Ghost Trapper 16 Cabinet Jack Read online

  Contents

  Cabinet Jack

  Copyright

  Also by J. L. Bryan

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  From the author

  Cabinet Jack

  Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper,

  Book Sixteen

  by

  J. L. Bryan

  Copyright

  Copyright 2022 J.L. Bryan

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Also by J. L. Bryan

  The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

  Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

  Cold Shadows

  The Crawling Darkness

  Terminal

  House of Whispers

  Maze of Souls

  Lullaby

  The Keeper

  The Tower

  The Monster Museum

  Fire Devil

  The Necromancer’s Library

  The Trailwalker

  Midnight Movie

  The Lodge

  Cabinet Jack

  Fallen Wishes

  Urban Fantasy/Horror

  The Unseen

  Inferno Park

  Time Travel/Dystopian

  Nomad

  The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

  Jenny Pox

  Tommy Nightmare

  Alexander Death

  Jenny Plague-Bringer

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my wife Christina for her support. Thanks to my son Johnny for always doing his homework and his chores.

  I appreciate everyone who helped with this book, including beta reader Robert Duperre (check out his books!). Thanks also to copy editor Lori Whitwam and proofreaders Thelia Kelly, Andrea van der Westhuizen, and Barb Ferrante. Thanks to my cover artist Claudia from PhatPuppy Art, and her daughter Catie, who does the lettering on the covers.

  Thanks also to the book bloggers who have supported the series, including Heather from Bewitched Bookworms; Mandy from I Read Indie; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Lori from Contagious Reads; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings; Kelsey from Kelsey’s Cluttered Bookshelf; and Ali from My Guilty Obsession.

  Most of all, thanks to the readers who have supported this series! There are more paranormal mysteries to come.

  Dedication

  For Johnny

  You can read it when you’re older

  Chapter One

  Stacey and I took Highway 21 out of Savannah, past the busy industrial center of Port Wentworth and into neighboring Effingham County, which was almost completely rural. Or had been, the last time I'd gone that way.

  “Wow, when did this area blow up?” I asked Stacey as we passed through the suburban town of Rincon, where new apartment buildings, strip malls, and big-box retailers had sprouted along the central four-lane road. “I remember when this was basically just a gas station and a stoplight. And that was like five or six years ago.” I checked my map app. “Twenty more miles to Timbermill.”

  “The meetup spot sounds fun.” Stacey looked at her phone. “Turntables Cafe, in something called the Old Mill District. Are we investigating a haunted coffee shop? Because that would be pretty ideal for those long late-night observations.”

  “No, we're just meeting the client there. Now this looks more familiar.” As we left the once tiny but now sprawling town, dense pine woods sprang up on either side of the road. Soon we passed fields of plump reddish-gold wheat, puffy white cotton, and towering rolls of hay.

  No interstate ran out this way, so the highway was the fastest route. There wasn't much traffic, either, since we'd left our coastal home city of Savannah for the rural inland.

  We eventually turned off onto a single-lane road, marked with ten-foot signs advertising new neighborhoods. One read MILLBURY ESTATES – NEW HOUSES FROM THE LOW $500s. YOU COULD BE HOME BY NOW! A watercolor painting of a house with a flower-filled garden implied the subdivision would be an idyllic realm of soft pastels.

  “Thank goodness it's the low five hundreds or I'd have to get a second job,” I said. “Maybe I'll buy a house the next time I have a half million lying around.”

  “Maybe your future husband will help,” Stacey said, which made me snort laughter. I was glad nobody but Stacey was there to hear the snort, but I still would have preferred fewer witnesses. “That neighborhood does look nice, though.”

  “For that much, it better be more than nice.” I eyed the neighborhood under construction. Three-story houses with picture windows overlooked sprawling lawns. An Olympic-sized community swimming pool sparkled at the end of the street. People who wanted to work in downtown Savannah but still have spacious homes could live here, without having to splurge and spend more than a low half-million or so.

  As we reached downtown Timbermill, a cheerful sign with more pastels read Welcome to Historic Timbermill – A Friendly Traditional and Modern Family Community.

  “That's a mouthful of a slogan,” Stacey said.

  “Sounds like it was workshopped by a marketing department for maximum buzzwords.”

  “But, hey, cute town.”

  Stacey had a point. This was no sprawl of strip malls, but an idyllic old-fashioned town laid out in squares, with aged brick buildings facing a town green with a freshly painted white bandstand. An apple-red train caboose was parked on the green, next to a small historical marker.

