Pennies for the Ferryman - 01 (33 page)

Listening to his drunken snores, I flipped around the television until a haggard looking Don Hodges dragged himself into the room after three in the morning. I was happy to see him. He was equally relieved to see me.

“Mike! I’ve been looking everywhere for you! One of the ghosts told me that things were cool and you were back at the hotel. I thought it was a trap…”

“I met the owners of this territory. We came to an understanding. They want me to leave and I don’t intend to hang around. If you don’t mind, let’s talk about it later. I’m exhausted and need some rest.”

“Sure, no problem buddy. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Tomorrow, we need to start talking about Roger Taney. He’s the boss ghost out where I live. Our paths are going to end up crossing sometime in the future and it sounds like the ghosts in Gettysburg work for him. Think you can do a bit of spying on him?”

“Isn’t recon my middle name?”

I chuckled. “I thought it was Peter?”

“Just get some rest. I’ll be on watch for the rest of the night.”

Settling into my bed, I thought about all that I learned. It all came back to greed. Greed made the living and the dead do strange things. People come to Atlantic City for the promise of something for nothing. Greed wasn’t so much a vice as it is a way of life here. The dead fed off that greed and used it to sustain their existence.

Atlantic City was a real eye opener into the dark underside of both worlds.

I’d leave there in the morning with over seven grand and a couple of forms so the IRS could take their cut of my winnings. Where exactly did greed get me?

I’ll tell you where, possessed, almost killed, and closer to truths I really didn’t want to know.

Somehow, that wad of money didn’t seem very comforting. I wasn’t going to give it back, mind you, but having it just wasn’t as important as it once was.

Episode 10: Hitting the Fan

My long delayed trip to Roanoke was a tale of ups and downs. The first day there, Don and I found one lousy lead on the oldest cold case, enough to reopen the investigation and hopefully get somewhere. That boded well for Candy’s career. She gave me a smoldering kiss that was definitely leading somewhere when the phone rang. I might not have
those
types of psychic powers, but I knew something was wrong.

Would it have killed the prisoners in the county jail to wait just two more hours to riot? Did the standoff have to take so long? Did they honestly expect that the police would let them go – or was the riot just a bargaining chip to get a better cable TV package in the jail? Seriously, it seemed like the powers above just didn’t want me and Candace McKenna to spend quality time together - ever.

So Don and I got to enjoy the sights from Candy’s apartment window and sample the fruits of her sub-basic cable package. Why Candy bothered with a cable package that consisted of six channels and a live feed from the state highway surveillance cameras was beyond me. My girlfriend-less vigil stretched on for the next twenty-eight hours, interrupted by brief pair of phone calls from my “oh so close, but oh so far away” girlfriend. Then her mother stopped by to find an unknown man at her apartment.

That probably could have gone better, but Don got a good laugh out of it.

Considering Melinda McKenna bore a more than passing resemblance to her sister Rose, the very first ghost I’d met, our encounter started on the wrong foot and got progressively worse.
 

My run in with Mrs. McKenna reminded me of Candy’s warning that the women in her family were difficult. Normally, I’d have been questioning whether or not this was a bad omen for our relationship, but given the many interruptions to date, I was questioning whether or not it was a relationship or a figment of my very cranky imagination.

Don and I bonded, which was a very poor second place to a frisky blonde. He wasn’t exactly Bruce Lee, but Don was an honest to goodness black belt in three different disciplines. We started working on ideas of what to do about Roger Taney, the ghost in charge of the territory I happened to call home.

When the poor lass did finally return after restoring law and order from a triple shift, she wasn’t exactly her usual outgoing self. She was more in the dead tired mood. Two hours before my bus was scheduled to leave, she finally roused from bed. I’d considered missing my bus, but that meant failing an exam the next day and I wasn’t doing so hot in that particular class.

There was barely enough time to grab a meal together and get me and my ghostly buddy to the terminal. At least we were able to laugh at our dating misfortunes. I suggested we take a flight to California and wait for the earthquakes to start. She countered, saying that she favored a nice cruise to the Bahamas, thinking it might be prudent to keep our life vests handy.

At least we weren’t two idiots basing our relationship on sex – that would’ve been laughable
and
pathetic.

“Alright Elsbeth, spit it out. What’s on your mind?” She was obviously irritated. Considering my performance on that exam, I should have stayed with Officer McKenna. Either way, I’d have gotten screwed, but at least I would have been happy. Reaching down, I scratched Sheba’s ears. At least one spirit in the room was glad to see me. Oddly enough, touching the dog no longer hurt at all. If I could ask why that was so, I would, but there’s not a lot of information out there to enlighten the novice ferryman.

“You just up and ran off to Roanoke with barely any warning at all. Right after going to Atlantic City! My grandmother had a fever over the weekend and your friend Jenny didn’t stop by until Sunday!”

“That’s when she said she’d stop by,” I reminded Elsbeth. One blessing was that my repaired hearing meant that I no longer had to physically touch a spirit to communicate with them. Otherwise, she’d be a literal pain instead of just a figurative one.

