by Terri Reid
“Yes, I am,” Mary said. “But it’s hard to see some of the details.”
The woman handed her the glass. “You might want to go over there by the microfiche machine,” she suggested. “The light is much stronger over there.”
Thanking her, Mary made her way to an empty table next to the microfiche machine and opened the book to the Junior Class photo. Using the glass, she leaned over and studied the face in the photo; it looked like Erika, the ghost at Union Dairy Ice Cream Shop. But as she looked closer, she realized there was something very odd about her face. Not only was she above the rest of the group, but when you looked close enough, you could see the row of bleachers through her face.
Mary slowly sat up, still staring at the book. That was a photo of a ghost. Erika had died before her Junior Class photo shoot and her ghost took her place.
“I wonder how many other people realized she was in the yearbook,” Mary wondered. “She’s not really hidden at all.”
Picking the book up again, she scanned the caption of names, at the very end of the list was a note. Deceased: Erika Arnold
“Well, at least I know who she is,” Mary whispered. “Now all I have to do is find out how she died and why she’s still hanging around.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Mary entered Union Dairy armed with a healthy craving for dark chocolate and some more information on Erika. It was the middle of the afternoon and school was in session, so the restaurant was nearly empty. She walked over to the counter and was greeted by a college-aged girl.
“Hi, what can I get you?” she asked.
“Dark chocolate,” Mary said.
“Okay, we have dark chocolate with pieces of coconut candy bars, dark chocolate with pieces of brownie, dark chocolate with bits of semi-sweet dark chocolate chips and dark chocolate with chocolate-covered raspberries. Which one would you like?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Mary asked. “I have to choose?”
The girl smiled and shook her head. “No, actually, I can put a scoop of each into these small cardboard containers that fit perfectly into your freezer. Then you can try them all and not feel like you are overdoing it.”
Mary looked at the small six ounce containers and quickly calculated how many could fit in the small freezer section of her office refrigerator. “Okay, I’ll take three containers of each,” she said with a smile.
“You want twelve in all?” the girl asked, trying to hide her astonishment.
Mary nodded. “Yes, twelve in all,” she answered.
The girl looked over to the stack of containers. “We’re down to our last five,” she said. “I need to run back to the storeroom for the rest. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Take your time,” Mary replied.
“You should have asked for a taste of them,” a small voice next to her said.
Mary turned and looked down at Brandon.
“Hi,” she said. “That’s a great idea; I’ll have to use it next time.”
“My mom and I used to get tastes all the time,” he said. “We would have a contest to see the best taste combination.”
“What was the best?” Mary asked.
“I liked the bubble gum, cookie dough and Rocky Road taste,” he said. “Mom liked the chocolate, cheesecake and strawberry taste.”
“Oh, I’m going to have to go with your mom’s choice,” she said.
Brandon glanced around. “Have you found her yet?” he asked. “I’m still looking.”
Mary took a quick breath as tears stung her eyes. “No, I’m sorry, Brandon, I haven’t,” she said. “Maybe you could give me some clues that would help me out.”
“Clues?” he asked with a wide smile. “Like in Blue’s Clues?” Naming the popular children’s show.
“Just like that,” Mary said, glancing around just to be sure they were still alone.
“Okay,” Brandon said. “Let me think.”
She smiled to herself as she watched the little boy screw up his face in concentration. Finally he looked up with a smile. “I kind of remember a big building,” he said. “We went there a lot. And after, we would come here.”
“A big building?” Mary asked. “Like a church or the library?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head and chewing his lower lip as he thought. “They listened to my heart and tapped my knee with a hammer.”
“The hospital?” Mary asked. “You used to go with your mom to the hospital.”
“Yes,” he said. “You got the clue. Now you can find my mom.”
Mary heard the returning footsteps of the waitress. “Okay, Brandon, I’ll keep looking and let you know.”
“Thanks,” he said with a brilliant smile. “Thanks a lot.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Josh Johnson’s office was in the Stewart Centre building on Douglas Street. The building was the only high-rise in Freeport and with a total of twelve floors; it stood well above the other structures in the downtown. Mary took the elevator up to the seventh floor and stepped out onto the carpeted lobby. She scanned the small marque on the wall in front of the elevators and found that Johnson Enterprises was located in Suite 705. Turning up the hall, she quickly found the room and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a man’s voice responded and Mary opened the door and let herself in.
Her jaw nearly dropped when the man behind the desk stood and greeted her. He looked just like Dale. But Dale not injured and in the flesh.
“Are you okay?” Josh asked, coming around his desk quickly when he saw the surprise on Mary’s face.
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry,” she said, slightly embarrassed by her reaction. “It’s just that you look so much like your father, you surprised me.”
“No one’s compared me to my dad in years,” he said softly, almost to himself.
After a quick moment, he regained his focus and smiled politely at her. “What can I do to help you?” he asked. “You said something about the house?”
Sitting down, Mary pulled the lien document from her briefcase and handed it to him. He reviewed it, crossing back around to the other side of his desk and sat down slowly.
