A Wicked Whack: Mad River Series (Prequel) Read online

  "Listen Josiah, we've got bigger problems going on. There's a killer on the loose and Jenny deserves justice. I really could use your help."

  "I saw you followed through on my advice regarding the knife. You're smarter than I thought," he chided.

  Gee, thanks.

  "I saw them throw away that old thing. It was painful to watch knowing you’ve invested in something that meant nothing in the end. But you still haven't looked into the one thing you already know about."

  "I know the preserves exi-"

  I stopped myself mid-sentence. It might have been another assumption I was feeling, but Josiah seemed like he was unintentionally the best help I could get. If there's anything I knew to be true, it was that having good instincts about something could come in handy once in a while. The trash in the backyard and nobody venturing in there to clean it was the biggest clue that maybe somebody hid something there and nobody would know for sure. It was not something Nick would’ve approved of, but I had to see if this time I was right. I would worry about what I saw with Jimmy later. This was something I could comfortably deal with now.

  "Josiah, you said your backyard had a lot of junk it right?"

  "Are you deaf? Of course Whitaker! It's a mess back there."

  Boy, he could be ornery…and impatient too for an old coot.

  "Would you say it's mostly trash? When was the last time you were in it?"

  "I went back yesterday. Definitely a lot of trash there. You modern folk are so lazy sometimes," he grumbled.

  "Josiah, I can promise you now that after today, your backyard will likely be cleaned up."

  "I don't believe you for a single second Whitaker."

  "If I promise you that, will you stop bothering me?" I asked.

  "That I can't promise you," he replied with a chuckle.

  Not like I could tell a spirit what to do anyway. They were without responsibility. I thanked Josiah for his time and insight and hurried towards the barn's entrance, and with all my might closed the large sliding door behind me. I tried to hurry, but my costume once again proved difficult.

  It was going to be hard work distracting George as I infiltrated the smithy's backyard, but something told me the missing preserves were buried somewhere in that pile of trash. If no one ventured in there, it was the perfect hiding spot. At least until the culprit could make time to dispose of them properly. With this busy weekend upon us, I doubt the murderer had time to remove it yet. Without it being there, and no one to confirm it for sure, there was no way anyone would go looking for evidence they didn’t think existed. Not to mention, ghosts aren’t reliable witnesses for the living.

  I thought I was going to be home free soon, that Jenny could rest easy and that this problem would go away. But as I traveled down the hilly path from the barn, I came face-to-face with Nick scribbling on a piece of paper.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nick looked up from his notepad. He saw me coming. I was about to have my moment of truth just like Annabelle.

  "Hey Shelby, what are you up to?" he asked.

  I wondered for a second what to tell him. Given what Josiah confirmed, I had a definite idea of where I was going and what to do next. Nick wanted facts. I would definitely give him that this time.

  "Can you help me with something?

  Nick raised an eyebrow at me. He stuffed his notepad in his back pocket and listened.

  "Has anyone thought to look for evidence in the smithy's backyard?" I asked.

  "Why would anyone do that?"

  "What if these missing preserves were hiding back there? Think about it. It's not used for anything except to store a bunch of lawn mowers and golf carts. It's the perfect place to look!"

  "But no one knows if they exist."

  "You have a testimony from Annabelle saying there's a high probability they do. Should you not listen to the one person who worked closest with Jenny? I know she got passed over as a potential suspect," I said.

  I had to catch my breath on this one. Determination was more exhausting than I realized. I watched Nick's stern gaze relax. There was nothing he could do with me since I knew about Annabelle’s situation. He nodded, appearing to consider what I said as something plausible.

  "Okay Whitaker. Lead the way."

  That was easy. Almost too easy. I led us down the path. Where had Jenny disappeared? I hoped she'd at least find me in the backyard when I got there. She needed to see this happen.

  "What's your plan?" Nick asked.

  "George is supposed to be giving a demonstration. Whether he is, is questionable knowing him. We'll either have to sneak in or you distract him."

  "Oh he'll be no problem."

  I looked to the right of the path. Perched upon a boulder was Matthias trying to throw blades of grass in the air. He wasn't having success of course. When he saw I acknowledged him, he winked at me. He knew something I didn't about George.

  We pressed onward. The smithy was not far from where we came from. George was not out on the front porch in his rocking chair like he normally was. I wondered if he was being reprimanded for drinking on the job mid-afternoon.

  I climbed the porch stairs and peeked my head around the edge of a window frame. It was pitch dark inside.

  "I don't see anything. Do you?" I asked Nick.

  Nick had finished looking through the window on the other side of the door. He shook his head. Had I not told Eliana about George, entering the smithy would have proved difficult. If this turned out well, I owed her a few thousand "thank yous". I doubted she'd take kindly to them. Her iciness amused me so much.

