Lady Justice and the Mystery Mansion Read online

  “I certainly do. Not a problem.”

  “Sorry.”

  I made a U-turn and headed back to Gladstone Boulevard.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” Art said, as we pulled into the driveway.

  “I’ll come with you,” I replied. “There’s something I want to check on as long as we’re here.”

  “That’s strange,” Art said, as we approached the carriage house. “I’m sure I closed that door.”

  We stepped inside and found a man crouched in the corner beside a hole he had dug. In his lap was a rusty old tin box and he was counting the money that had been stashed inside.

  I recognized the man. He was a worker that Don had recently hired.

  Evidently Art knew him better than I did.

  “Jason! What in the world are you doing in here?”

  Jason rose to his feet, the box in one hand and a pistol in the other. “Just back off. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  Suddenly, I put two and two together. “Jason? Are you Jason Briggs, Albert’s son?”

  “One and the same,” he replied, “and I’ve been waiting ten years to reclaim what’s mine. Now back away.”

  Art and I were between Jason and the door. He waved his pistol and we moved aside to give him a clear path to the door.

  He began inching backward toward the door, keeping his eyes and his gun trained on us.

  Too late, he saw the coil of rope on the floor. His feet became entangled, he lost his balance, and fell backward, landing on the sharp arrow of the old weathervane.

  We watched in horror as the point of the arrow burst through his chest.

  A moment later, Jason Briggs lay dead, the money he had stolen a decade ago scattered at his feet.

  I called Derek Blaylock and soon the place was swarming with cops.

  Derek looked at the grisly scene. “Jesus! What a way to go! Jason Briggs you say. That rings a bell.”

  “Ten years ago, Jason stole the money from his company to bail out his father, Albert. When the cops came for Jason, Albert leaped in front of Jason taking a bullet that was meant for his son.”

  “Yeah, I remember now. Jason wouldn’t talk and the money was never recovered. Looks like it’s been buried in here all these years.”

  “So what happens to the money?” I asked.

  “I’ll check it out and let you know.”

  He took another look at the bloody corpse. “Another owner of this old house dead and not in a good way. I said it before and I’ll say it again. I think this place has some kind of curse.”

  The same thought had occurred to me, and being the current owner, the possibility sent shivers up and down my spine.

  A few days later, Derek gave me a call. The statute of limitations had expired on the theft and the company Jason had worked for had gone out of business.

  Since there was no one else to claim the cash, it belonged to us.

  A blessing or a curse? Time would tell.

  CHAPTER 15

  At last, the renovation was finished.

  Don and his crew packed up their tools for the last time.

  Maggie and I decided to have a ribbon-cutting celebration. Along with Don, who had done a fantastic job, we invited all our friends and family.

  Nearly every jaw dropped as they gazed at the finished product.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Dad muttered. “The first time I saw the place I thought you were bat-shit crazy. I’m mighty proud of you, Son.”

  I gave Maggie a squeeze. “Thank this little lady. It was all her idea. I wanted nothing to do with it. Now I’m glad she talked me into it.”

  Maggie smiled. “You were great. It was a team effort. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “So let’s take a look inside,” Dad said.

  “Not so fast,” Jerry replied. “I’ve penned a little ditty for the occasion.”

  Jerry was not only our little group’s jokester, he was also our poet laurate. I had an idea what was coming.

  Jerry forged ahead. “I call this, You can’t polish a turd, or can you?”

  There once was a house on a hill

  It was old and ratty, but still,

  It caught the eye

  Of a gal and a guy,

  And became a dream to fulfill.

  They withdrew a bundle of cash

  To purchase this old piece of trash.

  Much to his dismay,

  Walt found out one day,

  It severely depleted their stash.

  They hired old Don and his crew

  Indeed there was much work to do.

  They would work every day,

  For an honest day’s pay,

  In an effort to make it look new.

  But the mansion had one little quirk.

  A ghost in the hallway would lurk.

  Said the men filled with fear,

  There is something quite queer,

  And as long as it’s here, we won’t work.

  The news made Walt all a-fluster.

  So he called his favorite ghostbuster.

  Chris came right away,

  Jumped into the fray,

  With everything that he could muster.

  When all was at last said and done,

  With the ghost, a victory they’d won.

  Her spirit set free,

  At last she could flee,

  To a peaceful place with her son.

  Walt thought things couldn’t get worse,

  Till a body was hauled off in a hearse.

  Much to his dismay,

  He knew from that day,

  His mansion was plagued with a curse.

  But now the work is complete.

  He has gathered his friends here to meet.

  To show off the house,

  He bought for his spouse,

  On Gladstone, this spooky old street.

  I know this may sound absurd,

  But this shall be my last word.

  This old house is proof,

  There really is truth,

  That it’s possible to polish a turd.

  There were cheers all around as Jerry took a bow.

