2 The Ghosts Upstairs

by SUE FINEMAN

  Mr. Clapp chuckled. “I’ll do that.”

  Minutes later, Mr. Clapp called again. “Mrs. Banning has accepted your offer.”

  Billy knew she’d accept it. He’d spoken with a friend who still taught at the academy and learned enrollment was down this year, partly because of Elizabeth Banning and her constant interference in school policy. She’d fired two teachers since school started, the kids didn’t like the new principal, they still didn’t teach sex education, and some parents were angry because Billy hadn’t been hired back this year.

  He’d take care of all that as soon as Elizabeth Banning was gone. Maybe Mrs. Packard would like her old job back, and whether it fit in the schedule or not, human sexuality would be taught at the academy.

  Billy wouldn’t have time to teach this year. It would take all his time and energy to get the academy straightened out.

  He leaned back in his chair in the study and grinned. He’d just bought himself the controlling interest of the most prestigious prep school in River Valley.

  He couldn’t wait to tell Kayla.

  Kayla called that night. “I’m here. It was a long drive, but I didn’t have any problems except heavy traffic. Is everything okay there? Is Buford all right? He hasn’t been away from me since he was a puppy.”

  “He keeps looking out the windows and crying, but he’ll be okay.”

  “I’m staying at the Comfort Inn tonight and tomorrow night, and maybe the night after. I need to cancel my phone service and utilities here, and I need to talk with my landlord before I leave. I don’t want to get stuck with the bills if Leonard decides to stop paying them. He can either put everything in his name or move out.”

  She was all business, and all Billy could think about was how much he missed her. “You don’t even miss me, do you?”

  “Oh, honey, of course I miss you. I’m just tired after driving all that way.”

  “I know. Get some sleep and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Billy. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He’d never missed anyone as much as he missed Kayla. He wanted to marry her and adopt children, but she didn’t want him now, and he had no one to blame but himself. He’d always regret his insensitive remark to Hannah.

  This trip was the beginning of the end. He could feel it in his bones. If she came back, she’d leave him, and he’d be alone again.

  <>

  Kayla woke early the next morning and had a light breakfast in the motel. Then she drove to her apartment. Leonard was probably still sleeping. Singing in the clubs kept him up late. Since Leonard had no business living in her apartment while she was gone, she didn’t care if she woke him. She didn’t want to see him again, but she couldn’t avoid it. She had to sort through her things and decide what to take with her.

  It was only seven-thirty in the morning when she knocked on the door. No one answered, so she let herself in with her key. The apartment looked like a tornado had come through, but after living with Leonard, she knew it was only him.

  “What a slob!” she muttered to herself. The place smelled worse than it did when Buford lived there.

  She opened the bedroom door and gaped at the sight before her. Leonard lay in bed with Norma in his arms. They were both naked, with the sheet tangled around his right leg. From the size of her belly, she hadn’t had the baby yet, and from the sweet, smoky smell, they’d been getting high together. How long had they been sleeping together? Did she care? No, because she was finished with both of them.

  Leaving the apartment door propped wide open, she retrieved a few boxes from her car and went back inside, to the kitchen. The counters were covered with decaying food and the refrigerator looked like it hadn’t been cleaned out since she left. It smelled awful. Looking around, she realized there was nothing in the kitchen she wanted except Granny’s cookbooks.

  Granny’s sewing machine was in the living room. As she pulled it toward the door, a bong fell out. She stopped, opened the cabinet, and removed several packages of pot. After tossing them on the sofa, she closed the sewing machine cabinet and pulled it out to the car. The cabinet barely fit in the trunk of her car, but she wasn’t about to leave it behind. Granny taught her to sew on this thing.

  To get the rest of her things, she’d have to go into the bedroom. It meant waking Leonard and Norma, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to get her stuff and get the hell out of here. She threw two empty boxes on the foot of the bed and opened the closet. By the time Leonard was awake enough to realize what was going on, Kayla had her pictures packed in one box and the other box half filled with clothes.

