Ghost Gifts

by Laura Spinella

  Split-levels were an architectural train wreck that demanded an immediate choice: up or down? Aubrey chose up, the short flight of stairs delivering her to the main living area. Alternating between her camera and note pad, Aubrey took photographs and jotted down the obvious: hardwood floors, original windows, a working kitchen you couldn’t turn around in—never mind seat a family of four. It was all complemented by harvest-gold appliances and green speckled Formica. Ridiculously dated but clean. And in that scoured kitchen, on the back of Aubrey’s palate, the taste of Thanksgiving returned. It was stronger than earlier, although, not being much of a carnivore, she didn’t relish the meaty zest of sausage stuffing.

  She tried to swallow down the flavors while moving on to the living room. It showed off tired pleated drapes, heavy and mauve, complemented by yellow smoke-stained walls. The asking price was a stark contrast to the visuals, a hundred thousand over what the house was worth. Unless Aubrey’s story mentioned buried treasure, they’d never sell it. She continued on, snapping photos, making her way through three closet-size bedrooms that shared a pink-tiled hall bath. She stopped, reviewing the captured images. They depicted what the average eye saw—too much furniture in too small of a space. But in the last shot Aubrey saw what she was looking for. An orb. It was something the average eye would perceive as a photographic malfunction. It also drove the paper’s head photographer, Blake Munroe, crazy: “Aubrey, these lights in your pics are so weird . . . random.” Interestingly, she was surprised to see only one orb; the aura indicated an entity strongly attached to the setting.

  Aubrey glanced at her watch. If Levi hadn’t managed to talk his way out of Malcolm’s suggestion, he’d be looking for her. She moved onto the lower level. There was a decent size laundry room, which connected to an empty one-car garage. It was filled with the strong odors of motor oil and grass clippings. But those smells were external, attached to things present and tangible. She quickly shut the door. Passing by a half bath sporting an avocado commode, she headed for the room at the end of the hall. Aubrey opened the door and stale air rushed past her as if on a mad dash for the exit. The combination of cigarette smoke and Aqua Velva clung like an anxious child. Aubrey stepped inside and closed the door. Split-levels were stingy about direct sun and she flipped on bright track lighting. In response to the stabbing light, there was a gasp from across the room. A man sat in a crushed-velvet recliner, blinking as if she’d aimed a spotlight at him.

  “Who . . . who are you?”

  “Aubrey Ellis. I’m from the newspaper. I’m sorry to startle you, Mr . . .”

  “Jerry. You might as well call me Jerry—everyone in that elderly asylum does. No respect.”

  “I was starting to wonder if you were here.”

  His gaze was focused out the window. “I might as well not be.” She arched a brow and kept the truth to herself, making a quiet approach. “What do you want?” He appeared to wrench his body higher in the fat recliner. His wheezing, only audible to Aubrey, fought its way in, then out.

  “I’m from the Surrey City Press. We’re doing a home portrait feature on your house. You know it’s for sale, right?”

  “Yes, my home. Mine since the Nixon administration—though, what’s the point? I’ve gone from homeowner to homebound . . . to feeling homeless. They take it all away without even asking. It’s not fair.”

  “Mmm, I don’t suppose it is.” Aubrey took a quick inventory. The space seemed to be his domain, the place where Jerry Stallworth belonged. There was a wood stove and a paneled bar set to the rear. It was surely the man-cave from which he hosted all the Sunday games. “I’m sorry this happened to you.” She sat across from him, her eyes lingering on the blue veins that laced through his face. Aubrey plucked the listing sheet from her bag and placed it on a narrow coffee table. The warm pages felt like fire. It always amazed her when they didn’t smolder—but she also understood the sensation of heat was hers alone. She leaned forward and glanced at the information. Homeowners: Jerry and Betty Stallworth. “I . . . um, I’m not just here for the house, Mr. Stallworth . . . you know?” Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t, and she treaded carefully until determining any spirit’s state of mind. The elderly could be particularly distrustful. Jerry turned back. His face and hands were dappled with dark fleshy spots, like rotting fruit. He dragged crooked fingers through tufts of white hair—perhaps more of it sticking out of his ears than on his head. “Your daughter . . .”

