Spooked on the Gulf Coast (Gulf Coast Paranormal Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  “Wait, I know you. Your name is Pete, right? You were on that show. This is a bad idea, Midas.”

  Pete froze and said, “I’m not on that show anymore.” His nervous expression said it all. He wanted a drink.

  I said calmly to Patricia, “You probably did see Peter on television, but he’s not involved in any of that anymore. I think he got homesick for Mobile, didn’t you, Pete?”

  “Yep, couldn’t stay away from the Port City.” He smiled pleasantly as he ran cables to the camera.

  “You can rest easy, Patricia. Nothing we capture will be found anywhere on television or the internet. We only want to help you and Carl.” I was surprised when she hugged me and cried on my shoulder. This was totally unexpected. Cassidy didn’t say much but came over and put her arm around Patricia. I neatly slid out from under her grasp and let her cry on Cassidy’s shoulder. Maybe she just needed a hug?

  “It’s okay, Patricia,” Cassidy said. “I know firsthand that these situations can be upsetting. We’ll find some answers for you. I promise.”

  It was sweet of Cassidy to say so, but we couldn’t really promise something like that. I’d have to say something to her later about talking to clients that way.

  The frazzled blonde didn’t act like she was in a hurry to investigate. I asked, “Are you sure you want to do this, Patricia? You could wait in the van with Sierra and Aaron and just watch us. You’ll have a radio you can use if you have questions.”

  “No, I’m going to do this for Carl. He isn’t coming back unless I can convince him that what he saw was…natural.” She accepted a tissue from Cassidy and rubbed at her nose.

  “I can’t promise you that, remember? I don’t make up evidence, but I will deliver you our findings and you can determine what you do with them.”

  “I get that, and I’m sorry to be such a nervous Nellie. I’ll be in my office until you need me. I think I need to clean up.”

  “Okay, we’re going lights out in about an hour. We’ll head that way in a few minutes so we can set up in Deter’s office.”

  With a glum expression, she stomped down the hallway to her office. Pete said, “Sorry, Midas. I wasn’t on the show that long. I didn’t think she’d be a fan.” He grinned like he’d been asked for his autograph or something, but I knew it bothered him. He’d really be bothered if he knew that Sara had been calling me to ask about him. I finally took her call before tonight’s investigation. She accused Peter of stealing from her. I didn’t believe a word of it, but who knew? And what did she want me to do about it, anyway? Shake him down? Frisk him? She’d have to do her own dirty work. I was staying out of it and told her so.

  “It’s fine, Pete.” I shrugged it off. “Let’s get this equipment hooked up before she changes her mind. Where’s that list?” Pete tapped on his phone. I noticed his hands were shaking, but I pretended it was no big deal. God, I hoped he hadn’t fallen off the wagon. It would make it hard to help him if Sara did bring the law against him.

  “Two cameras in the exhibit, one facing the staircase…”

  “I don’t recall anything reported on the staircase,” Cassidy added.

  “There wasn’t, but I’d like to cover it anyway. You never know.”

  “Okay, where else again?” Cassidy clutched a camera and looked over Pete’s shoulder. I loved her amber perfume. Pete smiled at me as if he could read my mind.

  “One covering the courtyard, in case we catch anything coming into or out of the storeroom and then one in the storeroom. Two in Deter’s office, one pointing at the closet.”

  “Roger that,” she said as she bounced up the stairs to set the exhibit cameras in place.

  “Wait, Cassidy,” Pete said. “I think we need to put this new gizmo up there too.”

  The two of them headed off to set up cameras in the exhibit while Joshua and I worked downstairs. He liked wearing his hair in a messy style, but today he looked like a homeless person. I didn’t want to push him, but I was concerned. “I guess I’m lucky that you didn’t have to work tonight.”

  “Nah, they canned me.”

  “What?” I asked as I swiveled the camera stand around to face the courtyard.

  “Yeah, they called this afternoon while we were on our way to the GCP office. They hired the guy back, the one they fired. He’s family, and I’m a stranger. That’s how it works.”

