Forgotten Spirits

by Barbara Deese

  “Could I see that?” Foxy turned the motion detector over in her hands. It was white plastic and looked similar to the night light she’d installed in the hallway outside her apartment. “This looks pretty fancy for a beeper.”

  “We’re not even using its full technology,” Robin said. “Brad wondered why it was so expensive and then we read the directions and found out you can hook it up to the computer and conduct surveillance from a remote place.”

  “Wow!”

  “I know. It’s invasive. The clerk was telling Brad how you can check up on the babysitter or see what your kids are doing when you’re not home.”

  “What a strange society we live in! That’s horrible!”

  “It doesn’t seem so immoral if your kids have four legs and fur coats, though, does it? If cats ever unionize, I’m sure they’ll outlaw spy cameras,” she said.

  Foxy, who’d been preoccupied and cheerless since she’d arrived, started laughing. And just as quickly, her laughter turned to tears.

  Robin put an arm around her and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Listen, we’re all here for you. You know that.”

  Foxy inclined her head to rest against the top of Robin’s. “I don’t want to ruin your beautiful meal. Can we please not talk about this today?”

  “Oh, c’mon, Foxy, you’ve just had some bad news, and you need to talk about it. What’s more important? When the others get here—”

  Foxy shook her head vehemently. “No, not over lunch. Promise me.”

  Robín acquiesced. “We’ll eat, open presents, and then we’ll talk, okay?”

  Chapter 4

  By the time the others arrived, Foxy had sponged her face with cold water, reapplied makeup and had found her smile. Robin had to wonder how many times, in her former profession, Foxy had had to stuff down feelings and put on her show face for a roomful of strangers.

  The women of the book club were all seated at the table. Grace wore the cowl-necked sweater she’d been kitting for months. “I’m going to be gauche and cover myself,” she said, looking at the bowl of butternut squash soup in front of her and draping a large napkin over the cream-colored wool.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Robin said to Grace, noticing the dark circles under her eyes.

  Grace rolled her eyes. “I’m exhausted. You would be too if you slept with Fred.”

  Robin raised her eyebrows.

  “Wait, that didn’t come out right. Fred snores. That’s all I meant, and yet I’m the one who’s going to have a sleep study to see why I wake up tired every day.”

  “Might as well rule out anything else,” said Robin.

  Louise gave a little moan as she lifted her spoon to inhale the rich aroma of the soup. She took a sip and moaned again. “This is liquid velvet.” For all the years Louise had lived in Minnesota, she still had a hint of southern in her speech.

  “It’s nothing elaborate, I swear,” Robin said. “It’s just squash and chestnuts, a tiny bit of cream, some—”

  “Nothing elaborate?” Grace swiped her hand in front of her to indicate the dishes, decorations, linens, and food. “It makes me tired just thinking about putting all this together.”

  “You always make a sumptuous feast,” Louise said.

  There was a time Robin might have felt guilty about this comment, as if preparing a nice dinner were not only decadent, but socially irresponsible. After all, there were women who didn’t have the time or money to entertain, and who fed their families by picking up takeout on the way home from work.

  Never mind that her own childhood had had its hardships, or that she’d worked hard to support Brad in med school. The only time she’d ever questioned her lot in life was when she’d had good fortune. Then a few years ago, a young immigrant woman at her church had said to her, “You say, ‘why me?’ only when you have plenty, yet for the bad, you don’t grumble. You must take all, good and bad. It is what God gives.” It had been an epiphany to Robin.

  She looked around the table now and knew she was fortunate indeed to claim these women as friends.

  “Please don’t tell me you replicated all the food in the book!” Grace snatched up her copy of A Christmas Carol, opening it where she’d placed a sticky tab, and read. “Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn—” She interrupted herself to say her annotated version defined brawn as boar’s meat. She continue, “great joints of meat, suckling-pigs—”

  “Stop,” Cate begged. “I will not sit on a meat throne, and I refuse to eat suckling pig!”

