by Etta Faire
Her glasses fell forward and she adjusted them. “Oooooh, now where is it? Where is it?”
“I’m not in any hurry,” I told her. She seemed a little frantic. Death was a difficult thing to relive for most people.
She licked her lips and continued. “It was the strangest thing. Sylvia was always my practical and reliable one. I never once worried about her. Her friends were a different story. And, my son, don’t get me started on him, he was a handful of worry. Truck load. ”
“Is he a deejay now?” I asked, remembering what Sylvia told me in the channeling, certain I’d get more “testing-the-medium” points for that one.
Mrs. Darcy stopped flicking through hangers and turned to me, head tilted. “Goodness no. What makes you ask that? He’s a landscaper. Makes garden fountains for rich people on the lake. Still single,” she said with a hopeful kind of a lilt. I kept my eyes forward. She went back to her closet.
“And your husband?” I asked.
“Ned died about thirty years ago. Heart attack,” she said with the same kind of tone she probably used to describe the weather. She stretched her arm into the very back of the closet, almost falling over but catching herself on the door. “See if you can reach that last one there. The one in plastic.”
She took a step back and I took over for her, my hand brushing against the dusty plastic as I pulled the long garment out.
Her shaky hands reached out for the hanger as soon as I freed it from the closet, so I handed it to her. She brought it over to the living room and draped it over the edge of the dark green couch’s armrest then sat on the cushion beside it. She rested her hands in her lap and waited for me, like the outfit needed a formal presentation before it could be unzipped.
I sat down on the love seat and put my own hands in my lap, mirroring her actions, I guess to show her I was ready, too.
The living room was dark, even with the blinds up and the lights on. It was no longer raining, but the sky still seemed to be sulking over it. Gray and cloudy.
Mrs. Darcy had incredible posture, almost straighter than the couch itself. “Like I said before, I was told to give this to Myrna the night of Sylvia’s murder.”
“I know Myrna was Sylvia’s cousin. Was she your side of the family?” I asked.
“Oh goodness no. Ned’s sister’s kid. Now, mind you, I didn’t think anything about it, until after the murder.” She stopped for a second and took a deep breath before continuing, unzipping the thick white plastic, revealing an American-flag-inspired, terrycloth jumpsuit with spaghetti straps. Not at all what I was expecting, and I hadn’t expected anything.
She smiled at it. “It is pretty different, isn’t it? Far out, as the kids would say back then. I never knew Sylvia to have a wild streak when it came to clothes. I’d never seen her wear this, never knew she owned it.”
“So, you don’t think this was hers?”
“I have no idea. She said Myrna and her boyfriend were going to a concert and she wanted to borrow the outfit. But… Myrna never showed up that night.”
I got the sudden feeling that Sylvia was here with me right now, hovering nearby so she could see how her mother was doing. But because she wasn’t manifesting, I knew she didn’t want to communicate.
Sometimes, seeing life continuing on without you was very hard on spirits. And sometimes, they were cowards who didn’t want to answer questions a living person might have for them about opening other people’s lockers.
Mrs. Darcy shook her head. “Of course, in the rush of things, dealing with Sylvia’s death and the funeral and everything, I forgot all about Sylvia even mentioning the outfit. So there it sat on Sylvia’s bed for… oh goodness, I don’t even know how long.” She looked up at the cracks in her ceiling. “It took me a while before I could even open Sylvia’s room and look through her things.”
“Didn’t the police look through her things?”
She shook her head no.
Landover’s finest, right there. I thought. They tried to pin the whole murder on Rebecca, saying that she was jealous of Sylvia and Jay, and they didn’t even investigate their own theory.
“I never did give it to Myrna or the police or anyone. I never told anyone…” Her hands shook like failing to mention an odd-looking outfit somehow made her a criminal. “Not until now. I couldn’t.”
I put my hand on hers. “Why?”
She sat up straighter (something I did not know was even possible), and lowered her voice. “When I went to put it away, I felt something safety-pinned to the inside of the pocket.”
I leaned forward as she rolled one of the deep pockets out. A large safety pin was attaching a yellow folded piece of paper and a twenty-dollar bill to the inside of the fabric.
She unpinned the note and handed it to me, lowering her voice. “There was a bag of what looked like marijuana in there, too. I threw that out. Myrna never did ask for this outfit. Never mentioned anything about it to me.”
“Is Myrna still around?” I said, already wondering how to look the woman up.
“Oh dear. You don’t know.” Her grayish eyes went serious and sad. “She took her own life about a month after Sylvia died. She was very distraught. I…I hadn’t realized how close she was to my daughter. I kind of fell into my own head for a while after Sylvia died. We sold the rink.”
Her bottom lip quivered a little.
“You couldn’t have known Myrna was going to do something like that,” I said.
“No, but I’ll just be honest. I couldn’t stand the girl. She was always borrowing money from Sylvia. Poor Sylvia couldn’t say no. Myrna died from carbon monoxide poisoning, found in her running car in her mom’s garage.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, touching the woman’s hand again.
“It was a hard time for our family, that’s for sure. Sylvia meant a lot to a lot of people.”
