Lily's Ghosts

by Laura Ruby

  “I wouldn’t, Aurelia,” Wesley snarled.

  “Quiet,” said Mrs. Reedy. “Do you want to know where the map is, Wesley, or don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then let me handle this, hmmm?”

  Wesley backed away, muttering to himself, and Ms. Reedy turned her attention back to Lily, patting her hand. Emphasized by the red color, Ms. Reedy’s lips were full and lush, and Lily couldn’t keep her eyes off them. It was like there were two Ms. Reedy’s — the staid librarian, and her glamorous twin.

  “I’ve known Wesley for some years now. And I can tell you first hand that he has a lot of pride. That pride often keeps him from telling the whole story.”

  Ms. Reedy picked up one of the forks from the table. “You can see by the fine things in the house that your uncle’s family was quite wealthy. When Wesley’s father died, your great grandmother Katherine took over the family’s businesses.” She picked at the fork tines with a red fingernail. “The Woods had holdings everywhere… manufacturing, retail, and so forth. Naturally, these holdings would eventually go to one of her children, and naturally most assumed that Wesley would be chosen to take over the family’s interests as soon as he was old enough.”

  She held up the fork. “Alas, poor Wesley. Even simple math was a challenge. Isn’t that right?”

  Wesley grunted in wordless fury, chewing on the tip of his cigar.

  “Ruth was already married, and a girl besides, so Katherine pinned her hopes on Max. She had to ignore all the signs of his…er…troubles, of course, but no one could deny that Max was incredibly bright.”

  Lily found her voice to ask the question Ms. Reedy hadn’t bothered to answer back in the library. “Did you love him?”

  Bailey Burton snorted. Ms. Reedy blinked slowly, and Lily thought that, for a just one moment, the woman looked pained. “He was special.”

  “He was insane,” said Wesley. “He thought he could talk to ghosts.”

  Lily glanced at Vaz. Ms. Reedy took note. “It’s true. As a matter of fact, that’s how he claimed he knew where the treasure was buried. He said he’d seen the ghost of Captain Kidd on the beach.”

  She peered at Lily through the tines in the fork. “Max was eccentric, but he loved his mother. When he found out that Wesley was more than a little interested in his pirate treasure, he hid the map. For his mother, he said. But the fool set that fire before he had the chance to tell his mother where he’d hidden it. And then Katherine died, too.”

  “Max broke her heart. I always said he couldn’t be trusted,” Wesley said.

  “So you keep telling us.” Mrs. Reedy put the fork on the table. “Obviously, Wesley searched the house top to bottom and found nothing. We can only conclude that wherever the map was hidden, it was hidden in something that perhaps Katherine unwittingly gave away? To your grandmother Ruth perhaps?”

  Lily’s mother spoke up. “My mother never said anything about any of this. Never.”

  “You didn’t speak to her for years,” Uncle Wes said.

  A smile played about Ms. Reedy’s red mouth as she gazed at Lily’s mother. “Think about it. Did she leave you anything perhaps?” She shot a hard look at Wes. “That’s the question you should have asked.”

  All throughout the evening, Lily’s mind had been racing from one thing to the next like a crazed chipmunk, thought to thought, idea to idea, never stopping on any particular thing. But now her brain had screeched to a halt, zeroed in on a single picture.

  Lily saw Ms. Reedy’s slow, languid smile and knew the knowledge was all over her face, as surely as it had been scrawled on her skin with the librarian’s shocking red lipstick. “You know where it is, don’t you Lily?”

  Wesley took two large steps and leaned into Lily’s face. “Tell me,” he said.

  “I think I’ve had just about enough,” said Lily’s mother, standing. “I think it’s about time I called the police.” Vaz leapt to his feet.

  Wesley reached into his jacket and pulled out a small silver gun. “Sit down, both of you.”

  “Wesley!” Lily’s mother said, the color draining from her face. “What are you doing?”

  “I said sit!”

  Arden sat.

