Heiko nodded.“Like I said, it’s always been his dream to step into Dave’s shoes, and today he’s finally achieved his goal. And I have to say that for a man supposedly consumed by grief, he wrote the funniest Tollie ever. The beginning of a new era. The era of Flint.”
Chapter 13
While Odelia took a detour to her office, and so did Chase, Dooley and I decided to drop by our good friend Kingman, and see what he thought of this murder business.
Kingman’s human runs the General Store on Main Street, and is usually a fount of information on anything and everything that goes on in our small town. He was seated in front of the store, looking very vigilant for his doing. Usually he likes to find a nice spot in the shade and sort of vegetate, but now he was watching the street as if he was fresh out of police academy and aspiring to become a traffic cop.
“Hey, Kingman,” I said as we walked up.
“Can’t talk now,” he announced curtly. “Have to keep a look out.”
“A look out for what?” I asked, my interest piqued.
“Ghosts,” he said, surprising me a great deal, I have to say. I’d never pegged Kingman as the spiritual type. In fact as far as I know he doesn’t have a spiritual bone in his body.
“Ghosts?” I asked. “What ghosts? What are you talking about?”
“I swear there’s a ghost that’s been on my case, Max,” he said. “It’s been harassing me—haunting me—keeping me awake at night.”
“Oh, you mean a poltergeist?” asked Dooley.
I stared at my friend.“What do you know about poltergeists, Dooley?”
“Well, they like to haunt places, and if they don’t like you, they cause a lot of trouble: knocking on walls, rattling doors… It’s not much fun to share a house with a poltergeist.”
“But surely poltergeists don’t exist,” I said. “Or any ghosts, for that matter.”
“They do exist, Max,” Dooley assured me.
“Don’t tell me you saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel about ghosts.”
“Well, yes, I did, and it was really scary.”
“Look!” said Kingman suddenly, his eyes wide and fearful. “Listen!” he added, his ears moving about like satellite dishes.
I looked and I listened, but apart from plenty of noise from the street in the form of foot traffic and motorized vehicles and such, I couldn’t see or hear what all the fuss was about. “What am I looking and listening for, Kingman?” I asked finally.
“It’s the ghost—he’s trying to tell me something!”
“What is he trying to tell you?”
“I’m not sure. It’s too faint. Oh, darn that street noise.”
I’d never really paid a lot of attention to the noise from the street before. I mean, it’s just noise, you know—it’s in the background and you more or less ignore it. But now I did pay attention and Kingman was right: all those cars passing by, and the motorcycles and the people talking, it was pretty loud, if you thought about it.
“Maybe we should go inside,” Dooley suggested. “That way we can hear the ghost.”
“Good idea, Dooley,” said Kingman, and abruptly turned on his heel and strode into the shop, where his human Wilbur was eagerly ogling a female and telling her he was single—information that clearly didn’t impress her in the least.
We moved deeper into the store, but since the sound of the customers and the humming of the fridges and freezers clearly impeded Kingman’s open line of communication with his ghost, we moved through the plastic door strips designed to keep out flies, and into the private part of the building, where Kingman and Wilbur live like perfect bachelors.
And much to my surprise it was pretty clean back there—though that probably had more to do with the fact that Wilbur pays for the assistance of a cleaner twice a week.
We moved up the stairs and now found ourselves in Wilbur’s living room, dominated by an exceedingly large flatscreen television, and one of those barcaloungers that are all the rage with the discerning bachelor and sportsfan. Next to it, a second sofa had been placed, and this is where Kingman likes to spend the evening, watching television alongside his human.
He now hopped up onto his favorite spot and said,“Be quiet, fellas. Let’s see if the ghost is ready to communicate. Usually he only comes out at night, but I could have sworn I heard it rattling its chain this morning, too.”
“Rattling its chain?” I asked, not bothering to hide my incredulity.
“Ghosts like to rattle chains, Max,” Dooley assured me.
“But why?”
He shrugged. Clearly the Discovery Channel hadn’t discovered that yet.
And so we were both quiet, even though I would have preferred to discuss the recent case with our friend. But since you have to adhere to the rules of the house when assuming the role of visitor, we did as we were told, and patiently waited on the carpet until the ghost made itself heard or seen.
We probably could have waited forever, for as far as I could tell, no ghost—polter or otherwise—was in evidence.
“I don’t think he’ll show up,” said Kingman after a while, then glanced down at us with a sort of reproachful expression on his face. “And it’s probably all your fault—he doesn’t want to show his face when you guys are here.”
“Look, Kingman, we all know that ghosts don’t exist, so maybe—”
“Shhhh!” he suddenly said, and assumed a sort of ninja position, one paw stretched out in front of him, the other up in the air. “Did you hear that?”
I hadn’t heard a thing, so I shook my head.
“I think I heard it,” said Dooley. “A sort of humming or moaning.”
“Probably the fridge,” I said, earning myself another reproachful look from Kingman.
“I think it must be the ghost of the person who lived here,” said Kingman after a while, when the humming or moaning didn’t persist.
“Who lived here?” I asked. I may not believe in ghosts, but I am always interested in idle gossip about both the living and the dead.
“Some old dame,” he said. “She ran the store until Wilbur took over, and then retired to a nursing home.”
“She sold Wilbur the store?”
“Lock, stock and barrel. Said she was too old and wanted to retire, and since Wilbur was one of those jack of all trades, master of none kind of guys, it was his big break and proved to be the making of him.”
“But if she retired to a nursing home, why would she be haunting the place?” I asked the logical question.
Kingman shrugs.“Who knows? Ghosts are weird.”
“Ghosts are weird,” Dooley confirmed, as if he was the big expert on all things ghostly.
“I think it’s pretty obvious she’s trying to tell me something. Something to do with the store, maybe, or Wilbur. Wait!” he cried, making me jump where I sat.
I waited patiently, or not so patiently, but when nothing happened, I said,“What do you think she wants to tell you, Kingman?”
“Who knows?”
“Oh, I know,” said Dooley. “Maybe she buried a treasure in the basement, and now she wants you to find it and share it with Wilbur.”
Kingman’s eyes showed a keen interest. “Treasure? In the basement?”
“Do you even have a basement?” I asked, still assuming the role of the skeptical one.
“Sure we have a basement. But it’s full of all kinds of junk. Everything Wilbur doesn’t know what to do with, he stores down there. He’s one of those hoarders, you know. Never likes to throw anything away, figuring it might be useful one day.”
“So maybe we should take a look?” Dooley suggested. “Maybe the ghost will show us the way, and we’ll find a big pot of gold.”
“Presumably at the end of a rainbow,” I said with a slight grin. But when my grin wasn’t reciprocated, I decided to let it go. Clearly I was dealing with two real believers, and in my experience true believers usually lack the one ingredient that makes life so much more agreeable: a sense of humor.
And since we didn’t have much else to do right then, apart from waiting for Odelia to pick us up for our next interview, we followed Kingman down the stairs and into the basement, where he proceeded to slowly move down a set of rickety wooden stairs, inch by inch, presumably hoping the ghost would lead the way tothat elusive pot of gold.