A Good Idea

by Cristina Moracho

“Jesus Christ,” Serena said, whatever anger or jealousy she’d felt instantly evaporating. She put an arm around my shoulder, and I leaned into her as far as I could without knocking her off her stool.

  “It’s okay,” I mumbled. “What do you think we should do?”

  “Right now? I think we should wait. In a couple of hours, that prissy cunt will be back here and the bar will be full, and she’ll be telling that story to anyone who will listen. I want to see what happens when she does. Let’s find out who in Williston believes in ghosts.”

  “You know what she saw, right?”

  Serena nodded. “Caroline.”

  “Dressed up in Betty’s clothes, wandering around at night.”

  “Probably high out of her mind.”

  “Speaking of—”

  Serena was reaching for her wallet before I even finished my thought. “Don’t worry, Fin, I’ve got you covered,” she said, and palmed me a blue.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m kind of having a day.”

  The back door opened and Owen and Emily came inside, both looking grim and unsatisfied. Emily returned to her seat at the far end of the bar, downed her shot of Powers, and started working on her beer.

  “Everything okay?” I asked Owen.

  He took in the two of us, heads angled together, the proprietary way Serena’s arm was wrapped around my waist, and he shook his head. “I’m leaving. You’re good here?”

  “Yeah,” I said. The heat of Serena’s hand against the small of my back made it difficult to speak. “I’m good.”

  “You still want to help out at the diner?” he asked me.

  I had offered to do that, hadn’t I. “Sure.”

  “Come by in the morning, before the lunch rush. Don’t wear anything fancy.”

  “Do I ever?”

  “Who knows what the fuck you get up to, Finley,” he said, and left.

  “I take it you guys are fighting again,” Serena said when he was gone.

  “Not ‘again.’ More like ‘still.’”

  “You want a drink?”

  “How are you getting served here?”

  “Jed goes to my church. You want a drink or not?”

  “Sure.”

  Serena signaled for the bartender. I lit a cigarette, and we were on our way.

  • • •

  True to her word, the aerobics instructor returned a couple of hours later. By then, Jed had told us more about her. Her name was Janet, and she was recently divorced. The aerobics class had been conceived as a way to help her—and other newly single women of Williston—work through their anger by bouncing medicine balls off the walls of the elementary school’s gymnasium to a soundtrack composed mostly of Alanis Morissette and Meredith Brooks. Jed complained that the women usually arrived en masse afterward and ordered complicated blender drinks that took forever to make.

  “You need a hand?” I offered. “I can blend the shit out of a margarita.”

  “You’re a sweetheart,” he said. “But it’s bad enough you girls are sitting on that side of the bar. No way I’m letting you back here.”

  I reached for my wallet. “I’ve got a license right here that says I’m twenty-one.”

  “Don’t bother. Finley, if your father walks in, you better hide in the ladies’ until I send someone to get you.”

  “He won’t,” I said. “The paper goes to press tomorrow. He’ll be at the office late.”

  “Better pray to fucking God you’re right.”

  “Does my dad really spend that much time here?” I asked, suddenly very aware that for three-quarters of the year his life was more or less a mystery to me.

  “Look around, kiddo. Where else is there to go?” The door opened and a dozen women in athletic wear poured in, Janet included. “Christ,” Jed muttered. “Here they come.”

  “Good luck,” Serena said, tilting her glass in his direction.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s watch the show.”

  They smelled like sweat and rubber, terry cloth headbands holding back their damp hair as they jostled around the bar and ordered margaritas and chardonnay and cosmopolitans. Emily hadn’t moved from her stool in the last two hours, and she recoiled at the sudden commotion, then visibly sighed with relief as the group moved to a cluster of tables, away from the bar. Still, they were loud enough to drown out the jukebox, now playing Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog” and competing with the blender. Once the divorcees all had their drinks in front of them, Janet retrieved her cigarettes from Jed, took a long pull of her margarita, and asked if any of them could guess what she’d seen last night.

  “Here we go,” Serena said. “She’s going to tell it again. I think I need another beer.”

  “Make it two.”

  “What?” one of the women asked, licking salt off the rim of her margarita glass. “What did you see?”

  Abruptly Emily stood up, grabbing her beer and cigarettes and making for the deck again. She strode across the dance floor like she’d been drinking Sprite for the last few hours, and when she reached the back door she kicked it open with her booted foot, a move she’d clearly perfected on the job.

  “Wow,” Serena said. “And why exactly isn’t she still sheriff?”

  “You tell me. I don’t even live here anymore.”

  I got down from the stool, the floor undulating briefly beneath my feet. Janet was about to launch into her story, but right now the woman who had been sheriff when Betty had died was drunk and alone on the back deck, clearly upset about something. If I was ever going to get any information out of her, this would be the time.

  “Where are you going?” asked Serena.

  I nodded toward the deck. “Fresh air. You stay here and listen to this. I want to talk to her.”

  “I thought you said there was no point.”

