Chapter One
Dean
“Hey there, pardner?”
Dean Carlson turned from peering inside the storefront window and winced against the afternoon glare that greeted him.Tugging down the brim of hisStorm River Stateball cap, he squinted through the resulting shade to find a teenager glancing back over at him.“Who?Me?”
The teen frowned, glancing left and right around the deserted street beside them as mid-afternoon sunlight turned his pimply cheeks into a road map of adolescent angst.“You see anyone else around here, City Slicker?”
Dean did a little double take, struggling to make sure he’d heard the kid right.CitySlicker?City?Slicker?“I...”Dean stammered, peering down at his faded blue jeans, scruffy sneakers and nondescript powder blue t-shirt.He’d dressed so casually for the three-hour road trip down from Southern Tennessee that it made Dean wonder what “city,” exactly, the kid was referring to?“Did you ...just ...call me...”
“Anyway,” said the teen, drifting from inside the hardware store next door and inching onto the cobblestone pavers that lined the quaint little store fronts up and down the aptly named Lonely Street that ran through downtown Pistol Creek, Kentucky.“He ain’t there.”
“Who ain’t there?”Dean blurted, shaking his head after falling so quickly into countrified speak.“I mean, who?Isn’t?There?”he enunciated more formally, turning to face the portly teenager as he drifted closer on big, dime store black sneakers.
“Sully,” the teen said, wiping his hands on the corner of his bright redHandy Dan’s Hardwarework smock.“The fella you’re lookin’ for.”
Dean had known Pistol Creek was deep down in rural Kentucky, but he thought the townies from in and around Storm River, Tennessee had somehow helped him acclimate to their southern accents by now.They’d done little to prepare him for this teenage cracker jack and his slow, lazy, almost indecipherable drawl.
“You mean the guy who runsGrayson’s Ghost Tours?”
The teenager brightened.Squinting slightly at the crooked nametag on one of his smock straps, Dean saw that his name was, amazingly, “Jason.”Funny,he thought as he stood on the sidewalk squaring up against the slack-jawed storekeep.He looks more like a Jasper or Judd.“That’d be the one.”
“Well, the business hours on his website says he should be open until 5:00, so...”Ridiculously, as if to prove it, Dean tugged on the clearly locked door handle.Not surprisingly, he found that it was still locked.The way it had been ever since he’d first tried tugging on it a solid five minutes earlier.
“That’s during the summertime,” Jason drawled, literally smacking his broad, pimply forehead with his big, beefy hand, as if to indicate just how much of a “city slicker” Dean was.“Ain’t nobody booking ghost tours in the spring, buddy.”
Dean wasn’t sure if “buddy” was an upgrade from “City Slicker” or not, but somehow it sounded better to his ears.Progress?he wondered.“Well, I am, so ...maybe he’d make an exception in my case?”
Jason looked Dean up and down, swirling a toothpick around his mottled pink lips.When the surly teen took his sweet ass time forming a reply, Dean grunted, “I’m sorry, are you his booking agent or...”
Jason’s face erupted in a vaguely charming burst of laughter, so sincere it helped to shatter the imposing presence he was clearly so eager to cultivate.“His what now, mister?”
“Booking agent,” Dean huffed, slowly and enunciating each syllable, just in case.“You know, for his ghost tours?That apparently only run in the summertime, even though his website says nothing of the sort.”
“More like a concerned citizen,” Jason insisted, nodding at the way Dean’s hand still lingered on the locked door handle.“You know, come to see what all the ruckus was about as you been fiddlin’ with that there door for the last hour or so.”
“Hardly,” Dean huffed, nodding at the faded yellow pickup truck parked crookedly in one of the mostly empty parking spots along Lonely Street.Even with Jason’s swirling toothpick sucking and open mouth breathing, Dean could still hear the engine ticking from his long haul down the interstate to Pistol Creek.“I only just now got into town.”
“And promptly just started yanking on Sully’s door?”
“Sully?”
“Sully Grayson,” Jason explained patiently, as if he was in no hurry to return to Handy Dan’s and mix paint or stock shovels or grab another toothpick.“The fella you’re trying to book a ghost tour from, in the off season, when he’s clearly closed.”
“Okay, fine, yes we’ve established all that but...”Dean caught his breath, standing upright and counting to ten—well, at leastseven—before adding in a much softer tone, “Is there any way?You might possibly?Tell me where to find him?”
“Who?Sully?”
Dean bit his tongue almost clean off and nodded, struggling not to let his usually expressive face reveal just how pissed off he was at the moment.“Yes,” he sighed.“Obviously.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say so, pardner?”Jason drawled, nodding toward the corner saloon across the street.“He’ll be in there pouring beers.Obviously.”
Dean noted the subtle tone of sarcasm and smiled in reply.Maybe the kid wasn’t such a thickheaded, slow-witted, knuckle dragging hayseed after all.“What?There?”Dean nodded towardPappy’s Pub, a low-key, old-school, brick façade, neon beer signs in the window kind of bar.
“Sure, why not?”Jason looked offended, somehow.
“No reason, I just ...does he do that often?Tend bar, I mean?”
