Forgotten Spirits

by Barbara Deese

  “You said there were other papers in the bottle.”

  “Yup, there was a handwritten note from the father acknowledging he’d received the results of the paternity test, and agreeing to help with costs. But only as long as she kept her mouth shut.”

  Grace turned in her seat and shook Robin’s shoulder. “Well, for God’s sake, aren’t you going to tell me who the real father is?”

  Robin shook her head. “You don’t think he signed it, do you? There was a veiled threat in his message. I can’t remember the exact wording, but here’s what Cate thinks, and I have to agree. Sierra threatened to make it public, and he killed her.”

  Grace sat back, her eyes blinking rapidly. “Wow, how do we keep getting ourselves in the middle of murder cases? I can’t figure out whether we merely track down trouble or attract it.”

  Robin shrugged. “Good question.”

  “There’s a third possibility. Do you suppose it’s possible we invent trouble?”

  “Bad question.” Robin’s laugh was nervous. “Are you suggesting we should ignore this?”

  Grace blew air from her cheeks. “I was only partly kidding. It just doesn’t seem possible that we keep getting into these messes. But no, I’m not saying we should ignore it, but . . . well, help me understand. We’re rushing up to the Canadian border—in the middle of a snowstorm—to tell Foxy we don’t know who the father of her dead friend’s son is, but that—with nothing other than a hunch to go on, mind you—we think he probably killed Sierra. Not only that, but if Foxy figures out who the father is, she could be next in line to be dead.”

  Robin pursed her lips. “Well, when you put it that way . . .”

  “I know! It’s nuts, right? Why do you think it has to do with Beau’s father? What about the whole Las Vegas connection, you know, the murder they witnessed? Is there a connection or is that just Foxy’s paranoia?”

  “I have no idea. We don’t know any of the people in Foxy’s past other than Foxy. Maybe it was the shooting victim who was the father. No, that doesn’t make sense. They saw him get murdered, so if he managed to murder Sierra seventeen years later, that would be some trick.” She laughed nervously again.

  Grace said, “What about the other guys? There was the one Foxy called Big Al, but he died a long time ago too, so he’s out. That just leaves . . .” She widened her eyes for effect. “Foxy’s husband.”

  “Vinnie? Why would he care who found out? What about Foxy’s brother? Sierra spent time with him before Beau was born. Why couldn’t he be the father?”

  “But why would he care if someone found out? And what are you saying anyway, that he’s just been pretending to be gay?”

  A laugh erupted from Robin. “Of course not.”

  They sat in silence, and then Grace said, “It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with Foxy and her brother for a couple days, but really, besides that, why are we doing this?”

  Robin said, “I’ve been questioning the sanity of all this, but look, Cate had an intuition about the papers she found and she’s convinced they somehow place Foxy’s in danger. I can’t ignore that.” Only then did she remember Cate was going to send her something. “Open my purse. My phone’s in the inside pocket.” She gave Grace the password to get into her e-mails. “Look for a message from Cate. She was going to take pictures of the notes and e-mail them to me.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Grace reached into the back seat, snatched Robin’s purse and grabbed the phone. Pressing the mail icon she scrolled down until she found Cate’s message. Opening the first attached photo, she spread her fingers on the screen to enlarge the picture. “DNA test report,” she read. “This must be the paternity test results.”

  “Right.”

  The report bore a case number and a date that would have been within Beau’s first year of life. There were three columns of numbers, one marked “mother,” one “child” and one “alleged father.” No names were given, except for Sierra’s, as the recipient of the letter, and the doctor who signed the report. Some of the numbers were circled in different colors. At the bottom was some kind of aggregate score and the words stating that the alleged father couldn’t be excluded. The probability of paternity was 99.99 percent.

  Grace thought about it and said, “The father isn’t named. Why couldn’t it be what’s-his-name, the guy she was living with?”

  “Wylie? I asked Cate the same thing. Maybe it’s in the other papers. Did she send anything else?” Just then, a strong gust buffeted the car. “The wind’s really picking up.” Robin tightened her grip on the wheel. “We’re coming up on the Hinckley exit. How about stopping for breakfast?”

  * * *

  Vinnie’s anger had passed, replaced by a dull ache in his gut. He offered to drive the next stretch, and Foxy was grateful. As soon as they’d shoveled an opening in the packed snow, she fell into the car, exhausted. Turning the key in the ignition he backed up, then stopped. Maybe it was too late to save their relationship, but if he’d learned nothing else in his addiction programs, it was that it’s never too late to do the right thing.

  “The break-in and the beating . . . that wasn’t a random crime,” he said. “I owed those guys money.” A glance at her told him Foxy wasn’t as surprised as he’d expected. It was his last confession to her, and he wasn’t going to hold back anything. Sitting in the car with the engine running, he told her about the night of high-stakes poker that had begun with such ridiculous hope and ended the next ­morning with his discovery that all the money he and Foxy had was gone. He told her about how later that night, after Foxy had left for work, the beefy guy with a scar over his eye pushed his way through the front door of their little house and slammed him into the wall. “Payback time,” he’d snarled, with a knee to Vinnie’s crotch.

