Beyond This Time: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel

by Charlotte Banchi

  Mitch whirled around at the comment. A smiling Kathleen Templeton stood at the top of the stairs, her dimples bigger and deeper than ever.

  “Hey, partner.” The two words were the most he could get out.

  He took the stairs two at a time until he reached the top then scooped Kat in his arms and carried her down to the waiting room. When he placed her on the sofa she wouldn’t let go of his neck until he sat beside her.

  “I wanted you to come,” she said, as tears filled her eyes. “I prayed and prayed.”

  He kissed her cheek. “I’m here, kid. I’m here.”

  Mitch heard someone sniff and looked up in time to catch Dreama wiping tears off her cheeks. Their eyes locked and she nodded, as close to an apology as he would get.

  Kat gasped in surprise. “Is that…?”

  Mitch jumped in before blurted out something about the future housekeeping manager. “Kat, I’d like you to meet, Dreama Simms. And that’s Taxi Devore over by the stairs. These two brought you to Dr. Biggers clinic.”

  “Holy shit,” she muttered, as the couple crossed the room.

  “You looking a whole lot better than the last time I seen you,” Dreama said.

  “And you’re looking a whole lot younger than the last time I saw you,” Kat responded, then jumped slightly as Mitch poked her in the side.

  “Taxi and I met last night at Bubba’s Julep Junction,” Mitch said, trying to cover her faux pas. “He’s been a real help locating you.”

  Kat turned to him. “Bubba’s? But you always go to The Blue.”

  “Dreama works at The Blue,” Mitch interrupted. “She plays the—”

  “That’s right,” Kat said to the woman, “you’re a singer.”

  “Not anymore, honey,” Dreama said quietly. “Not anymore.”

  “Now she’s the best piano player east of the Mississippi,” Taxi said proudly. “None better.”

  Dreama reached for Taxi’s hand. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Hey, I don’t know about the rest of y’all,” Biggers said, interrupting the awkward moment, “but I’m hungry.”

  “Then get out there and fix yourself something to eat, Timothy,” Lettie Ruth said.

  Biggers moved toward the kitchen. “You’d think I’d get a little respect around here,” he grumbled. “It is my house and my clinic.”

  “Then you ought to be doin’ all the cooking,” Lettie Ruth declared.

  The knock on the front door waylaid Biggers’ next salvo and he yelled, “I’m closed!”

  “You can’t close,” Lettie Ruth scolded. “This is a doctor’s office and you’re the doctor.”

  “I’m always closed on Tuesday’s. Besides, you’re the nurse.”

  “What’s that ‘pose to mean?”

  Biggers plopped down in the arm chair. “It means go get the door.”

  Lettie Ruth clucked her tongue and gave him a sharp look. “You behave yourself,” she whispered, as she opened the door. “It’s only Alvin, so you can relax.”

  Biggers grinned and kicked his shoes off. “Howdy, Preacher,” he called over his shoulder.

  Mitch felt Kat stiffen when her father walked into the room. He was equally on edge. He’d been through more than enough family reunions lately.

  Alvin Rayson glanced around the room. His gaze settled on the two people seated on the sofa. “Good to see you again, Miss Kat.” He walked over and extended his hand to Mitch. “Alvin Rayson.”

  Mitch stood and took his hand. Slightly taken aback by the sight of a young Pop, he was at a loss for words. “Mitch … James Mitchell.”

  “Miss Kat came to the Ladies Prayer Breakfast this morning,” Rayson announced. “By the by, I didn’t see anybody else in this room sittin’ in the pews.”

  “Alvin, me and your sister heard you practicing that sermon so many times we could of got up and preached it ourselves,” Dreama said.

  “It wouldn’t have been near as good,” Kat said, her voice catching.

  Rayson’s chest puffed out. “About time we got somebody around here that knows what they are talkin’ about.”

  “That’s cause she don’t have to sit and listen to you all the time, Alvin,” Dreama said.

  “Food,” Biggers croaked, feigning imminent death by starvation. “I need food.”

