The House on Xenia

by Rita Moreau

  James came back time and time again and begged YaYa to come with him. He would stay for months and then decide it was time to go so he could regain the money he lost. He just could not convince YaYa to follow him to another strange city. He had made his way to Florida where he saw opportunities in real estate. It reminded him of Greece, warm temperatures and the ocean. YaYa was comfortable and had come to feel safe with me on Xenia. As she got older, she rarely ventured outside my walls. She and I became good friends. She knew I watched over her and GiGi. One night she was cooking and talking away to GiGi, and the pan caught fire. A huge blaze erupted. She screamed and told GiGi to run and find Uncle Gus. GiGi ran outside, and they returned to find YaYa just looking at the oven and the pan. Smoke filled the kitchen but no fire. I saw what happened and I put the fire out. I am deathly afraid of fire by the way.

  “Stay calm,” I remember telling her as I blew the fire out.

  “What happened?” Gus asked her in Greek.

  “I don’t know. One minute I thought the house was going to burn down and the next the fire went out,” she said as she shrugged her shoulders and raised her arms up. “POUF!” She looked at Gus and GiGi and pulled out the gold cross that hung around her neck and kissed it. “This house is our protector. I will never leave it.” She stayed with me until her death.

  Uncle Gus provided for YaYa and GiGi and kept his promise to his brother. He would rise early in the morning, stoke the coal furnace for heat in the winter, and take his produce truck to the farmers market where he loaded up on produce and delivered the produce to all the Greek restaurants and small grocery stores in Dayton. Uncle Gus had a very good friend whose name was Sam who GiGi came to call Uncle Sam. He was always at his side and worked with Uncle Gus. Uncle Sam was there when Uncle Gus fell ill and passed surrounded by family within my walls. They got word to James and GiGi remembered how Uncle Sam broke down and was the last to leave the room. She watched as he said good-bye to Uncle Gus and leaned over and kissed him good-bye. “He loved him,” her father said to her as he wiped the tears from his eyes. “No one should tell you who to love GiGi, remember that.”

  The last time James came home, he came as an old man. GiGi was now raising two daughters of her own. He was ill and had nowhere to go, so he stayed here and passed peacefully one night surrounded by GiGi and his granddaughters. GiGi had her father buried next to YaYa in the Greek section of the cemetery in Woodland where all the Greeks are buried. She knew YaYa may not have been thrilled but at least they would be together and her father would rest in peace.

  YaYa had plans for GiGi, and they were simple. She would marry a good Greek boy, one who could provide her and their children with a good life. A solid Greek man, who got up and went to work and cared for his family, not one who would drag her and her daughter clear across the world to make a fortune and risk their future on dreams. GiGi had other plans, so this was a bone of contention between the two. I listened to their arguments every day.

  GiGi like her father was a dreamer, and YaYa saw that in her daughter at an early age. She seemed to be smitten with showbiz or as YaYa called it: show-bees-wax. GiGi had her father’s good looks and had inherited a beautiful singing voice. Not from anywhere on YaYa’s side of the family, they were all doctors and lawyers. Thinkers, not dreamers, it had to be her father’s side.

  “When I was young, he would serenade me and play the bouzouki,” YaYa would tell the Greek women who came to visit after driving her home from church service.

  “Ah,” they all said as they nodded their heads and smiled and chuckled while they recalled their own youth.

  YaYa was a teller of fibs but only when she found it to be useful and expedient. She told everyone at the Greek Church that her husband James had been killed in a car accident in order to explain his absence. “It’s easier that way,” she said one time to Gus with the famous shrug of her shoulders. He looked at her, shook his head and walked away.

  When James was home, she told everyone that he was her husband’s twin brother visiting from Greece and that he did not speak English. YaYa did not want to be ostracized from the Greek community. James went along to keep the peace between them. She wanted GiGi to be part of that community so she would find a good Greek husband. She considered returning to Greece but how could she, a woman with a child and no husband? So she remained with me on Xenia along with Gus who kept her secret and went along with the charade for GiGi’s sake.

