Forgotten Spirits

by Barbara Deese

  Cate tipped the last of the wine into her glass and swirled it, mesmerized by the blood-red cabernet. Robin knew that look. Cate was trying to get under the words and understand the bigger situation.

  Robin studied the faces of her friends. Their compassion for Foxy was obvious. So was frank interest in a past that was so different from their own. But what Robin was witnessing went beyond mild curiosity. She felt a chill when she recognized they had already been swept into the intrigue of Sierra’s death.

  A loud clattering in the kitchen startled them. Robin leapt to her feet to see what new mayhem the cats had perpetrated, and instead saw Brad picking up a stack of cups he’d knocked over. “How long have you been in here?” she asked, noticing the conversation in the other room had shifted, suddenly and deftly, to recipes.

  Pivoting to face her, Brad ran a hand through his hair. “Just long enough to be concerned.”

  She laughed, not out of mirth, but to put him at ease. “There’s nothing to worry about, Brad. Foxy was just telling us about an old friend of hers who died.”

  “So I gathered.”

  She hugged him and put her mouth close to his ear. “She just needs to talk about it, that’s all.”

  “That’s all? You forget I know you, Robin Bentley. When did you ever leave it at that?” He pressed his lips together and stared at her with weary eyes.

  He had a point. In the first year of their marriage, she’d gotten involved volunteering with a missing persons support group. Her intense interest in the subject ran deep, and had led her, over the years, to many a sleepless night. Her volunteer work was, of course, a way of dealing with her own father kidnaping her in the midst of a custody battle, and Brad had understood that her supporting others whose children were missing had been an important part of restoring normalcy in her own life.

  At some point, though, she’d needed to get beyond her own trauma, and just about the time she’d decided to pull back from the volunteer work, events had sucked her back in. She and her friends had found a body below the waterfall on the Bentley’s property in Wisconsin, and Robin had been thrust right back into sleepless nights. Not to mention she’d very nearly lost her life. Twice.

  Brad’s eyes were still focused on hers. If she’d seen excitement on the faces of her friends at the prospect of getting involved in another murder investigation, Brad was surely seeing it on hers.

  She struggled to meet his gaze when she told him, “Don’t worry. We’re not going to get involved in anything stupid.”

  “When have I heard that before?” He ran his fingertips over the stubble on his jaw. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.

  “Please don’t worry. I know our book club has gotten into a little trouble in the past, and I appreciate your concern.” She stopped long enough to pull him toward her so she could kiss him on the cheek. “I really do hear you, but for all we’ve done that was stupid, you know my friends and I always help each other out of whatever mess we get ourselves into.”

  His shoulders sagged. “Jesus, Robin, not again!”

  Chapter 5

  He drove around the block, looking for a parking spot. On top of the “no parking” signs, the streets were totally hosed up because of the snow, and he was getting more pissed by the minute. He finally found a place a block and a half away from her house, where one whole side of the street was empty and parked as close to the curb as the massive snowbank allowed.

  If possible, it was even colder than yesterday. He’d taken off in such a hurry, he hadn’t even thought about dressing for goddamned Antarctica. Slipping and sliding on the sidewalk, he made his way back to Foxy’s house. Once more, he went through the screened porch to ring her bell, and once more, no one answered. It occurred to him she could well be home and refusing to answer the bell.

  This time, though, he wasn’t leaving until he had her in his sights. If it got any colder, he might just have to call her and if she didn’t hang up on him, he’d let her know he wasn’t leaving until he saw her face to face. He rattled the door handle and pounded, but it was futile. Pressing a button on his cell phone, he realized the battery was dead. He checked his pocket for cigarettes, and then remembered leaving the pack in his car. Sitting down in the wicker chair, he waited. He watched a cadre of snowplows go past, scraping the streets and piling up even more snow at the curb.

  After a while his face was numb and his toes were burning with cold, and he cursed his own stupidity for coming unprepared for the weather in this god-forsaken place. Standing to scan the streets before leaving, he was relieved there was no black SUV in sight.

