A Light to Kill By Read online

  A Light to Kill By

  Mourning Dove Mysteries, Volume 3

  Mikel J. Wilson

  Published by Acorn Publishing, 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  A LIGHT TO KILL BY

  First edition. August 3, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 Mikel J. Wilson.

  Written by Mikel J. Wilson.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  MOURNING DOVE MYSTERIES: A LIGHT TO KILL BY

  Copyright ©2021 by Mikel J. Wilson.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover design by Damonza.com.

  Author portrait by Dave Meyer at DaveMeyerDesign.com.

  Mikel J. Wilson

  555 W. Country Club Lane, C-222

  Escondido, CA 92026

  MIKELJWILSON.com

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-952112-52-2

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-952112-53-9

  First Edition, June 2021

  Printed in the United States of America through Acorn Publishing at AcornPublishingLLC.com.

  Dedicated to my BSM.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER 1

  I know who the killer is.

  Juniper Crane’s yawn morphed into a gasp as she watched the masked ripper slash the throat of a young girl, silencing her screams.

  Great, I’m never going to be able to sleep now.

  The fiftyish woman with flowing brown hair reached for the joint in the Dollywood souvenir ashtray on her nightstand. She relit it and sucked the flame down to her coral-painted nails before returning it to the ashtray. Her exhaled smoke drifted up to the light smog lurking beneath the ceiling of her bedroom – one of the smallest at the Geisterhaus estate.

  I need to turn this off. Grabbing the remote next to the ashtray, she instead set the sleep timer for the TV mounted on the wall. As the masked villain chased down another victim, Juniper sunk deeper into the gray flannel sheets of her bed and closed her hazel eyes. The movie’s staccato score tensed her grip on the downy quilt clutched at her neck until the violin flourishes distorted into static.

  “What happened?” Juniper unclenched her eyes and saw the screen go blank. “Is the cable out?” The middle of the screen bulged out. “Oh my lord!” She jerked up in bed. “What is that?”

  A volleyball-sized sphere of white light bubbled out from the screen and separated from the TV. Dozens of tiny tendrils reached out from the orb at random points along its surface, giving it the appearance of a miniature sun.

  Juniper screamed and kicked out of the sheets, backing herself into the headboard.

  Her bedroom door burst open, and a dark-haired man in flannel pajamas bolted inside. “Ms. Crane, what’s…” Tommy Addison’s voice trailed off when he saw the reason for her fear. “What the hell is that?”

  The orb floated across the room toward the door, and Tommy approached it, extending his hand.

  “Tommy, what are you doing?” Juniper jumped off the opposite side of the bed. “Don’t touch it!” Her warning came too late.

  Two tendrils reached out to Tommy’s fingertips, and an enormous POP! followed a flash of light.

  The force of the explosion shoved Juniper’s back against the wall before dropping her to the floor. Ears ringing, she pushed herself up enough to peek over the bed. It’s gone.

  “Tommy?” She rose to her feet and shuffled over the hardwood floors, looking around the room. “Tommy, where are you?”

  Once on the other side of the bed, she spotted a body in the hallway just beyond her open bedroom door. “Tommy!”

  The man’s body settled into stillness, and his vacant eyes locked onto the ceiling – although Juniper felt them watching her as she rushed to his side.

  “No, no, no, no.” Juniper cupped her mouth as tears dripped from her cheeks. She retrieved her phone and called 9-1-1. While imploring the operator for help, she hurried up two flights of stairs to her employer’s closed bedroom door. “Ms. Geister!” Her knuckles thumped against the solid oak. “Ms. Geister, it’s an emergency!” Hearing no response, she turned the copper knob and rushed inside.

  “Ms. Geister!” Juniper shook the shoulder of the unresponsive woman lying on her side within the gold bedframe, and yet she didn’t respond. She clicked on the nightstand lamp and pulled the sleeping woman’s shoulder to roll her onto her back.

  As Blair Geister’s head turned on the overstuffed pillow, a final breath whistled through her gritted teeth.

  Emory Rome parked his white crossover on a street in Knoxville’s trendy Old City – an area formerly called The Bowery, which served as the red-light district during the first half of the last century. The pale, handsome man with brown eyes and matching hair looped a wool satchel over his shoulder before pulling his lean and muscular six-foot-two frame from the vehicle. He retrieved a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet, folded it twice and slipped it inside the sleeve of one of the paper coffee cups resting in the center console. Grabbing both cups, he closed the door with his foot and headed down the sidewalk toward the two-story, brown-brick building with a painted window sign that read, “Mourning Dove Investigations.”

  Emory smiled at a young Bohemian sitting on the sidewalk playing guitar as he handed him the coffee with the twenty-dollar bill. “Good morning, Phineas.” The twenty-three-year-old PI had never asked the homeless man his age, but he assumed him to be two or three years younger than himself.

