Ghost Gifts

by Laura Spinella

  “Believe me; I’m not looking for the adrenaline rush, just the truth. I’m going into this eyes wide open.” Aubrey’s hand dropped from his cheek. She turned her attention toward the diner. “If this were your interview, would you let anything stop you?”

  “Short of being hit by a train?”

  “Okay, then,” she said, looking back. “Why should I allow anything to stop me?”

  He started to object, the dimple forced into a false smile. “On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you feel the slightest bit threatened, whatever that means to you, and I’m not talking about Delacort, you leave. You don’t take time to make excuses. You get up and walk out. I mean it.”

  Her breath was doing it again, the fluttery movement of air she’d felt last night. But inside the car was more intimate than a restaurant vestibule, a space busy with a bar and a longtime girlfriend a few feet away. “Levi . . .” No one leaned in; it was more like gravity, his mouth moving deftly over hers. Aubrey’s arms rose, needing to hold on to him. Her mind took exception, feeling a sharp pang of betrayal. This was wrong. This shouldn’t be happening. But like the woozy lure of champagne, Aubrey wanted more. She wanted Levi to kiss her again, to tell her he wanted the two of them to be someplace, anyplace where the focus was only . . . kissing. But before the moment clarified, the kissing stopped. Levi’s forehead and heated thoughts bumped against hers. She still held tight to his arm. Aubrey blinked fast, her peripheral glance catching a man in a hooded sweatshirt, his gait hurried. “Damn, this is it.”

  Levi inched back. “Here?”

  “What?” she said, looking between the diner and Levi. “No. Delacort. He just went inside.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” She let go. Aubrey only wanted to feel the crisp cotton of Levi’s shirtsleeve—all businesslike and orderly. Instead it was the quixotic sensation of the taut muscle of his arm that lingered. “You . . . you’ll follow right behind?” she said.

  “Count on it.”

  Aubrey gathered her satchel and reached for the door handle. Her gaze flitted back. She smiled, wiping a smudge of lipstick from his mouth. “That might stand out.”

  “Thanks,” he said, repeating the swipe himself.

  “Thanks for the extra camouflage.”

  “Camouflage?”

  “Color isn’t the only deterrent at my disposal. The more divided my thoughts . . . emotions, the more difficult it becomes for any spirit to make itself known.”

  “So kissing is a tactic. Like you could have just as easily kissed Blake in photography?”

  Aubrey stepped out of the car, then ducked back in. “No, it wouldn’t work with Blake. Cute as he is, the wrath of his boyfriend would make it totally not worth it. And for that particular distraction to have any influence, I need to feel something in return.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Aubrey moved through the diner, her focus not completely on Missy or Frank. The taste of Levi was redolent—powerful. She was halfway across a worn linoleum floor when the heady aromas of coffee and all-day breakfast finally grew stronger. Aubrey was grateful for unexpected and ordinary things. She saw vinyl-covered booths and a well-traveled atmosphere. People were scattered about, caught up in early-bird dinners and destinations. Seated in the rear of the diner was the man in the hooded jacket. He had salt and pepper hair, close-cropped to his head. Distance couldn’t hide the awkwardness with which he sat, the come-and-go setting foreign and removed. “Mr. Delacort?” she said, approaching. He gripped a glass of water as if stunned by the simple sensation of ice. His head ticked left, reacting to her voice, a feminine voice, in the same dumbfounded manner.

  “Yeah. I’m Frank.”

  “Aubrey Ellis.” Extending her hand would have been the polite thing to do, but touch was more risk than she was willing to assume. He didn’t seem miffed by the lack of etiquette, his chin cocking at the seat opposite him. It wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t friendly. The immediate air, laden with greasy food smells, made her stomach churn. Aubrey tried not to glance in Levi’s direction. He’d just taken a seat out of Frank’s line of vision, a newspaper in front of him. Aubrey thought he might as well be holding it upside down.

