A Ghost of a Chance

by Cherie Claire

  “But that’s crazy,” Merrill says. “How could you possibly have two birth certificates?”

  She shrugs. “I suppose your grandfather adopted me and somehow got the local hospital to issue another — a fake — birth certificate with his and my mom’s name on it so I would never find out the truth.”

  “People don’t do that,” Merrill insists.

  “You’d be surprised,” I insert and both women look at me. I shrug. “I’m from Louisiana. That kind of thing happens all the time.”

  At this point, Annie turns to me and studies me hard. “The real question, Merrill, is why your friend here knew I was adopted when I haven’t told a soul.”

  Only minutes before I felt confident and eager to solve this mystery. Gazing into the face of a woman raised in secrecy and deceit who suddenly discovered her life was a lie, my courage fails me. “It’s that ghost-seeing thing I told you about,” is all I can manage.

  I sense Merrill catching up. “Does this have to do with those girls who went missing?”

  I shake my head, but truth is, I suspect Gene Tanner had something to do with Lori’s murder. I’m determined to find out but first I need to bring Annie to Lori’s room where hopefully my ghostly roommate of the past week will be satisfied and move on to heaven or wherever trapped spirits go when they are finally released. I swallow hard, knowing I must ask Annie the inevitable. “What was your birth mother’s name?”

  After a week in hell the heavens indeed part and I can almost hear angels singing. Three words and my heart soars.

  “Her name was Lauralei Annabelle Thorne.”

  After more questions fly across our cozy space by the bay window, I hold up my hand and insist we take a trip. We all climb inside Merrill’s Prius and the three of us head up Spring Street to the Crescent Hotel and a lonely young woman who never got a chance to see her baby grow up. I’m praying my instincts are correct and Annie is indeed Lori’s child.

  I explain everything that had occurred the past week to both Merrill and Annie: Lori visiting me in my room, the pained look on her face as she held her arms like cradling a child; my visions that involved James Leatherwood; and how I’m fairly positive Lori’s baby was his. I haven’t connected the dots yet and I look in the rear-view mirror to Merrill for support.

  “You need to tell her,” she answers softly.

  “Tell me what?” Annie asks.

  We park outside the Crescent and I turn in my seat to face her. “I believe that James Leatherwood, your father, was James Caballero, the son of an Italian immigrant from Ohio.”

  Poor Annie, what a morning of revelations, and coming from a ghost-whispering Louisiana survivor of Katrina, no doubt suffering from PSTD. Her face pales once more and this time, I take her hand. “He lied and changed his name because he wanted to work here as a teacher and he didn’t have the credentials — or the right name for that matter.”

  “But how do you know this?” Annie asks.

  I can’t help but laugh. How indeed? “The same way I knew those girls had been assaulted and murdered. I see these ghosts, have visions through their eyes. I can’t explain it. I didn’t have this gift until that bitch Katrina came to town. Oh, sorry ma’am, pardon my French.”

  “It’s not French,” Annie adds, which makes me smile. I do so love people who appreciate language.

  “I also think that Lori left school when she found out she was pregnant. Perhaps her parents were urging her to give the baby up for adoption and she came back here hoping James would do the right thing and she could keep her child.” Honestly, I don’t know why I think this but I’m rolling with my intuition — or perhaps someone on the other side is feeding it and I’m listening, like the good girl my aunt told me to be. “Why she was murdered, I don’t know.”

  All three of us shiver at the same time and Annie covers her mouth to stifle a gasp.

  “James didn’t kill her,” I quickly add.

  Annie closes her eyes tightly. “No,” she says, “but he had something to do with it.”

  I don’t argue, have always thought the same thing, and we exit the car and walk silently through the lobby and up to the fourth floor, back to my home of the past few days. We stand outside my room and Merrill and Annie look to me as if I know what to do next. I shrug, then knock on the door. First things first, I think, find out if anyone’s in there. A maid opens the door and looks at us questioningly and it’s then I remember what I’m wearing.

