by Rita Moreau
“Who is that?”
“Right now, it’s me. The son’s name is John Long.”
“The local news anchor? The one who’s been on the evening news for years?”
“Yes, that’s him.” Great Josie thought the military, the police and now a well-known TV reporter.
“What about Colonel Storms? He said I should contact him first and he was adamant I follow his directions,” Josie asked.
“As far as I am concerned the Dayton police have sole jurisdiction over this case. He may tell you otherwise. It’s our cold case and if he bothers you, just tell him to contact me. Here is my card.” Josie took the card. The detective had a backbone. She liked that.
“Well, I’ve taken enough of your time. I am sorry to bother you. Once the news dies down, which I am sure it will, you can return to a normal routine.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Hill. It’s just as much as a shock to me as it is to everyone else.”
After seeing him out, Josie closed the door and held the card between her fingers. She felt like she could trust the detective, to a point, but she also felt like matters were escalating. She listened to her messages, and sure enough, she had several from John Long. She had noticed calls from the local news channel but had ignored them along with all other calls from reporters.
“Ms. Yanni this is John Long. I am Harvey Long’s son. We need to talk.”
“Great, just great,” she said out loud.
I’m going by the church and light a candle Mom. Please pray for us.
Chapter 10
Fish Camp, FL
Being busy made the time go by quickly. I called the revenue agents to introduce myself as a CPA working with Mr. La-Fleur. They were not happy with Charlie. He was way overdue in returning the requested information on their cases, and they were threatening to issue a 90-day Notice of Deficiency. If you got one, then you had 90 days to petition the US Tax Court. If you miss that deadline, there are no extensions. You are plain out of luck, and the IRS will send you a bill. You really don’t want that. You want to work with the agents, but if a resolution could not be worked out at the examination or collection levels, you want to cut ties and tell them to send your case to the appeals office. The Office of Appeals has the authority to settle cases on something called the hazards of litigation. That means if your case were to go to court and the government knew they had a fifty-fifty chance of losing then appeals could cut you a deal. Like a 50% concession of the tax, the IRS says you owe. That usually was cheaper than hiring a tax lawyer, but you needed someone like Charlie or me to represent you at the appeals office. You need a CPA who knew how to deal with the IRS which we did, having both worked for the IRS.
Theo and I talked last night, and he told me that he would be out of reach for a couple of days. When we reconnected, Theo told me that to cover the cost of his research vessel, from time to time he took on some contract work with the Navy or the Coast Guard. This required me to stay on land. Usually, I spent the time at Useppa Island where there was a cottage available for me. I say cottage, but that was an understatement.
“Who’s paying for this,” I asked Theo the first time he dropped me off at the cottage.
“Let’s just say you’re getting the government rate,” Theo told me. I didn’t see any point in asking further questions about his assignments with the government. I knew the drill, having been there not too many years ago.
Useppa is a private island north of Fort Myers. It has been known for luxury resorts since the late 19th century. I usually spent my time there alone. You could walk for miles and not see a soul. I could understand why the government would have a safe house on Useppa. Accessible only by boat it wasn’t easy to get to unless you had a yacht. There is both a marina and a club launch for the tourists who have rented a place on Useppa. Those rents were not cheap, and those folks seemed to like their privacy, and my encounters found they were not very sociable. Theo had hinted government witness when I mentioned how quiet I found Useppa Island. Not being one who liked to fish, it was basically long walks and bike rides. I also had a sneaky suspicion that our mutual friend Ernie had referred the Navy work to Theo. Before long, my husband would become a spook if he wasn’t one already. Moving back to Fish Camp and living in the marina with those pirates might find the longtime bond Theo had with Ernie and Velma’s Rodeo back in place. Velma called them the three musketeers.
I headed over to the convent and met Sister Matilda in their herbal garden.
I sat down in the gazebo, and without further ado, Sister Matilda got right to the point and took control of the conversation.
“So, you want to know about Wright-Patt. First things first, why is that?”
“Well, Sister Matilda, you may remember that I have Greek relatives in Dayton, Ohio.”
“Oh yes, delightful. We met them at your wedding.”
“You did. Do you remember Josie and her granddaughter Annie and her sister Alexi?
“Yes, Josie could be your twin, all business like you, she said with a wink. Beautiful granddaughter and Alexi was the one who lives in California. She was in the movies. Very colorful relatives you have back in Dayton.”
“Unfortunately, not to long after the wedding, Alexi suffered a major stroke and has lost much of her memory. It’s almost as if she is a child again at times according to my cousin Josie.”
“Oh dear, I will pray for her,” Sister Matilda said and made the sign of the cross.
“That would be nice, Sister Matilda.”
I waited for a second while Sister Matilda got right to it and closed her eyes and quietly said the prayers.
“Otherwise I’ll forget,” she said. I smiled, and when she opened her eyes, I got back to the reason for my visit. One thing about Sister Matilda was you had to keep her on track. She had so much stuff in her brain that she was easily distracted.
“I need to know about Wright- Patt because Josie’s mother GiGi worked there when she and Alexi were kids. They lived in a house on Xenia in east Dayton. To get to the bottom line, they found a body under an old farmhouse that sits behind the house. It looks like it has been buried there since the time Josie and Alexi were living in the house as kids with GiGi and their YaYa.”
