by Etta Faire
Sylvia paused and looked at the ceiling. She was definitely a spirit who couldn’t remember too much about her past life. Or, was selective about the things she said out loud.
After what felt like a full minute, she finally began. “I was getting my master’s degree in accounting at LU. So, I usually wouldn’t make it to work until the middle of the afternoon. But I’m pretty sure both Rebecca and I were there. Maybe.”
I nodded, scribbling everything into my notebook.
“I would take over for my mom when I got into work so she could go home and take a break. There were three skating sessions on Fridays. One in the afternoon that ended at 5:30. One in the evening that went from seven to nine thirty. And an after-hours one. On Fridays when I had the Executive Club meetings, I only stayed for the afternoon session, maybe a little of the evening one to get it going. But never the late-night one. Bruce liked that one, anyway. You know, drinking and partying.”
“Who was Bruce?”
“My brother.”
“And he was there with you that night?”
“Yeah, but I left early and he stayed for the late-night session.”
I bit the end of my pen. I had no idea there was such a thing as a late-night drinking session at roller rinks. Who knew alcohol and wheels went together? “So on that day you first went to school. Then, the roller rink. Then, the executives club and finally, the drive-in?”
“That’s the way I remember it,” she said.
“Anything weird happen at school?”
She shook her head no, her hair didn’t shift around like a living human’s when she shook her head. It glimmered in the light of my living room, though. A little life left.
“I think we can skip both that and the roller rink. Nothing happened at either that I can remember,” she said.
“Maybe,” I replied. She seemed pretty eager to skip those, which made me eager to see them. “What about your brother? Tell me about him. He worked at the rink with you? Did you get along?”
Rex snored by my feet and I mindlessly patted his back as Sylvia went on talking about her brother and how he was kind of a good-for-nothing, the ne’er-do-well of the family.
Her voice was confident like a person much older than her years, yet it still had that telltale “youthful quality” to it that mostly showed up as a lilt in the undertones, giving away the fact she was still in her early twenties.
She adjusted her glasses and went on. “Just like they did with me, my parents only gave him the job so he’d have experience. He said he wanted to be a deejay at a radio station. But he was almost twenty-five years old and living with us at home. Not going to school. Not trying to get a job at a radio station by putting his resume out there. Not doing much beyond getting high and listening to Dark Side of the Moon, typing out stories for Playboy or Guns and Ammo or something. Nobody ever bought anything, as far as I know. My parents said he was a deep thinker. That he was just artistic. Rebecca said he was creepy.”
“Any reason why she thought that? I mean, beyond the writing-for-Playboy stuff.”
“Who knows? I do know Rebecca thought very highly of herself. Like every man was watching her, following her around or something. She thought that about Bruce too. I think she may have been right about that one.”
“What makes you say that?”
She didn’t answer me.
I made a mental note to contact Sylvia’s family again after the channeling.
“Tell me as much as you can about the other people in the club who were there that night. Curtis and Danny.”
“Danny wasn’t an executive even though he was in the club. He called himself an entrepreneur, and I guess that was good enough for Jay. He made sculptures out of trash.”
“And Curtis?”
“Rebecca’s boyfriend. He was the manager of the bike shop by day,” she said. “And by night, he was into some pretty shady stuff.”
“I know about the pornos. What else?”
“Pornos aren’t shady enough? What life do you lead?”
I smiled. “You’re forgetting who I was married to.”
My ex appeared by my side on the couch as I said that. “Sorry to interrupt. My ears ring whenever I hear the word porno. I would say it’s a gift, but it’s more like a superpower.”
I was actually glad to have him around. I wanted to run my schedule by him, see what he thought of things. He looked good, ghostly and pale, but he had a lot of color today. I could actually see the gray streaks in his brownish beard and the straggly hairs that never combed down right, apparently not even in the afterlife.
“So Rebecca and Curtis starred in the movies together?” I asked.
