A Fright of Ghosts: Hollis Ball and Sam Wescott Series, Vol. 4

By Helen Chappell

When Sluggo is found dead, Robbie, the outsider, is charged with the crime.

But when Hollis and Sam head to Shellpile to investigate, they find plenty of local suspects to chose from, including Sluggo’s fellow watermen and his three ex-wives.

And behind the Shellpile Islanders’ wall of stony silence, there are bigger secrets than who murdered Sluggo Fotney. Secrets that could land Hollis into deep, dark waters, even with the help of a special guest ghost, a long dead pirate who knows all the island’s secrets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Write Words Inc.
• Release date: Nov 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781613860359

Helen Chappell

Helen Chappell lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she tries to keep a low profile and stay out of the line of fire. She has written about the area for forty years. In addition to her fiction and non-fiction, she has also written a produced play and a novel about Oysterback, A Whole World of Trouble. Her Sam and Hollis mystery series garners positive attention. Her journalism and articles have appeared in the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, in addition to many magazines. She is currently a columnist for Tidewater Times and at work on a new book.

Book preview

A Fright of Ghosts

Hollis Ball and Sam Wescott Series, Vol.5

by

Helen Chappell

Published by Write Words Inc. at Smashwords

copyright 2011 Helen Chappell.

Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Author or Publisher, excepting brief quotes to be used in reviews.

WARNING: Making copies or distributing this file, either on disk, CD, or over the Internet is a Federal Offense under the U.S. Copyright Act, and a violation of several International Trade Agreements.

Chapter 1

The Dog in the Nighttime

If you ask me, there’s no such thing as too much sleep. It’s free, it feels good and it’s the only time I’m not thinking about chocolate or craving nicotine. I cherish sleep, the way some people prize Fabergé eggs. My nod time is important to me, especially when it’s cold outside and I can crawl under a pile of warm quilts and drift off into a dream where my life is far more interesting than my reality.

All of which may have had something to do with the way I didn’t hear that smoky voice cutting through my slumbers like a cheap alarm.

Hollis, wake up.

Slowly, I opened one eye. My bedroom was dark, so it had to be the middle of the night. The dim black outlines were illuminated by the sullen gray light of a waning moon. And unless my cat had suddenly learned to talk, the misty face hanging in front of my one open eye had evidently come back from the dead just to mess with my zonk time.

Yes, it was Sam. The ghost of my late and unlamented ex-husband haunts me, but usually he has the common sense to do it during regular business hours.

I’m calling that exorcist first thing in the morning, I mumbled, and turned over, burrowing myself deeper into the nice, warm quilts.

But Sam was still there.

Hollis. I could feel him, a soft, cool presence, like a breeze from the Bay.

I’m serious as a heart attack, Holl, you gotta wake up. The phone is gonna ring any second now. Sam’s voice was quiet, but insistent. I felt the air as he sat down on the edge of my bed, just the way he used to when he was alive, we were still married, and he’d been out carousing til three in the morning.

The mere thought of which was enough to charge me with adrenaline.

If there’s someone you wish you could bring back to life, just so you could kill him all over again, it’s Sam Wescott, professional ghost.

What the pluperperfect hell is it this time? I yawned, squinting at the clock on the nightstand. It was, indeed, three o’clock in some dark night of the soul, notably mine. I do not enjoy being awakened at the best of times, and this cold spring morning was not the best of times.

What’s going on? I sighed, rolling over so I could keep a better eye on him.

Sam’s dim outline glowed slightly. The phone is going to ring any second now, and you must be awake, he said.

If it’s Rig Riggle, the editor from hell, with some car accident or break in he heard on the scanner, he can go cover it himself. The Gazette doesn’t pay me enough to get out this bed at this hour, I grumbled and closed my eyes again, back to snoring.

It’s not Rig, Sam said quietly.

Dead or alive, there was something entirely too serious in his tone that I didn’t like. This wasn’t one of his stupid jokes, I decided, looking at his expression, or what I could see of it.

What’s the problem? I snarled. Did you forget your ectoplasm or something?

Sam inclined his head to one side, regarding the phone on the nightstand. It’s serious, Holl. Dead serious. It’s D—

The phone shrilled, anxious in the still darkness.

I just gave Sam a look as I picked it up.

H-Hollis? Are you there?

The voice on the other end was as close to hysterical as I’ve ever heard my sister-in-law. She’s an emergency room nurse, and she doesn’t get hysterical. But she sure was perturbed now.

