Midlife Ghost Hunter: A Paranormal Women's Fiction (The Forty Proof Series Book 4) Read online

  Midlife Ghost Hunter

  The Forty Proof Series, Book 4

  shannon mayer

  Midlife Ghost Hunter

  The Forty Proof Series, Book 4

  Shannon Mayer

  Copyright © Shannon Mayer 2020, Midlife Ghost Hunter

  All rights reserved

  HiJinks Ink Publishing

  www.shannonmayer.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a database and retrieval system or transmitted in any form or any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the owner of the copyright and the above publishers.

  Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Mayer, Shannon

  Midlife Ghost Hunter, The Forty Proof Series, Book 4

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Up Next!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  I started running back in June and I hated it. Still hate it now, but let me tell you, that time running was where this story came to life. Running was where I once more felt the aches and pains of pushing a forty-year-old body to work hard when it hadn’t for longer than I care to admit. I was reminded that Breena is the epitome of so many of us, that she carries with her OUR hopes and dreams for living well even though we are past our ‘best before’ dates. She reminds us that it’s never too late to go again for the goal posts with everything we have.

  That we are of worth.

  That we are stronger than we realize.

  I don’t know about you, but I think this world needs more strong women. Women with heart and fire, with passion and voices. Women who carry not only ourselves but others through the storms this world throws at us.

  Breena is one of those women.

  And I think maybe you are too.

  So own that strength, be the fire this world needs, and never shirk from your own flames because they are what will light up the darkness in the most epic of fashions.

  1

  What happens when you put a middle-aged woman wearing leather pants, a blood-stained tank top, ass-kicker boots, and three days of stink, into a communal jail cell with half a dozen other women? Well, let me tell you, nothing good can come of it. Especially for the one in the leather pants who smells like she doesn’t know how to shower.

  I turned my head, leaning my face against my upper arm, took an exploratory whiff of my own B.O. and made a face. What I wouldn’t give for a shower. I mean, assuming I was getting out of jail soon. The bench I sat on was cold, hard, and not exactly what I would call comfy. Again, I was hoping it wouldn’t matter soon.

  I should have had my phone call already.

  Should have heard something from my friends.

  Should have been formally charged.

  None of that had happened.

  “Hey, you got anything on you? I’m jonesing hard.” A hand pawed at my calf, and I shifted my foot so I could stare down at the woman with dark brown hair gazing up at me, somewhat vacantly, beads of sweat along her upper lip, which only highlighted that she needed a mirror and some tweezers. Desperately. Looking at her made me touch my own chin for the wayward hair that always managed to pop out without me noticing, going from nothing to four inches long overnight.

  Easier to think about chin hairs than why and how I’d been stuck in this cell for more hours than I wanted to count.

  “You probably don’t want to lie on the floor,” I pointed out as I adjusted my seat and slid down the bench out of reach. “Lawdy gawd only knows what’s down there with you.”

  “Poop. Smeared around on the floor, like a skating rink,” another woman muttered from across the twenty-by-twenty space, bars on one side and concrete on the others. The cell had three uncomfortable metal benches screwed to the floor, one on each wall and one in the middle, which was currently un-occupied.

  The speaker had her head leaned back against the wall, eyes closed. Long fake eyelashes brushed her sallow cheeks. She looked younger than me, but honestly, it was hard to tell because she was rail thin. So thin, her name-brand clothes hung off her as if she’d played dress up in her mother’s clothing.

  My mind caught back up to what she’d said.

  “You saying there is . . .poo on the floor?” I looked at the space between my feet and indeed there did seem to be some off-color smudges ground into the cracks that didn’t jive with what I would call a normal level of dirt.

  “More than a bit,” the woman in the designer clothes said. “They took the pooper out just before you came in. She’d had some fun in it. Someone came in to clean it, but they did a minimal job. Smells better now.”

  Gagging, I stumbled onto my feet as I hopped and danced to try to keep away from the smudges. Like some sort of nightmare version of Twister. The others started laughing at me, but I didn’t stop until I was standing in the middle of the room. How the hell could I not have smelled shit that close to me? Was my sense of smell going? I’d heard that was a thing when women hit menopause.

  I paused for a moment next to the middle bench—should I sit and swing my legs over?—when a hand slapped my ass hard enough to make me yelp and hop right over the hurdle.

  “You go in the clink dressed like that, you’ll be a favorite with those leathers on.”

  I spun to see the oldest of the prisoners hobble away from me, giggling to herself as she swayed her head from side to side, reminiscent of my skeleton friend Robert. Her hair was brilliantly white and fluffy, like she’d back combed it repeatedly to give herself more height than her maybe four-foot-eleven frame. Then put twigs in it for good measure and a few more inches.