  The attractive man with Prussian blue eyes stopped strumming. “Hey, thanks man. I was just about to move. It’s too noisy. What’s going on in there?” Phineas pointed over his shoulder with his thumb to a brick building with a connecting wall to Mourning Dove.

  Emory heard the sound of hammering coming from inside. “Oh, they finally started. They’re adding this old comic book store to the firm. It’s going to be my new office.”

  Phineas took a sip of the coffee. “Sweet.”

  Jeff Woodard stepped onto a small debris field of drywall crumbles and aimed an exasperated hand toward the wall with the body-sized hole in it. “Is there no quieter way to take that down?!”

  The coveralled man rested the sledgehammer on his shoulder. “Sure. I could pare through the wall with the spoon I used to dig my way out of prison, but I have other jobs lined up this year.”

  Jeff clenched the left side of his face, depressing the natural smirk from his full lips. “You know, nobody likes a smartass.” Leaving the construction worker to his task, he walked through the lobby of Mourning Dove Investigations, eyeing the clear plastic tarp covering the desk and bookshelves as he returned to his office. When he started closing the bookshelf door between his office and the lobby, a voice chided him from behind.

  Virginia Kennon, a beautiful young woman with flawless ebony skin and curly black hair, looked up from her laptop at the side of Jeff’s desk. “Keep that door open.”

  With each punch of the sledgehammer against the wall, Jeff’s muscles popped into unintentional flexes, further stressing the Italian fabric of his stylish green shirt. “I’m trying to buffer the noise so we can work.”

  “We have a nine o’clock appointment. She won’t know we’re in here if you close that door.”

  Jeff asked his other partner, Emory, who had just entered the office. “You see the trouble we’re going through for you?”

  “How is that my fault?” Emory asked.

  Jeff plopped into his desk chair. “We bought that building next door so you could have your own office.”

  Virginia spoke up for Emory. “Stop trying to make him feel guilty. We needed the space.”

  Emory proceeded to a tiny desk in the corner of Jeff’s office and hung his satchel on the back of the adjacent chair. “How long will the construction take?”

  Virginia replied, “They told me a week. The full crew should be here at 10.”

  A woman with a tensed but pleasant face and wearing a camel pashmina draped over a navy pullover wandered through the office door. “Excuse me. I
have an appointment.”

  Virginia jumped up to greet her. “Mrs. Crane?”

  The woman’s latte-shaded lips eked into a half-smile. “It’s Ms., but please call me Juniper.”

  Jeff stood for a second to wave her toward one of the two chairs in front of his desk. “Please have a seat. I’m Jeff Woodard, and these are my associates, Virginia Kennon and Emory Rome.”

  Emory shut the door to the lobby before rounding the larger desk to stand at Jeff’s side.

  Jeff let loose a sigh of relief at the noise reduction. “That helps.” A second later he tensed once more when the sledgehammer again hit the wall in the lobby. Though muffled, the sound of the impact still thumped through his bones. “A little.”

  Virginia reclaimed her chair and faced their potential new client. “How can we help you, Juniper?”

  The woman clutched the faux snakeskin grocery-bag of a purse resting on her lap, and she touched three fingers of her shaky right hand to her upper lip. “My boss is trying to kill me.”

  All three PIs gasped, but Jeff was the first to speak. “Whoa. Seriously?”

  Emory crossed his arms. “Ms. Crane, what makes you think that?”

  Fingers still on her lip, Juniper shook her head. “She blames me.”

  “Blames you for what?” asked Virginia.

  Juniper struggled with her next words. “Something… A… A few months ago something happened… An overnight guest of Ms. Geister’s… His face…”

  Never one for patience, Jeff asked, “Well? What happened?”

  Juniper snatched a tissue from her purse and pressed it to her mouth. “His face… disappeared, and he sued her.”

  Virginia and Jeff jerked back in their chairs, while Emory whispered, “Disappeared?”

  Jeff patted his desk twice. “How does a face disappear?”

  Juniper waved her tissue. “I can’t go into detail. Ms. Geister made all her employees sign a non-disclosure agreement.”

  “You’re seriously going to leave us hanging?” asked Jeff.

  “I’m sorry. Like I said, I can’t talk about it.”

  Emory stepped forward to rest his palms on the desk, his brown eyes locked on Juniper’s blues. “Ms. Crane, I have to say that doesn’t sound like much of a motive for murder to me. If you’re responsible for a lawsuit against your boss, why wouldn’t she just fire you?”

  Virginia forced a reassuring yet skeptical smile. “Murder does seem extreme.”

  “Ms. Geister had her good and bad qualities, like all of us. She was brilliant and passionate about her work. She was also ruthless and vindictive. Ms. Geister hated to be embarrassed. She was phobic about it.” Juniper took a moment to catch her breath. “Some information was brought up in the deposition. She was mortified. I can’t say anything more.”

