Deadly Kiss

by Bob Bickford

  Already there were rumors that the place was haunted. The sheriff himself had heard that stock was left untouched on the shelves, because no one had been brave enough to clean the place up, and that the shades of the owners were inside, sitting behind the counter and waiting for customers.

  “She hanged herself right over the spot on the floor where her men-folk died.”

  That was true, but what of it? She had to use a rafter somewhere. He drove to the back of the place and set the brake. The rear area where black customers congregated still had a working hand pump for water, and there were usually people gathered there. Today it was deserted. Whoever had been there had heard the siren and cleared out. He got out of the car. The day was clouding over.

  He did a quick survey of the area, specifically checking the ground for blood or any other evidence that someone had been injured. There was nothing. His police sense was many years tuned, and it didn’t feel like there had been people there only minutes previously. At the same time, he felt like he was being watched. He looked at the building.

  The back door and all of the windows were boarded up with gray wood. He tried not to imagine the dimness inside, empty shelves, the forsaken cash register, the smell of old wood, stains on the floor.

  Walking once around the outside of the store, he confirmed that the place was shut tight. The ground under the hand pump in back was wet, and the cast iron spout dripped slowly, drops of water landing silently in the dirt. Ben went to the door of his car and pulled it open.

  There was a muffled bang from inside the building, then a heavy thump as something fell. The sheriff started and then stood frozen, staring at the nailed-up doorway. A full minute ticked by and there was no other sound. He got into his car and started it. He had to jockey the car forward and back to point it at the road.

  He didn’t look in the rear-view mirror when he reversed. When he left the lot, the car spun a tire and rattled small stones against the front steps. The sound of his engine slowly faded up the highway and then the old store was quiet.

  ***

  Present Day:

  “She left?” Molly asked. “How could she leave?”

  “There was no reason for her to be here any longer,” I said. “It was good of her to come at all. She cared about my dad, but the funeral is too much for her right now. Anyway, she and I probably had enough of being in the same place. I’m kind of relieved she’s gone.”

  “Did you fight with her?” Molly demanded.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “But it was uncomfortable in places.”

  Was I unfaithful? I was stricken and fought the urge to tell her about the night I had spent with Angela. Although Molly was divorced, and she made no secret of the fact that her ex-husband drifted in and out of her life, I still felt like a cheat.

  We had no commitment except friendship, and I had once spoken vows with Angela, but logic didn’t help me.

  “So, now what?” she asked. “You have the funeral--what else?”

  “I guess I have to figure out about the house,” I said. “Apparently there’s a will, which shocks me, knowing my dad. I’ll still have to deal with cleaning out his stuff no matter what.”

  She was quiet on the other end. I felt her smile. “I have something for you when you get back,” she said. “A surprise. I’m having some second thoughts, so I hope it’s the right thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you know me?” she laughed. “Can you even imagine I’m going to tell you? Really?”

  “I’m going to be at least a week sorting this out,” I said. “It’ll have to wait, I suppose.”

  “Hang on a sec, Mike.”

  I smiled and held on while she put the phone down and talked inaudibly to someone on her end.

  After a moment she came back. “I’m at the marina,” she said. “Bill’s going to take me down to Toronto in the morning. I’m flying down there. You’re not doing this by yourself.”

  The next morning, I walked through the airport concourse and spotted Molly standing at a luggage carousel. I stopped where I was for a moment and looked at her. She wore a light cotton dress in a floral print, high-heeled sandals, and a straw hat. She was elegant without a shred of sophistication, small town lovely, summer on the lake come to life. The women who stood in the crowd around her were faded to invisibility. Contained and serene, she watched for her bags and didn’t look around for me. She knew I’d be along.

  A yellow light flashed, a buzzer sounded, and the carousel jerked and started to rotate. When I glanced back at her, her eyes were on mine. As always, her smile erased everything around her. I needed to be near her, and hurried.

  “You look terrific,” I said when I got to her.

  “My feet don’t feel terrific.” She laughed. “I always wear heels when I go somewhere I’ve never been to, because I think they make me look taller. I think they’re pretty, and I never have a reason to wear them, but I can never wait to take them off.”

  She swiveled, bent to put down her carry-on, and then turned to hug me. She was warm and smelled wonderful.

  “They are pretty, and they do make you taller,” I said. “You don’t need to be taller, though. Don’t worry about taller.”

  “Yes, I do. You have no idea. I told you I got you a present. I wanted to bring it with me, but it wouldn’t have been a good plan. You’ll have to wait ’til you get home. Here’s my bag. Get me out of here.”

  “This city’s a little crazy,” I told her on the highway from the airport. “The war. Sherman burned the whole thing down after it had no strategic value. The war was really over. The South was a shambles, and the geography around here made Atlanta impossible to defend anyway. The Confederates would never have tried to take it back.”

  “I know they burned it,” she said. “I was always a little bit vague on why.”