  Everything was fine until about the time GiGi turned eighteen and had graduated from high school. Still no husband, to YaYa’s dismay, she knew GiGi had other plans. Then it happened. It was wartime, and GiGi came home with an offer to join a USO band as a singer and travel the world. YaYa would have had to sign for GiGi, and she flatly refused as she did each time James asked her to come away with him. In doing so, she later would tell me in the dark of the night that she had crushed her daughter’s dreams. She thought she was doing the right thing for her only child. She would come to regret that decision because from that point on GiGi would fight her every step of the way when it came to what GiGi was going to do with her life. One of the first things she did, to everyone’s surprise, was to turn down a marriage proposal from a wealthy Greek widower. The fight that ensued that night could be heard for miles. To top it off, GiGi instead married a red neck who drank too much beer and spent more time down the street in a pool hall instead of on the job and soon she was pregnant.

  With no money and GiGi pregnant, YaYa had GiGi, and her husband set up house in the back in the old farmhouse that sits with me on the same property. I did my best to keep my windows shut tight, but still, the neighbors could hear YaYa and GiGi going at it daily. The fight was the same. “If you had signed that piece of paper, I’d be a star.”

  Or “If you had married the Greek, you’d be comfortable and not have to worry for money.”

  Her poor husband, the redneck, I actually felt sorry for him at first because he got his share of GiGi’s wrath. He was just a kid when they got married. To escape the daily drama, he took up spending his days shooting pool instead of looking for work. He was good at pool and actually had dreams of his own to head out to this new city called Las Vegas. That was about all they had in common, dreams.

  By the time they had two young daughters, GiGi was the one working at Wright-Patt and putting bread on the table. She had enough when he told her he wanted to move to Las Vegas and shoot pool for a living. She had found him a job in construction, but he wasn’t very good at it. She heard he was fired. One night I watched him sneak out. I knew he had plans to hitchhike to Las Vegas. GiGi somehow got hold of a handgun and tracked him down to a nearby pool hall. She was ready to shoot him, but the police were called and intervened. They gave her a pass about the gun, but they also gave her relieved, soon to be ex-husband the night in jail. When the police asked her where she got the gun, she said, “It just showed up one night at our house.”

  “Out of the blue,” the officer asked GiGi. “I think the house found it for me to shoot that worthless piece of no good for nothing—”

  “Okay. We’ll take the gun now ma’am,” was all they said when they gave her a ride home.

  “Go home now and get some rest,” they said as they stood outside and watched her climb, back strong and straight, up the steps and go inside. “Seems crazy, but it was like that house was looking out for her,” the one officer said. He was right. I was.

  Chapter 5

  Fish Camp, FL

  Velma gave me a ride back to my aunt’s condominium at Pirate’s Cove, and we said good-bye. She was heading home to start the second part of her day as mom and caregiver for her mother, Bessie. Aunt Anna and Aunt Sophia were out visiting doctors. Limo Louie was driving them to their appointments. He texted me that he should have them home in two hours. He was going to take them shopping at their favorite Middle Eastern market after their doctor appointments.

  Something told me to head over to Hotel Florida and pay a visit to my old friend Ernie, th
e spook. My psychic genes work that way, under the radar. It’s as if I have a twin who lives with me. I need to give her a name but haven’t come up with anything annoying enough—yet.

  A few years back, I felt drawn to drive over to the convent of Sister Hildegard and Sister Matilda. That’s where I first met a gypsy by the name of Pythia who told me about a place called Dreamland. It sits between the visible and invisible worlds. We enter it through our dreams. People we love who have died can visit us there. When they do, it’s to deliver a message. My mother pops in from time to time. She hasn’t given up on me. Since Theo and I remarried, she has been quiet. She loved Theo, and the night I first told her we were splitting a CAT 5 storm erupted around our dining room table. So she must be happy and doesn’t pester me as often, but since I was back in Fish Camp, I could feel her presence. I knew she wanted me to help Josie. Sometimes you know these things. You don’t need to be psychic, just listen to your inner voice.

