Brewing the Midnight Oil

by Constance Barker

  Mama put her hand on Ivy’s. “Harmon will be home soon, sugar.”

  “But what about the tarot reading?” Blanche blurted out.

  Moira vanished from the parlor, reappearing in the dining room. “What tarot reading?”

  “The cards can’t be interpreted so literally,” Auntie Abitha said.

  Blanche spread her upturned palms. “That looked like a whole lotta bad boating cards to me, and then the Death card.”

  Moira gave them all a haunted look. She vanished. Inside the hutch, plates rattled ominously. The chandelier flickered overhead. In the parlor, the volume on the TV increased. A machine-gun blatt of fast-changing stations roared, and then died.

  “I just talked to Harmon,” Ivy said. “He made it past the Somali coast. He’s fine.”

  Around the house, the three toilets flushed simultaneously. China clinked and shuffled in the cabinet, tableware thrashed in the drawer, all their cell phones made strange squawks. Moira was upset.

  “Lot more in the ocean to worry about than just pirates,” Uncle Roby said.

  Moira wailed, a ghostly sound of heart-stabbing angst. Only Blanche and Ivy could hear her. Yet the Biddy Committee could still sense it. Abitha rubbed her arms, as if chilled.

  “Not that my nephew can’t handle it,” Roby finished, lamely. “Dang it, it sounds like our ghost is back.”

  Ever since Ivy and Blanche were little, the ghost of Light House was supposed to be a running gag for when anything went wrong. Can’t find your keys? It was the ghost. Who knocked over my sweet tea? It was the ghost. Still, the lighthearted stories terrified the girls when they were alone in their room at night. Especially since they knew the ghost was real, no matter how the old folks joked. It was a relief when Moira came out to them. Even if she was a ghost, at least she wasn’t a spooky, lurking secret.

  Moira’s crush on Harmon Light ran deep. Ivy was worried, and a little sad. Moira was anguish personified. The entire house shook with her sobbing wail.

  “Stop being such a drama queen!” Blanche shouted.

  The poltergeist activity immediately quieted. All eyes shifted to Blanche. Auntie Abitha said, “Who are you talking to, sugar?”

  ***

  Early the next morning, Ivy put on coffee and hopped in the shower. Bleary eyed, she wiped steam from the mirror, revealing Moira. Ivy let out a cry.

  “Drop your socks and grab your locks, Private!” Moira was dressed in a tattered robe identical to Ivy’s, save the chevron on the sleeves. “You call that a shower? Did you even exfoliate?”

  “Moira, jeeze, it’s six a.m.” Ivy was glad she decided to sleep in her apartment. Maybe the Biddy Committee couldn’t hear Moira, but Blanche could. And no one would miss the sound of her dropping her hair brush, bouncing her hand soap dispenser off the floor, and knocking over her nail polishes like tenpins. “You’re making me nervous!”

  Her hair dryer vibrated on the vanity. Moira got up in her face on the other side of the glass. “We didn’t buy those suits so you could frowse around! Tease that hair! Mousse it! Mousse it! Pike at the waist! Blow that mass of honey blonde sky-high!”

  Ivy wasn’t sure if she preferred angsty Moira, or drill-sergeant Moira. It was a lot to take before caffeine. She staggered around, getting ready.

  “Did you drag a one-eyed stray cat into the shower to shave your legs with? Sakes alive, you look like a fresh popped can of biscuits! Slather on that foundation! Easy on the perfume, that ain’t no mustard gas! Where’d you learn to brush on mascara, from a family of blind raccoons? What do you call that lipstick shade, Bozo the Clown Number Seven? You need a red so slutty, your mama won’t kiss you for fear of getting VD! Your eye shadow is so uneven, you look cross-eyed! Those nylons—”

  “All right, stop it!”

  Moira raised her brows. “Just trying to help.”

  “You’re not helping, you’re making me crazy.”

  When the ghost vanished from the mirror, Ivy found herself looking at a woman she didn’t know. Moira appeared beside her, but not in reflection. “Maybe we overdid it a touch. You’re a natural beauty. You can get away with a little concealer, some lipstick and some brow pencil.”