I unfolded the paper, realizing there were actually three pieces of paper folded into one. I smoothed them out along my leggings. The handwriting on the first one was swirly but legible. It read:
Don’t worry, I got it cleaned. Here’s proof! Hahaha. Have fun tonight. Just pay me back when you can. Love, Syl
P.S. Thanks for everything!
The second paper was a receipt for Landover Dry Cleaners and the last was a note with a list of about ten addresses.
“Interesting,” I said, noting that the addresses were for a few businesses and a few people with the last name Hunt. Jay’s last name. “And you never gave this to the police?”
She shook her head no. “Never thought to, honestly. It didn’t seem related, plus I didn’t want Sylvia’s memory to become tainted like the others.”
“Because of the marijuana.”
She nodded. “And the money. It looked like one of those drug deals. That’s what everyone would have thought. I know it. Sylvia was not a drug dealer.”
I didn’t bother to tell her that drug dealers didn’t usually give their customers both the drugs and the money.
Instead, I put my hand on her shoulder, which was pretty bony, despite the shoulder pad. “I completely understand.”
She lowered her voice like someone might be listening. “And honestly, I did not know any of that stuff about Rebecca and Curtis and the movies they made. I would never have hired her at the roller rink if I had.”
“Tell me about that. They found a lot of stuff in Rebecca’s locker.”
“Oh yes, they did.” She paused, squeezing her veiny hands together. “And after it all came out, I heard from Bruce that he’d known all along that she’d been hanging out with some shady people doing some shady things, and that’s what killed those kids. He didn’t know the specifics, but he knew Sylvia had met up with the wrong crowd.”
“So you think Rebecca was responsible for what happened to them?
“I don’t know if she did it. But I know she knows more than she’s ever let on.”
I snapped a photo of the terrycloth jumpsuit and all the contents from the pocket, a
nd Mrs. Darcy reached for my phone. “Please delete that photo. Like I told you, I haven’t shown this stuff to anyone. Not even my family. Don’t ask me why. I just don’t want people talking about the incident anymore. I want to know what happened, sure. What mother doesn’t want that closure when they’ve lost a child. That’s why I agreed to talk to you. But, it’s also very, very painful, like a sore people keep picking at. It hurts. It never stops hurting, actually, but it hurts a lot less if people stop picking at it.”
“I won’t show it to anyone,” I said. “I promise.”
Besides my ghost client, I added in my head.
“Please make sure that you don’t.”
She looked at her watch again then zipped the outfit back up. “I think we have time for me to show you the old photo album if you want.”
I helped her put the garment in the very back of the closet again as she brought out a flowered photo book from one of the humungous bookcases lining her living room. The word “Darcy’s” was scribbled on a white label sticking to the front of the book.
“We sold the rink not long after Sylvia’s death. Ned and I just couldn’t bear going there anymore. Too many things reminded us of Sylvia.”
She opened the book to a photo of a neon sign of a huge roller skate and the word Darcy’s under it. “We bought this rink in 1976. It was already a roller skating rink at the time. It was a bowling alley before that, I think. And now, it’s a Wells Fargo.”
I didn’t recognize the building, but I did recognize the area. It was near Landover University.
She turned the page to a dark, blurry photo of women in tube tops and men in tight, shiny, collared shirts skating. “Sylvia and Rebecca did a great job getting young people to the rink. We had all the stars…”
“Stars?”
“The weather girl from channel 10 came here almost every weekend. And the rich. The rich loved us. The Donovans had parties here.”
She pointed to a thin blurry man in a top hat and suit. “I wonder if your ex-husband ever told you he went through a James Bond phase.”
I looked at the photo. “James Bond? Maybe if James Bond ever went through an Abe Lincoln phase.”
She didn’t hear me. She was too busy reminiscing. “A lot of people would show up in costume for no reason. On Saturday nights, there was a line out the door and down the block. Ned hated it. But I told him it was all in good fun. He just needed to remember what being young was like. And then, the incident happened and changed it all. And I was the one who forgot what having fun was like.”
I scanned through the photos, taking pictures as I went. Most were blurry or too dark. The age of film, when you couldn’t check that everyone’s eyes were open. You had to point, click, and hope for the best when you went to the Fotomat to get your photos developed.
The front door opened and a heavyset man in his 60s with thick gray hair and a goatee sauntered in. “Hello,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“My son, Bruce,” she said, looking down at her hands.
“I’m Carly.” I shook the eligible bachelor’s hand. He seemed nice, jovial almost. He plopped down on the dark green recliner next to us.
Mrs. Darcy motioned to me. “Carly was just leaving.” She checked her watch again. “And, I have bridge soon.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “So how do you know my mother?”
“I’m here because I’m investigating Sylvia’s death.” I began, my face growing warm even though I wasn’t technically lying.
“You a cop?”
“I’m actually a medium. She’s a client of mine. I help ghosts solve their cases.” I said it exactly the way I’d practiced it on the way over. My voice didn’t even shake this time.
He laughed, but when I didn’t join him, his face fell. “You’re serious.”
