by Etta Faire
“Nope. I mean I wasn’t exactly the kind of person others might describe as virtuous. I had a lot of things in my life that someone could’ve seen or found out about. A lot of gambling. A lot of cheating. But I don’t remember any huge bets I didn’t pay off or anything like that.”
“It’s so hard when everyone wants you dead,” Jackson said, making Feldman scowl at him again. They stared at each other for almost a full minute.
“Said a man who had a very similar problem in life.” I reminded my ex, interrupting their staring contest. “But we do know it was impossible for anyone else to get into the speakeasy or leave it because of the snowstorm.”
“It had piled up around the doors and windows. Yeah. We were stuck.”
“Then we know all I have to do is follow that horse. Whoever planted the horse around the bar that night is the killer. Do you know about what time your murder happened?”
He ran a hand over his long chin. “It’s hard to say. Everyone had gone to bed. That much I know. Maybe two or three in the morning.”
“I should go into the channeling at the beginning of the party,” I said.
Feldman smiled.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Jackson interrupted. He had moved so he was a safe distance from our guest, hovering closer to the living room, right by Rex. The chicken. He could dish out the insults but he never wanted to deal with the repercussions. “I think that’s exactly what you want,” he continued. “Carly combining energies with you for that long… You’d be a very powerful ghost if that happened.”
My heart pounded in my chest. I never knew that’s what was happening during a channeling. I knew I was combining energy, and I knew I felt drained afterwards, but I never thought I was somehow giving the ghosts more power when we did it.
Feldman couldn’t stop grinning. “Carly’s a very strong medium. She can handle herself. She doesn’t need a babysitter.” He moved in closer to Jackson, and my ex backed away.
Jackson turned to me. “This sounds like almost a full day of channeling. You can barely handle a couple of hours.”
“I’ll take breaks with this one,” I said. “I’ll set a timer on my phone and I’ll only channel for half an hour at a time.”
I pointed my finger at my still-grinning houseguest. “And you’re right. I’m pretty sure I can handle a half an hour. But that’s it for tonight.”
Jackson’s face dropped. “You are not serious. Tonight? I cannot believe you are considering it at all, but so soon?” He disappeared, allowing his voice to fade out with him. “You gamble. You lose. I suppose.”
Chapter 10
Channeling with a cheater
Jackson appeared again in front of the sofa I was trying to relax on. “For the record, I would just like to state this is a bad idea, and I am completely against it.”
“Duly noted, professor,” I said. “I’ll probably hear my phone’s timer, but just shake me out of the channeling in half an hour if I don’t.”
“I most certainly will not,” he said. “You are on your own. I want no part of this.”
“It’s okay, pal. She’s not gonna want to stop after half an hour, anyway,” Feldman replied, winking at me. His teeth were almost a golden shade of yellow as he smiled. “Most women can’t get enough.”
“I’ll keep an eye on things,” Jackson said, weakly.
Of all the channelings I’d done over the last eight months or so, this one made my skin crawl the most.
“Let’s just get this over with,” I said. I set my timer, put my phone on the coffee table, then let my head rest against the pillows, trying to get my mind to go blank.
It took me a couple of minutes to calm my breathing down enough for Feldman to enter. He kept telling me to relax, which made relaxing that much harder, kind of like when Jimmy Swinson and I fooled around under the bleachers during a football game my freshman year of high school. It was my first time making out and people were stomping their feet above us. There was no relaxing then, no matter how many times he said to do it. There was no relaxing now.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about Jimmy Swinson.
Still, it took me by surprise. His ghost entered my energy faster than I expected. And an instant chill fell over my entire body, like when you drink a Slurpee too fast and your brain feels numb and achy, only this was over my entire body. And this Slurpee was creepy.
I needed to stay professional, I reminded myself, no matter how much I couldn’t stand the ghost I was channeling with. This was my job. I needed to do it. I concentrated on the sounds and smells around me. It was cold. My hands ached with a stinging, frozen feeling. A strong wind smacked my face and made my nose run. Laughter surrounded me and a bright light permeated my closed eyelids.
“Okay, Feld, now you take the photograph and I’ll be in it.”
I heard the sounds of footsteps crunching through snow. Somehow, I knew they were my own. Snowflakes fell along my face and head. I opened my eyes. I was standing in front of a large, box-like, black camera on a stand.
“And hurry up, will ya?” said a curly-haired blonde in an opened mink coat with a short dress and thick legs. I recognized her as Blanche, the woman Doc brought, who wasn’t his wife. “The girls and I are freezing. You try wearing a dress in the snow.”
“Who’s to say we haven’t?” One of the guys joked.
“It’s warm inside,” Feldman said.
“No kidding,” she replied. “I wouldn’t know.”
There they were. The same people from the photo, scrunched together and smiling in front of the pharmacy, snow falling around them, piling up. Women in long coats, opened to show their short skirts, cute short haircuts made cuter by the flapper hats pressing against their hairlines. The men were in suits, of all things. The kind of ties, collared shirts, and vests that would’ve seemed too stuffy and pretentious for such a casual weekend now.
