The Ghosts of Landover Mystery Series Box Set

by Etta Faire

  Myles and Annette went off together to the middle of the dance floor, and Gloria danced by herself for a while, snapping her fingers awkwardly before she backed her way off to the outskirts of the crowd again. I listened in on some of the conversations going on around us, while trying to recognize people.

  “We might have to sell the lake house,” a girl in loose-fitting jeans cuffed at the bottom said. “My parents are so mad they could kill.”

  “They’re not the only ones,” another girl replied.

  I tried to hear more from the girls by our side, but Gloria began talking to me in her head. “If I were back in California, I would just have grabbed one of my friends and made her dance with me, you know? But I didn’t know anyone here.” Her voice was sad. This was a tough memory for her.

  “I get it,” I said. “I’ve spent a fair share of my life being an outsider too.”

  After straightening out her polka-dotted blouse, she stomped over to the punch bowl and grabbed a dixie cup from the stack in front of it, plunking the ladle into the bowl. A group of about four girls passed the table, stopping long enough to give Gloria the curled-lip once-over like she was trash then laughed to themselves and left.

  “She always does this. Brings me someplace where I don’t know anyone, and I don’t fit in, and then she goes off with some boy. I know she only brings me along so her mom’ll let her go.”

  Some of the punch spilled onto the plastic tablecloth. She didn’t even notice.

  A short, thin brunette in a pale blue dress and thick horn-rimmed glasses leaned into her. I knew it was Mrs. Nebitt even before I read the name tag on her conservative cardigan that said, “Deborah.”

  “I suggest you drink from the other punch bowl,” Mrs. Nebitt said, motioning with her head to a bowl of orange liquid at the other end of the table. “This one has added ingredients.” She winked.

  Gloria had already filled her cup with punch. She smiled at the woman and downed the punch in front of her. “Thanks for the warning,” she said then filled the cup up again.

  Next to the punch bowl was a tip jar with a sign that read, “Help build Landover’s first public library.”

  Mrs. Nebitt waddled off to warn someone else about the punch, and Gloria looked around. “I think that girl thought I was 14 or something. I’m 18. I’m old enough to drink in this state. Not in California, but in Wisconsin, sure. Or, at least, that’s what Nettie told me.” She took a sip of what smelled like Pine-Sol and tasted even worse. It burned our throat a little. “It’s awful, though.”

  She walked over to a group of boys dressed in jeans and t-shirts, stacking dixie cups on a table off to the side of the dance floor. The pyramid was taller than the kids, and a chubby boy stood on a chair with a cup in his shaky hand, reaching up to the top.

  “Ain’t that a bite. He’s gonna make it,” one of the bystander’s said.

  “Nope, never,” another kid replied.

  “You’re going down, fat boy,” said the first. Everyone laughed. The chubby boy’s face grew red and his hand even shakier.

  “You can do it,” Gloria told the boy with the cup in his hand.

  He looked down, saw who it was who had talked to him, and curled his lip at her. “Get lost, out-of-towner,” he said. “Troll.”

  The other boys laughed their approval.

  She went back to talking to me, her voice lower now. “I didn’t know any of these kids, and when you look like Kathy from Father Knows Best instead of Marilyn Monroe, nobody wants to know you too much either. At least the boys didn’t.”

  She bumped the table on purpose when she moved past the group and all the cups fell, clattering over the table and onto the floor. A hush fell over the group and they turned to Gloria.

  “Oh, you’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’, huh?” the thick-necked teenage boy said, eyebrows furrowed. He jumped down from his chair with a loud thud and strutted after her. Gloria took off, fast-walking through the crowd, pushing by kids. He grabbed her arm, yanking her back. “Hey. What’s your problem?” he said.

  She pulled away. Looking only at her feet, she walked quickly toward one of the side doors.

  He threw his cup at her but missed, and she turned to face him. I got a good look at his face that time. Clyde Bowman.

  “Why don’t you go home? Out-of-towner,” he yelled. “Loser.”