  Ms. Reedy looked up at Wesley, frowning. “Really, Wesley, must you—”

  “I must, Aurelia,” Wesley said, backing up and turning the gun on her. “I suggest that no one move too quickly.” He swung the gun around to Vaz, who seemed more interested in throttling someone than sitting. “You!” he barked. “No heroics from you.”

  Vaz’s eyes got small and squinty, and Lily could see a muscle tighten in his jaw as he sat back down.

  Then Wesley turned the gun on Lily. She gripped the arms of the chair and pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling as she looked at the small black hole. He wouldn’t shoot her, would he? Was he that crazy?

  “Now,” he said. “Where is the map?”

  “The doll,” Lily said quickly. “It’s in the doll.”

  “What doll?” said Wesley. “Where?”

  “My room, the first bedroom on the left,” Lily said. “It was my grandmother’s. A Kewpie doll in a red dress.”

  “Go get it,” Wesley said to Bailey Burton. “Now.” Bailey turned and hurried out of the room.

  Ms. Reedy watched her brother leave, and Lily thought that she saw worry lines furrowing the woman’s skin. Why was she worried? Wasn’t she getting exactly what she wanted?

  Ms. Reedy met Lily’s eyes and the worry lines smoothed out as if they’d never been there at all. “You want to know why I’m here.”

  Lily lifted her chin, speechless with rage and fear and confusion.

  Ms. Reedy shrugged. “It’s true he was a little odd. He was so absent minded his mother would sometimes find his books in the ice box. But I had grown up with nothing and he was heir to a fortune. And then he found the treasure that people had been seeking for more than three hundred years. We would have been set for life. Our children and our children’s children would have been set for life. If he hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed.”

  “I married a schoolteacher who left me a widow at thirty. Since then, I’ve been working as a librarian, the steward of the treasures of history. After all that I’ve been through, it seems right, almost poetic, that I should be the steward of any literal treasures left here.”

  “What do you mean you should be the steward?” said Wesley. “This is my treasure, Aurelia.”

  “Our treasure,” Ms. Reedy said. “Yours and mine and Bailey’s.”

  Wesley waved the gun. “Aurelia, I’m warning you-”

  The sadness on Ms. Reedy’s face fled, and her expression hardened. “Wesley, don’t waste my time with threats. If anything happens to me, if I don’t call in by midnight tonight, my lawyer has instructions to alert the authorities. I’m sure you don’t want the authorities involved, do you? Who do you think would get the treasure then? The state of New Jersey, perhaps? The federal government?”

  Wesley clutched the gun tighter, but Ms. Reedy turned back to Lily.

  “So you ruined the microfilm at the library?” Lily asked.

  Ms. Reedy tugged her neckerchief. “Of course not. There’s nothing in those papers about the treasure. And besides, no one is interested in history. Except for you, Lily. And my dear brother, of course, and he’s too stingy to share. That’s why I sent you and Vasilios, to Bailey’s house.”

  “How did you know what we were looking for?”

  “I wasn’t sure until you came in wearing that necklace. After all these years, I couldn’t believe it that I might have a chance to find it.”

  Just then Bailey Burton returned, holding the Kewpie in his hands. As they watched, he grabbed the doll’s head in one of his hands, yanked it off, and tossed it to the floor.

  “Oh, dear,” said Ms. Reedy. “Why don’t you simply look in the clothing?”

  Bailey scowled and picked at the buttons. He slid a finger down the back of the red
dress and found a yellowed piece of paper pinned to the inside. Lily’s mother gasped. Bailey carefully removed the paper. “This is it,” he said, his Halloween face cracking into a smile.

  “Wonderful,” said Ms. Reedy. “Well, it’s time to get moving then.” She eyed Arden. “Tie her up,” she said. “I have a feeling that she could give us some trouble.”

  Bailey pointed at Vaz. “What about that one?”

  “He comes with us. Both of them do,” said Wesley.

  “I hardly think we need—” began Ms. Reedy.

  “Enough, Aurelia, you’ve had your fun. It’s my show now. They can dig while we keep an eye on them.”

  “Please don’t do this, Wesley,” said Lily’s mother.