“It was all Curtis’s idea. He also produced them.”
“Okay,” I said to Jackson. I knew he had been listening in. “I think I should start at the roller rink.”
“Yes,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t even know which one of these executives was the main target, or if all of them were. So far, we don’t have much.”
He was right. “I think we’re going to have to break this up into several days, but we’ll go in order. Roller rink first. Then, the meeting. And last, we’ll see what happened in the woods.”
I knew it was the right schedule, even though every part of me wanted to skip ahead to the woods. I had a missing person’s case in the present that involved those woods (a case I technically didn’t really have), and a boyfriend who was being secretive about his involvement.
But mostly, I was being drawn to the forest. I wanted to go in there, see its secrets, smell its crispness, feel its warmth.
And then there was the fact that I couldn’t wait to die again. But that was something I would never admit to anyone.
Chapter 9
All Skate
At this point, I pretty much had channeling down. I used to spend a good amount of time trying to let my mind go blank and open myself up to a ghost, but this gave the spirit way too much power over things. And it drained me of all of my energy afterwards.
I had control now.
“Are you ready?’ I asked my ghost client.
Sylvia nodded, and I closed my eyes, drawing her into me. She was a light spirit. Tickly almost. I could feel a slight vibration as our energies merged.
Some ghosts felt heavier than others. Some had a particular smell. Sylvia was barely noticeable, like her energy floated to the outer corners of my own. It was different.
I smelled popcorn first, buttery and salty, but it wasn’t a good smell. It was mixed with foot odor and a chalky-kind of deodorizing spray. The floor moved under my feet, or felt like it was. I realized I was gliding, effortlessly. One foot over the other.
The disco version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony played loudly in the background, thumping off the walls and floor, and I nodded my head to it, wind blowing my face and hair. My lips pressed together, sticking in an overly-lip-glossed kind of way.
I opened my eyes. The roller rink.
It was larger than I was expecting, darker too. The main lights had been dimmed so a disco ball overhead could create a sparkly light pattern onto the wooden floor. A large deejay booth with hockey-rink-like plexiglass sat off at the end of the oval-shaped skating area next to a couple of oversized fans.
The rink was walled in with a railing-type barrier about waist-high, and many people stood watching the skaters. Others ate at the booths and tables just outside the rink by a large snack shack, which was by the arcade area, a skate rental booth, and a gift shop.
A gift shop. At a roller rink.
But the most surprising part was just how many people were here. The place was packed. Kids in long colorful socks and dolphin shorts glided past the slower skaters, like they were the fast cars in traffic, swerving this way and that, never slowing down, never looking back. A few chased each other. It was Friday afternoon. School was an afterthought.
“Wait a sec. It’s October, right?” I asked, seeing the kids in shorts, momentarily wondering if sh
e’d taken me to the wrong memory.
She laughed. “It got so stuffy and hot in this place. You have no idea. It’s why we have three industrial-sized fans going at all times. It’s why my uniform is a t-shirt.”
I did feel it when I thought about it. My shirt was sticky with sweat, the fan felt good against our skin.
I looked down. The bedazzled roller skate across her navy t-shirt shimmered in the lights. Not exactly what I was expecting a CFO to wear.
She must have read my thoughts.
“I was mostly in charge of the books, taxes, payroll, finances and stuff. But, I also took on a lot of the managerial tasks because my parents didn’t trust our manager.”
“Rebecca,” I said.
“Yep.”
Someone called Sylvia’s name and she turned around. An older teenager with peach fuzz for a mustache and the same shirt as Sylvia’s (minus the rhinestones) skated toward us, twirling a necklace whistle. He didn’t skate too fast, even though I could tell by his level of expertise that he definitely could have. When he finally got to us, he turned around and skated backwards so he was facing us. “What’s shaking, babe?”
Sylvia talked to me in our head. “Joey Pastori. A regular show-off. He was the rink cop.”
