Spooky Business (The Spectral Files #3) - S.E. Harmon Page 0,22
in the kitchen.”
A fate worse than death, to be sure. I didn’t go to Sunday Fundays at the McKennas. Even before we’d broken up, I hadn’t wrangled an invitation. All I knew was that it started with church and ended with pot roast. Danny usually brought home tons of leftovers in Tupperware. Of course, she marked his name on the side—and only his name—on a piece of tape. And of course, I didn’t give a rat’s ass and tucked into the food anyway.
We walked around the property, making notes about what needed to be fixed and what needed to be junked. I was put on trash duty while Paula busied herself bringing the patio furniture back outside. Danny disappeared up a ladder and on the roof.
After I finished removing debris from the yard, I was promoted from trash duty to Head Honcho of Removing Hurricane Shutters. I squinted up at the roof. I hadn’t heard a sound from that quarter in quite some time. If Danny was up there hiding out and getting a tan, he would rue the fucking day.
My new task consisted of removing screws from the giant plexiglass screens and stacking them neatly in the garage. It was annoying but easy work, something I could do mindlessly. That gave my mind plenty of time to mentally roam. Inevitably, my brain roamed over to the copycat murders.
If Kane hadn’t killed the three women, then we had a dangerous copycat on our hands, maybe even still operating undetected. On the surface, there was nothing to connect them. Lana Snow had been a model, unmarried, and without children. She hadn’t had much of a home base and mostly crashed on friends’ couches.
The second victim, Ivy Khan, was also unmarried, but she had one child. She’d been a fourth-grade teacher, whose life was as stable as Lana’s was scattered. Rosetta Smythe, known as Rosy to her friends, was the third victim. She’d been a newlywed, married to her high school sweetheart, and worked in a tire shop as an office manager.
Other than details of their abductions, that’s all I knew. Now I had to figure out who they were beyond the glare of a computer screen. Where did they live? What were their hobbies? Who were the important people in their microcosms? No detail was too small in trying to find a connection between the three women.
My phone rang, jolting me out of thought. I juggled the drill and a handful of screws to pull it out of my pocket. A familiar picture appeared on my screen, and I put the call on speaker. She didn’t bother with pleasantries. “I found it,” Chevy announced.
It took a few seconds for me to realize who she was talking about. “The fair from my dream? It’s only been a couple of days.”
“I know,” she said smugly. “I’m just that good.”
I should’ve known better than to doubt her skills. “You know, humility is—”
“Highly overrated.” Computer keys clicking sounded on her end. “The fairgrounds were originally owned by the Cartwright family. It was named Zappa Fair, and they ran it successfully for forty-five years.”
“The place I saw was abandoned,” I said with a frown. “What happened to it?”
“Bad luck, mostly. Several incidents happened at the fair that tarnished their reputation.”
“Like what?”
“Two kids died on a freak accident on the carousel. A year later, a woman was abducted while on the fairgrounds and never seen again. The last straw was when they found a man in the parking lot, dead of a gunshot wound to the back of the head.”
That sounded less like bad luck and more like a fucking curse.
“People blamed the patriarch, William Cartwright, for the woman’s abduction. He eventually committed suicide. The fair folded a few months later. Now there’s talk of the grounds being haunted.”
“A good old-fashioned haunting is the story of my life,” I murmured. “When I walk into a room, the theme from The Twilight Zone just starts playing.”
She snorted. “The grounds now belong to his grandson, Terrance Cartwright. He lives in Tampa. He said you’re more than welcome to visit the property, but he won’t set foot on the place.”
“So kind of him to give me unfettered access to his haunted, dilapidated fair. Can you text me the—” My phone dinged with a text, and I smiled wryly. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem.”
My mind flashed back to the ghost I met in my dream and the wound on the back of his head. “What was the gunshot victim’s name?”