  “I’m showing these two ladies around,” I tell the maid as if I work there. “They have a wedding coming up and wanted to see some room examples.”

  “Oh sure,” the maid says, and grabs her cart and heads out the door.

  “We just need a few minutes,” I tell her back.

  She waves me off. “No worries. I have several open rooms on this floor so take your time.”

  I immediately close the door and lock it, amazed at my good fortune, then look around for my familiar friend. She’s nowhere to be found and my heart sinks. What if she doesn’t show?

  “Now what?” Merrill asks.

  “I don’t know. There’s no guidebook to this stuff.”

  Minutes go by and nothing so Merrill and I make ourselves comfortable on the bed. Annie walks around the room nervously, wiping her palms on her jeans and looking inside the closet, the bathroom, behind the TV credenza as if Lori is playing hide and seek. After another five minutes, I can’t stand it anymore. “Lori,” I shout out. “Where are you?”

  Again, nothing and suddenly my confidence evaporates, replaced by my old friend, neurosis. I stole my brother’s trip to Hawaii and flew up here on a whim when I should have been home salvaging my career, if I still have one. I need to look for another newspaper job before I run out of money and I need to make amends with my ex-husband who’s been supportive through this ghostly nightmare. Eventually, I have to apologize to my mom. What the hell am I doing here? I think. I lean forward and hang my head in my hands, trying to still the anxiety. I’m the biggest fool, trying to solve a mystery from the nineteen twenties, of a ghost no less!

  “Vi.” Merrill’s voice brings me back and I straighten, watch as a mist appears at Annie’s back morphing into the face and stature of a young hopeful woman. I rise and call out her name, but Lori only has eyes for her missing baby girl.

  Annie turns and the delight that spreads over both their faces takes my breath away. The resemblance is uncanny. They gaze upon each other as if old friends finally reunited, as if the fact that neither has seen each other since the day Annie was born is irrelevant, and I see a tear escape down Annie’s cheek while Merrill cries softly to my right.

  “Lauralei Annabelle Thorne,” I say, trying to quell the lump in my throat, “meet your daughter, Melinda Annabelle Leatherwood.”

  The four of us remain like this for what seems like an eternity — Lori gazing upon her grown daughter with love and pride, no doubt aching to touch her; Annie absorbing every inch of the mother she never knew; Merrill sniffling as she watches from the bed; and me standing there amazed that I got it right. I think about that again. I did this. I solved this mystery.

  “I have so many questions.” Annie pleadingly looks my way.

  “She’s never talked to me.”

  We both gaze back at Lori who shakes her head. I can’t help but wonder why the mysterious Michael, if he was a ghost, could walk, talk and knead me like bread but this poor murdered soul stands mute. One of a million questions I have for Carmine, when I catch up with him next.

  Suddenly, Lori starts to fade, although the smile never leaves her lips, and we all gasp at the thought of her moving on. I wonder if she will disappear into the light like Sam Wheat in Ghost, crying out to us that the love we have in life goes with us in the end because one thing’s for sure, the hairs on my arms are tingling with the love radiating through this room.

  Panic seizes me thinking that the ghost tours at the Crescent will continue naming her Annabelle the suicidal coed, relating repeatedly tha
t she jumped off the balcony like those overdramatic ghost shows on A&E. I don’t want this precious young woman who suffered in life to be reduced to a sappy Hollywood story.

  “Lori, before you go,” I call out, “how were you murdered?”

  She looks my way and blinks slowly as a soft white halo appears behind her head. I get the message, and I know I have very little time. I close my eyes and feel myself drifting away, like I did the first evening spent in this room. This time, however, I kneel to avoid a fall and in an instant I’m back in the nineteen twenties watching the crime unfold.

  At first, Lori’s standing in James’ office, dressed in dirty clothes, her hair mussed and shoes covered in mud; outside it’s pouring like the night I left Eureka Springs. Lori’s no longer pregnant but her belly betrays her last few months. James jumps from his desk and grabs her by the shoulders, taking her in from head to toe. “What on earth? Why are you here? What happened?”