  Some of the stores looked like they'd been empty for years, maybe decades. Others, though, had been refreshed with vibrant exterior paint and new signs. Every place seemed to have a fun, happy name to match the fun, happy paint colors. The exterior of Aspire Yoga was a cool celestial blue. Slappin' Tails Dog Grooming was a cheerful banana yellow. Barbershop Gelato inhabited a storefront with a candy-cane barber pole, possibly original to the building. Red Caboose Hair and Nails was located, appropriately enough, across the street from the historic caboose.

  “Look at that,” Stacey said. “‘Coming Soon: SweetCore Cider House’? How do they have a cidery? Is this town some kind of hipster colony?”

  I parked in front of Turntables Cafe. A graphic of a giant vinyl record dominat
ed the plate-glass window, advertising Records, Cookies, and Caffeine. The coffee shop was on the bottom floor of a two-story brick building with shops below and empty-looking windows above.

  “The guy we're meeting is David Brown,” I said. “I get the sense he wants discretion, so let's get our coffees to go so we can talk outside, away from people.”

  The coffee shop interior looked like it wanted to be a jazz lounge. Framed black and white posters of musicians from the 1940s and 1950s adorned deep purple walls. The seating was soft and sunken. An electric keyboard and microphone stood in one corner, though nobody was using them.

  Vintage vinyl records were displayed for sale on antique, hand-carved shelves built into the wall, conveniently located where customers could browse while awaiting their coffee or tea.

  There was no line. A few customers sat at the round, glossy-black tables painted to resemble records. A gang of sweaty, cheerful-looking yoga moms sipped smoothies at the largest table.

  A guy in his late thirties or early forties sat alone at the tiny back-corner table, as far from everyone else as possible. He had an extra-large coffee and a tired, unshaven look. He wore a rumpled brown suit, his tie loosened, the top button of his shirt undone.

  Stacey nudged me. “You think that's our Dave?” she whispered.

  He was already looking up at us, the two new arrivals in the sparsely populated space.

  “Welcome to Turntables,” said the lone staffer, a balding, pudgy white guy in his mid-sixties. He wore a coffee-colored apron—probably a smart idea—and stood under a chalkboard where the menu had been written in assorted colors. “What can I brew for you?”

  “Um, good question.” Stacey approached the counter and read the selection. “I'll have the Muddy Waters Mocha. Ellie, what do you want?”

  “Just plain black coffee.” I texted Are you here? to our prospective client.

  The guy's phone chimed, and he tapped something back.

  Yes, I'm the one not wearing yoga pants appeared on my phone.

  “One Muddy Waters, one Nancy Sinatra,” the retirement-age barista said, with a joviality that implied he'd probably made up the names himself. “Can I interest you ladies in a fresh-baked cookie? The Peanut Buddy Hollies are my personal favorite. Or a Marvin Gaye Muffin? I heard it through the grapevine that they're loaded with top-shelf raisins.”

  While Stacey turned down the sales pitch, I gave her my empty portable coffee cup and walked over to meet our possible new client.

  “Hi, Mr. Brown,” I said, approaching his tiny black record-shaped table while he rose to greet me.

  “Dave,” he said. “You're Ellie? The lead investigator?”

  “Yes, sir. And over there, getting our coffee, is my tech manager Stacey.”

  “You're both…a bit younger than I expected.”

  “That can happen. I can assure you I have many years of experience, unfortunately.”

  “Oh, yeah, I didn't mean anything by it. Sorry, I'm pretty drained lately. Want to have a seat? Or maybe step outside?” He glanced at the table of suburban yogis like he didn't want them overhearing us.

  “That park across the street looks nice,” I said.

  “It's great.” He looked relieved as he got to his feet.

  We met up with Stacey at the exit door. I grabbed my coffee, introduced them, then noticed she carried cookies in a white paper bag.

  “I got some Johnny Cashews,” Stacey said, looking guilty.

  “Lucky pick. Those are actually good,” Dave said. “Avoid the muffins.”

  We crossed the street to the park, then climbed the steps to the deserted bandstand and sat on the built-in benches for a little shade. The hot, humid June day made us feel like crabs getting boiled.

  “You say you have a lot of experience.” Dave sat across from us. “What's your background?”

  “I was trained by Calvin Eckhart, a former Savannah homicide detective. He was a private investigator by the time I worked with him. Savannah has a lot of ghosts, and there was nobody to deal with them, so he became that person. Then he trained Stacey and me to be that person. Er, those people.”

  “And where is Mr. Eckhart now?”

  “In Florida, semi-retired. But he's available to consult and assist if needed. And we have access to other specialists. It really depends on the case.”

  He nodded along. “That's fascinating. And how many times have you succeeded?”

