“You don’t really think Grandpa was having an affair with Onyx, do you?” Noah asked. “You said she’s old, right? I mean, like really old.”
“All I know is your grandfather lied to me about where he was every Friday night for years,” Kizzy said. “And where was he? With another woman—who he wasted our money on. What would you call it?”
“So what am I supposed to do with this stuff?” Noah asked, motioning to the box.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Kizzy said. “Burn it for all I care. I wash my hands of anything to do with that woman. As far as I’m concerned, Onyx Webb can go to hell.”
“I need $20,000,” Noah suddenly blurted.
“Twenty thousand dollars?” Kizzy repeated. “What could you possibly need that much money for?”
“It’s for the band,” Noah said. “We’ve been spinning our wheels for three years now, and if we’re going to get anywhere, we need to cut a demo.”
“No.”
“Grandpa must have had insurance, right?” Noah said, instantly regretting asking the question. But he was desperate.
“Your grandfather had a $100,000 policy,” Kizzy said. “And I am willing to give you $20,000 of it—”
Noah felt a sense of relief wash over him.
“—but not for your music,” Kizzy said. “If you want to go back and finish college, or use it to learn a trade—like going to the Culinary Institute in Napa—I’ll give you the money. Otherwise, no. Your grandfather wasted years pursuing his musical fantasy, and he failed. Now you want to do the same thing? Well, I will not allow you to waste any more time or another dollar on your ridiculous dream of becoming a rock star.”
Noah spent the better part of the afternoon rummaging through his grandfather’s notes, trying to make sense of the wide range of material, and confused about what exactly he was supposed to do with it.
But when he reached the bottom of the box, Noah struck pay dirt. There, in a file folder held together by a large rubber band, were a bunch of song lyrics his grandfather had written.
The songs weren’t good.
They were great.
Amazing.
Noah glanced over at the clock on his dresser. The band—including Alec Yost—would be there soon. And Noah knew the songs were going to blow them away.
Alec leaned against the wall, reading the last of the five pages of song lyrics Noah had selected from his grandfather’s file box.
“Well?” Noah prompted.
“Yeah, sure. These are great lyrics,” Alec said. “The problem is that we don’t need any more damn songs, Noah. We need money so we can cut a frickin’ demo.”
“I know,” Noah said. “I was hoping to sell the Stratocaster, but—”
“Yeah, well I was hoping to join a band where I didn’t have to do every damn thing myself for once. Can any of you sing, Noah? No? Can you play great lead guitar? No. Can you come up with the cash for the demo? No. So, tell me, Noah—why are you even in this band?”
Noah was stunned, unable to respond.
“That’s what I thought,” Alec said, turning to the other three band members behind him. “Grab your equipment, guys. We’re out of here.”
In the last ten days, Noah had lost his grandfather, lost his band, and—more than anything else—lost his confidence.
He needed to get out and go somewhere. Get on his bike and just ride. To the ocean maybe? Yes, that’s what he’d do. In the morning, he’d climb on his bike and ride to the Oregon coast.
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
OCTOBER 31, 2010
Declan Mulvaney’s sleep routine had always been pretty consistent. He went to bed by ten each evening and slept until five or six in the morning. It had been a number of years, however, since Declan had slept through the night without waking to make a quick trip to the bathroom to relieve himself—something to do with the storage capacity of the bladder, his doctor had told him once.
Or reduced testosterone.
Or the shrinking of the lining of the urethra.
Or whatever.
All Declan knew was that after he’d passed fifty, the days of getting eight hours of uninterrupted sleep were over.
This morning was different, though. This morning he woke in serious pain. And when he went, he noticed his urine stream wasn’t the familiar light yellow. It was red.
Blood red.
Declan put on his slippers and made his way from the old section of the mansion, where his bedroom was, toward the hall that led to the newer part of the mansion that had been added on once his son made the decision to marry Nisa.
Nisa.
Declan was surprised how much it still hurt to think of Nisa, even though it had been seventeen years since she’d gone missing. And it pained him to think about the awful way he’d treated Nisa’s father, Kajika, for being an American Indian. Fortunately, Declan had come to his senses and salvaged the relationship before it was too late.
Declan entered Bruce’s office and turned the light on. He looked over to the desk and was glad to see the computer screen was lit up since he still didn’t know how to turn the damn thing on. Bruce wanted to put a computer in Declan’s office, but Declan had refused.
Truth be known, Declan had actually begun to enjoy “surfing the web” once Koda showed him how it worked. Now he was finding himself on Bruce’s computer more and more.
In particular, Declan enjoyed watching videos of military personnel coming home and surprising their kids. As far as he was concerned, that was the best part of being on the Internet. That and funny cat videos—though he’d rather cut off his arm before admitting it to Bruce or anyone else.
Declan sat behind the desk and typed “red blood in urine” and pressed the enter button. Two seconds later, there were eighteen million hits. He clicked on the tab for the Mayo Clinic and an article immediately appeared.
The news wasn’t particularly bad: urinary tract infections, kidney infections, kidney stones, enlarged prostate, benign prostatic hyperplasia.
Nor was it good.