  Lily could barely keep herself from breaking out into sobs at Wesley hauled Vaz to his feet, as she watched Bailey Burton lash her mother’s hands and feet to the dining room chair, stuff a linen napkin into her mouth. She felt a stiff, frigid breeze, smelled the sharp tang of smoke and yearned for Max to do something, anything. Why wasn’t he helping?

  Wesley pointed to the map. “Max actually measured everything off in paces! And there’s nothing here but a circle marked WELCOME. How do we know where we’re supposed to start pacing from?”

  Ms. Reedy rolled her eyes. “Men,” she said to Lily, “are braggarts, deceivers, and idiots. It would do you well to remember that.” To Wesley she said, “Here. We begin right here in this house, at the front door.” She slid into her fur coat. “Good-bye Arden. I hope you’re not too uncomfortable.”

  Lily saw a single tear streaking down her mother’s face before Wesley poked the gun into Lily’s back and ordered her to get moving.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  With Vaz and Lily in front, Bailey, Wesley, and Ms. Reedy behind, the group paced one hundred and ninety-seven steps from the front door to the firsts street lamp at the Congress motel (marked GOVERNMENT on the map).

  “They could have moved the street lamp since 1953,” said Wesley.

  “Trust me, they didn’t. The preservationists would have had a fit,” said Ms. Reedy.

  The sidewalk next to the hotel was blocked off. “Now what do we do?” whined Bailey Burton.

  “Walk in the street,” Wesley said. “And stop whining. You sound like a child.”

  Two hundred twenty more steps and they reached the street pole marking Beach Drive. They paced across the street until they hit the sidewalk. Another turn, right, and they paced to the promenade. Five steps up, five steps over, five steps down to the beach.

  “What now?” said Bailey.

  “One hundred sixty-one paces southeast.”

  “Couldn’t he have just started at the beach?” Bailey said. “We didn’t need to count all the way down here.”

  Wesley snorted. “My brother loved to waste other people’s time.”

  “Stop,” said Ms. Reedy. She removed a compass from the folds of her voluminous coat, the markings on the gadget luminescent in the dark. She pointed. “That way. Let the boy count it off; he’s about the right size.” She pushed Vaz ahead. He looked back at Lily. Ms. Reedy shook her head. “You can gaze into each other’s eyes later. Now walk.”

  Vaz counted off the paces while the rest of them followed, Ms. Reedy keeping them on a precise course. The night was dark and moonless, the inky sky streaked with ashen clouds. Lily shivered in her thin dress and coat, felt the sand creeping into her shoes and stockings as they walked. The sound of the surf crashing into the beach got louder and louder. She couldn’t see how they were going to get out of this.

  “One fifty-nine, one sixty, one sixty-one.” Vaz stopped walking.

  Wesley handed a shovel to Vaz and one to Lily. “Dig,” he said. “And put your backs into it.”

  Vaz and Lily started to dig. The dry sand on top wasn’t too heavy, but soon they reached the wet sand underneath. Lily began to sweat, the skin on her hands burning. After what seemed to be hours and hours, the hole now several feet deep, Lily stopped to flex her aching, blistered fingers.

  “Did you hear a whistle? Did anyone say it was break time?” said Wesley.

  Lily risked a glare, but she picked up the shovel and continued her digging. Her back and arms were on fire. She could hear Vaz grunting as lifted each shovelful, could see the sweat dampening his dark curls. He glanced up at Lily, throwing a load of wet sand behind him. “She’s just a friend,” he said.

  “The drama of young love,” said Ms. Reedy, her voice chilly. “I’m glad those days are over for me.”

  Lily ignored her and tightened her grip on the shovel. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He threw another load of sand over his shoulder. “Yes, it does. Kami’s a good friend.”

  “You like her. I could see it that day at the library. “

  Vaz grunted as he dug. “OK. I did like her. Sort of. But then I got to know you.”

  Lily jammed her shovel into the sand and stepped on it. Tears stung her cheeks, her own hair whipping across her face to rake them away. She couldn’t trust her own instincts or her own judgment; no matter what she thought she always seemed to get it backwards or inside out or wrong. He had come when she needed him, and now they were here, digging themselves deeper, together. That meant something, didn’t it? She did not know what would happen to them if they found the treasure, or if they didn’t.

