Ghosts of West Baden: Book Five in the West Baden Murders series

By Patrick J O'Brian

Following a disastrous attempt to sell the West Baden Springs Hotel, Paul Clouse and his family move into the historic building. Clouse hopes to regain trust from local residents, after several gruesome incidents, by creating jobs with his newly-constructed a casino near the famed hotel. His family is constantly surrounded by bodyguards as the hotel opens to the public for the first time since 1932.

Clouse senses his family may still be in danger from unseen evil forces, receiving confirmation of his fears soon enough. Taunting notes are left for him, then the body count rises once more, leaving him the option to flee, or confront an evil power fueled by a satanic cursed object.

He soon realizes he has little choice in the matter as his family and friends are endangered by what he believes are the remains of Martin Smith's devoted Coven. If they haven't found a way to bring Smith back from the dead, they soon will, and Clouse knows his nemesis would bring doom to anyone around the hotel.

In a final showdown between good and evil, Clouse realizes he must stop the Coven to save his family, even if it costs him his own life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick J O'Brian
• Release date: Jun 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781604147971

Patrick J O'Brian

Patrick O’Brian lives in northeastern Indiana, working full-time as a firefighter. He enjoys photography, theme parks, and travel. Born in upstate New York, Patrick returns to his home area once a year to visit family and conduct research for his future manuscripts. His other fiction books are: The Fallen Reaper: Book One of the West Baden Murders Trilogy The Brotherhood Retribution: Book Two of the West Baden Murders Trilogy Stolen Time Sins of the Father: Book Three of the West Baden Murders Trilogy Six Days Dysfunction The Sleeping Phoenix Snowbound: Book Four of the West Baden Murders Series Sawmill Road Ghosts of West Baden: Book Five of the West Baden Murders Series Non-fiction: Risen from the Ashes: The History of the West Baden Springs Hotel Pluto in the Valley: The History of the French Lick Springs Hotel

Book preview

FOREWORD

Factual History of West Baden Springs

1855 Dr. John A. Lane builds and opens the Mile Lick Inn a mile from French Lick, Indiana. He renames the inn to West Baden after Weisbaden, Germany and renames the hotel the West Baden Hotel.

1888 Indiana banker Lee Wiley Sinclair gains controlling interest in the hotel, changing its name to the West Baden Springs Hotel. The hotel is transformed into a world-class resort, adding an opera house, bicycle and pony track, casino, and a regulation-size baseball diamond. Local mineral water is touted as a cure for many ailments.

1901 On June 14 a fire breaks out at the hotel, consuming the entire wood-frame building. Sinclair vows to rebuild a better hotel that is fireproof within the year. West Virginia architect Harrison Albright designs and builds a freestanding 200-foot dome at a cost of $414,000. Construction begins on October 15.

1902 Sinclair moves into his apartment at the hotel on the one-year anniversary of the fire. The hotel receives its first guests on September 15.

1916 Sinclair passes away on September 7, then lay in state in the Grand Atrium before his burial in Salem, Indiana. His daughter Lillian and son-in-law Charles Rexford inherit the hotel.

1917 The couple makes significant changes to the hotel including:

• Refacing the fireplace in the atrium.

• Adding a sunken garden with a fountain centerpiece.

• The Seal Fountain is moved from the atrium to the driveway in front of the hotel.

• A veranda is constructed that wraps around one-quarter of the building.

• Brick spring houses replace the old wooden structures.

• Over 12-million small tiles are placed as the new atrium flooring.

• Benches, statues, trees, and urns are placed throughout the atrium for decoration.

1918 The hotel is leased by the government, serving as a military hospital during World War I.

1919 The hospital is closed, allowing the hotel to reopen for regular business once more.

1923 After her divorce from Rexford is final, Lillian sells the hotel to Ed Ballard for one-million dollars. Ballard is an entrepreneur known for his ties with circuses and gambling. Half the money repays the debt the Rexfords owed Ballard for hotel renovations, while the other half allows Lillian and her new husband to live out their dreams.

1929 The stock market crashes on October 29, leaving the hotel virtually empty within four days as the country entered the Great Depression.

