The House on Xenia

by Rita Moreau

  “I remember him,” Josie said. “He was a nice man. She became his secretary, and she worked for him, and they both retired about the same time.”

  “Well, Harvey was called into the base commander’s office that day, and they had a nice chat. Anyway, he never pushed that envelope with your mother again, but still he was her boss,” Gabby said as she poured them another splash of cream sherry.

  “Gabby, did my mother know something about what happened to him? Was that why she left instructions in her will that we were never to sell the house?” Josie said as she took a sip of cream sherry, felling her blood pressure rise along with her temper. “You know my mother never talked to me about important things, like her health for one. She lived for her dream, and Alexi who shared that dream was no help.”

  Josie closed her eyes again, recalling the handling of all the doctors’ appointments, the chemo, and the radiation when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Her mother was a force of nature but was strongly in denial. Josie was blindsided when she died. It hit her hard because she was also in denial.

  Josie shook her head. “To this day she continues to stir up the pot, just as she did when she was alive.”

  “When your mother and I worked together at Wright-Patt we were clerk stenographers which was a pay grade above the typing pool where we started.” Josie knew they were lifelong friends. She had heard this story before, how she was plucked out of the typing pool and met her mother. She kept quiet, for now. Gabby was a talker, another reason she was called Gabby.

  “Back then, if you wanted to get out of the typing pool you had to be sharp. You had to type fast, take shorthand, transcribe it, and chew gum all at the same time. We worked for high-ranking military officers or defense contractors. We were given clearance to view classified information. Our clearance was in line with our boss. Your mother had the highest clearance for a secretary, top secret. Keeping our mouths shut was number one,” Gabby paused here to zip up her thin lips to emphasize her point.

  “If someone gossiped, they were sent packing. Escorted right off the base. Zing!” Gabby said pointing one finger to the door as she mimicked a bow and arrow. “Zing! Zing!”

  “I remember the day I met your mother. She trained me. The first thing she did was read my job description and then she told me to repeat it until I knew it by heart.”

  Josie watched as Gabby prepared to read her job description from an imaginary piece of paper. “I still know it by heart,” Gabby said with a wink.

  “CLERK STENOGRAPHER: Under supervision, to perform varied and increasingly responsible clerical duties; to take and transcribe dictation; to do related work as required.”

  Gabby paused and took another sip of cream sherry.

  Josie tried to wait patiently, but patience had never been her strong suit. She wanted to know why Gabby called her to talk about the body. Why was she telling her about this Harvey Long? Maybe her mind wasn’t as sharp as it used to be?

  “It was the related work as required that you have to watch out for, your mother told me the day we met. I was young and single, but I knew what she meant. I got the message. GiGi took me under her wing and kept a watchful eye out for me. Later I married and left to raise a family. We remained friends for life.” Gabby was quiet now reflecting on their friendship and a very long life.

  “So, Gabby the body they found the other day was my mother’s boss, Harvey Long,” Josie said, guiding Gabby back to the present. She decided she’d better jump right to the chase before Gabby wandered back to the past.

  Josie continued, “When we first heard the news about the body Alexi said something strange.”

  “She did?”

  Now she had Gabby’s attention.

  “Yes, we were sitting at that big, old, dining room table having breakfast. We had just heard the news reporting a body found under a house on Xenia, and I ran into the kitchen to see what they said, and Annie followed. While we were in there talking, we heard Alexi.”

  “What did she say?”

  She said, “There was a body. I remember it.”

  “Goodness,” Gabby said and made the sign of the cross and kissed the gold cross she wore around her neck. Gabby was a devout Catholic, Josie not so much. “Then what?”

  “Then she said to talk to the house.”

  “She did? Your mother used to tell me all the time that that house talked to her, especially after YaYa died. She said it protected your family. I believed her. I always felt something when I visited. Like the house was a mother watching over her children. That house was different.”

  “It was different all right,” Josie said. “Alexi cannot remember the present, but she can remember the past like it was yesterday. I have to take it one step at a time, so she doesn’t go over the edge, have another stroke, and I lose her altogether. Gabby, you were my mother’s best friend. She talked to you more than she talked to me. I mean how did the body of her boss wind up underneath our old house? Something must have happened. Alexi and I would have been kids; I would have been about five and Alexi close to ten.”

  Gabby sat there and stared past Josie, all the way back to another lifetime. She watched Gabby close her eyes and look inward. She took a long and very deep breath and then spoke.

  “That is why I asked you to come over here today.” Josie sat quietly watching Gabby. When she opened her eyes, she knew Gabby was going to tell her something. She was ready to talk. She had crossed over that bridge.

  “What is it?”

  “GiGi told me something the last time we spoke. It was the night she slipped into the coma.” Josie knew Gabby was the last person to talk to her mother before she died.

