Finding the Tracks to the Past: Deb Powers, Otherworldly PI: Case #5: Deb Powers: Otherworldly PI, #5

By Kari Kilgore

Echoes of a Plan Gone Wrong

Deb Powers finally welcomes friends and family with a neighborly new addition.
But renovation at the old train depot alerts her sheriff cousin to unexplained happenings.
A perfect case to save Deb from making progress in the career change she might not want.
Will she uncover the trouble before the whole town's plans derail for good?

 

Also available in the collection Investigations Beyond Belief

 

An excerpt from Finding the Tracks to the Past:

When New Changes Stir Up Old Trouble

"Did Gina tell you what's happening at the depot?" Deb said.

Terri took another big swallow of her beer and scooted around on the couch until she sat cross-legged and facing forward.

"Not until this afternoon. But she's been calling in reports of trespassing that don't make sense all week long. Things knocked off shelves or knocked over. Footprints all through the dust, inside and out. Tools moved around, doors either locked or unlocked, day and night. Same with windows. Got a few complaints of noise from people who live nearby, too, when no one was there working. Dead in the middle of the night."

"Charming choice of words," Deb said. "Your deputies checked it out?"

"Of course they did. Couldn't find a trace of anyone sneaking around, not outside of what Gina reported. I hate this for her, but apparently nothing happens when one of the patrol cars hangs around. That kind of thing can drive you crazy."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201325787

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Finding the Tracks to the Past

For all my fellow train and ghost enthusiasts

Finding the Tracks to the Past

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Finding the Tracks to the Past

Deb Powers was beginning to suspect she’d made her distractibility problem worse rather than better.

She currently sat in her back yard outside her basement office, under the shelter of her greatly expanded porch. What had been a postage stamp-sized concrete pad and tiny roof barely big enough to hold one chair and an umbrella now stretched a good fifteen feet to the right of her office door.

The new porch floor also stretched several feet further out into the yard, leaving plenty of room for an outdoor sectional couch, two chairs, and a porch swing, all fitted with cheery blue and green cushions.

She hated to admit it, but those cushions were deep and plush enough to be more comfortable than her sofa inside the office.

Right now, late in the Virginia mountain spring and early in the afternoon, the porch was open to the warm breeze. But rolled up and nearly hidden under the edge of the roof hung screens that would connect with magnets, letting in air and light while it kept pesky mosquitos and other flying creatures out.

Deb even had a set of clear plastic covers to hang up when the weather turned cold in the fall. And there was still plenty of room in the big back yard of her Auntie Zelda’s house for a modest gas grill and plenty of flowerbeds.

Creating an outdoor paradise, especially in a town as pretty as Estonoa.

From where Deb sat on the porch swing—beside her more-like-a-boyfriend-every-day friend Jeff Denton—she could look out over the sheltering ridge that surrounded the town. Her house perched on the highest edge, giving her a view of all the red brick buildings spreading out below, with bunches of brilliant green trees and colorful banners accenting the scene.

She even caught a glimpse of the sparkling water of the Clinch River twisting along the edge of Estonoa, anchoring miles of trails and a state park that drew people here for recreation all year long. Also the location of a most unusual discovery involving an eddy that seriously disturbed people and animals alike.

The banners informed all those tourists and locals that the annual Chow Down on the Clinch festival started tomorrow. As if anyone within sniffing distance needed any reminders that something special and mouth-watering was coming up.

Someone had a meat smoker going full strength, and the enticing aroma