  He was pretty sure his feet were frozen. He slipped and slid back to where he’d left his car, or at least to the place he remembered leaving it. But there wasn’t a single car parked on that side of the street. He swiveled his neck back and forth, looking to see if he’d gone down the wrong street, but no, it had been right there, where that— He approached the big white mound, which, on closer inspection, was a mess of fluffy and hard-packed snow laced with mud and ice where his car had been.

  He clawed at the mound that encased his car until his hands were raw, realizing he wasn’t going to dig the blasted thing out with his bare hands. What he needed was a jackhammer. “I’m so screwed,” he muttered to himself as he made his way back to Foxy’s. He waved and yelled at the lone man up ahead who was pushing a snow blower, but the guy didn’t look up.

  After going back to the front door and determining she still ­wasn’t home, he tromped around between the houses where someone had worn a crooked path in the snow. At the corner of the house, he hooked around to find the back door steps covered in a foot of snow. He pounded and tried the handle, but it was just as tightly locked as the one in front.

  Turning his attention to the single small window just to the left of the door, he peeked through it and saw a shovel leaning against the inside wall. So close and yet so far. He groaned, and then, as an idea occurred to him, he pulled out his Swiss Army knife. “Little Miss Foxy,” he said through chattering teeth. “You are in more trouble than you know.” His fingers ached from the cold as he opened the knife and slipped its blade through the crack at the top of the little window. As he’d hoped, it was held shut with a simple latch, which he knocked aside easily with his blade. The window opened right away. Standing on the tips of his icy toes, he stuck his hand through the opening and felt around. The lower edge of the window frame cut into his armpit, but he pushed harder until finally his fingers touched the round doorknob. With a little more exertion he was able to turn it until he felt and heard it click.

  Once inside, he took a moment to get his bearings. He was standing in what appeared to be a mudroom or storage room. It had a musty, old-house smell. The shovel and a broom, he now saw, leaned against the wall under a pair of jumper cables hanging from a bracket. Terra cotta pots full of dirt were stacked precariously in the corner. A makeshift set of shelves held pantry items—paper products, oversized cans, jars, bottles. He spied a bottle of Canadian whisky, the seal unbroken. Not his drink of choice, but it would go a long way to warming him up from the inside out.

  One hand was on the shovel handle, but his eye was on the bottle. The idea of going back into the wintry weather made him remember how brain-numbingly cold he was. Shivering, he looked at the crumbling concrete stairs leading to the basement, and the wooden stairs inviting him to go upstairs into the warmth. He grabbed the whisky and started up the wooden steps.

  * * *

  The sun lowered in the sky and street lights went on, and still Foxy talked. Surrounded by her friends, she looked at Robin’s Christmas decorations and reminisced out loud about the Christmas she’d brought Sierra with her to Pine Glen. Foxy hadn’t spent a holiday with her family in a while, and her parents were pushing pretty hard for her to come home. She’d agreed, bracing herself to get an earful about her life in Sin City.

 
Since she and Vinnie had just started dating, it was way too soon to do the whole family thing, so she’d asked Sierra to make the trip with her. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” Foxy said to her book club friends. “It wasn’t a disaster, exactly, but I can’t say anyone had a jolly Christmas. I warned her right up front that my family was already praying for my soul and would probably be praying for hers, too.” She laughed drily. “But Sierra had this romantic idea about having snow at Christmas.” Foxy’s eyes threatened to spill over with tears as she remembered that trip. “I had ulterior motives inviting her,” Foxy admitted. She’d wanted to play matchmaker. Her brother Matt had dated most of the eligible girls in their small community, and since he and Sierra were close in age, she’d thought they might hit it off.

  Louise interrupted. “Y’all were living such glamorous lives. What made you think Sierra would be interested in a Minnesota boy?”