1932 Poor economy forces Ballard to close the hotel for good on June 30.

1934 Ballard sells the hotel to the Jesuits for one dollar. The Catholic sect uses the hotel as a seminary called West Baden College. They remove many of the hotel’s elaborate decorations, opting for plain adornments.

1964 Sometime in June the Jesuits closed the campus, moving to Chicago, Illinois.

1966 On November 2, the hotel is purchased at auction by the Whitings from Midland, Michigan.

1967 The Whitings donate the grounds to Northwood Institute for use as an Indiana campus.

1974 The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

1983 Rising maintenance costs and several other factors force Northwood Institute to close their Indiana campus. The hotel has remained vacant since that time.

1987 The hotel is named a National Historic Landmark.

1991 An ice buildup and construction flaws cause a portion of the exterior wall to collapse.

1992 The Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana spends $200,000 for emergency repairs to repair and structurally stabilize the building.

1996 Historic Landmarks purchases the grounds for $250,000 which came from an anonymous donor.

FOREWORD II

Where the Trilogy Picked Up

In 1998, I took my first tour of the grounds on a weekend when I had nothing else better to do. Though my parents had visited the grounds when they were in disrepair, I passed on the opportunity.

Regrettably.

My first look at the hotel’s atrium awed me, and I still had the rest of the tour to finish. With the flash from my camera popping every several seconds, likely annoying those around me, I grew fascinated with the building in a heartbeat.

Immediately wheels spun inside my mind, telling me I had to write a novel centered around the West Baden Springs Hotel. Being a horror movie buff, this was my first attempt at a mystery novel with horror elements.

Centered around a professional firefighter who works part-time helping to restore WBS, he discovers the gruesome murder of his wife may be pinned on him by local detectives. Making matters worse, more murders happen around the hotel, which makes him the prime suspect in everyone’s eyes.

The primary mystery behind the murders stems from the hotel’s factual past, which helped me create several colorful characters. Toward the end of Reaper, my first hotel novel, I decided to follow it up with a tale of revenge, keeping the same core characters.

While in the early stages of writing Retribution it became painfully clear the characters needed even more development, so the trilogy was born with a major plot twist at the end of the second installment.

Everything ended on a happy note, closing the chapter of the hotel’s restoration era...at least fictionally.

In the real world, Bill and Gayle Cook have done an exceptional job stabilizing and renovating the grounds. I commend them on the beautiful work they and their teams have done restoring the building and garden to their previous splendor.

Orange County residents voted, though not overwhelmingly, to allow gambling in their county, which allowed the Cook Group to take bids from other companies. What looked like a sure thing with the corporation voted to lead the project ended in disaster when that group filed for bankruptcy.

Luckily Bill Cook chose to finish the renovation himself, creating another chapter in the legacy of WBS. Now, with the atrium, the ground floor, and the grounds completely finished, work has begun on model rooms. Next, the remaining five floors will see finished rooms, allowing the building to function as a hotel for the first time in decades.

Perhaps even by the time this book is complete and printed, which brings me to the reason for a fourth book.

While the trilogy focused on the restoration era, the new book, and any following it, will deal with current events in Orange County. They will allude to the events in the trilogy, but more importantly, the hotel’s true past will be involved in solving any mysteries divulged by the characters.

Please keep in mind the events mentioned in this book from the restoration era through the present refer to my original trilogy, which is why the aforementioned time line stops abruptly in 1996. This is by no means an effort to diminish the rest of the hotel’s history, or the hard work of the Historic Landmarks employees, but rather my way of keeping the continuity from the trilogy carrying into this new project.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the trilogy and the fourth book in the series. Though Snowbound was a departure from the original storyline, I felt it held merit in the fictional time line. That being said, this is the fifth and final book of this series. There are too many ventures we authors like to take during the courses of our careers to be tied to a series for too long. Though I’ll never say never when it comes to the possibility of doing another West Baden book, this will be the last one for quite some time.

Thanks for the devotion and support!

Patrick J. O’Brian

Chapter 1

Paul Clouse felt certain his life had reached a miserable low.

At least he knew the answer to whether money made people happier or not.