Feldman clicked the photo. Then we all crunched back through the snow inside, laughing at nothing but our own daring foolishness to be taking a photo in a snowstorm. One of the brunettes wrapped her arm into Feldman’s. “It’s good to see your old friends again,” she said as we walked around toward the basement steps.
“Yeah, seeing ‘em’s great. Hanging out with them’s a whole other story,” he replied.
The smell of alcohol took over my senses as soon as we stepped through the basement door, a strong smell that I wasn’t expecting, almost medicinal, like the kind of alcohol that goes into thick cold syrups, and it seemed to ooze from the cracks in the wood, that and the tobacco smoke.
The basement seemed larger than it did at Chez Louie. There were rooms off to the side that I never noticed before. A kitchen, maybe. The place was bright with hanging lights that separated the bar from the lounge area that was decorated in white tufted white couches and small wooden tables. At least now I knew what the lumps probably were sitting under drop cloths in Mr. Peters’s basement. I couldn’t get over the bar, though. It looked amazing compared to its rundown condition today. With its polished wood and glasses hanging down decoratively, it almost glistened.
“Let’s have a toast to the Bear Bird,” the dark-haired man I knew was Doc said. He quickly hustled behind the bar and grabbed nine shot glasses from the cabinet underneath, lining them up along the counter while he puffed on his pipe. He looked even older in person, his hair graying around the temples. He handed the woman in the mink the first glass and they stared at each other for a second before she turned away.
“To our good friend, Feldman Winehouse, the most appropriate host for a most inappropriate weekend,” Doc said, and everyone laughed, downing their shots. It burned my throat a little going down but Feldman didn’t cough or gag at all. It was water to him.
“Thank you, one and all, for showing up to what I hope will turn into a tradition. An annual weekend of debauchery,” he said, turning to Doc.
Doc looked down at his shot glass.
Feldman spoke to me in his head again.
“Look at them all. My brother, he’s sure laughing, huh? Look at him with his girlfriend. I should never have sold the place for him. He didn’t even care. All I did for that jerk, and he never even said thanks.”
I could tell channeling was going to be hard for Feldman. He was very angry and bitter, making me feel almost sorry for the guy. It’s one thing to remember something as a distant memory tucked away in the dark corners of your mind that you pull out and rewrite every once and a while. And it’s an entirely different thing altogether to relive that day exactly how it happened, breath by breath, moment by moment, knowing one of the people in the room was just about to slit your throat.
“Keep an open mind, Feldman.” I reminded him. “Terrance might not have been the one.”
He did look guilty, though. They all did. A radio played softly in the background and Terrance’s girlfriend, Flo, turned up the sexy jazz song. Slowly, she took her long wool coat off to the beat of the music, laying it seductively over Terrance’s shoulders. Her dress was short and flouncy. The other men turned their heads when her coat came off. She was easily the cutest one there. Early 20s, short blonde hair, long lashes.
“Although the weather outside is frightful, thank you, Feldman, for keeping this joint delightful,” a man said.
Feldman turned toward the voice. It was the guy I knew was the sheriff. Richie Somebody. He sat at the bar, cleaning his fingernails with the blade of a long silver pocket knife. His initials were on the handle.
“I like to make sure the furnace stays on so the skirts stay short,” Feldman replied. “You should know that, Richie.”
Feldman’s girlfriend, Drew, smiled awkwardly at them both, then at the girl who had just taken off her coat. She took hers off too, but nobody’s head turned. I could tell by how quickly and meekly she’d done it, though, that turning heads was far from her intention. She was just as cute as Flo, but her dress was more of a modest length, a little longer and looser than the younger woman’s, and her face was more serious and less makeup-perfect. “Who wants a tour of the darkest corners here?” she asked. “Chance? Blanche? Anyone?”
I really wanted Feldman to raise his hand and take her up on the offer. I knew there was no way, though. He already knew his own darkest corners.
I recognized most of the people from the photo and my notes. But I was pretty sure I was noticing things Feldman probably hadn’t. The man known as Chance was more than just the dumb pigeon Doc had brought. I could tell by the way the women all stared at him that he was the most interesting man here. Like Flo, he was also in his early 20’s with broad shoulders, a chiseled chin, and dark, thick hair.
Chance went on the tour with Feldman’s girlfriend and so did Blanche, Richie, and Boyd. Bobby looked eerily like his distant relative. Same curly hair and the kind of bushy dark eyebrows that looked like they might spin a chrysalis on his forehead. I would never have guessed Feldman went to high school with the man, though. Feldman was about 40, and this guy looked much younger.
While the group left for their tour with Feldman’s girlfriend, Flo grabbed Terrance’s hand. “Come dance with me before you jokers go off and play your cards,” she said, kissing him lightly on his lips, making Doc puff harder on his pipe.
Terrance laid their coats on a stool and allowed his girlfriend to pull him closer to the radio. Flo easily swayed into dance moves, and Terry awkwardly snapped his fingers and tried to move along.
Flo caught Feldman’s eye, staring a second longer than I expected her to. Then, she winked at us.
“You’re kidding. You and Flo?” I asked.
“Sure, a little. Once. Who can blame me?”