  “Kitty,” he said. “That’s her. Her and her no good ex-husband.” Jerry Stallworth took shaky aim at a large framed portrait. Aubrey saw a typical family: a man looking uncomfortable in a photo-op suit and a wife with a broad toothy grin, the kind where the gums showed. Two teenage children, one gummy like Kitty, one not, and a gray golden retriever posed with them. “What are you gonna do? Can’t erase the son of a bitch from the photo.” The conversation stalled as a chest-rattling cough almost dislodged him from the chair. She waited. “God . . . damn . . . cigars . . . cigarettes,” he sputtered. After a few starts and stops Jerry continued. “Can’t do nothin’ about that husband of hers. But Kitty can quit her job now, find a better one . . . take a vacation—twenty years at the DMV, can you believe that? I . . . I can help. I’m better prepared than Kitty knows.”

  “Twenty years at the DMV. Wow.” Aubrey inched closer. “Tell me how you can help, Mr. Stallworth.”

  “Betty, my wife. You . . . you’re not married?”

  “I, um . . .” The question rattled the normally centered medium. “No, not anymore . . . almost, anyway.” He waited. Aubrey hadn’t anticipated discussing her love life. “It didn’t work out.”

  “Yeah, that’s what happened to my Kitty. Best twenty years of her life wasted. My Betty and me, we were different. She watched my back. I watched hers. Trust like that, it’s everything. You’ll see . . .” A skeptical hum pulsed from Aubrey’s throat. “My Betty—she took care of it all after I ended up with goddamn rotting lungs . . .”

  “Emphysema.”

  He nodded, still in a struggle with life on this side. “Two, maybe three packs a day, Lucky Strikes . . . midshipman through mid-level corporate America. A favorite cigar. Back then, who knew? Any . . . way, I just didn’t expect . . . expect,” he said, fighting for what he perceived to be useful air. He captured a breath and spent it telling Aubrey the rest. “Who the hell thinks about somebody as smart as Betty ending up with Alzheimer’s? Who would have thought she’d slip so fast that she wouldn’t tell Kitty about the money? If she’d left it alone, it woulda been fine. Kitty’s smart; she would have found it. But then Betty started squirreling things away—my inhaler in the microwave, her rosary in the cat box . . . the oxygen tank near the wood stove.”

  “And that’s when Kitty moved you both to assisted living.” He gasped for air, maybe a breath of dignity. “You need to tell me where it is, whatever it is I’ve come for, Mr. Stallworth.”

  His faded blue eyes narrowed, sinking into creped skin. Specters could be stubborn. To him, Aubrey was no more than a stranger. He needed a sharper picture.

  “You know, this can be better. All of it. Concentrate. You’ll see that your reality isn’t clear.”

  “What would you know about reality?” he snapped. “I worked my whole life to own something, and for what? Just for Kitty to end up in a mess, owing more than she’s got. More than this damn house is worth.” His tired lungs couldn’t keep up, ragged sounds grating from his chest.

  Aubrey pressed on, moving him beyond the physical. It was a wall that he couldn’t yet see past. “Tell me something, Mr. Stallworth. How did you get here?”

  “How did I . . . I drove, I’m sure. They’ve probably got a search party going at that home.”

  “No, you didn’t drive.”

  “Don’t tell me. I’ve been driving longer than you’ve been alive.”

  “I was just in your garage. There’s no car. There wasn’t one i
n the driveway. Nobody’s lived here for months. There’s no food in the kitchen, no mail on the counter.” They traded stares. This would only take a nudge. “Betty, she’s still at Sunset Gardens, isn’t she?” The blue in his eyes pooled. “She’s going to be there for some time. She’ll need a lot of care.”

  “She will, won’t she?” His chin quivered and he brushed at a tear. Then Aubrey watched him take a breath that was fuller than any before it. His eyes widened at the ease with which he inhaled. He’d want another breath. He’d have to accept his death to get it. Jerry Stallworth would want to move onto a place where everything was better.