It didn’t.

Standing beside a good friend, he watched heavy construction equipment tear into, then haul away, the remains of a relatively new mansion seated atop the crest of a steep road. Cool air from the Southern Indiana February forced them both to wear jackets, but at least the sun peeked through the nearby trees.

An industrial smell filled the air, the kind created when metal and heavy rock butted heads.

Both men knew why the mansion had to go, despite being younger in age than either of them. What Clouse told the public provided a necessary smokescreen to put a positive spin on recent events.

Numerous conversations with his lawyer had engraved the phrase positive spin in the recesses of Clouse’s mind.

While his press agent told the media the mansion had foundation and erosion issues, Clouse knew the mansion served a far more sinister purpose than to provide lavish shelter.

It was designed to take lives efficiently, supplying adequate cover from the outside world.

Kind of a shame, Mark Daniels said at his side.

How’s that?

All that labor and material going to waste.

Clouse had donated every brick, window, and piece of furniture to needy organizations, but his friend didn’t mean that kind of waste.

He meant the waste of a man who built it on false pretenses, tricking an entire community, including countless families, politicians, and law enforcers who unknowingly backed his evil plans.

Clouse himself had fallen victim to the old man’s charms. Even in death Martin Smith gave him grief, because he left Clouse the billions he had amassed over the years from his legitimate empire. It was the other side of Smith that Clouse feared when he discovered the man’s evil intentions after he turned up alive after faking his own death. Smith finally died for real at the hands of Clouse, purely out of self-defense.

To think of such things disturbed Clouse, mainly because Smith continued to reach out to him from the grave. An event less than two months old left him cleaning up more messes in and out of the courtroom. He had three pending lawsuits, and possibly more on the way.

All of the cases were linked to events that happened in the partial mansion before him.

What now? Daniels asked him. You can’t keep running from a ghost.

Daniels, a police detective in nearby Bloomington, befriended Clouse shortly after Clouse’s first wife was brutally murdered. The two got to know one another during the investigation, and despite the officer’s own marriage apparently coming to an end, they kept in touch.

I can’t run from a ghost who has real life goons fucking up my life, Mark.

Smith had used his wealth and connections prior to his death to set certain events in motion, which included the unfounded notion he could be brought back to life using a certain ritual along with a cursed object. While the attempt failed miserably, three people died, and Smith’s body disappeared along with a curious green cube that witnesses felt certain was the cursed object in question.

Some believed his plan worked, and he simply walked out of the mansion to enact revenge on Clouse at a time and place of his choosing. Others, including Clouse, thought the conspiracy ran deeper, and someone removed the body from the mansion to attempt even more ludicrous resurrections.

Watching a dump truck leave with heavy stone destined to help build a church, Clouse wondered exactly where his life was going. After the last incident, he hired a private investigator to flush out any of Smith’s remaining connections and dig into the dead man’s past. Thus far, the search provided him with very few answers.

Constantly surrounded by bodyguards, which led to more arguments with his wife, Clouse wished things were normal again. He wanted his two best friends back, both of whom died at murderous hands, and he missed his job as a full-time firefighter. Things were simpler back then, and while bills weren’t always as easy to pay, he enjoyed life.

He traced his misery back to the day he met with Martin Smith for the first time, wishing he could have seen through the man.

What if I go into the casino business, Mark? he finally asked, drawing a raised eyebrow from his friend.

Well, you own the French Lick and West Baden hotels, so there’s nothing stopping you there.

And Orange County voted to let gambling into the Valley, Clouse added. I’ve always loved the dome, Mark. Maybe it’s just meant to be that I keep the thing.

Sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind.

Clouse looked to the ground, kicking a few loose pebbles with the tan lizard skin cowboy boots he often wore. Riches were never going to change some things about him.

He had purchased the French Lick grounds down the road about a month prior, deciding it was the icing on the cake for a casino package. Whether he completed a casino project himself, or sold all of the property, it made good business sense.

Considering himself a businessman in no sense of the word, Clouse felt awed to possess properties that industrialists like Lee Wiley Sinclair and Thomas Taggart once owned.

