“I’m…not sure. Anyway, that’s not what really upsets me…”
“What does?”
“I fell off the Dean’s trellis. It broke under me…”
“And?”
“As I fell, tumbled backward, I looked up and could see, for an instant, a figure standing there in the bathroom, framed by the window. It was back-lit by all that white tile glare…I couldn’t see the face distinctly. Then I was tumbled over and hit the water.”
“And this figure in the window…you thought it was me?”
“No.”
I looked up at her.
“I thought it was the little girl…”
FIVE
“Wow!” Rita said, trying to get her breath.
I rolled beside her in a light sweat even though the breeze through bedroom window had cooled. ‘Wow’ indeed.
“Wow,” Rita repeated. Then found my hand on the damp sheets and placed it over her breast. “Can you feel that?”
“I can.”
“Like a trip hammer!”
I nodded above my own laboring chest. “Me too.”
I could tell by her tone she was smiling contentedly in the darkness. “That was really…”
“Athletic?”
“Don’t spoil it by being glib,” but she giggled like a schoolgirl. “I was going to say ‘wonderful.’” Silence for a few moments, aside from the collective rasp of our throats, then: “Wow.”
“You’ll ruin your extensive vocabulary and my endearing modesty.”
“You were so…”
“Huge?”
“…passionate! Took my breath away! ‘His eager spear pierced the very heart of her.”
“Is that D. H. Lawrence?”
“That’s Rita Blaine. Who is seriously satiated at the moment. And damned glad of it. Grateful. Is that proper protocol?”
“There’s no protocol in sex.”
“Foreplay.”
“Not the same thing.”
“You’re a wonderful lover.”
“Keep talking, I’m swelling up like a toad.”
“You mean your ego, I assume.”
“That too.”
She squeezed my hand. “Whatever got into you, my sweet?”
“I lack expertise in these things but I think it was the other way around.”
It didn’t get the laugh I was looking for.
“Elliot?”
“No, it’s Harry the plumber.”
“…I’m…I know we haven’t always had the greatest…”
“Speak for yourself. It was great for me.”
But her tone had gone serious. “Tonight. But you can be satisfied with the…frequency. I’m a small town Texas girl, with a provincial upbringing that stressed athletics, not…creativity.”
“Not the afterglow I perceived…”
I felt her turn toward me. “I know there are things you’d like—“
“I like everything about you.”
“…things that don’t come so…naturally to me. I’ve been told I have a dominance problem.”
“Who told you that?”
“I’m serious.”
“Hey, dominate all you like, bring on the whips!”
“I’m talking the other way around and you know it. But tonight…tonight was wonderful, but…”
“But?”
She rustled the sheets with a restive leg. “I don’t know, it was also kind of—what’s the word—“
“As long as it’s flattering…”
“—almost angry?”
“Sweetie! Did I hurt you?”
“No. It was lovely. It just felt for a moment there you were...”
Somewhere way back in my mind, Katie Bracken laughed silently.
“You weren’t fantasizing about someone else, were you? Tell me the truth.”
The goddamn ‘truth’ again. “Don’t be silly, Rita.”
“Sorry. It’s just…the other night, at Dean Owen’s party, I saw you talking with—oh, this is silly! I’m acting like a jealous schoolgirl.”
“You certainly are.”
Pause.
“Talking with who?”
“Oh, you know, what’s-her-name.”
“Who’s name?”
“The one with the boobs.”
“That’s most women on the planet, Rita.”
She cupped her hands a foot from her chest. “The boobs. The one the jocks are always chasing. ‘Sanders,’ is that her name? I saw you talking with them at the pool.”
“Them?”
“The boobs.”
I grinned in darkness. “I’m her sophomore crush, Rita. I get one per semester year, it’s teacher privilege. Don’t tell me you haven’t had your share. With the boys.”
“Don’t ever ask, Elliot. Oh hell, I’m being an idiot. You banged my brains out, stud!” She sighed, rolled onto her side. “Excuse me now while I drift off in post-coital bliss.”
I smiled.
“And if your girlfriend calls, please take it in the other room. Night...”
I patted the curve of her hip, rolled onto my own side, closed my eyes.
My cell phone played the theme from The Sopranos on the nightstand beside me. I thought the same thing I always thought when I heard it: we’re never alone these days.
“Who in the world at this hour…” Rita mumbled dreamily, already half-under.
I groaned, leaned over, groped, found the plastic wedge. “Hello?”
“It’s me.”
My eyes flew open as if they could see in the dark. I could hear Rita already snoring softly beside me. “Little late, isn’t it?” I whispered.
“Is it?” A rustling sound like she was turning to check a clock. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Can’t this wait?”
“Uh-oh. Were you doing the wild thing?”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow in class, Mr. Thomas.”
“We don’t have ‘till tomorrow, Elliot. The widow is closing fast on this case. You said you’d call after studying the newspaper clipping I gave you.”
“I didn’t say tonight!”
“The clipping--is it the same little girl or isn’t it?”
Rita made a sighing sound. I scooted away to the edge of the mattress. She began snoring again. “I don’t know! It’s really late!”