  “You know, my cousin Dmitri is looking for someone to manage his rental properties. It would be a lot of hands-on work, but you’re a pretty handy guy. You’d be free nights unless there was some kind of maintenance emergency.”

  I set the camera on the tripod. He connected the cord and said, “I didn’t think you liked Dmitri. Do you think he’s legit?”

  “No, it’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that he always has something to prove when it comes to me. But as far as business goes, nobody can beat him. He’s a whiz at buying, flipping and all that stuff.”

  “You think he would hire me? I mean, I don’t have handyman on my resume.”

  “Yeah, but maybe you should change that. You’re good with your hands, and when it comes to home repair, you know a ton. Just look what you’ve done at your house and mine,” I said, trying to encourage him.

  “That’s great, Midas. I would be really grateful to you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. He’s not the nicest guy in town, but he’s fair. I’ll call him in the morning.”

  He grimaced and lifted the collar of his shirt. “Man, this thing is getting worse, if that’s possible. I might have to go see a doctor. It feels like it’s infected.”

  I clicked on the walkie-talkie. “Hey, Sierra. How does that look?”

  “Um, great if you want me to stare at Joshua’s head all night. Tell him to move,” she said teasingly. Josh moved, and after a few changes we had the camera right where we wanted it.

  “Okay, we’re headed to the storeroom.”

  Thirty minutes later, the cables were connected and Sierra reported we were all systems go. Pete’s anomaly detection device was hooked up too and running with the camera in the exhibit.

  “I’ll go see if Patricia is ready. Here’s how we’ll do it. Pete, you and Patricia will be with me down here, Cassidy and Joshua will start upstairs. Let’s do baseline readings first. Record them and then get on to EVP work.”

  “Sounds like a plan, boss.”

  I walked down the hall to ask Patricia to join us when a door beside me slammed shut. “Shoot!” I said, nearly jumping out of my skin.

  Pete must have seen me jump about a foot. “What was that?” he whispered like a freight train. With a shrug, I reached for the door handle and gave it a twist, but the darn thing wouldn’t budge. This was Deter’s office! How did this get locked? I didn’t even see a lock. I twisted it hard, but it still wouldn’t move. “Son of a gun!”

  Patricia stepped out into the hallway; she was two doors down and staring at me like I’d done it. “What are you doing?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I came to see if you were ready when someone walked into Deter’s office, slammed the door and locked it. Who else is here?”

  “Nobody is here; I made sure of that. And that door doesn’t lock.”

  “Well, someone must be. I saw a man walk in here. Do you have a key?”

  Patricia inched closer. “Like I said, that door doesn’t have a lock. Are you putting me on?” Just then, the lights began going off and she grabbed my arm in fright.

  “That’s just Pete. We always go dark when we investigate.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief but didn’t turn loose of me. “What now?”

  I reached for the doorknob again, and this time the door swung open easily. “Now we investigate.” Together we walked into the dark room.

  Chapter Nine—Midas

  “Hello? Who’s in here? I saw you walk in. No sense in hiding from us. Patricia is here too.” I waited just inside the doorway, and Patricia hung behind me. No one answered. I reached for my walkie-talkie. “Midas to Sie
rra.”

  “Go ahead, Midas.”

  “Patricia and I are on the bottom floor, in Deter’s office. I saw someone walk in here. Tell me we have a camera in this hallway.”

  “That’s a negative, Midas. Two in the office: one pointed at the closet, which appears to be closed, and one at his desk.”

  “Shoot! Well, we’re going to investigate in here first, Patricia and me.”

  “Great, copy that.”

  Hanging the walkie-talkie on my waistband, I pulled my digital recorder out of my pocket. “Midas and Patricia in the downstairs office, EVP session.”

  “What?” Patricia asked. I squeezed her hand once and released it. I put my finger to my lips too, but I wasn’t sure she could see me. There wasn’t even a flicker of light in here. She dug her cell phone out of her purse, hit the flashlight and illuminated the room. I preferred to work in darker conditions, but I couldn’t ask her to do that. She was scared already.

