Doggone It, page 1
DOGGONE IT
A DREAMWALKER MYSTERY
DOGGONE IT
MAGGIE TOUSSAINT
FIVE STAR
A part of Gale, Cengage Learning
Copyright © 2016 by Maggie Toussaint
Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, except as permitted U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Toussaint, Maggie, author.
Title: Doggone it / Maggie Toussaint.
Description: First edition. | Waterville, Maine : Five Star, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. [2016] | Series: A dreamwalker mystery
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007145 (print) | LCCN 2016012672 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432832315 (hardcover) | ISBN 143283231X (hardcover) | ISBN 9781432832353 (ebook) | ISBN 1432832352 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432834715 (ebook) | ISBN 1432834711 (ebook)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3235-3 eISBN-10: 1-43283235-2
Subjects: LCSH: Women private investigators—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Psychic ability—Fiction. | Psychics—Fiction. | Paranormal fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3620.O89 D64 2016 (print) | LCC PS3620.O89 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016007145
First Edition. First Printing: October 2016
This title is available as an e-book.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3235-3 ISBN-10: 1-43283235-2
Find us on Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage
Visit our website– http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/
Contact Five Star™ Publishing at FiveStar@cengage.com
Printed in the United States of America
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This one’s for Craig.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Critique partner Polly Iyer helped sharpen this manuscript. A tip of the hat to my awesome Five Star team of Deni Dietz, Alice Duncan, and Tiffany Schofield. Thanks for all you do to make my books shine. Thanks also to Deborah Holt, a patron of the Wetumpka, Alabama, Public Library, who won the right to a character name in this story.
CHAPTER 1
Spending twilight at June’s Folly was nuts. This swamp was bad news to folks like me. I wanted my friend to turn her car around and get the heck out of here. Instead, I steeled my nerves for the coming ordeal.
Charlotte stopped the car, her high beams illuminating a two-story house in dire need of painting. Windows were broken. The door gaped open. A rocking chair lay on its side on the porch. Some wooden chairs had been busted up.
“Wow. Someone’s torn this place up. Is that damage new or has it been like this?”
“I don’t know about the house, but the holes in the yard look freshly dug,” Charlotte said. “It looks like the pirate treasure vandals have struck again.”
“I hate this.” And I did. I hated being out here. I hated that such a beautiful house was going to ruin. I hated that vandals were digging up half the county hoping to strike it rich.
“Those movie people ought to be strung up by their heels.”
My stomach churned with anxiety. I just wanted Charlotte to do her reporter thing so that we could leave this place. Air huffed out of my lungs. “Like that’s going to happen. Everyone thinks Ford Morrison and his crew walk on water with all the money they’re spending in the county.”
“Boosting the economy is one thing, but all this hype about our alleged missing pirate treasure has folks all stirred up. My boss won’t let me write about the vandalized lawns anymore because we’ve had over thirty yards documented with holes like this. What a shame.”
Charlotte was in a tight race with another reporter to be top dog at our weekly paper. She was better than the other guy, but the competition had the boss’s ear. Unless we had another big case, my friend would be stuck covering her regular beat.
Fortunately, she’d thought up this cool ghost story series to keep her name on the front page. “Not even the spooky legends about this place were enough to keep it off the vandals’ radar. I wonder what Horace June was thinking, building his home way out here in the swamp.”
“Must’ve been a loner. No, that’s not right. I read he had a family.”
“Maybe his in-laws tried to snatch his kid.”
Charlotte made a tsking sound. “Don’t go projecting your troubles on Mr. June. I’m sure he had plenty of troubles of his own.”
“Speaking of troubles, we should phone this in.”
“Not yet! We’re here to find ghosts, and those clowns who work for the sheriff might scare them away. We need to stay focused. I saved June’s Folly for last because of all the ghost stories. I’m sure this place is haunted.” Charlotte glanced my way. “Are you sensing something already, Baxley? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I wasn’t sensing anything. I’d shielded my extra senses as soon as we turned down the driveway. “I haven’t set foot on this swampland since the time we snuck out here in high school, and I got so sick my father had to come get me.”
Charlotte let go of the steering wheel and turned to face me. “I remember. You said you had a stomach bug.”
“I wasn’t sick, at least not in the usual way.” I managed a half smile at her reproachful look. “Something out here short-circuited my senses. My father warned me the same thing would happen if I came out to this place again.”
Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t get you, Baxley Powell. If this place is toxic to dreamwalkers, why’d you come with me tonight?”
“Because.”
Charlotte snickered. “Because what?”
I stared at the fluid headlight beams and motley sand piles. Charlotte couldn’t begin to understand the things I’d seen, the beings I’d encountered. “Because I’m a grown-up. Because I’ve learned how to be a dreamwalker, and I have the streak of white hair to prove it. And because I won’t let fear defeat me.”
