Southern Belle (5 page)

"What's wrong?" Max asked, hearing the tremor in his own voice.

Drummond pointed Sandra back to her chair. To Max, he gestured toward the bookcase. "You might want a swig."

Max didn't have to ask. He had been thinking the same thing. He walked over to the bookcase and pulled out one of several false books Drummond had always stored. Inside was a silver flask filled with well-aged whiskey.

After Max sat and had poured a shot for Sandra and one for himself, Drummond began to pace the room. He clasped his hands behind his back. He took another glance at the newspaper and said, "We've got to talk."

Chapter 5

Max and Sandra waited as Drummond drifted around the room — his version of pacing. Questions stampeded through Max's mind, but he kept quiet. The fact that Drummond caught sight of the newspaper did not incriminate Max directly. After all, Max could have bought the paper that morning, and it just happened to flip open to the page detailing Dr. Ernest's murder. There was no undeniable link between Max and any knowledge of Dr. Ernest. Of course, if Drummond thought about it for more than a second, he'd wonder why Max had a newspaper in the first place when Max had been a digital guy for years.

Then I have to make sure he doesn't think anymore.
"Are you going to talk or did you simply want us to watch your ability to float around the room?"

Drummond shot Max a warning frown. "Have a little patience. This goes back a long time. I want to make sure I have the details right."

The details. Drummond had taught Max that when a suspect starts concentrating on the details, chances are that lies will being coming out soon enough. Max exhaled as softly as he could manage. If Drummond picked up on his relief, the old ghost might get suspicious.

"My apologies. Take your time."

To Max's pride, Sandra picked up on the situation as well. "Should we order food? If this is going to run all day into dinner, we'll want to make sure we get something delivered."

"Good idea, dear. You want Chinese or Indian tonight?"

"Okay, okay," Drummond snapped. "I didn't know you were in such a hurry." He gazed at the office door, the frosted glass showing its age with cracks from the corners and stains on the edges, and his face relaxed as if he were sailing back in time, seeing it all happen before his dead eyes.

"That man in the paper, the one that died — his name was Dr. Matthew Ernest. He was a young man when I knew him, and though I only knew him a short time, I've always felt close to him. Sort of like how soldiers become brothers under fire." He pointed to the door. "The day he came through there, I had been working the oddball angle for quite a while. Ghosts, curses, witches — if it had a hint of the unexplained, people found their way to my door."

So far Drummond had stuck to the truth, but Max did not expect it to last. One of the first techniques Drummond taught him — if you have to lie, mix it in with as much truth as you can. It'll make the lie sound real and will be far easier to remember down the line.

Drummond turned back to Max and Sandra. He licked his cold lips and shook his head. "Doc came from up north. Virginia had been his last stop, but he'd been making stops in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. Maybe elsewhere, too. I don't recall. See, Doc was a paranormal investigator. Not that such things officially existed back then — I suppose they barely do now — but back then he had no school behind him."

"So he just called himself Doctor?" Sandra asked.

"I think he had a doctorate in English or History. Something useless like that. Doesn't matter because when it came to the supernatural stuff he was the best. He knew everything. Taught me quite a bit. In fact, had I known he was alive all these years, I would have tried everything I could to contact him, get him to come help me when I was cursed."

"Why didn't he? If he was here all along." Max regretted the question as it left his mouth.

Drummond moved over to the bookcase and studied the titles, but Max caught the pained expression that crossed the detective's face. At length, Drummond rose a foot higher and turned back around. This time, he had complete control over every aspect of his countenance.

"Dr. Matthew Ernest was one of those people, like the two of you, who learned that the world was filled with more than most would even believe. He saw ... well, when he was young, unpleasant things happened right before his eyes. From that point on, he studied all he could, prepared himself for when he was old enough to strike out on his own. When that day came, he waged war on all those creatures and those people who helped such creatures."

Sandra crossed her arms. "I've known those types. Some trauma sets them off, and they decide all things paranormal are cut the same, all things paranormal must be killed. You should be glad he never found out about you. He probably would have destroyed you before he ever considered freeing you from your curse."

"Probably." Drummond's far off gaze returned.

Max had to admit that if Drummond had been weaving lies into this narrative, he did so with extreme skill. Everything sounded authentic so far. But then Max reminded himself that the story had only begun.

"I don't know why I remember this but when Matt walked through the door, I was coming out of the bathroom. I think it's because of the look he gave me. He had this narrow face that somehow managed to widen when he saw the supernatural. I didn't know it at the time, but that was the look he was giving me. I've never been able to figure out if prognostication is real or just another myth that built up over the years, but now I wonder if maybe he knew — maybe he saw what would happen to me.

"Well, he told me he came down to North Carolina because of a possession case. Some nasty ghost had taken over this little boy, and he wanted to do something about it. At first I was going to kick him out of the office. When you're the only paranormal investigator in town, you end up seeing a lot of crackpots. You give it time. Once word gets out about us, we'll have the nutcases lining up. But something in the way he spoke, as if he were embarrassed to say the things he had to say, convinced me there might be something real going on."

"So, you helped him," Max said.

"I did. We got hold of a Catholic priest who didn't care too much for following Church protocol and had him perform an exorcism. That did the trick, boy was saved, and I thought that ended my time with Matt. But he knew of other cases in the South, and soon I was taking overnight trips to the coast, to South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, anywhere that I could get to within six hours or so. I don't know how he did it, but I got caught up in his urgency. I believed him when he said how we were doing more than just patching up the dam. That's how I saw myself. I was that kid with his finger in the dam, keeping the supernatural creatures from drowning the city, and here was this guy who said we could do more than plug up the hole. We could climb to the top and push the entire river back a few feet.

