has saved her the year before from the Mud People Killer by whacking him over the head with a stick in Abigail’s bedroom. “She might be a scrawny little thing, yet she’s fearless.”

“Yes, she is. You should have seen her on the stand. For once she made perfect sense and behaved as if she knew what she was doing and saying. She sounded amazingly normal. It almost makes you wonder if her dottiness is an act.”

“I think so. I figured that out years ago. Myrtle likes people to think she’s a little nutty. It’s a cover. She’s a lot smarter than she portrays herself.”

“I think so too,” Frank echoed. “You know I got the sheriff to drop the gun charges on her. I blackmailed him by saying I’d never tell a soul he never took any of the crimes against the old people seriously. That and Myrtle is so old no one would put her in jail for something like saving someone’s life, even if she was illegally packing a gun.”

“That was good of you on both counts. I’d hate to have to visit Myrtle in jail. Think of all the food we’d have to bring her.” She laughed.

“And Myrtle seems so tickled with her new modular home and furniture. She couldn’t stop talking about it. She’s thinking of planting flowers in the front and fruit trees in the backyard. She wants me to build her a deck in the rear, too. She’s on a roll.

“Oh, and I almost forgot. You know when I left that old woman today at her place she said something you’ll get a kick out of.”

“Don’t tell me…she’s already got another mystery for us to solve?”

Frank chuckled again. “How did you guess?”

“I know Myrtle. She loves to feed us troubles to solve. It’s what she lives for…that and trying to push her way in and help us solve those troubles. It’s like a hobby to her. What is it this time?”

“She wouldn’t spill the beans. Said she’d tell us all about it tomorrow when she comes over for supper. Here.”

Abigail laughed. “She’s invited herself to supper again?”

“Yep.”

“I can’t wait,” Abigail said, “to hear what she’s come up with now.”

“Me, either. Whatever it is, I bet it’ll be a doozy.”

“I bet.”

They became silent for a time as the day drifted away. The sound of thunder in the distance grew louder. There was lightning dancing on the murky horizon.