Fatal Storm (16 page)

“And she was completely out of our league.”
Having finished their section of the first floor, Josh turned and
lumbered back to the library.

The only part of Josh’s comment that clung to
Padre’s ears was how Josh referred to Sheila in the past tense.

The library was littered with candles.
Outside the skies were hurling sheets of horizontal rain. The loss
of electricity didn't bother Dagger. He and Skizzy had brought
night vision goggles. Sara had her own version of night vision
goggles. He glanced quickly at her. She had been quiet since
revealing her alleged encounter with Sebold.

“This is like watching paint dry.” Padre
flipped open a card in his game of solitaire. “Cell phones don’t
work, power is out. What a night to be sitting in a haunted
house.”

“When a spirit is trying to manifest itself,”
Venus explained, “it draws its energy from whatever source it
can.”

Sara walked up to Skizzy. “How come your
computers still have power?”

“Super duper battery backup.”

“Did your scanner detect anything on the
first floor?”

“Nope. Walls contain nothing but the typical
wiring and pipes.” Skizzy pounded away on his laptop.

Flea and Josh sat at the end of the
conference table, heads together.

Sara moved to the French doors and watched
the storm. It always amazed her the power Nature could release.
Although her eyes focused on what was outside the house, her
attention was actually focused elsewhere.

“You okay?” Dagger followed her gaze. “I
didn’t mean to make fun of you.”

“Shhhh.” She pulled on his sweater to
move him closer, then brought her lips close to his ear. “Flea and
Josh are talking,” Sara whispered. “They are saying something
about
what if they find it
?
Something about how they should have removed it. Do you think they
are talking about Sheila?”

Dagger turned his back to the windows and
watched the two men at the conference table. Josh gave the
impression he was studying the research papers, but he was leaning
close to Flea and whispering. All the while both of them kept
glancing at something on the book shelves.

“Take a walk around the back of them and see
if you can determine what they are looking at. Maybe there’s a
switch hidden under one of the shelves that opens up a wall.”

Sara watched the two men, how their eyes
glanced toward a section of the bookshelves. She slowly made her
way behind them while her eyes examined the shelves looking for
hinges. Her intense focus on the books appeared to make the two men
nervous. She circled the table and moved closer to the shelves as
an anomaly caught her attention. As she reached toward one of the
shelves, both men slowly rose, eyes wide, mouths gaping.

“Don’t...” Flea shrieked, then covered his
mouth with his hand.

Dagger moved from the window. “What did you
find, babe?”

“I can’t reach the books on that shelf.”

“What’s so interesting about those? There’s a
whole wall of books,” Josh said, but his hand nervously ran down
the back of his hair.

“I, uh, oh god.” Flea’s fingers clutched at
his face.

Dagger tried moving one of the books but it
was attached. “They are fake.” Dagger pulled off a false group of
five books.

“Oh, jeez.” Josh grimaced and hung his
head.

“It’s a recorder of some sort.” Dagger
brought it down and set it on the table. This got Padre’s attention
as he abandoned his game of solitaire.

“I think there’s another one back there.”
Sara pointed at a shelf two sections over.

“How the hell could you tell?” Josh said.

Padre studied the two black boxes. “What are
these? Spooky voices? Women crying in the night? Woo woo sounds?
This what you planned to use on Sheila Monroe to try to get her to
write a glowing report on the Indiana Paranormal Investigators?”
Padre asked.

“What!? NO!” Josh stammered. “You still think
we had something to do with her disappearance?”

“Sounds reasonable to me.” Dagger noticed
Sara’s eyes had returned to normal. “Sheila saw you planting them
or discovered them the way Sara did and you panicked.”

“There’s no way anyone could see them. They
were too well hidden.” Josh turned to Sara. “How did you see them?
My camouflage was flawless.”

This produced a huff of air from Venus. “I
should have known you two were up to no good. ‘Come join us. We’ll
get a TV show out of it,’ she mimicked. ‘We’ve made fantastic
discoveries. We’ll be on the cutting edge.’ Cutting edge, my foot.
What I do is legitimate.”

