“Those poor boys,” I said. “I can’t imagine anything sadder than no one to note your passing.”
“At least this should help you get the boys to the other side, M.J.,” Gil said, trying to cheer me up a little.
“How does that help?” Muckleroy asked.
“If you know a grounded spirit’s backstory, they feel you are connecting with them. They tend to trust you more, and they’ll accept that you’re trying to help them rather than trick them.”
“That’s good,” said Muckleroy. “Now that I know this stuff is real, I want to do all I can to help you help those two boys.”
“Can we come with you to interview Eric’s mother?” I asked. “I have a feeling Eric is going to give me the most trouble about crossing over. He seems to have implanted himself pretty firmly in his grounded-spirit status.”
“Absolutely,” said Muckleroy, polishing off the last of his side salad. “Say,” he said, switching topics. “Did you two come up with anything?”
“Not really,” I said. “Skolaris was a complete waste of time. He wanted nothing to do with us. But one of the other teachers, a Mr. Vesnick, was very cooperative.”
“What’d he say?”
I pulled out my wallet as the waitress collected our plates. “He said he had actually had an encounter at the beginning of the school year with Hatchet Jack.”
“You don’t say?” said Muckleroy. “What happened?”
“He saw the replay of Eric’s death,” I said. “It’s as I suspected: Jack would bring the boys to the school grounds, knowing there was no one around to witness or help the boys, and then he would chase them in some awful game of cat and mouse.”
“What did Vesnick think of all this?”
I shrugged. “I suspect he was pretty rattled by it. He said two things that were curious to me, though.”
“What?”
“He said that Habbernathy had given him strict orders not to discuss the incident or anything to do with Hatchet Jack, and he said that he was working at Northelm for peanuts.”
Muckleroy grunted. “I’m not surprised,” he said, “on either count.”
“Really?” Gilley said.
“Really,” Muckleroy said. “Owen has a reputation for being a tightwad. If he can get you for less, he will.”
“Vesnick seemed to believe that wasn’t the case with Skolaris,” I said. “He said that Skolaris was being well paid.”
“Well, that seems to be true,” said Muckleroy. “But then, Skolaris never could be bought for less.”
“Is he that great of a teacher that Habbernathy would fork over the extra dough?” I questioned. “I mean, he’s the school’s newspaper editor and an English teacher. What’s the attraction for Habbernathy?”
“No one knows,” said Muckleroy. “In public they’re careful to avoid each other, but it’s common knowledge that Habbernathy has always looked out for Skolaris, just like his father did when he was dean.”
“Maybe there was some kind of directive from Habbernathy’s old man,” Gilley reasoned. “And that’s why he pays him and puts up with him.”
“You wouldn’t catch me putting up with that,” I said distastefully. “Skolaris is a grumpy old curmudgeon, and he’s got no business teaching children.”
“So, what’s next?” Gilley asked Muckleroy.
The detective reached back into his folder and pulled out a stack of papers and handed two to Gil and me. I looked at the sketch of a man with dark hair, angular features, and wide-set eyes and asked, “Who’s this?”
“Hatchet Jack,” Muckleroy said with a grin. “Hardly looks like himself without the hatchet and the crazy eyes, huh?”
“This is Amelia’s drawing?” I asked, amazed at the difference.
“It is,” said Muckleroy, glancing at his watch. “I was really hoping you two might help me by putting these up around town. The number to call in case anyone recognizes the face is right there,” he said, pointing to the bold typeface at the bottom of the sketch under the words, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?
“Absolutely,” I said, volunteering both Gil and me.
“You heading back to the office?”
“Yep,” said Muckleroy. “I’ve got a meeting with the captain in ten minutes. If Doris Hinnely calls me, I’ll give you a shout.” With that he was gone, leaving Gil to pout in my direction.
“How come we got stuck with poster duty?” he groused.
“You have someplace more pressing to be?”
Gilley gave a gigantic yawn and said, “I was really hoping to take a nap, actually. I’m not getting enough beauty sleep on this job.”
“No rest for the weary,” I said, standing up from the table.
“At least we’ll be able to sleep tonight,” Gil reasoned as he followed me out of the restaurant.
“How do you figure?” I said, giving him a backward glance.
“It’s Thursday,” Gilley said, like I should know what he was talking about. “Nicholas said Hatchet Jack only shows up on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.”
“Which is exactly why we’re going to head back to the school and try to reach Eric and Mark,” I said. “With any luck I’ll be able to cross them over without Jack attacking me again.”
“Slave driver,” Gilley moaned.
We decided that we would divide the posters in half and work the town separately. We started at a grocery store, where we both raced to be the first to put up the poster. (I found the bulletin board first, so I won that round.) We also agreed to meet back at the store by three, which gave us about two hours to get the job done.
While I was taping one of the posters to a streetlamp my cell phone gave a jingle. Pulling it out of my pocket I saw that the good Dr. Delicious was calling. I took a deep breath and answered with a cheery, “Hey, there, Doctor. How goes the lecture circuit?”
“It goes well,” Steven’s smooth and silky voice replied.
“How goes the ghostbust?”
