On the Cutting Room Floor (A Ghosts of Landover Mystery Book 8)

by Etta Faire

  Not even back then.

  She watched Barry walk away, up the stairs and out of sight.

  I could tell Mandy’s spirit was getting tired. The memory was losing its crispness, and she seemed to be pulling away from me.

  “Are you okay?’ I asked, pausing the memory.

  “I think I just need a short break.” Her voice was low, her energy sounded drained.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I want to do a little more research before we channel again. Do you think you’ll be rested enough to finish up tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m not too tired. It’s just hard to relive things and not be able to change them. To know what’s coming up.”

  “I completely understand,” I said. This was not my first channeling. I always wanted to change things, too.

  “But I have plenty of energy,” she went on. “In fact, seeing the dog and the birds made me remember an incident at the diner that happened during our stay in Landover. It probably has nothing to do with the bird shifters and the curse you guys are always talking about. But, if you want, I can take you there right now.”

  Chapter 22

  A Short Detour

  It took me a few seconds to process what my ghost client was saying. The memory was paused in front of me. The Lockes’ living room with its puffy oversized couches and pale pink and mint green accents seemed frozen in time, stuck between present and past, like we all were.

  “Did you just say you remember an incident that could have to do with the curse?” I asked.

  “Yes. Maybe. I mean, who knows?” she said. Her voice was strong now. Her faded mom-laugh was back. “I have no idea what this curse is about. I just heard you guys talking about bird attacks and talking birds.”

  She must have heard my conversation with Shelby…

  “Yes,” I said. “Whatever this memory is, I’d like to see it. But only if you feel up to it.”

  “I’m fine. I was a stronger living person than most people thought I was, and I’m a pretty strong ghost, too.”

  “Then, let’s go.”

  The memory began to play again in all its 80s color. I turned toward the Lockes’ spacious kitchen, allowing its sunny yellow walls and cherry oak cabinets to blur and fade into the dark corners of my mind.

  My stomach lurched with nervous anticipation, like I was heading up the steep climb of a rollercoaster for the first time. I only knew this memory had something to do with a diner and the 80s. I had no idea what else to expect.

  I could tell my partner in this was growing weaker, though. This would be a short ride.

  The sounds of glasses and plates being clinked and stacked together interrupted my thoughts. Mumbled conversation and laughter. A jukebox playing Elvis.

  It was a 50s diner. It must have been the Spoony River.

  The smell of extra grease mixed with weak coffee confirmed my suspicions before I even opened my eyes.

  I blinked and looked around. The Spoony River looked different than it did today. Brighter. The pink vinyl booths weren’t faded in spots. I could tell by the way Mandy’s bare shoulder rubbed against the upholstery that they were just as sticky, though. The 50s statue of the carhop waitress on skates by the front door wasn’t chipped and scary looking, and the black-and-white checkered floors had hardly any scuff marks.

  Mandy sat at a booth next to the window with her husband, who was busy reading Horror Monthly. Frederick and Olivia sat across from them. Frederick twisted a straw around his finger, looking at the other people eating. The sun was setting in the distance.

  “I can’t believe you used to work here,” Olivia said. “That’s such a trip.”

  Mandy smiled at her daughter. I could tell she held a certain pride in working here. And she was proud her kids didn’t have to. “Nothing’s the same. It was just a regular diner then. No fun fifties stuff.” She turned to Graham. “We had the cutest uniforms, though. You used to love my uniform. Do you remember that? It was this little pale yellow number with a matching hat…”

  He nodded, but he didn’t look up from his article.

  Frederick curled his lip. “Here we go again. If I have to hear how hard it was to work during college, I’m gonna puke. We get it, Mom. Work study isn’t really working.”

  Mandy sat up straighter. “Sorry, Fred, but it’s not. Three hours a week handling dorm problems — like kids getting locked out of their dorm rooms — is hardly working. Try waitressing thirty hours a week while going to school full time.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay, then be thankful you don’t have to. Right, Graham?” Mandy said, putting a hand on Graham’s arm.