“Later than you think. Is the little girl the same one in your dream, the one you’ve been seeing around campus?”
I was suddenly finding it hard to breathe correctly for some reason.
“I can’t talk about this right now.” And I rang off.
Lay back on my pillow, the room silent but for Rita’s soft whistle.
Found that I couldn’t sleep now.
I got up, padded downstairs barefoot in T-shirt and pajama bottoms for a glass of milk. With maybe a shot of Kahlua.
* * *
I retrieved the yellowing newspaper clipping from the briefcase in my study, took it with me to the kitchen table, poured a glass of milk, sat there studying the clip from the August 21, 1983 New Orleans Sentinel, the grainy photo of the little girl, and the headline above it: 8 YR. OLD STILL MISSING.
A little towhead girl with pigtails, pretty, angelic features and a missing front tooth, a cheap silvery chain and huge locket about her thin neck.
After a moment I sweetened the milk with a dollop of Mexican bought, tariff-free Kahlua, one of a case-full Rita and I purchased on our last trip to Tijuana.
I sat, I stared at the picture.
The kitchen was dead silent except for a slow, twenty-second plip from the faucet I’d been meaning to tighten for weeks.
plip plip plip
I sat, I stared.
Katie’s ghost sat across the kitchen table from me, waiting impatiently. “Well?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you’re not, not sure.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?”
I sat, I stared. Drank. Soon enough felt the kitchen walls fade away and I was back within the crow
ded confines of my university office, me pacing, Katie watching behind my desk.
“Tell me about your movie, Elliot. What was it about?”
“I thought you said you saw it.”
“What was it about for you?”
I paused a moment in my pacing. “It was about a young man with a missile silo of hubris attempting to be the next Truffaut.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“What inspired you to make a movie about a little girl from New Orleans with pigtails who gets kidnapped and drowns.”
“‘Inspired’…”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure that’s the word.”
“What is the word? Did the idea just come to you one morning in the shower?”
I jerked to her sharply. “’Shower’?”
“Or the University library? Where’d you first get the idea for the film?”
I began pacing again. “I don’t know. People have asked me that before, but I really don’t know. I guess it just came to me one day.”
“It came to you in the daytime? Where were you? Inside or outside?”
“Outside. Walking around Central Lake in Cincinnati. The idea just came to me…”
I stopped and looked down at her suspiciously again. “You’re trying to find out if I read about the case somewhere--a newspaper maybe. That’s why you mentioned the library. Well, I didn’t. I was seldom at the library back then, I wanted to be a filmmaker, and I didn’t see a news report on TV or hear one on the radio.”
“Maybe sub—“
“No, I did not hear about it subconsciously either. Why are you frowning at me?”
“You sound defensive.”
“I’m not. I was making a great work of art, Miss Bracken, trying to be original. If the Cincinnati Times or the local stations had carried the story—which is unlikely—I’d have given them full credit. I thought it was a work of fiction.”
“Thought. But something compelled you to write it—to film it.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. I never heard of the case.”
She studied her hands a moment. “Hard to believe…”
“Do you think I’m lying to you? Or better yet, myself? Locking hoary secrets deep in my superego, Doctor Bracken?”
“You tell me. The twenty years ago incident in the New Orleans swamps is identical to your movie, or nearly.”
I was quickly losing it. “’Nearly’ being the operative word! First of all, I filmed it in Cincinnati where we don’t have swamps, secondly, the little girl drowns in my movie. According to your newspaper clipping she was never found.”
“The New Orleans Sheriff’s Dept. assumes she drowned, was carried away in the current. A swamp is a slow moving body of water, a river, not a stagnant lake.”
I started to wave her off—suddenly froze in place, throat thickening.
Katie watched me silently as if waiting.
“Are you with the law?” I asked sharply. “Am I under arrest?”
“You could be.”
I finally bridled. “Who the hell are you?”
Katie sat composed behind my desk. “Who I said I was--a Paranormal Investigator.”
“Working for whom?”
“Working for me. But Elliot, your arrest notion is not beyond possibility. It may be that the only reason the gendarmes haven’t knocked on your door after all these years is for lack of proof. The obscurity of your film.”
I studied her. “Do you think I hurt that little girl?”
“I’m a private investigator. I always keep an open mind.”
“Right. Fine. Fuck you! And kindly get the hell out of my office. And if you keep stalking me like this I’ll call the—“
“The who, Elliot? The authorities? Want some advice? Know who your friends are, who’s on your side.”
I yanked open the office door. “Out! Now!”
She hoisted her purse, moved past me. “I’m leaving the clipping on your desk along with my phone and motel number. Call me if anything begins to look familiar.”
I started to slam the door in her wake…closed it softly instead.
The walls of my office morphed back into the kitchen in Rita’s condo.
I picked up the newspaper clipping, held it close. I sat. I stared.
plip plip plip
I sighed, tried to pour another dollop of Kaluha into my milk but the brown bottle with the bright red letters slipped from my fingers. I made a clumsy grab as it broke across the table, felt an icy sting on my thumb. A bright pearl of blood appear just above the inner knuckle. Shit.