  Jeff tensed his body at the thump of another sledgehammer impact. “You keep leading us onto these dead-end narratives. How about getting us onto the straight and unimpeded explanation of why you’re here and what you’d like us to do?”

  Emory backhanded Jeff’s shoulder.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” said Juniper. “This is a new situation for me. It’s difficult to explain it to strangers, knowing how you’re probably going to react.”

  Emory asked, “Ms. Crane, has your boss threatened or otherwise menaced you?”

  Jeff snickered at Emory. “Menaced her?”

  Juniper pinched her lips. “Two nights ago, I was in bed watching TV. It had been such a long day. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep.” Her trembling hand returned to her lips. “Ms. Geister came for me.”

  Virginia asked, “She showed up at your home?”

  “No, I live on her estate, a few miles from Calhoun. But I’ve been staying up here with my daughter since that night.”

  “Calhoun?” asked Emory.

  “It’s in McMinn County, about ninety minutes southeast of here.”

  “Hold up.” Jeff leaned in on his elbows. “Estate? You’re not talking about Blair Geister, the construction tycoon, are you?”

  Juniper almost whispered her response. “Yes.”

  Jeff threw up his hands. “Problem solved. Maybe you haven’t heard, but your boss died a couple of nights ago.”

  “I know she’s dead!” Juniper shook her tiny fists as tears cascaded into the mouth of her giant purse. “That didn’t stop her from killing Tommy!”

  “I read about Blair Geister’s death,” said Emory. “No cause given yet, but they said an employee died in an accident at the same time. That was Tommy?”

  “Yes. He was the facilities manager for Geisterhaus. His room was down the hall from mine. But it wasn’t an accident. Ms. Geister was coming for me when Tommy got in the way.”

  Virginia asked, “Did they kill each other?”

  Juniper hesitated as her eyes seemed to search her purse for a response. “Ms. Geister died first.”

  “How did Tommy…” Jeff began. “What’s his last name?

  “Addison.”

  “How did Tommy Addison die?”

  “Ms. Geister killed him.”

  Jeff shook his head. “I’m not following.”

  Virginia placed a comforting hand on Juniper’s wrist. “Do you think your boss killed Tommy after… she had already died?”

  “You mean like a zombie?” Jeff asked with a grin. “Is the apocalypse here already?”

  Juniper jumped out of her chair. “I didn’t want to come here. My daughter insisted. She likes your ads. I told her a private investigator isn’t what I need.” She headed for the hidden door but saw only a painting on the wall. “How do I get out of here?”

  Virginia intercepted her. “Please, don’t go. We want to help you. Just tell us how we can.”

  Juniper turned around and frowned at Jeff. “It wasn’t a zombie. It was her spirit.”

  “Ms. Crane, can you describe for us very specifically what you saw?” asked Emory.

  Juniper took a deep breath. “When I was watching TV, Ms. Geister’s spirit… emerged from the screen.”

  “Like Poltergeist?” asked Jeff, excited while derisive.

  Emory squinted at Jeff. “Did any ghosts actually come out of a TV in that movie?”

  Jeff stretched out his arm in an overhand grasp. “I remember a ghostly hand reaching out of a TV.”

  “Guys, what does it matter?” asked Virginia. “Juniper, you actually saw her ghost?”

  “I didn’t know it at first. It looked more like a ball of light. I screamed, and that’s when Tommy showed up. His room is next to mine.” Juniper broke down and let the tears flow. “Ms. Geister’s rage filled the room. It knocked me against the wall. If Tommy hadn’t gotten in the way… It must’ve weakened Ms. Geister because she disappeared after that.”

  “What makes you certain the light was Ms. Geister’s spirit?” Emory asked.

  “I ran upstairs to tell Ms. Geister about Tommy, and I found she was dead too. That’s when I realized it. She had to have died first.” Juniper shivered. “I just ran from the house.”

  “Geister died first,” said Jeff. “What does that prove?”

  “You don’t understand.” Juniper stared at the space between Jeff and Emory. “There’s a knowing that comes with dying. Unimpaired clarity. You remember everything that happened, but more than that. You see your life, your whole life from every point of view. Parts of it you didn’t know before. Things people did for you that you never saw. Things people did against you. When Ms. Geister died, she must’ve become aware of what I’d done. That’s why her spirit came for me. For what I’d done.” Juniper looked at the PIs one-by-one. “I know you must think I’m crazy. So does my daughter. She wants you to prove there’s something else behind it, but I know what I saw. I just want to be able to sleep without worrying that she’s going to appear again. I don’t think her spirit can leave the house, but I’m not certain.”

  Emory asked, “Ms. Crane, would you mind waiting in the lobby while we discuss your case? We’ll just be a minute.”

  “Sure.”

  Virginia pulled on the painting, opening the hidden door to the lobby just as the construction worker’s sledgehammer hit again. She closed the door behind Juniper and turned to her partners to say, “I’m torn about this one. I want to help her, but I don’t know how.”