The Rhino Ritz Detective Agency was celebrating their victory. They had located and liberated The Spiritual Predators. For three weeks the local band had been held captive by the keyboardist's ex-wife and no one gave into her demands. Police Chief Noel pretty much assigned the case to the back burner but then the fourteen year old son of the bass player set fire to an American flag at his high school. People started to become concerned that Spencer's dad wasn't around to shepherd the young man into manhood. After all, despite their ambitions, The Spiritual Predators were never on tour.
It was Scottie who had come up with the solution. He'd been sitting in the back seat of the Suburu as Teary drove up to the Benedictine Abby. When one of Teary's fellow oblates waved to her in the parking lot, Scottie decided to switch cars for the ride back into Longmont. Once Catherine pulled into her garage and took three large boxes of Costco baby wipes out of the trunk, F. Scott Fitzgerald thought something must be up.
Undeterred by the fact that they did not have a client, an hour later the Rhino Ritz Detective Agency pulled up in the driveway and shot the locks off all the doors of the house. The Spiritual Predators walked out of Catherine's house in their underwear and found no-one waiting for them. They had a doozy of a time trying to convince the cops, when the cops finally showed up because of the neighbour's complaints about men standing in the street in their underwear, that they had just been rescued from captivity.
"It's not like we don't like hanging out with Catherine, we just never thought of it," the drummer explained diplomatically.
"We'd like to press charges," the bassist said.
"I never intended to spend three more weeks with Catherine," the keyboardist clarified. He went back into the house to collect their clothes. The police followed him and discovered Catherine, hysterical and incoherent.
The men later penned their number one hit, "Kept Our Underwear On."
The Rhino Ritz Detective Agency especially liked the line, "When Gertrude tied my ex-wife up with fishing line and Ernie harpooned her to the wall, I recalled that I never missed her at all."
"Still," Scottie said, "we haven't managed to find Keith's manuscripts."
"Because we can't find Lolly."
"He's in a vacuum," Ernie said.
"Yeah, but does he have the manuscripts with him?" Gertrude asked.
"Probably not," Michael said.
Michael Sowl was an inobtrusive person and the dead authors hadn't even noticed him sitting at the next table.
It was about time Mr. InBetween got laid. He was due for a tune up and he had money in his hand. Trader Jamison Grere had paid Mr. InBetween handsomely for laying the spell on Flora. Mr. Inbetween had a big book of spells in his apartment. Most days, he stuck to the standard spell on page forty-two. But this time, just for a change of tactics, he'd put a permanent spell on Flora. His line of thought was that if something was supposed to be permanent then it was sure to have a faulty warranty. And it always cost extra to reverse permanent.
Mr. InBetween walked out of his San Francisco apartment and debated taking the bus. He debated mainly with himself and, on that day, he was winning the argument. He might need to take a cab home to impress a lady. Presumably, the lady in the cab. The cab that he was going to pay with his bus money. Let's not continue with this line of reasoning because it might just end up that the lady in the cab would chip in for cabfare to get back to his apartment to go to bed with him and that didn't sound romantic at the very moment that Mr. Inbetween was debating on how to impress a woman with the intention of covering cabfare.
He walked calmly to the bar. The first bar of the evening. There would be more bars during the night. Mr. InBetween was looking forward to meeting his friend, Eric, the painter from the novel Monterey of Mordecai. There was no guarantee that he would find Eric at a bar, but that was the benefit of having a friend who sometimes went out at night and spent his other nights frantically applying black paint to a canvas.
Mr. Inbetween had found his own line of work in the ads in the San Francisco Chronicle. Wanted, the ad stated, a man to put spells on people. No experience required. Must use precise wordings. And that was the definition of Mr. InBetween. He was very precise about words. He'd answered the ad and been hired within a day. His new employer handed him a key to a locker at the Grey Hound Station in 1963. The man said that he could find the Book of Spells in the locker with the number 89003.
It had taken Mr. InBetween a long time to find the locker with the number 89003. Surprisingly it hadn't been the locker after the locker with the number 89002. If anything, Mr. InBetween was quickly learning, reversing permanent could help out with the rent.
That evening Candace was looking forward to catching up on her series. Unfortunately for her, that wasn't what happened. Instead, Emily walked through the front door with Emery and Troy Bannick in tow. Emily didn't even knock, which was the first clue that things were off kilter.
"Holy Cow, Emily!" Candace said. "What happened to knocking?"
"Can you explain to me why Logan's grandmother insists that she is not Mormon in the afterlife?" Emily demanded.
"Because that's not Logan's grandmother," Candace said.
"Who is it then?" Emery asked.
"That's Troy's great-aunt."
Troy wasn't seeing the ghost. "Uh, look. Can someone drop me off at my house? I am supposed to look after my stepmom's kids." Troy was certain he made easier money sitting on the corner.
"Let's drop Logan off at his house, Mom," Emery suggested.
"The Devil be damned!" Emily brought out a small handgun from her purse and pointed it at the ghost.
"She's not bothering anyone, Emily," Candace said loudly. She took a deep breath. "Can you please put the gun down? Why don't we take this young man and the ghost of his great-aunt home?"
"We're going to the bishop!" Emily screamed. "Everyone, get in the car! Now!"
Candace sat behind the wheel while Emily held her gun in front of her, waving the gun from person to person.
"If you don't have to be Mormon when you're dead, then I don't want to be Mormon anymore," Emery said flatly.
"Emery!" Emily pointed the gun at her daughter.
"Come off it, Mom. You're not going to kill me if I am not Mormon."
Candace thought that the conversation was taking a dangerous turn. She knew how wound up her sister could get as a child and what she was capable of when in the throws of a tantrum and Emily was acting very strange. Suddenly Candace saw the ghost of the Chevy truck swerve in front of her. It was aburptly turning towards McCarthy's bar. The truck was heading into the side wall. Candace realized that the ghost of Troy's great-aunt was in the car with them, and that Candace might be able to make the portal. She quickly turned the steering wheel, following the ghost truck, and pressed the gas pedal.
Coming Soon Chapter Thirty-Three
#longmont #colorado #keithkumasenabbott #keithabbott #mormonpotatoes #speakingwiththedead #ghoststory #rhinoritz #localband #spiritualpredators
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