“Huh!” Josh waved her off. “Yours is nothing
more than a carnival act.”

“What? Why you.” Venus made a move around the
table but Padre grabbed her arm just as a loud crash of thunder
rattled the windows.

“If the crystal ball fits,” Josh jeered.

“Hey.” Dagger waved the faux books in his
hand. “Let’s get back to this.” He held up a three-sided display.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to gut five hardcover books,
gluing them so they stood side-by-side. The back of the book on the
left and the front cover of the book on the right completed the
three-sided concealment.

Skizzy gave them the evil eye. “Which one of
you morons has the controller?”

Josh and Flea locked eyes but neither said
anything. Padre held his hand out. “Cough it up. What does your
little toy do?”

Josh grimaced and tossed an angry glare at
Dagger before jamming a hand in his pocket and pulling out what
looked like a remote key. Skizzy ripped it from Josh’s hand and
pressed a button.

A young girl’s voice could be
heard.
Julia
.

Skizzy pressed the button again.
Mommy
?

“You frauds!” Venus tried again to make a
move toward Josh but Padre lunged and wrapped his arms around her
waist. Her right arm swung toward the lanky giant but she missed
him by a foot. She tried with her left arm but missed again as
Padre held her back.

“Calm down, Venus. You really didn’t think
ghost hunting was on the up and up, did you?” Padre gently forced
her into a chair.

“I can’t believe I let you jeopardize the
integrity of my craft.” A tinge of pink rushed to her cheeks. “My
goddess, if this gets out.”

“Well, seems like all three of you had
something to lose if Miss Monroe had written a negative column
about her experience here.” Dagger took the remote from Skizzy and
studied the mechanism. Anyone with Flea’s electronic knowledge
could have put this together.

“That’s ridiculous. She never knew it was
there.” Beads of sweat started to form on Josh’s forehead.

“Sheila is known for her stealth reporting,”
Dagger said. “While you were upstairs she would have climbed on a
chair and searched every nook and cranny for evidence that you were
even the slightest bit deceptive. Believe me, if there was
something to find here, she would have found it.”

“No, no.” Flea was shaking his head back and
forth. “We wouldn’t have.” He paused and looked sharply at Josh.
“At least I know I wouldn’t have done anything.” He stressed the
word “I.”

“What are you saying?” Josh turned on his
friend.

Skizzy took a step back. “FOOD FIGHT.”

“Everyone sit down. NOW,” Padre yelled.

Josh yanked the chair back and fell into it.
“Real nice, Flea. How long have we known each other?”

“You were the one who invited that Lansky guy
to join us at that farm house in Demotte and he up and went
missing,” Flea said.

“Whoa, wait.” Padre held his hands out like a
traffic cop. “You had someone else who went missing?”

“Oh, dear gods and goddesses.” Venus hid her
face in her hands.

“He didn’t go missing,” Josh argued. “The
weasel was a college jerk. Thought he’d pull a fast one and plan
his own fake ghost but our tape recordings had the ass peeing in
his pants. He snuck out and called a buddy to pick him up a mile
down the road. Let us think he was missing. The cops found him
sunning on the beach by the Planetarium. Rich bastard always loved
screwing with me.”

“So you lied in your interview.” Padre
studied the two men with more interest. He despised it when
suspects were evasive.

“No, you never asked the right question.”

Padre wanted to leap across the table at
Josh. He looked over at Dagger who remained leaning against the
book shelves. Dagger gave a slight shake of his head indicating
that Padre wasn’t going to get much more from these two. Eventually
something was going to give them away, if they were involved.

“Anything else hidden in this house?” Dagger
asked. “Any recorders upstairs?”

“Would you even trust them to tell the
truth?” Venus eyed Josh with contempt. Then she took a deep breath.
“I have to stop this. Negative vibes are bad for my karma.” She
pulled her legs up and sat yoga style, the tops of her hands
resting on her knees, thumbs and index fingers touching.