  He looked up and mumbled. “Your mother’s right.”

  A young blonde waitress with a pink button-down dress approached, carrying a tray full of burgers and fries. “Here y’all go,” she said, handing out the food, pulling a stack of napkins from her apron pocket.

  “Honestly, Mom,” Frederick said, motioning to the waitress as she set his steak in front of him. “That doesn’t seem so hard.”

  A balding middle-aged man sat with his wife and teenagers at the table in front of us. I recognized his thick head and roundish glasses immediately. It was Clyde Bowman, my ex’s uncle and the mayor of Potter Grove now. I studied the teenagers there with him. Caleb was obviously the thin, curly-haired boy with a huge Adam’s apple. His sister, Julie, by his side.

  They were like a mirror copy of Mandy’s table.

  “Patsy! There you are. Finally,” Clyde said, fanning his puffy, pink face with the diner’s laminated menu. “We have been waiting ten minutes now, and I am starving.” He turned to the two teenagers sitting with him. “I tell you, outsiders get treated better than locals in this establishment. Probably why it’s going under.”

  Patsy was Mrs. Carmichael’s name, only this woman didn’t look too much like Mrs. Carmichael.

  “I will be there in a second, Clyde.” She scratched at her blonde hair so it fluffed out in crazy ways around her hat.

  It was Mrs. Carmichael, only younger. I could tell that now. She smelled like she’d just come off a smoking break.

  “Don’t pay him any attention,” she said to us, “because that’s the only thing he’s really starving for.” She winked and lowered her voice. “He’s just upset because his brother recently passed on.” She shook her head. “And don’t think, for one minute, that I mean he’s upset the man died. He’s upset the man died and did not leave him anything. Second time it’s happened too. Once with his dad then his brother,” she said, making me realize she had always been the town’s biggest gossip.

  She set a plate of chicken fried steak in front of Mandy and plopped a burger in front of Olivia. “And we are not going under,” she said, loud enough for the mayor to hear. “Place was just bought, that’s all. Happens all the time.”

  A group of birds flew by the window, low enough that they skimmed the sidewalk. They stopped right in front of us, about ten ordinary blackbirds, nothing scary. Mrs. Carmichael didn’t even notice them.

  She was still talking. “The new owner said he’s keeping everything the same, so you’ll have to come back and see. Everybody likes the fifties thing.”

  One of the birds squawked loudly, almost like a scream. A human scream. Mandy turned toward the noise. Mrs. Carmichael didn’t flinch, making me realize the town was already desensitized to bird problems.

  Three birds suddenly pecked aggressively at one of the other birds as it hover-flew at window height. It tried to fly away, but the other birds pecked harder, causing it to hit the window.

  Olivia gasped.

  Clyde slammed his menu on his table. “Patsy, I will leave, I swear. And I will make sure the new owner knows exactly which waitress caused him to lose my business,” he yelled from his booth as the birds flew away from the window.

  “Please, let him know. I’d like to get a raise right away,” Mrs. Carmichael yelled to him, then turned back to us. “Let me know if you need anything else
.”

  “Is the bathroom still down the hall by the kitchen?” Mandy asked.

  Mrs. Carmichael smiled. “You’ve been here before?”

  Mandy looked at her kids. Her son’s eyes begged her not to say it.

  “I worked here in college,” she said.

  Frederick sighed heavily.

  “Then I’m sure you remember how awful the Bowmans can be,” Mrs. Carmichael said loud enough for Clyde to hear. But she sashayed over to his table with a pencil in her hand, ready to take the man’s order.

  Buddy Holly played in the background as Mandy walked toward the bathrooms. Too many memories filled her head, about how Graham used to pull her to the side when he’d come into the diner back in college, tell her how beautiful she was, how lucky he was. His hands would be all over her. She had to pull him off, every time.