“It’s coming along,” I said. “We’ve made a little bit of progress, at least.” And then I filled him in on all that had transpired, minus revealing the nasty attack from Jack the night before.
He seemed to sense something had happened, because he asked, “Are you being careful with this ghost, M.J.?”
“Of course,” I said a little too earnestly.
“It makes me nervous that you are engaging him,” he said. “He could turn out to be more dangerous than even you can handle.”
I smiled. “I’ll be fine, Steven,” I assured him. Then, feeling bad for having been impatient with him on this job, I asked, “Are you heading back this way to help us finish the bust?”
“You are wanting me to?” he said, and I heard the little note of surprise in his voice.
“Sure,” I said, working to keep my voice light and encouraging. “But I have a feeling we’re about to wrap it up, so if you’re going to come back you’ll need to haul some butt up here.”
There was a pause on his end, and I thought maybe I could have been a little nicer with how I asked him to come back to the job. “I will see what I can do.”
“Great,” I said, feeling bad that the conversation had just turned awkward. “That’s really great.”
Steven and I made small talk for another minute or two before we said good-bye. As I put the phone back in my pocket I wondered how people ended up staying together. It seemed this whole relationship thing was going to require a lot more work than I was used to.
I met Gil about an hour later back at the grocery store. He was standing in front of the bulletin board, staring curiously at it and looking around. “What’s up?” I asked.
He pointed to the board and said, “Someone ripped down your sketch.”
I looked up and noticed what he was talking about. Right where we’d tacked up the image of Hatchet Jack were a few tattered pieces of paper still held by the thumbtacks. It appeared someone had torn it down quickly. “That’s weird,” I said. I reached into my folder
and pulled out another flyer and tacked that one up again. “I wonder why someone would tear down our poster.”
“Maybe they recognized the guy in the sketch,” Gilley said. “Maybe they took it home to call it in.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Wouldn’t that be awesome?” I said. “If we had a name to go with this guy it sure would help solve a lot of the mystery here.”
“Let’s go visit your detective and see if he’s heard anything.”
Gilley and I climbed into the van and made our way out of the parking lot, heading toward the police station. It was then that something caught the corner of my eye, and I turned to look at the lamppost where I’d personally taped up a poster of Jack. It too had been torn down.
“Crap,” I said, feeling a cold, prickly sensation along my spine.
“What?” Gil asked.
I pointed to the lamppost. “Seems you were right about someone recognizing Jack,” I said. “They’re tearing our signs down.”
Gilley changed directions, and we backtracked along the route I’d taken around my half of town, and without exception every single sketch had been torn down. I was so mad by the time we’d circled back that I was seething. “That son of a bitch!” I snarled. “It took me two hours to put all those up!”
“Let’s check my route,” Gil offered, but at that moment my cell rang.
Pulling it out of my pocket I looked at the caller ID and said, “It’s Muckleroy.”
“How’d you two make out?” he asked when I answered.
“Not so well,” I said. “We’ve got a wise guy following behind us, ripping down our sketches.” I went on to explain how Gil and I had just followed my route and discovered all the posters missing.
“You’re kidding,” Muckleroy said with a heavy sigh.
“Wish I were, Bob,” I said. “I think someone recognizes Jack and they don’t want anyone else to.”
There was a hint of laughter in Muckleroy’s voice as he said, “It could also just be some local kids having fun at your expense.”
I pouted in my seat. “It’s not funny. I worked hard putting those damn things up.”
“Okay, okay, M.J. I’ll give a stack to my foot patrol and they can take over for you and Gilley. Besides, I just got a callback from Eric’s mother. Thought you two might want to ride shotgun over to her place for an interview.”
“That works for me,” I said, and filled Gilley in quickly.
“We’ll see you in five minutes.”
The ride over to Mrs. Hinnely’s was much quicker than either Gilley or I would ever have made it. I suppose when you’re a cop you think nothing of exceeding the speed limit and racing down side streets. I resisted the urge to get out and kiss the ground when we finally stopped in front of a well-maintained and surprisingly large home on the east side of Wheaton.
By the look of Gilley’s rather green complexion as he exited the car, it was pretty clear he hadn’t enjoyed the excessive speed and hairpin turns either. “Maybe we should catch a cab back,” he whispered, holding his stomach.
“You can sit up front when we leave,” I replied, feeling bad for him and thinking it would help with the motion sickness.
“Great,” he said with a huge roll of his eyes.
We both shut up as Muckleroy came around and led us up the walkway. “Wheaton’s nicer on the east side of town,” he said. “You go to the west side and even I drive with the doors locked.”
“We took a tour earlier,” I said, referring to our visit with Vesnick.
A trim woman in her late fifties with silver blond hair, startlingly beautiful aqua blue eyes, and a bit of a forced smile greeted us at the door when we stepped onto the front porch. “I saw you pull up,” she explained. “I’m Doris Hinnely, but everybody calls me Dory.”
“Nice to meet you,” Gilley and I said.
“Thank you for agreeing to see us,” Muckleroy said, extending his hand.
“Won’t you please come in?” she asked, holding the door open for us.