I cupped my other hand under the slowly dripping wound and reached for the paper towel dispenser above the sink. It was empty. Natch.
I looked around like a helpless idiot, gripping my right wrist and watching stupidly as the little red explosions hit the tile beside the stainless sink. I grabbed a dishtowel, swathed my thumb and trotted into the hall bathroom.
I ran tap water on the slice that was already healing, wrangled a Band-Aid from the sink drawer and patched myself up to the thumping rhythm of Rita’s footfalls on the staircase. Damn. I’d woken her to find the pleasant surprise of blood and broken glass in her kitchen.
“Sorry, hon!” I called from the bathroom as I heard her cross the kitchen floor, “be careful, I broke a bottle!”
I doubled my wound with another Band-Aid just to be sure and crept sheepishly back to the kitchen.
It was empty. No Rita.
“Rita--?”
She never came downstairs.
I turned a tight circle. “Honey--?”
I shrugged, headed for the pantry broom and dustpan and caught my breath hard when I glanced at the fridge. There were bright red streaks across the white top freezer section, dripping in uneven scallops. I stepped toward them.
Not streaks. Writing.
Crudely smeared but legible enough. And in my own blood.
ELLIAT HALP ME
SIX
Memorial Day Weekend.
I’d lost an uncle in WWII, a cousin in Vietnam.
A close friend had taken a bad hit during Desert Storm wherein the enemy round had entered his helmet on his left side and spun around like a roulette ball for a few seconds that must have seemed an eternity, before finding lodging in his right frontal lobe. The injury was deemed by medics over there and doctors over here too dangerous to operate on. The casualty, my friend Jamie Wilkes who’d I known since middle school, survived with a barely discernible temple scar but a no-longer complete memory. Certain events of his childhood, certain seasons like Christmas, certain ordinary two-syllable words, in fact, no longer held meaning for him or likely ever would again. One of the words was ‘Bledsoe,’ my last name.
I still wept a few minutes every morning with exacting reliability two times a year: Memorial Day and Jamie’s birthday. I did try to stay in contact over the years, phone him occasionally. But after a while, hearing his distant, now slightly-slurred voice pleading, “—now who is this again?” I finally gave up, let it go.
All this to explain why Memorial Day was not a good time to be driving my fiancée Rita Blaine to the airport for a three-day visit with her parents in Dallas.
That and the fact that it had been decided Garbanzo, The Feline from Hell, would be left in my care.
“Now, please, please, don’t forget to feed him, Elliot!” all through breakfast, all through getting dressed, the entire five miles southeast from the Austin central business district to the American Airlines gate of the Dallas/Fort Worth flight from Austin-Bergstrom International. Mostly, I suspect, just to be sure the cat’s welfare was nagged indelibly into my brain; it would have been far simpler for her to take the “Airport Flyer” bus running right past our condo and avoid the protracted good-byes. And lectures.
“And for God’s sake, Elliot, don’t forget to leave him water! I read about a cat once who died from dehydration! And see he gets outside once in a while, can you?” Repeated ad nauseum all th
e way to the terminal.
Yet I endured this unending cat lecture for good reason: selfishness.
Katie had hinted that if I felt the cat would be too much for me, she’d take him along with her to Dallas in a carry-on cage.
It was tempting. But I wanted to assure Rita, over the next three days, exactly of my whereabouts. Me and the cat safely at home. In the condo. In Austin. Alone.
A lie, of course.
I’d already made up my mind by the time I woke that morning where I’d be over the long Memorial Day weekend. And whom I’d be with. I’d had an entire sleepless night thinking about bloody red writing on the white fridge door to consider it.
“You are beyond anal retentive,” Katie Bracken reflected cheerily half an hour later when I picked her up at her motel in the blackbird. “Beyond even the concept of control freak.”
“Good morning to you, too,” I responded irritably behind the wheel, already regretting this whole thing.
Katie slammed the passenger door behind her and—there being mere inches between the Thunderbird’s two bucket seats, occupied by the gear box--set the cat cage in her lap and craned around at the narrow interior. “Did you maybe consider renting a car?”
“You don’t like my shiny, black ride? ‘57 Ford Thunderbird sports car, last two-seater made in decades, original fender skirts and upholstery that still smells almost new. The coeds love it.”
“Elliot, it’s a pip. But by the time we get to Louisiana and back there’ll be mud caking the fender skirts, cat hair all over the interior and it may smell slightly less new. Couldn’t you break the obsessive monotony of just one day of your fastidiously ordered life and rent? And what’s with the cat?”
I growled, jerked too quickly from the curb, barely avoiding a truck. “They don’t allow pets on the airline!”
“American airlines?” she smiled, tickling Bonzo’s nose through the wire front of his cage. “Of course they do.”
“Rita didn’t want to bring him along,” I lied, merging with traffic.
“Hogwash. She offered to.”
I gave her a look of mixed anger and disbelief. “How do you know that? You can’t possibly know that!”
Katie sighed, petted Bonzo’s nose until the cat purred. “All us witches know that.”
I jerked toward her again, not smiling.
FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 5