“I have no idea what that means,” I replied.
“You know, rink security? Makes sure everyone’s skating in the right direction and nobody bleeds to death or brings food onto the floor. You know, important stuff like that.”
He stuck out his bottom lip. “Rebecca says I can’t have the night off.”
“Then you can’t have the night off.”
He scrunched his face into an even deeper puppy-dog one. “I thought you were the cool one.”
Sylvia shook her head. “You didn’t think that.”
“I would like to. And you’re still in the running if you give me the night off.”
“Sorry, but I’ve gotta split soon. I have a meeting, then I’m off to hang out with Jay. Rebecca’s busy too,” Sylvia said. “You’re the only one we have for the night session.”
“Oh, I see how it is. Everyone else gets to do what they want on Friday nights…” He zig-zagged as he skated backwards, staring up at the ceiling like only the disco ball could know his pain.
Sylvia tried to reason with him, shouting over the pounding base of the Beethoven rendition’s finishing notes. “We don’t have anyone to cover for you, Joey. That’s all. Nothing personal. Bruce is taking over for me tonight. It’s almost gonna be just the two of you most the time.”
Joey rolled his eyes.
“If he leaves again, let me know,” Sylvia said.
“What do you mean ‘if?’ He always leaves. It’s almost like I’m here by myself. When you were gone last month with your mom, it was a madhouse. I was like the only one who didn’t take off. Rebecca and Bruce? Both gone. Never got paid extra for it, either. You could make up for that now, though. With some extra time off…”
We looked over to the deejay booth, and I got to see Sylvia’s brother. He nodded to us as we passed, bushy shoulder-length brown hair engulfing his humungous headphones.
He leaned into the microphone as the music ended and the lights went up. “Annnnd, this’ll be an all-skate,” he said in an announcer-sounding voice. “Everyone, on the floor for the last dance of the session. I repeat. This is an allllll-skate.”
Last Dance started playing and more people entered the rink. Kids, teenagers, adults.
“Just think about it,” Joey begged, twirling his whistle, skating off backwards into the crowd, almost plowing into a kid in a velour sweatshirt.
Sweat trickled down Sylvia’s hairline as she skated over to the opening in the rink walls to get out.
Our skates slowed to a crawl once we hit the ribbon-patterned dark carpeting of the lobby, and it took a little more effort to skate down the hallway off the side. We stopped at a room with the sign “Employees Only” on it.
The break room, with lockers. I wasn’t entirely sure what memories were going to be important and what weren’t. But I did know from the newspaper articles that Rebecca Torrance was found with a key in her pocket when the police picked her up later this night. It was a key to one of these lockers, that for some odd reason was full of sex toys and her x-rated tape. That seemed a little strange to me, and I didn’t put it past the police in Landover to plant stuff. I wanted to see what the locker looked like myself.
A chubby, short, blonde woman in her forties with a pink collared pantsuit and a short silk scarf tied tightly around her neck sipped coffee at the only table just in front of the Mr. Coffee. Sylvia skated over to her and kissed her cheek. It was scratchy and thick.
“My mother,” Sylvia told me.
The woman took her coffee mug to the sink at the back of the room and poured the last bit of her coffee down the drain. She grabbed a disintegrating sponge from the side and turned on the water. “Did you see my note on your locker when you got in?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Could you please call Myrna back then? She called three times this morning. Your father’s getting worried. Bruce said it’s something about an outfit. I told him she just wants money.” She raised an eyebrow at Sylvia. “What does she want, anyway?”
Sylvia looked down at her skates. They were bright white, unlike the tan rental ones most the other skaters on the floor had been wearing. “Bruce is right. She just wants to borrow one of my outfits, that’s all. Not sure why. You know Myrna. New styles.”
“I do know Myrna,” her mother said, picking bits of yellowish brown sponge out of the sink and throwing them into the trash bin at the side of the counter. “That’s what makes me think she only wants money. You’ve got to stop lending her stuff. She’s lazy. Your father’s offered her a job so many times. So many. You know we like to help out family. She refuses to work.”