Microscopic urinary bleeding due to kidney disease. Or kidney injury, which it probably wasn’t. Declan thought he’d know if he’d been hit in the kidney hard enough to make it bleed. The same with strenuous exercise. He worked out, but…
Glomerulonephritis, causing inflammation of the kidney’s filtering system. Or sickle cell anemia. Hereditary defects in the hemoglobin.
Having no idea about his parents, Declan could not rule any hereditary reason for blood in his urine to be either in or out.
Finally, there it was—the big C.
Cancer.
More accurately, cancers.
Advanced kidney cancer, bladder cancer, prostate cancer—all usually in the later stages if blood was present.
For the briefest moment, Declan felt sorry for himself, asking the question every cancer patient probably asked when they’d been given the diagnosis.
Why me?
The equally reasonable question was, why not me?
Declan had made it to eighty-eight years of age with very few issues. He’d had his tonsils removed. Broke an arm once. He fought in World War II for eighteen months and returned home without a scratch.
He had no reason to feel sorry for himself. He’d lived a good life. A great life. If Declan had believed in God, he’d be the first to say it was a blessed life—even with the years spent at the orphanage.
Declan placed the cursor in the search box and typed “funny videos” and pressed enter. He needed to watch something funny.
Son of a bitch.
The first video was of Mika Flagler hitting a reporter in the face with a hot pie. The reporter was pressing charges. The DA had issued a warrant for Mika’s arrest.
Declan laughed and started the video over.
Declan knew that if he was going to get his first-edition copy of Ulysses back, he’d have to act quick. On the other hand, who cared? He didn’t need to go to the doctor to know the truth.
He was sick.
Declan hit play for a third time and watched Mika squirming and then hitting the reporter in the face with the pie. This time Declan laughed until he cried.
CRIMSON COVE, OREGON
JANUARY 12, 2002
Abigale Dietz stood at the center of the stage in front of a packed house, allowing the excitement and relief to wash over her. It turned out her father was right: people did want a diversion after the horrors of 9/11—with, of all things, horror.
“And now, without further ado,” Abigale said into the microphone, “it is my pleasure to introduce the founder of the Dietz Theater, and the man who shot much of the original footage you will be seeing today—my father, Mr. George Dietz.”
Aaron Dietz helped his elderly father into a director’s chair, to the cheers of the audience, and Abigale handed him the microphone.
“Thank you all for coming out,” George Dietz said into the microphone. “I could never have imagined sixty years ago that I’d be sitting here addressing you today.”
“We want Onyx!” someone shouted to the cheers of other audience members.
“Well, from where I’m sitting, I see about a hundred Onyxes,” George said, followed by a wave of laughter. “And, who knows, maybe one of them is the real Onyx Webb.”
Onyx sat on the aisle, directly in the middle of the theater, amused by the spectacle of everything going on around her. Under normal circumstances, she’d have drawn stares going out in public—but the circumstances were anything but normal since almost every female in the theater was in costume—as Onyx Webb.
Pipi Esperanza would have preferred to avoid declaring her position with the FBI to gain entrance to the theater, but since neither she nor Newt had tickets to the event, they were forced to flash their bureau ID to a kid at the ticket window.
“Official business,” Pipi said, letting the kid study her picture for a moment.
“There’s no seats left,” the kid said.
Newt opened his wallet as well, realizing it was the first time he’d ever flashed his ID—other than to his parents, who weren’t nearly as impressed as he’d hoped. “Don’t worry. We’re just going to stand in the back.”
When they got inside, Newt saw the kid was telling the truth. “How can a town this small support a six hundred-seat theater?” Newt asked.
“I’m guessing there was no TV when it was built,” Pipi said. “They probably drew people from as far north as Tillamook and as far south as Coos Bay.”
“Life magazine and the Hollywood Reporter each sent people to cover the trial,” George Dietz said from the stage. “So did RKO Radio Pictures, who did the newsreels that ran in theaters across the country on Saturday mornings. And, as it turned out, I was the first person called to take the stand.”
The lights in the theater went down, and black-and-white footage from inside the courtroom began to flicker across the screen.
For the next fifteen minutes, Newt and Pipi watched the screen as a young George Dietz recounted the events of the night he and his friends accidently caught the image of a ghostly figure in the cemetery. “When I placed my eye to the viewfinder and turned the focus knob, that’s when I saw her. It was the ghost of Onyx Webb.”
The audience went wild. Newt leaned in Pipi’s direction and said, “Hey, do you know someone at the bureau named Maggie? From OSINT?”
“Maggie? No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“It’s nothing,” Newt said. “Forget I asked.”
“Wait,” Pipi said. “Are you talking about the cute little brunette who is always prancing around in the school-girl navy blazer?”
“I said to forget it,” Newt said.
“Okay, but if you want I’m glad to ask around,” Pipi said.
Newt shook his head, wishing he’d just kept his mouth shut. What did he expect Pipi to do anyway? Set up a date? “Do you see anyone who fits the profile?” Newt asked, changing the subject.
“No,” Pipi said. “I hadn’t considered that everyone would be in costume. All we can do is eliminate people by height, weight, and sex.”