  She pushed open the door to the outside, not really trying to connect with anyone anymore, her heart racing. “I just wanted to go home,” she said. All along the outside of the dance hall kids were making out, leaning up against the wooden frame of the building. Mildred rushed around from couple to couple, trying to break them up while smelling their drinks, her puffy pink dress bobbing from side to side.

  “If you don’t stop, you’ll have to leave,” she kept saying to each couple.

  They treated her like a substitute teacher. There, but without any real authority. She could only just beg them to be good.

  Gloria's nose stuffed up and her eyes welled into tears. A couple kids who were hanging out throwing rocks into a nearby tree laughed and pointed at her. She pretended not to notice, and ran out to the lake to sit by the water’s edge. She curled herself into a ball and rocked back and forth.

  A gentle breeze blew through her hair, bringing up the smells of a barbecue somewhere. “I couldn’t leave her,” she explained to me. “I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t fit in like she did, but I couldn’t leave her.”

  For a few minutes, I just sat there with her. I didn’t ask her to fast forward through these tough moments. I just calmly felt her tears sting her cheeks and her breath quicken as I listened to the thoughts running through her head at the time, thoughts of doing herself in, thoughts that she wouldn’t fit in at college either and that she’d never find a boyfriend or a career.

  Normal thoughts that just about every teenager feels, but when you’re going through them, you’re convinced you’re the only one in the world who feels that way.

  Footsteps came behind her. “Hey. You okay?”

  She turned. It was Clyde again. She sniffed back a tear. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Her shoulders shook, and she didn’t at all seem fine. “I’m leaving. Don’t worry.”

  He sat down next to her. “I’m sorry… you know, for back there and everything. I wasn’t going to make that stack anyway. You actually saved me the embarrassment of messing it up myself.”

  She nodded. “Thanks.”

  “What’s your name? You’re one of the girls from California, huh?”

  “Gloria,” she said.

  “I’m Tony,” he said, lying. The piece of shit. I knew where this was going.

  He put his sweaty thick arm around her and I thought I was going to hurl. He smelled like he used Velveeta as cologne. And I tried to get Gloria's memory to slap his face, but I had no control over the way things were going to go tonight. I shuddered thinking about the possibilities.

  Gloria sobbed even harder, and he pulled her into him with his mouth open and his eyes closed. His thick tongue touched her mouth, my mouth, just as she turned at the last second and bolted up. Thank God. Leaving him sitting in the dirt, she ran back over to the party.

  He didn’t go after her. “Like I wanted you anyway, troll,” he said. “I heard the ugly friend was always the easiest.”

  “That was the closest I got to fitting in that night,’ she said to me.

  “That was a little too close if you ask me. There are some places in life you do not want to fit in.”

  She laughed.

  I went on. “He was lying about his name too. That’s Clyde Bowman back there.”

  “When you’re an out-of-towner, boys think they can get away with a lot.”

  Nettie rushed up to us on her way out the door. “I just kissed the cutest boy ever,” she said, twirling a strand of her hair around a fingertip.

  “Congrats,” Gloria replied, sarcastically. “The boy from the dance floor?”

  “Oh no, that boy was a real dud,” she r
eplied. “But he helped me find the other one. The one from before. I kissed him in a closet. Can you believe it? I never do that.”

  Gloria talked to me in her head. “She always did that.”

  Nettie went on. “And while we were, you know, getting to know each other in the closet, which I still can’t believe I did, the door swung open and one of the chaperones walked in on us. I just about died, right there. Died.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t die,” Gloria said.

  “It was that weird college girl who was going around trying to warn everyone about the punch, like anyone cared. When she opened that door, she just started yelling. Man, the girl went bananas. I think she was upset that Freddie was drunk. Like he was the only one drunk.” She sighed. “I was just telling her to mind her own business when Freddie puked.”

  The girls walked along the lake as they talked. “Anyway, punch-girl and the other chaperones are breaking up the party now. I think because of the puke.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” Gloria said. “I just want to go home, anyway. It’s late and I’m tired. Maybe you’ll meet that boy again sometime. We’re still here a few more days.”