We trooped inside and entered her living room, which was beautifully decorated with mostly white upholstered furniture, robin’s-egg blue walls, and beech-wood flooring. The interior had a very soothing quality about it, and I’ll admit, knowing that Dory had been a former drug addict made the interior of her home a complete surprise.
“Please take a seat,” she said, and hurried into the adjoining dining room, where she retrieved a silver tray with a pitcher of iced tea and a few glasses. “Would anyone like some refreshment?”
I glanced over at Muckleroy, willing to take his lead on whether to accept or not. He seemed a little uncomfortable in the face of so much politeness, especially when I knew he had to tell Dory about the death of her son. “That would be nice, thank you,” he said, trying to put her at ease.
Gil and I each took a glass after she’d poured it for us. I took a sip and was surprised at how fabulous it tasted. “This is amazing,” I said. “There’s no bitter aftertaste.”
Dory nodded, and her forced smile became a little more real. “I import it from Istanbul.”
Gilley took a tentative sip, and he nodded too at how light the tea was. “Just the thing to settle my stomach,” he whispered to me.
Dory sat down in one of the large overstuffed chairs that sat across from Gil and me on the sofa, and next to the detective in a similar chair to the right. She laced her fingers together tightly and folded them in her lap. “Now,” she said, turning slightly to face Muckleroy. “I believe you said you had some information for me about my son Eric?”
Dory’s posture was ramrod straight, and my heart went out to her, because I knew she was bracing herself. I’m sure she’d known all along that Eric was gone forever, and I could only imagine the range of conflicting emotions that must be going through her thirty years later.
Bob put his tea on the coaster Dory had set out for him and scooted forward a bit in the chair to rest his elbows on his knees. The look he gave her was somber. “I’m afraid we suspect that the remains we found yesterday near Hole Pond may very well be your son’s, Mrs. Hinnely.”
Dory’s expression became blank, and I had a feeling she was suddenly far away in a past that included her son still vibrantly alive. She swayed in her chair ever so slightly, and I watched her carefully, ready to leap up if she tipped over into a faint. But a few moments later she was back with us, blinking hard and swallowing the painful truth. She gave one sharp nod of her head. “I knew years ago that he was gone,” she whispered. “One night I just felt him leave me, like his soul were no longer connected to mine.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said gently.
Her eyes glanced over at me, as if she were seeing me for the first time. “I’m sorry,” she said, placing a hand on her chest. “I’m afraid I don’t know who you two are.”
I felt my cheeks grow red. Why hadn’t I introduced myself? “My name is M. J. Holliday, and this is my partner, Gilley Gillespie. We were the ones who located your son for the detective.”
Her expression seemed puzzled. “Located him for the detective?” she asked, wanting me to clarify what I meant.
I always took a deep breath before I explained what it was that I did for a living. “I’m a professional medium,” I said carefully. “I specialize in helping energies that have become grounded on the earth plane cross over to the other side.”
The puzzled expression on Dory’s face deepened. “I’m sorry…you what?”
“I am someone who can talk to the deceased,” I tried again. “I can communicate with people who have died almost as easily as I can communicate with you. Your son appeared to me and told me that he’d passed away. It was clear when I first communicated with him that he was what I call grounded, or a soul who has not quite made it to heaven yet. I’ve been trying to help him make it the rest of the way for a few days now.”
“Eric is a…a…ghost?” she stammered, and the look of horror on her face made me wish I’d stuck to giving her just my name and
not my profession.
“Yes,” I said. “But he seems to have adjusted to that quite well, and I will do everything I can to help him find his way to heaven.”
Tears welled in Dory’s eyes. “My poor baby,” she said, the tears leaking over onto her cheeks.
No one spoke for several long, awkward moments as Dory put her hands over her face and openly wept. I wanted to go over and give her a soothing hug, but her posture was still ramrod straight, and I knew she wouldn’t welcome it. Finally she wiped her eyes and turned to the detective. “How do we make sure it’s Eric that you found?”
Bob cut me a quick look before he said, “We’d like to take a sample of your DNA. The coroner thinks there might be enough usable DNA in one of the teeth to identify whether he was your son.”
Dory nodded. “That’s fine,” she said. “Do you know how he died?”
Bob glanced at me again, and Dory seemed to catch the exchange. She swiveled back to me and said, “Eric told you, didn’t he? He told you how he died?”
“He did,” I said, knowing that this woman deserved the truth.
“He was murdered,” she said, reading my expression.
“He told you he’d been murdered.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I believe he was.”
“Did he tell you who did it?”
Muckleroy cleared his throat and called Dory’s attention back to him. “There is an ongoing investigation, Mrs. Hinnely. I can assure you we’re doing everything we can to try to determine who killed your son.”
And it was then that Dory seemed to wilt into the chair. Her shoulders sank and she leaned back into the cushion. “You may start by pointing that finger of blame at me, Detective,” she said.
Muckleroy’s eyes became wide. “Come again?” he asked.
“My son died because his mother was a drug addict who couldn’t take care of her sons. They were taken from me and sent to foster care. It took me years to get off the drugs, and by then they were gone.”