  “Life wasn’t as glamorous as you might imagine,” Foxy said. She stared down at her plate. “To be honest, I wasn’t thinking so much about what Sierra might be looking for. I just wanted an ally in the family. Matt was the sweet, wholesome kid my parents raised him to be, and I guess I thought if he married Sierra, y’know someone like me, the pressure would be off of me.” She wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “I can’t believe how selfish I was.”

  Robin said, “They were both consenting adults.”

  Even though she’d always felt responsible for her younger brother’s well-being, Foxy conceded he’d been old enough at the time to make his own decisions. “Sierra thought Matt was pretty hot, actually,” she said.

  Sierra was an exotic mix of Irish, Puerto Rican, and Lebanese, and, according to Foxy, people couldn’t take their eyes off her. “All Matt said about her was that he thought she seemed ‘nice enough.’ Don’t you think that’s an odd way to describe a gorgeous, leggy creature like Sierra?”

  They nodded.

  Foxy, though, confessed she hadn’t given up trying to get them together, even after that trip. When Matt moved up north to take a job as an outdoor adventure guide in Ely, she’d tried once more. She and Sierra had flown into Minneapolis, where they’d rented a car and driven to the resort where Matt worked, up near the Canadian border. They’d stayed for two whole weeks that summer, and Foxy studied Sierra and Matt together, eager to detect any sign of a spark. Matt took them hiking and fishing and taught Sierra how to paddle a canoe. “One day Sierra even played shuffleboard in a string bikini and high-heeled sandals,” Foxy said, “but nothing came of it. He was a perfect gentleman, but the chemistry just wasn’t right.”

  Grace chortled. “I raised my boys to be respectful, but I don’t delude myself. They’re still men, and even though they’re respectful, that’s a lot of temptation to resist.” She looked at her friends, raising her hands as if entreating them to agree with her. “I mean, what young man wouldn’t be thrilled to have a sexy dancer throwing herself at him?”

  “A gay one,” Louise said, and immediately put her fingers to her lips. “I’m sorry, Foxy. I forgot we’re talking about your brother.”

  Foxy sighed loudly. “No, you’re exactly right. My brother hid it for years. By the time he actually told me a year or so after that visit, I’d figured it out. I didn’t care about him being gay. I guess I got my way, because from then on he was my ally in the family. I had his back, too. When he came out to our parents, I went with him as backup.”

  “I’m guessing that didn’t go well,” said Louise. She repositioned her jewel-encrusted comb to catch a stray lock of hair.

  Foxy gave a mirthless laugh. “You guess right. At first they tried to talk him out of being gay, and when that didn’t work, they sent him to the pastor to talk him out of it. Pastor Paul had that “love the sinner, hate the sin” creed, and he did his best to pray poor Matt straight.” Foxy spoke softly about her brother, but it was easy to see she carried a sense of outrage still as she said, “Matt came away from the experience convinced he didn’t deserve to be loved.”

  When there was a pause, Robin turned the topic back to Sierra. “If you and Sierra were so close back then, what happened?”

  Foxy shrugged. “We all moved away, and—I don’t know, it just changed. Sierra got more and more—” She searched for a word.

  “Reclusive?” Louise suggested.

  Foxy stared at her fingernails, which she kept short because of her work as a massage therapist. “Not reclusive,” she said to her hands. “I guess our lives just changed in different directions. She was awfully wrapped up in her son. And maybe it’s because she was a mother, and I never—” She stopped to blow her nose. “After we all went in different directions, she stopped sharing things like we used to. She didn’t tell much about her life in California, and didn’t want to talk about the time we were all together in Nevada, either. I don’t know . . . it was almost like she thought our dancing days were shameful. Whatever it was, it drove a wedge between us.”

  “What’s shameful about dancing?” Louise said. She put a hand over her heart as she spoke. “Honey, if I’d been gorgeous and talented enough, I’d have taken great pride in doing what y’all did.” The others agreed.

  “We never talked about why things changed between us. It’s a shame, because there aren’t many people who could understand that part of my life.”