“I’m surprised to see this,” he said, still studying the paper. “I know the work was completed and paid for. Have you contacted Rogers Construction?”
“No, I didn’t,” she replied. “I didn’t want to stir anything up for your family, not knowing the situation behind the lien. I did find out, though, that Steve Rogers has passed away.”
Josh nodded. “Yeah, I went to his funeral,” he said. “He and my dad were good friends. I thought he’d want me to be there.”
“Hell, I wanted to be there,” Dale said, appearing behind Josh. “But you went and killed me, so that kind of prevented it.”
Josh glanced over his shoulder and then turned back to Mary. “Did you hear something?” he asked.
“Um, no,” Mary lied. “No I didn’t.”
Josh shrugged and glanced back down at the document. “So what do you need from me?”
“I just need your signature,” she said. “The document basically states that you and your family will be responsible for any debts or obligations set forth in the lien.”
“Do you know how much the lien is for?” he asked.
“No, I didn’t pull that paperwork,” she said. “Once again, I didn’t want to uncover anything that was best left alone. When I first saw the lien, I didn’t know anything about your father, so I didn’t know what to think.”
Josh’s head snapped up. “What do you mean by that?”
Once again, Mary tried to read emotions as she spoke. “I didn’t know he was such an honest man,” she said.
“He was a hard-ass,” Josh replied. “A stubborn hard-ass. But, yes, he was honest.”
“You don’t seem to admire him as much as your siblings did,” she said.
“Well, when you’re the oldest, you get a different perspective,” Josh said. “When you’re the oldest, there a
re obligations that are assumed from the moment you’re born. At least when you’re the oldest in a multi-generational agricultural family.”
“Ah, so your future was decided before you even had a say in the matter?” Mary asked.
“Course it was,” Dale said. “That farm gave you the house you lived in and the food you ate. Nothing wrong with a legacy. Should have been grateful for the opportunity.”
“Yeah, before I was ten my life was all set out before me,” he said. “Dad would always say things like ‘When Josh takes over the farm’ or ‘When you run the farm, you can do things your own way.’”
“What did you want to do?” Mary asked.
“What I’m doing now,” he said. “I work the financial ends of things. I help other farmers invest their money, so they have a different kind of legacy for their kids. Not just back-breaking hard work and an uncertain future, I help them plan for a future.”
“Nothing wrong with hard work,” Dale muttered. “It was good enough for me, my dad and his dad before him.”
“Is that why you wanted to sell the land right after your dad died?” she asked. “For the future?”
“Or for the money?” Dale spat.
"Is that what they told you?” Josh asked, standing and pacing behind his desk, nearly running through his father. “Is that what Jessie and Abe said?”
“Well, I don’t think they used those exact words,” she replied.
“Mr. Gartner told me I needed to sell in order to take advantage of the incentive,” Josh said. “He told me if waited I would lose millions of dollars. I wasn’t just thinking about myself, but of Jessie, Abe and Mom. It was a lot of money.”
“That’s a lie,” Dale said, shaking his head slowly. “Gartner never sold his property. He was on the county board and they were the ones deciding on allowing the corporation to come in. It would have been a conflict of interest. He would have had to recuse himself from the voting.”
“But your dad didn’t want the land to be sold,” Mary said.
“Yeah, but my dad wasn’t around anymore to make any of those decisions,” Josh said. “He wasn’t going to run the farm and I sure wasn’t going to be the sacrificial goat and run it.”
“How about Abe?” Dale asked. “He could have done it.”
“Wasn’t Abe interested?” Mary asked.
“Abe,” Josh closed his eyes and sighed. “Abe was so buried in guilt that he didn’t leave his room for a week, except for the funeral. He blamed himself for dad’s death.”
“But it wasn’t Abe’s fault, was it?” Mary asked.
Josh shook his head. “No. It wasn’t Abe fault,” he said quietly.
Sitting down suddenly, he grabbed a pen and quickly signed the document. “Okay, you have my signature,” he said, pushing the paper across the desk to her. “Now, please, get out of my office.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“I got your text, Mary,” Rosie said as she entered Mary’s office. “I can’t believe you’ve already met with all of Dale’s kids. So, what do you think? Did they kill their dad?”
Mary looked up and grinned. Rosie was still wearing the plastic shawl from the local beauty parlor and her head was covered with blocks of shiny foil.
“Rosie, what were you doing when you got my text?” she asked.
“Having my hair done,” she replied, sliding into the seat in front of Mary’s desk. “It has to process for twenty minutes anyway, so I figured I’d hurry down and talk to you.”
“Really, Rosie, it could have waited,” Mary chuckled.
“Well, I couldn’t,” she argued. “This is the very first time I’ve actually hired a ghost investigator. So, what’s up?”
“All of the children were willing to sign the fake document about the lien,” Mary replied. “But it seems that all of them are not convinced Dale’s death was an accident.”
“Why didn’t they go to the police?”