  “I’m not going into the clink. I’ll be out of here in no time,” I said.

  The old woman giggled. “Oh, that’s what you think!”

  I drew a ragged breath through my nose and stayed where I was, afraid to sit, afraid to move for fear of what I might step in.

  Literally and figuratively.

  But let me backtrack for those who are just now coming into my story. A mere twelve hours before this low moment of getting my ass slapped by an old lady while dancing around poo smears, I had been arrested for the murder of my ex-husband, Alan.

  Now, to be fair, I had on more than one occasion thought about killing him, bu
t no more so than any other woman with a douche canoe manipulating liar of an ex. However, I can firmly say I didn’t so much as put a bruise on him. Not that the police here in Savannah had believed me. Nope, they’d tossed on the cuffs and dragged me here to my own personal hell.

  To add insult to injury, the police have taken my magical leather hip bag, which meant they are now in possession of my gran’s old spell book, the finger bone I use to summon Robert (shoot, that might not help me in the “I’d never hurt anyone” category if they ask me who it belongs to), and the book of black magic curses I’d picked up in my travels. They also have the two knives Crash made for me what felt like a lifetime ago. I wonder if the officers would be able to find them in the bag.

  I hope not. I hope that my bigger-than-it-looked bag hides my goodies from the police.

  The one thing they haven’t been able to take from me was the one thing I wished to heaven they’d been able to. Of course, he was the reason I was currently stuck in this poop-covered cell.

  Alan, aka Himself, aka the ex.

  “Seriously, Bree?” Alan stood on the other side of the bars from me. My ex-husband, dead as a doornail, had come back as a ghost to haunt me. The jerk. “What did you expect, hanging around with that freak show crowd? Acting like you’re some sort of super sleuth, when we both know you were always terrible at guessing how a book or movie ended. The worst.”

  He still wore his paddy hat, and he lifted it to rub his mostly bald head. “I mean, even I know you didn’t kill me, but let’s be honest, any of those freaks you’re with could be the culprit—it’s not like I remember how I died. Maybe that troll you were making out with did it because he didn’t like the idea of me as your ex-husband.”

  I stared at Alan. The troll he was referring to was Crash. Crash was fae, and he had a glamor that kept humans from seeing his true appearance, which was why Alan had seen him as an ugly lump instead of the stunning piece of man—fae—meat that he was. Then again, maybe I was the one who’d gotten it wrong. Because it turned out Crash wasn’t such a stand-up guy. I’d helped him face down the goblin king, and he’d left me high and dry afterward.

  I leaned my forehead against the bars and whispered to Alan. “You realize that if I get stuck here, you get stuck here, seeing as you’re attached to me whether either of us likes it or not? Why don’t you see what you can find out in the other rooms? Try to figure out why they think I did it. Maybe it’s just a mistake.”

  And maybe I was the queen of England, but I was hoping this could be dealt with before I had to use the toilet in the corner of the room in full view of everyone.

  Alan frowned, which wrinkled a great deal of his forehead with that receding hairline of his. He tapped a finger to the hollow of his throat and then turned as he spoke. “I have to admit, I’d like to know what they have on you. I’ll see what I can find.”

  His footsteps didn’t make a sound as he walked off. When he disappeared from view, I turned and found myself face to face with the woman who had the expensive clothes hanging off her frame. Her dark brown eyes were dilated as she stared into my face. “You crazy? Talking to yourself or your demons? Or still coming off a high?”

  “Not crazy, not high, more like I was talking to a demon.” I tried to slide sideways, but she snaked a hand around the bar to my left, and when I shifted to the right, she grabbed a bar on the other side. Well then, apparently, we were going to have a talk. I grimaced and looked at her. “Look, I didn’t kill anyone, certainly not my ex-husband. I’m going to be out of here in no time, so no need to make friends.”

  I ducked under her arm, and she didn’t try to stop me.

  “They think you killed your ex?” the woman from the floor said. “I would like to kill my ex. He was a tool.”

  I blinked and looked away. “Maybe that’s not something you should say when you’re in jail and there are most likely cameras on us recording everything we say. Right?”

  She shrugged. “I’m a druggie. They don’t believe us when we tell them the truth. And if we get hurt? We just got what was coming to us for being like this.” She waved a hand over her body. My eyes tracked the movement and found a path of bruises across her pale skin. Some were shaped like fingers and hands from where she’d been grabbed and squeezed.