  Leonard rubbed his eye. “What the hell?”

  “I’ll be out of your way in a few minutes. I can’t believe I had to drive all the way back here to get my things. Did you think I wouldn’t come for them? Did you think I wouldn’t find out you two have been sleeping together?”

  Norma sat up, her oversized boobs creased from the wrinkled sheets. “You’re divorced.”

  “Yes, we are, thank God.” She pulled more clothes out of the closet and packed them in the box.

  “It ain’t how it looks,” said Leonard.

  “Ask me if I care.”

  “I came to ask him if he wanted my baby,” said Norma. “He said you were getting back together, so I thought—”

  “We’re not getting back together. Ever. And I don’t want your baby.”

  “Then what am I going to do with it?”

  “Find an adoption agency.” Kayla walked to the window and opened the drapes, flooding the room with morning sunlight. She pushed up the window. “It stinks in here.”

  Norma walked into the bathroom and slammed the door, while Leonard pulled on his jeans. Kayla kept packing. She carried two boxes down to the car, put them on the backseat, and came upstairs to get the rest of her clothes.

  Norma puffed on a cigarette. “Why don’t you want my baby?”

  “Because you smoked cigarettes and pot while you were pregnant, slept with I don’t know how many men, including my ex-husband, and I don’t know how much you damaged that poor kid. Besides, I don’t want to get stuck taking care of you for the rest of my life.”

  “When have you ever taken care of me?”

  “When have I not taken care of you? Who do you always call when you need help?”

  “I don’t need nothing from you.”

  “Not even my ex-husband? Were you sleeping with him while we were still married?”

  “Go to hell!”

  The fight escalated into a screaming match, someone called the police, and the next thing Kayla knew, she was being cuffed and read her rights. The bags of pot she’d taken from the sewing machine cabinet had her fingerprints on them, and there was enough pot in the bags for it to be a felony. Leonard swore it wasn’t his, that he’d never seen it before, and Norma went along with whatever he said.

  “Can’t you smell it?” said Kayla. “They were smoking it last night, and I didn’t get here until this morning.”

  “Says you,” said Leonard.

  “I was in Ohio yesterday morning. I didn’t get to Memphis until late last night, and I stayed in a motel until this morning. Take a blood test if you want. I didn’t smoke it. Check the mother-of-the-year and her hillbilly lover.”

  Leonard and Norma both started yelling again, so an officer took them into the kitchen.

  The other officer asked, “Can you prove when you were in Ohio?”

  “I had Sunday dinner with the chief of police and his family in River Valley, Ohio. His name is Donovan Kane. Sunday night, I was with his son, Billy Kane. I left Monday morning – yesterday morning – around eight, and it’s a ten-hour drive. When I got to Memphis, I checked into the Comfort Inn, called Billy, and went to sleep.”

  The officer crossed his arms. “What are you doing here?”

  “This is my apartment, or it was my apartment. I came here this morn
ing to get my things, because my asshole of an ex-husband wouldn’t send them to me. I knocked and didn’t get any answer, so I let myself in. He was in bed with someone I once considered a friend, and the place reeked of pot, so I left the door open. When I took my sewing machine out to my car, a bong fell out, so I searched the cabinet and found the pot. It’ll have my fingerprints on it, because I took it out of the cabinet and tossed it on the sofa. I sure as hell didn’t want to take it back to Ohio with me.”

  The cop cocked his head. “You got a phone number in Ohio?”

  She rattled off Billy’s cell phone number and then Donovan’s home phone number. “I don’t know his office number. I’ve never called Donovan at work.”

  Leonard and Norma were taken away and Kayla was allowed to finish packing her things. She felt sorry for the baby Norma carried. While Georgia had done everything she could to ensure little Jonny was born healthy, Norma didn’t give a shit about anyone but herself. In spite of that, Kayla would take the baby if she thought she wouldn’t end up supporting Norma, too. Better to let a childless couple have the baby, people who would love the baby and do right by her without any interference from the baby’s biological mother.

