Dinner was always an adventure in the Fenton household. The challenge being to find a dish with somewhat less ham in it. Danny was carefully separating the ham from his his potatoes when a gust of cold air seemed to blow through the kitchen turning Danny's breath into a faint mist. His Ghost Sense.
Danny quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed. His father was frozen in his seat, a forkfull of ham suspended between plate and mouth. Almost nothing stopped him from enjoying his supper but he was staring at the TV not at Danny. His mother, too was staring at the TV. His sister knew about the Ghost Sense so it didn't matter if she saw it. Danny turned to look at the TV.
A reporter was standing in front of an old brick building whose front wall had collapsed. Apparently it had housed an old recording company, which Danny found interesting only because he didn't recall Amity Park having an active music scene. Fire Fighters on the scene attributed the explosion to a gas leak.
"That brings back memories," Danny's father said with a sigh once the news report was over. 'Groove Town Records' You don't hear much about them these days but in their time they were one jumping record company."
"When was that?" Jazz, asked. Danny waited for her to add, "During the Jurassic?" but his sister was largely lacking a sarcastic bone in her body.
"Back in the 80's mostly. They got their start in the mid-70s with Disco Fever but branched out into heavy metal and punk rock. They had quite a stable of hit-makers - - The Hallelujah Sisters, Queen Obediah, Temptress, Gloria Penia..."
"Sounds like a lot of chick bands. Did they ever have guy groups?" Danny asked.
Jack Fenton thought for a moment. "Maddie?" he asked when he came up blank.
"Groove Town Records was famous for being a female friendly recording studio," she said. "All the other labels were mostly after guys with long hair. Groove Town signed woman with longer hair."
"Like Patty and the Powercats," Danny's father said with an unlikely dreamy quality in his voice. "Oh, they were so adorable with their little cat ears and tails..."
"Jack, dear, Patty and the Powercats were an early punk band. They wore black jeans and army boots. You're thinking on that cartoon band on TV." Danny was surprised by the terse tone his mother used. He glanced towards his sister to see if she had noticed but she was keeping her eyes studiously on her plate.
"Oh, right. I like the ones on TV better. They were so sex- Well, anyway... Tattoos! They were first to sport a lot of tattoos. Especially Patty. Patty Melt, I think her name was..."
"That was just her stage name," Maddie corrected crisply. "Her real name was something like Sybil O'Shea."
"Patty, Sybil, whatever her name was, I remember her now. Man, she was hot. I had posters of her in my bedroom. Right next to my Farrah Fawcet and Rachel Welch posters.
"Of course," Danny mother said disapprovingly.
"Oh, come one, Maddie, I was Danny's age at the time. All boys like to have posters of sexy woman on their walls. That was long before I met you. You know I've never looked at another woman since."
She smiled forgivingly, "that's true."
"So what happened to Patty and the Powercats?" Danny asked.
"It's the same old story," her father replied. "Patty, the lead singer, got too full of herself. Angered all the other band members, so they split. Groove Town Records was never the same afterwards."
"You forgot all the fraud, embezzlement, lying, cheating, general malfeasance Patty uncovered when she demanded an audit after the band broke up," Maddie corrected. "It was quite a scandal at the time. The owner, Colonel Greenbriar went to prison for twenty years, I believe. That's what killed the label."
"Greenbriar..." Jack mused. "He wasn't a real colonel. Not even a Kentucky Colonel. He just called himself that because he admired the guy who found Elvis Presley."
"And Patty Melt?" Jazz asked. "Did she ever get all her money?"
"It was a sad case," Jack said. "She never got her money, spent all she had on lawsuits. Also, I think she had a drug habit. They all did back then. In any case, one day she jumped from Amity Park's tallest building. They said she played one of her signature guitar riffs all the way down. She went out the way she started, I guess."
"Gross." Jazz said and Danny had to agree with her. A suicide and a ghost sense alert; that couldn't be good. He would have to investigate.
"May I be excused?" he asked. "I promised Tucker I'd be over to check out the new video game he got."
His mother looked to his father to see if he had any objections. "Well, OK," she said, "but only after you and Jazz clear up after supper. And remember: it's a school night so curfew is 9 pm."
"Aw, Mom. It's after 6 already. I won't get to Tucker's before I have to come home."
Maddie frowned. She hated contradicting herself when it came to family discipline. "Do you have any tests tomorrow? Any reports that are coming up?"
"No."
"Then I guess we can give you till 9:30."
"Thanks, Mom."
