I was on a mission to clear up the mystery of who rented space in the Dugan-Stuart Building. Whether Fanny was a figment of my brain damage or a real ghost wanting answers, I wanted to help her. I needed resolution as well. When I go to prison, not if, and appointed a state psychiatrist, it’d help me to understand how to explain my associating hallucinations. I’d have plenty to talk about.
In the basement, I walked the dimly lit hallway, tiled with green asbestos flooring. The third door on the right had a peeling number three decal pasted onto the frosted glass. The rusty key went into the lock well enough, and I turned the lock, but like Jeanine predicted, the door stuck. I put a hip into it and the door scraped across the tiles emitting an annoying squeaking sound. If climbing the hills in Hot Springs didn’t kill me, the old asbestos floors might.
The light switch failed, and I flipped it several times before the hanging fluorescent lights hummed to life. I propped open the door with the brick lying beside it. Getting locked inside this echoing catacomb didn’t sound fun.
My slight movements rustled up a snow globe full of dust, and I covered my nose with a tissue, breathing through my mouth. From the amount of dust floating in the air, nobody cared who owned what or when Fanny lived—nobody but me and her.
Following Jeanine’s instructions, I turned right and counted the rows.
Nearing the far corner, the ledgers thinned out. At two, I stopped counting. Jeanine’s count was off, and I faced extra dusty shelving on the back wall.
“Guess this is it.” I headed down the wall looking at the sparse leaning or lying flat ledgers. Based on the volume of archived building permits, Hot Springs should have been a thriving metropolis, not a one road Podunk town with a few spas and a racehorse track.
I browsed like the dungeon was a real library, reading titles, but found nothing marked building permits for Central Avenue. I couldn’t be that lucky. Hunting a building permit turned into an archeological event. Good thing I wasn’t searching for the building permit for the Egyptian pyramids.
Lifting a cover or two, without disturbing too much dust, I peered inside a few books. Handwritten in a flowery flourish, the ink had faded, making the records difficult to read. I needed patience and a handwriting expert to translate the wording. Taking another step along the row, I found a ledger standing on end. Someone had written 1922 on the binding with waxy pencil in childlike scribbles. I took it down and opened the cover.
“Are you the book I’m looking for?” My whisper echoed. A smattering of scurrying happened between the shelving rows. “That’s only mice.”
I flipped through the book, scanning the pages for addresses or anything identifiable. Several lines caught my eye, but my cell pinged distracting me. Couldn’t a girl search for the old building permits without being disturbed?
Another hushed rustle happened nearby, and I snapped the book closed, listening again. My butterfly lurched, but I was glad to feel her alive and well. Even if Anita believed many downtown locations were haunted, this dungeon was too lonesome for me to haunt. The building moaned, but the brief sigh was only the building’s bones creaking.
“Hey, if you can hear me. Leave. There’s more fun out on Central Avenue. Find Fanny Doyle. Tell her I sent you. She’s fun.” Great! I’m telling ghosts of building permit’s past to find my imaginary friend. Fanny makes enough trouble as it is, and I might be sorry if they came to live at the Row.
I crammed the ledger into my purse. “I’m only borrowing it, like checking out a library book.” I hugged my purse, guiltily hiding the ledger. Not a single person had opened the old ledger since it was stored a hundred years ago; no one would ever miss it. I locked up the room, hurried upstairs and left the keyring on the counter. Jeanine didn’t look up from her computer.
Coming from the city’s catacomb, I shaded my eyes from the super bright sunshine and hurried downhill.
Five minutes later, I parked behind the Row.
Teddy knew I’d break Dick’s commandments and come to the shop. We had too much invested in the place for me to stay away for long. I wasn’t staying long and didn’t turn on the lights. I’m sure Dick had the building watched. Who knows, maybe he’d hired Teddy to tail me?
The lights coming on would’ve clued the spy, so once again I was in the dark.
“Smells like home.” The shop’s scented soaps smelled lovely. The stronger vanilla and cinnamon scents mixed with the more delicate fragrances of Linden flower, orchid, honeysuckle and rose. Funny how being here all the time deadened my ability to delineate the scents.
