From the Grave--A McKenzie Novel

by David Housewright

  Toy didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. A house exorcism was apparently an everyday occurrence in her world.

  “The money,” she said.

  “It was hidden beneath the floorboards of an old tool shed that was leaning against Leland’s garage. It was the same shed where Ryan used to go to get away from his father, the shed where he kept a photograph of his mother. The only thing he had of her, he once told me. The photograph that he sent you to find, that you did find, that you brought to him before he was sent to federal prison in Kentucky.”

  Toy stared at me long enough for it to become uncomfortable.

  She wants to know what you’re going to do, my inner voice told me.

  I’m not going to do anything.

  Tell her.

  “You did very well with the money.” I gestured at my surroundings. “All of this. A kid in an expensive, top-ranked college. Way better than what most people would have done, I think.”

  Toy chuckled and sighed at the same time.

  “It helped that I lived in Ventura Village,” she said. “Minorities are more apt to deal in cash; we don’t have the same access to credit cards and checking accounts as you do. I’d buy groceries, pay my rent, fix my car or buy a new one, and no one wondered where the money came from. It allowed me to save all of my paychecks, make investments even, and cash deposits, too. Never more than a couple hundred dollars a week. The bank tellers probably thought I was a whore, that I earned the money selling myself. I didn’t care. I was saving and investing nearly $30,000 a year—after taxes.”

  “All of it right beneath FinCEN’s nose,” I said.

  “There were a few setbacks, but I stayed patient. When the time came, I moved out of Ventura Village into Standish-Ericsson. It was a much better neighborhood, more middle-class, yet not a place where I would stand out. I kept saving. I kept learning. Eventually I reached the point where I was able to open this store, and because of the store, I could pay $66,000 a year to send Jackson to Macalester College without anyone wondering how I managed it. The store’s doing very well, too, by the way.”

  “Did Jackson know what you were doing?”

  “No. It never occurred to him to wonder about it. He was a child, why would he? Now that he understands about economics, about how money works, he thinks I’m the smartest woman he knows. At least he did.”

  “What does he think now?”

  “I don’t know,” Toy said. “The way he looks at me…”

  “You might tell him the truth. I’m impressed. I’m sure he would be, too.”

  “Can I tell him one thing without telling him the rest?”

  “You mean about his father?”

  “Did Leland’s spirit tell you about that, too?”

  “I kinda guessed. Between what you told me and what Ryan told me—it’s a very sweet story when you think about it, you and Ryan.”

  “I doubt Jackson would agree.”

  “It’s a better story than the one he’s living with.”

  “What story is that?”

  You went too far.

  “McKenzie?”

  It’s none of your business.

  “McKenzie, tell me.”

  You might as well, now.

  “Jackson thinks Leland is his father,” I said. “He thinks Leland raped you.”

  Toy recoiled at the words and then slumped down in her chair to the point where I thought she might fall out of it. Her body shuddered. I rested a hand on her shoulder. Instead of giving her comfort, though, it sent an electric charge through her. She jolted upright and shrugged my hand away.

  “This is what he meant by you saying terrible things,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m glad you told me, though. I needed to know this.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I can’t tell Jackson the truth until after I’ve told Ryan. I called him, you know. Ryan. I talked to him at work. He seemed so happy to hear from me.”

  “You were one of the very few people in the entire world who was kind to him.”

  “Probably it would have been better if I hadn’t been so kind,” Toy said. “No. No. Without him I wouldn’t have Jackson. It’ll be all right. Ryan’s coming for dinner tomorrow night; I still have no idea what I’m going to make. I’ll decide what to tell him then.”

  “He seems like a nice guy,” I said. “Young for his age.”

  “I got that impression, too, when I spoke with him.” Toy gestured at her surroundings. “In a very real way, Ryan paid for all of this. I want to give him something in return; I need to give him something. I’m not sure a son is the right gift.”

  “A family?” I asked.

  “That would be up to Jacks. Once I explain it all to him … Jacks is a good kid. No, he’s a good man.”

  I started to move away from her.

  “I wish you luck, Toy,” I said. “I wish you nothing but good things.”

  “Wait,” she said. “What now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the money.”

  “Finders keepers, losers weepers. It’s the law of the land. You can look it up.”

  “Are you trying to be funny, McKenzie? The FBI isn’t going to forget about this.”

  “Actually, it already has.”

  “The bank…”

  “It’s not the bank’s money. It’s the insurance company’s money, and they wrote it off twenty years ago. The only reason they’re interested now is because of me, and telling them the true story—hell, even I don’t believe it. Besides, it would only screw up their paperwork.”

  “I doubt it would bother them, though,” Toy said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Your name won’t be mentioned. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I love happy endings. You’re going to find a way to be happy, aren’t you, Toy?”

  “Lord above, I hope so.”