  Vaz was right. It mattered.

  Lily nodded. “Just a friend. Okay.”

  “Shut up and dig,” barked Wesley, angling the gun so they could see it.

  They dug.

  The hole was nearly five feet deep when Lily hit something with her shovel. Ms. Reedy must have heard the muffled whump, because her face appeared over the edge. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lily.

  “Well, find out, you silly girl!” Wesley said.

  The two of them got to their knees and used their hands to dig at the sand. Soon the top of a small leather trunk was visible. Lily couldn’t help but feel excited at the sight of it.

  “Get it out,” said Wesley as they stood and started digging around the edge of the trunk to free it from the heavy sand. It took another half hour before they could heft the leaden weight out of the hole and hand it up to Wesley and Bailey. They were both panting with exhaustion as they crawled out of the hole.

  Bailey Burton leaped on the trunk, yanking at the ancient lock, but Uncle Wes stopped him. “Wait,” he said, “I’d like to savor the moment with a smoke.”

  Ms. Reedy looked on in disgust. “Really, Wesley!”

  “Aurelia. Let me enjoy this.”

  Bailey’s eyes looked like they were going to burst from his face, but Ms. Reedy threw up her hands. “Bailey, let the man have his fun. We’ve waited more than forty years. What’s another minute?”

  Still holding the gun, Uncle Wes reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a cigar, and placed it in the corner of his mouth. Then he pulled out his lighter and flicked it open with his thumb. The flame was tall, bluish, ghostly in the dark. As Lily watched, he dialed the flame higher and brighter, his watery eyes glittering behind it. The tip of his tongue darted against his livery lips. His eyes caressed the flame, and Lily remembered him insisting on setting the fire himself that first evening at the house, remembered him saying that fire was “one of man’s greatest inventions.”

  It was then that Lily knew that Max hadn’t set the fires.

  Wesley had.

  Lily gripped the shovel so hard she thought the skin on her hands would split. She glanced at Bailey Burton and Ms. Reedy, both waiting impatiently for Wesley to finish his heinous little ritual. They were both at least sixty years old. She was sure that Vaz could handle them if he had to. It was the gun, and Wesley, she was worried about. If she could just knock it from his hands.

  Now, her mind prodded her, while he’s still distracted.

  She lifted the shovel just as Wesley turned. She heard Vaz shout, “Lily!” just as Wesley brought the gun down on the side of her head. Fir
eworks fizzled in her brainpan, and then there was nothing.

  Ghosts

  He seemed to be floating beside her, skin so pale it was nearly blue. She gazed at him in wonder. “Hello, Max.”

  “Hello, Lily.”

  “Your hands are on fire.”

  He shrugged. “They’re always like that. I’m used to it.”

  She looked around. She could see a swirling gray mist with shadows shifting behind it, like people passing behind a gauze curtain. “Am I dead?”

  “No,” he said. He danced in the sand. “You’re dreaming.”

  “I don’t think so. It usually doesn’t hurt this much when I dream.”

  “Then you must be dead.” He stopped dancing. “What does it feel like, dreaming?” he asked. “I forget.”

  “Dreaming feels real, mostly,” said Lily.

  “Oh,” he said. “I forget how that feels, too.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you at first. I wasn’t sure if you were real.”

  “And now you’re sure?”

  Lily frowned. “Well, I can see you. And I can touch…” She reached out, but Max drew back.

  “Does your mother love you?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Lily. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “How do you know that she loves you, if you can’t see love? If you can’t touch it?”

  Even with the fog in her head, and the fog swirling about her, Lily was annoyed. “You’ve been trying to tell me something. But I didn’t understand.”

  “We often don’t understand what’s important.”

  “Max, you put jam in my shoes,” said Lily. “What was that supposed to mean?”

  Max laughed, the sound like the leaves rustling in the trees. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Who was it? Katherine?”

  “A spiteful soul bent on mischief.” In the air, he traced a name in fire: LOLA. “She’ll be here a long time.”