  Aubrey reached out, palms upturned—from here she could help him. Slowly, his wrinkled hands came across, steadier now. He placed them in hers. His lungs seemed to fill and everything lightened. A smile he’d forgotten spread into the basins of his cheeks. “That’s . . . um, that’s so much better.” She offered an encouraging nod. He took a long delicious breath. “Oh, God, that’s . . . that’s good. I’d forgotten . . . Thank . . . you . . . You make those damn doctors look like idiots.”

  “We all work with what we’re given,” Aubrey said. “A year ago, you would have been grateful for a doctor over me.”

  “Thank you for that, for coming.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Stallworth. I’m glad I could help.”

  “Behind the bar,” he said, cocking his chin. “There’s a false panel in the liquor cabinet—hides the plumbing. You’d never know it was there, unless you did. Betty did. I guess she thought it would be safe.”

  “Probably.” Aubrey let go of his hand, walking toward the dimly lit, 1970s bar.

  “Miss Ellis?”

  “Yes,” she said, ducking behind the bar.

  “You tell Kitty she’s better off without that no-good husband.” He laughed, which hadn’t been an option moments ago. “She can get herself a makeover, take a cruise . . . redecorate her house.”

  Rummaging through the old paneled cabinets, Aubrey first found a splinter, hissing, “Son of a b—” Then she located the panel he described. She stood, biting down on a bloody index finger, a sizable sliver of wood lodged deep under her skin. With the opposite hand, she dumped the contents of an envelope onto the bar top. Inside were Kitty Stallworth’s baptismal certificate, a grocery list, two dryer sheets, and an annuity for $750,000. “I think Kitty’s going to be just fine,” she said, blinking at the sum. “In fact, I’d say she’s going to be”—Aubrey shook her smarting hand and looked toward an empty recliner. It rocked gently, the room bright with false light. Through the low picture window a gust of wind rose and rattled the mulch and mums, sweeping energy across Jerry Stallworth’s front lawn.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  By the time Aubrey returned to the newsroom, her index finger was puffy and still splinter-filled. Instead of the hour she promised Malcolm, she’d been gone two, having left the house on Harper Street on a hunt for Alana Powell. Aubrey located the realtor at her home inspection on Halifax Drive. There she turned over the annuity, along with an unremarkable explanation about its discovery. Coming down the newsroom’s main corridor, Aubrey saw Malcolm in his office; he looked busy, not particularly engaged in looking for her. Levi was nowhere in sight. Good. Maybe he’d talked his way out of deputizing her as his sidekick on the Missy Flannigan case. Aubrey shuddered at the prospect and headed for her cubicle.

  Rounding the corner, she dropped her satchel on her desk. The injured digit caught her eye. With the opposite hand, she felt the half-moon scar on her chin. On her left forearm were deep pockmarks—bites. Today’s splinter was an accidental consequence of her Jerry Stallworth encounter. Aubrey’s old injuries were something else entirely. The scars represented the always lingering and potentially threatening unknowns of her extraordinary gift, and Aubrey had no desire to tempt evil.

  She went about her business, unpacking her camera and notes and worries when Bebe turned up at the entrance. “Clearly, disinterest should have been my pitch during Malcolm’s meeting.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your blasé attitude. You couldn’t be less interested in Surrey’s big news, and yet you managed to walk away with the story. Not to mention the bonus perk in from Hartford this morning.”

  “Levi?” Aubrey pressed the skin around the splinter, trying to force the wood out. She hissed at the pain. “You guessed it, Bebe. That was my strategy all along.” Aubrey gave up on the splinter and folded her arms. “I’m bubbling with excitement, can’t you tell?”

  “I don’t get you. Why someone who claims to be a reporter would rather showcase properties for sale than cover the hottest news to hit Surrey since . . . well, since Missy Flannigan disappeared. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “And here’s the really good part. I don’t have to explain it to you.” Aubrey returned to her Harper Street notes but then the rest of Bebe’s remark registered. “What do you mean by ‘the bonus perk’?”