I guess I’ve been tossing around the idea of keeping the place for a while now, Mark. I know things haven’t been going so great for you lately, but I was wondering if you might want to come work for me.

Daniels now shot him a skeptical look, as though Clouse was offering him a sympathy position because of the divorce.

I need a head of security when the casino opens up. It’ll pay more than double what you make at the police department and-

Whoa, Paul, Daniels said, holding his hand up like a stop sign. You’re about three steps ahead of me right now. You’ve been doing more than tossing around ideas.

Unable to look at his friend a moment, Clouse knew he had already made up his mind. Part of him wanted to own the West Baden Springs Hotel, but from a business standpoint, the move allowed him to escape a few potential lawsuits by bringing certain individuals under his wing.

There are classes in Las Vegas, Mark. The thing wouldn’t be built for another year or two, and I’d pay you to learn everything you need to know in the meantime.

And throw away my government pension?

Clouse scoffed.

You don’t think I’m going to take care of you on your retirement and benefits? Jane would kill me if I didn’t treat my employees like gold.

Daniels rubbed his neck, openly uncomfortable with his good friend becoming his employer.

I didn’t mean it like that, Clouse said, on the verge of inserting his foot where it belonged. With the divorce, you could probably use some extra funds.

Rubbing his jawbone thoughtfully, Daniels said nothing as an excavator made a grinding noise, trying to unearth part of the mansion’s partially loose foundation.

How long have you been thinking about this?

A few months now.

And what does Jane think?

Clouse shrugged.

She’s like me. Whatever’s going to come, it’ll come for us anywhere.

"If anything comes."

Instead of arguing, Clouse shot him a look that spoke volumes.

You can’t live your life in paranoia, Paul. Bodyguards, private schools, whatever helps you sleep at night. It has to end somewhere, so why can’t it be over with?

I thought it was done two years ago with Smith’s death, but his scheming went deeper than I ever imagined.

Look, if your private investigator isn’t finding anything, maybe it’s really over this time.

Clouse looked skyward, where no answers were forthcoming.

If you’re so confident it’s over then come work for me, Mark. Clean slate for both of us.

Daniels grinned, still not looking at him.

I’ll give it some thought. That’s all I can promise right now.

Refusing to take no for an answer, Clouse decided to have his lawyer draw up an employment contract immediately for his friend to review. He wanted to keep his friends close, all the while hoping it didn’t draw his enemies closer.

Chapter 2

Two years, three months later

Clouse spent two years completing three objectives, which included a remodel of the French Lick Springs Hotel, updating the West Baden Springs Hotel, and building a casino from scratch.

Unconventional gambling laws in Indiana required casinos to technically be afloat, so a riverboat casino was constructed before a small pond was added beneath it. Though it looked functional, the casino was not a working boat. A hallway and a parking lot attached it to the French Lick hotel, leaving it nearly a mile from the love of his life.

Architecturally speaking.

On a mid-May afternoon, Clouse found himself standing on the West Baden Spring Hotel’s veranda, looking out toward the sunken garden. Completed in 1902, the hotel had a storied history with numerous changes throughout its various ownership periods. Two of the old brick spring houses in the garden before him were evidence of early 20th Century design. The hotel itself was the largest freestanding dome in the United States until the Coliseum was completed in 1955 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Spring water initially drew guests to the hotel, but gambling eventually became the prime attraction, luring the rich and famous to the area, even when the courts closed down casinos for a brief period. Now, more than a century later, gambling was going to keep both of the area’s major hotels functional, while providing much needed jobs within the county.

Clouse still marveled at the building’s architecture, though he had seen every square inch of it during good times and bad. Indescribably beautiful on the inside and exterior, the hotel had survived a partial collapse in 1991 to receive funding from supportive groups. His university graduate work brought Clouse aboard on the project, which seemed like a dream come true at the time.

Now he had mixed feelings, knowing he would never have met Jane, if not for his work at the hotel, but many of his friends might still be alive if things had turned out differently.

His son and stepdaughter were still in school, and his mind weighed heavily with the grand reopening affairs fast approaching.

Five days until Saturday, he thought.