  Just to see if we were for sure in the clear, I knocked twice on the door. Both times, there was no answer. I turned the doorknob and peaked inside. Not a creature was stirring. It seemed we were home free.

  Despite not being proactive about work, George kept the smithy in good shape. Old burnt coal wafted through the air, but the wood floors creaked less than those at the old cookery did. It still felt much like a home. A mahogany harvest table was in the main room and the remnants of an old fireplace were across from it. The walls displaying rows of iron cast tools told a different story about this place now. I could see why Josiah really liked this house. I wouldn't have wanted it refurbished either.

  "We'll need to grab something to hold the jar. We can't contaminate the prints."

  Of course, that's what we needed to do. I turned to the cluttered workbench, which sat under the tool racks. Left behind on it was a pair of canvas gloves. I grabbed them. Now we just needed something to hold the jar.

  "I think this pot might help us hold it when we find it," Nick said.

  Nick retrieved a medium size steel pot from the floor. It would do. It was more than enough space to hold the evidence. It was never a bad idea being over prepared, so I also grabbed a pair of tongs off the tool rack. We were finally ready to get this evidence.

  We went to the back of the house and opened up the door to the backyard. Josiah was not kidding about the amount of stuff kept back there. Nick and I stood on the back porch dumbfounded at the sight of it.

  You could see little grass. Piles of stuff covered much of the ground. A small mountain of lawn mowers sat in a far corner against a chain link fence. There were the expected golf carts and John Deere gators. Tons of far too old firewood lay under a tarp next to the porch. Sheets of rotting siding lay in another pile. The entire yard was an overwhelming mess. Even I wondered why no one had gone through this. Most of this junk seemed completely unusable. What had we gotten ourselves into?

  "Are you sure this is going to work?" Nick asked.

  "Well, it remains untapped territory. The battle is in another hour or so. We have time on our side."

  I tiptoed down the rickety steps of the porch. I didn't know where to begin.

  "Let's leave the pot here and go digging. I'm sure there's a spade or shovel around to help."

  Lucky for me there was a large shovel next to the woodpile. Nick took the plastic rake. We decided to di
vide the yard. Each of us could inspect a half of it without wasting time. I put down the shovel next to me and searched for anything unusual under the stacks of siding. I dug around in the dirt a bit nearby. This patch of soil looked like a garden at one point. The earth was too fresh. It seemed like the perfect disguise to bury something. The more I dug though, the more soil I found.

  "Socks? What on Earth?" Nick exclaimed.

  I turned to see he was holding out a pair of filthy white sport socks on the edge of his rake. Disgusted, he tossed them away.

  "You're a policeman, Nick. At worst, you're going to have to look at dead people who might not look like people anymore. How is it some old socks gross you out?"

  "Sometimes it's nice to know what you're getting yourself into," he replied.

  It was bizarre to me that Jenny still hadn't shown up to witness what we were doing. I would have welcomed even Josiah or Gladys to help feel out where the preserves were.

  I moved over to the lawn mower pile covered in old tree branches. A rusty hack saw lay next to it. That was one thing I didn't want to touch. Picking out any kind of unusual hiding spot would be a challenge. It was a complex pile of junk to maneuver around, but I thought it was worth a deeper search.

  I pulled on one of the lawn mower handles. It caused the tree branches to avalanche down to my feet. It made some troublesome cracking noises that caught Nick's attention.

  "Are you okay?" Nick asked.

  "Fine. Certainly wasn't an inconspicuous noise though. I hope no one else heard."

  Through the fragile lawn mower mountain, I also spotted some damp cardboard boxes. I reached my arm between some of the intertwined metal bars and slid one of the boxes toward me. The closed top came off rather easily. Inside were copious amounts of rocks of every size and shape. Some of their surfaces were clean. Few had patterns drawn on them with markers and stickers attached. Many more had faces drawn on them.

  "You ever have a pet rock when you were a kid?" I asked Nick.

  Nick stopped his awkward dirt digging. I could tell that rake was not much help at all.

  "Did I have friends growing up? C'mon," he said.

  "I don't know. You could have had some weird hobby I never knew about. You never truly know someone."

  "Who would actually own a pet rock? I wanted a dog, but my mom was allergic."

  I held up a smooth stone with drawn on blue eyes.

  "Whole box of these things in the corner over here. Probably a bunch of children's programming crafts that got left behind one summer."

  "Lame craft if you ask me," he replied with a chuckle. "Bunch of little boys come to an old war town expecting to see guns and all they get are rocks with googly eyes."

  "Wonder if any of those kids were Charlie Brown," I said.

  "Bad joke, Whitaker. We should get back to work."

  I couldn't help but laugh at myself anyway. I had seen that Halloween Peanuts special hundreds of times on TV. Every time Charlie Brown reacted to getting rocks instead of candy, I found it funny.