  “Wreathes of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples—” Grace stopped and said, “Dickens sounds like a food critic for the Times.”

  “He was,” Robin said, straight-faced. “Well, the London version anyway. They called it The Best of Times and The Worst of Times.”

  Grace looked at her over the top of her reading glasses. There was a collective groan.

  “The Victorians were way over the top, but I love doing this at Christmas,” Cate said, fingering the grosgrain ribbons festooning the centerpiece of holly and red roses.

  Louise, who routinely helped herself to an endless supply of treasures at the antique store she owned, wore a gem-encrusted comb in her champagne-colored hair. “I love that era! The dresses with the wasp waists and voluminous skirts, the gold lockets and lace gloves—Gawd, it was all so grand back then,” she drawled.

  “Okay, Louise, you can be the ghost of Christmas Past,” Grace said. “I’d like to toast the Christmas Present and our hostess.” She raised her glass of sherry and they all clinked. “And, Cate, how about if you use your powers to tell us about Christmas Yet to Come.”

  All eyes turned to Cate, who raised an eyebrow. Her fingers automatically curled around the turquoise amulet that always hung around her neck.

  They waited expectantly.

  Cate inclined her head and with a dramatic flair, said, “At her next checkup, Robin will be told the doctors can do nothing to cure her sick sense of humor.”

  “Hey!” said Robin.

  Still looking very serious, Cate said, “Grace will have to make the decision whether or not to retire early, and Louise will postpone a business decision.” She bit her lower lip.

  “Go on,” said Foxy.

  “Foxy’s love life will get . . . complicated.” Quickly, she added, “And she’ll live happily ever after.”

  Foxy skewed her mouth to the side. “I don’t believe in fairytale endings.”

  Cate stared into the candle. “Okay then, your life will have normal ups and downs like the rest of us. But after the holidays, you’ll have a long rest.”

  “A long rest?” Louise slapped her palm on the table. “Good Gawd, you make it sound like she’s gonna take a dirt nap.” She switched to a Jersey accent, or at least her southern version of one. “Youse sayin’ she’s gonna sleep wit’ da fishes?”

  Foxy’s veneer looked like it was about to crack.

  “Of course she doesn’t mean that,” Robin said, fixing Cate with a look. “Who doesn’t want to rest after the holidays, right? What about your own future, Cate?”

  Cate dabbed her lips with her napkin. “You know I can’t read my own destiny. If I could, it would mean I’ve made all my dumb decisions on purpose.”

  The oven timer buzzed, and Robin excused herself. She came back with clean china plates, each one holding an individual beef Wellington, a Duchess potato, and a mound of glazed carrots with walnuts. On each side plate, she placed two bacon-wrapped sea scallops with a sprig of rosemary.

  When they’d finished the main course, Robin turned the warm, freshly-steamed plum pudding out on a platter, doused it liberally with brandy and touched a match to it. Even in the afternoon light, they could see blue flames dance around th
e dark mound. It smelled heavenly. Robin cut generous portions, passing each plate to Cate for an added dollop of hard sauce.

  “It’s just like the book,” Grace managed to say, even though her mouth was full of the sweet, spicy dessert.

  Robin said, “It’s as authentic as I could make it. All the recipes called for raisins instead of plums, and I finally discovered real plum pudding is not pudding and it isn’t made with plums, but raisins.”

  “Someone should teach proper English to those Brits.” Eyes twinkling, Louise gave an indignant shake of her head.

  Once the table was cleared, they retired to the living room to open presents—flannel scarves, leather journals, glass wine stoppers, bracelets, and etched vases. When there was nothing left to unwrap, Foxy’s fingers twirled around strands of curling ribbon in her lap, a far-off look in her eyes.

  Robin knew she was preparing to unburden herself.

  In the entryway, a cell phone rang. Foxy blinked, shook her head and rushed to find her purse among the four black handbags near the door. Clawing through it, she snatched up her phone.