  Grace said, “You know you can always talk to us.”

  Foxy gave a small, sad smile and shook her head. “What can I say about being a Las Vegas showgirl to people who could never, in a million years, imagine doing such a thing? I mean, Sierra and Tina were my partners in crime.”

  Cate raised an eyebrow, which did not escape Robin’s notice.

  Taking a deep breath, Foxy seemed to come to a decision. “Okay, there’s more to it. I think Sierra’s death might be related to something in her past. In our past, actually.”

  The women were utterly silent.

  “It could be nothing. Maybe she even died accidentally, but Tina and I both think it’s related to something else that happened the night we went out to celebrate Wylie’s birthday. It was a lifetime ago.”

  The next part of her story poured out of her. Wylie and Sierra were seriously dating at the time, and several of the dancers and their boyfriends decided to go to the Flamingo for cocktails. Sierra was pregnant at the time, although Foxy couldn’t remember if anyone else knew it. It was after their last show, which meant it was sometime after two in the morning. From the Flamingo, six of them had left together and went on to another casino off the strip. It was in the old downtown, closer to where they all lived. Even though they weren’t looking for trouble, they had been drinking, especially Wylie. Vinnie, Foxy’s husband at the time, was also feeling no pain.

  The book club women had known almost nothing about Foxy’s “ex” until now, and eagerly listened to what she had to say about Vinnie.

  “Vinnie and I had our problems, obviously, or we’d still be together.” Foxy held her hand up, as if warding off any comments. “But that night everyone was just having a good time. Wylie was a harmless drunk. I don’t know where he got it, but he was wearing a stupid paper Burger King crown that night. Outside the casino, there was this yellow Lamborghini, and we started goofing around, posing in front of it like we were the kind of people with money to buy a car like that.” A tear ran down her cheek. “God, we were so innocent!”

  Robin couldn’t imagine where this story was headed, but she, along with the others, hung on her every word.

  Foxy finally got around to telling them about the man who careened around the corner on foot, dropping a cooler bag, literally at their feet, and dashing out into the street where he was shot dead while they watched.

  “How awful,” said Robin and Cate together.

  Foxy shifted as if she couldn’t get comfortable. “We were all catatonic. We just stood there, horrified.” There was pain in her vo
ice. “We actually saw a man get murdered, and we didn’t do a thing.” She sniffed and looked away, adding, “No, that’s not true. We ran away.”

  They sat in stunned silence.

  Finally Cate spoke. “What was in the cooler bag?”

  Foxy didn’t meet their eyes. Shrugging, she said, “I don’t know. Wylie never told us.”

  Robin shot a look at Cate, who raised an eyebrow at her. “He never told you?” Robin asked, incredulous.

  “Well, actually, he claimed it was a chicken salad sandwich, but nobody believed him.” Foxy laughed nervously and stood up, effectively ending the conversation.

  They all sensed the party was over. Louise stood to leave. Grace got up too, and reminded Robin about their early morning choir rehearsal before worship.

  Robin groaned. She’d been so engrossed in Foxy’s story, she’d forgotten all about it.

  As Foxy zipped up her boots, Robin said, “Wait a minute. I want you to take something.” She came back with the motion detector, pressing it into Foxy’s hand. “I’ll feel better if you’d take this. Put it somewhere in your hall or your porch. Not in your apartment, or your animals will set it off.”

  “Really?” Foxy said, but the way she gripped the plastic device told Robin she’d done the right thing.

  “Really. You’ll sleep better knowing it’s there.”

  “I’m just down the street if you need me,” Cate reminded her. “And you’ll have Molly Pat, the Nancy Drew of the dog world, to keep you safe.”

  Foxy laughed, but her eyes welled with tears. “Thank you,” she said huskily. She wrapped a scarf about her and made her way down the shoveled walk and into her car. Cate and Robin watched until the engine purred to life and she drove off.

  Cate let out a pent up breath. “I hope you’re not kicking me out too.”