  “I never knew what to make of it. I still don’t. She was pretty sick those last days. Her boss, that guy they found, was the head of a top secret department. I mean top secret. They worked on all kinds of stuff, government stuff, sent to Wright-Patt to this secret area where your mother worked. Breaking down and studying everything from weapons to planes and stuff like that whether it was captured or recovered. As his secretary, she was privy to a lot of secrets. One of my grandsons is an aeronautical engineer. He told me it’s a process called reverse engineering. That’s why her boss was brought in. He did that stuff during the war, for the other side. The government did that. They brought in a lot of German scientists after the war, and kept it quiet. I guess you could say your mother worked at an Area 51, the real one.”

  “Since my mother has been gone, I’ve felt like there is a lot I didn’t know about her. She kept secrets. I know that.”

  “You were her daughter, and you were the one who stayed to care for her as she did for her mother. She got word to me that day and asked me to come to the hospital. I held her hand that last time. I remember thinking she was her old self and I even mentioned it to the nurse who told me that was common in the last hours. As she held my hand, she told me she had something to tell me, but I was to keep it a secret. She had been given something. She was to keep it well hidden. She was told to keep it for protection. Just in case they came after her or her family. I still remember the fear in her eyes when she told me that.”

  “Come after her? Who would come after her?”

  “The government,” Gabby said.

  “The government?”

  “Josie, the area where your mother worked was way below ground. If a nuclear bomb hit the base, she would have survived. It wasn’t a big secret, but still, it was secret. She was the one who catalogued anything brought into that secret area. She had seen all the records past and present,” Gabby said as she took a sip from her sherry and then continued, “Did your mother share any of this with you or Alexi?”

  “She never talked about her job. Her job as far as it concerned her put food on the table. The only thing she ever talked about was making it big in the movies. If she shared anything like that, it would have been with Alexi. You know, the oldest daughter. Alexi was a dreamer like Mom. That’s all they talked about—making it big in Hollywood
. Alexi did, for a while anyway. My mother was so proud of her. I never could live up to that. My mother and I did not see things the same way, so we spent a lot of time arguing like she did with her mother. I was the practical one, and she and Alexi were the dreamers. When they started their jib-jab, YaYa and I went out for a walk.”

  “Then she may have told Alexi about it. She may have asked Alexi to keep it or even hide it after she was gone.”

  “Hide what, Gabby?” Josie said.

  “Something her boss gave her.”

  “Something her boss gave her?” Josie said as the light bulb went on high beam. “OMG! The man they found under our house?” Gabby nodded her head yes. “What did he give her?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it was something like a floppy disk. You remember those?” Josie was familiar with that term since she’d worked at Wright-Patt as a secretary, like her mother. And like her mother, she needed a job to raise a child, her granddaughter. She took computer courses at night to become familiar with computers. It got her promoted over the years. She was good at her job, like her mother.

  “Only that night she called it a chip. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I still don’t. All I know was she told me it was her insurance policy. Whatever it was, her boss Harvey Long told her to keep it hidden and that it would protect her if they ever came after her.”

  “Are you sure she called it a chip?”

  “Yes, she kept calling it a chip. She held her fingers up when she was talking to show me it was small. I think it was some computer chip or maybe what they call today a flash drive.”

  How could that be, Josie wondered? No computer guru, she knew enough to know we did not have computer chips or flash drives until after her mother was gone.

  “But wait a minute— at the time she died, I think we would have only had microfiche or floppy disks?”

  “I know, but we are talking Wright-Patt. They had a lot of stuff way before it's time,” Gabby said as a matter-of-fact manner—no big deal - and then with a nod of her head, “Trust me on that one.”

  “Good grief. So, my mother had a computer chip or a flash drive or something before anyone else and her boss, the one they found under that house on Xenia, gave it to her. If she told anyone, she told Alexi. Gabby, I have no way of figuring any of this out unless Alexi remembers. Something happened to that man, or he wouldn’t have ended up buried under that old farmhouse on our property. It sat behind the house on Xenia, next to the alley. If it had not caught fire no one would have found him. That neighborhood is gone, and no one lives there anymore. If she remembers, it might be too much for her. I’m afraid for her. Her doctors warned us that another stroke might be fatal.”

  Gabby was staring at Josie, and then she said, “Have you talked to your cousin, MC?”

  “MC? Not really, I mean we spoke last week when I called to find out about Aunt Sophia’s knee surgery. She is back in Fish Camp while Aunt Sophia recuperates.”

  “She was my CPA before she sold her practice. Your Aunt Toolou sent me to her. You know she is psychic and has a knack for finding things.”

  “I know. I’ve heard all the stories from Aunt Toolou. MC doesn’t talk about it though.”

  “You both have a lot in common. Strong mothers. Her mother and your mother were about the same age and were good friends.”

  “I remember. They talked on the phone all the time about show business. Drove YaYa crazy. MC’s mother had some kind of public access TV show in Fish Camp, and she was always inviting my mother to be a guest on her show. My grandfather, James, and MC’s grandfather were related. Not sure how. Alexi paid more attention to that than me.”

