Gabby's Haunted House 2 Read online

  Gabby’s Haunted House

  Culinary Cozy Mystery

  (Book 2)

  LORRIE BANNETT

  Copyright 2015

  All Right Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  …Synopsis…

  “Hey, are you going to sit out here while the rest of us are feasting on your cookies or will you join us?” James asked as soon as he peeped through the door and caught a glimpse of Gabby sitting on a porch in the veranda, reminiscing.

  “I will be in a minute. I was just seeing off a neighbor and decided to catch some air. Did you guys miss me?”

  “No. Not really. We were just wondering where you had gone to for a while. Ok, we will be waiting for you inside. But when the cookies run out, don’t say I didn’t give you a heads-up.”

  Gabby smiled and raised her glass of juice towards her former partner right before getting back into her deep-thought- state.

  After that little chat with her new neighbor, Keith, Gabby found it difficult to focus for the rest of the party that she had hosted in honor of her new home. The things that Keith told her got to her and for a moment, she almost believed in one thing that she was raised to shun her entire life – superstition.

  Gabby didn’t believe or care for superstition, but whatever it was that Keith told her made more sense that what she chose to believe. And everything in her moral fiber was telling her that there was something not so right about that new house, and she wanted to investigate it.

  Will Gabby Macklemore make up her mind and get to search for this mystery? Will she just brush it off and continue living her life? Will she find whatever she is looking? Keep on reading to find out what happens.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3:

  Chapter 4:

  Note from Author

  Chapter 1

  -The Weird Feeling-

  Ever since Gabby had that conversation with Keith, it seemed as though her confidence and certainty had left her completely. And it was James who was the first one to notice just how disoriented her had been and needless to say, he approached her and tried getting some information from her.

  But being the thick headed woman that she was, Gabby tried to duck the conversation and went back to hosting the party.

  Good thing, James knew that if it were something that Gabby wanted him to know, then she would find the time to talk to him. And just like that, he figured out it would be best to leave Gabby to her problems until she invited him in.

  As for the rest of the quests, they enjoyed having a great time with their host and when they were done with the juice and cookies, they demanded a full tour. Gabby’s head wasn’t in the game, but still, there was no way she was going to deny her friends and neighbors the satisfaction especially after giving them a couple of weeks’ worth of anxiety as she kept everything under wraps until she was done.

  Time didn’t seem to be on their side and after a while, it was time for everyone to clear the area. It was time for them to go home, leaving Gabby to her incredibly meticulous new home. And now that they knew where she lived, they were all welcome to visit whenever they felt like it.

  They loved the place alright. And this made it a little bit difficult to leave. But with time, it seemed as though they didn’t have a choice. So they left her the presents that they had brought for her and left.

  And as soon as Gabby had seen the last of her guests, she figured it was a good idea for her to come back to the house and think over what Keith had told him. That was the only weakness that Gabby had and ironically, this weakness was what made her be one of the best police officers that they NYPD had ever had.

  Gabby Macklemore just couldn’t let anything suspicious go that easily. She always wanted to get to the bottom of it and get the results. And that made her an amazing police officer.

  And staying true to that quality, she still found that conversation with her new neighbor was a little bit interesting. Keith hadn’t been diagnosed with any mental disorders as far as she could tell. He was a very successful lawyer whom, according to the few people she had interacted with, was a very brilliant mind. And for something as baseless as a house being haunted shaking him to the core was a little odd.

  And that was what made her a little bit concerned about the house. And for a moment, Gabby regretted having not carried out a proper background check right before going ahead and purchasing the house. But that being said, she didn’t see any reason as to why he was scared. And that became her job – to find out why Keith was so scared.

  The first thing that Gabby did that evening after cleaning the house was to sit down and go to the internet and did a search for haunted houses. The first thing that she expected to come up was the photos of the houses that were listed.

  And sure enough, there were some houses that came up on the list. And this forced Gabby to check them out one by one. But to her relief, her new house wasn’t on the list.

  For a moment, Gabby just sat on the couch in the living room while munching on the leftover cookies and thinking about how best she was going to solve this puzzle. She felt really stupid that she was on the internet in the night looking for clues about haunted houses instead of just doing what most of the adults her age was doing.

  An hour passed and Gabby continued reading all about these haunted houses as well as the signs that they showed. She always had a notebook where she jotted down all of the pieces of information that she had and once she was done with that, Gabby was more than grateful when she found out that her house didn’t have any of the above-stated symptoms.