  “Is there anyone in here? I saw you when I came up the hall.”

  “Deter, is that you?” Patricia asked. “I know this was your office; we don’t mean to intrude.”

  “She’s right. We’re here because we saw you come in here. Do you want us to look in the closet?” I stared at the digital recorder, but the indicator light did not come on after my question. That meant it had not picked up any voices.

  “Deter Simon, are you here? Please give us a sign of your presence,” I asked again as she waved the light around wildly.

  “I don’t want to stay here. Can we go now?”

  “Let’s open the closet first, so the camera can record it.”

  I opened the squeaky door and placed the digital recorder on Deter’s desk. “Deter, my name is Midas. I am a friend of Carl’s and Patricia’s. I am going to leave this here. If you want to talk to us, any of us, speak into this device. I can hear you when you speak into the device. We’re leaving now, but we will be back.” And we eased out of the room.

  “How do you guys do this all the time?” she asked me as we walked down the hall to join Pete, who waited for us at the bottom of the stairs.

  “It takes some getting used to, but it’s not usually this exciting right off the bat. I know I saw a man walk in that room, and for whatever reason, he didn’t want me to follow him.”

  Patricia waved her flashlight around again and bit her lip. “What did he look like?”

  “He was tall, with slightly slumped shoulders. I couldn’t see his face since he was walking away from me, but he had salt-and-pepper hair.”

  “That sounds like Deter! Why would he still be here?”

  I didn’t really know, but I offered the only suggestion I could come up with. “You mentioned that he had dementia and that his condition worsened before he passed away. Perhaps he doesn’t know he’s gone.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth, and I realized that might not have been the right thing to say. She said in a panicked voice, “Oh no. You mean he’s trapped in here?”

  “Not exactly,” Pete offered. “What you could be seeing is a residual haunting, meaning it’s not actually Deter but just a snapshot of him. Like a memory locked in place, in a time loop that keeps repeating.”

  “So not him?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but we can’t be sure and may never actually know.”

  Pete walked up to us with a confident smile. “Let’s do some baseline sweeps. This is an EMF detector, Patricia. Some investigators believe that blips and surges in the electromagnetic field indicate a paranormal presence. It’s good to know what the baseline for the building is, and it might also provide an explanation for any hallucinations or overall bad feelings.”

  “Cassidy had one when I met her. I’m curious to see more about how this works.”

  Pete began showing her how to use the EMF detector and handed me the IR camera.

  “All right, let’s go,” I said. “I’ll go first. Patricia, you follow me with the EMF detector since it’s pretty basic—Pete, stick with her. I’ll use the IR camera; it’s a thermal camera that lets us take heat readings.”

  She didn’t ask any more questions, and we began sweeping the place with the EMF detector and IR camera. “Point two, point three, point four…back to point two. I think we’re following an electrical line here,” Peter suggested. “See, it’s not over here.” Patricia waved the box on the other side of the room. Sure enough, it seemed like we were tracing some electrical lines.

  “I’m not getting anything on the IR. Let’s go to the storerooms, this way,” I told Pete. We went through the storerooms, and the EMF detector went off the charts. “Thirty-eight? Geesh. Forty-two, now twenty-five.” My suspicions were correct. The electrical box was putting off a ton of EMF, so much so that it could affect your emotions, give you the creeps and who knew what else. It all depended on the person. “Sierra, this is Midas.”

  “Go ahead, Midas.”

  “We’ve got some high EMF readings in the storeroom. Up to forty-two.”

  “Forty-two?”

  “Yeah. We’re going to do some EVPs.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Will you take the IR, Pete? I think Patricia has the hang of that EMF detector now.”

  “Sure, sweeping now. Uh-oh….”

  “What is it?” Patricia asked fearfully.

  “I think you have a mouse in here.”

  She clutched my hand again, and I could see Pete’s amused expression. Patricia said, “Yuck, can we leave now? I knew I didn’t like it down here.”

  “Sure. But first, let’s do an EVP session. Pete, you want to lead?”