My phone buzzed. The city’s basement had been quiet, and now I had stepped back into the turmoil. I couldn’t ignore my buzzing phone any longer and answered my messages.
Ally asked if I was okay—at least she was concerned. She saw the newspaper article online. I sent her quick not to worry reply. Craig didn’t message because he was probably in the boonies between here and California. Other girlfriends sent text messages and questions checking on my whereabouts and condition. I skipped replying to them. Anita left a voice message because she doesn’t text message… yet. I wasn’t about to call her, I’d never get her to shut up.
Nothing came in from either Sandy or Myra. Weird.
Sandy went into hiding. The stress of the situation was too much for her, and I was glad she disappeared. Myra’s missing in action act wasn’t normal. She loved gossip—and the Row’s business was partly hers. Surely, a dead girl floating in bath bomb fizzy ickiness would have piqued her interest.
“Where have you been? I’ve been… lonesome… worried.”
I was focused on the barrage of messages on my phone, and jumped back. “Lordy, you scared me.”
In luminescent colors, Fanny looked prettier than ever. “The fellow jiggled the front door."
“What fellow?”
Fanny paced fluttering the tissue paper on the workbench. “The one on the walk.”
16
My Best Girl
“Someone was trying to get into the Row?” I dreaded hearing her answer. With the newspaper headlines of death by bath bomb, maybe a disgruntled customer wanted to return a bath bomb?
“Was it a customer?”
Fanny’s chattering matched her fast-paced glimmer. “No. The ugly one.”
Had Spats returned to the shop?
“The one who took pictures. I don’t know how that thing worked.” She lifted her hands like she was holding an invisible camera.
“My word! Do you mean Mike?” I’d rather have Mike snooping than Spats; he was far more dangerous than that sleazebag photographer.
“The one you didn’t like.” I hadn’t liked either man.
“Good grief. He better not come back. I’ll…” I would love to woman-handle Mike. Shaking him until his pea brain rattled and rolled out of his skull sounded fun. He had some nerve selling my photo to the newspaper. I couldn’t think of enough ways to get even with that clown.
“He’s not my kind.”
“He’s not my kind either. I don’t want anything Mike has to offer. Don’t let him scare you.” I tsked. Now I’m telling a ghost not to be afraid.
“What have you been doing?” Not only was I consoling her fears, I was asking how she kept herself occupied.
I should write that down for my future psychologist. I’m certain I will be assigned both a psychiatrist and a psychologist.
“I’ve been thinking. For a long time now, I was dead. I’m alive again. But… I’m still dead, aren’t I?”
I sighed, thinking about Fanny’s problems, which was better than thinking of my own. I didn’t have any advice to offer her. Life was tough. Waking up from the dead, thinking you’re alive, and then finding out you’re still a ghost must be a bummer.
Fanny paced, wringing her nearly invisible hands. “I suppose so. I feel so powerful. Until you bumped your head all I heard were whispers of people talking. Of course, the others didn’t say much.”
I chuckled. “You’ll get used to it. What
others?”
“Dead folks like me. The others who haven’t gone on to the Beyond. What’s this?” Fanny asked, poking the ledger sticking out of my bag. She gasped and shot backward. “I moved it!”
“Ha. You did.”
She punched the book and it moved again. Delighted, she grinned. “That was fun.”
She could tickle a man’s ear, too.
“I took Myra’s suggestion. Since I couldn’t open the shop, I went to the building department… uh hmm and borrowed this book.”
Could I blame my thievery on brain damage? Yeah, but it wouldn’t hold up in court.
“A book of what?”
Cradling the volume on my arm, I opened it and turned its crisp pages. “Boring stuff. Building permits.” I read a few entries about other buildings, but the details were sketchy and incomplete. Dates and names, an address, but nothing I could correlate with to the Dugan-Stuart building.
Fanny peeked at the pages as I turned them. “I didn’t read much. My mama said sewing was best for me.”