Danny sat back down and fidgeted a few minutes until his father pushed back his chair with a sigh and announced that he couldn't eat another bite. Considering how much he's already put away Danny always wondered how he knew when to quit. But it meant supper was over and Danny and Jazz both hopped up to begin clearing the table.
"We'll be in the lab," their mother announced as their parents went out of dinning room door.
Danny and Jazz worked silently for a moment, then Jazz asked, "Going to investigate? I saw your breath."
"Do you think mom and dad noticed?" Danny asked, always worried that his parents might find out that he was part-ghost.
"Nah, they were focused on the TV."
"Good. Say, Jazz, I'll owe you a big favor if you let me go now. Would you?"
"Danny, if I had a dollar for every time you said that...my college fund would be paid up."
"I thought you were in line to get a full ride on scholarships?"
"I am, but you know what I mean. You promise to do something for me but you never do. So, sorry, you're helping with the dishes!"
Danny sighed, then started clearing the dining table while Jazz filled the sink with hot water. They worked in silence for a bit then because Danny couldn't take the silence, asked, "How are things going with your ghost therapy group?"
"You mean People for the Ethical Treatment of Ectoplasmic Manifestations? Going well, I guess. I had a break-through last week with one of our newer members. A little fellow named Oscar who had spent the last ten years haunting his wife. He blamed her for making his life so miserable but I was able to show him that he was partially responsible because he never spoke up and complained about her behavior. Classic case of Passive-Aggression. It was so sweet. You could see the realization spreading across his face then, Poof! He was gone. Hopefully to a better place. In any case, he hasn't been back since."
"Good for him. One less ghost I have to chase. What about the others? Still butting heads with Ember? Have you gotten Lord Faultless Roy to stop saying out loud what he thinks of people's clothes?" He was scraping off the plates and putting them in the dish washer. When he was done he handed the last plate to Jazz, who washed the accumulated food into the garbage disposal then handed the plate back to Danny. He put it in the dish washer, added soap and turned it on. Jazz was washing the pots and pans. He grabbed a dish cloth and started drying as they came out of the suds.
"No," Jazz was saying. "And, Ember hasn't been around lately. We were talking about her need to have more power when she had so much power already. She got a bit snippety and hasn't come back."
"Snippety?"
"You know, when someone..."
"I know what snippety means. I just never thought of it applying to her. Rude, vulgar, scarcastic sure; but 'snippety?' no."
[I]
Danny called Sam and Tucker before leaving and they met downtown a block away from the destroyed building. They all were riding small white scooters. Danny already had his chained to a lamp-post.
Anyone growing up in a city knows that it is made up of many parts. There are bright, shiny new parts, older communities, bad communities and places where time and man have forgotten. The Groove Town Records building was in one of the latter locations. To the south was the cross-town expressway, to the east was Main Street, eight lane wide, dividing Amity Park into East and West sides. To the north stretched further blocks of aged, abandoned buildings. To the west stretched open fields where the buildings had been scrapped away in hopes of an Urban Renewal that never came. It was a depressing part of the city. The blown up building was a modest size structure four stories tall, old brick and covered to some extent by graffiti. The lack of extensive tagging suggested that even the taggers found this place too sad for their work. The street department have place barricades at either end of the block, in case the rest of the building decided to tumble into ruin, as if there was any traffic on that street that needed protection. Police tape had been strung from fire hydrant to lamp post to scrub tree growing through the sidewalk to the other end of the building but an actual guard over the disaster scene just scant hours after the explosion happened had been considered unnecessary.
Danny, Sam and Tucker walked across the street towards the building, ducked under the police tape and stopped on the sidewalk outside the building and studied the half open building. The street side face of the building lay at the foot of the building a pile of rubble. The interior of the four floors was open to the air and the three could see that the exposed rooms were filled with desks, chairs, filing cabinets almost as if the building was still in use.
"Didn't you say this place blew up?" Tucker asked.
"That's what the TV said," Danny told him.
"Weird. 'Cause you know an explosion is a force moving out so you'd expect a lot of these bricks to be scattered across the street, but they're just here in a pile."
"Maybe the street department swept up the street already," Danny suggested.
"That doesn't explain the bricks that are in the street," Sam snorted. "Tuck's right, there's more bricks inside the building that outside. It doesn't look like an explosion to me."
"And where's the scorching if this had been a gas-leak explosion," Tucker went on. "If you ask me, someone on tha outside was trying to blow this building down."
"That would explain my ghost sense going off when I heard the news, I guess. This wasn't an explosion, this was some ghost trying to cave in the building." Danny said.