“YaYa is Greek for the grandmother,” Sister Matilda said. “It’s a term of endearment.”
“Yes, she lived with them.” I watched as Sister Matilda’s mind was working. I waited, hoping for history time, a discussion, and a story about a Greek YaYa. But it didn’t follow. Sometimes history time came with extra, long, anecdotal stories. That was when the nuns at the convent broke out the church wine they kept on hand, and those with their medical marijuana cards started vaping.
“Is this the body that has been all over the news lately? Was the body someone they knew?” She was quick, and you had to run to keep up with her, a walking Encyclopedia Britannica. I had to keep in mind that she was also psychic so at times it could get way out of control. I had to keep her on track and get the information I needed today.
I began filling her in with what I knew, “The body they found was Josie’s mother’s boss. His name was Harvey Long. It’s possible that Alexi may have seen something one night when he showed up at the house. She keeps mentioning a body, like a memory that keeps floating in and out of her mind. They're caught in the middle of this, and Josie needs to find out why his body was buried under their property. Josie found out from her mother’s friend Gabby that Harvey Long gave her mother a computer chip the night he showed up at their house. It was the same night that he disappeared. This would have been way before computer chips by the way.”
“I see,” Sister Matilda said. “So, you are going to help her, I take it. You are going to use your talent to locate that chip so Josie can figure out why her mother’s boss showed up buried under their childhood home?” Everything in life could be summed up as a lesson with Sister Matilda, the school teacher.
“Yes, I am. I’ll be using that gift of mine.”
�
��Good the more you use it, the stronger it will become, like working out with weights. We need to get back to the gym by the way,” she said and pointed to her biceps.
“Okay let me tell you about Wright-Patt. Don’t go there, don’t enter there and don’t pass go.”
“I see. Sounds like the witch’s forest.”
“Oh, much worse, MC, much … much … worse. MC, does this have something to do with aliens?”
“Aliens? I don’t know. I was focused on helping Josie find that chip.”
“I feel like it does,” Sister Matilda said, referring to her psychic ability. “Many have long speculated that whatever was found at Roswell was not of this planet and that it was first taken to Wright-Patt along with what was left of the alien ship that crashed. The air force claims to have discontinued its investigation of UFOs around 1969 with the closing of something called the Blue Book,” Sister Matilda said.
“But I guess it has not,” I said to myself. History class was in session.
“There is some speculation that the program is still going strong. I’ve heard it from a few of my male counterparts, priests who heard it from their bishops and so on up that food chain. As nuns, we are not part of that exclusive men’s club, but we keep our ears and eyes open and share information. We have a United Nations, of sorts, amongst the remaining nuns of the order.”
“I do recall that the Catholic Church is interested in aliens,” I said thinking back when Theo and I first got back together. We had a close encounter of the third kind. So I believed in alien life on this planet along with ghosts and spirits. I’d come a long way from the stuffy accountant I was when I first landed back in Fish Camp when my government job was axed.
“Oh yes. Rumor has it that the Vatican Library may even possess the remains of aliens. What better place to hide them?”
“That’s pretty interesting. Why wouldn’t they just get rid of the alien bodies?”
“You mean like a weighted steel drum filled with acid?”
“Well, that has been known to work.” The sisters were fans of Tony Soprano.
Sister Matilda leaned a little closer and whispered, “I heard the bodies could not be destroyed.”
Now I was the one making the sign of the cross.
“It’s a very tough place to visit. It’s not like the air force museum open to the public that is located at Wright-Patt. Most of it is miles below the surface, way underground. Close to hell,” she said with a mischievous chuckle.
“I think I heard something like that from Ernie.”
“It’s been over 50 years since the air force acknowledged an active investigation of extraterrestrial beings. So yeah, they probably are still at it,” Sister Matilda said.
“What did Harvey Long do at Wright-Patt?”
“He worked in that area where they would have brought in the aliens.”
“That tells me Josie’s mother was working in the area where they conducted the UFO investigations. He may have been coming to warn her about something if he showed up one night and gave her a computer chip.”
We both thought about that, two psychic minds at work.
“My educated guess,”—her code word for psychic—“is that it had something to do with some secrets the government wanted buried along with Harvey Long. I’m afraid now that the body has been found the government may come looking to see if those secrets were in danger of being leaked,” Sister Matilda said. “Proof of secrets that were given to your cousin’s mother in that computer chip. That area of Wright-Patt had a lot of sophisticated technology that is very common today.”
“I also heard that from our friend, Ernie,” I said and continued, “so what else do you see in that remarkable mind of yours Sister Matilda?”
“I see the house on Xenia where the body was found.”
“You do, my goodness,” I said, and we both made the sign of the cross, and once again I waited while Sister Matilda said some prayers for the dead.
“That house on Xenia talks by the way,” I said. “My Greek cousins have chatted with it over the years. They say it’s like a YaYa, looks out for the family. My Aunt Toolou who is good friends with that house said it even speaks Greek.”