“Uh-huh. You’re a good seamstress.” I ran a finger along a column of numbers. The skimpy information in the ledger was useless. I shoplifted it for no reason and snapped it closed. “I was searching for who owned this building about the time you were killed.”
“It was just like yesterday.” Fanny let another ghostly sigh.
“Walk me through the details of how you were killed... shot.” I didn’t know how to put that delicately and added. “Who knew Willie?”
“I don’t remember.” She whispered near my ear and snapped off like a movie projector.
“If you can’t remember, it’s okay.” I waited, but she didn’t answer and I went into the showroom. Nothing was amiss, other than the place was a wreck.
I spotted dog hair on the floor where Hector had taken a nap. The CSI crew left behind more evidence than they found. A broom wouldn’t work on his short wiry dog hair, so I fetched the wand sweeper. The last thing we needed was Hector hair tangled in our one-hundred seventy-five-dollar terrycloth robes. I could see the Sentinel’s bold headlines— Hector Hair in Row’s Robes. That rumor would be worse than poisoned bath bombs.
I took two slow therapeutic passes sweeping the showroom, zoning out, going deep into bath bomb problems. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how the bombs were tainted. It couldn’t have been anything I did.
“I remember.” Fanny glimmered next to the table where I just swept. Startled from my sweeping daze, I jumped back waggling the broom in her direction. “Hey! Stop interrupting my train of thought.” Her sudden outbursts and appearances were going to be my death.
“Good grief! What do you remember?”
“It was Monday.”
“You already told me. That was a bad day.” If I remember my history correctly, when the stock market crashed and fortunes lost, despondent men jumped from windows.
“I’ve got to finish sweeping.” I pushed on the wand sweeper, thinking about those poor people who lost had loves and lives.
She scurried over the display window, flickering in hazy gray.
“You don’t have to remember. I’ll just finish cleaning.”
She looked back. “I just finished sewing a bowtie.”
“Yeah?” Peeling off the used sweeper cloth, I turned it over and affixed the clean side up. “What happened next?”
“I’d sit sewing.” She pointed at spot in the corner. “My Singer sewing machine sat in the good light.”
The Singer sewing machine sitting in my condo’s foyer had belonged to my grandmother who had shiplap walls. As a toddler, I would ride the black iron treadle underneath the machine. I thought I was sewing. Years later, my mother told me she disconnected the leather strap, which drove the sewing head. I wasn’t sewing after all, but when my grandmother passed, she gave me the machine because I had loved her and the sewing machine so much.
“Folks would nod. They liked watching me sew.”
“I bet.” Fanny had faded deeper into her moody haze, but her voice was clear. “Lots of folks ordered shirts and dresses from Sears. The catalogs, you know? On the cheap.”
“I know. Sears is still in business. I can show you their website.”
“Web what?” Fanny sighed. I pushed into the window sweeping, longing to hear the clack of a treadle sewing machine. “Never mind, it’s nothing.”
“I had my men. The ones who wanted nice shirts. Everyone wanted stripes and plaids, but I made nice white cotton shirts. The kind you starch to a crisp.”
“I know that kind of fabric.” I had ironed more than my share of white cotton shirts with starch to a crisp. Now, clothes embedded with Lycra or Spandex are the boon. Next to dryer sheets and cool down settings, stretchy jeans were incredible inventions. I won’t wear clothes that aren’t stretchy.
“Yeah. So, you were sewing in the window? The market crashed and somebody shot you.” I stripped off the dirty sweeper cloth, put it in the trash and leaned the wand in the corner beside the swinging doors.
“I don’t think so. I don’t remember much after watching two men fighting on the street.”
Fanny glowed like a neon sign. She displayed her feelings in a kaleidoscope exhibit of anxiety riddled emotions. There was no rest, even for the dead.
“Imagine that. It’s crazy.” I twirled a finger at my temple gesturing the universal sign for crazy.
“Imagine what?”
“Nothing. I’m amazed at your abilities. I feel like I’m watching an old movie.”
