by JL Bryan
The theater’s newspaper advertisements decreased in size over the years. Full-page splashes in the 1950s featuring happy families in convertibles shrank down to postage-stamp remnants by the 1990s, barely large enough to list that week’s double feature in the newspaper’s smallest font. There were no more ads nor any mention of the drive-in after 1999.
“The rise and fall,” I said. “Do you think Benny and Callie’s plan to revive the theater could actually work?”
“Who knows?” Stacey said. “It’s super risky, but it has a better chance if ghosts aren’t actively chasing away the guests. That’s great for spooky season in October, but there’s eleven other months to think about. Any chance I can get back to researching the murdered movie star?”
“You think you can solve the murder of Adaire Fontaine?” I asked. We were keeping our voices low, but a couple of elderly librarians were within earshot, and they both looked over with interest at the late motive star’s name.
“If I can solve it, it’ll surely happen by being the hundred thousandth person to read this book about her,” Stacey said.
“I realize you’re just trying to get out of the old-newspaper job,” I said. “But okay. I’ll look over these.”
While Stacey dug into her Adaire Fontaine biography, I found my way to a lengthy article about the drive-in’s original grand opening in 1955. It had been a two-page feature, with plenty of pictures, headlined Savannah’s Latest and Greatest New Attraction. The theater’s large ads in the papers had likely encouraged the gushing positive coverage.
“The drive-in is unarguably the way of the future,” explained Stanley Preston, enterprising owner of the majestic new theater on the highway between Savannah and Pembroke, in a location convenient to all. “Soon the indoor film theater will be a bygone relic. Americans love to spend their leisure hours in the familiar comfort of their own automobiles, free to chat and to smoke without disrupting other theater-goers. The drive-in is the nearest thing to hanging a movie screen in one’s own home. While the adults relax without a care, children can run off and play on the picnic lawn, and teen-agers may enjoy social visits with school chums.”
“It’ll be fun while it lasts, Stan,” I murmured under my breath.
A photograph showed Stan and family outside the monument sign with its giant arrow, its marquee advertising a Chance Chadwick film, The Chicago Hustle, along with Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy.
I’d seen the family before, in pictures in the farmhouse.
Stan Preston, the drive-in’s creator and our suspected cigar-smoking ghost, once again wore a suit and fedora, with a mustache that covered much of his pockmarked lower face. His wife Nancy stood by him in a flashy red dress, her hair elaborately curled, smiling for the press. The two elementary-age stepchildren were also finely dressed, looking scared and overwhelmed.
More photographs showed the drive-in packed with rows of cars. Kids ran wild on the lawn. A family ate fried chicken and hot dogs at a picnic table by the concession stand. It certainly looked like the popular and wholesome place to be, at least if you didn’t think too much about what goes into making hot dogs.
In contrast to the newspaper’s huge splash about the drive-in’s grand opening, its shuttering decades later barely rated a back page mention, a single paragraph wedged into a slot between a plumber’s advertisement and a mattress sale, with the unceremonious headline Old Drive-In Closes.
The Nite-Lite Drive-in, a remnant of the 1950s, has screened its last show. “People just stopped coming,” said the owner, Stan Preston, calling it quits after decades of declining attendance. “I guess I ought to retire, anyhow.”
That was all.
Preston had died years later, in his nineties. His obituary was short, as if there had been nobody left to say anything about him. He’d been survived by a lone stepdaughter, as we knew.
Before that, Stanley’s stepson Zebadiah Williams had died, age sixty-one, out in Louisiana. Prior to that, Stanley’s wife Nancy had died in her early seventies, preceding her husband by a couple of decades. I wasn’t clear about her cause of death.
Stanley had run the theater from its creation down to the bitter end, when he was living there alone.
My phone rang—Leah, the stepdaughter, calling me back. I hurried out of the library as I answered, drawing a scowl from a balding man with thick glasses reading The Economist, who clearly didn’t care for me talking on the phone in the library.
“I understand you called me about the Nite-Lite,” Leah told me. Her voice was gravelly and faint. “But I sold it. I can’t tell you anything new about it.”
“I’m researching the history of the place, ma’am,” I said, standing on the library’s front steps. “I understand your family built it.”
“It was Stan’s doing, mostly. My stepfather. It was never as glamorous as he thought it would be, though. What’s this about, again?”
“I’m researching the history of local drive-ins for an article I’m writing,” I said, which was a total lie, unless you wanted to count my final report to the client as an article, a news report for an exclusive audience of two. But telling people you’re researching ghosts risks derailing the conversation quickly and permanently.
I finally convinced her to discuss the drive-in theater with me, and once she got started, she had plenty to say.
“A line of cars came up from Savannah every night. In those days, everybody went to the drive-in all the time. Hardly anybody had TV. The drive-in was almost like church, except our congregation met at night, under the stars.”
“How did your family end up building a drive-in on your farm?” I asked.
“My stepfather had a love of the theater and the movies. That was what he cared about the most in life, I think.”
“What kind of person was he?”
She hesitated before answering. “I don’t know why you’d need this for a newspaper article.”