  “At the end, the people were close to starving already, and the Union army came through and killed about fifty thousand civilians and left the rest utterly destitute. I wonder what the hell happened to all the children, the ones who survived. How dark and twisted did they grow up? What did they teach their kids?”

  “Is it still haunted? Do you see things here?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe. A hundred and something years isn’t enough to wipe out the horror. It’s right in the dirt.”

  “It’s pretty, anyway,” she said, looking out the window.

  I turned the rental car into my father’s driveway. The house was large, brick and white wood.

  “We’re staying here, right, Mike? A hotel for a week is a little rich for me right now.”

  “Staying here. I want to get it done and get home.”

  “This is the house you grew up in?”

  I nodded. At the front door, I pulled out my father’s keys and sorted until I found one that fit. “He’s probably got keys on here,” I said, “for locks that have been gone from this earth for twenty years.”

  I pushed the door open, and let Molly enter in front of me. “Pretty big place for one person,” she said, looking around her.

  “They bought it when I was born. I think maybe they were planning a few more kids.”

  “But she died before they could?”

  “No, I was a teenager when she died. I don’t really know why they stopped with me. I think maybe they realized that they saw enough kids teaching. They didn’t need to come home to it, too.”

  The entry opened left into a large living area, clad in the greens and gold that had been popular forty years before. There were vacuum tracks in the carpeting, and a visible patina of dust on every surface. The room was seldom entered and never used. I was nearly overwhelmed at the sense of long-ago that the room evoked.

  “There are a few pieces of my mother’s furniture that I probably want to keep,” I said. “I’ll have to check storage around here. For now, I mainly want to take any pictures of my parents or family documents that’ll fit in a suitcase. I didn’t bring much in the wa
y of clothes with me so I can carry stuff back.”

  She looked steadily at me. “I’m glad. I’d hate to think you were just going to pitch everything.”

  I nodded at the cabinet stereo against one wall. “I spent a lot of time drinking beer in front of that thing,” I said. “Probably find some milk crates of my records in the basement.”

  Molly trailed her fingers across the keys of an old upright piano that stood against the wall. The sound was startling in the silence.

  “Did you play this?” she asked.

  “A little,” I said. “I took lessons for a while--didn’t really like all the practicing. This was mainly my mother’s thing. Her escape, I guess. She was good, a natural. Sometimes when I hear a piano playing, I remember her so clear I can smell her perfume.”

  We walked through the kitchen. Pale blue paint and avocado-colored appliances were darkened by years of grease. In the den where my father had taken his meals and spent most of his time, a large black reclining chair faced an older television across the matted shag carpeting. There was a nearly full ashtray on the small table next to the chair, but the room didn’t smell of tobacco. My father hadn’t smoked in years.

  A telephone on the table was hooked up to an answering machine; the red digital display indicated that there were unheard messages. I sat down in my father’s black chair. I thought of the time he had spent sitting here, unthought-of by me, as my life had unfolded hundreds and thousands of miles away.

  This was where he was on the rare, awkward occasions that I called him. I wondered what he had thought of me as he sat in this spot.

  I reached across and pressed the button. I heard the tiny cassette rewind, and then the speaker hissed.

  “I know what you did.”

  The voice was soft, androgynous, and the connection was broken immediately after the words were spoken. The machine moved to the next message.

  “I know what you did.”

  I played through the rest of the tape. The messages were all the same. The background noise and timbre changed slightly from one to the next, but the speaker and the message were exactly the same in all thirteen of them.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  I was shaken. I looked up at Molly, who was leaning in the doorway. She shook her head. I rewound the tape and listened to the first message again.

  “I know what you did.”

  “When did these come in?” Molly asked. “Can you tell?”

  I picked up the machine and fiddled with it. “He doesn’t have the time and date thing set up,” I said. “He wasn’t much for gadgets.”

  “But these messages are all new, right? He hadn’t listened to them?”

  “They’re new, yes. At least since he left for Canada, I would think. He didn’t have much contact with people--he was fanatic about checking his mailbox and his phone messages. He wouldn’t have gotten one and not bothered to listen to it.”

  “Should someone know about this, Mike?”

  “This must be what he was so afraid of. This has to be that woman, Wanda. God knows how long this was going on. I wonder if he mentioned anything about this to Angela.”

  I pulled out my cell. Molly came in and sat on the sofa that was against the far wall. Angela answered. Her tone was guarded. After perfunctory hellos, I asked about the time she had spent with my father prior to my arrival.

  “Did he say anything about being called?” I asked. “About someone harassing him on the phone?”

  “Harassing him? How?”

  “Leaving him messages. I found about a dozen, all saying ‘I know what you did.’”

  “That’s weird,” she said, “I don’t think so, but let me think.”

  She was quiet, and I listened to us breathe. “God, Mike. It’s hard to put my finger on. He said he had tried to set the record straight or something like that. He was tired of keeping a secret.”