I thought about leaving, but I really wanted to ask Sylvia’s brother a few things too.
“I was hoping you could tell me everything you remember about that night,” I said. “Did you stay at the roller rink all night that night? I know some nights you left early.”
“No. He never left eary,” Mrs. Darcy said. “That’s inaccurate.”
Bruce got up and went to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and rummaged through some stuff, pulling out old green and yellow tupperware containers, plopping them onto the counter next to the pizza boxes. “Sorry, no offense. But I do not believe in any of this medium crap. We know what happened that night. We know who did it, too.” He opened a tupperware container, sniffed its contents, and scrunched his face.
He put it back in the fridge. “And the murderer got off scot free. We don’t need a psychic to tell us that. So you can sell your phony services somewhere else.”
I didn’t bother to tell him psychics and mediums were not necessarily the same thing. My ghosts never told me squat about the future. “Like I said, Sylvia is my client.”
“Sure. I bet she pays you a lot, too.” He slammed the fridge door shut. “You psychics are all the same. Preying on people who lose someone.” He turned to his mother. “Don’t pay her a cent.”
“I didn’t ask for money,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened forty years ago. I’m not sure it was Rebecca Torrance.”
“Well, I am,” Bruce said.
Mrs. Darcy followed suit, closing the scrapbook. “Bruce is right. You should probably leave. I have to go to bridge soon.”
“Oh God.” Bruce sighed heavily. “Is that today?”
“You said you’d take me.”
“It’s just I’m super busy,” he said, leaning against the fridge.
“I can take you,” I said. It was a bold move, but I had a feeling there was more to this story than Mrs. Darcy was telling me. I also suspected there was a reason, besides bridge, that she was checking her watch all the time. Bruce was probably that reason. I wanted to get her alone again.
“I will take care of my own,” Bruce said, and I could tell by his tone he meant it. He stormed over to the front door and opened it for me.
About thirty blackbirds sat on the porch, looking this way and that, their beady black eyes not focusing on anything in particular.
“What the hell?” he asked, looking me over suspiciously like I brought birds with me.
He stepped out onto the porch, waving his hands at them. “Go on. Go,” he said. They left, hover-flying just high enough above the porch to watch me run out to my car, with my hands over my head.
Sylvia appeared in the passenger’s seat as soon as I closed the door.
“I knew you were there,” I said, still watching the black birds out of the corner of my eye. None of them had crusty yellow beaks, but I was still not comfortable seeing birds everywhere I went. Were they following me or were they starting to take over the town again? I was going to keep my eyes open from now on, and possibly bring my bike helmet out of storage again.
Sylvia was weak today, or at least her coloring was. Her stringy blondish brown hair seemed to morph into my upholstery.
“Your mother’s doing really well for a woman in her 80s,” I said. “Very spry. Your brother, too. So… energetic.”
“My mother’s disappointed in me. I can tell,” Sylvia said, looking out the window. “I made bad choices. Bad friendships.”
I tried to cheer her up. “C’mon. Show me a mom who isn’t disappointed in her daughter, and I’ll show you a mom who’s not related to me,” I replied.
We both kind of stared at the tree-lined streets of Sylvia’s old neighborhood, still damp from yesterday’s rain, as I made my way into work, neither one of us really talking.
“I only went into Rebecca’s locker that day,” she finally said after a couple minutes of silence, “because Bruce told me he saw her looking at love notes from Jay. I didn’t believe him. I needed to see them for myself, and finding that key gave me the chance. I didn’t remember about it until the channeling, though. And then, I was angry, at Jay, at Rebecca, at myself for not remembering something so important… The an
ger all came back.”
“I get it. This is a hard process,” I said, not entirely believing her that she hadn’t remembered the love notes. “But I think it’s important for us to be honest with each other from now on. Let’s channel tonight.”
She stared out the window, not really saying much.
“I’m sorry to hear about your cousin,” I finally said.
“Me too. My mother never liked Myrna.”
“Yeah, I could tell. What was that list of addresses for?”
“I don’t remember,” she said, fading away, obviously done with questions again or avoiding them.
At the next stoplight, I asked Siri what $20 from 1978 was worth today. According to the inflation calendar she found on the web, it was close to $80.
Eighty dollars, pot, and an outfit. That was some gift that poor college student gave her cousin. I decided to look up as much about Myrna as I could.
Chapter 15
A little revenge among friends
Neither of us said much before the channeling. I didn’t believe her anymore, and she was avoiding me on as many levels as possible.
She hovered in my living room, not talking.
“You ready?” I asked.
She nodded.
Her energy seemed even more jittery this time around when I drew her into me. I could tell she was reluctant to show me her memories from the break room. When they finally came into focus, it was almost as if we were moving faster than we should have been. Things looked foggier, too.
I got the impression she was obscuring her memories, not letting them play out in real time. Who could blame her? These were the parts she wanted to forget, and maybe even conveniently had up until now.
“Sylvia,” I said, trying to get her attention. “I’m your friend. I’m not going to judge you on the things you did forty years ago, but they could have contributed to your death, so I need to see everything.”