  That had been two hours, four beers, and an unknown number of milligrams ago. Now I saw things a different way. Why not talk to Emily? So what if she couldn’t give me any information? Who cared if she told me to go fuck myself? When the summer was over, I’d never have to come back to Williston again.

  Outside the rain had stopped and the fog had rolled in across the sea. The clouds were either dispersing or simply gathering their strength, I couldn’t tell, although a few snatches of inky black sky showed around the seams. Emily didn’t turn around when she heard the door close behind me.

  “Hey, Finley,” she said.

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “I used to be a cop, remember? Besides, I figured if there was anyone else who couldn’t bear to hear that twat tell her story again, it would be you. And now she’s going to tell all her little friends, and by tomorrow it’ll be all over town.”

  “You don’t believe her?”

  Now Emily turned to me. “I know you and Betty were close. Don’t let that dumb bitch get your hopes up. I don’t know what she saw, but it wasn’t Betty.”

  “But they never found her body. How can you be so sure?”

  Emily’s eyes were, unbelievably, as sharp as they had been two hours ago. “Don’t insult me by playing stupid. You’re not stupid, I know that much.”

  I dropped all pretense. “Nobody ever called me. In New York. If she had run away, she would have come to me, and I never even got a call from any of you people, asking if I’d seen or heard from her. Yeah, I guess I did the math.”

  “If you know so much, why are you bothering me?” she said wearily.

  “That’s just what I know. You know a hell of a lot more.”

  “I can’t tell you any of that.”

  “So what can you tell me?”

  She cleared her throat. “I was already on my way out when it happened. I’d been fired as sheriff, given notice at the department. I’d gone up against Leroy Miller too many times. He wanted someone more, I don’t k
now, agreeable. And then Betty disappeared, and his son was the prime suspect, and I knew if I didn’t clear the case while I was still sheriff it would never happen. I had my chance, and I blew it.”

  “The confession?”

  She looked away, over the balcony. “I can’t answer that.”

  “Was there ever anything to go on, besides the confession?”

  “There was nothing. Nothing washes away evidence like the ocean. We never found the witness.”

  I lit a cigarette, trying to stay composed. “The witness?”

  Emily shook her head. “I meant a witness, any witness. Someone who could put them together that night. Someone who might have been on the beach, or saw what happened from a distance.” She took a deep drag of her cigarette. “If there was someone like that, we never found them.”

  “Right.”

  “There’s three ways Betty’s killer could still be caught and punished. One, her body turns up, and somehow there’s enough physical evidence left to lead us back to who did it. Not us”—she corrected herself—“them. It’s not my job anymore. Anyway, I don’t think that’s very likely. Second, a witness comes forward, says he or she saw what happened that night. After all this time? Seems pretty unlikely, too.”

  “And the third?” I prompted.

  “If whoever did it confesses.”

  “Which you also think is unlikely.”

  She looked me straight in the eye, and I held on to my composure. “What was your plan, huh? Rattle him hard enough and let his conscience do the rest? Do you know who you’re dealing with?” She lowered her voice. “Leroy Miller would never let it happen. If you mess with his family, he won’t come after you. He’ll go after your father. He’ll go after Owen. He’ll go after your new girlfriend in there. You’re here for what, another month? Think about the people who’ll stay behind. You want my advice? Leave it alone.”

  “Can’t you just tell me why he did it?” I pleaded.

  “You know, if I thought it would help, I actually might.” She took a swallow of her beer. “Now it’s my turn to ask the questions. Is Owen working for Silas?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  She rested her elbows on the railing and hung her head. “Christ Jesus. I thought I was helping him. He’s family, he was in a bind. Who cared if he sold a little shit behind the diner once in a while? So I looked the other way. But this, Finley—he’s in over his head. I’ve seen that guy’s record, it’s not pretty. God, I have never felt so fucking helpless in my life.”

  “Tell me what to do,” I said. “Tell me how to help him and I’ll do it.”

  “Convince him to stop doing business with Silas.”

  “I never said he was. But let’s say, hypothetically, I had tried that already and it didn’t work. What then?”

  “Tell him to sell the diner and go to college. There’s enough Shepards in this town to look after his parents.”

  “Why don’t you tell him that?”

  “I did. I don’t think it took.”

  I finished my cigarette and threw it over the side, where it disappeared into the spray on the rocks below. “I better get back inside.”

  “You be careful with that girl,” Emily said.

  “Careful? Careful how?”

  “A little discretion never hurt anyone.”

  As I started for the door, my mouth filled with saliva, and bile backed up into my esophagus. I swallowed hard.

  “I’m sorry, Finley,” Emily said. “I really am. I let her down.”

  “Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “I’m sorry, too.”

  Inside, I headed straight for the ladies’ room. I locked the door and dropped to my knees, barely managing to get the seat up in time. I threw up the beers and that single bite of grilled cheese from the afternoon, heaving so violently into the toilet my eyes filled with tears. Even when my stomach was empty, the convulsions kept coming—hands gripping the porcelain, my whole body shuddering, body slumped over the bowl, until finally I was beyond empty and I sat there on the floor wiping my face and laughing. There was something cathartic about it, like this was exactly where I should be, what I deserved. I knew it was just the pills that made me feel that way, but I remembered what Caroline had said, and I knew what she meant now: even the puking felt good.