“It’s more of a deeper academic look,” I said. “For a small history journal. I doubt many people will ever read it.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. If you really want to know, my mother was charmed by him. She would have given him the moon from the sky if he’d asked for it, or died trying. Stanley had a way of casting a spell. He wasn’t handsome, but he had a little bit of charm and glossy talk. He’d flatter you if he wanted something from you. It appealed to some people.”
“When did you first meet him?”
“My mother brought him home for supper,” Leah said. “Grandma Ruby—my mother’s mother—she hated him right then, day one. Said he was nothing like my daddy, my mother’s first husband.”
“Were your parents divorced?”
“Oh, no, Daddy died when I was little. Tractor turned over on him.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I only have one real memory of Daddy. He was showing me newborn goats out in the barn. Daddy was a serious man, Grandma Ruby always said. Pious and hardworking. She hated how Stanley wasn’t.”
“She thought Stanley wasn’t serious?”
“Don’t think ill of Grandma, because she was right. Stanley came in during my mother’s wild streak,” Leah said. “I don’t wish to speak ill of my mother, either, of course. But my mother married my daddy when she was just nineteen, mostly arranged by Grandma Ruby.”
“Arranged?” I asked.
“Grandma Ruby may have been sickly in body, but she had a will of iron, and as long as she breathed, she was a force to be reckoned with. Now, the Williams family, Daddy’s people, had a nice house and a lot of land, and I think maybe that’s why Grandma Ruby wanted Momma to marry Daddy. She moved in right along with Momma and lived there the rest of her life.”
“So, your grandmother lived with you and your parents when you were growing up?”
“Oh, yes. Grandma Ruby had the back bedroom. She’d rap her cane on the floor when she wanted someone to come see her, to take orders from her, or go fetch her something. She just about ruled the house
with that cane.”
As I jotted furiously in my notepad, I thought of the back bedroom in the farmhouse, with all the circular dents in the floor by the bed. “At what point did your mother end up with Stanley Preston?”
“After Daddy died, Momma’s wild streak showed up. She’d leave us with Grandma Ruby while she went to parties and nightclubs in Savannah.
Sometimes she didn’t come home for days. Grandma Ruby hollered at her for going into town and carrying on, but Momma didn’t pay her no mind. As a widow, Momma felt like a free woman who could do as she pleased, probably for the first time in her life.”
“That’s when she met Stanley?”
“Yes, she fell in with what you’d call the Bohemian crowd—musicians, theater people, artists, professors, people like that.
Stanley was a local stage actor, and not a successful one. He didn’t have a steady job nor any land. Grandma Ruby opposed the marriage. She opposed Stanley’s drive-in idea, too.”
“But Stanley built the theater anyway?”
“Grandma Ruby was real sick by then, up coughing half the night. When she passed, Stanley acted on his drive-in plans. He sold all the animals, and I never altogether forgave him for that. My sweet goats. He said customers wouldn’t like the smell. He sold off everything to raise money for the drive-in, even some land we’d had for generations. Daddy would spin in his grave about that, I’m sure. Grandma Ruby, too.”
“Going back to Stanley’s acting career,” I said. “This may sound random, but I’m just following up on something. Do you know if Stanley ever met the actor Chance Chadwick?”
“I doubt it. He enjoyed Chance Chadwick movies and was always eager to screen them. He grew the Chance Chadwick mustache when that was fashionable and kept it long after it wasn’t. It helped cover his chickenpox scars, which he would try so hard to hide under makeup. The bigger the mustache, the less makeup he needed. He smoked Chance Chadwick’s brand of cigars, too.”
“Is there any chance Stanley knew Adaire Fontaine from his acting days?”
Leah laughed. “He may have said he did, but he told a lot of lies, said he used to know a lot of famous people. He was the sort of man who could invent his own version of the truth, and start believing it if it was entertaining enough, if it drew him enough attention.”
“Adaire did get her start in Savannah’s theater district.”
“I can’t say my stepfather knew any real movie stars. I think he looked up at that big screen and saw what he wished he could be. Heroic, handsome, confident. Instead of a failed actor stuck out here in the boonie-sticks.”
“You think he was unhappy?”
“He could be happy. When everything was going his way. And he could rage when it didn’t. But as long as he was working, seeing himself as the local movie king, he felt like he was somebody. As the drive-in got less popular in later days, it became harder to keep up that image of himself.”
“Was he ever violent?”
“Sure. When we were young, he’d pop us. As we got older, he disappeared into his work. I could tell Momma felt abandoned by him. Eventually, he started living out in the screen tower and left Momma alone in the house. He never acted like he cared about anyone. My baby brother, Zeb, tried hard to buddy up to Stan, when he was still little—he missed Daddy so much, and after the wedding I think he misunderstood, and thought Stan would be kind and loving to us like Daddy used to—but Stanley never really took to him.
“Stanley did make us work at the drive-in. At first, I enjoyed it, because it was like all the kids came to my house to have fun. But I had to work there, serving hot dogs and sodas, dressed in these striped uniforms with bow ties. I’d be hot and sweaty, and I felt like all the girls from school were making fun of me. My brother got resentful, too, once he realized Stanley was never going to care about us.