  I was now driving Aunt Sophia’s whale of a car, Moby Dick, so when I got there, I was lucky to find a parking space. I had to be careful with the whale, so I didn’t knock over the row of Harleys parked in front of the bar, just like Bike Week in front of Sloppy Joes in Key West. These are not your typical bikers or motorcycles. The paint jobs were a work of art. Add to that the cost of these bikes and you were looking at an investment of at least $50,000. The real bikers, you know as Hells Angels, call them visa-bikers, “A bunch of type-A personalities taking a break from their life and problems. Can’t blame them.”

  As I parked Moby Dick, I was tempted to use the handicap slot but as I was an enforcer of rules in my prior job with the IRS, I passed on breaking the law, plus the ticket is hefty. Also, it was taken up by a three-wheeler with a handicap sticker.

  Ernie saw me coming and placed a cold beer on the bar. He came around and gave me a hug.

  “Welcome home, MC.”

  “Thank you, Ernie.”

  I sat there and sipped the beer while Ernie tended to his customers. Looking around, I knew the patrons at the bar were local cops, IRS, FBI, and maybe even CIA mixed in with the visa-bikers. It was the haircut that gave them away. Most of these guys came up the ranks from the military and kept the look. You could never be sure though with the CIA since, as spooks, they are masters of disguise, sometimes their lives depend on their ability to blend in. It always made for interesting conversations overheard at this beach bar that looks out over the Intercostal waterway to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. It sat smack in the middle and was called Hotel Florida.

  After a while, the crowd began to disperse, and Ernie brought me another beer. It was just Ernie and me and two older bikers, real ones, down at the other end of the bar. They had been to the Keys many times. They wore tee-shirts from Hemingway’s favorite bar, Sloppy Joes, vintage tees, not new ones bought by the visa-bikers who just left. They were content right where they sat as I watched them lift their beers in a toast, recalling old times. Pirates they were, now and in another lifetime.

  “I sent your Aunt Sophia flowers and chocolates.”

  “Yes, she loved that they were sunflowers, her favorite. With help from Aunt Anna, they finished the chocolates. Expensive they were.”

  “Well only the best for those two ladies,” Ernie said. We spent a few minutes catching up on Aunt Sophia’s health and Theo and Charlie’s whereabouts. I finished the second beer and broached the subject that had brought me. When attempting to get information out of Ernie, it was best to jump in with both feet. Never having worked for the CIA, I knew no smooth information gathering techniques. Working for the IRS, you just asked the questions and waited for the answers. Patience was not needed.

  “Ernie, what do you know about Wright Patterson Air Force Base?”

  “Why do you ask? I know you have gotten yourself mixed up with a lot of weird stuff in the past, but you just arrived,” Ernie said and then gave me the stare down which I am sure brought down a lot of bad guys and some women. Ernie’s cover was Secret Service—the key word being secret.

  “Yes, seems like you managed to get me into some of that weird stuff,” I said. I watched him acknowledge that fact with a slight nod. Sometimes, that’s the most you would get out of Ernie.

  “If you are talking Wright Patterson Air Force Base, you have reached the witch’s forest my friend. My advice—don’t go there.”

  “It’s too late for that. I’m already there, thanks to my Greek relatives from Dayton, Ohio. You met them all at the wedding.”

  “I remember them. Aunt Toolou who with Aunt Anna had me dancing to Zorba the Greek. There was a lot of ouzo flowing at your wedding this time around.”

  Ernie had been present at both of my weddings to Theo. They were friends, and he was the best man at both. He was correct. Ouzo was very present at our second wedding, for good luck of course.

  “Well, my cousin Josie is looking for something,” I said. Ernie returned with the covert-ops stare down.

  “I’m listening,” he said. Good, I thought. I had his attention.

  “She is looking for something gone missing that might explain why a body was found under a house where she grew up.”

  “A body?”

  “Yeah, the news is reporting it may have been there for over fifty years which takes it back to the time Josie and her sister Alexi were living there as kids.”

  “I remember Josie. She reminds me of you. Structured and level headed. So somehow, like you, she has found herself in the middle of a squall. So now I’ve got two women I will need to look out for?” Ernie asked.

