Free Ghosts Beneath Us: A Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery (Spookie Town Murder Mysteries Book 3) by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

dilapidated and surrounded by castoff items like wash machines, rusted cars, broken furniture and trash, it was an eyesore.
    “I hate to say this,” Abigail whispered to Frank as they waited for someone to answer the door, “but I’ve never seen a house like this. It’s so modest. And what’s around it reminds me of a –”
    “Junkyard?”
    “Or rubbish dump.” Her gaze slid in his direction as she held her nose. He was grinning. “How does anyone live like this?”
    “Alfred is a weird old duck. He’s a collector of sorts. Very resourceful though. He served in the Viet Nam war and was awarded a Purple Heart or two. He came from a family of carpenters and built this place himself in the nineteen seventies after his parents died and left him this piece of land. It’s a sizeable amount of acreage, too.” Frank rapped at the door again and someone inside could be heard yelling at them to keep their clothes on, he was coming.
    “That explains it then.”
    “Explains what?”
    “His house in this neighborhood. Weren’t there any housing codes in the nineteen seventies?”
    “Not in Spookie evidently. But the house has been here for as long as I can remember and no one’s going to tell Alfred to update it. If he could even afford to do it. He lives on a pension and veteran’s disability. But, beyond all that, there have been rumors he’s sick; that he’s dying. So no one’s going to bother him about the decrepit state of his homestead.”
    “Oh, that’s so sad.” Now she felt dreadful for thinking badly of him and his home.
    The door burst open and a grizzled man somewhere in his seventies was scowling at them. “What do you want?” His voice was somewhere near a growl.
    “I’m Frank Lester and this is Abigail Sutton.”
    The man’s face and shoulders relaxed and a faint smile emerged. “Ah, the ghost busters Myrtle said would be visiting. Frank and Abigail. Howdy. I feel like Scrooge in that Christmas movie. You know when he was told to expect three visitors? The police were the first and you’re the second. I wonder who will be the third? I’m thinking it could be the Easter Bunny, with Easter so near and all.” He chuckled. “Enter.”
    “Yeah, that’s us,” Frank quipped with a cynical smile as he reached out and shook the man’s hand. “We’re ghost busters, whether we like it or not.”
    “Not that I believe that crap about my problem being ghosts and such,” the old man griped as he led them into his home. “That’s Myrtle’s foolishness. Myself? I believe it’s a bunch of miscreants causing the troubles, but that Myrtle wouldn’t take no for an answer and had to bother you both. It is humans pestering me. If I catch those damn scallywags making their mischief I’ll fill their butts full of buckshot. I have the guns here to do it. Those &#%@ !!#!& better stay away if they know what’s good for them. Buckshot isn’t easy to get out.”
    The inside of the shack wasn’t what Abigail was expecting. It was neat, sparse, but clean and nothing like the outside. Though it was humble, it seemed to be of sturdy construction. Frank had said the man lived a simple life. He didn’t have a computer, the Internet or even Cable. There was aluminum foil on his old TV’s bunny ears and there was a conversion box on top of the set. So he was only getting the basic local channels. Well, that was simple.
    Sitting at the wooden table with mismatched chairs they heard a story fairly similar to the one Beatrice had related to them days before. For weeks Alfred had been tormented with knocking at his windows, disturbances in the basement, things going missing in the house and other petty crimes against his property. But, unlike Beatrice, he swore it wasn’t supernatural, but man made.
    They journeyed down into his basement and, sure enough, it’d been trashed the same as Beatrice’s. There were windows broken, objects turned over and cans of paint and varnish spilt. The lower level was in