Whispers from the Dead

by Joan Lowery Nixon

“I guess I don’t blame you,” Dee Dee said. “But her job is selling houses. What was she going to do?”

  “She should have been honest and told my father about the murder.”

  “Then he wouldn’t have bought the house. No one would.” She glanced over her shoulder at our house and shivered. “It would have just sat there and crumbled. After the Holts moved out, somebody threw rocks into the front windows, and one night someone kicked in the back door. Nobody on the street wanted the house empty. Look at it our way. Don’t you understand?”

  “No,” I said.

  Dee Dee turned slowly and began to walk back to her house, so I added, “But I do want to be friends.”

  She lifted her head and smiled hopefully. “It would be awful living next door to you if you hated me.”

  I managed to smile back. “I doubt if anyone could hate you.”

  “Eric does—sometimes,” she answered. “Of course, Eric hates almost everybody. He can be so mean when he feels like it.” She wiggled her shoulders, as though she were tossing off the problem between us. “About Tony,” she said. “I know he’s tall, but what does he look like?”

  “Nothing special, just okay,” I answered, but I felt myself blush. Dee Dee grinned, but before she could say a word, I went on. “He’s tall—just as Eric said—and he has a good tan, and his hair and mustache are dark brown.”

  “Mustache?” Her eyebrows rose. “How old is he?”

  “He said he was a year older than Eric. That would make him nineteen.”

  “And you like him,” Dee Dee said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. I guess I do.” I could feel my cheeks grow even warmer.

  “Have you eaten breakfast?” Dee Dee asked. “I haven’t. Come on in. I’ll get Lupita to fix us something, and you can tell me all about Tony.”

  I didn’t want to tell Dee Dee about Tony. I wanted to keep him to myself. I pointedly glanced at my watch, not really seeing it, and said, “I’ve got to get home. I told Mom I’d take a quick ride, then get back and help with the unpacking. I’ll see you later.”

  “I could come over and help, too, if you’d like me to.” She glanced at our house again from the corner of her eye. “Sooner or later I’ll have to get used to being in the house.”

  “Just like we’ll have to get used to living in it.”

  Dee Dee flinched.

  I hadn’t meant to hurt her. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “All of this wasn’t your fault.”

  Dee Dee blinked a couple of times, managed a smile, and said, “I’ll be over in about an hour. Okay?”

  “Great,” I answered. “We’ll put you to work.”

  When I finished my bike ride, I wheeled the bike into the garage and went back inside the house, where Mom was on her hands and knees, her head inside one of the kitchen cupboards.

  “Are you sure I can’t do that for you?” I asked.

  She squirmed backward until she could sit upright. “No thanks,” she said. “I know exactly where I want to put everything in my kitchen.” She pointed toward the end of the counter. “I’ve made a shopping list. Why don’t you take the car and run down to the store? By the time you’ve bought the groceries, the bookstores will be open. Then you can stop by the vet’s and get Dinky.”

  “Good! I can’t wait to see Dinky.”

  Mom tilted her head and examined me. “Why this interest in Spanish all of a sudden?”

  “Lots of people in Houston speak Spanish.” We’d always been open and honest with each other, so I felt uncomfortable about hiding my reason from her.

  Mom sighed and said, “I know this move has been tough on you, Sarah, but when school starts, you’ll make some friends.”

  “I have one friend here already—Dee Dee Pritchard.” Mom’s eyes clouded for an instant. Before she could say anything, I quickly added, “Dee Dee’s nice. Really. Don’t blame her for what her mother did.”

  “I know you’re right,” Mom said, although she didn’t look very happy about it. “I’m still having trouble accepting what happened.”

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Mom.” I picked up the shopping list and hurried from the room. She’d always been good at reading my face.

  While I was standing in line at the bookstore, waiting to buy a Spanish-English phrase book, I looked up the section on familiar phrases. Lo necesito esta noche—I need it tonight. Aqui tiene la lista—Here is the list. Trate de encontrarlo—Try to find it.