  The landlord showed up before Kayla finished. “Your rent’s late.”

  She wrote him a check. “I’m moving out today. You’ll need that cleaning deposit to clean up this pig sty. I’m leaving my furniture. You can sell it or rent the place furnished. Whatever. If my ex-husband comes back, throw him out.”

  “Damn it, Kayla, it’ll take me a week to get this place clean.”

  “Then sell Leonard’s guns. That should pay for the cleaning. I threw him out and divorced him, and he came back while I was gone.” Leonard wouldn’t like it, but she didn’t give a shit what Leonard liked. She wasn’t about to clean up after him.

  Kayla packed the rest of her things in her car and then went in search of the mail, which she found shoved into a kitchen drawer. She called the number on the past-due phone bill and cancelled her service, and then did the same with the overdue electric bill. She hated to pay what Leonard and Norma owed, but it wasn’t their credit that was being ruined.

  After she paid her bills and took care of business at the post office, Kayla drove to the cemetery and walked back to Granny’s grave. She knelt in front of the stone and stared at the name, Arlene Louise Higgins. Kissing her fingers, she touched them to the stone. “I miss you so much, Granny. I already told you about divorcing Leonard, but I didn’t tell you I found a wonderful man. His name is Billy Kane, and he lives in Ohio. I love him so much, but after what Blake did to me, I can’t marry Billy. He wants babies, and that’s the one thing I can’t give him.”

  She wiped a tear from her cheek. There were times when she missed Granny so much. She could always talk to Granny about nearly everything. Sometimes she still felt her presence.

  Kayla had taken care of her grandmother in her final days, but she wouldn’t have children and grandchildren to take care of her when she got old.

  She wouldn’t have anyone.

  <>

  After the phone call from the Memphis police, Billy tried to reach Kayla, but she’d left the motel and wasn’t answering the cell phone he’d bought her.

  Dad called. “Billy, did you get a phone call from Memphis?”

  “From the police? Yes, I did.”

  “I suggest you get your butt down there and get her out of there, before that crooked cop finds her. By now, he must know she’s in town.”

  “I have a flight booked for this afternoon, but I can’t reach her by phone.”

  “Did you leave a message at the motel?”

  “Yes.”

  Billy threw a few things in a suitcase and drove to the airport in Dayton. The plane was late, as he knew it would be, and he didn’t arrive in Memphis until after eight that evening. And then they couldn’t find his bag. So he took a taxi to the Comfort Inn. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Kayla’s car, filled with boxes, parked on the side of the building.

  He walked up to the desk. “I’m looking for Kayla Ainsworth.”

  The woman going off for the night said, “A police officer took her away about an hour ago.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. He followed her into the elevator, and when they came out, he had her cuffed and she had a piece of tape over her mouth. She kicked at him and struggled to get away, but he pulled her out to his patrol car.”

  “Do you know the officer’s name?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s Tremont. Officer Tremont.” She said the name with distaste.

  Billy turned cold at the thought of that crooked cop putting his hands on Kayla again.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  On a deserted dirt road outside the city, Kayla, handcuffed in the back of Tremont’s police cruiser, heard the call on the police radio. “Officer Tremont, return to the station immediately.”

  Tremont turned the radio off and drove deeper into the woods. “I ain’t going nowhere until I take care of you. Bitch! Think you can ruin my career and then go off and hide. By the time I finish with you, there won’t be enough of you left to bury.”

  Her heart raced with fear. At first, she thought he intended to rape her, but now she knew he didn’t just have rape on his mind. He wanted to kill her, so she couldn’t testify against him.

  The side of her head throbbed where he’d hit her in the elevator. If she hadn’t been stunned, he wouldn’t have been able to handcuff her or tape her mouth.

