Scatman Dues (Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures Book 6) Read online

  “Paulides only takes a case after thorough conventional investigations have ruled out every possible explanation, including murder, suicide, natural disaster, and animal attacks. Drex, these people disappeared without leaving a single trace. Not a shoe, a cellphone, a body part, nothing.”

  “Oh.” I slumped back into the booth. “So what does that leave?”

  “Nothing we know currently,” Grayson said. “Paulides proposes that the only answers remaining must be unconventional ones.”

  I locked eyes with Grayson. “Like these electromagnetic fluctuations you’re talking about?”

  “Yes. Their called EMFs, for short.”

  “So, tell me,” I said. “How’s this EMF theory work?”

  Grayson opened his mouth. I grabbed his arm. “The non-geekified version, please.”

  Grayson nodded. “To start, EMFs themselves aren’t responsible for the disappearances. They’re just a remnant—a fingerprint, if you will—left behind by an Einstein-Rosen Bridge.”

  I stopped slurping my Dr Pepper. “I said the non-geek version.”

  Grayson drummed his fingers on the table. “I’ll try. How about this? Many physicists agree with the premise that strong fluctuations in electromagnetic fields may create areas where conventional physics breaks down, thus allowing for unexplained phenomena to occur.”

  “So where there’s fluctuations, there’s funky stuff going on?”

  Grayson sighed. “Yes.”

  I shrugged. “Like what?”

  “Bends in time and space. Wormholes, if you will.”

  My eyebrow met my hairline. “I thought you were kidding. Are you saying that glowing microwave thing we saw out there last night really is a wormhole? And that people are getting sucked into it?”

  “In a nutshell, yes.”

  “Grayson, that’s insane!”

  Grayson sighed and shook his head. “The thing about smart people is they seem like crazy people to dumb people.”

  My face puckered. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Grayson locked eyes with me. “Tell it to Steven Hawking. He’s the one who said it. A direct quote, I might add.”

  Crap. I couldn’t argue with Hawking, for crying out loud. But I didn’t have to be happy about it. “Fine,” I said, grinding my molars. “How would this wormhole thing suck people up?”

  “It’s elegantly simple,” Grayson said. “The wormhole itself is merely a portal where time is passing differently in one spot versus another. Those who enter it simply step into another time or dimension.”

  My jaw dropped open. “That’s impossible.”

  Grayson shrugged. “Your disbelief is irrelevant, Drex. The theory that time and space can be folded to meet in other dimensions of time and space stands up to scientific scrutiny.”

  I stared sullenly at Grayson. I still didn’t get what he was yammering about. If that made me stupid, so be it. But it also made me as surly as a gal with no prom date.

  “Whatever,” I grumbled.

  “Look,” Grayson said. “Take this taco shell, for instance.” He picked up a soft flour tortilla. “The distance from this edge to the other is what? Five inches?”

  I shrugged nonchalantly. “More or less.”

  “Okay. But if I fold it in half, like this, those same edges are now touching. There’s no space between them. Right?”

  I perked up a little. “Yeah.”

  “That’s kind of how a portal works, Drex. You bend time and space, creating a shortcut from one point to another. That’s an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, or wormhole.”

  I sat up. “So, what happens when the tortilla—I mean the wormhole—bends back?”

  Grayson’s cheek dimpled. “It takes with it whatever’s crossed to the other side.”

  My nose crinkled. “I’d be lying to say I totally get it, Grayson. But let’s say it’s possible. Is there any way to tell when it’s gonna happen? You know, before it’s too late?”

  “As far as I know, there’s no way to tell when a wormhole is going to open up. But you can tell if there’s been one there in the past.”

  “Not especially helpful to avoid getting sucked into one,” I said sourly. “But okay, how do you tell one was there?”

  “By looking for distortions in the area’s electromagnetic field,” Grayson said. “When a bend in time and space occurs, it leaves a distortion in the EMF—that’s the electromagnetic fingerprint I mentioned earlier.”