  He didn’t feel compelled to tell Foxy every detail about how he’d cowered and pled for more time to come up with the cash, and how the guy had backed off, and for a second, Vinnie had actually thought he was going to relent. That’s when the other one, the one with the pinky ring, had come up from behind, spun him around with one meaty hand and delivered an upward jab under his ribcage with the other.

  He’d stayed conscious as they pulverized his face and kicked the ribs that were probably already broken. When one goon picked him up and held him, the other one grabbed hold of his legs. Vinnie told her about kicking and squirming as they held him down on the kitchen table with his legs sticking out over the edge. “I thought about the carving knife in the block by the stove, and was sure they were going to slice me open,” he told Foxy and saw the pain in her features. He went on to tell her how Pinky Ring had put one giant paw on his knee and the other on his ankle and, using the edge of the table as a fulcrum, pressed down with all his weight. The sound of his leg breaking was sickening, even in his memory.

  They’d left him screaming. He must have fallen to the floor when he lost consciousness, because that’s where Foxy had found him.

  In the hospital the police had grilled him about the attack as soon as he was out of surgery and conscious. For that first week he hadn’t been able to remember much of anything, and so he’d told what he thought was the truth, that he didn’t know who his assailants were, and didn’t know how he’d wound up on the kitchen floor, near death from shock. But gradually, as his memory began to return, he’d never recanted his initial story to the police. Instead, he’d dug himself in deeper, insisting with increasing vehemence to the authorities and to Foxy that he’d been an innocent victim.

  He turned to look Foxy squarely in the eyes for the first time since he’d begun to tell her the last shameful part of it.

  “I always knew there had to be more to the story,” she said quietly through her tears. “And I guessed it had to be something like that, but what I could never figure out is why they let you live.”

  He took a deep breath. “Pink
y Ring came to the house the second day I was home from the hospital. They gave me twenty-four hours to come up with the money.”

  “Where did you get it?” Her voice was suddenly icy.

  “Remember the break-in at my folks’ business?” he began. Shame almost paralyzed him as he thought again about all the hard years his parents had invested in their thriving furrier business.

  He could see it on his ex-wife’s face as understanding came to her in spasms. “Oh, my God, Vinnie! Those monsters were the ones who stole all those fur coats?”

  He lowered his head, shaking it back and forth.

  Her eyes widened. “You did it? You stole all those furs?”

  “I did. I robbed my own parents to pay off those sadists.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. She faced the window rather than look at his face. For a long minute he thought she might bolt and run just to get away from him. Finally she spoke. “I’m glad you told me.” She said it like she meant it.

  He was still shaky from all their revelations when he finally pulled out onto the road. Although he was grateful to be given permission to put it all in the past, he knew it couldn’t be that easy. He’d spent years examining how he’d allowed his addiction to wreck their marriage. It had taken a lot of counseling, but he’d finally come to terms with it. She was right—he was a better person now. He’d vowed more than once if he were ever to get another chance with Foxy, he’d make it right. And now, here he was with her, just the two of them, and he couldn’t see any way to put it behind them.

  Foxy’s news of the miscarriage loomed again—a son he’d never known about because he’d never been born. How was he to put that behind him? He went over it in his mind.

  It had happened four days after she’d found him unconscious, Foxy had informed him. She’d stayed at his side in his hospital room, catching bits of sleep whenever she could, curled up in a chair. He knew at the time she’d been sick with worry and disappointment, and on top of that, she’d found it almost impossible to sleep with all the staff coming in at all hours, not to mention how uncomfortable that chair must have been as a bed.

  She’d lost the baby because of him. He’d always blamed himself and his gambling for the fact they’d never had kids. Foxy had put up with his antics for years—his weird hours and his wildly fluctuating moods that followed his roller coaster wins and losses—waiting for him to grow up. Then, when she couldn’t wait any longer, she’d gone off the pill. But nothing had happened. Month after month, she’d failed to get pregnant and she said they’d waited too long. After he’d gotten his head on straight, he’d accepted the blame for them not having a family. That, unfortunately was still the case. This new information changed nothing but the details.

  The roads were more rutted, and Vinnie slowed his speed. Wisps of snow blew from the top of high snowbanks on the left of the road, laying shifting stripes of white in their path and making him feel disoriented. As if everything else about this trip wasn’t disorienting!

  Foxy clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap. He could tell she was steeling herself to say something, and he steeled himself to listen. It didn’t seem possible, after they’d just unburdened themselves in such a huge way, that there was anything left to say. His life had twisted in so many directions in the past week, he couldn’t imagine anything surprising him now. In the old days, he would have done just about anything to avoid any more emotion, but today, he waited. He tilted his head back and forth to keep from bunching his shoulder muscles.

  Whatever she said, whatever happened next, felt preordained. It was like spinning the roulette wheel or throwing the dice. As soon as it left your hands, your fate was already decided.

  “I need to tell you the rest of the story, Vin. You have a right to know.”

  He felt dead calm.

  “I took the money that day. I took it all and hid it at Tina’s place.”

  He kept his eyes on the road. Bile rose in his throat. All those years ago, he’d accused Foxy of stealing it and she’d denied it. “I see.”