Hollis, there’s been a terrible, terrible misunderstanding, I heard Callie saying, her tone barely under control. Your brother Robbie has just been arrested down to Shellpile Island for murdering Sluggo Fotney.

I stared at Sam as this news slowly penetrated my clogged brain.

We’re in trouble now, he said.

Which, as it turned out, was the understatement of the century.

Chapter 2

A Child’s Christmas

Down to Toby’s Bar

The mess, and a mess it was, started around Christmas last year.

As far as I am concerned, there is no such thing as too tacky when it comes to decorating for the holidays. I guess it runs in the family. When Granddaddy Russell died, they wanted to drape some of his Christmas tree lights on his tombstone and power them up with an old Ford marine battery. Mum-Mum Russell was still in her right mind then, and she wouldn’t let them do it. I personally think it would have been sort of cool, but then, along with my cousin Toby, I share the title of Family Black Sheep, so that just goes to show you.

Toby, being a good Eastern Shoreman, takes Christmas seriously. Along about Thanksgiving weekend, he gets his decorations out of storage in Old Man Wiggin’s shed and starts doing up the bar.

Of course, this being Toby’s, you already have the peculiar ambience of desiccated stuffed waterfowl, cheap paneling and neon beer signs, so you can imagine what the place looks like after he’s put up the last plastic Santa in bathing suit and lei, holding up a can of Natty Bo.

Also note that about once or twice a year, my mother, Miss Doll, puts in a state appearance at Toby’s. This is supposed to show how broad-minded she is, since ladies from her generation don’t hang out in bars and also, that The Family stands behind Toby, even if he is one of its darker sheep.

Usually, I am wrangled into assuming the position of her lady-in-waiting for these visits. This is to let me know that my mother wants to keep me in my place, and also, that she knows that I know she knows I hang out at Toby’s more than any daughter of Mrs. Roberta Russell Ball should. I’m not entirely certain that she believes most of my drinking is confined to Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi, either, but it is. Come for the Tobyburgers, stay for the gossip is my motto, as it should be for any good small town reporter.

This Sunday after Thanksgiving, Queen Doll, Our Lady of the Methodist Women Yard Sales, chose to make her state visit following our annual pilgrimage to the cemetery, where she lay her handmade wreaths on the family stones and sighed about autres temps, autres mores, as she does every year. You’d think the woman was doddering toward the grave herself, rather than enjoying a robust perio-menopausal fifty-five, but such are the ways of royalty, and not ours to question.

Not if we want to eat Doll’s homemade oyster dressing and roast wild turkey, which we do, oh, we do, during this holiday season. And did I mention her tollhouse cookies?

You couldn’t stand Aunt Yvonne when she was alive, and now you hang all over her tombstone like she was your favorite relation, I was complaining to Her Majesty as we entered the bar. The awful thing is, I can see myself turning into you in twenty years!

You could do a lot worse, Mom replied serenely as she peeled off her gloves and took a deep toke of that stale beer and cigarette air freshener Toby uses. She handed me her coat and her gloves to hang up. We’ll set up to the bar, she announced, having ascertained that the place was as dead as the graveyard we’d just left.

Toby was decorating his deer head with a jolly elf cap and a wreath of plastic greenery. Aunt Doll! he grinned, just like he always does, What can I get you, darlin’?

Mom looked around herself, for once stunned into momentary silence. Over the years, Toby has accumulated quite a collection of seasonally themed giveaways from the beer and liquor industry.

Nephew, it looks like you run through Wal-Mart with a magnet in here, Mom pronounced at last.

What, you think it’s tacky? Toby asked, maintaining a perfectly straight face. Oh, my Lord, Auntie Doll, how can you say that?

In fact, sometimes I’m not so sure that Toby isn’t goofing on us all. Maybe he really does think life-size cardboard cutouts of Donder and Blitzen being a little too jolly with a fifth of Pride of Baltimore Vodka is a thing of seasonal beauty and a joy to behold when it is firmly placed beside the juke, right where you can fall into it on your way to the ladies’ room.

I gotta hand it to you, Tobe, I agreed, You sure don’t know when to stop. I like that in Christmas decorations.

Aw, it’s just a little holiday thing, he growled. This from a bear of a man who has had offers from professional wrestling, yet manages to win a number of female hearts with his chocolate desserts and haiku poetry.