His worries stemmed from far greater concerns than guest lists and festivities.

The last time someone tried to open the hotel, a man was murdered when someone set him on fire. While Clouse wasn’t present, he heard it made quite a spectacle on the evening news.

Somehow no one particular murder had worried or hardened him. It took the culmination of everything he’d seen over the past five years to accomplish that, all because Martin Smith wanted the one thing everyone wanted, but no one could attain.

Eternal life.

You okay? Jane inquired as she took his side, wrapping her hands around his arm.

I’m coping. And you?

Could be worse, I suppose.

Jane had been a trooper, not complaining much about the bodyguards following her or the children the past few weeks. Clouse had cut his security for a time, but with major events on the horizon, he upgraded the force once more. He told the men, mostly ex-military or former cops, to watch like hawks, but give his family some space.

Her flowing brown locks touched her shoulders, as gorgeous as any model’s hair in television commercials. Jane’s blue eyes had a way of reading people while comforting them at the same time. She easily could have abandoned the medical practice completely, when money came their way, but she worked several days a week at a nearby clinic in Paoli.

Giving Clouse some additional support, Daniels had signed a contract, spending time between Las Vegas and Miami at several important schools, relieving the couple somewhat. Clouse needed someone who knew the business aspect of overseeing casino operations, and he didn’t want to import someone. Daniels would focus on cheating, general complaints, chip distribution, and funds, regardless of where money traveled in the casino.

Of course he had people under him who carried out most of the duties.

You worried about this weekend? Jane inquired.

I’m worried about life in general. That dinner we had with Jana Privett didn’t do much to ease my mind.

While the couple had spoken personally with several survivors after the mansion incident, her testimony struck them as the most brutally honest and sincere. She had a grasp about what drastic measures Martin Smith had taken before his death to ensure he didn’t stay that way. Of sound state of mind, she also believed his corpse hadn’t been whisked away, but rather walked out of the mansion’s secret third level that fateful night.

She moved south, though Clouse couldn’t recall the area, never once threatening legal action. Of all people, she had a right, because Clouse accidentally placed her in harm’s way by asking her to sell the West Baden Springs Hotel for him.

We can’t hole up the rest of our lives, Jane told him earnestly. Money hasn’t changed who we are, Paul, even if you think ghosts are waiting around every corner.

The ghosts that disturbed him most were the haunting memories of the friends and colleagues he lost during Smith’s reckless searches. Their only crime was befriending him, and Smith used them to his advantage, ruining Clouse’s life.

I don’t want Zach growing up to think life is always going to be this way, he admitted.

His son, now ten-years-old, had spent half of his life living with Katie, Jane’s daughter from a previous marriage the same age as Zach.

Clouse and Jane had discussed moving to another state, but most of his family wouldn’t follow, and he didn’t want to leave his parents behind. Deep down, he hoped drawing his friends closer might keep them all safe, if indeed danger lurked in unseen places.

On the bright side, he had lots of new friends and acquaintances that came with acquiring the French Lick property, and opening the hotel he currently stood within.

The brick driveway between Clouse and the garden area had several cars parked on it as guests loaded and unloaded their belongings. In the second week of a soft opening, the hotel had entertained friends, family members, and some people Clouse had never met before, simply to work out any issues with the staff. So far, not an ounce of trouble was reported, which eased his mind a bit.

He tried to keep himself from thinking it was the calm before the storm because his life had returned to normal too many times before.

Behind him, a few construction workers walked across the veranda, picking up a roll of carpeting as efficiently as worker ants before retreating indoors. Only a few minor adjustments remained before the hotel was a 5-Star wonder, welcoming the general public for the first time since 1932 as a functioning hotel.

Complete with every amenity available to guests, the six-story building included wireless Internet, dozens of lounging chairs and sofas in the grand atrium, a brand new pool, and a beautified property unrivaled by any building within a hundred miles.

Does it ever feel like a dream to you? he asked his wife.

Sometimes. The whole ordeal, all of this, seems weird with everything we’ve been through.

We should be happier, shouldn’t we?

Jane gave an understanding gaze.

