by Elise Sax
I finished the article on Stella’s wake and handed it to Jack, who went through it with a red pen, as usual. Most of my articles were more or less rewritten by Silas or Jack, but they told me repeatedly that I was improving. With the paper put to bed, the office cleared out, and I opened another file on my computer.
I titled it “Leonard,” and I filled it with all of my questions and things I wanted to investigate. I included his letter and the list of initials, the VIP Ticket to Heaven, and Nora’s new job. It wasn’t much, and nothing alone was suspicious at all, but for some reason, I couldn’t let it go, a lot like I couldn’t let go of the mystery of the dead girl who had come to visit me, asking for help.
I turned off the lights in the office and locked the door. I peeked out past the front gate to see if Boone’s truck was there, but it wasn’t. The dirt parking area was empty except for Silas’s Cavalier and my Altima. Where was Boone? He should have come back by now. Not that I cared.
Although, it sure seemed that I cared. I was on the verge of being obsessive. Meanwhile, Amos had invited me to his house tomorrow, and I wasn’t thinking about that at all. My thoughts only went back to Boone and the letter he had left me before he went on his mystery trip.
Maybe I had a thing for letters, and my interest had nothing to do with Boone. Sure. Let’s go with that.
Before I walked into my living quarters, I peeked in the windows of Boone’s part of the house. He was leasing it for a year, and I had originally mistaken it for a condemned storage area, but he was living there. He had left the door and windows locked while he was away, and until then, I hadn’t broken in, despite my curiosity. Boone was still a mystery to me. I knew he was Amos’s brother and Jack’s cousin, but beyond that, I was clueless.
Standing there, trying to see through the window as the sun went down, I was sorely tempted to pretend that I smelled gas and break the window with a rock so that I could invade his privacy, but the sound of water running in my bathroom on my side of the house distracted me. I crossed the courtyard and walked into the kitchen. I fed the dogs and looked in the refrigerator to see if something had magically grown in there. Really, I shouldn’t have been hungry after the wake, but the New Mexico mountain air gave me a perpetual appetite.
The water in the bathroom turned off, and I closed the refrigerator. “Silas? Are you decent?” I called.
“Sure am, boss.”
I walked into the bathroom, and he was lying in the bathtub—thankfully covered with bubbles—reading Foreign Affairs magazine.
“Don’t you have a bathtub in your house? You’re here every night,” I said.
“You should be glad your senior reporter practices good hygiene.”
I didn’t point out that he wore the same suit every day, and I wasn’t sure how often he cleaned it.
“You’re later than usual,” I said.
“This is my second bath. I took the first one and went to leave, and black goo fell from the sky and fell on my head.”
I gasped. “The same thing happened to a guy at the wake. I saw it happen. What do you think it is?”
“It smells like my crap after I eat the chicken fried steak at the diner.”
“That’s not good.”
“I kept a sample and am going to drop it off at the hospital’s lab to see what it is.”
“Smart,” I said, impressed.
“Remember in a small town, everything’s a story, boss. And if shit’s falling from the sky, that’s a headline that sells papers.”
Selling papers sounded good to me. I was hungry.
“So, about Leonard,” I started and gave him the full story, or as much as I had so far. “What do you think?”
“I think any ordinary editor would tell you to put your head down and report the stories we already have, not search out half-baked theories that have no basis in reality.”
My head dropped in disappointment.
Silas slapped the water. “But I’m not any ordinary editor!” he yelled. “I’m a hard-bitten, take no prisoners, never say die, Edward R. Murrow was a god kind of journalist! Do you hear me, boss?”
“Yes, you’re speaking very loud.”
“Do you understand me, boss?”
No, I had no idea what he was talking about. “Yes. You mean…”
“I mean go with the story. Follow it wherever it leads. Dig deep. Ask hard questions. I know you’re like a dog with a bone. I know you’re still trying to find out about that dead girl.”
“Well…”
Silas waved his arm, making the bubbles move enough to give me more of a view of his doughy body than I wanted. “Don’t need to make excuses, boss. I approve. That dead girl is the most exciting thing that has ever happened in this town.”