  “I still have a condo near Fish Camp, but I haven’t been down there since I moved into this retirement home,” Gabby said rolling her eyeballs. Giving up driving and little by little her independence has not come easy to Gabby.

  “You should call her. She might help. She might use that psychic side of her personality to help you find that chip,” Gabby said.

  Josie sat there for a moment and thought about what Gabby just said. Her brain was good at putting information together and sorting it out for answers. Like a computer. She knew she needed to find that chip or whatever it was and asking Alexi was out of the question. She needed to find out what information was on it. She might need it if the police or the government started asking her questions about her mother’s boss and why they found him under the house she still owns. The one her mother would not allow them to sell. She knew right then she had to find out what this insurance policy her mother left her was all about. She also knew a man died because of what was on it and that sent another shiver down her spine.

  “I will call her,” Josie said with a shrug of her shoulders, not sold on involving family but she knew she was running out of options and time. They would call her daily with many ideas on how to solve this mystery if she got the family on board. Not to mention all the card readings that would take place for those in the family that had the gift, like her cousin MC.

  “It won’t hurt, as your mother used to say.”

  “You’ve got a point there. Okay, I’ll call her. I need to catch up on Aunt Sophia.”

  Josie got up to leave and gave Gabby a big hug. She could see she was getting tired and this had taken a lot out of her.

  “So, will you do it?” She knew what Gabby was talking about.

  “You mean come to mass with you? Yeah, when the Catholic Church enforces that zero-tolerance policy with all those priests—starting from the top with the bishops who have been hiding them for decades, I will,” Josie said to Gabby’s question, trying to deflect it with her view of the Catholic Church. Josie had drifted from the church a long time ago, and each time she started on the road back another scandal erupted. “Have you seen some of the mansions those bishops live in? They need to be sold. They should all be living a life of poverty like the nuns.”

  “I’m not talking about attending mass,” Gabby said, pointing her bony finger at her. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Gabby, you know I will write your eulogy when the time comes.”

  “Good. The pizza slab was banging loud the other night, and I thought it was time. You should write a book. Not just eulogies. You have a talent.”

  “I am happy to be a writer of last words. A book is over my pay grade. Something my mother, your dear friend, would say.”

  On the way out, Josie once again thought about writing a book. She always thought the family talent went to Alexi and now her granddaughter Annie. No, she was happy writing eulogies. She was pretty well known as a writer of last words. Well maybe someday, she would write a book. Each eulogy was a short story. Funny, how you don’t know somebody until after they are gone. Like my mother, for example, Josie thought as she sat in her car thinking about the conversation she had with Gabby.

  I wish I had paid more attention to the history of our family. Oh well.

  As Josie drove off, she did not see the black SUV that followed her home.

  Chapter 3

  Dayton, Ohio

  The reporters were camped outside her home. They had connected the dots. Annie had to sneak out the back and through a neighbor’s yard to get to work after breakfast. Alexi was getting jittery. Josie had enough. She had to do something. She called and spoke to Aunt Toolou who naturally offered to come by and read the cards.

  “The whole family is talking, and we are worried. I’ll be over a little later with my cards. Sit tight.”

  Reading cards was the answer to solving difficult problems for her large, boisterous Greek family. Family members and news reporters kept her voice mailbox full even though she deleted the messages daily. A colonel from Wright-Patt kept calling. He wanted to drop by and talk. Josie listened to his latest message. He had gone from polite to demanding.

  “This is Colonel Storms. I am calling to speak to Ms. Yanni on the matter that concerns the body found under the property on Xenia. I have called more than once. Please re
turn this call ASAP. We need to talk.”

  That did it. It was time to call her cousin MC. She’d had it with her family leaving messages and telling her how to get out of this mess. They were like that, no polite offering of suggestions, they skipped that step. The last thing she needed was a reporter talking to one of her family members. She waited while the phone rang. MC’s Aunt Anna answered, “Anna.”

  “Hello Aunt Anna,” she said. Everyone in this family was someone’s aunt or uncle, so it was easy to address them by that title, whether or not it was true. They small talked for a respectable time frame about Aunt Sophia’s knee and then she asked to speak to her cousin MC. If you were close in age like she was to MC, you were cousins.

  “She’s on her way to her old tax office. They got some work for her,” Aunt Anna said, and of course, she was not going to let it go at that and asked why Josie was calling MC. The Greek genes were awake.

  “I heard she was good at finding things,” Josie said.

  “That she is. Does this have something to do with that body they found under the house on Xenia? Toolou called the other day, spoke to Sophia about it, and they read the cards while they were talking.”

  The family news pipeline was quicker than the speed of lightning.

  “Yes, it does,” Josie said.

  “Then I’d call her now,” Aunt Anna said and gave her the office number. “She can help you. That’s what the cards told Toolou and Sophia.”

  Josie called the number and got a recording. I hate this, she thought. Unlike her mother who used to talk on the phone for hours, she did not. In fact, she preferred email or even better—texting. Thanks to Annie who got her hooked on texting.