I thought I was being a stand up guy by getting Jenny to stop in and check up on “Grandma” Meg. I regarded the elderly woman across from me diligently working on her crossword puzzle.

“Elsbeth says you were sick this weekend, are you feeling better?”

She met my gaze with her overly large glasses, “It was nothing. I was just a bit under the weather. When you get to be my age, it happens every now and again. You never really told me how your trip to Atlantic City went. When my Samuel was still alive, we’d go there every few years.”

Ignoring Elsbeth’s accusingly overprotective glare, I told Meg that I enjoyed myself. Alright, that was a flat-out lie but did a soon to be eighty-four year old woman need to hear about spirits that try to possess people and steal their lives? I lived that story and I didn’t want to hear about it. Hell, I hadn’t even really gone into the details with Don.

Meg smiled at me conspiratorially, “Did you win anything?”

“I did okay,” I said evasively.

I downplayed it on purpose. My new policy was to keep my idiotic mouth quiet when it came to money. Considering she was leaving in a few weeks to go on an all-expense paid cruise to Hawaii, all expenses being paid by me, I figured the less I talked about money, the less fate would be tempted to find cruel and unusual ways of separating me from it.

Picking up her shopping list and some cash, I headed out the door to do Meg’s shopping with Elsbeth dogging my heels.
“Ever since your war buddy showed up, you’ve been neglecting her!”

I gave her my best “you’ve gotta be kidding me look” and replied, “I was on crutches for three weeks after screwing up my knee fighting Charlie. Yeah, remember him? Even so, I was able to get over here and do her shopping. What’s the real issue - are you and Kevin on the rocks? Say it isn’t so!”

She reacted poorly to my sarcasm. Oddly, most everyone else does as well.

“You know damn well that he went with his daughter to visit the Princeton campus!”
she said rather tersely.

“So, you stayed home and realized how little you’ve been around lately and decided to take it out on me. Except in this case, you’re both the pot and the kettle. Quit projecting.”

What do you know? That Psychology stuff was coming in handy! Too bad I this didn’t count towards my grade.

She was clearly fuming and I pressed my argument, “I’m tired of being your doormat, Elsbeth. You promised you’d compensate me for helping Meg and then backed out of it because of Kevin’s newfound sense of ethics. That was after getting me to promise to send her on a cruise in return for help that you never gave me!”

“Well why don’t you just go then?”

“If it was just you, I would. Fact is, I happen to like Meg and I don’t intend on leaving her in the lurch just because you’re a bitch. You know this, which is why you let yourself off the hook for your end of any bargains we made. Unlike you, I’m perfectly capable of living up to my promises.”

People like Elsbeth can get under my skin. They use guilt and manipulation to get their way. They try to make you feel bad for not doing exactly what they want, when they want. Freed from the tyranny of her very recently dead husband, she was fast becoming a serious bitch with man-hating issues.

She faded away, going back to her focus not twenty feet from where I stood. It was the quickest way she could exit the argument. Imagine my surprise when she wasn’t there to face me when I returned.

“You were right,” I said.

Don laughed,
“Aren’t I always? I know her type – user and abuser. Give her an inch and she’ll take you for everything you got! Makes me wonder if that Charlie guy wasn’t forced into it?”

I wasn’t prepared to justify Snowden’s behavior. After all, the man did try to kill me, twice. Instead, I kept working on the heavy bag I’d set up in the garage. I’d used my Atlantic City windfall to pick up some new training equipment and was determined to make the most of it.

“Was Sonya like that?”

“Oh hell no! She’d just tell me what to do and cut me off if I didn’t.”

“Honestly, your wife creeped me out, Don.”

“Really? Why? Didn’t you think she was hot?”

“No, that isn’t it. Yeah, she was hot, but she creeped me out -- even before you two were married. Lord knows she was better looking than Heather.”

In what seemed like a lifetime ago, Don and I both dated girls who worked at a strip club just outside the Army Post we were stationed at prior to shipping out to Iraq. Don’s girl was Sonya, also known by her stage name of Cassandra. My girl was a sweet but not too bright girl named Heather. They were as different as fire and ice. Don married Sonya, and my relationship with Heather fizzled out when I got orders for the Gulf. Sonya was undeniably gorgeous, but like I said, I never really cared for her. She had this cold and calculating way about her. Heather was a vapid dingbat, certain that she was only going to dance a few more months. Nowadays, I doubt she’d be worth my time.

“Was Heather still dancing there when you left?”

“No, she finally latched on to some guy as her meal ticket. Sonya was her maid of honor. Could’ve been you…”

“Nah, I’d look terrible in heels and I just don’t have the legs for a short skirt.” I played off his words, knowing what he was really trying to say. Considering what a sunny disposition I had during my rehabilitation and the fact that Heather was already a single mom when I knew her, I doubted we would have lasted very long.

“I dunno. I think you’d look good in a dress.”

Well, I suppose I was asking for that. “So, you all set?”