Spirit of Murder

By S. J. Smale

Spirit of Murder is set in the twenty-first century and is about Stella Blake, a tall slender kick-ass ex-lieutenant of homicide, having to face the haunting truth about her heritage, her lineage, the three parallel worlds.
This truth pops up and causes her to resign from the force. Now a private investigator, working alone, Stella still solves crimes while trapped into keeping the family secret from the rest of the world.
A friend calls Stella when a dead body turns up in her home. There she faces her successor and finds herself strangely drawn to him. The two battle for control of the murder case and eventually their attraction to each other.
Stellas world is once again rocked when she finds out this man also has a secret linked with hers. Her internal strength and determination gets her through and allows her powers to develop and grow. In the end she can no longer fight the fact that she and her family have a special brand of magic flowing through their veins.
Stella learns to use the family secret to her advantage in her career in solving crimes. But at times her temper puts her at risk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: May 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466996090

S. J. Smale

I grew up in a small town. My nose was always buried in a book. I developed a love of reading and writing. Writing has filled my life ever since and has brought me so much joy.

Book preview

SPIRIT

OF

MURDER

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S . J. SMALE

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© Copyright 2013 S . J. SMALE.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-9610-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-9609-0 (e)

Trafford rev. 05/22/2013

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CONTENTS

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

I dedicate this book to my husband.

He made my spirits soar to new heights and taught me that life was to be experienced. That there are no boundaries, that all things are possible.

I thank all my friends and family

Thanks to my friend Deb for allowing me to incorporate your personality.

Thanks to my mother for her faith in me, and to my brother for his love and encouragement.

Thanks to my entire family with all their eccentricities for endowing me with the DNA to feed my whacky imagination.

CHAPTER ONE

S tella stood just inside the foyer of her friend’s beautiful brownstone house, looking down at a body of a man laying in the fetal position. She shook her head to clear out the cobwebs that had taken up residence from lack of sleep. Yep there was a body on the floor curled up in the fetal position. If it wasn’t for all the uniforms she had to pass through to get inside, she would have thought he was just sleeping off an overindulgence of a good party. The fact that the same person laying dead on the floor was also standing, floating there in front of her on the opposite side of the body looking down was a trick of the light, or her mind playing tricks. A reminder of just how over-worked and tired she really is.

He had an ethereal look about him. His somewhat transparent body just hovered there, eyes glancing down at the man on the floor and back to her, with a puzzled expression as if to say ‘okay jokes over right’?

No, no, no she told herself, shaking her head. He was not there. This was not happening to her. Once again as she had done all her life, Stella sought for a rational way to explain this phenomenon. Her mind would not accept spirits wandering around.

Dead was dead.

She told herself once again that she was not like her mother and the rest of her family. Her mother, sister, aunt and grandmother, in fact all the females of her blood line laid claim to some kind or other of psychic ability. But she refused to believe in it. All her life they tried to tell her that she had elfin blood running through her veins. That they all had special gifts because of it and had a responsibility to use them for good. Even the bedtime stories her mother used to tell her at night were about faeries and wizards and warlocks.

Stella refused to believe that anyone could see into the past or future. After all, she thought bitterly, wasn’t it because of her mother’s gift, as she puts it, and openly flaunting it, the very reason she left the force? Giving up everything she had worked so hard for.

Bitterness still bubbled inside her over that as her mind traveled back.

Putting in long hours and a natural instinct for fitting pieces of a crime together had her making detective in only five short years after graduating from the police academy. Her dedication and leadership ability had her climbing to Lieutenant after another three years. All it took was one slip to have it all taken away. A whisper in the wrong ear exposing her family’s secret, making those around her look at her as if she had just sprouted a third eye on her forehead.

Her mother was ridiculed by the professional world all her life for her beliefs and visions, but she happily ignored them and carried on with every day living. But Stella insisted she wasn’t like that. She needed the respect of those around her to function and to do what she did best. Lead a squad and work on solving serious crimes. Wouldn’t the press and most of her squad laugh at the very idea that she could see the dead, the spirits?