  I chewed my bottom lip. “So, how do we find these EMF wormhole fingerprints?”

  Grayson grinned. “With an electromagnetic field detector. I just happen to have one handy.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a rectangular, black device that looked a lot like the bug sweeper I’d found under the floorboard.

  “You guys ready for the check?” the waitress called out from across the restaurant.

  “Uh ... sure,” I called back.

  “Pay the woman,” Grayson said, patting his pockets. “I don’t have any cash on me.”

  “What?” I grumbled. “You forget your wallet, but you remember to bring that stupid gizmo. Unbelievable!”

  Grayson shrugged. “Consider it more proof that coming to this restaurant wasn’t part of a premeditated plan.”

  “Yeah, right.” I reached for my purse. “The theory’s still out on that one, mister.”

  I pulled out a couple of twenties while Grayson fiddled with the knobs on his shiny EMF-detector toy.

  “How’s that thing work?” I asked.

  Grayson’s green eyes lit up like a kid’s at Christmas. “See this needle gauge? It moves if it detects changes in either the electric or magnetic fields. It also lets out an alarm tone.”

  “Huh.” I glanced up and spotted Earl heading our way from the men’s restroom. “It doesn’t happen to detect deadly gas, too, does it?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  By the time our waitress Thelma came back with my change, the sun was breaking through the clouds, shining beams of golden light on the greasy front window of Juanita’s Casa del Tacos.

  “Sun’s out. Y’all heading over to the park?” Thelma asked, pocketing the eight dollars I’d left her for a tip.

  Earl snorted. “Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s off to work we go!”

  I groaned and shot Thelma an apologetic grimace. “I’m sure you haven’t heard that one before.”

  “Oh, come on,” Earl said. “You were thinkin’ it.”

  “Maybe,” I said, shoving Earl toward the edge of the bench. “But at least I had the decency not to say it.”

  Thelma shot us a pained smile. “No harm done. Y’all come back now, you hear?”

  “We will,” I said absently.

  I stood and followed Earl and Grayson toward the door. Thelma grabbed my arm.

  “Wait,” she said, her face marred with concern. “I meant that literally. Y’all come back.”

  I blanched. “What do you mean?”

  Thelma glanced around nervously, then spoke in a whisper.

  “Like I tried to tell you before. It could be dangerous. This past Saturday, my cousin Wade left his truck here in the parking lot and walked over to the Hi-Ho for a stroll, like he always did after lunch on the weekends. But this time, he never came back. I haven’t heard from him since.” Thelma shook her head. “It’s been four days, now. Wade hasn’t been home. He hasn’t picked up his phone. Something’s wrong. It’s just not like him to do that.”

  “Did you contact the police?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Thelma said. “Lot of good it did. They said there was no evidence of foul play, so they couldn’t do anything. They told me to mind my own business—that a grown man can do what he wants.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said. “I promise we’ll be careful.”

  “Could you keep an eye out for Wade while you’re over there?” Thelma asked, following me out the door. “That’s his Dodge over there. The blue one by that big old monster truck.”

  “Sure,” I
said, the tears in Thelma’s eyes playing my heartstrings. “What’s he look like?”

  “Kind of like him,” she said, pointing over at Earl. “Tall, dark and—”

  “Hairy?” I quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

  Thelma smiled weakly. “Yeah. If it helps, Wade was partial to walking the Whirlwind Trail.”

  “Okay. How can we find it?”

  “There’s a small sign for the trailhead off the main road,” Thelma said. “Keep an eye out. It’s easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, watching Earl kick a pinecone across the shell parking lot. “Kind of like my cousin’s charm.”

  EARL MANEUVERED BESSIE back and forth down Turkey Creek Road twice, but we couldn’t spot the place where the RV had gotten stuck in the muck last night. Heavy rain had washed away all traces.

  There were also no GPS signals pinging from the cellphone Garth had stuffed in Jimmy’s gym bag. That meant either Garth’s phone battery had died, or Jimmy had moved out of wifi range.