  Lettie Ruth grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet. “Then get your lily white butt out in the kitchen. On second thought, stay right where you are.” She gave him a little shove and he fell back in the chair.

  “This mean you’re gonna cook for me?” Biggers asked, as she turned and walked away.

  “No, I’m cooking for everybody else,” she said over her shoulder. “You can go down to the Daisy Wheel Café.”

  He turned to the group for sympathy. “Y’all think she ought to be able to kick a man out of his own kitchen?”

  “Don’t know if she ought to,” Taxi said. “But I’m on my way to that kitchen to help out before I end up at the Daisy Wheel.”

  “Mitch?” Biggers pleaded.

  “Don’t know nothin’ about cookin’, Miz Scarlett,” the King of Rock and Roll said.

  Kat groaned.

  “I heard that, Mitch,” Lettie Ruth yelled. “You go right along with Timothy, both y’all can eat at that tacky café.”

  =TWENTY=

  APRIL 03—WEDNESDAY

  After sleeping until almost noon, Mitch felt half human for the first time since leaving his own Maceyville. He spent the early afternoon helping out in the clinic, or as Lettie Ruth called it, “getting in her way.” An hour ago she’d dismissed him from medical duty and sent him outdoors to “play.”

  He exited the house via the kitchen door and found Kat seated in an Adirondack chair. The back yard was hidden behind a screen of tall junipers so he felt it safe to join her. As he crossed the lawn his eyes wandered over the three-storied clapboard, admiring the roses blooming on the trellis. Now he knew where Lettie Ruth had gotten the fragrant flowers he’d seen in nearly every room.

  The doctor had told him the clinic had once been the Heart of Dixie Hotel. When Biggers’ began to remodel, he’d left the lobby intact so he could live in the manager’s quarters behind the front desk. The large rectangular dining room, across the foyer from the lobby, he’d divided into four examination rooms. The original kitchen, at the rear of the building and accessed by walking down the narrow front hall, he updated with modern appliances.

  On the second floor, four of the six guest rooms—three on each side of the open U-stairwell—served as a hospital. Of the remaining two rooms, Biggers converted one into an office, the second into a TV room and medical supply storage. He said he’d blown most of his budget on the bath at the head of the stairs. He’d gutted the old bathroom and rebuilt from the ground up, equipping it with a large sunken whirlpool tub and a separate shower.

  Lettie Ruth lived alone on the third floor, where she had her choice of six bedrooms and a private bath. No whirlpool.

  “Did you know we’re staying in the former Heart of Dixie Hotel?” Mitch asked as he made himself comfortable in the empty Adirondack chair.

  Kat whistled. “Heart of Dixie, huh? Sounds kind of upscale for the east Hollow.”

  “I don’t think an east or west Maceyville existed in the 1800s. If there had been, I’m sure the city council would have moved the boundary lines to accommodate the hotel.”

  “I noticed a lot of land attached to this place,” she said. “Must be two or three acres.”

  “In our time this whole area is a run down trailer park.”

  She pointed to the elaborately landscaped lawn. “How does Biggers pay for the upkeep on all those bushes?”

  “No upkeep. A few patients pay off their medical bills by doing the yard work.”

  “I wish somebody would offer to do my gardening in exchange for policing their neighborhood.”

  “In your dreams,” he said. “We’re lucky to get a free cup of coffee on Christmas.”

  She rested
her on the chair backs and closed her eyes. “This trip didn’t exactly turn out the way I’d planned,” she said, wincing at a sudden pain. “About the time I think I have a handle on the rape, I go into a tailspin.”

  Mitch stared at his partner. The bruises and black eye were ugly reminders of what had happened to her and he found it difficult to keep up the light banter. He didn’t know what to say. He felt as helpless as he had when the doctors diagnosed Lisa’s brain aneurysm. All the time Lisa spent in the hospital, he’d never said the right thing. He’d sat beside her bed like a mute, a living ghost no one could see or hear. He didn’t exist. And now someone else needed him. He prayed for the right words.

  “It will take time, Kat. No one expects you to act like nothing happened,” he said, knowing his response didn’t come close to what he wanted to say. Or what she needed to hear.