"Why would a ghost just randomly try to demolish a building?" Sam, ever the practical one, wondered. "Do you think it's safe to go inside?"
Tucker snorted. "Hardly."
"They made buildings a lot stronger back then then they do today," Danny said. "But I have an idea. Take a hold of my hands and at the first sign of trouble I'll go intangible and fly us out of there. We'll be safe that way."
There was a flash of light and Danny Fenton had become Danny Phantom. Sam and Tucker took his outstretched hands and they glided into the ground floor of the building. Though the light was fading there was still plenty to see everything in the room. The front half of the ground floor was a large lobby filled with small clusters of tubular metal-framed chairs and couches surrounding small, low tables. Numerous magazines were scattered on the tables. Half way back was a large receptionist's desk, sweeping across the room like the bridge of the Enterprise. Broad, sweeping stairs were behind the receptionist leading up to the next floor. And an elevator bank were behind that. From the street they had seen that a loading dock and small warehouse had filled out the rest of the ground floor.
"What the?" Tucker said, letting go of Danny's hand and picking up a tabloid newspaper from one of the tables. "Rolling Stone?" He help up the newspaper so the others could see the masthead. "Since when was Rolling Stone a newspaper?" he wondered. Danny shrugged his shoulders then looked to see where Sam had got off to. Danny was feeling a bit exasperated that his plan to keep his friends safe was being ignored so quickly.
"Look at this!" Sam called from behind the receptionist's desk. Danny drifted over. Sam pointed to the clutter of paperclips, a stapler, coffee mug filled with ballpoint pens and scratch and memo pads. "It's like they just walked out the door one day and never came back," she said.
"Dad said something about the business being closed down because of some kind of embezzlement scandal. Maybe that's just what happened. One night the police arrested the founder, that Greenbriar guy, and there was nobody to open the store in the morning."
"Or no one wanted to come back," Sam suggested.
"Hey, look at this," Tucker said as he walked over to join Sam and Danny. He held up another ancient music industry magazine. It's Shirley Lamont, back when she was young...and skinny. Wow, she was quite a looker.
"Queen Obediah" Danny read the headline.
"Maybe back then but she records as Shirley Lamont today. My dad has all her records. She's good - if you like torch songs."
"Let's go up," Sam suggested and Danny took their hands and flew through the ceiling into the next floor.
This floor was a warren of small offices. There was a small reception area in front of the elevator bank with a hall leading off from one side of the building towards the front and looping around back to the elevator on the other side. Here, too, it looked liked people had just swept up their personal possessions and left everything else in place. Danny wondered if, when the police had come from Colonel Greenbrier the others had realized that the jig was up and had just melted away before they could be caught up in whatever trouble the Colonel had gotten into.
They went up another floor.
This was series of recording studies and practice rooms. The recording studios had large glass windows from the hallway looking into the control room which in turn had large windows looking into the recording chamber. The walls of the recording rooms looked like they were actually lined with old cardboard egg crates. Tucker let go of Danny's hand and pushed through the closed and rusty door to touch the wall. The egg crate, or whatever it was, disintegrated under his touch. Tuker came back out shaking his head. He paused to look at the sound board in the control room, moving slides and turning switches. He was shaking his head when he got back to Danny and Sam.
"I can't believe they just walked off and left all that equipment in place," he said. "There must be tens of thousands of dollar worth of gear there. Even if the company had gone into bankrupt I would'a thought they'd sell off the recording equipment to pay some of the costs. What a waste."
The fourth and final floor was a bit different from the other floors. Where they all had the drab look of a moderately successful business the fourth floor had a glitzy, albeit dust covered elegance. Fashionable 70s era furniture was scattered around a large reception area. A wet bar was built into one corner. Large windows looked out on the north side of the room. The south side was paneled with several doors leading into rooms. Sam popped one door open then sprang back with a gasp.
"What's up?" Danny asked, gliding around to hover next to her. He looked through the still open door. The floor ended a couple feet beyond. The rest of the room was piled up on the ground far, far below. "Looks like a conference room," Danny told her. He took her hand and flew her back to the middle of the room. "We'd better stay away from that side of the building," Danny told Tucker. "The floor ends kind of abruptly. No telling how stable it is."
"What are those things on the wall?" Tucker asked, walking up to where Danny had just told him not to go. "Golden Record awards! And people just left them here?"
Sam joined him while Danny rolled his eyes. "Fakes," She observed. "That's not real wood," she said tapping the imitation wood plastic molding, "and I bet the record is plastic, too."