Toby dug under the bar and found an ancient bottle of sweet sherry. From some hidden place, he produced a tiny glass and poured my mother a thimbleful of amber liquid, just as he does every state visit. Mom nodded in approval.

Well, she conceded, sipping daintily at the glass, We don’t want people to think the Russells are cheap Christmas trash.

I went into the ice chest and fished until I found myself a soda. "It’s a bar, Mom, not Martha Stewart’s house—"

Just then the door slammed back on its hinges, blowing a gasp of cold air through the room that rattled the chains of tinsel and plastic pine.

Ooooowwwweeeeeee! I was born with one foot in hell, the other in the grave and no way to chose! It’s as cold as a witch’s tit out there!

He seemed to fill the place. A big-booted, survival-suited man with a weather-beaten. vulpine face and the lust for strong drink all over him, after a long cold, boat trip. He shattered the quiet peace of the afternoon like it was a stained glass window. And definitely lowered the tone of the place, if indeed it is possible to lower the tone of a waterman’s bar.

Speaking of cheap Christmas trash, I muttered.

It was the annual influx of the Shellpile Island waterman.

Barbarians at the gate!

Sluggo Fotney shuffled up to the bar. He laid his gloved hands on the counter. His red hair stuck haphazardly out of the hood of his sweatshirt, and small icicles of frost clung to his beard. His small, shifty eyes shifted from one side to the other but never quite met any one else’s gaze.

Give us all a beer, Sluggo commanded grandly. It’s on me!

My cousin stared down at the smaller man. When you pay up the tab you run out on here last year, he replied coolly.

Shit, Sluggo pulled off his gloves with his teeth and fished into the pockets of his vinyl overalls. From somewhere he brought out a large bankroll, which he waved at Toby. Is this good enough to suit ya? he asked. Clearly insulted that someone should ask him to pay longstanding debts, he shifted in his heavy boots while Toby looked for his bar bill.

I knew he hated this happening in front everyone, even if everyone was just a handful of the regulars. He smelled of the outdoors and of river mud, not an unpleasant smell, unless you added the essence of unwashed human and K-1 kerosene to it. Since he’d been traveling in his workboat all the way up from the lower Bay, and a workboat is not exactly a luxury liner, three days and nights sleeping in your clothes with a Kero Sun will make you a tad fragrant.

Barbarian at the gate, indeed!

Fine talk to use around ladies, my mother said, fixing Sluggo with her most regal gaze. Around Mom, the yahoo just seems to drain out of these guys. I wish I could do that.

Hullo, Miss Doll, he mumbled, pulling off his hood and removing his Patamoke Seafood cap.

Mom inclined her head, graciously greeting him. Good afternoon, Sluggo.

Now, all Fotneys are interchangeable, since their family tree goes straight up, and I never did bother to learn their names, since I couldn’t tell one from the other with two native guides and a road map. They were all ferrety-looking, with small eyes and underslung chins. The way you look when your family tree has too many first cousins marrying each other. And I had once had an unpleasant run in with one Cinderella Fotney, when I caught her in bed with my then beau at the Maryland Inn during a session of the state lege in Annapolis. So I was not inclined toward the tribe. But there was something especially unlikeable about Sluggo; he was more intelligent than the rest of them, in that shifty, cunning way my father calls country smart.

How is everyone on Shellpile Island? Mom asked formally. How are your mother and father? How is Frannie?

Sluggo tugged at his beard. Everyone’s just fine, Miss Doll, he rumbled. sheepishly.

The Fotneys are your cousins on your father’s side, Mom reminded me, as if I wanted to be reminded.

I tried not to roll my eyes. At least we don’t marry our brothers, I mumbled under my breath, which was hard to do because I was holding it.

Toby handed him a long roll of paper. Sluggo pretended to faint at the figures, but he finally grinned and started to peel off bills.

Don’t forget all the tips you stiffed Peaches for, Toby reminded him.

Yeah, yeah, something for the barmaid, too, Sluggo peeled off more bills. I could tell he was pissed off about losing face, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Toby’s is the only place on Beddoe’s Island where the Shellpile boys haven’t been permanently banned. Miss Mary said if she saw them anywhere near the Island Light ever again, she was calling the state police this time.

But then again, Miss Mary doesn’t keep a sawed-off shotgun under the bar, at least I don’t think she does.

As Toby set up the drafts, Mom decided she was going to have a little fun.

So, what brings you all up here on such a day? she asked Sluggo.

"Same thing as last year