  “I don’t know how women do this every day. It feels like my eyelashes are going to get glued shut, my hair will explode in the humidity, and all this goop will melt off me when it heats up. Not to mention my knees are knocked together, my ankles are wobbling, and I feel a draft down this top.”

  “Sometimes, it hurts to be beautiful.” Moira shook her thinning hair. “I think the blue top and shoes with the berry suit is quite fetching. I hate those earrings. Maybe some hooker hoops.”

  Ivy made a face at her. “I don’t own any hooker hoops.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Moira patted her shoulder, although Ivy couldn’t feel it.

  “Blanche has always been the girly-girl,” Ivy said. “This just isn’t me.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t have that va-va-voom body your cousin does,” Moira put her fists on her hips and cocked them. Big gold hoop earrings appeared in her lobes. “But I find men prefer us willowy gals.”

  Ivy thought this wasn’t the time to mention Moira’s pot belly. She walked into the kitchen and downed the rest of her coffee. “I’d better get going.”

  “Wait.” Moira’s face turned serious. “Why didn’t you tell me Harmon was in trouble?”

  “My brother’s not in trouble, Moira. It was just a silly tarot reading. Auntie Abitha gets it wrong almost all the time.”

  “Almost?”

  “He was worried about Somali pirates, but he’s past that. He’s fine.”

  “He’d better be.” Moira wrung her hands. “That man, that untamed beard, those tanned, muscular legs, that tight—”

  “Hey! That’s my brother you’re talking about.”

  Moira pouted. “Maybe you should check in with him.”

  “I have no idea what time it is in the middle of the Indian Ocean.”

  “Four-forty-two p.m.”

  Ivy blinked.

  Moira shrugged. “It’s a ghost thing.”

  She knew that if she didn’t try, Moira would bug her until she did. Ivy closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. In a moment, the air around her felt thick and heavy. She heard the crash of low waves against a hull, the flap of canvas. Bro-chacho?

  Sissy, hey, can’t talk right now. Something has fritzed up all my nav gear. I’ll hit you back when I get it fixed.

  Once again, the air thinned, her brother gone. Ivy didn’t like the sound of fritzed up nav gear, but she kept her expression level. “He’s busy. Something to fix on the boat. But he’s fine, Moira.”

  The ghost narrowed her eyes. “You sure?”

  “Just fine,” Ivy lied.

  Chapter 9

  At the duplex that served as Klein’s office, Ivy let herself in, and froze. Oh, no. The plants on the bay window sill had grown so much that most of the glass was hidden. In the corners, the floor plants had grown nearly to the ceiling. A lush, green scent hung in the air. She had seriously overdone it.

  “Back here, Ivy.”

  She followed his voice past the reception area to his office. Everett glanced up from his computer at her. “I got…”

  He looked up again, this time staring for a few seconds. With Klein, Ivy figured this was all the reaction she would get. But she would take it.

  The man surprised her. “Wow. You clean up right nice, Miss Ivy.”

  Ivy blushed, and for the first time was glad of the layer of makeup. “Trying to up my game. Look more professional.”

  “Game upped.” He smiled. “Anyhoo, I got some immediate hits on the prints I took.”

  “That quick?”

  He shrugged. “Friends in high places. Out of the prints I took, one set remains unidentified, although APHIS might turn something up, given time. One set went back to Susan Miller-Day. Not unexpected. But these other two are more interesting.”

  Ivy sat in the visitor se
at slowly, unused to a snug skirt. “Do tell.”

  “Both men died violently,” Everett said.

  “The curse of the tiara?”

  “One was murdered, case open/unsolved, the other died in a freak garbage truck accident.”

  “I’ll bet the survivors will be thrilled to speak with us,” Ivy said.

  Everett got up. “Let’s find out.”

  She followed him through the former living room, wincing internally. Klein eyed the plants without pausing. “Little sun, little water,” he said.

  Everett was on to her, Ivy thought. She just knew it. What she could do about that, she didn’t know.

  ***

  “That damned tiara!”

  Alejandro Castro sat on the porch of a shack surrounded by sea grass and rusty car bodies. The ocean was close, but there was no beach to speak of. The neighborhood consisted mostly of similar shacks, and similar cars. He dug a can of beer from a cooler.

