by Etta Faire
Sylvia’s mother scowled at both girls, and I took note of it. I wasn’t sure who the intended victim actually was in this murdered group of friends and who got murdered simply for showing up. But, at this point, everyone was on my suspect list, including the woman who kind of resembled Mrs. Garrett from Facts of Life, if Mrs. Garrett hated children.
Plus, I just found out Sylvia’s mom had been all alone tonight, no alibi, except Myrna coming over for an outfit. I needed to talk to both her and Myrna.
“As you kids say, I am out of here,” she said through gritted teeth. “Please be kind to Bruce. He’s having a tough day. He didn’t get any sleep last night.”
Sylvia talked to me in our head. “Did you hear that? I get lectured because of one bad test. One test out of a hundred. My brother gets babied because he had insomnia last night. Poor thing.”
The woman hugged Sylvia good-bye, the smell of peppermint mixed with Aqua Net tickled our nose. She grabbed her coat from off the back of a chair and left without really saying much to Rebecca.
Rebecca leaned against her opened locker, and I knew it was the locker. The one with all the x-rated stuff in it.
The break room was small with the same weird dark carpet everywhere else in the rink, same blue walls.
I tried to see around her and into the locker as she lit a cigarette and blew the smoke above her head, creating a smoke ring.
Sylvia talked to me in our head. “There was a designated smoking area in the lobby, but no one could ever find it once my parents left. At least Bruce always waited until my mother’s car pulled out of the lot before he blared his music. He couldn’t stand disco and couldn’t wait to let us all know how he felt about it.”
I could only see part of the locker out of the corner of Sylvia’s eye, watching as Rebecca yanked a chunky gray backpack out of it and flopped it onto the floor, followed by what looked like a torn t-shirt with drips of blood on it.
She quickly bent down, snatched up the t-shirt and stuffed it into her backpack.
Chapter 10
The key
Thankfully, Sylvia noticed it too. She pointed to the backpack. “What was that?”
“It’s nothing.”
She moved in closer to her friend and lowered her voice. “That’s the second nothing this month. Remember your nothing of a bruised arm?”
With a cigarette dangling from her lips, Rebecca looked up at us. Her piercing blue eyes were desperate for Sylvia to drop this. “It’s my business. I’ll handle it, okay? I fell down while I was hiking. I’ve just been falling down a lot. I’m clumsy.”
“You should get that looked at. Could require a break-up.”
“You’re one to talk,” Rebecca said. “Every time Jay snaps, you jump to attention.”
“That’s not true.” Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Hiking? Are you for real? Like you hike.”
Sylvia explained things to me. “I remember it now. We were worried Curtis was hurting Rebecca. But there’s nothing you can do if she won’t admit it. And not only that, she’d get really snippy about it. Defensive.”
I thought about that one. Being harmed by your boyfriend was definitely a motive to murder him. But there were three others murdered too. One, of which, was her frenemy, and another was the man she might have been having an affair with. Maybe it did make sense.
Rebecca checked herself in her locker mirror. “Speaking of your controlling boyfriend, remember not to tell him I’m skipping out on the meeting tonight to go to the movies. Just say I’m sick, okay?” Rebecca said, pulling a large hair brush from a floral makeup bag in her locker.
“Why?”
“Because he’s weird about that, Syl. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it. He’s a spaz about that club of his, whenever people don’t follow his rules.”
Sylvia opened her own locker, which was right next to Rebecca’s. She tugged a backpack out and put her skates into it. “You could follow the rules if you tried. And Jay isn’t a spaz. He’s just truthful about everything. He’s on a higher level of enlightenment than most people. Truth will get you to that level. Open your mind. He’s enlightening a lot of people.”
“Enlightening or controlling? Come on. You sound like a robot.”
“You just don’t want to hear the truth.”
“He’s the one who can’t hear the truth. You can’t just say you want to skip a meeting anymore. You have to have a valid excuse from both your doctor and your mother, and even then, you get treated like crap for doing it.” She took a long inhale of her cigarette, offering it to Sylvia, who also took a drag. The end was sticky from lipgloss and it smelled a little like bubble gum.