  She heard gunshots in the distance. Hunting season. A favorite time of year for men like Leonard who liked to kill things. Tremont liked to kill things, too. He’d won some kind of award for killing a bank robber a couple years ago. Now he thought he was invincible.

  Donovan said Tremont was under investigation by the police department’s internal affairs for the incident at the club, so why was he still working as a cop? The man should be behind bars, not behind the wheel of a police cruiser, where he could do more harm.

  The sun hung low in the sky when Tremont pulled off the narrow dirt road into the woods. He drove back into the middle of a thicket and turned off the engine. Tossing his hat on the seat, he twisted around to face her. “Your time has come, darling. Do your praying now, because you won’t be around much longer.”

  He opened his door and stepped out, and Kayla thought about Billy. She knew he was in Memphis, looking for her. What would he do if she died before he found her? Would he blame himself?

  Help me, Billy. I’m in the woods with Tremont. He’s gonna kill me so I can’t testify against him. Look for Dutton Road. The tire tracks lead off to the left of the road, into the trees. Please hurry! I love you.

  She prayed he’d hear her silent message and find her before Tremont killed her.

  <>

  Billy paced in the police station, worried sick about Kayla. Tremont wasn’t answering his calls, and he hadn’t come to the station. Where in the hell was he? And what had he done with Kayla?

  He heard Kayla’s voice in his mind and blurted, “He’s going to kill her.”

  “How do you know?” an officer asked.

  “Because she’s psychic, and she’s sending me messages.”

  The officer wiped a smile off his face. “Yeah, sure she is.”

  “Where’s Dutton Road?”

  “Out in the woods.” The officer cocked his head. “Are you telling me she’s out there?”

  Someone yelled, “The 911 operator just got a call from a hunter out near Dutton Road. Says there’s a police car parked in the woods, and he wondered if something was wrong.”

  “Could be Tremont,” said one of the officers. “He hunts out there.”

  Billy didn’t ask if he could come along. He jumped into the car with two officers and they took off with lights flashing.

  He tied me to a tree and he’s gonna set me on fire. Please hurry. I’m so scared.

  “He tied
her to a tree,” said Billy. “He’s going to set her on fire.”

  The two officers exchanged a skeptical look. Billy knew they didn’t believe him, but he’d heard Kayla’s voice loud and clear. He didn’t know if Kayla could hear his thoughts or not, but he had to try. We’re on the way, Kayla. We’re coming, honey. Hold on a little longer.

  “This here’s Dutton Road,” said one of the officers. The moon shone brightly, and they turned their lights off and drove slowly down the rutted dirt road, windows rolled down. Billy wanted to scream at them to hurry, but they didn’t know exactly where to look.

  “I wish she’d scream,” said the officer in the passenger seat.

  “She probably can’t,” said Billy. “He taped her mouth at the motel.”

  A man in the road ahead waved them to a stop. The officer driving leaned out his window, and the man pointed ahead and to the left. “The police car is down yonder about a half mile. He’s got something burning back there. If he ain’t careful, the whole place will go up.”

  They turned on their lights and sped down the road, shining a spotlight in the woods until the officer driving said, “I see the car.” He turned into the woods and stopped.

  As soon as they opened the back door, Billy ran toward the smoke, screaming, “Kayla.” He heard someone running in the woods. Tremont. The son-of-a-bitch could shoot him, but Billy kept running, praying he’d get there in time to save Kayla from being incinerated.

  One of the officers ran after the suspect while the other ran with Billy toward the smoke.

  They found Kayla tied to a tree, mouth taped so she couldn’t scream, eyes wide with terror. Several small fires burned in a circle around the tree, and the fires were creeping toward her. Billy stomped his way through two fires to get to her. Using his pocket knife, he cut the rope holding her to the tree, lifted her into his arms, and ran through the fire to take her to safety.

  He put her down and pulled the tape from her mouth. “You’re okay now, honey. It’s okay. Are you burned?”

  “No, but my head hurts where he hit me and my wrists sting. I tried to get loose, but I couldn’t.”