  Nettie didn’t seem to hear a word Gloria said. She grabbed her hand and swung it wildly as they walked. The night air chilled Gloria’s cheek, and it finally felt like she could breathe again. Nettie hadn’t even noticed that Gloria's eyes were swollen from crying. She just went on and on about what a magical night this had been. She was sure this boy, once he sobered up, was going to be madly in love with her. She needed to know more about him. She only knew he was a recent grad like them, and he was one of the richest boys on the lake. She said it was like a page out of Cinderella.

  I could hear Mildred’s loud gravelly voice above everyone else’s. “Thanks for coming. But you heard Debbie and Horace, dance is over. Out! Scram!”

  Kids groaned and meandered out of the dance hall, making their way along the lake and the parking lot, getting into their cars or their boats to go home. Little Richard stopped playing and the sounds of engines replaced Tutti Frutti, echoing through the night.

  “Come on,” Nettie said, grabbing Gloria by the arm and pulling her into a nearby bush. “It’s one of those nights you never want to end. You know, the kind where you feel pretty and loved and like the whole world is hanging on your every word. Don’t you just adore those nights? Like you could do anything or be anyone. Nothing can stop you on a night like this.”

  Gloria bit her lip, allowing herself to be pulled into the bushes.

  When Gloria spoke to me again, her voice was very weak, defeated almost. “I should’ve told her the truth. I’d never known a night like the one she was describing. I never felt pretty or loved. I felt like Nettie Jerome’s frog cousin. That’s the way I lived, and that’s the way I died too.”

  The branches surrounding our face smelled thick and earthy as we peeked through them. Three boys staggered out from the dance hall arm and arm toward a very large boat docked at the country club; the two boys on the outer sides seemed to be holding up the one in the middle, almost dragging him.

  “What happened to Freddie?” a man on the yacht yelled out into the night. “Is he drunk? You have got to be kidding me. I told Ernst to make sure that didn’t happen.”

  The older man continued yelling as the boys dragged their friend onboard. “His dad’s not gonna like this one. Let me have a quick word with these so-called chaperones.”

  “Come on,” Nettie said when the older man had gone off to talk to someone at the party and the kids had made their way onboard. She tugged Gloria out of the bushes and over to the boat. “They’re gonna be jazzed to have us at their party.”

  Gloria ran along with her cousin. “This is a bad idea, Nettie. This doesn’t seem like a party. That man is angry.”

  “Stop it,” Nettie said, pulling hard on Gloria's arm, pain shot all the way to our shoulder. “You’re being a bore again. You promised me you’d stop doing that. Besides, that’s the boy I kissed. He’ll vouch for us. You watch.”

  Chapter 8

  Outsiders

  It was dark and hot, and Nettie kept elbowing me in the chin every time she turned to peek out of the small closet we were hiding in. Gloria had been forced to squat at an awkward angle to get the door even remotely closed. It smelled like pine needles and stale beef jerky and when someone came into the room and sneezed, Gloria’s nose tickled too.

  After sneaking onboard, Nettie had motioned for Gloria to go down to the lower level while everyone was still boarding on top. There were two bedrooms. They checked both, picked the larger of the two, and then found the largest closet there, which wasn’t very large.

  But it must’ve been a pretty good hiding spot. People had come into the room three times so far, and no one ever mentioned seeing a crazy blonde peeking out of the closet.

  “What’re we gonna do?” Gloria asked when the bedroom went silent again.

  “Same as I told you before. When it sounds like the party’s in full swing, we’ll pop up to the deck and join in. They won’t even know we’re not supposed to be here. You know how it is with parties. Who knows how anyone got there or who’s officially invited?”

  “This isn’t a party,” Gloria said. “This is a private get-together.”

  The voices were back, again. Someone was in the room. Sweat trickled down Gloria’s temple.

  “Okay, in about 15 minutes, we’ll start the music,” a man said.

  “Got it,” a kid answered.

  “Grab the bags and beer from the cabinet and let’s start this party.”

  They left again.