  * * *

  The Meritage promoted itself as a chef-driven, award-winning French brasserie, which is why I wore a sports coat, slacks, and dress shoes when I went to meet Maryanne Altavilla there for lunch. She ordered oysters on the half shell to start and escargots à la Bourguignonne to finish.

  “I could get used to this,” Maryanne said.

  I had a chicken salad croissant and said, “Meh.”

  “So to what do I owe the pleasure?” Maryanne asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t bring me here because you enjoy my company.”

  “Actually, Maryanne, I enjoy your company very much.”

  “McKenzie…”

  I reached into my pocket, found the flash drive she had given me, and set it next to her water glass.

  “Are you trying to tell me something?” she asked.

  “The money is gone.”

  “Define gone.”

  I curled all the fingers on my right hand, brought them to my lips, kissed the tips, and let fly.

  “Poof,” I said.

  “All right, now define poof.”

  “Leland Hayes hid the money immediately after he stole it,” I said. “He didn’t plan on getting caught, but if he had been, he figured he could collect the cash after he got out of prison. ’Course, if he had done twenty-five years like his son that would have worked out to only $26,172.84 per year, but nobody said Leland was smart. Anyway, we know all this because he went to the East Side of St. Paul immediately after the robbery looking for a place to hide. His friend turned him down, and so on and so forth.

  “Now, there weren’t many places where he could have hidden the money, places that he trusted. There was his house, of course. But the FBI searched it pretty thoroughly.”

  I pointed at the flash drive.

  “So did your SIU,” I said. “But what they didn’t search was the small tool shed that was leaning against his garage. Or, more to the point, they didn’t search beneath the floorboards of the small tool shed that was lean
ing against his garage.”

  “You’re saying that’s where Leland hid the money?”

  “It’s no longer there, in case you’re wondering. We believe that it was eventually discovered by one of the dozen or more families that lived in the house after Leland departed from this earth, or at least someone close to one of the families. Anyway, poof.”

  “We?” Maryanne asked.

  “Me and the psychic mediums.”

  Maryanne looked as surprised as I had ever seen her. After a few beats she managed to say, “Ummm.”

  “You seem skeptical, Maryanne.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “The dozen families—the reason so many people moved into and then quickly moved out of Leland’s house during the past twenty years is that it was haunted.”

  “Haunted?”

  “By the ghost of Leland Hayes. I went over there the other day with a couple of psychic mediums. We made contact with Hayes, and after a lot of this and that, we figured out about the money. One of the psychics believes that Leland didn’t actually know the money was missing; that’s why he had been haunting the house all this time.”

  Maryanne took a long sip of her drink. I don’t think she was thirsty so much as she wanted to avoid saying what was on her mind.

  “Long story short, the psychic mediums sent Leland to the other side, so,” I added, “case closed.”

  “How did they do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Send Leland…”

  “Oh. They waved some sage around and chanted a few prayers.”

  “Sage? Like what I use in my world-famous butternut squash and sage pierogi recipe?”

  “Except they burned it.”

  “You’re kidding, McKenzie. Right?”

  “Maryanne, you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and you didn’t know that they cleared haunted houses by burning sage? Huh.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  “Well, it’s going to be on TV, so you know it’s true.”

  “What do you mean; it’s going to be on TV?”

  “There was a production crew filming it all for a show that they’re going to call Model Medium. I told them they should call it MILFs. You know, Mediums I’d Like To—”

  “I get it.”

  “But they won’t listen to me. They’re hoping to have it on a cable network by next fall.”

  Maryanne started drumming her fingers on the tablecloth, so I knew she was thinking.

  “If they so much as mention the name Midwest Farmers Insurance Group we will sue you personally, the mediums, the production company, the network…”

  “We’ll all have it coming, too.”

  “I still don’t believe it.”

  “Hell, Maryanne, I don’t believe it either, and I was there.”

  Maryanne kept drumming her fingers.

  “I cannot put this into a written report,” she said.

  “If you want me to explain it all to your supervisor in person—”

  “Shhhhhhhh, McKenzie. Absolutely not.”

  A few moments passed, and Maryanne resumed eating her lunch. What else was she going to do? After a few bites, she began to chuckle.

  “What?” I asked.

  “MILFs. I’d watch a ghost show called MILFs.”

  JUST SO YOU KNOW

  The show wasn’t called MILFs, of course, or even Psychic Babes. It was titled Model Medium and featured “supermodel” Hannah Braaten as she went about her daily life, which somehow consisted of equal parts celebrity sightings, photo shoots, ghostbusting, and readings with ordinary people who wept a lot. Most of the readings seemed to be spontaneous and involved random men and women Hannah met along the way, although how anyone could have a chance encounter with a psychic medium who has a full camera crew following her around remains a mystery to me.

  The episodes that seemed to create the most buzz, however—and the most on-demand views—were those that featured “fledgling” psychic medium Kayla Janas, whose skills seemed to blossom under Hannah’s watchful eye.