The smoke stung Sylvia’s lungs, but she refused to cough. I could tell she didn’t smoke nearly as often as her friend. The opening drum beats of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll played loudly from the speakers of the deejay booth. Mommy had left the building.
Rebecca bent at the waist, throwing her head forward to brush the back of her hair but continued talking. “You have to admit. The meetings have gotten crazy too. You can’t use the bathroom except during the official breaks. Everyone has to be on time, and… why do we have to call him alderman now, anyway?” She raised her head back up and shook her hair out. It fell perfectly along her shoulders. “Is that another word for dick?”
“We call him alderman,” Sylvia explained, handing the cigarette back. “Because he’s showing us the power of mind over matter, remember? You know he’s running for town council.”
“I know he’s losing too,” Rebecca replied with the kind of smile that let me know how she felt about it. “Mind over matter. I almost peed my pants once trying to hold it in until break. I don’t know what you see in someone so controlling.”
“Oh yeah, tell me all about it. I hope you’re not going hiking again today. Bruised arm. Torn shirt. All Jay did was ask me to control my own bladder.”
“I really did fall down,” she said.
“Whatever.”
The same mauve striped pantsuit Sylvia was wearing as a ghost hung along the rod at the top of the locker. A polyester reminder that the end was once again coming for me. Here was the outfit she was wearing when it happened. I tried not to think about it and stayed focused as Sylvia ran her fingers over the stiff fabric, pulling it out of her locker. “Jay is on the verge of something huge. It’s a shame more people don’t get it. He’s not only transforming the way people think about business, but he’s changing the town too. Or he’s about to.”
“Alderman,” Rebecca said. “What does that even mean?”
Sylvia closed her locker and leaned against it, glancing over at Rebecca every once in a while. And I tried to see every last thing. Aside from the things that came out in Rebecca’s trial, I had no idea what evidence police had collected.
When I asked Justin if he would look through the cold case files for me and tell me everything in the locker and what the police considered important, he laughed.
Those are confidential police files, Carly. We don’t just open those up for public opinion.
“Maybe you should,” I’d shot back. “You might be able to solve a few more cases.”
I was just glad I hadn’t asked him to bring the files home, which had been my original idea.
Rebecca’s locker was neater than I’d expected it to be. There weren’t too many things inside of it. Typical 70s stickers lined the inside along with polaroids of Rebecca doing silly faces with various friends. Most had Sylvia in them too.
“Look, just don’t tell Jay, okay? I don’t need that hassle today.”
“I won’t say a word,” Sylvia said as she took her pantsuit into the bathroom, which was off the back of the break room. Then added in my head, “Of course, I’d already told him. He freaked out just like Rebecca said he would. I remember now. It was his idea to do the drive-in thing. To show them a thing or two.”
I made all sorts of mental notes about how controlling Sylvia’s boyfriend had been while she slipped off her wo
rk pants and t-shirt and put on the uncomfortable pantsuit that had almost no give or stretch to the fabric. It scratched against our skin, so tight we almost couldn’t get it buttoned, or breathe properly. We definitely couldn’t do both at the same time.
“You wore a pantsuit just for the Young Executive’s Club?” I asked, my eyes mindlessly glancing over lime green bathroom tile.
“I was projecting my self-image. You don’t dress for the job you have in life. You dress for the job you expect to get,” she said, making me wonder just how right Rosalie might have been about this club. Everyone even had to dress the part.
We came back out and I got a full look at Rebecca’s locker. Straight on. I took mental notes of the bottle of Charlie perfume sitting next to a white pack of Wrigley’s, a large makeup bag and some skates.