“That’s my girl.”
I faced her, serious as a heart attack. “I wouldn’t do this for just anybody.”
Her expression grew pensive in the faint dash lights. “Surely you don’t believe the scary rumors about this place? Somebody made them up.”
“No doubt, but there’s often a little truth behind a legend.”
Charlotte turned off the engine, cut off the lights, and the yard plunged into darkness. “That’s why I asked you to come along. You’ve got an in with the spirit world. Help me figure out the real story of June’s Folly. That’s what my readers are longing for—the truth.”
My reporter friend was on the last column of her haunted house series for The Marion Observer. She’d recounted every ghost story ever told about Sinclair County and gotten positive feedback from the community. There was even talk from the tourism people of them asking Charlotte to run a weekend ghost tour, complete with mini-bus, loudspeakers, and a nifty headset microphone.
“I’m the wrong kind of detector for the information you need. I talk to dead people who’ve crossed over. Earthbound spirits are different critters altogether. You need a medium for that.”
“I don’t have a medium.” Charlotte opened her door and started gathering her gear from the back seat. “I’ve got a best friend who talks to dead people. Just change your frequency or something. I need the lowdown on the ghost out here.”
The warm, muggy air from outside quickly overpowered the cooler air from the car. With reluctance, I unsnapped my seat belt. “If only it were so easy. I would have dialed in normal years ago.”
“Come on, be a sport. Let me know which ghost rumor is correct. Is the ghost of June’s Folly a French-speaking giant with a pet alligator or a boatload of drowned slaves shaking their chains of death?”
Charlotte made it sound so easy. Run a little extrasensory recon, chat up the ghost, and then go home under my own power. “I’m accompanying you because you are my best friend, but I don’t speak ghost. Sometimes I can make contact with a spirit by touching an item that belonged to a dead person. Most times spirits come to me in my dreams. I’m not planning on napping out here in swamp world.” I clicked on my flashlight and stared into the darkness. “I hope I don’t break my ankle.”
She joined me in front of the warm car. She’d slung a camera around her neck, tucked a pad of paper under her arm, stashed a pen behind her ear, and carried a jumbo flashlight. “Quit bellyaching. I have to turn this story in tomorrow. You feeling anything yet?”
“I’m feeling stupid for agreeing to play ghost detective with you, but I didn’t want you out here alone at night.”
“Thanks. I appreciate the moral support.”
We picked our way through the obstacle course of dirt piles and holes, navigating toward the sa
I stopped and peered in a dirt hole. “Do you think they found anything?”
“No way.” Charlotte’s breath came out in little huffs, whether from the humidity, her plus-size weight, or the lure of a good yarn, I couldn’t tell. “People have been combing this property with metal detectors for years. Trust me. If a pirate’s horde of gold were buried here, it would have been discovered long ago.”
As someone who lived from paycheck to paycheck, the likelihood of finding buried treasure seemed smaller than winning the Georgia lottery. “I can’t imagine a pirate leaving behind his gold.”
My friend shrugged. “He couldn’t stash it in the bank.”
“Good point.” The bottom board was torn off the steps, and another hole excavated at the foot of the stairs. This disregard for private property upset me. “I have to call the cops.”
“Not until we’re finished. Unless . . .” Charlotte glanced around furtively. “Unless you think the diggers are still here, and we’re in danger.”
“No need to whisper. If someone’s here, they would’ve heard the car. And if they somehow missed that, they would’ve heard us talking.”
“Gotcha. We scared them off. Or the ghost did. I wonder if they planned to rip up the floorboards and dig under the house.”
I stared at her, alarmed. “We’re going in the house? Count me out. I didn’t sign on for breaking and entering. I can’t do that. I’ll lose my job as a police consultant.”
Charlotte shone her light on the weathered facade. “No breaking required. The front door is open.”
I added my beam to hers. Sure enough, the paneled door with the centrally located doorknob gaped on its hinges. “Dang. You’re right. Still, this place belongs to someone. We don’t have the right to stroll inside. We’ll be trespassing.”
“Just a peek inside. If the ghost is here, it should repel us at the door, or so goes the legend. Speaking of ghosts, is anyone talking to you? Maybe shaking some chains or speaking in French?”
“All I’m hearing is a desperate reporter.” Cautiously, I touched the banister to see if it was secure. It was. I used the railing for support as I carefully trod the rotten, squeaking steps. Drifts of thickened air stirred my hair and sighed through the pines.
Charlotte halted. “You hear that?”
Her voice sounded too high. “The wind?”
“Chains clanking. And a sad, mournful song in another language.”
“Truly?” I heard nothing of the sort. Was Charlotte’s imagination getting away from her? Was there a ghost?