  Try to find it! With trembling fingers I fumbled through my shoulder bag, pulled out the scrap of paper on which I’d written the words from my dream, and read them: Trate de encontrarlo. The same words. Try to find it. Try to find what?

  “May I help you?” the clerk asked.

  Quickly I paid for the book and hurried out to the car. I thumbed through the book, trying to find what I wanted to ask, but the verb to find, encontrar, was not conjugated. Here was qué, meaning “what.” Could I combine them? Or just answer “¿Qué?” to whoever was trying to reach me?

  When I picked up Dinky, I was so glad to have her in my arms again that I snuggled against her fur. She looked at me as though she blamed me for her visit at the vet’s.

  “It’s not my fault,” I told her, and tucked her inside the cat carrier. “Moving’s been hard on all of us. Why should you be an exception?”

  Dinky just sneered and turned her back to me.

  Dee Dee arrived at my house just as I pulled into the driveway. “I’m ready to work,” she said, and tugged one of the large grocery bags from the car. Spying the cat carrier, she said, “Hey! She’s pretty.”

  Dinky looked at Dee Dee with a little more friendliness than she’d shown me, but once inside the house, Dinky went exploring, ignoring both of us. I watched her carefully to see how she reacted. Weren’t cats supposed to sense things people couldn’t see? But not a hair raised on Dinky’s calico back.

  Mom and Dee Dee greeted each other a little awkwardly.

  “I’ll put away the groceries,” Mom said. She nodded toward the maid’s room. “I’d appreciate it if you girls would do a really good job of wiping down the floor in there—especially in the little closet. It’s a hands-and-knees job, and my back is beginning to give out.”

  Dee Dee and I equipped ourselves with soft old towels and the wood cleanser. “I’ll begin in the closet,” I said.

  The closet was so small that I couldn’t get completely into it. I attacked the baseboards, scrubbing hard. I was so intent on my work that at first I didn’t notice that the air had changed. It grew warmer, and it touched my face in rhythm, as though someone were breathing.

  I heard the words in my head. Trate de encontrarlo.

  ¿Qué? I demanded. ¿Qué, qué, qué?

  There was no answer, but the breathing became more rapid. How can I help you if you don’t tell me what you want? I asked. Stubbornly I scrubbed even harder at the baseboard, working faster, trying to break the rhythm that surged against me. It was like an excited heartbeat, a gasping, a trembling, and it wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Suddenly a piece of the baseboard came away in my hands. “Oh, no!” I said. “I think I broke something.” But I realized that I hadn’t broken it. The board must have been loose. It pulled away too quickly.

  The breathing stopped.

  “What did you break?” Dee Dee was right beside me, peering over my shoulder.

  I picked up the small piece of board—about eight or ten inches in length—to see if there were nails I might drive in a little deeper in order to fasten it in place, and I glimpsed a shallow, hollowed-out place, a rough gap in the Sheetrock. Inside this hollow was a bundle of papers with a thin silver chain wound around them.

  “Move back, Dee Dee. I’m coming out.” I squirmed backward into the room.

  She plopped down beside me as I sat cross-legged on the floor, examining the small packet in my hands.

  “What is it? Where did you find it?” she asked.

  “It was tucked behind a loose piece of ba
seboard.”

  “That’s a religious medal!” she said as I unwound the chain and exposed a round, silver medal, so small that I hadn’t noticed it at first.

  The envelope on top was unsealed. Inside was a wad of currency, both United States money and Mexican pesos. “Ohhhh!” Dee Dee said. “How much money is in there?”

  I thumbed through it. “About a hundred and fifty dollars in U.S. bills. I don’t know how much the pesos would be worth.”

  “Is there a name somewhere in there?”

  I dropped the first envelope and medal into my lap and opened the second. Inside was a small pocket calendar, two years out-of-date. The names of the months and days of the week were in Spanish, each day crossed off with a tiny black X up through March second. From March third there were no markings on the calendar.