“I went on to college and never looked back. I’d visit Momma in that house as it was crumbling around her, but she wouldn’t move. ‘This is where I was happiest,’ she always said. ‘When you and your brother were little, my little angels. That was the best part of my life.’ Of course, she was out dancing and partying a lot of that time. Anyway, Momma never wanted to leave, even though Stanley stayed out at the screen tower and she was pretty much living alone in the house. But she said it was like living with her mother and her children, even if we were all just memories.”
“Would you say your mother and stepfather grew apart over the years?”
“Stanley cared more about the movies and less about her. I sometimes wonder if he ever cared for her at all, or if he just saw her as a naive young widow with a lot of land. I never visited the place again after Momma died. By the time I heard Stanley died, I hadn’t spoken to him in years. I was surprised he left the place to me, really, but he just didn’t have anybody else. I didn’t want the empty wreck of a drive-in. Who would? I always assumed somebody would buy it in order to demolish it and put up a gas station or a Wal-Mart.”
“The family who bought it is trying to bring it back to life,” I said.
“Well, bless them, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. The drive-in era is long past.”
“Did your brother stay in touch with your mother and stepfather?”
“He moved off to Louisiana and hardly ever returned. I know Momma wished he’d visited some. He’d call her once or twice a year. And he didn’t care about Stanley any more than I did. I last saw him at my mother’s funeral, oh, twenty years ago. He died nine or ten years after that.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” I took a deep breath and plunged in. “I have another question that might be kind of strange. Did anyone ever report unusual experiences at the drive-in?”
She laughed. “Unusual? Sure. Pretty much every weekend. Oh, goodness.”
“Anything that would have been considered paranormal?”
“Paranormal?” She repeated the word like it was foreign. “We did have Halloween nights. A Casper picture as the early show for the little ones, then a vampire or Frankenstein movie for the late show, when the littles were supposed to be asleep in their parents’ back seats.”
“Aside from Halloween promotions, did anyone ever report seeing strange things like ghostly figures or apparitions?”
“It almost sounds like you’re asking whether the farm was haunted.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A long pause on her end, and then, “I don’t appreciate having my leg pulled.”
“I’m not—”
“That farm was my Daddy’s pride and joy. It was in our family for generations. Stanley Preston wrecked it all, and now it’s an ugly ruin. If anybody haunts it, it must be Daddy, cursing my momma for marrying such a shiftless second husband. I do not care for these kinds of questions you’re asking. Do not call me again. Good day and God bless.” She hung up before I could say anything more.
Chapter Eight
“How’d it go?” Stacey stood beside me on the steps, holding her tablet and our folder of printouts from the newspaper microfilm. “And before you answer that, can we get some lunch?”
“I was planning to visit the Bryan County courthouse in Pembroke next,” I said, and Stacey sagged visibly.
“Property records?” she asked.
“I think we can delay that for now, though. Leah, Preston’s stepdaughter, told me it was in her father’s family for generations. She grew up there, working at the drive-in. She got offended when I asked if it was haunted. But also the question seemed to catch her off-guard. She didn’t react like a person who’d grown up having paranormal experiences there. Just bad memories. Stanley wasn’t the warmest stepfather.”
“Does that mean no property record research?” Stacey perked up. “Just straight to lunch?”
“Unless we discover signs of a haunting that precedes the twentieth century, going to the courthouse might be a waste of time.”
“But going to lunch is never a waste of time, so…” Stacey took my arm and steered me down the sidewalk.
�
��There’s some possible links between the creators of the drive-in and Adaire Fontaine, after all. Stan Preston was an actor for a while in Savannah, but his career never went anywhere. His wife Nancy, the widow who owned the land, liked to party with the theater crowd in Savannah. That’s how they met.”
“And Adaire was a major partygoer all her life.”
“We need to find out whether Stan knew Adaire or not,” I said. “We need a complete list of plays he was in, or any theater where he worked in any capacity. And hers. The list of his plays will probably be shorter but harder to find, because he was obscure.”
“Whoa,” Stacey said. “Maybe we really will solve the murder of Adaire Fontaine!”
“If you do, let me know,” said a random elderly man in a baseball cap, startling us. He was walking his schnauzer toward Forsyth Park. “My wife’s been trying to solve it for forty years.” He continued past us down the sidewalk, never breaking his stride, never glancing back to see our reaction, his schnauzer trotting dutifully alongside him.
“See?” Stacey said. “Everyone has heard of Adaire—”
“I get it.”
Over lunch at Bull Street Taco—my taco had red chile tempura cauliflower, hers had tuna, and she was finally mollified to be eating lunch—Stacey dished the dirt she’d been digging up about the late great Adaire Fontaine. “She may have been denied Oscar recognition more than once because of her wild behavior,” Stacey said. “A real party girl in the more restrained era of the 40s and 50s. There were so many rumors of scandals and affairs, it’s hard to know which ones were real.”
“Any connection to Chance Chadwick?” I asked. “Other than co-starring in that poker movie?”
“You mean Pocketful of Aces? Technically, that was a caper movie, because they were robbing the big boss while distracting him with a poker game—”