  “Thank you for agreeing to this,” she said, sitting. Frank’s gaze moved over her like a metal detector. “Let me, um . . . Let me start by saying that I’d like to hear things from your perspective. I’d like to help.” Frank stared blankly, as though help was the last thing on his mind. “We can show the public, our readers, what this whole ordeal has been like for you. Everything from being accused of the murder of a girl you barely knew to your time in . . . well—”

  “Prison?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Other than to sell newspapers, why would you be interested in any of it? No one from the Surrey City Press has come around on visiting day for the past twenty years.” He held a pack of cigarettes in his hand. “‘Course, guess I’d make a good . . . what do you call it? Human interest piece?” He turned the unopened pack over and over, tapping it on the tabletop. “Nobody’s wanted to talk about the state of my humanity for ages. But a body falls out of a wall, and . . . Bang!” He let the pack of cigarettes fly, his fist splaying wide. Aubrey startled. “Suddenly everybody wants a meeting.” He laughed. “Almost as bad as I want a damn cigarette.” He glanced at posted no smoking signs. “You know how long it’s been since I sat in a diner, Miss Ellis?” She cinched her shoulders. “I didn’t have a clue you couldn’t grab a smoke. That’s how long.”

  “Fortunately, people better appreciate the hazards of smoking.” Aubrey cleared her throat. “Your situation is news, Mr. Delacort. That’s not my fault. It’s just my job. I’m sorry if that offends you.”

  “I was right about you—you got guts, lady. I could tell that on the phone.” He flashed a dazzling smile and Aubrey felt a tickle of déjà vu. “But here’s the thing. The police screwed up plenty the first time around. Maybe they’ve got it all wrong again. So why should I believe that you’re here to help me?”

  Aubrey scrambled to organize her thoughts, amazed how swiftly she’d managed to botch the interview. She glanced at Levi, who offered an encouraging nod. Regrouping, she shuffled through her satchel for her phone. “Do you mind? I’d like to record our conversation.” Aubrey tapped the screen. In reply, Frank reached across the table and grabbed the device. Aubrey’s eyes went wide; Levi stood.

  “It would be polite to wait until I answered.” He handed it back. “Pass on the audio. Last time I sat with a running tape recorder, it was on a reel. It also didn’t end in my favor.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. She took the phone back, gingerly, and put it away. Levi lowered himself back into his booth, although it looked as if he were waiting for the sound of a starter pistol. “I’d like to begin with a few questions about you and Missy.”

  “I . . . I didn’t mean to snap,” Frank said, his mood revolving. “Bad impulse . . . A lifelong habit.”

  “Uh-huh,” she murmured, wondering if he’d used the same excuse on Missy. “Is that all right? Could we talk about her?” Tentatively, Aubrey reached into her bag again. She took out a notepad and pen. She held them at eye-level for Frank’s approval. He nodded.

  “I been thinking this through since the second I heard about Missy’s body being found—where it was found. And I decided that unless I was going to talk about Missy . . . I mean, really talk about her, there was no point. All or nothing.”

  “Why’s that, Mr. Delacort?”

  “Frank,” he insisted. “I said you were gutsy. Let’s not be a phony, okay, Miss Ellis?”

  “Frank,” she said, flipping the notepad open.

  “Because what I have to say isn’t going to make me look any less guilty.” The waitress came by and asked what they wanted
to order. It gave Aubrey a moment to process his remark. “Coffee,” Frank said. Aubrey said she’d have the same.

  Levi peeked up from his newspaper. He knew she wasn’t a coffee-drinker, and that the order was a fine demonstration of her nerves. She skipped past it. “Then why say it? Why not just get on your bus and go? No more questions asked.”

  “Dustin Byrd is now physically linked to Missy and her murder. I got things to say about that—some of it is going to shock you.” Aubrey remained poised, expressionless. “But first I need you to know one true thing: the last time I saw Missy she was alive. Banged up, but alive.”

  “Where was the last place you saw her?”

  “In my room at the Plastic Fork.”

  “You stated she cut her leg running, that you offered first-aid. That was your explanation for how Missy’s blood and hair ended up in your room.”

  “That’s not exactly how it happened.”

  “Okay, Frank, I’m listening with an open mind. How did it happen?”

  “To tell you that I have to explain what Missy was doing in my room . . . really doing in my room.”