  It had been a great day, buy Jerry’s little poem reminded me that, given all of the tragedies that had occurred here, there might actually be some kind of curse on the old mansion.

  Once inside, everyone oohed and ahhed at the refurbished interior.

  After all the guests had completed the tour, we gathered in the back yard. We had hired Rob, a retired cop who had a bar-b-que catering business, to provide a picnic lunch of ribs, brisket, brats, and smoky baked beans.

  Knowing beans were on the menu, Jerry had brought along his remote-controlled fart machine. Jerry’s mistake was making Mary his first victim. After a robust blast brought a round of laughter at Mary’s expense, she chased Jerry across the lawn, grabbed the remote from his hand, and crunched it with her foot. “That’ll teach you, you little pervert!” she muttered, stalking off.

  Good times!

  All things considered, the day was a grand success.

  The next step would be listing the mansion for sale. Now that the work was done, it was time to recoup our sizeable investment.

  CHAPTER 16

  Maggie listed the property and as soon as it hit the Multiple Listing Service the phone started ringing.

  There were multiple showings every day during the first week. I always accompanied Maggie unless it was a buyer she knew and had worked with previously. After she had been abducted at a vacant house several years earlier we made a pact that she would never again meet a stranger alone at a vacant house.

  The moment each buyer walked in the door they were impressed with the grandeur of the place. They were complimentary of all the work that had been done and declared the old mansion to be a beautiful showcase, but there were no offers.

  In fact, as much as they loved the house, each of them departed saying something just didn’t feel right.

  I understood because I felt
it too.

  Even though there was no trace of Albert Briggs’ blood in the foyer, and the hole in the basement floor where little Jeremy Weston had been buried was covered with fresh concrete, something still didn’t feel right.

  Then I remembered how I first met Christopher Wheeler. An agent in Maggie’s office had a listing where the husband had murdered his wife. Despite many showings no one seemed interested. Chris came out, cleansed the house, and she had a contract the next week.

  Even though Chris had come to the mansion and made contact with the restless spirit of Julia Weston, I began to wonder if other unhappy spirits still lurked in the attic or basement.

  I decided to give him a call.

  We met at the mansion and I told him the response we’d been getting from buyers and my own feelings that something wasn’t quite right.

  “I’ll go in alone,” he said. “Sometimes spirits are reluctant to reveal themselves to someone who doesn’t possess the gift. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  I sat in my car and waited. One hour turned into two and I was starting to get worried. I was about to go check on him when he walked out the door.

  “Well?” I asked, expectantly.

  He shook his head. “I spent time on both floors and even in the basement, but I got nothing. I did, however, get the same uneasy feeling that your buyers describe. There’s definitely something going on here. I just haven’t found it yet.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “I’ll check out the carriage house and garage. If I don’t find anything there, I’ll roam around the back of the property. Honestly, with all that’s taken place here since 1903, it could be most anything.”

  I went back to my car to wait.

  An hour later, Chris came scurrying around the corner of the house. I could see the excitement on his face.

  “You absolutely won’t believe what I’m about to tell you. This is another first for me.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “First, I need to give you a quick history lesson. In the early eighteen hundred’s, before there was a Kansas City, all this land was Indian territory. In fact, there was an Indian encampment on this very spot.”

  Suddenly, Art’s discovery made perfect sense. “One of my workers found an old arrowhead in the back yard.”

  “It was made by the Osage tribe,” Chris replied.

  “How could you possibly know all that?”

  “Because I made contact with Ka'-wa-sab-be, a medicine man with the Osage tribe that once called this bluff their home.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Nope. The Osage lived here for centuries, then came the westward expansion of the white man. In 1825, Federal troops drove the Osage from this bluff and made them relocate on a reservation in Oklahoma. As his people were leaving the valley the medicine man looked back on their home one last time and placed a curse upon it.”

  “I knew it! A curse! Just great! Can you do whatever it is you do and get rid of it?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The curse can only be removed by the one who placed it.”

  “Any chance I could talk to this medicine man?”

  “It wouldn’t do you any good. This is not like the other spirits we’ve contacted. They all spoke English. Ka'-wa-sab-be only speaks his native language.”

  “But you talked with him.”

  “No, I communicated with him. That’s altogether different. I didn’t hear him speak. I understood his thoughts.”

  I sighed. “Okay, I get it. The Indians were understandably upset about being driven from their home, hence the curse. I can’t go back in time to correct what was done to them. How can we fix this?”

  He thought for a moment. “You can’t change the past, but maybe there’s something you can do to help his people now.”

  Then I remembered when I was a cop Ox and I arrested an Indian boy for shoplifting. Rather than putting him in the system, we took him to the Kansas City Indian Center. They had some kind of a rehabilitation program.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, grabbing my phone.

  I Googled the Indian Center and their website popped up.