A bright flash of light was followed by
another clap of thunder, this time sounding as though it were right
overhead. The sky outside was turning a dull and menacing shade of
green. The room became silent as candlelight flickered against the
walls creating shadowy pockets that darted in and out of the
furniture groupings.

“So we have one missing reporter, a guy
missing for fourteen months who mysteriously appears, all within a
stone’s throw from this house, and both of which have something in
common.” Padre pointed a finger across the table. “You three.”

Venus’ eyes snapped open. Josh and Flea
remained silent. “We’re just as baffled as the rest of you,” Venus
said. “They may be jerks but I was here with them the entire night.
We never saw that guy. I can attest to that. As the goddess is my
witness.”

“Aw, shit. I just lost my super duper battery
backup. How can that be?” Skizzy pounded on the monitor.

The wind outside sounded like a freight train
headed straight for them. Seven people sat across from each other
at the conference table as some unseen breeze made the candle
flames flicker. Shadows continued to dance along the walls and
appeared to join the shadows in the foyer where more candles
flickered on the tables. Something heavy blew against the side of
the building near the French doors. Venus gave a “yelp” while Josh
nervously drummed the table with his fingers.

“Well,” Skizzy started, “if anyone is
interested, before I lost power I was checking on the weather
history in this area during the previous Rain Man crimes. I think I
can summarize it by saying we are screwed.”

Sheila slowly rose from the couch and tested
her legs. All she wanted to do was sleep but the storm wasn’t
letting up. In all of her years she had never seen a storm so
strong or last so long. She stepped into the hallway and stood at
the bottom of the stairs. There weren’t any sounds coming from
upstairs. Between the bursts of thunder she heard muffled voices
from outside.

Sheila opened the front door to find Adrian
and Colleen on the porch. Adrian sat on one of the rockers. Colleen
was standing at the railing, her small hands reaching out to catch
rain drops. Puddles of mud surrounded the house like a moat.

“It never lets up.” Sheila took a seat and
reached around her neck, forgetting that her scarf was missing.
“You didn't see a red floral scarf around this house, did you?”

Colleen looked at Adrian and quickly returned
her attention to the rain. The young girl seemed to be calm as long
as the lightning and thunder had quieted down.

“Did you have a nice nap?” Adrian crossed his
legs. He appeared out of place in his suit with long tails and
high-collared shirt. Didn't he own any casual clothes?

“Does it ever stop raining?” Sheila
asked.

“I love the rain.” Adrian leaned back with a
sigh. “It brings so many possibilities, or at least it used to. Oh,
for the good old days.”

“I like rain but I don't like thunderstorms,”
Colleen said. “It brings death,” she added in a voice so quiet
Sheila wasn't sure she heard her correctly.

It was the glare Adrian drilled toward
Colleen that sent a shiver through Sheila. There had been several
previous comments Colleen had made innocently that Adrian didn't
like.

A bolt of lightning split in two and
darted in opposite directions. This was followed closely by
ground-shaking thunder which sent Colleen running toward Sheila who
wasn't too concerned. It was all a dream and there had been a bad
storm when she was at the Sebold mansion. She wondered how the
others were faring. Were they still at the mansion? Were they at
her bedside? Knowing her father he was probably interrogating them
all, wanting to know exactly how she was injured and wondering how
much he could sue them for. Maybe she had gone outside during the
storm and been hit on the head by flying debris, like Dorothy
in
The Wizard of Oz
. That had
to be the answer.

“Storms used to be more enjoyable. I was able
to come and go as I please.”

“What do you mean?” Sheila tried to jog her
memory. Had there been something about storms in her research?
Maybe there had been a flash flood through Dawson's Corner.

“I used to enjoy moving around in a storm.
Few people would be out with all the lightning. Fear can be very
intoxicating.”

Colleen tugged on Sheila's arm. “I want to go
inside now.”

“Okay, sweetie.” Sheila turned to see Adrian
watching the skies. There was a strange smile on his face. He had
been too vague about his life history. “Maybe we can continue the
interview.”

“That would be most enjoyable.” He motioned
toward the door. “Shall we?”