“More than the giraffes and the aliens?”
“There’s a murderer out there who killed a young girl, and we don’t have a clue about who that girl is. Never mind that you talked to her when she was dead. That’s bigger than wild giraffes and aliens.”
I nodded. I agreed. The girl haunted my dreams. I had let her down, and I didn’t want to do that with Leonard. “So, continue with this story,” he continued. “But don’t let the other stories drop. Tomorrow you have to cover Mabel’s tea party raves and I’ll need you with me at the meeting about the giraffes. That’s definitely a two-reporter story.”
Whoa. That was a lot of stories I had to cover.
“Journalism never sleeps, boss,” Silas told me, reading my mind. “You can do it. You might want to start early tomorrow and visit Nora at her new job.”
“At Jenny and Joyce’s.”
“Or as most of us in Goodnight call them, ‘the witches.’”
“Oh, they’re not nice?”
“No, they’re nice enough. They’re just witches.”
Chapter 4
The next morning, after I fed and walked the dogs, I made myself a cup of coffee to go and headed out to Jenny and Joyce Johnson’s house at eight o’clock. I warned Nora ahead of time that I was going to visit her, and she seemed delighted.
“We’ll have coffee and Danish, Matilda. Oh, you should see the place!” Her hours were six-to-three, which worked out well with her kids. “I’ve got two snuck away in their library. They’ll never know.”
Jenny and Joyce lived not far away from me, further up into the mountains. I turned off the road through wide wrought-iron gates and up a windy gravel path further into the mountains until I finally found their house. Their mansion. Their house was old like mine, but that’s where the similarities ended. Their house was stunning. Gorgeous. Majestic.
I parked out front and rang the doorbell. Nora answered, opening the two-story Spanish-inspired mammoth-size door. “Look at me! I’ve got a new job!” she announced and gave me a warm hug. “Jenny and Joyce are giving me an hour off to have breakfast with you. They say it’s karmically important for us to have tea together. Don’t worry. I made coffee, instead. Who the hell drinks tea?”
The house that was a mansion was actually a castle. There was room after room of wood-paneled walls and antique furniture. “What the hell?” I said, gobsmacked by the opulence.
“Isn’t it something? I’m telling you, Matilda, richer or poorer, it’s better to have money.”
We ate Danish and drank coffee in the kitchen, which was about the size of a football field. Halfway through my first cup of coffee, I was surprised to see Faye walk in. She was wearing her usual uniform of work boots, short-short cutoffs, a tight t-shirt, and a large tool belt.
She was sheepish when she saw me and when she plopped down on a chair next to me, she launched into apologies. “I’m so sorry, Matilda. I know I’ve left you in the lurch, but Jenny and Joyce were in a rush, and it’s a really good job.”
I put my hand on hers. “Faye, I’m not even paying you. Don’t worry about it.”
It was true. I wasn’t paying her. She had decided to renovate my house because it was historical, and she enjoyed doing it. But I did wish there was
n’t a large hole in my living room floor.
Faye leaned toward me and whispered in my ear. “I’m collecting all kinds of odds and ends they don’t need. Your house is going to be amazing.”
There was no better friend than a friend who was willing to do morally questionable things for you. She picked up a Danish and took a bite.
“Did you hear about what happened to Leonard Shetland?” Nora asked me.
I nodded. “He died yesterday. I saw him.”
Faye sucked air. “Did he talk to you?”
“No. I went to his house for a story. He was just normal dead. You know, not talking or anything.”
“Isn’t it something that he quit his job right before he died?” Nora asked. I took a sip of my coffee and looked away. What was I going to say? That maybe her new employers killed him?
“He ate a lot of cheese,” a woman with long, flowing gray hair said, entering the kitchen. She was accompanied by another woman with the same kind of hair, who was obviously her sister. They both wore gorgeous, colorful, handwoven clothes that were typical of Santa Fe.