"It didn't work out that way. Ernest and I had a falling out, and he went elsewhere to continue his battle. And I continued mine. In my own way."

Max had to admit that he still had little idea what was a lie. Some of it was obvious — Drummond had not mentioned Joshua Leed or a witch coven, but perhaps that had not happened at first. It was conceivable that Dr. Ernest had met with Drummond years before he met Leed. He could have fought ghosts and witches and done exactly as Drummond had suggested. Later, Ernest teams up with Leed and when their coven goes to North Carolina, Ernest already knows the perfect contact to help them out. Of course, it could all be crap. Drummond could have made it all up to bury any information regarding Leed and the witch coven. Yet he seemed so genuinely saddened by the memory of Ernest. The only thing clear to Max — something bad had happened back then.

Sandra asked, "What caused you two to stop being partners?"

"It doesn't matter. The important thing to all of this, the reason I'm telling you anything, is that he was murdered."

"We can read the paper."

"Have you two learned nothing? Every article in the news is about more than the words tell. You have to read beyond the story."

Max glanced at the whiskey flask. So far he had no need for its contents. Something in Drummond's voice told him that was about to change. "Well, my first question then is why was he murdered?"

Sandra picked up the newspaper. "It says he was ninety-three. That's a strange age to be making enemies that want to kill you."

Drummond clapped his hands once and pointed at Sandra. "Unless your enemies are old, too."

"You think some pissed-off ghost killed him?"

Drummond hesitated. "The things that Matt faced, he destroyed. There wouldn't be any left to come after him."

"Then who?" Max asked.

Sandra rattled the pages in her hand. "It's all right here, hon." She winked at Drummond. "The article says that police were called to the scene when neighbors reported of loud screaming and gunfire."

"Ghosts don't use guns."

"Hurts too much," Drummond said.

Though Drummond could interact with the physical world, the longer and more complex the experience, the greater the pain. To load a gun, lift it, aim it, and depress the trigger would be a highly improbable task for a ghost. Besides which, Max reasoned, why go to all that trouble when ghosts had plenty of other means at their disposal. For a ghost willing to endure the sort of pain required to fire a gun, it might as well reach into its victim's chest and freeze his heart.

"So we're dealing with a person?"

"Maybe more than one." Drummond glanced at the newspaper. "Look at the photo. There are two bullet holes in the wall. One near the edge of the photo and one near the top — wild shots. This wasn't a planned murder. This was Matt being in the wrong place, wrong time."

"He was in his home."

"Wrong time then."

"You think this was a robbery gone wrong?"

Sandra shook her head. "Not if this photo is any indication of the rest of his house. He doesn't have much."

Drummond drifted toward the window and gazed outside. "I don't think this was a botched robbery. Not the kind you're talking about. I think this was a robbery for a very specific item."

"Well?" Max flipped his hands outward. "You going to make us guess?"

"Matt's notes. All of his cases, all of the ghosts and witches he fought, everything he ever did would be in a set of well-hidden notebooks. To anybody who sought to know and understand and even attempt to control this other realm, those notes would be invaluable. Somebody, or perhaps a family of somebodies, would certainly find those notebooks worth killing for."

"Wait. You mean the Hulls?"

"You don't find it suspicious that you never hear from them, and then suddenly when this highly valuable notebook comes into play, up pops Modesto with a time-consuming errand to sideline you? Come on. You've been in this game long enough to know that a coincidence like that ain't no coincidence at all. And what's worse, we're just finding out about all this. The Hulls have a few days on us. We've got to get moving."

"At what? We don't have a client. We don't have a real case. We don't even have evidence."

"That's why you and I have to go to the crime scene before it gets turned loose." Before Max or Sandra could object, Drummond swooped in between them. "That notebook is somewhere in Matt's house. They had that much right when they robbed him. I may not have seen Matt in decades, but I guarantee he would keep something that important close by. And since stuck-up Modesto visited with this excuse for research, we can guess that they still don't have the notebooks and need you busy so they can find them. Which means the notebooks are still at Matt's house." Sandra opened her mouth, but Drummond raised his hand and barreled onward. "For the moment, that house is sealed off as a crime scene. That won't last forever. The moment it's turned loose, you can bet anything that Hull will have paid somebody to go squat there until they find the notebooks. Heck, he might even just buy the house and search at his leisure." Max tried to interrupt, but Drummond raised his other hand. "Now the house has been sealed off for a while already. We don't have a lot of time until its turned loose. We need to go tonight. Get in that house while Hull can't easily get in there. If he sends someone to break in like we're going to do, if they get caught, it'll blow back right on the Hulls and that means payoffs and cover-up and all sorts of headaches. Why go to all that trouble when there's really only one guy they have to worry about getting a whiff of this? Why not just send that guy on a senseless research project? This is it. We have to go sneak in there tonight."

Nobody said a word. Drummond stayed quiet, watching for their reaction. Max and Sandra simply waited to make sure he was done.

Sandra broke the silence first. "You can't do this. It's crazy."

"Why?" Drummond asked. "It's not like we haven't broken into places before."

"Those weren't crime scenes. The police already have their eye on this place."

"Lucky for you two, you have a ghost to help out."

Sandra turned her sharp eyes onto her husband. "You just going to sit there?"

Max had not been paying close attention. He tried to place how this notebook and the Hull family and Modesto's research project all fit together. Drummond made a strong case, and while breaking in would be dangerous, it would be far more dangerous to let Hull get his hands on vital supernatural information.