  I put the stone back in the box and closed it up. Nearby was another patch of dirt that had no grass on it. It seemed like another good place to bury something. So I decided to dig. Deep in the hole of dirt I created, I found something solid, the top of it shiny like silver. I grabbed the top of it and wiggled it out. Upon removal, I learned it was a cylinder tin tube. I popped the top off, but inside there were no preserves, just pieces of paper squished together. The top one was from a pocket-sized note pad. I unfolded it.

  If you're reading this, get back to work.

  Someone back then had a cheeky sense of humor. I then noticed the one side of the tin had "Time Capsule - 1980" sketched on it in black magic marker.

  "Hey check this out. The Old Town has a time capsule. I think I might have dug it up too early though."

  Nick stopped his search and came over to look. At the same time, he was holding a rather scary looking child's doll. Time mangled its dark eyes. Its painted face was now chipped. Dirt and time had mustered up and thinned its once golden hair. I imagined at one point this child's toy might have appeared cute.

  "What is that?" I exclaimed. "Did someone shoot a horror movie here and leave the props behind?"

  It was reminiscent of those old dolls in poltergeist movies. The ones where inanimate objects come to life when evil spirits possess them. Given what I knew about the other side, that was one item I couldn't stand to look at.

  "I had to bring it over, because honestly...I don't know," Nick said. "Why do we have this? I mean, why?"

  "Get rid of it!"

  With a mighty swing, Nick tossed it behind him. When it hit the ground, it cooed out a rather creepy sounding "mama". Instantly, we looked at each other in fright.

  "What have you got in the tin that's going to make me forget I just heard that?" he asked.

  I stuffed the cheeky note back into the tin. I dug deeper and pulled out a sepia-stained photograph. It was definitely from a time long ago. It was a staff photo of the Old Town sitting on a porch. All the young men and women had more hair than any normal person should have. They were wearing the shortest shorts and tightest tops. It was easy to assume they were part of their summer camp program. I could only imagine what the ghosts thought of seventies and eighties fashion at the time.

  "Those two look like Matthew and Calinda,” Nick said. "We should show this to people. I think they'd get a kick out of it."

  He was definitely right. It was always interesting to me looking at older people in their younger bodies. The depths of their souls became clearer in picture form from the time passed. Matthew was quite handsome with a lush head of hair and dimpled smile. I could see the resemblance between Eliana and Calinda. There was a timeless beauty to them both.

  "Maybe," I replied. "Perhaps later though."

  I took a closer look at the photo, specifically at younger Matthew. He was sitting on the bottom step. I recalled him mentioning wood boards here always needing some kind of upkeep. The more I looked at the photo, the more familiar the setting. The staff was definitely sitting on the back porch of the smithy.

  "You're really starting to think like a ghost now."

  I looked up to see Phineas appear on the porch.

  "You know what you have to do,” he said. He kept tipping his head down to insinuate the direction to take.

  "Shelby? You okay?" Nick asked.

  "Oh..." I had to watch those moments where I blanked out. It hadn't happened in a while, but I never it wore it well. "Yeah, I'm...fine." I replied, turning back to him.

  Phineas disappeared from the porch. He seemed to insinuate what I was feeling about in that moment. One of the porch boards held the answers.

  "I think we should look under the bottom floorboard of the porch," I said.

  Nick wasn't sure how to take such a specific request, but he proceeded. I stuffed the photograph back into the tin and put the top back on.

  We gathered around the stairs. I put the tin next to me and grabbed at the bottom step's board. It wiggled almost too loosely.

  "No way," he exclaimed in disbelief.

  I pulled extra hard. The nails popped out of their holes and the board lifted up with immense ease. I passed it to Nick who put it aside. Underneath the board was a wool blue blanket that looked an awful lot like one of mine. I put my hand forward, but Nick grabbed it.

  "Gloves first," he said, handing them to me with his other hand.

  I put them on and reached for the blanket. It was definitely a sample of mine from a demonstration. I couldn't for the life of me understand how it ended up all the way over here.

  "That's definitely one of my blankets," I said.

  "You think someone was trying to frame you?" Nick asked.

  "I bothered a lot of people around here, Nick. Someone really wanted to divert the police. Little did they know how savvy I could be."

  After removing the blanket, I came to find a piled up mound of dirt. I dug my fingers around in it, breaking the s
tructure of it slowly apart until I felt something firm.

  "Get the pot," I told Nick.

  He was ready with the pot when I placed the blanket in it with one hand. After that, I placed a silver spoon on top. Nick couldn't stop looking at it. It was hilarious. His eyes lay transfixed on this piece of cutlery as if he was seeing a real life miracle. I did make it appear out of thin air after all. I wasn't just a detective or textiles expert. I was also a wizard!