“She has a job. She’s a photographer,” Sylvia said.
“Photographer? Photographers work at Olan Mills or Fotomats, and they get paid. If you’re giving her money again…”
“No, Mom. She’s just borrowing an outfit. She and Paul have an anniversary tonight. I left the outfit on my bed for her. Either she or Paul should be there sometime around 9:00. Can you give it to them?”
“Only Myrna. I’m not dealing with that derelict boyfriend of hers. Your father’s going out with the boys tonight and… I get afraid to answer the door if no one’s around.”
Sylvia talked to me. “My mother thought everyone was a derelict, but especially anyone who would go out with Myrna, my cousin.”
“Was she borrowing money,” I asked.
“Not very much,” Sylvia replied.
I decided to pry her later for more information about Myrna. I needed to know everyone Sylvia had had contact with or was going to have contact with during the days around her murder.
Her mother was still talking, asking her how she’d done on a recent test.
Sylvia motioned to a Garfield poster overhead. “Let’s just say, thank God it’s Friday,” she answered, pointing to the same words, written in block letters just above the cartoon cat eating a lasagna.
The woman continued. “That’s not reassuring. You know your father’s not paying for that college so you can hang out with your friends and never study. You’re an adult now.”
“Dad’s not paying for my college, Mom. It’s both you and Dad. You get credit, too. But thank you. I’m sure I did fine on the test. Stop worrying.” Sylvia smiled, but I could tell she was annoyed with the woman.
“I don’t know why you need a master’s degree anyway,” her mother said, searching through her humungous white leather purse. She pulled out a set of keys. “You should’ve found a doctor or a lawyer when you were getting your bachelor’s like Donna’s daughter. Save us all some money.”
“I did find a nice accountant, Mom,” she said, pointing to herself. “Me.”
Her mother pushed her lips into a smile. “You know what I meant.”
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br /> “Jay and I are happy,” Sylvia said. “And his family has a lot of money. Why don’t you like him?”
“Rebecca’s boyfriend has a new car. I heard he paid cash. Yours… makes paper.”
“I think you’re forgetting that’s how you got that very nice stationery set, for free,” Sylvia said. “You can’t get that with just anyone.”
Her mother groaned at her joke.
Sylvia talked to me again. “My mother, always comparing, always making me feel like I wasn’t good enough. Not in looks. Not in boyfriends.”
Sylvia plopped down on one of the four blue plastic chairs around the only table. She untied her laces and loosened them, tugging on the tongue of her skate until her foot released. It instantly thanked us as it expanded out to its natural form.
A numbing pain shot over the sides of our foot and we mindlessly massaged it.
“I just don’t want you to have to worry about money in life,” she said, kissing our head.
The door to the break room swung open, smacking hard against the back wall. And I turned toward the noise, recognizing the woman immediately. Rebecca. She was just as gorgeous as the photos in the paper. Feathered, dark-brown hair, tight dark jeans and pink leg warmers that matched her flouncy top. She seemed to have a perpetual pout with lips so shiny I was pretty sure I would’ve been able to see myself in if she got close enough.
She strutted in socked feet with the kind of confidence you really only saw in perfume commercials.
“Are you on your way out,” Sylvia’s mother said to Rebecca. She didn’t say hello, didn’t smile. I noticed. “That’s kind of early to leave.”
Rebecca pulled a painted-pink key from the back pocket of her jeans and opened her locker. “Sylvia okayed it.”
Her mother shot Sylvia a look.
“We’re not leaving until we get things set up for the next session,” Sylvia added, looking at Rebecca.
“Oh yeah,” Rebecca dutifully agreed, grabbing a clear lipgloss tube with the words Kissing Potion scrawled on the side of it in pink lettering. She rolled on another coat while checking herself in the mirror.