  “I thought I would be a stronger person.” She opened her eyes and stared across the gently sloping lawn. “Everything scares me now. A floorboard creaks outside my room and I imagine the boogie man. Yesterday, two twelve-year-old boys walked me home from church because I couldn’t do it alone.”

  “Once we’re home, out of this crazy place, things will get better.”

  “No, they won’t, Mitch. I’ll be carrying these bruises until the end of my life. Nothing will heal them except seeing those three bastards in jail.”

  Mitch agreed. Unfortunately, given the time and place, he knew their crimes would go unpunished. He also suspected Kat knew this as well, which provided the fuel for her fears.

  “I’ll never know what you went through,” he said. “Or what you are going through now. But I’m willing to listen, and help in anyway I can.”

  “Then start helping by taking me home.”

  The next few minutes weren’t going to help his partner. They would probably do the exact opposite, but there was no way around it, she had to know. “I’ve got a couple of things to tell you, before we get into all that.”

  Kat sat upright in the chair, her honey-colored eyes frightened. “What’s wrong?”

  She knew him too well. She’d already read the bad news message in his face. He took a deep breath. “Pop had a heart attack yesterday morning.” Mitch knew his approach lacked diplomacy and tact, but there was never an easy way to deliver bad news.

  “Is he… Is he okay?”

  “The doctor said his heart is bad, honey.” Mitch looked at his shoes. The anguish he saw in her face broke his heart.

  “I never considered the strain my coming back here would put on him. He sat right beside me, his arm around my shoulder and told me how bad things were in 1963.” She shook her head. “But I didn’t listen.”

  “But he’s been talking this way for years. His heart attack was just a matter of time, you know how he eats. It’s not your fault.”

  “Thinking about Pop lying in a hospital all alone, with no family around to comfort him, is crushing the life out of me,” she said, rocking back and forth.

  He reached across the space between their chairs and squeezed her hand. “Don’t do this to yourself. He knows where you are and Alvin understands why you’re not with him.”

  She brushed a tear off her cheek. “You know, yesterday I thought the only reason you were here was because we’re partners and you were going to watch my six. The Red and Black team live and in person in 1963.”

  “God, Kat, I wanted to come with you. But I didn’t have your courage. I sensed something really bad would happen to me if I went with you. That’s why I balked.”

  “Then why put yourself in the middle of all this now?”

  Mitch shrugged. “Hey, bad voodoo or not, when you need me I’ll always be there for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “‘Tis nothing m’lady.” He took her hand. “I talked to Alvin yesterday, and I guess there are a few things he forgot to tell you. He was worried.”

  “Then I’m right, his heart attack was triggered by my stupid trek into the past.” She took a deep breath. “What did he forget?”

  “I don’t know. His machines started beeping before we got a chance to talk about it, and the doctor kicked me out of the CCU.”

  Her grip tightened on his hand. “We have to go home, Mitch. Go home today.”

  “Can’t go today.”

  “Then when?”

  “Let me check.” He pulled his hand free and took the tattered Arson/Fatality computer printout from his back pocket. He studied the names and times. “Looks like we aren’t going anywhere until Friday.”

  “This is so wrong,” Kat said. “Pop’s in the hospital and I’m thirty-seven years and three days away from him.”

  “You have zero control over this issue, Kathleen. We came through at a certain time and we have to leave at a certain time.”

  “He needs me, Mitch.”

  “Your Pop’s a tough old bird. He knows the score; he’ll still be around on Friday.”

  “That’s April 5. Mitch. The same day Lettie Ruth…” Kat’s voice dropped off, her thoughts unspoken.

  A gust of wind rattled the paper in his hand. “We still have time to make some changes in the past. It’s not too late for Lettie Ruth.”

  “Right now I’m more concerned with Pop’s future. Besides, the past has already changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You and me, Mitch.” She waved in the direction of the clinic. “We weren’t part of their lives before. But what happened to me has drawn this group together.”

  “They weren’t total strangers before you came along. Their relationships were already established.”