  • • •

  “So what’s the verdict?” I asked Serena as I took my seat again on the stool beside her. “Does Williston believe in ghosts?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Better now. Did Janet finish telling her story?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do they really think it was Betty?”

  “They seem a bit divided on the subject,” Serena said, looking over her shoulder. The divorcees were still in a huddle at their table. “It’s going to be all over town by tomorrow. I don’t like this. If word gets around that someone saw Betty alive, Calder might start to relax.”

  “Or he could just look in his sister’s closet, and he’d know what Janet really saw.”

  “We could just tell people, you know. That it was Caroline.”

  “No.” I couldn’t explain it, but I still felt strangely protective of her. If Caroline was becoming addicted to painkillers or slowly losing her mind, I wasn’t going to be the one to out her. “Maybe it won’t be a bad thing if Calder lets his guard down a little.”

  “What did Emily say?”

  I sketched out the conversation, and Serena listened, thoughtfully sipping her beer.

  “She said ‘the witness’ the first time? You’re sure.”

  “She’s pretty lit. She probably just misspoke.”

  “Or maybe she was trying to tell you something.”

  “Why would she do that one minute, and then turn around the next and tell me to quit fucking with the Millers?”

  Serena shook her head. “You know, it doesn’t matter if it’s true. All we have to do is make people think that it’s true. Make Calder think that it’s true. If we could get him to believe someone saw him do it—”

  “And how are we supposed to do that?”

  “We do what Janet’s doing. We start a rumor.”

  • • •

  I made it to the diner by eleven A.M. Owen gave me a once-over, a disapproving glance, and an apron, then pointed me toward the kitchen, where the breakfast dishes were waiting.

  “Jesus H.,” I said when I saw the mess.

  “No complaining. You volunteered for this.”

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling the apron over my head, “but I never thought you’d actually take me up on it.”

  “I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”

  “And who’s going to keep an eye on you, Owen?”

  “Just get to fucking work. Here,” he said, handing me a pair of yellow rubber gloves. “You should probably wear these.”

  I snapped them on like I was getting ready to perform surgery. “Thanks,” I grunted.

  “I don’t know what you’re so cranky about. At least back here you don’t have to talk to anyone.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “You want to trade places? You can do dishes and I’ll pour people coffee and make chitchat.”

  “No dice.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I called after him as he went back out front.

  I washed the dishes. All the dishes. I hosed them down with the sprayer and scrubbed them with Brillo pads, racked them and set them aside to dry. I washed every fucking coffee mug from breakfast, and used steel wool to scrape bacon grease off spatulas until my forearms ached. Just as I was finishing, fantasizing about going out the back door and smoking a cigarette in the alley, the lunch rush started and suddenly the sink was full all over again.

  A couple of hours later, when the Halyard had quieted down again, I followed Jenny out the back door when she took a smoke break.


  Jenny had been a few years ahead of us, quiet, the middle child of a large brood whose most memorable feature was her ability to stay out of everyone’s way. She wore her straight brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, an apron over her jeans and black V-neck T-shirt. This was her first summer at the diner, but she seemed okay. She moved with efficiency and economy, and since Owen didn’t complain about her I assumed she was a decent waitress.

  “Hey,” she said as I stepped outside.

  “Hey.”

  The sun was making a rare appearance, but in the shade of the alley I still felt chilled; it didn’t help that my clothes were soaked beneath the apron. My cigarettes were tucked safely in my back pocket, and I lit one with relief, leaning against the wall next to the Dumpster and sighing.

  “Rough night?” Jenny asked.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “You’re not the only one. There were a couple of ladies in here before, looked like they overdid it at Charlie’s.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said, trying to be casual.

  She looked into the distance, smoke curling up around her face. Then she turned to me. “Hey, you knew that girl, right? Owen’s cousin Betty? The one who disappeared?”

  “We were friends, yeah.”

  “These ladies, they were saying someone saw her. Just a couple days ago. Walking down the side of the highway at night. You think it could be true?”

  I took a drag of my cigarette and shook my head. “Not unless it was a ghost.”

  “Really? You think she’s dead? I’m sorry, that’s awful.”

  We start a rumor, Serena had said. Sure, why not. “You know how they arrested Calder Miller but never charged him?”

  “Yeah?” Jenny said, moving a little closer to me.

  “I heard there was a witness. Someone who saw him do it.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Her voice was skeptical.

  I shrugged. “My dad runs the Messenger. He has a lot of contacts.” After a meaningful pause, I added, “I can’t really say anything else.”

  “If there was a witness, why wouldn’t they go to the police?”

  “Maybe whoever it was, they were too scared to say anything when it happened, but now, I don’t know, maybe their conscience is getting to them.” Another meaningful pause. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”