“That’s the problem,” Newt said. “We know The Leg Collector has already disguised himself as a woman, plus he can do things to make himself look taller, older, and heavier. And I wish we’d been able to talk to Onyx Webb.”
“We’ve been to the lighthouse three times,” Pipi said. “It’s not going to happen.”
“Maybe she is a ghost,” Newt quipped.
“I apologize for the interruption, your honor,” a voice said from the theater screen as an attractive woman—wearing a mask and an arm sleeve—burst into the courtroom. “My name is Onyx Webb, and I have come to clear my name.”
For the fifth time in as many minutes, the audience in the Dietz Theater went crazy—with the exception of a single woman in an aisle seat, three rows in front of Onyx.
It was Claudia Spilatro.
Claudia had taken the train from Chicago several days earlier. It was the first time she’d traveled more than fifty miles from Chicago since she died. And unlike the moviegoers who surrounded her, Claudia had not come to see George Dietz’s little movie, even if she was one of the film’s stars. In fact, seeing her image on the screen in the theater her family used to own—glowing with the beauty and vitality of a woman in her mid-twenties—filled her with rage.
Nothing had gone Claudia’s way in life, starting on the day she’d met Ulrich Schröder. From the very beginning, Claudia knew Ulrich was a lying scoundrel—but she was determined to make him her lying scoundrel. It should have been easy.
In the end, Onyx had the last laugh.
Onyx had passed at the age of thirty-nine. Claudia, on the other hand, hadn’t died until years later at the age of sixty-one.
Onyx would be thirty-nine forever.
Claudia would be old forever.
Even with her flaws removed, there was no skin treatment in the world that could make a sixty-one-year-old woman look like she was thirty-nine—unless you were Raquel Welch or Catherine Deneuve perhaps.
Claudia shook the thought from her mind. She hadn’t come all the way to Crimson Cove to relive her past—she’d come to deny Onyx of her future.
Claudia watched the movie screen as the judge remanded her younger self into custody and the bailiff slapped handcuffs on her wrists—much to the delight of the audience who hollered and cheered around her.
Okay, Claudia thought. Time to go. She already knew how the movie ended.
Claudia stood and scooted past a man in a wheelchair parked next to her in the aisle and then headed for the exit, happy to get away from him. For one thing, she didn’t understand his costume. Worse still, he stunk of vanilla.
Noah stood at the back of the theater, scanning the darkened room for an empty seat, without luck.
He’d started his day early, climbing on his motorcycle and taking Route 30 out of Portland heading northwest to Astoria on the ocean—then working his way down the Oregon coast through Cannon Beach, Tillamook, and Otter Rock—then stopping briefly for lunch in Lincoln City.
Fifty more miles to the south, Noah spotted a lighthouse, with the setting sun glowing orange on the ocean behind it.
Was this Onyx Webb’s lighthouse?
Minutes later, Noah rolled into the small seaside town of Crimson Cove, which was jammed with tourists who were there for The Onyx Webb Film Festival.
Weird.
Noah looked again for a seat and then saw a gray-haired woman stand to leave. He quickly went down the aisle, sliding past a man in a wheelchair, and grabbed the empty seat before someone else did.
The man in the wheelchair had long hair—a wig most likely—held in place by a red, white, and blue bandana. Clenched between the man’s teeth was a Tiparillo cigar. Then Noah noticed both of the man’s legs were missing from just above the knees.
“Great costume,” Noah said. “Lieutenant Dan, right?”
“Very good,” Stan Lee said. “The special effects in the movie were amazi
ng. Almost made you think Gary Sinise had no legs, the way they had him swing them off the side of the shrimping boat like that. Me? I took the hard road and threw myself under a commercial farm reaper.”
Noah’s mouth dropped open.
“Hell, I’m just shitting you, Son,” Stan Lee said with a smile and holding out a box of candy. “Milk Dud?”
After an intermission perfectly planned to coincide with the dinner hour—during which an additional four hundred hot dogs, 250 large sodas, and another hundred boxes of popcorn were sold at eight dollars a pop—the floor was opened up for Q&A.
Clay Daniels IV leaned against the wall on the left-hand side of the theater, watching George Dietz revel in the glow of the attention he was getting. Clay had never thought much of George, but he had to admire how the man had managed to pack the house in a nowhere place like Crimson Cove, with people who’d come to see a movie about a ghost that didn’t exist.
On the other hand, fanatics in any cult were like heroin-addicted zombies who would walk through fire for the next fix, Clay thought. After all, he’d flown to San Diego to attend his first Comic-Con in 1998 to meet his personal idol—comic book legend Stan Lee—and had gone back every year since.
Clay watched as another of the many Onyxes in the room approached the microphone stand in the aisle and asked the question everyone in the theater was thinking. “So, Mr. Dietz, seeing as how you know Onyx—personally, I mean—I was wondering if you thought you’d recognize her if you ran into her face to face today?”
George Dietz released a laugh. “I haven’t laid eyes on Onyx since her trial, and that was six decades ago. So I’m not sure if I would.”
“But they say ghosts never age,” the masked Onyx at the microphone said. “If that’s true, she’d look the same as when you last saw her.”
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