Everyone on the force all knew her mother and her reputation. They had read the articles in the papers and heard the reports in the news on how she found missing persons through her visions. Whenever one of theses events occurred it made it hard for her to walk through her squad room. Her men would suddenly get very busy and avoid eye contact with her. Embarrassment filled the squad room, either for them or her or both.

Most of the men in her squad knew cases were solved with hard work dedication and proper police procedures. They would saw off their tongues before admitting to any validation in psychic power.

She could hear the reluctance in the half hearted attempts to persuade her to stay after receiving her resignation. Her superiors wanted to distant themselves from her and from the reputation of her family.

It still made Stella shudder to remember that day when her mother walked into the squad room during the morning meeting and stared at the crime board. The room went instantly quiet as all eyes turned to her. Apparently Wanda had a vision, and in her mind, she thought she was helping her daughter. She didn’t realize the first words out of her mouth would end Stella’s career.

The moment Wanda Blake walked into the room filled with officers and detectives, Stella stopped her briefing in mid sentence. All eyes turned toward the direction their Lieutenant was looking. They saw the connection immediately. An older and much smaller version of the woman who they had just been listening to. Her hair was more carrot than flame in colour and cut shorter to frame her delicate face. The eyes were a duller moss green. Even if they hadn’t known of Wanda’s reputation, the resemblance to their Lieutenant left them in no doubt as to their relationship.

Before Stella had time to recover from the shock of seeing her mother, Wanda had walked up to her and stood in front of the briefing board. And just as Stella reached over to pull her mother aside and ask her what the hell she was doing there, Wanda started speaking to the room.

I am so sorry to interrupt, she apologized to the people sitting in the room. Her eyes sparkled as the excitement build up in her. It’s just that I was having such a lovely cup of tea with Gwen. She turned to look at her daughter.

That’s nice mom, Stella grabbed for her mother hoping to get her out of the room as quickly and as quietly as she could. We are kind of busy right now. I’ll talk to you later and you can tell me all about your visit with Gwen. But right now you need to leave. Mentally she sent up a silent prayer that she could get her mother out of the room quickly before she would do anything to embarrass her. But apparently the one who listens to prayers was either in a meeting of His own, or out to lunch.

Wanda turned spinning out of the grasp her daughter had on her arm and found herself facing the board. Now don’t be rude dear. Oh look! She pointed at one of the pictures on the board. That’s him, that’s the one that killed that poor sweet girl. That’s what I came here for. To tell you I seen him kill her. She shuddered at the memory then turned her face to her daughter. Now Stella, don’t tell me that that poor sweet girl didn’t come to you and tell you who did this.

Stella stood frozen, seeing every eye on her and her mom and not a breath of sound in the room. It was like watching your whole world shatter like glass into miniscule pieces around you and fall at your feet. Slowly she reached for her mother and putting one foot in front of the other walked her out of the room and out of the building.

Through the years, Stella had built and earned the respect of the men and women under her command while tolerating the sympathetic looks aimed at her eccentric family. It only took a few simple words of how she could see and speak to the dead, to have everyone’s eyes in the room bulging out and jaws dropping. They looked like a room full of guppy fish and her hard work and long hours to get where she was came to an abrupt end.

Stella left the room escorting her mother out then went directly to her office and with tears in her eyes, typed up her resignation.

She knew her mother was only doing what she thought would help, and couldn’t or wouldn’t understand why she turned away from what she was. But the pain of losing what she had worked so hard to achieve was something she would have to face on her own. No, she wasn’t her mother and there are no such things as ghosts or earth-bound spirits or whatever the hell her mother calls them. It just wasn’t logical.

Stella left the force and got her license for private investigator. Her investigative skills and reputation of solving cases soon had clients beating down her door.

She was relentless like at dog digging for a bone until all the clues fit neatly in the puzzle. Never would she give up until the case was solved. This kind of diligence had her client list fill to overflowing, but she refused to hire anyone to help ease the load.

She had to work solo. Didn’t her mother prove that not so long ago? No, she vowed, never again would she give anyone the chance to look at her as if she had three heads. Maybe, she thought, her family was a little weird but this was her business now. She will not have anything make her give this up.

Tired, that’s right, she was just tired. She hadn’t had much sleep the night before. Stella shook her head again and cast her eyes down to the body at her feet. She refused to look up.

