by Terri Reid
“Yes, that’s right,” she acknowledged, with a chuckle. “I was just a little concerned it might bring me some unwanted attention.”
The return laughter was warm and engaging. “I think your exact quote was, ‘It would bring the crazies out of the woodwork.”
“Something like that,” she giggled.
“But it would have made a hell of a story,” he replied. “So, what can I do for you, Mary?”
Mary glanced out the window before answering. The snow had stopped falling that morning and now, at two o’clock in the afternoon, it was bright and sunny and most of the roads had been plowed.
“I was wondering if you were planning on being in Freeport today?” she asked, knowing Dan’s paper and his offices were located in the small town of Lena, about fifteen miles away.
“Yeah, I had a couple people I needed to meet,” he replied. “Why?”
“Well, I’d like you to meet me at Winneshiek Theater,” she answered. “It’s regarding a case I’m working on.”
“Sure, I can be there at three-thirty, that work for you?”
“Perfect. See you then.”
“He’s a lying bastard.”
Faye’s voice came from right over Mary’s shoulder and she jumped. “Faye, it’s not polite to listen to private phone conversations,” Mary said, breathing deeply to help slow her heart.
“I’m a ghost, I don’t give a damn about polite,” she sneered, rolling her eyes. “As a matter of fact, when I was alive I didn’t give a damn about polite.”
“Well, there’s a surprise.”
Faye walked around and faced Mary. Her head was still hung in the angle caused by her death. It made Mary want to cock her head too, to look into Faye’s eyes, but she resisted the temptation.
“You don’t like me very much,” Faye accused.
Shrugging, Mary leaned back in her chair, “I don’t have to like you, I just have to help you.”
“Why in the world don’t you like me? I’m rich, I’m popular, I’m intelligent, I’m well-dressed and I know people who can help you move up in the world.”
“You’re a bully,” Mary said simply. “I just don’t like bullies.”
“I’m not a bully,” Faye protested.
Mary stood and walked up to Faye. “Sure you are. You use all of those things you just mentioned, money, intelligence, and power, to intimidate the people around you,” she said. “You were blessed with so many gifts and instead of using them to help people; you use them to help yourself.”
“Well, I didn’t do that all the time,” she blustered. “There are some people who love me.”
“Name one.”
Faye stopped and thought for a moment. Several times she started to speak and thought better of it, and closed her mouth. “This is like a bad rendition of A Christmas Carol, isn’t it?” she finally said.
Mary nodded sadly. “Except, in this version, the redemption is not going to come in this life.”
Faye sat down limply on the couch. “Well, damn, this is not what I planned for my life.”
She looked over at Mary. “I really did want people to like me,” she confessed. “But it was much easier to have them fear me. I really made a mess of things.”
Sighing, Mary sat down next to Faye. “Well, it’s not cast in stone yet. You still have some time here on the earth to alter some things you did while you were alive.”
“Rewrite my last scene?”
“Something like that.”
Faye stood and floated across the room, her arms outstretched. “I’ll do it! I’ll change my life! I’ll make amends! I’ll change the world! People will love me.”
“Faye, you don’t have a lot of time. Perhaps you ought to just start with trying to undo some of the damage you’ve caused.”
Faye stopped floating and looked over at Mary, glaring. “You really know how to take the joy out of a final scene,” she said and quickly disappeared.
Shaking her head, Mary went back to her computer. She had a list of things she still needed to do. Tapping her fingers against the table, she realized she really ought to let Bradley know that she was going to be meeting with a suspect, even though she doubted Dan had anything to do with the murder.
Call her a coward, but she really didn’t want to talk to him. As a matter of fact, she decided, if she never spoke with him again she felt her life would be much better. Weighing her options, she went over to her computer and accessed her e-mail. She typed Dorothy a brief note.
Dorothy – I’m meeting with Dan Stevens at Winneshiek this afternoon for a follow-up on the Faye McMullen case. Just FYI. Mary O’Reilly.
There, she nodded at the e-mail before she pressed “Send,” now no one can say I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing.
An hour later, the tow truck still hadn’t delivered the Roadster yet, and, she decided, she really didn’t want to take it out in the snow again. She dressed in layers and prepared for the two mile trek to Winneshiek. She stuffed a notebook into her oversized purse, slipped on woolen mittens and left her house.
She hadn’t gotten further than two steps off her porch when she heard the cry of warning. “Duck, Miss O’Reilly!”
She dropped back, the snowball missing her head by inches, and turned in the direction of the cautionary voice.
“Gosh, I’m sorry, Miss O’Reilly,” Andy said, his cheeks even brighter red than usual. “I was aiming for my brother, promise.”
Mary smiled. “Well, from where I was standing, it looked like a great snowball,” she said. “Thanks for the warning.”
“No problem, cause it would have been my fault,” he said. “And my mom would have been really mad. I’m not supposed to cream our neighbors.”
Mary couldn’t help it, she grinned. “Well, that’s always a good rule to live by.”