  “Pretty much what he said to me,” I said. “What the hell was the secret?”

  “No idea,” she said. “He was upset. I didn’t push him. And old people talk, you know? I didn’t listen all that closely, just tried to be there for him. I didn’t think it was important. What does it mean?”

  I didn’t know yet. We hung up, and I sat with the phone in my hand.

  “What are you going to do?” Molly asked.

  We looked at each other, and I shook my head. My father’s story was suddenly a real thing, not just the rambling of a frightened, confused old man. Some of the fear that he must have felt listening to these messages seeped into me, but I also recognized the beginnings of real rage stirring inside of me.

  “I have no idea. I really don’t. I guess I need to find Wanda, and see what she has to say for herself.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Sam Latta, Roy Tull,

  Marietta, Georgia, Friday, December 13, 1946:

  The small stone bounced off the shutter and rattled the window glass. Sam Latta crossed his room and looked out. There was a small figure down in the dooryard, winding up to deliver another pebble. The movement was graceful and sure, and the shutter made another cracking noise. He opened his window and stared down. The shout came up to him.

  “Come down here. I got to talk to you.”

  Sam said nothing. After a time, he closed the window then turned, left his room, and went down the stairs. In the yard he stood in front of the other boy, who was a little bit taller than he was and dressed poorly for the cold. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “That girl told me what you done.”

  “I didn’t do anything. That girl’s a liar.”

  “Don’t matter. I know what you done. I know it for sure.”

  “What do you want?” Sam asked again.

  “My brother’s dead, and now my daddy’s dead too. I want to ask you a question, that’s why I came here.”

  The December wind blew clouds across the dark sky. When they crossed in front of the weak moon, they were visibly tattered and falling apart.

  “My mama says Jesus going to take care of us now. What do you think about that? Think that’s true?”

  Sam had nothing to say. The other boy puffed his cheeks and blew out. Sam could see his eyes roll in the darkness of his face. His voice was rising. “You don’t think so neither? So then I got a question for you. Who’s gonna look out for us with my daddy gone? Who?” He stepped closer, and Sam could hear his tears. “What am I supposed to do without my daddy? What am I supposed to do?”

  Sam Latta turned and went up the steps and back into his house. He closed the door softly behind him.

  ***

  Present Day:

  “Come here a second,” Molly called.

  She was standing on a chair in my father’s bedroom closet. Only the bottom part of her was visible. I stuck my head in, and she looked down at me. “I found your mother,” she said. “Careful. I’ll hand her down to you.”

  I reached up and she put the urn into my hands.

  I felt a tiny shock and my vision brightened. I stood on a gravel path bordered by lush green grass. The sky was warm and gray. I heard dripping on the leaves above me. Chimes sounded, I smelled rain, and then--

  It was all gone. I stood again in the musty closet, looking up.

  “I think you really did,” I said. “I think you found her.” I held the container against my chest and helped Molly down from the chair with my free hand.

  “You never knew where she was?”

  “I never did. I barely remember the funeral service. I know half the high school was there. Packed. I was in shock--I don’t think what happened to her body occurred to me. I don’t remember my dad ever mentioning it.”

  “He brought her home to be with him,” she said, taking the urn from my hands. “He couldn’t stand to be apart from her. It’s very sweet. They must have been very much in love.”

  “I never noticed,” I said. “Hard for me to picture my dad very much in love with anyone. They always seemed kind of...neutral with each other. Eithe
r that or fighting.”

  “You don’t know a thing. What kind of a man keeps a woman’s ashes in his bedroom? It’s very romantic. She was perfectly lovely, and I think he was too.”

  She smiled sweetly at me and left the room, taking my mother with her. “You don’t know a thing, Mike,” she repeated over her shoulder. “You’re in the dark when it comes to love, you poor man.”

  ***

  “Belly full, no worries,” Molly said.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  She looked at me across the table and burst out laughing. I felt my heart move. We were finishing dinner in a dark steak house outside of Atlanta, sitting in a sea of plastic Tiffany lamps and artificial foliage. Her dark hair was a cloud around her lovely features, and her eyes held mine and warmed me.

  “When I was in university I waited tables,” she said. “I hardly had time to study--my mom was dead by then and my aunt couldn’t help much with tuition. I didn’t think I could pay back student loans on a teacher’s salary when I got out, and that’s all I ever wanted to be. I was carrying the weight of the world.” She picked up her glass and swirled the ice in it before she drank. “There was a guy I worked with, a busboy. Miguel. Older, not Mexican...Nicaragua or someplace like that. Probably illegal, raising a family on what he made in that place, God only knows how. Treated like shit, mostly. One night, we were on meal break, back in the kitchen. He finished eating and was rubbing his tummy and said ‘Belly full, no worries.’ He had his eyes closed. I don’t think he knew I heard him.”