  * * *

  It was Tina.

  Foxy had hoped to escape the unending speculation about Sierra, if only for a couple of hours, but it was not to be.

  “First it was Big Al, and now Sierra.” Tina’s voice was tight.

  It was true. Sierra had not been the first of them to die. The first had been Tina’s former boyfriend, the one they all referred to as Big Al. For months no one had a clue where he’d gone, and then one day Vinnie called Tina out of the blue to tell her Big Al was dead.

  “And you think there’s a connection?” Although Foxy had wondered that herself, she found it even more unsettling that Tina saw the connection too. Whatever Tina’s former boyfriend had been up to in the months after their breakup, he’d somehow wound up dead, the victim of a hit and run. His body had been found in the old downtown area of the city, not far from where they’d found the money a year earlier. There had been sixty-two dollars in his wallet, the newspaper reported, and a Nevada driver’s license. The driver of the car that hit him had never been found. At the time, there had been a flurry of phone calls among the five remaining friends, and the concern had quickly escalated to paranoia. But then years passed and the subject of Big Al’s death didn’t come up any more.

  “I’m absolutely convinced she didn’t take her own life,” Tina said, “And I don’t think the killer’s going to stop with her, do you?”

  They’d been through this all last night. “I don’t know what to think.” Foxy, certain her friends were listening in the other room, struggled to stay grounded. “Please, let’s not jump to conclusions,” she pleaded.

  “You’ll jump to the same conclusion when I tell you this. Sierra told me she was afraid someone might kill her. She got pretty obsessed about it in the past few weeks.”

  Foxy said, “Just a minute,” and took the phone into the sunroom for privacy. “Is that why she moved to Minnesota?”

  “No, it happened after she moved. She thought someone was stalking her.”

  “Why would she think that?” In their dancing days, they’d all dealt with overzealous audience members who fantasized about one showgirl or another. Sierra had had more than her share of obsessed fans. The bouncers dealt with those guys.

  “It started out with hang-up calls.”

  Foxy’s mouth went dry.

  “At first she thought it was her son’s friends pranking him, but then a few days before she died, she woke up in the middle of the night and felt a presence—that’s how she put it. She felt a presence next to her bed. She screamed, and when her son came in to check on her, nobody was there.”

  “What?” It came out as a hoarse whisper.

  Evidently Tina and Sierra had talked about that incident at length, and Sierra had refused to call the police, saying it would be pointless. With no signs of tampering and nothing missing, she’d said, they’d blow her off as just one more hysterical woman, afraid of sleeping alone.

  “She never said a word to me,” said Foxy, stung by the exclusion.

  “She didn’t say anything to Wylie or Vinnie either.”

  “Do all of you talk to Vinnie?” It came out louder than she’d intended.

  “We talk sometimes.”

  “I really need to get back to my friends,” Foxy said.

  * * *

  Robin saw Foxy’s shoulders slump. Her voice carried into the living room.

  “Vinnie!” Robin said to Cate. “I knew it started with a V.”

  When Foxy returned, Louise asked what was wrong. Foxy eased herself into the chair as if she were in physical pain, her mouth twisting to one side as she looked at the four pairs of eyes focused on hers.

  “What is it, sugar? You can tell us,” Louise persisted. “What we lack in worldly experience, we make up for . . . well, by giving a damn.”

  For so many years Foxy had tucked her past away from them all. Robin wondered if she would ever let her guard down. But then, looking at their concerned faces, Foxy must have decided there was no longer any point in keeping secrets. With no further coaxing, she began talking as though she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. They bubbled out of her in fits and starts. First she told them about Sierra’s death, and then backed up to tell about Sierra’s life, starting with the more recent years.

  After dancing in Las Vegas, Sierra had worked in California for years, and then suddenly she’d moved to Minnesota over the past summer and rented a house in Rochester. Her son, Beau, was in high school. Foxy thought he was a junior or senior, not the ideal time to pull a kid out of school and move across the country so he’d have to finish out high school with strangers.