  “We took it out of the foil and crammed it inside that big green hassock of hers for safekeeping. It was a stupid place to put it. It was worn and the stuffing was already coming out, so we just pulled out some more stuffing, put the money in there and slapped duct tape over the bottom.”

  “You had the money all along! Jesus, Foxy, I believed you!”

  She stared straight ahead, saying nothing.

  “You took all our money and left me.”

  She dropped her head. “No, Vinnie, it’s gone. I never got any of it either. The same day you came home from the hospital, Al tripped over the hassock and pitched a fit. He picked it up and said it was a piece of crap and was hauling it out to the trash can. Tina went after him and tried to pull it away. They tussled over it and the bottom mesh caught on something and tore enough that some of the money fell out.”

  If Al weren’t already dead, at that moment Vinnie might have wanted to help him get dead.

  “Al demanded to know where the money came from and Tina had no choice but to tell him it was ours. He was gone the next day, and so was all the money.”

  He smacked the steering wheel with both hands. “I always knew Big Al was the thief. That sneaky lowlife bastard!”

  She tilted her head back, rolling it back and forth against the headrest in a headshake. “Not always, Vin. You accused me of stealing it, and I told you the truth when I said I didn’t. At least it wasn’t my intent to steal it. I just meant to hide it from you until—well, the truth is, I thought once we were away from the casinos, you’d change.”

  “Stop,” Vinnie said. The car jerked on an icy patch. “We have to stop beating ourselves up. Haven’t we suffered enough? Seventeen years! God!” He let his hand drop to rest on top of hers, and he gave it a squeeze. “We’ve already spent too much of our lives regretting what we can’t change. It’s water over the bridge.”

  “Dam.”

  He tensed.

  “I think you mean water over the dam, or under the bridge, not over the bridge. It’s a mixed metaphor.”

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  Chapter 23

  They settled into a booth at Tobie’s restaurant in Hinckley. Both of Grace’s parents had family in Duluth, and so they’d traveled this stretch of road often, usually stopping at Tobie’s, a convenient halfway point for a bathroom stop and a cinnamon or caramel roll.

  As soon as they ordered, Grace handed Robin’s phone back to her.

  “Oh, that’s not gonna happen,” Robin said, squinting at the cramped handwriting in the second attachment. She muttered to herself as she dug in her purse. Pretty soon the table was littered with detritus from her large bag. She plopped a toothbrush on the pile of receipts, pens, and tubes of lipstick, and kept digging. “Oh, for crying out loud! I had my prescription glasses when we left this morning, and I always have a pair of cheaters in my purse.”

  Grace grinned at her. “Maybe you could try either pair up there.” She pointed above Robin’s head.

  Robin’s hand shot up, patting the two pairs of glasses perched on top of her head. She burst out laughing.

  Grace joined in. Through her laughter, she said, “And I thought I was squirrelly after getting three hours of sleep.”

  Wiping her eyes, Robin chose her good glasses and put them on. Once more, she squinted at the small screen. The scanned letter wasn’t perfect. The dark parts were too dark and the faint parts too faint, as if the pen had skipped as he wrote.

  “Read it out loud,” said Grace.

  “He didn’t sign it. Cate already told me that when she read it to me last night.” Robin frowned, trying to make sense of the odd handwriting. Each line began with a long tail that swooped up to the first letter, and some of the letters looked like they’d been gone over more than once. “He starts
off with just the letter S.” She read through the first couple of lines to herself and the pattern started to make sense to her, the way he closed some letters and left others open.

  “He writes, ‘I wonder why you assume I’m the father. After all, I’m not the only man in your life, and it does bring up the question of character. I’m sorry, but you have to understand I can’t simply accept your word on something so—.’ He crosses off the word damaging and writes weighty,” Robin said.

  The waitress came with two coffees and two enormous pecan caramel rolls.

  “The guy’s a real peach!” Grace said, cutting off a chunk of the roll and sticking it in her mouth.

  “No kidding.” Robin picked up her phone again. And then he says, ‘If it proves to be mine, I will bear part of the responsibility. You will think it unfair, but I want proof before I commit to helping with the financial burden. If I have indeed fathered an illegitimate child, I will do the right thing. After all, the fault does not lie with the child. Regardless whose it is, it deserves love and protection.’” Robin shook her head.

  “How thoughtful!” Grace said. “What a standup guy!”

  “Oh, wait,” Robin said. “It gets better.” She opened the next attachment. This note was typewritten. “There’s no signature on this one either.” She read aloud.

  I hope you destroyed the other note as I instructed. I reflect on how this all has come to pass, and am deeply saddened. What began in love has turned to suspicion. I may have betrayed others in this whole affair, but I never betrayed you and do not want to do so now. I was all too willing in succumbing to your beauty and sensuality, but what I did, I did out of love. Yes, I loved you, more than I had any right to.

  You complain to me that it’s unfair to have to raise a child alone. Do you think I’m not aware you deceived me about birth control? Deceit comes easily to you, as evidenced by your willingness to allow your young man to believe he is the father. Where is the unfairness now?