  “Here,” I said, showing Chris my phone. “It says the mission of the Kansas City Indian Center is to encourage social, educational, and economic advancement of the American Indian community by promoting traditional and cultural values. And look, it says they provide emergency services for low-income American Indians, including food pantry and holiday baskets, emergency telephone calls to Reservation or Nation and referrals to additional services such as the Morningstar Substance Abuse Outpatient and Prevention Program.

  “Suppose I offered to make a sizeable donation to the Indian Center. Is there any chance we could get that curse removed?”

  “How much are you talking about?”

  I thought for a moment. I had to get the place sold just to get back the money we’d put into it and it looked like the only way that was going to happen was to get the curse removed.

  “There was seventy-five thousand dollars in Jason Briggs’ old tin box. I will donate all of that plus any profit we make on the sale of the mansion.”

  “Wow!” Chris said, obviously impressed. “That’s a lot of wampum. Are you sure you want to give up your profit?”

  “I’ll have to talk it over with Maggie, but I’m confident she’ll agree. That’s my insurance policy that the curse will actually be removed. If the place doesn’t sell, they’ll be no profit to donate to the Indian center.”

  “Good thinking. Let me present your offer to the medicine man.”

  Chris was gone for another hour. When he returned, he was all smiles.

  “Looks like you’ve got a deal.”

  “Fantastic! Anything else?”

  “Actually there was,” Chris replied with a grin. “He said that for a white man, you’re an okay guy.”

  I thanked Chris for his work, paid his fee, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Now all I had to do was tell Maggie I’d given away all our profit.

  It took a full bottle of Arbor Mist to tell Maggie about the medicine man, his curse, and what I had done to get it removed.

  After I finished, she sat there for the longest time trying to absorb the unlikely story I had just dumped on her.

  Finally, she gave me a big smile. “You know, for a white man, you’re okay in my book too.”

  Two days later, we met a young couple at the mansion. They fell in love with the place the minute they walked in the door.

  At the conclusion of the tour, they were ready to make an offer.

  As Maggie was preparing the contract, something clicked in my mind.

  Their names were Dillon and Marcia Matson.

  “By any chance, are you related to a Matthew Matson?”

  Dillon thought for a moment. “Maybe. It seems like I had a great-great uncle way back named Matthew. Why do you ask?”

  “Because your great-great uncle was the original owner of this house. He had it built back in 1903!”

  Maggie handed the awe-struck young couple the scrapbook she had so diligently constructed. “Here, as the new owners of the property, you should have this. It’s like a family tree, and you’re the newest branch.”

  In one hundred and fifteen years, a house built on tainted land had passed through the hands of seven families who had suffered terrible tragedies because of the curse of an Osage Indian Medicine Man.

  Now Mystery Mansion, free of its curse, was owned once again by a relative of its founder.

  EPILOGUE

  When it was all said and done, we recouped our original investment and made a twenty-five- thousand-dollar profit.

  That, along with Jason Briggs’ seventy-five thousand, made a nice donation to the Kansas City Indian Center.

  Friends and family, hearing what we had done, thought we’d lost our marbles. Six months of labor and for what?

  For Maggie and me, there were no regrets.<
br />
  The moment she saw the old mansion, she fell in love with it.

  She had the vision to see what it could become.

  For her, it wasn’t about the profit. It was about the restoration. She had a dream and we made that dream come true.

  Along the way, we were able to set right some wrongs.

  After the discovery of the body of Baby Jeremy that had been hidden away in the basement in shame, the spirit of his mother, Julia, was set free and the two of them found everlasting peace.

  Gene Paxton, imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, was freed because of evidence uncovered by a freak accident.

  Money, stolen and buried for a decade, is now in the hands of a charitable institution.

  And most important, the curse that plagued the old mansion for over a century is no more.

  If someone had told me ten years ago that a spirit world existed, I would have been skeptical.

  Not any more.

  I have come to accept that there are things beyond our comprehension at work in the universe.

  I have also come to understand that Lady Justice works in mysterious ways. For poor Gene Paxton, it took twenty-five years, but in the end, Lady Justice prevailed.

  My name is Walt Williams and for me, the irony of it all is that none of that would have happened if Maggie hadn’t talked me into buying Mystery Mansion.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Award-winning author, Robert Thornhill, began writing at the age of sixty-six and in nine short years has penned thirty-three novels in the Lady Justice mystery/comedy series, the seven volume Rainbow Road series of chapter books for children, a cookbook and a mini-autobiography.

  Lady Justice and the Sting, Lady Justice and Dr. Death, Lady Justice and the Vigilante, Lady Justice and the Candidate, Lady Justice and the Book Club Murders, Lady Justice and the Cruise Ship Murders and Lady Justice and the Vet won the Pinnacle Award for the best new mystery novels of Fall 2011, Winter 2012, Summer 2012, Fall 2012, Spring of 2013 and Summer 2014 from the National Association of Book Entrepreneurs.