  “Sierra just up and moved one day,” she continued. “She told us about it after the fact, and never really explained why. I was so excited having her here in Minnesota after all these years, but when I said I wanted to get together, she kind of blew me off.” Foxy explained how she’d arranged meetings twice, once in Rochester and once in St. Paul, but both times Sierra had cancelled at the last minute. “I kept trying, though,” Foxy said, unable to hide her emotions.

  As she talked, it became apparent Foxy had talked to her friend Tina in Portland after hearing the horrible news about Sierra, and after piecing together what they knew, they’d become fearful. Robin, for one, wanted to know why.

  Foxy clenched her fists on her thighs, and said, “I don’t care what Sierra’s father believes. He says she left a note, but when he told me what it said, I thought it could have meant a lot of things other than a suicide note.”

  Cate jumped in. “What did it say?”

  “Something like ‘I’m sorry. I have no other choice.’ But how could she kill herself? She’d never leave her son. I just don’t believe she’d do that, and neither does Tina.”

  Louise, an anachronism in her pre-Victorian jewelry and clothing, checked the time on her cell phone. She leaned forward, fixing Foxy with a look. “You think it was an accident, like maybe she was sitting in the car with the engine running and fell asleep or passed out or something?”

  Foxy looked at her with wet eyes. “I think someone killed her.”

  Her audience of four glanced around to see how others heard that comment.

  Louise reached out and took Foxy’s hand. She spoke slowly, her Southern accent more drawn out than usual. “I think we’re all a little jumpy after getting involved in those two little incidents—”

  “You can say the word, Louise,” Grace interrupted. “Murders.” She stifled a yawn, which was out of context, considering the gravity of what they were discussing. “We got involved in murders. Solving them, I mean.”

  Louise nodded sagely. “Yes, sure. But, honey child, there are explanations other than murder.”

  Grace nodded. “She�
�s right. We can’t jump to conclusions.”

  They all asked questions at once. Had Sierra been working in Rochester? Was there a new man in her life? Could she have gotten married recently? Did she have family in Minnesota? What was to become of the boy? Had Sierra been ill? Might she have moved to Rochester to be close to the Mayo Clinic?

  Foxy answered as best she could, but for most of the questions, she had to admit she simply did not know. She had no idea if Sierra was working in Minnesota. She’d never married, although there’d been a few men in her life over the years. The only boyfriend Foxy actually knew was Wylie, but Wylie and Sierra hadn’t been together for years. She thought they were still in contact, though.

  Grace asked about the funeral, suggesting a trip to Rochester might answer some of the unknowns. Robin suggested talking to the son or Sierra’s parents might shed some light. “Alexandria is only a couple hours away,” Louise reminded her.

  “There’s not going to be a funeral, just a memorial service in a couple of months,” Foxy told them, explaining that Sierra’s parents, who had to be in their seventies, were still staggering from the kind of heartache no parent ever recovers from. And now, in the midst of their grief, they had to make arrangements for their grandson. Foxy didn’t know if the parents still lived in Iowa and had a summer place in Alexandria, or if they’d retired to the quiet little resort town. Either way, poor Beau was going to have major adjustments to living with grandparents. As were they. “You hear about that all the time—retired people raising their grandkids—but can you imagine?” Foxy said.

  “What about the father?” asked Cate. “I can’t keep all these names straight.”

  “It’s Wylie. Wylie and Sierra were a couple, Tina was with Big Al, and I was with Vinnie.”

  “Why wouldn’t Wylie take Beau?”

  Foxy shook her head. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she caught it with the tip of her tongue when it got to the corner of her mouth. “Wylie hasn’t been in the picture for a long time. I totally understand why he and Sierra broke up, but I always thought it was wrong he didn’t stick around for Beau.”