He considered her reply and nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said earnestly, then his eyes lit up, “Hey, you want to go sledding with us? Krape Park has the best sledding hill.”
“When are you going?” she asked.
“In a few minutes, cause we have to be back ‘fore dinner.”
Mary sighed. “I have to work, so I can’t go.”
She was genuinely disappointed. “How about tomorrow?”
He shook his head. “Naw, tomorrow we can’t, ‘cause it’s gonna be a school day. Mom says.”
“Well, I will never disagree with your mom about weather.”
“Yeah,” Andy said, seriously considering her words. “Dad says she’s a psycho about the weather.”
Mary’s smile nearly cracked her frozen cheeks. “Perhaps you meant psychic?”
Andy nodded, “Yeah, that’s what I meant. Psychic.”
“Well, thanks for the invitation,” she said. “Have fun.”
“I’ll ask you another time, okay?”
“I will look forward to it.”
Mary continued down the street, in a much better mood than before.
Chapter Nineteen
Winneshiek Theater was not very impressive from the outside. The boxy architecture and soft grey siding did not advertise the true beauty of the small auditorium and its history in Freeport. Before arriving, Mary had made a call to Deb Deutsch, Ashley’s mom, who volunteered as the building manager. Deb not only provided her with the security code for the door, but also shared the secrets to staying warm in the drafty old building.
Mary fixed the door, so the lock wouldn’t catch and Dan could get it without the code. Then she climbed the stairs to the stage level and immediately turned up the thermostat. The furnace sprang to life. The late winter afternoon only cast shadows through the few windows available, so Mary went to the wall of lights and switched on enough to illuminate the backstage area as well as the auditorium.
She slipped through the plain wooden door that separated backstage from the audience, reality from fantasy, and picked a seat in the second row. Making herself comfortable, she enjoyed the relative quiet while she waited for Dan. The sn
ow surrounding the building muffled the noises from the occasional traffic outside, and Mary enjoyed casually listening to the sounds and footsteps coming from upstairs in the Green Room. She had often heard theaters were places that drew ghosts because of the creative energies the actors produced, but it was only in the last few years she had found it to be true. She had met ghosts in all of the Freeport theaters, from the high school to the Masonic Temple, and all were fairly harmless spirits who loved dropping in for a good show.
She started when she heard the door open and laughed at herself. Yeah, humans scare you.
“Hey, Mary, are you in here?” Dan’s voice called out from backstage.
“I’m in the theater,” she called back, not bothering to move from her vantage point. She had discovered you learn a lot about a possible suspect by the way they reenter a crime scene.
Dan pushed through the door, a cell phone pressed against his ear and, after a quick glance around to find her, nodded at Mary. He was a large man, looking more like a professional football player than someone who made their living sitting behind a desk and tapping on a keyboard. And even though some of the muscle had grown a little soft, he was still an intimidating figure.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “But if you want the ad to run in next week’s paper, I need you to be paid up by the end of the week.”
Mary really admired Dan. He was a newspaper man, in the best sense of the title. He understood the importance of the fourth estate, telling the story and letting the reader decide without letting opinion enter in. Dan was the editor, publisher, salesman and reporter for a very successful paper that was distributed throughout the small towns surrounding Freeport. He was up on all the county news, village news and school board news. If you wanted information, call Dan Stevens.
Of course, even though he didn’t let it show in his news articles, Dan had a definite opinion and let it run rampant in his editorial column. With a quick wit and small town perspective, Dan’s Points to Ponder had not only won national recognition, it was the must read at most of the small diners throughout the region.
But the reason Dan was walking down the theater stairs to meet Mary had little to do with any of those traits. After college, Dan had decided to follow his heart and try for a career on Broadway. Mary tried to visualize the big man in A Chorus Line and shook her head, “Nope, can’t do it,” she said aloud.
She peeked up to be sure Dan hadn’t heard her. He was still on the phone. He really did look at home up on that stage. But, for whatever reason, Dan decided treading the floorboards wasn’t for him and turned to journalism. He never forgot his love for theater. Dan’s paper was the only paper in the area that reviewed local performances and paid as much attention to the high school dramatics and speech teams as most papers paid to high school sports. He was a hero to many aspiring teen-aged thespians.
Of course, not everyone loved a critic.
“So, Mary O’Reilly, what can I do you for?” he asked, shoving his cell phone in his pocket and walking down the stairs to the theater.
“I wanted to talk to you about Faye McMullen,” she replied.
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, please,” he responded. “She talks enough about herself that no one needs to say a word.”
“She’s dead.”
Dan sat down. “Well, damn, I hadn’t heard,” he said. “She’d died so many times on stage, I guess it was inevitable. How’d it happen?”
“She was murdered.”
“No joke?”
Mary shook her head. “No, she was found hanging from the curtains.”
Dan wiped his hand over his face. “Oh, wow,” he said. “I’ve been out of town; the storm kept me away a day longer than I wanted to be gone. I haven’t caught up yet…”
“Can you prove that you’ve been out of town?”