  Dee Dee gasped. “March third is the day the murder took place! What do you think that means?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever owned these things must have left this house the day before.”

  “Or on the day of the murder.”

  “You mean that the person might have seen what happened?” I shivered, thinking of how terrifying that would be.

  “What else have you got there?” Dee Dee asked.

  With the calendar was a small envelope, addressed to Rosa Luiz at a post-office address someplace in Mexico called El Chapul, and there was a canceled Mexican stamp on the envelope.

  Rosa? Is that your name? I felt a shiver of recognition. I turned the envelope over and stared at it. “This is a personal letter,” I said. “I don’t think we should read it.”

  “Sure we should!” Dee Dee demanded. She was practically leaning into my lap. “It’s been opened, hasn’t it? Besides, we need to know who owns these things, don’t we?” She paused and added, “And if they have anything to do with the murder.”

  From the envelope I took out a small, rough sheet of paper. It was dated about four years ago and was addressed to Rosa Luiz with a formal heading.

  “Can you read Spanish?” Dee Dee asked me.

  “No.”

  “Then stop staring at the letter and give it to me. I’ll read it.”

  Almost reluctantly I handed the sheet of paper to her, and she studied it. “Oh, dear,” she said.

  I reached over and shook her shoulder. “Read it aloud! I want to know what it says too!”

  Dee Dee complied, translating as she went along, with only a few stumbles.

  This is to inform you that your uncle, Carlos Reyna, died last week of complications brought on by influenza. He worked on my farm for many years, as you may know. The other workers told me that you were his only living relation, so I am writing to inform you that he is buried in the church cemetery at Hermosillo. Señor Reyna had only a few possessions. I will hold them for you if you wish, but I am enclosing in this letter the medal he always wore.

  With sincere condolences,

  Señor Diego de la Ruiz,

  Rancho Playa del Rey, Sonora

  Sorrow wrapped itself around me, its weight bending my shoulders. “Poor Rosa,” I murmured. “She was all alone.”

  Dee Dee’s glance was curious. “How do you know that?”

  I was puzzled too. “I don’t really know. I just—” I took a deep breath and tried to cover by saying, “I just took it for granted that if she were her uncle’s only relative, then he must have been her only relative.”

  “Wrong,” Dee Dee said. “She might have been married. She might have a dozen children, parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, who knows?” She paused. “The real question is who is this Rosa Luiz, and what are her things doing in this closet?”

  “She probably worked here,” I answered.

  Dee Dee fingered the bills. “Poor thing. She worked hard for this money. She wouldn’t have wanted to leave it behind. Maybe we could find her and get it back to her.”

  “We can’t do that!”

  “Why not? You sound so positive.”

  The presence who had contacted me was Rosa. I was sure of this. But I couldn’t tell Dee Dee about it. How could I explain?

  “I know what we can do,” Dee Dee said. “We can telephone Mr. Holt. Maybe he’ll know where Rosa is.”

  “No!” I insisted, but Dee Dee handed me the letter, jumped to her feet, and ran into the kitchen.

  I hurried after her. “Dee Dee, wait a minute. I don’t think telephoning Mr. Holt is a good idea.”

  But Dee Dee had already bent over the Houston telephone directory and was thumbing through the pages. “I know where Mr. Holt works,” she said. “Yes, here’s the number. I’ll dial. You talk.”

  “We shouldn’t …” I began, but Dee Dee had already finished dialing.

  “Here,” she said in a stage whisper, thrusting the receiver at me. “It’s ringing!”

  “Hello?” a masculine voice was saying as I reluctantly took the receiver from Dee Dee. “Hello?”

  I tried to sound very businesslike, but I felt strange talking to a man whose son was a murderer. “My name is Sarah Darnell. Is this Mr. Martin Holt?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I plunged right in. “Mr. Holt, we’re living in your former house on Fair Oaks Lane. We’ve found something that belongs to a Rosa Luiz, and I hope you can tell me how we can get in touch with her.”