  “Tell us about it,” Ivy said.

  Alejandro gave her another once over. He boasted a graying comb over, a wife-beater T-shirt over a beer gut, and cut off cargo pants that might once have been blue. “We were dive guides, and treasure hunters. We were always heading down to St. Lucie, Indian River, diving for sunken gold. But Irene happened.”

  Everett folded his arms. “Irene didn’t hit St. Augustine.”

  “No, but it stirred up the sea floor enough. All that diving, and Martin finds the thing washed up on the shore.” Alejandro’s eyes dampened. “Shoulda thrown it back in the drink.”

  “Martin’s fingerprints ended up in Gus Beranger’s vault.”

  Alejandro nodded. “I wanted to put the thing up at auction, but Martin was too hot to sell it.”

  “Why was that?” Ivy said.

  “I did mention that we were treasure hunters and dive guides.” Alejandro gave her a pointed look. “Beranger offered five grand for it. It’s probably worth millions. Martin decided to leave it in that vault. We didn’t have a safe enough place. But my damn fool brother shot off his mouth too much.”

  Ivy had already heard the story during the ride over. Martin had been murdered with a machete and robbed. The thieves got away with the twenty bucks in his wallet and his dive watch.

  “They tortured him,” Castro said. “To get him to say where the tiara was. He probably did tell them.”

  Everett nodded. “Sorry for your loss. But what happened with the tiara?”

  “I ended up taking the five grand.” Alejandro chugged the beer and wiped his eyes. “Needed it to pay for my brother’s funeral expenses.”

  ***

  “Jeeze, that was cheerful,” Ivy said. She was so glad she’d dressed up for this.

  Everett drove the Dodge back north toward St. Augustine. “Five thousand dollars. That thing’s insured for a million and a half.”

  “Pretty good return on the investment.”

  He shook his head. “The insurance won’t pay out unless they’re certain it’s been stolen. That means the cops get involved. Gus doesn’t want any of this getting out.”

  “Who’s next on our list?”

  “Someone who should’ve been on the list we already had, but wasn’t.” Traffic thinned after the I-95 interchange and Klein opened the Viper up. “A security guard, John Starling. Prints go back to a gun permit for a security job.”

  “Eagle Security?” Ivy asked.

  “You got it. He was just a year or so out of the army, living with his mother and sister. Let’s ask what else he might’ve been up to.”

  “You think he had the tiara, since he died in a freak accident?”

  Everett gave the Dodge more gas. “No, because his fingerprints were in the wrong spot. There’s no good reason a guard would be on the inside of the vault with the door closed.”

  Ivy could think up a number of scenarios when a guard might close the vault door from the inside, but she let it slide. She was fairly certain that Everett believed in the curse, whether he would admit it or not. And if this John Starling was cursed, it meant that he also possessed the tiara.

  The Starlings lived in St. Augustine South, not far from the Matanzas River. Everett parked on the street. A dive boat with a ratty canvas cover took up most of the driveway. Ivy could see dust and road dirt on the dingy fiberglass. One of the tires on the trailer was flat. The boat hadn’t been anywhere near the water for a while.

  Linda-Lou Starling, John’s sister, was a wan, freckled ginger. She wore a tie-dye summer dress and flip-flops, hair in a low ponytail. She gave Everett a thorough going over with her eyes. “You’re the man who called about my brother?”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “C’mon in. Mama’s at work, but you can ask me, I reckon.”

  Ivy put Linda-Lou at maybe twenty years old, tops, definitely out of high school, but just. There were high school senior photos on the wall in the parlor verifying her estimate, and one of a young man in an army dress uniform she took to be John. Linda-Lou pointed to it.

  “That’s him. It was so sad. Just when he was getting his life together.”

  “It fell apart at some time.” Everett, always with the non-question questions.

  Linda-Lou nodded. “Daddy left with a rental agent gal down at the Enterprise when we were little. Johnny fell in with a bad crowd. Judge offered him military or juvie.”

  “Army straightened him out.”

  The young woman’s face brightened. “Oh, it did, it really did. When he got out, he found himself a real good job right away. He even met a nice girl. They were planning on getting hitched, he said, right after they came into some money he was expecting.”