“I’m Jenny,” the woman said, extending her hand to me. Every finger was covered in rings. I shook her hand.
“This is my friend, Matilda,” Nora said.
Jenny closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. She put her hand up, as if she was determining which way the wind was blowing. “Matilda is one of us,” she said in a lower voice. “A kindred spirit.”
“A sister of the psychic sisterhood,” the woman who had to be Joyce said with her eyes closed, too.
“Really?” Nora asked. “So cool.”
“Matilda talks to dead people,” Faye said.
Jenny and Joyce flanked me on either side like a hippie sandwich. “We knew it,” Jenny said.
“Your atomic aura filled the house the moment you rang the doorbell,” Joyce agreed.
“Are you sure? I don’t think I have an atomic aura,” I said, growing uncomfortable with their attention. They were standing very close to me. Jenny’s breath was peanut butter and peppermint, while Joyce was all about the cigarettes. They didn’t seem like killers, but they were pretty creepy.
“Have you shown Matilda the house?” Joyce asked.
“We must show Matilda the house,” Jenny said.
“She must feel the spirits of the dwelling,” Joyce agreed.
“And know.”
“Yes. And know.”
“Jenny and Joyce are psychics. Did you know that?” Nora asked me. I caught Faye rolling her eyes at her coffee cup. Her husband ran a shop in town, catering to alien enthusiasts. She was a firm believer in the Vegan intergalactic army, but she obviously didn’t cotton to psychics. I didn’t either. That is until I met one back in Cannes, California. Now I was a believer, but I wasn’t so sure I believed in Jenny and Joyce. They were more woo-woo than the psychics I had known.
Faye went back to remodeling the house, and Nora and I followed Jenny and Joyce as they took me on a tour of the castle. There must have been fifteen bedrooms. A maze of hallways, nooks, and passageways connected the rooms. But I noticed that the place was rundown in spots, the edges worn, and the rugs frayed. I assumed that it was a lot of upkeep to maintain a castle, and I worried that Faye would never finish with it and get around to fixing the hole in my living room floor. I could handle having a house falling down around my ears, but I didn’t want to fall down, too.
“Why did Leonard quit?” I asked as they walked me through the den.
“We don’t know,” Jenny said. “Perhaps he felt the universe call to him?”
“Yes, maybe he knew it was his time,” Joyce said. “His soul is now traveling the cosmos. We’re very happy to have Nora with us. She’s already greatly improved the organization of our calendar.”
“I hooked them up to Google,” Nora explained. “Jenny and Joyce do a lot of readings, you know. People come to them for all kinds of insights. They told me that I was done having kids. Thank goodness. I’m so relieved that I might even let my husband touch me again.”
“And now our readings are organized with the wonderful new calendar,” Joyce told me, beaming. “Google means computer, you know.”
I nodded. If Jenny and Joyce were on the up and up, perhaps they could help me about the dead girl. Maybe they could summon her and ask her more questions. As much as I wanted help, though, I resisted talking to them about the girl. Leonard’s death was still suspicious in my mind, and I wasn’t ready to trust the sisters.
We entered a great room, and I stopped in my tracks. My breath was completely taken away. The room was two stories tall with beams crossing the ceiling. The walls were covered with built-in bookshelves, and the furniture looked like it had been taken from Hearst Castle. But that wasn’t the part that took my breath away.
It was the view.
The view of the century. The view to end all views. An entire wall was made of glass and through it was the view of a large canyon, forest, and endless sky.
“It’s through nature that we know God,” Jenny said.
“Would you like to go outside to get a better view?” Joyce asked.
She opened the door, and we went out back. The view was spectacular. The house was situated on a ridge, and far below us was a narrow, meandering river that ran through the canyon. Other houses dotted the land along the ridge all the way around the canyon. Even though the other houses were large and beautiful, they couldn’t compare to Jenny and Joyce’s.
“At night, the stars light up the sky, of course,” Jenny said.
“So close you can almost touch them,” said Joyce.