  “Does it affect your story significantly?” she said, heeding Levi’s advice to keep a back-and-forth dialogue going.

  Frank picked up the pack of cigarettes, his focus on his thumb as it ran over the shiny label. “If I’d told the whole story twenty years ago, I would have looked big-time guilty, like electric-chair guilty.” He shrugged, making serious eye contact. “So here goes. We were in bed.”

  “In bed?”

  “Yeah. Doing . . . well, doing what you’d expect we’d be doing.” Aubrey’s sideways glance met with Levi’s stare. “Missy wasn’t an acquaintance, like the papers said, like the police said . . . like I said.” Aubrey’s pen jammed, forming a tiny pool of ink. “But saying that we’d been together all summer . . . for sure that wasn’t gonna help my case.”

  “You’re right,” Aubrey said, absorbing the shock while smoothing out her cursive. “That is a very different story. The police theorized that you kidnapped her.”

  “The police and the DA would have told you my fingerprints were a match with the devil.” He looked past Aubrey. “I’m a few light-years from perfect, Miss Ellis, but I’m not that kind of monster. Can you believe that much?” She was only convinced it could go either way. The waitress returned with the coffee and served them. Frank proceeded to dump four packets of sugar into his. “Habit,” he said, “prison coffee sucks . . . you know?”

  Aubrey dumped half as many packets into hers, nodding. “Newsroom coffee is almost as bad.”

  “So here’s the second unexpected truth. The world saw Missy like she was as innocent as snow. I thought the same thing. It was easy to believe.” He hesitated. “But it wasn’t true. It also wasn’t her fault.”

  “That’s an interesting assertion. Can you elaborate?”

  “I’ve watched nearly twenty freakin’ winters come and go from one exercise yard. Plenty of time to study the color of snow. You know how it starts out, pretty and innocent—even in a prison yard. Fast-forward into February, maybe March. It drifts outside the lines of what you first saw, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s kind of dirty, not so pretty anymore.”

  “Imagine what it looks like after twenty years. What I’m saying is the police saw Missy that way, and maybe even I saw her that way. But I’ve had lots of time to watch the snow change.”

  Aubrey navigated away from metaphors, aiming for facts. “If you and Missy were romantically involved, will you tell me about that?”

  “We were planning on leaving Surrey together,” he said. “She wanted out of that town for a lot of reasons.”

  “Name a few of them.”

  “For one, she’d been carrying on with Dustin Byrd since high school. He wanted to marry her, and she didn’t want anything to do with that.” His head tipped, eyes narrowing at Aubrey’s blunt stare. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “It’s one of our revolving newsroom theories. I think Dustin Byrd may have paid for her car. My partner on this story, Levi St John . . .”

  “I seen his name with yours in the paper.”

  “It’s Levi’s contention that Missy paid for the car herself.”

  Frank frowned as he stirred his coffee. “You’re still seeing white snow. Your partner’s got a sharp instinct. I like sharp instinct. Missy paid for that car herself.”

  “Did she? But how . . .” Aubrey stopped. One thing at a time. She needed to steer. “Can you fill in some details about her relationship with Dustin Byrd? He was so much older—not really the image that jumps to mind. He was mid-life, she was just starting out. Dustin’s life was stable but not very glamorous. He was—”

  “He was one more thing. He fit the profile.”

  “What profile?”

  “The kind of guy a teenage girl would latch on to after years of abuse.”

  “Abuse? What kind of abuse?”

  Frank Delacort opened the pack of cigarettes and took one out. He tapped the unlit casing into the table. “The kind that nice folks in pleasant towns don’t talk about. Tom Flannigan. It’s another thing the police totally missed, what he did to his own daughter. But if you follow what I’m telling you, you’ll see that it fits.”

  “Tom Flannigan sexually abused Missy? Do you have proof of that?”

  “I told you, Miss Ellis, you’d be shocked by what I had to say. You also won’t be inclined to believe me. Twenty years in prison—guilty or not—alters my credibility. But it’s the truth, every goddamn word.”