  She glanced over at the exact spot where he asked her out the first time, at the counter that backed up to the kitchen. He’d ordered a country fried steak, then later confessed he hated country fried steaks. He’d only ordered it because he couldn’t think of anything else after she’d recommended it to him in theater class.

  She shook herself out of it. Why was she bothering to remember the stupid little details of a relationship her husband wouldn’t even know if she gave him a multiple-choice test on it?

  She headed down the hall and was just about to push the bathroom door open when she heard the strange sound of flapping birds coming from the storage room. The food storage room. Or at least it used to be. She’d gone into that room too many times not to know what it was used for. It opened up to the alley and the dumpster on the side of the building.

  Someone must have left the door open, and those awful birds from before got in.

  How unsanitary.

  She should tell someone. She stopped and listened, pressing her face against the coolness of the sticky door. It smelled like bacon mixed with old ketchup.

  But she didn’t hear birds. She heard voices.

  “They have no idea the numbers we have,” a woman’s voice said.

  “It’s almost sad,” a man replied. “How they think they’re monitoring us.”

  They both laughed.

  “We were supposed to get the diner,” an older man’s voice chimed in.

  “We can manage,” the woman snapped. “It’s for the best, anyway, so they don’t get suspicious. They don’t know we already have next door, and the barbershop too. Pretty soon, we’ll be everywhere. Unstoppable. By the time they figure out what they’re up against, they won’t be able to do anything about it. We will not lose again.”

  “But what about the curse?” the older voice asked.

  “Stop talking to me about that. I do not want to hear it.” The woman’s voice was strained, like each syllable had to force its way from her lips.

  Mandy no longer thought there were birds in the room. She knew she should leave. Whatever this conversation was, it was none of her business. Still, she didn’t move. She pressed her hands against the door, prepared to pop back as soon as someone came by.

  “The curse is a myth,” someone else said.

  “The sparrow will return. You’ll see. Just like the prophecy says. Signs already point to it. The baby of unknown origins will be…”

  “What if the curse affects the baby?”

  Mrs. Carmichael hummed her way down the hall and Mandy pushed herself away from the door just like she’d planned, acting like she’d already come from the bathroom.

  Mrs. C smiled at us, looking Mandy right in the eyes. It was one of those smiles that went straight through Mandy, like it was meant for me. But then, I always felt that way when I saw someone I knew in a channeling.

  “I bet it feels good to come back to your old stomping grounds, huh?” she said, to Mandy. Or was that directed at me?

  “Landover’s one of those towns you never really leave,” Mandy replied, adding her famous fake laugh that faded out at the end. She was just glad the waitress hadn’t noticed her listening in at the storage room door. That would have been hard to explain.

  Oh no, I wasn’t snooping. I heard birds…

  The sound of birds came from the room again, loud flapping and squawking. She turned toward the door, motioning to Mrs. Carmichael with her eyes, but Mrs. Carmichael didn’t seem to hear anything except the Chubby Checker song she was swaying to.

  “I guess it’s like that old saying goes,” Mrs. Carmichael said, still staring straight at me. “Chickens always come home to roost.”

  Mandy nodded as Mrs. Carmichael pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, leaving us standing there.

  I knew the old saying she was talking about. It was from an epic poem I briefly studied in Jackson’s English class at Landover University.

  It actually went: Curses are like young chicken; they always come home to roost.

  And she was right. Everything seemed to be coming. Curses and all.

  Chapter 23

  Discrepancies

  I slept in. It was almost 9:30 when I got downstairs the next morning. My neck throbbed in time with the sound of my clock. I really needed to make sure I was in a comfortable position before I began channeling from now on.

  I had a lot of new clues to think about. But first, I pulled out my shoe box full of prophecy and curse stuff, and wrote everything about the diner and the birds into my notebook. It was strange, and not just because it wasn’t the first time I overheard bird shifters having a meeting. The other one was in the backroom of the barbershop last year.