  “Yeah, it looks that way,” I said and smiled as Ernie placed another beer on the bar.

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  Ernie was quiet, but I could tell he was thinking. It could go either way. I took a sip of my cold beer and waited and then he gave me something. That was the way it worked with the spook. You had to wait and listen and be good at reading between the lines. Plus, with the offer for a ride home, I downed my beer and ordered a shot. Ernie brought my favorite, a vodka shooter.

  “Think of it as an old house. Wright-Patt, as it is called for short, would be the basement. It has a long reputation of things going in the basement but not coming out.

  “You can check in, but never check out,” Ernie was a big fan of the Eagles. He loved the name of the bar, Hotel Florida.

  “If you ask the airmen stationed there, they will tell you all about the air force museum or the Dayton Dragons baseball team. But if you buy two locals a round of beers during an Ohio State football game and shout ‘O-H,’ they will tell you about the secret tunnels on the base.”

  “How about the alien bodies?” I asked knowing the shot was working.

  “Have you visited the air force museum?” Ernie had this annoying habit of changing the subject to avoid answering questions, a spook tactic.

  “Many times, when I’m visited Dayton. My Uncle Ollie saw to that, and then we always stopped for Graeter’s ice cream,” I said. “I always felt strange walking through the hangars with all the old warplanes. My Aunt Toolou can’t go there anymore. She said there are too many ghosts of airmen attached to their planes and can’t leave.”

  “What does this have to do with Wright-Patt?” Ernie, the spook, was back in control of the conversation.

  “Josie’s mother GiGi worked at Wright-Patt. The family always joked and said she worked at Area 51. The body was her boss. She worked underground.”

  “Well then, she worked at a secret facility. What is your cousin looking for?”

  “A computer chip left by her mother right before she died and before computer chips.”

  “Wright-Patt had a lot of gadgets that are now commonplace,” Ernie said.

  “Like what? Stealth bombers?”

  “That and computers.” That was all the Ernie vault would give up because his eyes looked over my shoulder and they were smiling.

  “There’s someone I’d like you to meet MC.”

  I turned a
round and saw a tall and athletic looking woman heading toward the bar and her eyes were locked on Ernie. I had heard from Velma that, after all these years, he had a romantic interest in his life. On a leash and handle alongside her walked a chocolate Labrador. Velma had shared that she and her service dog suffered from PTSD.

  “She served as a Marine, and her job was handling military war dogs,” Velma had told me. “Military war dogs suffer from PTSD. Just like many service men and women. The VA can do only so much. Some of them are lost and homeless.”

  When they got to the bar, she gave an order in what sounded like German, and the Lab sat down under a bar stool in the shade. Ernie walked around and gave her a big hug and then lightly touched the Labrador’s dark head. She got a doggie bowl out of her satchel, and Ernie filled it up with water and placed it near the Lab.

  “MC I’d like you to meet Maggie and her service dog Max.”

  Maggie extended her hand, and I shook it. It was a very strong grip.

  “Pleased to meet you and Max,” I said. When I said his name, Max looked up at me and barked and then settled back into his position. Multi-lingual I thought.

  “That’s interesting,” Maggie said. “He senses something about you MC.”

  “He does?” I asked looking now at Max who looked up at me one more time. I knew a little about dogs like they had a keen sense of smell. “Hope it wasn’t anything wrong with me,” I said.

  “It’s your psychic ability,” Ernie said jokingly, but as I looked at Maggie, it didn’t look like she found that to be funny. She was looking out at the water, something was on her mind.

  I knew Izzy and I could communicate on a psychic level. Maybe the same was true with Max who now sat quietly at Maggie’s feet. He looked up at me as if he was reading my thoughts and then placed his head back down.

  “Max is my service dog. He and I were deployed in Afghanistan. His official title was Military Working Dog or MWD. I was one of the lucky ones and was fortunate to adopt him, and I would like to adopt his sister Molly. I’m trying to find her. She’s dropped off the grid.”