Charlotte sank to the porch decking, her gear clunking as she landed heavily on her rear. “I, uh, need a minute.”
“Okay.” I sat on the top step beside her. Other than feeling dread and a shiver against the elements, I seemed normal with no sign of sensory overload. I marveled that I was still functioning. A little maturity and a little extrasensory training and I had a whole new perspective on this place.
“Don’t you feel it?” My friend’s teeth chattered. “I’m freezing.”
I estimated it was nearly eighty degrees and humid enough for spiders to dance on the air. Puzzled, I touched Charlotte’s arm. Her skin felt cold to the touch. Ordinarily, Charlotte would be griping about the heat and the humidity. Something was crossing her wires.
“Look at you! Working those earlier ghost sites must have unleashed a latent talent.” I gazed at her with frank admiration. “You’re the ghost detector tonight, Char. I’m not picking up anything.”
“Are you looking?”
She had me there. “Nope. I don’t want to have to call my father to come get me again. That would be embarrassing.”
“I thought you were doing this to prove yourself as a bad-ass dreamwalker.”
“My main thought is that you have your answer to the ghost question. Chains and mournful singing support the drowned slave legend. Time to go home.”
“There’s more to this, I know it,” she insisted. “Help me prove it. You can handle whatever it is I’m feeling. I haven’t passed out or anything.”
Like that would reassure me. But there was a certain logic to her claim. I was being a wimp by keeping my senses and my body shielded.
Charlotte had called me out. Worse, she was right. Just because I never heard ghosts before was no reason not to listen for this one.
My talents and my shielding abilities were much more finely tuned now. I’d been talking to the dead for months. I didn’t have to let childhood fears dictate my actions. And, the sooner I gave Charlotte what she wanted, the sooner we could go home.
With that, I closed my eyes and opened my senses to the night. Immediately, I plunged into a freezing fog bank.
CHAPTER 2
“Baxley! Wake up! You better not be dead, you hear me?”
Charlotte’s insistent demands added to the din inside my head. Wind roared. Fog boiled like a kettle on the stove. A crowd of people were talking. Most of the conversation I couldn’t make out, but it sounded like a dozen radio stations were coming through on the same channel.
Simultaneously, every hair on my body electrified. I felt the steady pressure of something otherworldly on my jeans. Chilled skin, bones, and joints rendered me immobile. Cold. I was so cold.
“Baxley!” Charlotte yelled, shining her flashlight in my face. “I know you’re in there. Your eyes are moving back and forth, and you’re freaking me out. Whatever it is you are seeing or sensing, snap out of it. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Fight back, darn you. Fight back.”
Her words jabbed through my iced thoughts, needle sharp, but I couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything.
Something with red eyes advanced through the fog. It was hip high, as tall as a child. Not low enough to be an alligator. Or a small dog. But it might be a large dog. A mastiff or a Great Dane. It loomed over me, striking terror in my gut.
“Go away,” I shouted into the fog. “Begone!”
The eyes remained. Watching. I tried to transition through this inhospitable corridor to the next world, but couldn’t. I tried to wake up. Couldn’t.
“I renounce you, evil spirit,” I shouted. “You have no power over me.”
The beady red eyes glowed brighter.
Would it pounce on me?
I needed to get out of here. What was this foggy place? What held me fast?
Strangers shouted in my head. Maddening. I wished I could clamp my hands over my ears. I couldn’t take much more of this chaos. I needed help. “Charlotte!” I tried to thrash, to pinch myself, but my hands went right through my body.
Not a good sign.
I couldn’t stand the chill of this place. The longer I stayed in this temporal zone, the less I was myself.
I needed help. My father and daughter were connected to me in the spirit world. “Daddy! Larissa! Can you hear me? I’m in trouble. Get Mom. I need your help.”
The fog thickened like day-old grits. Something bumped against me, knocking me down.
I needed immediate help. Someone who could kick spirit butt. Rose. But Rose didn’t do anything for nothing. Was I desperate enough to contact a demon?
“The rose tattoo on your hand is glowing,” Charlotte yelped. “It’s possessed or something. What’s going on in your head? Wake up, Baxley. There’s no way I can carry you to the car. To hell with the ghost feature for the paper. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
My tattoo. I bore the mark of an entity from the spirit realm. Hope flared. “Rose?” I whirled in the murk, unable to get my bearings, knowing this wasn’t what I saw during my dream-walks. I was trapped in limbo. “Rose, are you here?”
Rose wavered before me, tall and thin with red eyes. Her wings weren’t visible, so she was still working undercover in demon mode.
“You should not be here,” Rose said.
Her words were as clear as if we were having a conversation in my kitchen. Must be a direct link between us. “I’m stuck between worlds. Can you help me?”