  “I had your child,” Lori pleads, “and my parents won’t let me keep her. You have to help me.”

  James’ eyes widen in shock, making me convinced men are the most clueless species on earth. He makes love to a student and she leaves school a few weeks later and it never occurs to him why? His next words prove me wrong, however, and now I see him for the cad he truly is. “I’m engaged. Judith Tavers, the home economics teacher and I are going to be married in another week.”

  Lori jerks back, stunned. I think she’s going to unravel on the spot, her mouth agape as if to scream or cry. James wraps an arm about her to steady her while placing a hand over her mouth. “Please don’t cry. I never meant for this to happen. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  Lori pushes him away, this time more in control, angry. “I don’t care anymore about you. If you want to marry someone else, then so be it. But you have to help me keep my baby. You owe me this much.”

  A bell rings and doors open in the hallway outside his office. James quickly closes the door as a mass of students are heard walking the hallway. The wheels are turning inside his head. He’s trapped and he’s trying to figure a way out. Finally, after a few moments and the noise outside disappears, he takes Lori by the shoulders once more. “Elizabeth Hawkins has mono and went home yesterday. She’s living in Blair’s old room and I have the key.” He swallows and we all know why that key is in his possession. “Go there, take a bath and get some clean clothes on.”

  “And then what?” Lori is all business now, stern and unyielding. Amazing how in addition to a child, motherhood brings steel to fuse with a woman’s spine.

  James is surprised at her transformation. This is not a teenage girl who will do as she’s told. “I have play rehearsal right now,” he stutters. “As soon as it’s done, I’ll come up to the room.”

  Lori pulls out the birth certificate from her purse and displays it in front of his face. “I want my baby, James. Do you understand me? Either you help me, James Caballero, or I’ll tell everyone who the father is and what he is.”

  He sees his name on the birth certificate, but he’s not playing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “That night in Tanner’s office downstairs. I heard it all. I know who you really are.”

  James retaliates like a trapped animal. “And how am I supposed to know that I’m really the father?”

  Lori slaps James so hard the sound reverberates in my head and I can almost feel his pain. A red welt appears on James’ cheek and I want to cheer, “Go Lori!” except that this is all so tragically sad.

  Silently, James heads to his desk and removes a key from the back of a drawer and hands it to Lori. “I’ll wrap up rehearsals early and come to you as soon as I can. We’ll work this out. I promise.”

  I’m now in Lori’s room, or Elizabeth’s, and the décor reflects another girl’s personality, more frou-frou and lace, less books and papers. Lori’s soaking naked in the tub, softly crying, when Gene Tanner enters. It’s the first time I’ve seen the murderer up close and whole, and he scares me more in full flesh than he ever did. Tanner’s dressed in a trench coat poked with stains that I fear are blood. His hair’s slicked back with some oily substance with several dirty strands hanging over his beady eyes which show no semblance of kindness or love. He’s on a mission, heading straight to the bathroom.

  I scream out but of course no one can hear me and within seconds in this vision the deed is done, Lori drowned in her tub by Tanner merely holding her forehead and torso down by force. He stands and uses a towel to dry the water Lori splashed around the tub in an effort to save herself. My heart breaks seeing my dear friend lifeless in the bath, one hand draped over the tub’s edge, palm up, as if waiting to hold her baby one last time. “No,” I scream out again, but nothing emerges from my throat, like those awful dreams where you can’t speak no matter how hard you try.

  Just before Tanner leaves, James enters the room, and the two nearly bump into each other. “What are you doing here?” James asks, deeply shocked for the second time that day.

  Tanner throws the towel at James, who catches it and looks at it questioningly. “You reneged on your promise, Professor. You told the police where I was. I came back to return the favor.”