  I looked up from the phone app. “Nothing pinging on the radar, either. What do we do now?”

  “Well, we’re here,” Grayson said. “We might as well take a look around for Jimmy and Wade. We have a known route for Wade. Whirlwind Trail. Let’s start there. His disappearance is too close geographically and time wise not to be related somehow to whatever’s going on with Jimmy.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Earl shrugged. “Works for me.”

  We spotted the sign for the trailhead on the second pass. Earl pulled off onto the gravel shoulder and up to the marker for Whirlwind Trail.

  “I’ll lead the way,” Grayson said. You two keep close. Don’t get separated, whatever you do.”

  “Why not?” I asked, annoyed that I’d have to stay within earshot of Earl.

  “I forgot to mention it,” Grayson said, climbing down out of the monster truck. “But that was one of the things all of Paulides’ missing person cases have in common.”

  My nose crinkled. “What is?”

  “Each person who vanished had either been hiking alone, or they’d gotten separated from their group. Some disappeared without a trace just a couple hundred yards down the trail from their companions.”

  I gulped. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Seriously.”

  As I climbed down out of the truck, Grayson clicked a button on the EMF detector. It whirred to life.

  “In fact, Drex,” Grayson said, “some vanished almost before their companions’ eyes.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Earl asked, walking around the front of the truck to meet us.

  Grayson shot me a glance. “Explain it to him while I calibrate the detector. Make it quick.”

  My jaw dropped.

  Oh, sure. Explain the time-space continuum to a guy whose best friend is a two-headed turtle. This should only take a sec.

  Earl had been in the can when Grayson explained to me how fluctuations in electromagnetic fields could represent the “fingerprints” of past wormholes and other disturbances in time and space.

  Grayson had dumbed it down for me with a taco shell. Now I had to dumb it down another hundred notches for Earl.

  God help me.

  “Uh ... Earl?” I said, snapping my finger to get his attention. He’d picked up a handful of mud and was rubbing the black muck between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Yeah?” he said, wiping the black smear on the thigh of his camo hunting pants.

  I sighed.

  I guess I should be glad he didn’t eat it.

  “Listen,” I said. “Grayson thinks there may be a hole in time out there in the woods that people are falling into.”

  Earl’s eyes narrowed. I could almost hear the rusty cogs in his brain crunching.

  “You mean like in Back to the Future?” he asked, then looked up at the sky like a turkey in the rain.

  “Yes,” I said. “Exactly like that. Only there’s no DeLorean required. You just walk into it. That’s why we need to stick close to each other. You know. So we don’t end up sucked up into space.”

  Earl surprised me by grinning. “I think that’d be kind a cool, Bobbie.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “You wouldn’t like it.”

  Earl frowned. “Why not?”

  “They don’t have fried chicken in space.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Earl and I hiked alongside each other for about a half mile up and down the undulating slopes of Whirlwind Trail. Accustomed to Florida’s usually flat terrain, I was having a hard time keeping pace a few yards behind Grayson, who was in the lead, waiving his EMF detector in front of him like some space cadet in a low-budget sci-fi flick.

  The only thing missing was the red shirt.

  Back at the truck, Grayson had told us there was safety in numbers. I begged to disagree. As far as I was concerned, the fewer people who witnessed this ridiculous parade of idiocy, the better my odds were of not dying of embarrassment.

  Still, a niggling little part of me worried Grayson was right. What if there really was a wormhole out there, vacuuming people up like some ravenous space Hoover?

  I hedged my bet and tugged Earl along as my human shield—just in case.

  Whirlwind Trail wound its way through patches of palmetto and pine flatland, interspersed with small hills covered mainly in stunted, gnarled scrub oaks. It was obvious the land had, in the not-too-distant past, undergone an upheaval of apocalyptic proportions. The terrain was hilly. And, with the exception of a scant handful of places, Florida simply didn’t have hills.