“Probably your brother and your girlfriend, that’s who,” I said. “And your girlfriend seems very nice.” I was mentally making notes of all the people this man had cheated, the people who might have wanted to see him under the table later.
“Everybody does it. You have someone you care about and you get a little careless on the side.”
Flo danced with Terrance but glanced over at Feldman more than a few times to make sure he was watching her. He was.
I continued. “That’s why you think he killed you. You were sleeping with his girlfriend.”
“It’s not like they were gettin’ married. C’mon. But yeah, he might’ve had some reasons.”
“So, your brother had a motive and your girlfriend too. Doc could’ve found out you were cheating him at business. Anyone else have a reason to do you in?”
“Everybody did,” he said, casually. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “Never said your work was going to be easy.”
Chapter 11
Half an Hour
While his brother danced, Feldman went behind the bar with the doctor. Doc had shoe-polish black hair with only odd streaks of gray around the temples, and his face was a little ashen for a man in the health profession. He pulled down a couple beer glasses from an overhead rack and filled one from the beer tap. He gestured toward the dance floor while handing the beer to Feldman. “How’d your brother get someone like that, anyway? She deserves better.”
“You mean like a doctor?”
He poured himself a glass too. His smile was large and yellow. “Yes, of course that’s what I meant. Or a businessman like yourself.”
“I’m happy with what’s-her-face,” Feldman replied, sipping his beer. “Besides, you know who that is, right? She’s a Donovan right there.”
“No kidding. So, she’s slumming then?”
Feldman laughed. “Except most people in the slum are bright enough not to take such a high-risk offer. Not my brother, though.”
The Donovans had the same reputation now. Rich and powerful.
“And to think, in high school, they used to say Terry was the bright one in your family.”
“Before the war, maybe he was. He’s changed now. He’s drinking me out of a very lucrative business, running with the wrong crowd, acting like there’s no tomorrow. I’m only selling for him.”
“When you gonna tell everyone,” Doc asked, sipping around the foam, scrunching his face up like it was awful.
“Probably tomorrow evening, at the end of the weekend. No sense putting a damper on things now.”
“You’re talking about the bar?” I asked Feldman in our head as Drew walked out of what was probably the kitchen followed by her tour group. “So no one knew you were selling the bar until this weekend? That’s kind of interesting. Don’t you think?”
“I kind of suspected Terry would go crazy when he found out, and I was right.”
Drew’s voice interrupted him. It was low and soft, even though she was obviously trying to project it. She was standing in the hallway with her tour group. “The cook here is famous for his chicken,” she announced to the whole club. No one listened. Most were watching the dance floor where Flo and Terrance had hands all over each other.
I went back to talking to Feldman in our collective head. “Why did Terry get upset? I thought you said you sold this bar for him.”
“I did, but it was also for me. I was a terrible businessman when it came to this bar. I couldn’t refuse my own brother, drinking on the house. My own friend, Richie the sheriff over there, taking a cut of my business so we didn’t get raided. Oh yeah, and he also drank on the house. And my friend, Doc, wanting more of a cut for his prescriptions. I had way too many cuts already. I wanted out.”
Drew was still talking like she had everyone’s full attention. “I… I had the cook make some chicken for us. If anyone’s interested. I’m heating it up.”
The place went to the smells of chicken warming in the oven, and my stomach rumbled. I’d forgotten to eat before the channeling again.
Feldman’s eyes scanned over to Chance. I could tell he didn’t trust the man. I couldn’t stop staring whenever Feldman’s viewpoint gave me the opportunity. Chance had that “quarterback look.” He definitely stood out in this crowd.
Stop looking, Carly. You love Justin.
Feldman la
ughed at me in his head. I forgot he could hear a lot of my thoughts. “Ms. Perfect isn’t all that perfect either, eh?”
“At least I know my boyfriend’s name,” I shot back, mocking him. “I’m fine with what’s-her-face.”
“I knew her name,” he said in a faraway voice. “I was just playing it up for the guys. I should’ve been better to that kid. I miss her, actually. Look at her, taking our guests around. She was sweet.”
I took a second to replay my own thoughts from earlier: Had I really just said I loved Justin? Did I really love him? Did that make me desperate to love him so early? We’d only been dating a few months.
“Yes,” Feldman said. “That is pretty desperate.”
“Focus on your own memories, please,” I snapped, kicking myself for getting lost in personal thoughts and inviting a stranger in to comment. I focused my attention back on the memory in front of me.
The woman Doc had brought with him had her mink coat draped across her arm now, her hat off. She fluffed up her blonde curls and leaned into Chance, laughing at something the quarterback said while they stood in the doorway with Drew. As if feeling Doc’s glance, she looked up at him and blew him a kiss before the tour moved on. He took a long sip off his beer and picked his pipe back out of the golden naked-lady ashtray he’d set it in on the bar. “I need a new girlfriend.”
“Is that what your wife told you this morning when you left for your weekend of debauchery?” Feldman asked.
Doc flicked a match and lit his pipe again, puffing out smoke that circled Feldman’s head. “In the end, there’s only one story that matters in life. The one you tell your wife. Speaking of which, Pamela is dying to know how you liked your incredibly thoughtful birthday present. She had it sent special.”