“Well, you of all people need to listen to that house if it speaks to you. Those are special houses MC. They do exist. Those houses will go to great lengths to protect the ones who live within their walls. Have you ever walked into a house and got a bad feeling?”
“I have,” I said. I was thinking of a room Velma calls the bomb shelter. It’s very susceptible to psychic minds. It’s not really a bomb shelter but a room in the lower part of the old mansion that sits on the convent property, right next to the cemetery. The mansion was bequeathed to their order at the turn of the century by a Florida tycoon. He is buried in the cemetery.
“Paid his way into a Catholic cemetery,” Sister Matilda told me. “You know, like bribing Saint Anthony.” That room doesn’t talk, but it’s still a little freaky.
“Do you see anything else?” I asked Sister Matilda, who then took a deep breath and closed her eyes. I was quiet, very quiet.
“I just see a very old house. It’s dying MC. The family will gather one day around the house to say good-bye, very soon. I don’t see it, but I feel strongly that the chip is hidden in that house. I feel the house knows where that chip is. It is not ready to give it up, but it will be soon. Before it passes,” Sister Matilda said as she opened her eyes and took out a small bottle of holy water and sprayed it on it like perfume.
“Got this at a nun’s conference,” she said as she tucked the bottle back in her habit. “Let’s go for a walk. I can use the exercise, and I need to catch up on my Fitbit steps.”
We got up and followed a path that the nuns used for walking and it was wide enough for the golf carts they used to get around the 10-acre convent.
“If the house on Xenia hid that chip and I feel certain it did, it did so for a reason. That reason is that it is protecting the only family it’s got left, Josie and her sister and her granddaughter. It will protect them to its very last day.”
I thought about that, and I just nodded my head. I felt a shudder go over my body as we walked through the convent cemetery. Someone was walking over my grave.
The House on Xenia
Reader I would like to tell you about Alexi now. She was a favorite of mine.
Alexi was a flower child of the 1960s and 1970s. She was her mother’s daughter. She embodied her spirit and dreams.
She was born in 1945 and was 20 years old in 1965, the height of the 60s. She took off as soon as she could and got a job as a waitress in Hollywood. She rented a small room, and like the other aspiring actresses, she made the calls daily, and in the evenings she attended acting and singing classes. It was at one of those classes she would meet and marry her first husband, a gangster but he had money, and he would do anything to make his wife happy. He put muscle on a well-known Hollywood producer who gave Alexi a bit part in a movie. The movie did well, and so did Alexi. She had talent, and before long she was busy with major roles. She usually played second fiddle to the big star, but that was fine with Alexi since she was biding her time. She divorced the gangster who moved on to a younger actress, and Alexi married a movie producer as her second husband. This turned out to be a mistake since he did not want a wife working in the movies and soon she was blackballed by the studios. One night, at a big Hollywood party, they had a knockdown-dragout fight, and Alexi picked up a gold Oscar he had won, threw it at him, and broke his jaw.
Well, that was the end of that marriage but Hollywood being Hollywood fell in love with Alexi. She divorced the producer and married a younger actor who kept her happy, and when she divorced him, she married someone even younger. She was a little older and still not garnishing the big roles, but she had plenty of supporting roles. She snagged a good part as the secretary in a private eye show on TV, so her face was well known. It typecast her as a tough broad and after the show was canceled so was her caree
r. Parts seldom came her way.
By then she was pushing mid-forties, and as luck would have it, she was approached by some Wall Street types who wanted to use her fame to open a bar and restaurant. They called it The Knock-Out and the bars were called The Oscar. Alexi reinvented herself. She served as the hostess and became famous in that role. She would greet patrons dressed as a glamorous movie star like the ones she idolized as a child. She also became known for her Hollywood movie theme parties. She earned a small fortune which grew since over the years since the Wall Street boys invested well for her. She was getting older and had turned her hostess role over to younger actresses. Her health was not good, and when approached by a corporate tycoon with an offer she couldn’t refuse; she cashed out, sold her holdings in the restaurants, and retired. She was tired of Hollywood. It had changed. She still had a beautiful house on the hills that overlooked LA, and she loved it when Josie and Annie came to visit. She knew her niece Annie had also been bitten by the bug. It was in her genes. They developed a strong bond, like the one she had had with her mother, GiGi. So Alexi turned her attention to mentoring her niece. She took Alexi around to the movie studios and introduced her to important producers and directors. She still had clout in Hollywood. Annie loved it, and Alexi was excited for her because she could spot talent, and her niece had true talent. She wouldn’t be getting second fiddle parts. Her niece would hit the big-time for sure. She and Annie talked, and they made plans for Annie to move out to Hollywood after she graduated from high school. Annie couldn’t wait, but it wasn’t to be. Alexi suffered a major stroke and lost her memory. Before the stroke, she set up a trust for Annie. The house in Hollywood and all her assets would pass to Annie. She wanted to make sure Annie could hold her own with the sharks that populated Hollywood. She could stand up to them since financially she would be set. Josie moved her sister back to Dayton so she could care for her. Her mind was gone but not her heart. She had passed her dreams to her niece who would take up the journey. I am waiting to talk to Annie, and then I will go.