  Tanner shoves James out of the way and heads out the door. James rushes to the bathroom and cries out when he sees what Tanner has done. He grabs Lori, pulling her into his chest and rocks her while he sobs and apologizes over and over again. I almost feel sorry for the man. Maybe he would have done the right thing. Maybe not. No one will ever know.

  I can only imagine that James feared a scandal because once he calmed down and starting thinking, he removed the birth certificate from her purse and stuffed it in his coat pocket. Then he dressed Lori in Elizabeth’s clothes and, when no one was looking, pushed her dead body over the balcony edge.

  I wake up with a start, still kneeling on the hotel room floor. I’m too stunned, too horrified by what I just saw to say anything, having difficulty breathing. I simply gaze up at Lori as she fades into this light that replaces the horror with something warm and loving. Just before she disappears into the heavenly mist, she sends me a smile that seems to say “Thank you.” I smile back, happy that at least one mother in this world saw her daughter one last time.

  Once we’re all back to the living plane and Lori has moved on, Annie begins to cry. Merrill jumps up to comfort her mother and I rise from the floor to perch on the side of the bed, commanding myself to breathe. My head’s spinning but that buzzing now retreats to a distant hum and I am able to calm my rapid heartbeat. After a while we regain command over our emotions and I hear the maid’s cartwheels squeaking in our direction.

  “I think we all could use a drink,” Merrill suggests. We exit the room as the maid turns the corner, wondering, no doubt, why a look inside a hotel room took twenty minutes.

  The Baker Bar is buzzing with people so Annie, Merrill and I find a table in a back corner, ignoring the suggestion of the waitress that we fight the crowds and enjoy the spring weather on the balcony.

  “But it’s so beautiful outside,” she insists, when we take our seats in admittedly the worst spot in the bar.

  “This is perfect,” I say, and I mean every word. Think I’ll avoid balconies for a very long time.

  Annie and Merrill are anxious to know what happened to me on the floor of that room, but I’m not sure how much to divulge. I explain that my visions confirmed what I had feared, that after Lori had given birth to Annie she traveled to the school in an effort to get James on board. Tanner had fled Eureka Springs after Blair’s disappearance and I relayed what Maddox had told me, that there were two months of his whereabouts unaccounted for after he left Pennsylvania.

  “Why, though,” Merrill asks me. “Why would he kill my grandmother?”

  I turn my napkin around and around with the tip of my index finger, wondering how to spin this tale. “He was an evil man. And I don’t think he liked James very much. I believe he killed Lori to get back at James.”


  “Why did he dislike my father?” Annie asks me.

  I shrug my shoulders and the two Seligmans send me a puzzled look. I know they doubt every word but they don’t inquire and I say no more.

  “It all makes sense now,” Annie says. “After my father married my mother, they must have adopted me. But I doubt my mother was happy about it. She must have known why.”

  Annie studies the ice in her drink, turning solemn. “I always thought my mother didn’t love me, but dad insisted she favored Brad over me because mothers have a special relationship with their sons. And since my dad always doted on me I dealt with it.”

  “Brad is Letitia’s father,” Merrill adds.

  I had forgotten about the mayor. “What’s Letitia going to think about her grandfather being a fake?” I ask. “She’ll hunt me down and murder me for sure.”

  The drinks arrive and we pause in our conversation until the waitress leaves, then Annie leans forward so only our ears will hear. “No one’s going to know about this. It’s our little secret. Okay, girls?”

  I want so badly to argue that poor Lori is the nightly subject of ghost tours with tourists watching the hotel’s balcony at ten-thirty every evening in hopes of seeing a frickin’ mist. After witnessing what really happened, I’m appalled that a young girl’s murder has become entertainment. I vow never to watch another TV ghost show again. But Annie’s right. It’s too difficult to explain and it tarnishes the reputation of one of the town’s leading citizens, not to mention his granddaughter running for office.

  On second thought….

  “She pulled out of the race,” Merrill says, as if she reads my mind. “The newspaper finally looked into that utility company wanting to come in and a lot of unpleasant things were uncovered, starting with a nice payoff to a couple members of the city council.”