  From what I’d gathered in a Google search, the hills and valleys covering Edward Medard State Park were manmade—a byproduct of decades of phosphate mining by the American Cyanamid Company. The digging had ended in the late 1960s. The company had donated the land to the county back in 1969, and the area had been revegetated with trees and shrubs.

  From what I could see, since then Mother Nature had been hard at work trying to heal the damage. She was doing her level-best to make the land, well, level again. Rains like the one that fell earlier in the day were slowly eroding the man-made hills, exposing the roots of the towering oaks that had sprouted atop them decades prior.

  Like the child’s fable of the little pigs who built their houses of straw, the unfortunate trees that chose to sprout on the hilltops could do nothing but watch and wait as the soil they’d sunk their roots into washed out from underneath them.

  At the top of a particularly high hill, I stopped to take in the view. The grey-white sand comprising the mound was still damp from the rain, and left fairly detailed impressions of Grayson’s boot treads. Other than a few bird footprints, no other marks marred the cleanly washed trail.

  I sighed. This expedition wasn’t turning into the clue-finding bonanza I’d hoped for. But on the bright side, I didn’t have to keep such a keen eye on Earl. After all, he couldn’t destroy evidence that didn’t exist, right?

  Ringing the base of nearly every sandy hill we descended, dark, muddy puddles burbled like miniature moats. Leaves and twigs washed in by the heavy downpour floated on the blackish-brown surfaces of the backwash pools, making them resemble ponds of brewing tea.

  About an hour into our journey, nothing out of the ordinary had yet to happen. Grayson’s gizmo hadn’t gone off. And Earl had remained unusually silent and thoughtful, making me begin to wonder if we’d stumbled into another dimension without me noticing.

  I shook my head, fighting against the enticing calm of the tranquil woods. If that detector thing of Grayson’s did eventually go off, I needed to remain vigilant—my Glock at the ready. I planned to shoot that hyperactive Hoover in the nads before it could sweep us up in its cosmic vacuum hose. But then again, would that work?

  “What’s Grayson doing, Bobbie?” Earl asked, sending my crazy train of thoughts colliding off their tracks.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, glancing up from where I’d been k
neeling, staring at my reflection in a puddle as black as slate.

  Earl nodded to his left. I followed his gaze to see Grayson about twenty feet away, waving his EMF detector around the edges of a pond.

  “Think he found that space hole?” Earl asked.

  “I dunno,” I said. “Let’s go find out.”

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” I asked Grayson.

  He looked over at us and stopped waving his EMF detector over a pond about the size of a swimming pool. He adjusted his fedora, then rubbed his chin.

  “Intriguing,” he said as we approached.

  I could see the water in the pond wasn’t black, but an odd, crystal blue. It almost appeared to be glowing. At the bottom of the crystalline water, massive clumps of creepy, greenish-blue slime lurked, making me think of crocodiles lying in wait along the Nile for their prey.

  A shiver ran up my spine. “Is that the portal?” I asked.

  Grayson shook his head. “No.”

  I frowned. “Then why is it glowing?”

  “Phosphorous can give the water that appearance.”

  “Huh,” Earl grunted. “What about that swamp cabbage crap growin’ down there in the bottom of it?”

  “Blue-green algae,” Grayson said. “A byproduct of excessive phosphate contamination.”

  “Phosphate,” I said. “Makes sense. Isn’t it an ingredient in fertilizer?”

  “And bombs,” Grayson said. “But not portals, apparently. I’m not getting any fluctuations in electric or magnetic readings. The pond may look odd, but it’s perfectly normal.”

  “Hey!” Earl called out. “What about this over here, Mr. G.?”

  “Earl!” I yelled. “You’re not supposed to go—”

  “Don’t move!” Grayson yelled.

  Earl froze like a scarecrow hanging on the North Pole. “Am I gonna die?” he asked, barely moving his lips.

  “Yes,” Grayson said as we sprinted over to the small clearing Earl had wandered into.

  “How long have I got?” Earl asked, remaining stiff as a board.

  “Who knows?” Grayson said. “We’re all going to die someday, Earl. But I don’t think today is your day.”