"Guys..." Danny called, trying to wave them away from the structurally unsafe part of the room.
"Wow," Tucker was saying. "Who are these people? Queen Obedieh...oh, That's Shirley Lamont. I forgot all about her disco days. She's a much better Gospel singer. Temptress? I wonder who that was. She has quite a string of Gold Records apparently."
"One's missing," Sam said. Tucker and Danny both turned to look at the empty spot on the way. It was mid-way between two conference doors which suggested that it had been only the latest Golden Record to be won, before the company's collapse. There was a light colored square on the wall indicating that something had been there for a long time. And removed only recently.
"You think who ever blew up this building came back and took this plaque first?" Tucker wondered.
"I think that's a forgone conclusion," Sam said. "If only we knew who it was?"
"Shouldn't be too hard to find out. Just Google for Groove Town Records and Gold Records and see which was the last one given." Danny said.
"I'm not getting a signal here," Tucker said sadly, looking at his smartphone. "Too much iron in the building,"
"We'll figure it out later," Danny said. "Want to see what in the room at the front of the buiding? I'm guessing that it's Colonel Greenbriar's office.
They were crossing the large, open room when a glowing form materialized in front of them. It resolved into a chubby ghost wearing bib overalls, a checked shirt and a beret. "Take Care!" It said in loud, hollow tones. "I am the Ball Ghost, defender of all things round and bouncy. Heed My warning..."
"Hi, Rollo," Danny called up to the ghost.
"Oh, hi, Danny," the ghost returned in a chipper voice quite unlike that he had used a moment before.
"What are you doing here?" Danny asked.
"Let me finish, OK?" The ghost's face wrinkled up in concentration. "Take Care," he muttered, counting it off on his fingers. "Ball Ghost," another finger was counted.
"Can we just take it as give then you're made you speech?" Danny asked.
Rollo seemed to puff up indignantly. "Unlike you halfs, we real ghosts are creatures of form and patterns. We must complete our rituals!"
"Rollo, what are you doing here?" Danny asked. There was a little crispness in his voice.
"You know him?" Tucker interrupted.
"Yeah, he goes to my sister's ghost therapy class."
"Your sister is doing therapy on ghosts?" Sam echoed.
"It's her new project, People for the Ethical Treatment of Ectoplasmic Manifestations."
"Pet'em?" Sam looked at him dubiously.
"Yeah. You didn't know about it? I thought for sure she'd hit you up to join?" Danny told her.
"Not a word. So how many people does she have signed up for this encounter group?"
"None actually, it's all ghosts."
"Danny," Tucker had been impatiently waiting for a break. "Doesn't this guy look kind of familiar?"
"Don't say anything," Danny warned.
"Huh? I mean he looks just like the Box Ghost..."
"I am not the Box Ghost! I am not his brother, cousin, uncle or nephew!" Rollo shouted. "I am a wholly original and unique ghost! I protect those things which are the most perfect in form, the round and bouncing things. I am the Ball Ghost! I am no ones imitation!"
"He's a little cranky about that point." Danny explained.
Sam was rubbing her ears. "...and a little loud," she griped. "But what is he protecting around here. Rather a lack of balls or anything else."
"I protect those!" Rollo shouted, pointing with pudgy ectoplasmic fingers towards the wall of Golden Records.
"They are round," Tucker agreed. "if nothing else."
"Rollo, Rollo," Danny broke in, "what are you doing here?"
"I'm haunting this..." the chubby ghost abruptly stopped talking, placing his hands over his mouth as if wishing to call back his words."
"You're haunting. What did I tell the group the other week about haunting...?"
Rollo looked guiltily away but eventually brought his hang-dog head back to face Danny. "You said we couldn't haunt any place and more."
"Right. I said you ghosts were free to come and go to this plane as long as you don't do any haunting."
"She said it would be OK?"
"Who said it would be OK?"
If it were possible for a ghost to look terrified, Rollo, the roly-poly Ball ghost, did. "I didn't say anything."
"Who is 'she'?' Danny insister. "Who said you could haunt this building?"
Rollo suddenly threw a ball of ectoplam at Danny and streaked into the sky. Danny warded off the ball with a quickly erected wall of ectoplasm, then rocketed off into the sky after the rapidly diappearing Ball Ghost.
"Danny?" Tucker asked the vacant air. "Now what?" he asked Sam.
"I suggest we wait for Danny over here," she waved towards the side of the building away from the open front of the street, "and try not to shake the building too much..."