  “Did you hear that? Beer… and a party,” Nettie whispered. “They’re probably just driving far enough out so homeowners won’t hear them. It’s late.”

  A few minutes later, as soon as they heard Jerry Lee Lewis blaring from the speakers on the main deck, Nettie pushed open the door and motioned for Gloria to follow her out. “Come on,” she said, under her breath. She opened her purse and popped out a compact. Looking at herself in the tiny mirror, she ran a finger under an eyelid. “What is with you today?” She swiped her face with the puff and pouted on some lipstick.

  “My mom’s gonna worry about me. That’s all,” Gloria said, straightening out the lining of her skirt.

  “My mom too.” Nettie rolled her eyes. “But let’s worry about moms later, and stop acting like moms now, okay, mom?” She playfully elbowed Gloria, handing her the lipstick and her compact. Gloria reluctantly put some makeup on.

  “And fix your hair too,” she snapped.

  Nettie inspected Gloria’s face when she’d finished. She pushed Gloria’s cute brunette bob this way and that, finger-combing it. “I think you’re a doll,” she said, making Gloria’s heart race.

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “I’ve always thought it. You’re definitely the cute one, and you don’t even need a dye job.”

  When the girls were done primping, Nettie pulled Gloria up the narrow staircase that led to the deck with Gloria shaking her head no the whole way.

  “Just be cool for once in your life,” Nettie said. “Talk to people. Don’t be a...”

  “I’ll try not to be a wet rag,” Gloria said before Nettie could say it.

  “You’re not a wet rag, okay?” She adjusted her bra and opened the door to the deck. “I’m sorry I said that before. Let’s go have fun.”

  But as soon as Gloria saw what was going on upstairs, her stomach flopped and her heart sank into her throat.

  We could only see their backs as they faced the lake and reached over the edge of the boat, laughing and talking. I tried to count the people there, check their clothing against the people I’d seen at the party, but it was dark and I couldn’t tell anything for sure. I heard a large splash over the side while Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On played in the background, which was followed by whoops and laughter. “Holy crap. That sunk fast,” somebody yelled as they reached over the side of the boat. />
  Someone else was in the middle of pouring two beer cans into the water then threw the empty cans in with it.

  “This is a pretty weird party, Net,” Gloria whispered.

  “I’ve been to weirder,” Nettie replied, adjusting her dress and sashaying forward. Gloria backed away, eyeing the life preserver on the wall by the stairs, already thinking about jumping. Something didn’t seem right.

  “Getting the fish drunk so you can take advantage of them?” Nettie teased as she strutted across the boat. She stopped at the group. “Remember me?”

  “Oh shit,” one of the boys said when he turned around and saw Nettie. The older man, who had been leaning over the side of the boat, turned around to see what was going on. His pale face got three shades paler in the light of the boat and the moon. He chucked the beer bottle he was holding into the lake and charged full speed at Nettie. She fell hard against the boat deck, her head hit the side of the metal rail on her way down.

  “Ohmygosh, ohmygosh,” one of the boys said.

  The one I knew was Myles pointed at Gloria, who was still standing by the stairs. “There’s another one,” he shouted to his friends and charged at her. Gloria screamed and turned. She tugged the life preserver off the wall, but her hands fumbled and wouldn’t work right. Myles yanked it from her grasp and smacked her hard across the face with it. Pain shot through my jaw and down my neck as I felt everything Gloria had felt that night. Punch after punch landed on our nose and eyes, each one felt more numb than the last, less painful as it went on. I fell to the floor of the boat and crawled along the planks, begging for my life. “We didn’t see anything,” Gloria said, her voice muffled. “We don’t know who you are. We won’t tell. We don’t even know what’s going on here.” I tasted iron as she talked. She was bleeding a lot.

  My eyes had swollen shut, and I couldn’t see who was doing what anymore. But the boys were all screaming now.

  “Shut-up,” an older man hissed through what sounded like gritted teeth. “Just everyone shut up and calm down.” He hoisted me over his shoulder with ease as I had little resistance left in me now. Wind shot over my wounds, the pain almost a numb constant throbbing. “They won’t survive.”