  A sharp pain spiked through my heart and my throat tightened. I was not the only one in trouble here. “I’m sorry they don’t believe you. I’m sorry they think you deserve to be hurt. You don’t.”

  She rolled onto her belly and put her chin on her hands, for all the world like we were having a sleepover and were about to play a game of Truth or Dare. “Did you kill him?”

  I cleared my throat and shook my head. “No, I did not.”

  A sigh from the other side of the room. “I hit my ex in the head with a frying pan. It made a rather satisfying thud, both when I hit him and when he hit the floor. A double whammy, if you will.”

  I turned to see the fluffy-haired old granny smiling at us, showing a perfect set of teeth that caught me off guard. I’d have guessed she was missing at least one tooth if you’d asked me to make a bet on it. She crinkled up her face and went on. “A drunk he was. And liked to use his fists on me. I beat him within an inch of his life with a frying pan. Course, the judge said I was in the wrong. My lawyer told them I was crazy. I got no time, but I was sent out into the world with nothing after the lawyer took his fees. Don’t matter, though, ’cause ain’t nobody going to tell me now what to do.”

  Fancy Pants snorted lightly and rubbed at her nose. “Except here you are, locked up like the rest of us. And like they say in that movie about the guy and his friend in jail with the tree at the end, everybody in here is innocent. Course, you didn’t kill your husband. Just like I didn’t crash my car while driving drunk—” she pointed at the woman on the floor, “—and she didn’t break into a house to use the facilities while still higher than a kite from using drugs on the street corner after prostituting herself. All of us is clean, baby. All of us don’t deserve this place.”

  I frowned. “Shawshank Redemption is the movie.”

  “That’s all you got to say?” Fancy Pants shook her head. “They say you killed your ex-husband, and you think you’re getting out?” She broke into a fit of giggles that was picked up by the woman on the floor, who laughed until she was shrieking. The sounds faded when the intercom crackled to life.

  “Shut your filthy mouths!”

  Fancy Pants slapped a hand over her mouth, and the sounds of laughter faded quickly.

  She stumbled toward me, pointing a shaking finger at me until she pressed it against the middle of my chest, her whole hand trembling with the DTs. “That’s not how it works, not for you, not for me, or any of us in here. You got a lawyer or something? No money, I’d bet, because money is what makes this place tick-tock-tick-tock.” She waggled her finger back and forth for good measure.

  I tried not to breathe deeply with her in my face. I might stink, but so did she. Like a sour drunk. “No, but I have friends. I’m sure they are trying to figure out what’s going on.” I took a step back to put distance between us. The smell of alcohol was still strong on her breath and it curdled my own stomach, which was already twisted in knots.

  I was holding it together on the outside—staying calm, not freaking out—but I was slowly losing my mind. I’d been in here for twelve hours with only these women as company, and I wouldn’t much call them company, and my own thoughts. Not even Officer Burke had come by. She was my one connection in the police force, and I’d thought she would have my back . . . or that she’d at least tell me what the hell was going on.

  Before my arrest, I’d learned that my gran, my parents, and Alan had all been killed in the same gruesome way. Their necks torn open as if by an animal, their bodies left to bleed out and die. And they’d all been killed in New Orleans, a point not lost on me. Gran’s spirit had been taken by someone, and I figured my best shot of finding her was to figure out who’d killed those closest to me,
and why. That had been the plan before I got stuck in here.

  The police had other plans.

  At first, I’d thought I’d be out in no time. I knew they had no proof, because of course, I hadn’t killed Alan.

  But nothing had been done in the right order.

  I went back through the list of all the things that should have happened since I’d been stuffed in here and hadn’t.

  No phone call.

  No visitors.

  No formal charges.

  It was almost as if I were being railroaded.

  No, not almost, I was being railroaded. I could feel it as surely if I were tied to the tracks and could hear the blasting horn of the oncoming train.

  I’d helped plenty of people out of jams. Where the hell was my hero? Yeah, don’t answer that. I had to get myself out of this mess.

  A semi-transparent figure strode through the closed door down the hall. I made myself walk slowly to the bars to meet Alan. He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. Definitely not the hero I wanted or needed, but in that moment, he was all I had.

  “It’s not good, Bree. I’m not your lawyer, obviously, but . . .” He frowned, pulled his cap off and rubbed his balding head before he put the hat back on. “The thing is I can see what kind of case they are building in there. They are . . .”

  “They’re trying to lock me up for a long time?” I asked quietly, not really caring if the other women heard me. I mean, they were all half loopy, anyway, and the woman on the floor had gotten one thing right: no one would believe their stories.