  “Those were different relationships. Now they have new ones.”

  “I don’t know. Things seem pretty much SOP around here. Everyone seems to have followed through with the whatever they were doing, or planned to do, before you and I showed up.” He said the words, recited the litany but in his heart he knew better.

  Kat shook her head. “Wrong, partner. I can name three changes since our arrival.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how Lettie and Dreama didn’t go to the Ladies Prayer Breakfast yesterday. You really think my aunt would have missed hearing her brother preach the first time if not for me?”

  Mitch grunted and picked at a mosquito bite on his arm.

  She held up two fingers. “I’ve heard Pop tell the story of how he and Lettie Ruth took part in the Birmingham lunch counter sit-in on this date and got arrested a hundred times. But they didn’t go today and he’s been here all afternoon. Mitch, he’s suppose to be in jail.”

  “That’s a big change.”

  “Glad I got your attention,” Kat said. “And the third thing, because they were out looking for me, Lettie Ruth and Taxi ended up in the wrong part of town this morning and got jumped.”

  Mitch’s freckles popped out on his too red face in response to her last statement.

  “Rein it in, boy,” she cautioned. “We’ve had our share of troubles with that bunch, don’t stir it up.”

  “Damn it!” he roared, jumping out of the chair. His long legs got tangled in the arm rest and as he shook them free the chair flipped over. “I’ve had enough of this racist shit. What in the hell is the matter with the people in this town?”

  “That’s just the way things are. It’s 1963, Mitch.”

  “1963 sucks big time.”

  “No argument on that point.” Kat drew up her knees and pulled the yellow dress skirt over them then patted the end of the chair. “Sit down here and listen to me.”

  “Don’t feel like sitting,” he grumbled.

  “Sit, stand. I don’t care what you do … as long as you pay attention. This is not our time, Mitch. We don’t belong here and our dumb mistakes will bring a world of hurt down on these people.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “We have to let the past remain the past,” she said sadly.

  “That past include Lettie Ruth?”

  She nodded. “Remember
your speech about making a ripple in the pond? Well, our ripple is turning into a tsunami. If we change what originally happened, we could end up getting more people hurt.”

  “I don’t see anything like that happening,” he argued. “Missing a church service and one sit-in doesn’t fall in the disaster category. Nobody has gotten hurt.”

  “All right, then what about the car full of rednecks that chased you and Taxi? Would that have happened if you’d been asleep in your apartment early yesterday, instead of getting into brawls down at Bubba’s Julep Junction?”

  “I handled the situation. Taxi won’t have any more trouble out of them.”

  “Oh yeah? I’ll bet next month’s pay those boys will be looking for his green De Soto for a long time to come.”

  “Come on, Kat. They don’t have any reason to go after him again.”

  “They don’t need a reason. Taxi is a Negro. Not a black man. Not an African-American. But a Negro. And that same Negro got caught ridin’ around in a car with a white man. That dog don’t bark down here.”

  “They could’ve chased him any time. Doesn’t mean it’s my fault.” Mitch felt like a fool, but he couldn’t let her keep thinking along these lines. She’d been through enough without adding the rest of the world’s troubles to her load.

  “If I’m willing to take my share of the blame, you should do the same,” she lectured. “Yesterday morning Lettie Ruth was supposed to be in church, not on a road with Taxi. And she and Pop were supposed to sitting at a lunch counter in Birmingham this afternoon. Hear me on this, none of these things happened before.”

  “Who’s to say we’re the catalysts?” he argued.

  “Stop it, right now,” she ordered. “You know we’re at the heart of these changes. We have to leave the past alone. Otherwise, we’ll create a bigger mess. Now, what time can we leave on Friday?”

  “On Friday,” he ran his finger down the names. “we can leave at— Shit.”

  “We have to go.” Kat grabbed his wrist. “Please, Mitch. I don’t think I can stay here much longer.”

  He shook free of her grasp and held up his hand. “Lettie Ruth’s name is on the list now and she dies on Sunday instead of Friday April 5. That’s two days later. And other names have been added since we started this conversation.”