She threw her backpack onto the table and unzipped it, removing a cute flouncy green dress. “Curtis wants to break in his new Camaro tonight,” she said, swinging the dress in her hand a little. “And let me repeat that last part in case you are hard of hearing, my dear. A new, doesn’t smell like cigarettes and B-O yet, primo, top-of-the-line Ca-ma-ro.” She drew out each syllable. “Drove it off the Freeman Chevrolet lot the day before yesterday. Mr. Freeman could hardly believe he’d made a cash sale.”
“So Curtis is doing all right?”
“All right? You have no idea.”
“And it’s all because of the movies?”
“Probably. Won’t be long before I can buy a new car too.”
“I seriously hope so,” Sylvia said as I looked in Rebecca’s opened backpack to see the torn shirt again.
“Stop judging me, okay?” Rebecca said, pulling off her top, revealing a lacy black bra underneath. “I can do what I want with my own body. There’s nothing wrong with that. We’re all adults. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Then, why do you wear a wig and weird makeup? Why don’t you yell it from the rooftops? Let your dad know you’ve been using his vet clinic…”
“Stop,” she said, lowering her voice. “Nobody better find out about that.” She gave Sylvia a sideways glance.
“I thought you had nothing to hide.”
“I’ll tell him when I’m ready. Which means never,” Rebecca said, taking one last look into her locker. She grabbed the perfume and sprayed a little onto her neck and wrists.
I didn’t see anything in her locker that the paper had reported, the things that had come out in the trial. The porno tapes and adult-store toys.
Either she’d come back and put those in her locker later or she was set up. But why?
Rebecca lifted a leg onto a nearby chair and sprayed more perfume along her bare calf. “Ohmygod, I’d die if my dad found out,” she said, putting her leg down. “Mostly because my father would kill me if he knew. Then, he’d drag my bloody, dead corpse to confession every week for a year and a half before he’d let the priest say last rites. And even dead, I don’t want to see a priest that often.” She made a sign of the cross along her body for no reason. “So mouth zipped, okay?”
Sylvia ran a finger along her lips to pretend to zip them, inhaling a nose full of sour-tasting “kinda free, kinda wow” perfume.
Rebecca put the bottle back into her locker and shut the door. It echoed just above The Ramones now playing full blast.
After stuffing her jeans and shirt into the backpack by her feet, she looked up at the clock above the lockers. It was 5:45. “When Curtis gets here you should come out and see the new Ca-ma-ro.”
Sylvia looked down at the awful clogs she’d slipped on when she changed into her pantsuit. They were incredibly heavy, and a little like what I imagined walking in logs would feel like. They were worse than the skates. “Sure.”
The door swung open and a clean cut blonde man with a flannel jacket sauntered in. “You ready?” he asked Rebecca, nodding to Sylvia.
“She wants to see the new car,” Rebecca said.
“Can’t blame her. It’s pretty sweet. Come on,” he said as we all walked out the door.
The lobby was mostly empty now, only a few middle school kids waiting here and there for their parents to come pick them up. A few others meandered in the gift shop, searching through racks of colorful skate laces.
I saw it even before Sylvia opened the glass door to go out. Parked just outside the door, in handicapped parking, was a bright yellow, shiny sports car.
“Wow,” Sylvia said.
“Wow is right,” Rebecca replied.
“Hard work pays off,” Curtis said, with emphasis on the word hard.
Rebecca laughed and elbowed Sylvia into laughing too as Curtis showed Sylvia around his new car. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. Something didn’t sit well with me about him. Not that I was stereotyping, but he didn’t seem like a porno-making thug. He was clean cut and polite, like one of the kids from Happy Days. But then, many serial killers never looked the part either. Falling for clean-cut charisma can get you stuffed in someone’s freezer, said every Jeffrey Dahmer victim.
And Curtis Sumner was a victim, I reminded myself.
He was showing us the trunk. Tire iron, right there. I knew that’s what Sylvia said he’d brought out with him later on.
“She knows not to say anything, right?” he said to Rebecca.
“You mean to Jay?” she asked.
He nodded. “I just don’t want to hear it,” he said. “I know a lot of people are into all that heavy Kumbaya crap. But, I… I don’t know. It’s just best if he doesn’t know we’re ditching.”