“Because they think they’re protecting each other,” Mary said. “Even Greta was suspicious, but she never told anyone because she didn’t want to get her children in trouble.”
“So, who did it?” Rosie asked.
Mary shrugged. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m sure it’s linked with the sale of the land, but I still need a strong motive.”
“They made a lot of money,” Rosie said. “Isn’t that a good motive?”
“Yes, money’s a good motive,” Mary said. “But does it outweigh the other variables?”
Sitting back in the chair and adjusting the shawl, so the back of the chair was protected, Rosie cocked her head slightly, sending all the foil slips shifting to one side. “What do you mean by outweighing other variables?”
“Okay, well, if someone offered you a million dollars to divorce Stanley, what would you say?”
Rosie pondered her response for a moment. “Could I marry him again, after I got the million?”
Mary laughed. “No, you could never see him again.”
“Then no,” Rosie said with a quick shrug. “I love Stanley more than a million dollars.”
“And love is one of those variables you have to consider,” Mary said. “If Dale’s kids loved him, they wouldn’t kill him for money.”
“Did they love him?” Rosie asked.
“Yeah, did they love me?” Dale asked, appearing next to Rosie. He looked over at her and did a double-take. “What the hell happened to her?”
“She’s getting her hair done,” Mary laughed.
“What?” Rosie asked.
“Dale just appeared and he wondered about your outfit,” Mary said.
“She looks like my TV antenna when we were trying to get better reception,” Dale muttered.
“Mary, you didn’t tell me there would be others at our meeting,” Rosie complained.
“Rosie, I didn’t know Dale would be here,” Mary said apologetically. “But since he is here, he can help with the question at hand. Did they love him, er, you?”
“Nope, they didn’t,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “They didn’t love me at all.”
“Dale doesn’t think they loved him,” Mary said to Rosie. “I disagree with him. I think they all loved him.”
“So they didn’t kill him?” Rosie asked.
“Well, I’m not willing to say that, yet,” she said, “because sometimes you make bad decisions when you’ve got pressure from other areas. For example, did Jessie feel pressure from Quinn? Was there an ‘If you love me you’ll help me close this deal’ moment? Was Josh feeling pressure about his future and saw this as a way to get out?”
“You still don’t kill someone,” Dale said. “No matter what you’re feeling.”
“Of course, I agree with you, Dale,” Mary said. “But until I’ve found more information than I have right now, I can’t give either you or Rosie a good answer.”
Rosie sighed. “I really thought things would be figured out faster than this. On television it only takes those private eyes sixty minutes, with commercials.”
Mary sighed and then thought of something. “I need to change the subject,” she said, “Before you have to head back to the beauty shop. Do you remember hearing anything about a ghost in a yearbook when you were in high school?”
“You mean Dead Erika?” both Rosie and Dale said at the same time.
“Dead Erika?” Mary repeated. “Well, that’s not very nice.”
“Well, she was dead,” Dale said.
“We only called her that because she was dead,” Rosie said.
“How did she die?” Mary asked.
“Hit by a train,” Dale replied.
“She committed suicide at the park,” Rosie said.
“So, no one really knows,” Mary said.
“All I know is that she died during her junior year of high school, before the pictures were taken and she showed up as a ghost,” Rosie said.
“Yeah, yearbooks sales that year were off the books,” Dale added. “They even got requests from folks o
ut of town. Dead Erika put Freeport on the map that year.”
Rosie looked down at her watch and then jumped up. “Oh, my time is almost up,” she cried. “I need to get back, or I’ll turn pink.”
She turned, ran out the door and jogged down the sidewalk towards the beauty parlor.
“If that don’t beat all,” Dale said, slowing fading away. “I never did understand women.”
Mary looked around her empty office, then stood up, walked over to the refrigerator and opened the freezer section. Yep, she thought, this is going to be a two container kind of day.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Dead Erika,” Bradley repeated, incredulously, trying not to smile as he watched Mary take her frustrations out on a pan of mashed potatoes. “They both actually called her Dead Erika?”
“People can be so insensitive when they are talking about dead people,” Mary said, whipping butter into the softened potatoes. “I mean, what if she were in the room and heard them?”
Bradley came up behind her and slipped her arms around her waist. “Well, to be fair, most people don’t expect dead people to be in the room listening,” he said.
“Well, they should,” she replied, beating the potatoes even harder. “I mean, even Dale said it, and he should know better.”
“Well, it did happen while they were both kids,” he said. “So, maybe they just said it without thinking. I’m sure Rosie would never intentionally say anything that would hurt someone’s feelings.”
The masher slowed in intensity and Mary sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m getting all worked up about it. It’s like I can’t control my emotions.”
Then she leaned back against him and sighed. “And I have another confession to make,” she said sadly, shaking her head when her emotions were too much for speech.
He turned her in his arms. “Mary?” he asked, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
Big tears slipped down Mary’s cheeks and she just shook her head. “I can’t…”
Wiping away her tears, he kissed her tenderly. “You can tell me,” he said. “No matter what…”