  For a moment there was silence. “Mr. Holt?” I asked. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice so thick with suspicion that it dropped a notch. “What do you want? I don’t understand the reason for this call.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t explain it right. I was cleaning up, and I found a few possessions belonging to a Rosa Luiz.”

  “What possessions?”

  I don’t know why, but something kept me from telling him everything. “A small amount of money and a religious medal. Her name was with them.”

  “Oh,” he said, the tension leaving his voice. “Well, somehow they must have gotten tucked out of sight and she forgot about them. Obviously they didn’t mean much to her.”

  “You know her, then.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did she work for you?”

  “A long time ago. It must have been ten years, at least. I remember it was when we first moved into that house. We only employed her for a few months. She didn’t work out.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to sound calm. “Do you know where she went?”

  “No,” he said. “Probably back to Mexico.”

  “I’d like to return these things to her.”

  “Forget it,” he snapped. “She was one of the many illegals. She’s probably somewhere back in Mexico, and you’d never find her. Keep the money. Count it as an unexpected gift.”

  “That’s all you can tell me about her?”

  “That’s more than enough. I scarcely remember her—” He broke off, his tone almost angry. “I have a business appointment. There’s really nothing more we need to discuss, is there?”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

  As I hung up the receiver Dee Dee leaned across the counter, asking eagerly, “Well? What did he say? Tell me!”

  I tightly gripped the envelope that held Rosa Luiz’s few possessions. “He said he barely remembered her, that she worked here for just a few months when they first moved into this house.”

  Dee Dee looked disappointed. “So that’s that.”

  “Let’s keep this to ourselves,” I told her. “At least for now, I’d just as soon no one else knew about it.”

  Dee Dee tried to look innocent. “Sure, if you want. I can keep a secret, no matter what Eric says about me. But I don’t understand why—”

  “No real reason. Just humor me. Okay?”

  But I did have a reason. The dates Mr. Holt gave me were years before the dates on the letter and on the calendar.

  Martin Holt had lied to me, and I wanted to know why.

  Chapter

  Seven

  When Dee Dee left fo
r lifeguard duty, I was glad. I needed time to think.

  Mom handed me a folded newspaper. “Do me a favor and take this out to the garage,” she said. As I glanced at the newspaper the front-page headlines gave me an idea.

  “Do you think that the Houston Post or the Houston Chronicle would let me look up back copies of their newspapers?” I asked Mom.

  “You can find back issues of local papers on film in any city’s downtown library.” She straightened, a hand at the small of her back, and leaned against the kitchen counter, studying me. “You want to read about the murder, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Her forehead puckered. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Everyone else knows all the details. I think it will be easier to know what happened here than to guess at it.” I had to learn as much as possible about what really happened.

  Mom hesitated. “Maybe we should ask your father for his opinion.”

  I walked over to face Mom, resting my hands on her shoulders. “Mom, you’ve got to stop worrying about me. I need to be independent. I have to make my own decisions.”

  Mom took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She opened them, looked right into my eyes, and said, “All right, Sarah. I trust your judgment. If you want to go to the library, you can take the car. I won’t need it until late this afternoon.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I gave her a hug, then paused. “Do you happen to know how to get to the downtown library?”

  She laughed. “Call them up, O Independent One. Ask them for directions.”

  “Let’s try this one first,” the librarian said as she snapped the first roll into place in one of the microfilm readers and showed me how to fast-forward and reverse. “As far as I remember, the issues that first tell about the murder are included in here. The stories about the trial are in the roll on the bottom of the stack I brought you.” She studied me. “We haven’t had anyone ask for these dates in a long time.”

  I just nodded. As she walked away I began to forward the tape from page to page, rapidly scanning the front pages. The fast-forward made me sick to my stomach, and every now and then I had to pause, closing my eyes to give them a rest.