“Gahd! I loved the talkies. My Best Girl was the last movie I saw.” She drooped, frowning and fading.
Nodding, I tried to recall when the first talkies were introduced. In the 1920s, movies were popular entertainment. Technology moved at lightning speed and I couldn’t keep up with it, much less explain it to her. How could I explain television, YouTube, or Netflix to a woman who died almost a hundred years ago?
“My Best Girl?” I asked, sitting on the stool.
“Mary Pickford.” Fanny’s red ribbon of fabric appeared in her hand but she didn’t sew with her needle.
“Ah, yes. She was the little darlin’ of movies. Everyone loved her.”
Today’s movies have lost their innocence with so much sex, violence, and special effects. “Walk yourself through getting shot. Pretend you’re sitting in the window. Visualize what happened next.”
“Willie climbed through the window. Calling… ‘Mama… Mama… there’s a man out back'.”
“The window?” I asked but remembered the boarded-up window where we installed the security door.
“Yes. He was seven. We lived in the back. Two cots.”
“You lived and worked here?” I guess it was a matter of necessity. My curiosity piqued and I fired off more questions. “Who was the man? Was he… was he Willie’s father?”
Up until that moment, I hadn’t thought to ask about her child’s father. If I knew Willie’s father’s name, Anita could research his former whereabouts. There was a slim chance Willie could still be alive, but nearly one hundred years old. If we found Willie, would I try to introduce him to his long dead mother?
Maybe not. Too hard to explain.
“No, he wasn’t.” Fanny fingered the needle stuck in her blouse. “I put my needle in my blouse like I always did, so I wouldn’t lose it. The men were fighting on the street. I’d heard about the crash. Mary… the lady who lived upstairs, told me about what she heard on the wireless.”
I leaned against the counter. “Black Monday changed the world.”
“It changed mine.”
A heavy thumping rattled the front door’s glass. “Hey! Pattianna. It’s Mike. Open up.”
“What the! Not him.” My butterfly flinched and bumped into my leaping heart.
I peeked over the swinging doors, making sure I didn’t move them as he pressed his greasy nose onto the door’s glass. I would need to rewash the dadgum glass again!
“He has some nerve. I oughta…” I hunkered into t
he shadows grateful I hadn’t turned on the lights.
Fanny flickered off. “It’s him. He reminds me of—”
“A sleazebag gangster?”
He cupped his hands around his eyes, smoking a hot spot onto the door’s glass as the breathed hard. “I see you. Open the door.”
I need a barrel of disinfectant. Greasy A-hole.
“Go away.” I raised my voice. “Get outta here. Don’t make me call Dick.”
“He reminds me of Elmer, my landlord.” In the shadows, Fanny’s flickering grew brighter with every word.
“What do you want?” I wasn’t about to open the door, or come close enough so he could photograph me. Would breaking Mike’s scrawny neck be murder, if he trespassed? Not if I only choked him, a little bit. Dick wouldn’t lock me up for long simply because Mike was Mike. Everyone at the department disliked that clown.
“Ah. Hey. I got something you’ll want to see.” His ornery tone was clear even through the glass.
“I don’t want to see anything you have.” Gathering my gumption, I walked nearer to the door, waving. “Shoo! Get!”
Seeing me, he rattled the doorknob. “C’mere. Open the door. It’s my best shot ever. You’re gonna be shocked.”
“What do you think?”
Fanny floated into the display window. “Don’t let him in.”
Musing, I considered my options. Fanny was dead. She didn’t have much to lose. On the other hand, if he threatened me, she could prick his ugly behind with her needle. I’d love to see him dance a jig.
As much as I disliked him, my curiosity got the better of me. He stole my image, sold my soul to the newspaper, probably ruining my reputation forever, but still… something nagged me about his odd, unwanted presence.
“I’m not giving you anything, so make it fast.” I flipped open the dead bolt.
17
Mike Claiborne
Mike stepped over the threshold taking jumpy jackrabbit steps. “Where have you been? I‘ve been waiting all morning.”
Bath Bombs & Beyond Page 12