Sylvia forced herself to smile reassuringly. “You guys can quit the club if you don’t like it.”
“No, we like it,” Curtis said.
“Plus, we’ve all heard the rumors,” Rebecca added. “They don’t like quitters.”
“Those are just rumors,” Sylvia said, mindlessly running a hand over the Camaro’s hood. It was still warm. “Jay… is just very committed and passionate about things, that’s all.”
“He’s committed, all right. Or he should be committed, to an asylum,” Curtis said and Rebecca laughed again as they both got into the car and drove off.
“What were the rumors?” I asked as Sylvia shuffled her way back in. I could tell she was feeling a little resentful that Rebecca had, once again, promised she’d help get things set up for the next skating session but had ditched out early. She was tired of making excuses for her friends, her brother, and her cousin. She was tired of keeping secrets and being the only responsible one in the group.
“Nothing. Just that some of the die-hard members would call and harass people who left, or were thinking about leaving. There were some graffiti-tagged houses. Kids’ stuff. But it was never Jay. And he never asked anyone to do that.”
I made a lot of mental notes. There were secrets here, and a club that seemed a little like you had to drink Kool-Aid in order to get away from it.
But the biggest question I had was how was Rebecca in a dress here, about to go out with her boyfriend. But, according to the paper and the police report, she was found with a key in the pocket of her jeans. The key was in the backpack, as far as I knew.
I could tell Sylvia wanted to end the channeling, but I didn’t let her stop. “I’m getting tired,” she told me in our head.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me just skim through the rest of these memories at the rink to see if there’s anything else then we’ll break until tomorrow.”
A few weeks ago, before I realized I was the one in control, I would just have ended whenever the ghost wanted to. Not anymore. Not since channeling with the cheater. I was the one who decided the timeline. Some ghosts were sneakier than others.
I fast forwarded, scanning through her memories easier than a roll of microfilm as Sylvia straightened the break room, putting away the coffee mugs drying on a paper towel by the sink. She pushed in the chairs and picked up wrappers under the table.
That’s when I saw it, or Sylvia did, rather. A shiny, small key laying on the floor under
the table. Sylvia picked it up and examined it. It was a padlock key, painted with pink nail polish on one side.
I tried to hear her thoughts from that day, but they were hazy and confused. Or, she was blocking them from me. Her spirit was trying to overpower things and end the channeling early. A weaker me would have succumbed. I was no longer a weaker me, though.
She ran the key through her fingers again and again while Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap played in the background, egging her on. But I could tell she wasn’t really listening to the music. She was listening for voices or footsteps.
Quickly, she went to the door, looked out into the hallway, then snuck back into the break room.
She opened Rebecca’s locker.
Chapter 11
Nonsense
I paused the memory and yelled at Sylvia in my mind. “You didn’t want me to see this. You’re not tired. You just didn’t want to admit you snooped in your friend’s locker.”
She didn’t answer. Never responded. Too “tired” to defend herself, I guess.
I calmed my tone down and tried again. “Look, if I’m going to help you, I need to see everything, including the stuff you’re not especially proud of. These could all be clues to your murder. Maybe Rebecca saw you open her locker. Maybe…” A thought came to me. “Did you plant the stuff in Rebecca’s locker?”
Sylvia never said a word. I briefly debated about going on from here, but that would have made me feel a little like I was snooping myself, searching her memories without the ghost’s consent.
“I’m tired too. We’ll stop, but we’re going to pick up right from this very spot as soon as you’re ready to go on. So, if there’s anything to confess, you know where I’ll be.”
The next morning, I stumbled out of bed, confused about everything. Sylvia was hiding things from me and I really had no idea why.
I grabbed my go-to pair of skinny jeans from my hamper then threw them back in and dug through my dresser drawers instead, spending the next ten minutes pulling stuff out and stuffing it back in again, trying to find something that fit the Carly I wanted to be.