  Aubrey tried to erase the stigma surrounding Frank, but she couldn’t dismiss what she knew about his military past. She leaned back, clearing her head. Inadvertently, she cracked open a frame of mind she’d normally keep sealed shut. Like the turn of a page, aromatic coffee began to drift and the odor of greasy foods receded. Pastries. She smelled fresh pastries . . . cookies . . . sugary icing. On her palate was anise, almond extract, nutmeg . . . lemon squares. Nothing so refined was on the Exit 43 Diner menu. But Aubrey also didn’t feel threatened by the sweet sensations. “Go on, Frank, I’m listening.”

  “When Missy was nine years old, Tom Flannigan started making frequent trips to her bedroom. Don’t ask me to explain that part. I’ve spent decades wondering what could be so sick inside a man’s soul that he’d do something . . . something that depraved. I don’t have an answer. But I do know that when Missy turned sixteen she took control. Missy was . . .” Frank laughed; the sound was eerie and out of place. “Because of what she’d been through or maybe despite it, Missy didn’t take much shit off anybody. I knew that from the day I met her. She told Tom Flannigan it was going to stop.” Frank mashed the unlit cigarette into a saucer, crushing it until the casing split like a watermelon. “According to Missy, it did stop. Of course, by then, what’s a girl like that supposed to do?”

  “She could have reported him to the police, a friend . . . confided to her high school counselor, another adult.” Frank’s head shook more adamantly with each suggestion.

  “Don’t you think I said the same thing to her? To tell anyone meant telling her mother, and Missy couldn’t bring herself to do that. You’re aware of her mother’s condition?”

  “She has multiple sclerosis. She was diagnosed when Missy was about seven or eight.”

  “Her mother’s illness, what she felt for her, it was the one thing . . . the only thing that kept her in that house. Still, Missy talked about a dream she used to have. She was at her mother’s funeral. Standing by the grave, she’d see herself as happy. Happy because after they buried her mother, Missy went screaming to the police about what Tom Flannigan had done. Pretty twisted, huh?” He sipped his coffee. Frank put down the cup, his expression turning rigid—lifeless. “Imagine having to wish your own mother dead to find some peace? That’s a big fucking burden for anybody.”

 
Aubrey didn’t say anything, trying to see between the rough edges of a tough life. It was raw but honest. There was also, in the distance, someone asking for Frank. The more he spoke, the closer it came. Aubrey turned it off hard, like a leaky faucet.

  “You all right, Miss Ellis? You look kind of . . . distracted.”

  She sat up taller, a reassuring shift. A glance at Levi’s face confirmed a repeat of Frank’s concern. “I’m fine, just surprised . . . just like you said I’d be. Tell me why you think that kind of heinous experience resulted in an ongoing relationship with Dustin Byrd.”

  “I’m no shrink, but I get coping mechanisms—probably because I’ve tried most of them. Over the years, I’ve read about girls like Missy. Most of them end up on the streets or with a needle in their arm. Turning to Dustin Byrd wasn’t a great choice, but it probably saved Missy from something worse—at least for a while. From what Missy said, Byrd thought the sun and moon rose over her, and . . . well, I guess that felt pretty good to her.”

  “But things changed when you showed up.”

  “By the time I showed up things had already changed. Dustin Byrd was obsessed with Missy. And the tighter he held on, the less she wanted it. He was a chump. Even a normal sixteen-year-old girl won’t want the same thing at twenty-one. But he had that kind of arrogance about him, never questioning why Missy fell for him in the first place.”

  “He didn’t know. Dustin Byrd can’t corroborate the abuse.”

  “No. She never told him. She couldn’t do that—ruin the image he worshiped. One of Missy’s hobbies was hanging out in church. But she didn’t tell them neither. She never could bring herself to confess something that wasn’t her sin.” Frank sighed. “So, lucky me, I’m the only person she ever confided in.”

  Convenient or tragic? It could be either. Frank waited as if Aubrey were his new jury. She felt like she had her opening. “Frank, I’d like to share something with you, something about Missy’s murder.” His eyebrows cinched together. “Eventually, the DA will release a manner of death. Missy died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.”