  “Success is…kind of a spectrum, sometimes,” I said.

  “You mean you can't always resolve the problem?”

  “Our track record is as good as you'll find in the local area,” I said. “Due to our lack of any local competition.”

  Dave laughed a little, but it was forced. “This is great.”

  As it turned out, Dave liked to ask questions, far more than the average soul. He asked about our techniques and past investigations and listened attentively. After a while, though, I felt like he was using his questions to maintain distance, to keep us away from him and his problems. We needed him to stop asking and start talking if we were going to make any progress.

  The town around us wasn't exactly bustling, but it was active. Someone, maybe the local chamber of commerce, had been making an effort to revitalize and rejuvenate the little town, attracting new businesses, builders, and homebuyers, and it seemed to be working.

  “Are you from Timbermill originally?” I asked Dave, by way of turning the conversation toward our particular case.

  “Not remotely,” Dave said. “We moved here from Kansas City. Nicole—my wife—thinks there are opportunities in the area.”

  “What kind of opportunities?”

  “She—I mean, we—are realtors. Well, I will be once I pass the exam. I'm not supposed to use these until I do.” He drew a business card from his wallet, showing a smiling, better-kept version of himself, with a recent haircut and shave, wearing a blue blazer and tie. Smiling next to him was a woman with short, professional dark hair and pale blue eyes, wearing a matching blue blazer. Brown Realty of Savannah. “She worked with her family for years in Kansas City. Pagonis Realty. So she's the one who knows what she's doing, obviously.” He put the card away instead of giving it to me.

  “Are you new to real estate?” I asked.

  “Just what the world needed, right? More people selling each other houses.”

  “What did you do before?”

  He sighed and looked over at the compact, red-brick city hall by the weedy, overgrown railroad tracks that bisected the town. “I was a newspaper reporter. My last position was city features editor for the Kansas City Citizen, founded in 1891, shut down for good last fall. Bankrupt.”

  “Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,” I said.

  Dave shook his head. “I know it's the twenty-first century and nobody reads the paper anymore, but it was still kind of a shock. I grew up reading the Citizen, starting with the comics over my breakfast cereal as a kid. It was the lifeblood of information for the city, always had been. A major institution. It seemed unsinkable, like the Titanic. Their downtown building is an historic landmark. It was once the tallest building in the city. I heard they're redeveloping it into condos now.”

  “Did that lead to y'all moving here?” I asked.

  “Sure. Well, Nicole had the idea already, but it was just something she was toying with. We vacationed in Savannah once, back when Lonnie and Penny were still little, and the younger two weren't even a thought yet.”

  “You have four kids?” I slid out my pocket notebook.

  “Yep. Nicole kept reading books on Savannah, saying it was such a beautiful place and it was growing, would grow more as people switch to working remotely and can live in whatever nice-looking place they might want. Savannah has the downtown squares, the parks and gardens, the beach, the warm climate, all of it. But we were rooted pretty hard in Kansas City, and adding more kids didn't make it easier to experiment with our lives. Then the paper shut down.” He winced. “We should have seen it coming, but we trust
ed all the assurances from above. Newspaper people ought to know better than to trust the word of the people in charge, but some of us did.”

  “And you're having problems in your new home?”

  “Right.” He glanced at some teenage boys skateboarding down an alley. “It's a nice little town, though, isn't it? Nicole was right about it rebounding.”

  “So, are you staying in an apartment or a house?” I asked, yet again trying to understand why he'd called us.

  “Both, in a way,” he said. “We bought an old boardinghouse across town. A house flipper started the process of restoring it—electrical, plumbing—back in 2007, but they lost it in the 2008 crash. It's in no worse shape than the house we bought in Kansas City when we got married. We fixed up that old wreck and even got it registered as an historic home. Selling it off gave us the new start we needed down here, for our new house and Nicole's new real estate business. I mean, our new business. Newspapers aren't exactly staffing up these days, no matter where you live, so I have to leave writing behind and move on to things that will actually pay the bills.”

  “Have you experienced anything unusual while restoring the house?” I asked the question in a casual tone, as if it weren't the whole reason we were here.

  “I…have, yes.” Dave sighed and slumped on the bandstand bench, like admitting that much was a kind of defeat for him. “I started coming down to work on it months ago. Long weekends, working alone, getting it ready. It's not like I had a job to keep me busy anymore. Once the sale of the old house closed, Nicole and the kids were left in the lurch for a couple of months, staying with grandparents and aunts and uncles while finishing out the school year. Good thing Nicole has a such a big family. But the kids hated that, and they aren't too thrilled about the new place, either. Hating things is their favorite hobby now.”