The sisters spoke with Nora about a yucca plant that was growing dangerously close to the house, and while they were busy, I continued looking out at the view. That’s when I saw her. At least I was pretty sure it was a her. She wasn’t far away, on the ridge. I wasn’t sure what house she had come from, but she definitely came from one of them.
But now she was falling.
I pointed. “Oh my God!” I breathed. I watched as the woman rolled down the side of the cliff, hitting rocks and dirt as she went, gaining momentum and then slowing down and then gaining momentum again. “That poor woman!” I shouted.
Nora and the sisters turned around to see what was wrong. “A woman is falling down the canyon. Someone get help!” I yelled. But by then the woman had reached the bottom and was hidden by brush.
“Are you sure?” Joyce asked. “Maybe it was a coyote.”
“Or a deer,” Jenny said.
“Why don’t you believe me? A woman needs our help. Call 9-1-1.” I had left my purse on the kitchen table and nobody else had their phone with them. A terrifying dread crept up my back. I looked over the edge of the ridge. “She couldn’t have fallen,” I said.
“What did you say?” Nora asked.
“She had to be pushed. Nobody could fall from here. If it was that dangerous, there would be back fences, but look, there’s not a fence to be seen. She had to be pushed. Nobody could fall from here.”
Okay. So, I’m stupid. I’m highly educated in useless information, but I’m in no way a member of Mensa. I’m dumb. I should never open my mouth. That’s what I was thinking as the ground gave way beneath my feet, and I started to fall down the side of the mountain to my death.
It wasn’t the way I wanted to die. I wanted to die from old age in my bed after eating ice cream. I hadn’t had ice cream in weeks. Why had I been depriving myself of ice cream? Now I was going to die without it. To think that I hadn’t allowed myself to have a pathetic, fucking scoop of vanilla, and now I was going to die!
A lot more regrets flooded my mind in the split second between standing on solid ground and falling to my demise. But a couple of seconds later I realized that miraculously, I was managing to stay upright as I slid down, down, down. I was like a downhill racer but in sneakers. Putting my arms out by my sides, I started to believe that I was going to make it. I was the queen of balance. I was the Cirque du Soleil of the clums
y set.
“Look at me! I’m doing it!” I shouted about halfway down, and that’s when I lost control, or rather, that’s when my dumb luck left me. My ankle turned, and I went down. I slid on my butt for a minute and then I started to roll.
I rolled a lot.
That’s when the regrets filled my head again, and I really wanted ice cream. And not to die.
And then finally it was over. I landed at the bottom. And miraculously, I was alive. I touched my body all over. There didn’t seem to be any bones protruding. I wiggled my toes and turned my head. Everything was in order. I looked above me and could just make out Nora peering over the side with a look of horror on her face. I gave her the okay sign with my thumb and index finger.
My elation dulled when I noticed that I had landed a stone’s throw away from the woman who hadn’t been as lucky as I was. I crawled toward her and checked her pulse, even though I could already tell that she was dead. She was an older lady, and her body was banged up from the fall. “You poor lady,” I said.
“Help me.”
I jumped backward as if I had been pulled by a rope. “Did you say something?” I asked the dead woman.
“Please help me.”
“Oh, no. It’s happening again.”
“He hurts me. I want my mother. I shouldn’t have run away.”
The sound wasn’t coming from the dead woman in front of me. I turned around. A girl was standing there, barefoot, her long blond hair dirty, her eyes dark hollow orbs. She looked like she was a couple years younger than the other dead girl who had visited me. And I was pretty sure this girl had suffered the same fate as her.
“Who’s hurting you? Does he have you locked up? Tell me, so I can help you,” I urged her.
“I’m not the only one here. Blondes. He collects blondes.” She stepped forward. “He’s closer than you think.” She touched my shoulder, and everything went black.
I didn’t know how long I was out, but when I came to, Amos was hovering over me, and there was a lot of activity around me. “There she is,” he said. He had taken off his cowboy hat. “You took quite a tumble. Don’t move. I’ve got men here who’re going to check you out.”