  Old George was being encouraged to choose sides now that they believed the sparrow was back. It was implied that he would be hurt if he didn’t choose correctly.

  I wrote everything I could about the meeting from 1987 into the notes I already had in the notebook: The sparrow would be returning soon. All signs pointed to it. The birds were everywhere in Landover. The bears had no idea about their numbers. And something about a baby of unknown origins.

  Could I have been that baby?

  I shook it off as ridiculous, but I also knew that I was adopted and the lawyer in charge of the adoption was a bird shifter who was also a ghost living at Gate House.

  So, there was that.

  Plus, I would have been born within a few years of the 1987 meeting.

  I also added Rex’s whereabouts into my notes. He was at the Lockes’ lake house in 1987, but I didn’t think he lived there. Jackson never mentioned when or how he got my dog. He always shrugged the question off, saying something like, “He just showed up one day.” So, I figured, like most things in life, I would know my dog’s story when I was supposed to.

  I quickly closed the shoe box and shoved it to the side. I had no idea what any of it meant, so I needed to take steps where I could. I needed to concentrate on solving Mandy’s case. Lifting the curse and preventing the war would have to wait.

  In the channeling, Mandy’s son, Frederick, seemed particularly interesting. There was something in the way he talked about his friend receiving an inheritance and about needing a new car that seemed suspicious. He had also been the one to let his dad and Somer spend the night at the frat house.

  But the frat house and the alibis kind of took all three of them off the suspect list: Frederick, Somer, and Graham. Or, it would have, if I trusted the police here to do their job.

  I had to check those alibis myself.

  But before I did anything else, I looked up the number for the vet clinic, and somehow got myself to dial it. There was someone else on my suspect list that needed my attention first. Crazy Hank.

  Marylou Marvelton answered on the first ring. She was the receptionist at the Landover Animal Hospital, and a good friend of Christine, the dispatcher at the police department. They were like two peas in a pod, but a pod where only one side was sweet.

  “Landover Animal Hospital.”

  “Hi Marylou. It’s Carly Taylor. I was just wondering if you could leave a message for doctor d…” I paused, stopping myself from
calling him Dr. Dog. “For Dr. Gleason for me.”

  “Oh hi Carly Mae,” she said, like we were old friends. “Of course I can. Is this about your dog?” She drew out her sentence in a leading way.

  It was a well-known fact that I had a dog, and that my dog had private veterinarian services come to the house. No one understood it, including me, but Marylou was the curious type about it.

  “Could you just have him call me? Thanks,” I said.

  “He likes to see animals in person. What’s going on with your dog?”

  “This isn’t about my dog. It’s about a friend of the doctor’s that he grew up with. I was just hoping to ask him a few quick questions. That’s all.”

  “I see.” I could tell by her voice that she didn’t really see. “So this is about a friend of Doctor Gleason’s from a long time ago that you have questions about? What kind of questions could you possibly have about a friend of Dr. Gleason’s from a long time ago? Did you run into him? Does he want to get in touch with Dr. Gleason? You could just have told him where Dr. Gleason worked. That’s what normal people would have done.”

  Marylou Marvelton was always trying to rival Mrs. Carmichael as the town’s biggest gossip, which was something I should have remembered before I picked up the phone. She needed to know every detail about everything, especially about people she didn’t see as “normal.”

  And, I obviously ranked very high on that list.

  I went to the kitchen for breakfast as I talked, pulling down the oatmeal. “Could you please just tell him to call me?” I said, leaving her my cell phone number and my landline.

  “I will tell him, but he is a very busy man,” she said, hanging up. I was just glad she hadn’t asked about Shelby and makeup parties. The woman was even more of a “makeup junkie” than Christine was.

  While my oatmeal cooked, I walked over to the folder sitting on the dining table. Mandy was nowhere to be found, but then I didn’t expect her to be. We’d done a long channeling session last night, and she needed her rest, which was good because she probably would have been upset to see what I was about to read.