  “All right.” We swapped equipment, and Pete began his session. “Pete, Midas and Patricia in the storeroom. Is there anyone here that would like to speak to us?” He waited for ten seconds or so and then asked another question. “Are you Deter?” Patricia shuffled nervously beside me as he continued. “Are you one of the Pelican girls? Do you know Cassidy? Has she painted you?”

  We didn’t hear a voice, but I had the feeling that we weren’t alone. I didn’t know if it was the EMF talking or just my own “spidey” senses, but things were just getting good.

  “Let’s go, Pete. Time to swap out with the upstairs team.”

  “All right, let’s do it. How about you, Trisha?”

  She didn’t correct him, and to my surprise, I saw her smile. “Fine, as long as I can hold someone’s hand.”

  He smiled back. “You can hold mine.”

  We walked out of the storeroom and headed to the lobby to meet Cassidy and Joshua. At least I didn’t have to hold Patricia’s hand anymore. But who knew how the evening would go? The way my personal creeped-out factor was climbing the charts, I might need to hold someone’s hand before this was over. Especially when I turned the corner and caught a glimpse of a young boy with dark hair sprinting past me. He disappeared into thin air. Although I hadn’t seen him in twenty years, I knew who that boy was. That was my dead cousin Dominic.

  What the hell was going on?

  Chapter Ten—Cassidy

  “Sierra to Josh,” Sierra’s voice screeched over the radio, and both Joshua and I froze in our tracks. After I caught my breath, I handed him the radio. Luckily for us, there wasn’t much going on up here on the second floor at the moment. The exhibit was fascinating, though, including the half ship replica. Someone—or more to the truth, many someones—put a ton of time, work and money into this project, and you could tell it was certainly a labor of love. During our investigation, I frequently found myself drawn to the exhibit case that displayed the comb and the glass beads. I wished I could handle those things, make contact with them, but I didn’t want to break any rules. Patricia Atkins seemed kind of particular about those things.

  “Sorry. I should have checked the volume.” He clicked the radio and answered back, “Joshua for Sierra.”

  “Your camera, the one on the ship, is showing an anomaly. It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. There’s a guy up there! You guys have the table
t? Grab it so you can see what I am talking about.”

  “Got it,” I said as I picked up the tablet from off the nearby bench and tapped on the app associated with the sensor. We immediately saw what Sierra was looking at, and she was right—that was kind of creepy. Standing on the ship near the front was a red stick figure. Gosh! Make that two stick figures, one noticeably taller than the other. Yes, that one was certainly smaller. Instinctually, I backed up a few feet. The dancing skeletons didn’t disappear but seemed to be watching us, probably wondering what the heck we were doing here. Could this be real?

  “Got them, Sierra. Josh, I’m hitting record.”

  “Okay. Five minutes, guys,” Sierra’s excited voice broke in one last time. “Midas knows you have something, and he is eager to switch out.”

  “Fat chance now,” I said as I stared mesmerized at the screen with the bouncing stick figures. My gaze went from screen to ship and back again. “Flash your light up there. I want to make sure this thing isn’t picking up on something dangling from that ceiling. Like some kind of wire.”

  “Good call,” he answered and shot the bow with his LED light. After a minute or two, he said, “I don’t see anything that would come off as an anomaly. Pete is going to love that this thing actually worked.”

  I couldn’t stop staring, but I had to kick it into investigator mode. “Now what do we do? Should we try to communicate?” For some reason, seeing these two figures with my own eyes gave me the chills.

  “Absolutely. I’ll give it a shot first.” He turned off his flashlight and stood beside me studying the screen. “Hey there. We can see you here on this device. I’m Joshua, and this is my friend Cassidy.” He clicked on his digital recorder. “Are you here for a boat ride?” What a silly question, but at least he had a question. I was too freaked out to ask anything at the moment. The two figures weren’t moving off that ship, and it looked like they were still watching us. The smaller one appeared a little more agitated now, waving its arms and moving around erratically.

  “Hey, don’t leave, okay? We’re not here to make you leave, and we’re not here to bother you. We’d like to come aboard.” Joshua added quickly, “Do you have room for two more on there?”