  Gabby glanced up at her clock and frantically rubbed her eyes. She was tired since she spent a good number of hours smiling and being nice to the guests to the extent that her cheeks hurt. That was the problem when an introvert decided to throw a party, and the only people that show up are extroverts. That meant that you had no other choice but to end up talking to the rest of them. That was just too hard for her to cope with at that moment.

  In the end, Gabby decided to stop the stupid search and dismiss Keith with his wild claims. But she made a solemn promise to herself to make a point of visiting Keith the following day as soon as she came from work and got to find out what his problem was.

  Gabby knew that despite the fact that she had decided to quit, she needed to know what Keith’s motives were. No normal, fully grown man would just abandon everything that they were doing and just attend a neighbor’s party and start spooking them out. Where there was smoke, there is always fire.

  That happens to be one very important policing dictum that never loses its meaning. Gabby yawn and rubbed her eyes once again. It was always a sign that she was tired and that she needed to rest as soon as humanly possible.

  But as Gabby stood up, she realized that she hadn’t seen Henry for the better part of the day. She already knew that Henry didn’t like having guests around. But that didn’t mean that he would keep off long after they had gone. It was just too darn strange, and so she decided to call him out, hoping that he was going to respond to her and come back as fast as his cat legs could carry him.

  “Henry? Where the hell are you, young man!”

  Her voice just echoed as she called. And this begun to spook her a little. Gabby wasn’t the type of woman to spook easily. But after that encounter with Keith and also in the way her voice was echoing through the emptiness, it just gave her the creeps.

  “Henry? Mama has some cookies for you. Come out wherever you are!”

&nbs
p; Gabby waited for a moment as soon as she made that call. She wanted to know where her cat was, and the best way to do so is by making that call. Henry was smart enough to know that Gabby always called on him when she had food. And under normal circumstances, he would have come running to her. But still, Henry was nowhere to be seen.

  At that point, Gabby’s heart started pounding. She wasn’t trying to jump to conclusions but from the look of things, it seemed as though Henry was in trouble. Or maybe he had sneaked outside and got lost.

  Gabby didn’t like the way these unpleasant thoughts were invading her head and for a moment there, she paused and said a prayer. She never used to pray, but this was too much of a coincidence. How on earth does a spooked out neighbor just show up and her cat disappears?

  And at that point, Gabby decided to pay Keith a visit. She didn’t want to wait until she got out from work. It had to end there and then or else she wasn’t going to be at peace until she found Henry. She immediately closed her laptop and after getting the flashlight, she put her huge coat on and opened her front door.

  ***

  As soon as the front door opened, Gabby’s face was hit by chilling cold air that rushed through the open door, almost discouraging her from leaving the house at all. But after a moment, she figured that her cat might be lost out there somewhere in the cold while she was enjoying the warmth of her antique mansion. That just wasn’t the kind of person she was.

  And with that kind of mentality, Gabby decided to get out despite the cold and shutting the door right behind her, she fastened the jacket tightly around her and continued walking without even looking behind.

  “Henry dear, where the hell are you?” Gabby called while flickering the touch on all the directions with the hope that she was going to find her cat at the end of it all.

  Outside the house looked spooky, especially in the night. First and foremost, it was dead silent, and there was nobody outside. That alone made it a little spooky than living in the town since eight o’clock was still early for the new Yorkers.

  There were no lights outside, only occasional flickers from the headlights of cars from a distance. And after the flickering had passed, it went back to the eerie darkness of the shadows of the long tree that looked like paradise in the daylight looking like silhouetted shadows of ghosts.

  And for a moment, Gabby stopped calling out and considered stepping back into the house and looking for a firearm.

  How on earth did she fail to notice that the street didn’t have any lights on them? Now she was starting to get a clear picture as to why the people in this little suburban estate were a superstitious bunch. Most of the residents were almost her age, and it was a little understandable because they were old school.

  “Henry? Come to mummy dear.” Gabby called once again, but there was no sign of her cat anyone. Not even the many cats that she had laid her eyes on ever since she decided to move to that place.

  After walking to the gate and opening it, Gabby went a couple of yards to the left and flickered her flashlight with the hope that she was going to see a cat. But that didn’t happen. She figured that if Henry were in the house, he would have responded to her call. And it wasn’t in henry’s nature to explore when they weren’t into visiting new places.

  That meant that he was either stuck somewhere or worse, someone had taken him. She hoped that someone had taken him and not something because the latter would mean that he was dead by now.