"I know what the papers say about you gets you down sometimes, but the public can’t really understand, because we can’t tell them everything."

By everything Jane meant the details science failed to explain.

Coverage of him wasn’t as kind as it once had been, particularly after the mansion incident. People loved that he was opening up the hotel and bringing jobs and revenue to the county, but somewhere along the way general trust was tossed aside like common trash.

Want to go for a walk my dear? Clouse asked his wife, nodding toward the garden.

Certainly, she answered, purposely formal. If only I had my parasol with me.

Clouse hooked his arm through hers before walking her toward the garden, hoping the rest of their days might be as pleasant.

If I bought you one of those old-fashioned girdles would you wear that, too?

Not likely, dear.

Chapter 3

Two days later Clouse didn’t feel much better about the opening of his hotel. It almost didn’t feel right having his name on any deed after self-made millionaires owned the property during its early years.

He wondered how history would remember him in years to come, when scores of tourists walked through the front arched gates. Previous owners hid some of their secrets within the property, which only true enthusiasts knew anything about. Clouse led his life as an open book, whether he chose to or not.

On the sixth floor of his hotel, he sat across from Raymond Bloom, a retired FBI agent who took on private investigator jobs for the right people, at the right price.

In his mid-fifties, Bloom maintained a tan throughout the year, wore custom-tailored suits, sported a Rolex, and kept just a few strands of gray in his otherwise sandy-colored hair for realism. Thus far, Clouse felt shorted by the funding to results ratio.

Their conversation drew near a close, Bloom providing few answers to Clouse’s questions about Smith and the man’s activities before his death.

The book may really be closed on him, Mr. Clouse, Bloom suggested.

I’ve fallen for that one before, Ray. He had a backup plan in place two years ago, and I have to think he had contingencies elsewhere.

I can’t exactly go door to door and ask people if they’ve been recruited by the Coven, now can I?

Bloom sounded a bit testy, and Clouse couldn’t entirely blame him. He was being asked to search out a group loyal to Smith, and very secretive at that. At the risk of sounding insane, Clouse failed to divulge certain pieces of information when he brought the former agent into his fold.

Bloom knew the players and the score, which needed to be enough at this point.

Someone took Smith’s body from the upstairs of that mansion, Clouse reiterated. That means there’s still someone out there who poses a threat to me and my family.

You said it yourself. There was secret passage after secret passage in that place. Anyone could have snuck in there and stole that body.

What about the police? Clouse persisted. They were the first ones to enter that room once the guests were safe.

Bloom looked at him with mild disbelief.

"Even if a cop took that body out of there, how could he have done it without his buddies noticing? And I can’t go checking every local cop’s background. My Bureau contacts can only take me so far before things blow back in my face."

I need some answers, Ray. If I don’t think my family is safe, I might start looking in your direction as being part of my problem. There are other private investigators.

Bloom looked entirely displeased, but he liked his paycheck too much to retort heavily. Clouse had already considered the idea of hiring a second investigator, considering loyalty often took a backseat to greed when it concerned the hotel property.

I’ll keep digging, Bloom answered. We’re walking a fine line with the locals by prodding around.

I can’t afford to take chances, Ray. Not with the grand opening just days away. If you have to ruffle a few feathers, then do it.

Bloom nodded before showing himself to the door.

Clouse stood from the conference table centered in the sixth floor suite. Complete with a kitchenette, two bedrooms, a conference area, and a few other perks, it was originally designed to house the hotel owners whenever they wanted to stay the night, or conduct business.

Smith had taken that measure before his death, but Clouse chose to occupy the entire sixth floor because he and Jane decided to live at the hotel full-time. There, security could keep a close watch on the children, guests made good witnesses and watchdogs, and simple measures kept anyone unwanted off the floor.

Elevators didn’t reach it without a special key card, and staircases met with locked doors on the top level, accessed only by card readers and fingerprint scanners. The deeper into the floor someone went, the more security they found in place.

Two dozen windows overlooked the atrium, but access to them from the outside required excellent stealth, and skills possessed by those experienced in rappelling from buildings.

A knock came to the suite’s entrance, pulling Clouse away from