  “Ah, more strategy. Fine. Play it coy. But it was obvious to me. Levi may be headstrong and particular, but I can think of worse things than having to work a story with him.”

  Really? Could you name one? But then Aubrey smiled, recalling old gossip. “You know, last time Levi was here, he mentioned a girlfriend. Now, how is it I know that? Oh, right,” she said, wagging her red swollen finger at Bebe. “You were having a moment, stunned that Levi preferred his girlfriend to your invitation for drinks . . . dinner . . . whatever.”

  Bebe rebutted with a slim-shouldered shrug. “Hmm, and what a vague tidbit to recall. Especially for a woman so recently back in circulation.”

  A retort teetered on Aubrey’s tongue. Bebe wasn’t worth the energy. Aubrey exited her cubicle, passing by Gwen Trumble. “Hey, Gwen. Have you seen Levi?” she said, scanning the newsroom floor. “I ran late at my property. I was kind of hoping he’d gone on his way.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that. He came out of Malcolm’s office looking more irritated than on his way in. I think he set up shop in one of the empty offices in the back,” she said, pointing. Dark and defunct, the offices sat in a glass-walled row, a daily reminder of the grim state of newspapers. But the one on the end showed new life, its lights on, a whirl of Levi St John’s energy pulsing from inside.

  “Thanks,” Aubrey said, heading in that direction.

  “Good luck,” Gwen called after her. “Look at the bright side, it’s not forever.”

  Aubrey pirouetted and offered a mock salute to Gwen. She took two more steps and paused. The energy differed—something other than the intensity of Levi’s personality. She shut it down. But ten feet from the office the smell of salt air invaded her lungs. If not for the carpet squares under her feet, Aubrey could have sworn she stood on a beach. The air was reminiscent and vivid—filled with beach-goers, beach noises. She glanced gingerly around the newsroom. This was a sanctuary, a place where she’d been allowed to make a deal with the dead. Specters didn’t intrude here—not unless their realtor brought them. Mental fortitude and years of a practiced life were on her side. Salt air retreated like the tide, replaced by the spicy scent of Ned Allegro’s Ramen noodles. Just a fluke, she thought, perched at the edge of Levi’s new office. She waited, then cleared her throat. Levi looked up, but her presence didn’t seem to register and he reverted to his work. When she didn’t dissolve from his peripheral glance, he dropped his pen and looked at her. Aubrey shrugged. “No luck with Malcolm?”

  “Not so much.”

  “So I guess we’re . . .”

  “Working this story together.”

  She stepped inside and Levi’s arms encircled the folders and notes on the desktop. Brooding looks and body language suggested a kid unwilling to share his toys. But the folders faded into a manila haze. The silver rim of Levi’s watch caught her eye.

  “Time is not the point . . .”

  The voice echoed in her ears and Aubrey took a step back. Her glance trav
eled the office interior. Levi must have said her name more than once. The only thing she heard now was clear frustration. “Ellis. Are you coming or not? According to Malcolm, you have a contact there.”

  “Sorry,” she said, blinking. But it wasn’t until Levi stood and pulled on his suit jacket, the watch disappearing, that Aubrey was able to focus. “I didn’t . . . What did you say?”

  “I said I’ve been waiting for you to get back. What took so long? If you’re going to work on this, Missy Flannigan has got to be your priority.”

  “Something unexpected came up with my home portrait piece.”

  “Like what? It’s a house. You walk through—take a few notes, some pictures. Unless it was being burglarized . . .”

  “Yes, that’s it. I had to wait for the coast-is-clear signal.” A sound of irritation pulsed from him. “I was obligated to my assignment before Malcolm’s fabulous idea this morning.”

  “Whatever. Can we get going now?”

  “Where?”

  “To the medical examiner’s office.” He gathered select folders and notes. “I want to poke around and—”

  “The ME’s office?” A shiver wove through Aubrey. “The morgue, where they have Missy’s body—or Missy’s alleged body?”

  “Do you know of a more appropriate location for skeletal remains?” Levi pocketed his keys and looked at his phone. His watch glinted again. “Malcolm mentioned you had some kind of six-degree connection there.”