  Unfortunately, there was a problem with the chemistry between the two women. In the beginning, it was fine. However, as the episodes mounted up, Hannah started coming off less like Kayla’s friend and mentor and more like a jealous older sister. And as pretty as Kayla was, standing in the shadow of Hannah’s otherworldly beauty gave her an accessible girl-next-door vibe that had the audience rooting for her—and against Hannah. They call it the underdog syndrome. Plus, it was obvious that Kayla was a straight-up better psychic medium than Hannah. As a result, Hannah’s show lasted thirteen episodes, an inauspicious number, before it was replaced by Medium for Hire, which was all Kayla all the time. It’s still on the air. You can look it up.

  But that was way down the road. Before Kayla became a cable TV star, she made one last visit to the Dunston home.

  We had a dusting of snow just before the holidays to make all those people hoping for a white Christmas happy. Afterward, it started snowing and kept snowing all the way until May. The Twin Cities were buried under seventy-seven inches; some places in Minnesota had as much as a dozen feet. Snowfall records fell that had stood for over a century. What’s more, it got cold and stayed cold. We set a record—thirty-six consecutive days with temperatures below zero, so the snow didn’t melt. It just kept piling up. The drifts and mounds became so high that strolling along a shoveled sidewalk was like walking through a trench.

  It was near the beginning of this weather pattern that Nina and I went to visit the Dunstons. Kayla arrived soon after. Shelby had been expecting her, of course, but Bobby had not, and while he was polite, if not downright charming, I could tell that her presence made him anxious. I began to wonder if any unsolved homicides or kidnappings had occurred recently that I was unaware of.

  Only Kayla didn’t come to see Bobby. Or Shelby. Or me, either, for that matter. She was there to speak to Nina.

  “Why?” Nina asked.

  “I have a message for you.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Ms. Truhler—”

  “Besides, I don’t even know if I trust you.”

  “I appreciate that,” Kayla said. “But I only need a few minutes of your time. You don’t have to believe a word I say.”

  “Then why should I listen?”

  “The message isn’t so much for you to hear as it is for your mother to speak.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Our sins aren’t just wiped away when we go to the other side. We have to suffer the way we made other people suffer. We have to feel the pain we caused and accept the full consequences of our past behavior. We need to take responsibility. And whenever possible, we have to make amends to the people we harmed. We have to make restitution. That’s why I’m here. Your mother needs to confess her sins out loud to the person she’s hurt the most.”

  “She needs—?” Nina said.

  “Walking around with the weight of her crimes, that really sucks. Living with the guilt and shame of her past wrongdoings—it’s preventing her from moving on.”

  “You’re saying you came here to help my mother, not me.”

  “Nina, your mom can’t move forward without your help.”

  “That’s just too damn bad.”

  “You can’t move forward without hers.”

  “Be very careful, little girl.”

  “Self-centeredness must be replaced with awareness of other people,” Kayla said. “Where we were selfish, we must be selfless. Where we were angry, we must be forgiving. Instead of indifference, we must begin to care. Otherwise our misery just goes on and on and on.”

  “Well, we can’t have that, can we? By all means, let’s talk about human misery with my mother.”

  Kayla glanced around her. Nina did the same. They saw Shelby, Bobby, and me watching them. I didn’t turn around to look, but I was willing to bet that Victoria and Katie were
standing at the top of the staircase listening, too.

  “C’mon,” Nina said.

  She took Kayla’s arm and propelled her toward the front door. Kayla was already dressed for winter, and Nina grabbed her coat on the way. Once outside, they walked across the porch to the sidewalk near the street.

  I couldn’t hear them, yet I stood at the window and listened carefully just the same.

  The conversation seemed intense. No one was screaming; of course, Nina had never needed to raise her voice to express her anger.

  Shelby stood next to me.

  She stroked my arm.

  “It’s going to be fine,” she said.

  “If it isn’t, I may never forgive you.”

  The exchange ended. Kayla turned and started walking down the sidewalk. Nina watched her go.

  She called to her.

  Kayla stopped.

  Nina walked up to the young woman, wrapped her arms around her, and hugged her tight.

  They hugged for a long time.

  Finally they parted. Nina kept her hands on Kayla’s shoulders. She leaned in until their foreheads nearly touched. Nina spoke slowly, carefully. Kayla nodded as if she were being told something that she was relieved to hear.

  They hugged again and parted again.

  It was Kayla who was crying, not Nina, when they separated and walked off in opposite directions.

  I left the window and headed for the Dunstons’ front door.

  Shelby took my arm.

  “Wait,” she said.

  I went back to the window.

  Instead of coming back inside, Nina crossed the street and walked into Merriam Park. She climbed the small hill, her boots sinking into the snow as she went, and took refuge among the oak trees there.

  I moved to the door again.

  Again Shelby stopped me.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Rushmore, you must trust me on this.”

  I wasn’t sure that I did, yet Shelby was the only person in the world who was allowed to call me by my first name, so …