His eyes widened. “I’m a suspect?” his voice raised. “I’m a suspect. Who the hell would consider me a suspect?”
Mary shrugged.
“Wait, wait,” he said. “I know how you work. Faye? Faye! She said I killed her?”
Mary shook her head. “No, she said you hated her.”
Dan stood up and started pacing in front of the stage. “I hated every part she ever played. I hated all the dialogue that came out of her mouth. I hated the way she tried to hog the spotlight from the other cast members,” he explained. “But did I hate her personally? Hell, I didn’t even know the woman.”
“So, do you have any idea who would hate her enough to want to see her dead?”
Pausing, he turned back to her. “You don’t think I killed her, do you?” he said, certainty in his voice.
Mary shook her head and smiled. “No, it was too clichéd,” she said. “You would have been much more original.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “Well, that’s a relief. I’ve been accused of a lot of things, but never murder.”
“You know the theater community,” Mary said. “If you think of anything, anything at all, give me a call. Okay?”
She got out of her chair and started toward the stairs.
“Hey, Mary,” Dan’s voice stopped her.
“Yes?”
“Okay, I don’t want to sound melodramatic,” he said. “But make sure you watch yourself, okay?”
“Why should I worry?” she asked.
“You’ve done enough stuff around town that most people realize you’re the real thing,” he said. “If people don’t already know, they’re going to find out you’re helping the police with this case. Whoever did this might get a little nervous and want to cover all their bases.”
Mary felt a cold chill run up her back. “Thanks Dan, I’ll keep that in mind.”
Chapter Twenty
Mary watched Dan’s car pull away from the curb. Although he tried to insist on giving her a ride home, she really felt the walk would give her time to think. At the corner of Clark and Walnut she prepared to cross the street. The streetlights were beginning to glow and she knew within a half hour the sky would be dark.
“There you are young lady; I’ve been looking for you.”
She turned to find Reverend Johnson standing next to her.
“Hello Reverend, how are you doing?”
He shook his head. “Not well, not well at all,” he exclaimed. “They’re having my funeral tomorrow and I’m not dead.”
“I beg your pardon, Reverend,” Mary insisted. “But you are indeed dead.”
“I know I’m dead,” he blustered. “What I meant is that I haven’t moved on, gone to my righteous reward. A man should go to his reward before his body gets laid in the ground.”
Mary started to shiver in the cold wind. “Excuse me, but can we walk as we talk? I’m getting cold.”
“Of course, my dear,” he said, “How thoughtless of me.”
They continued up Walnut toward Stephenson Street. The sidewalks were shoveled with only a narrow path, but the Reverend floated next to Mary, not bothered by the drifts of snow.
“Have you thought about anything that might be keeping you here?” she asked, “Any unfinished business?”
“Can’t be that,” he said sharply.
“Why not?”
“I’ve always done all I was supposed to do in a timely and efficient manner,” he said. “I pride myself on my organizational skills.”
Mary waited on the corner as a snowplow drove by on Exchange Street. “How do you get it all done?” she asked. “Do you have a large congregation?”
He smiled and nodded. “I have one of the largest congregations in the community. Other churches have had to close because their flocks have decided to listen to my message.”
“You must be a powerful speaker.”
“Young lady, power is not the only part of being an excellent speaker. You have to take the time to perfect your sermons and you have to practice. I practice several hours a day in order to be sure the right words have the right emphasis.”
They turned onto Stephenson and walked away
from the downtown area, toward the hospital.
“I’m confused,” Mary said. “If you spend so much time perfecting your sermon, when do you have time to take care of those in your congregation who are in need?”
“My wife sees to those cares,” he explained. “I feel that I can reach more people, spiritually, with my sermons. So, she takes care of the day to day nuisances.”
“Like what?”
He raised his arms. “I don’t know, she takes care of them.”
“But when you meet together and talk about the members of your congregation…”
“I don’t meet with my wife,” he said. “She knows the duties of a minister’s wife and she does them without any complaint or conversation. That’s what makes our marriage work so well.”
Mary nodded her head slowly. “And your children, do they help as well?”
“Of course, they know I expect them to be examples to the other children in the congregation,” he said. “Those other children don’t have the advantage of being my children. They need to be offered an example. My children offer that example.”
“How do they feel about being an example?”
“Why are you asking such absurd questions? Of course, they are honored to be examples. They are honored to have a father who holds such a high position in the community.”
“Reverend, I have a suggestion for you,” Mary said. “Why don’t you go home and be with your family. Perhaps your final influence is what they need and then you can move on.”
He thought about her suggestion. “That’s a very good idea, young lady,” he finally concluded. “I’m sure it’s going to be difficult for them once their role model is gone. Excellent suggestion.”
He slowly faded away and left Mary walking alone on the darkening streets of Freeport.
Crossing Stephenson, she walked down West Street until she came to Reed Park. She peered down the paths; they were shoveled and, from the myriad of tracks in the snow, had been well used during the day. But now as Mary stood at the entrance, the park looked fairly deserted. The partial moon reflected light against the snow.