  The thought of Henry dying hit her hard, and Gabby chose not to jump on that train of thought. She decided that she was overthinking when she was supposed to be thinking of her beloved cat and how best she was going to find him because that was the most important thing at the end of the day.

  Another car approached the clean tarmac road and flickered its headlights directly in Gabby’s eyes, making her shield them and curse in low tones. She stopped and waited for the car passed by and then took her arm from here eyes and yawned.

  She was getting a little bit sleepy and from the look of things, it looked as though this search was going nowhere. But despite having that feeling, there was no way Gabby was going to turn her back and leave her cat out there in the strangest place she had ever been.

  It was almost surprising to her that the place where she thought was a little piece of heaven away from heaven just a couple of days ago had turned into a nightmare all of a sudden.

  And Gabby blamed Keith for all the unfortunate things that were happening to her at that moment. And if he had anything to do with the disappearance of Henry, then he was going to face the music.

  “Lost something?” a baritone voice scared the wit out of Gabby, stirring her bowels in the process.

  She gritted her teeth and stopped for a moment. This incident was just too scary for her to comprehend. The wind was still blowing from the west going to the east, prompting the spooky trees to sway in a way that looked as though they were a heard a zombies walking towards her. Gabby didn’t care at that moment since the most she stayed away from her cat, the more shaken she was.

  She adjusted the jacket around her once again and cleared her throat before turning. But what she saw even threw her off than the sudden baritone. It was Keith, the once shaken neighbor who had attended her party just a couple of hours earlier. But this time round, Keith seemed a little more confident and self-aware than he was when they met a couple of hours earlier.

  “As a matter of fact I have. My cat has been missing ever since I hosted that party. It's unlike him to just disappear like that especially when I am hosting parties. It is unusual. Have you seen him?”

  Keith blew some warm breath into his hands and rubbed them vigorously in an attempt to get some warmth. And while he did this, Gabby was forced to kick back and stare at him. For a moment, it appeared as though he hadn’t heard her question that was absurd because Gabby was loud and clear. But when Gabby wanted to repeat her question, Keith interrupted her.

  “this is always how it starts. Your pets start behaving strangely right before the ghosts. I wasn’t lying when I told you that this house is haunted. And every time I get into that house, I am always shaken. That explains why I didn’t want to stay long enough to enjoy your cookies. But I do hope you took my advice with a pinch of salt. Not many people believe in ghosts.”

  Gabby didn’t want to talk about the incidents of that day. But since Keith had brought the issue up, she decided why not talk about it. And when it came to such kind of talks, Gabby just didn’t know how not to go straight to the point. There was something fishy about Keith’s behavior, and Gabby didn’t have the time to entertain surround details. She wanted answers.

  “What do you stand to benefit when I leave this place? Are you sure you aren’t just spooking me out so that you can get to inherit this space when I am gone? Did I beat you up to the bidding or something of that sort?”

  “I am afraid I do not follow. What do you think I have to gain by spooking you?”

  “I think I just asked that question. And instead of asking me the same question you should be focusing on giving me a straight answer.”

  The two figures stood still in the cold eyeballing each other for a very awkward moment. It seemed as though Keith was looking for an appropriate answer while Gabby was looking to ask him another question, but not before she got the answer that she was looking for at that moment.

  “I have nothing to gain by you leaving this premises. I was just being a good neighbor and was trying to tell you something that not many people from this place would risk. Tell me something, did you do a background research on this place before moving in?”

  “Of course I did. But that isn’t the question I asked you.”

  Of course, Gabby didn’t carry out a background check, but that was the last thing she was going to admit since she figured it would give Keith leverage and make him in charge of the inquest. And that wasn’t going to happen. Gabby also figured that this might go on for a long time, and she decided to cut to the chase and get this
over and done with it. And so for the second time, she cut to the chase.

  “Did you see my cat?”

  Keith bust out laughing. And Gabby clearly couldn’t hide her anger. At that point, all she was hoping for was for Keith to say something that could give her the mandate to arrest him and take him into custody. It was clear that Keith didn’t know whom he was messing with and if he kept doing it, he was going to find out in the hardest way possible. Gabby could feel her spine freezing from the anger and her entire body shaking. She clenched her fat fingers into a ball of fist and waited for the annoying Keith to do one more thing to annoy her.

  But Keith, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care less what this kickass police officer could do to him as long as he had put his point across. Needless to say, Keith, it was about time she took him seriously. Gabby hadn’t done a damn thing ever since their little chat and Keith felt as though they were running out of time.

  “No Gabby, I haven’t seen your cat.”