The case she just finished had her travelling for days and it was after one in the morning when she climbed into bed. Her client was free from all charges and the proof of the husband committing all the burglaries without her knowledge was now in the hands of the authorities. She had just fallen asleep when the phone call woke her at three in the morning.

Cursing it, she answered to find her friend Deb on the other end. She was crying, and talking at the same time. Stella tried to shake the cobwebs out of her brain. God, Deb slow down. Do you know what time it is? She reached for a cigarette, knowing that Deb was a bit of a scatter brain and she could talk the ear off of a monkey. Sighing and resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t be going back to sleep before Deb got whatever it was off her chest, she sat up and tried to chase the fog out of her head and listened.

Stella met Deb a few years back when she was on the police force and was working a high profile murder investigation. Five prostitutes had been killed and Senator Ewing’s aide was high on the list of suspects. Debra Styles was the main witness that put their main suspect behind bars for a good long time. She was a scatter brain then too, but there was just something about her that drew Stella in.

Even back then, Deb was bouncy and bubbly and her wit cracked a smiled on Stella’s face as she was interrogating her. Somehow a bond between them grew as the interrogations continued. Deb was a high-end fashion designer and it took hours to get her to stop describing the suspects’ clothing and concentrate on his facial features for the police sketch artist. No surprise there as she was the new up and coming fashion designer.

They became best friends after the case was closed. Mostly due to Deb’s insistence in calling her constantly and getting her to go out with her to different functions.

They were as opposite as two people could be. Deb was bubbly and looked at life as if it was a large loud party offering life on a platter. Where as; Stella, maybe due to her secrets or the career that she had chosen thought of life as a mine field where one had to tread very carefully to avoid having it blow up in your face. Stella was constantly amazed at how two completely different personalities could become so close.

Oh, God, Stella he’s dead. He’s dead.

Who’s dead?

That’s just it, Stella. I don’t know. But he’s lying on the floor in my home. Deb was hysterical by this time.

Did you call the police? Stella was wide awake now.

I didn’t think. I didn’t think to do that. Oh, Stella should I call them?

Well Jesus Deb yes. You should have called them first. Stella couldn’t think how one person could be such a bubble head. But then this was Deb at her best. Call the police and I’ll be over as soon as I can.

Stella took her time knowing that the forensic team would need time to log everything. She knew the routine. Hadn’t she been on the force long enough to know that a murder scene or a suspicious death would have them go through her place with a fine tooth comb?

Stella took her time showering hoping that the crime scene would be empty by the time she drove across town to Deb’s house. Luck didn’t seem to be on her side lately. Maybe she should be carrying a four leaf clover in her pocket she mused.

She walked through the door, after having a few words with the policemen outside the crime scene. The place was swarming with police and forensic people. Some of the police outside knew her and still thought of her as their Lieutenant and let her pass through the barrier. As soon as she entered she noticed the coroner was still there and the body hadn’t been removed yet.

So there she stood over the body and looking at the spirit of the man. Stella shut her eyes and told herself that she was tired. When she opened them again it would be gone. But of course luck was never on her side. ‘I’m going to buy a four leaf clover’. She opened her eyes and it was still there looking at her. ‘Okay,’ she told herself. ‘Ignore it, just ignore it and it will go away, and please, she silently begged, if God is in heaven please don’t let it speak to me’.

‘Hi, I’m Frank. Frank Townsend, um, what am I doing here?’

No, no, she groaned putting her hands over her ears. Her face paled as she looked at him.

Jumping out of your skin was just a phrase, wasn’t it? Because that is exactly how she felt when a voice across the room boomed out making her jump and look in the direction it came from.

Who the hell are you?

Standing at the far side of the room off the foyer was a very tall man built like Adonis, with an air of authority few would argue with. His suit jacket was straining to contain the bulging muscles within in it. He looked like an athlete or at least a man that worked out a lot. His thick black hair was just long enough at the back to kiss the top of his collar. His face was chiseled and angular like a Greek God. His steel blue eyes pierced through her, making her gasp. Her stomach felt like it had just been punched and heat licked at her as her eyes were captured and held by his.

Sorry, Stella found