  Ivy gave Everett a look. He raised a brow.

  “But then, that horrible accident.” Linda-Lou’s face squished in sorrow.

  “He was hit by a garbage truck?” Ivy had to ask.

  “Hell no, worse than that. See, Johnny just bought that boat out in the drive. It was used, but nice, y’know? He wanted to take me and some of the neighbor kids out on it. But they were jumping bikes off a ramp back in the alley. John, you know, being the former army guy and buying boats and such, he had to show them kids how it was done.

  “So he borrows Miguel’s BMX and rides it way back down the alley to get a good start. I told him that he shouldn’t go too fast, not without a helmet. But then he came racing as fast as he could. Caught some real air when he hit the ramp.” Linda-Lou pressed her lips together and shook her head in admiration.

  “But he come down front wheel first, and he got thrown, a real endo. At the other end of the alley, that garbage truck was pulling away. John crashed right into it. And, well, we was all laughing pretty hard. We didn’t realize that his sneaker was stuck in the crusher part. It pulled him right in.” Linda-Lou shook her head again. “Messy.”

  Ivy’s stomach dropped. “Jeeze, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  Linda-Lou’s freckled face did that sorrowful squishing thing again. “Mama and me, well, it’s been a year, but we’re still broken up about it. Boat’s still sitting there. We use the car, of course.”

  Everett put a hand on her shoulder. Linda-Lou arched like a cat.

  “I’d like to take in look in the boat, if that’s okay.”

  She closed her eyes. “Yeah.” Then opened her eyes in lidded suspicion. “What for?”

  “Clues,” he said.

  “Oh. Well. I guess that would be all right.”

  “Did he leave anything else behind that day?” Ivy asked. She didn’t know where the thought came from.

  “He did. His dive bag. It’s hanging up in the garage.” Linda-Lou headed into the kitchen. “Let me get the clicker.”

  Out in the driveway, Ivy felt fully overdressed as they removed the tarp from the boat. Lots of dust and crud came away, the fabric crackling with exposure to a year’s worth of Florida sun. The boat was catamaran style with two aluminum pontoons and a canopy shelter. Two black outboards had seen better days. The upper fiberglass p
art was filthy and smelled of brine.

  Klein eyed her skirt and shoes. “I’ll climb up there. You check out the dive bag.”

  Linda-Lou scurried out of the house and pushed the remote for the garage door. Inside, Ivy was shocked to see a shiny Mercedes Benz convertible. “Is that Johnny’s car?”

  “Nah, that’s mine. Mama’s got Johnny’s car at work.”

  Ivy thought of her beat-up truck. “That’s a nice car. What do you do for a living?”

  “Cashier at the Winn-Dixie on A1A.”

  Huh?

  I’m definitely in the wrong line of work, Ivy thought.

  Linda-Lou took a hanging duffle bag off a nail and made a face. “Eew, that smells right awful. Sorry, I just never had the heart to do anything with it.”

  A cloud of mildew made Ivy’s sinuses crawl. She took it, holding it away from her body. Was the smell ever going to come out of her new suit?

  “I guess just leave it on the curb by the garbage cans when you’re done.” Linda-Lou clicked the garage door closed and wandered back into the house.

  Grimacing, Ivy unzipped the olive drab bag. As she suspected, it contained a wetsuit with a greenish patina. She picked through the contents, wishing for gloves, finding swim fins, a weight belt, and a scuba mask. She felt a rectangular lump beneath the soiled neoprene. Not wanting to, she reached underneath. The object was a nylon pouch, red with a white angled stripe—the symbol for diver down. She unzipped it, finding a three-ring binder dive log book. Ivy flipped through it. Other than a bunch of numbers on the first page, the log was blank. But she recognized the numbers—coordinates.

  “You find anything?” Everett thumped around on the boat.

  Ivy took out her phone and photographed the page. “I think so. Hang on a second.”

  She didn’t want to do it, but she thought it was important enough. Taking deep breaths and closing her eyes, she went into her psychic trance.

  I don’t know what’s going on with this stuff, Harmon came through immediately. One minute it’s fine, the next, it doesn’t work at all.