The Chick and the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  "Who are those guys?"

  "They were my boyfriends."

  I flipped through trie pages. Except for K, Q, and Z, the other sections all had names, addresses, and phone numbers listed in them. Maybe thirty of them total. My eyes went wide. "All of them?" I asked.

  I guess the question must have sounded a little harsh because Didi's shoulders shot back. "You want me to apologize?"

  "No. Really. It's just… " I thought of Ella and the way she liked to preach about women's rights. Back in Didi's day, the concept of that many men in any woman's life must have been pretty shocking. These days, thanks to Ella and her liberated cronies, we were more enlightened.

  "What you do… " I corrected myself. "What you did back when you did it is none of my business," I told Didi, and I meant it. "It's not my place to judge and besides…" Quickly I thumbed through the book again. "You must have had one hell of a good time!"

  She caught herself just before she grinned and messed up the mask, and I got myself back on track. "So why would Susan want an address book filled with the names of your former boyfriends?" I asked her.

  While I talked, I paged through the book again. More slowly this time. That's when I realized there was more there than just a simple listing of names. I whistled low under my breath. "I can understand keeping the names and numbers of former lovers," I told Didi, "but I can't believe you had the nerve to have a rating system. Not in writing, anyway."

  "What are you talking about?" She looked over my shoulder to where I pointed. Some of the names were marked with stars.

  Didi shook her head. "I didn't put those there," she said. "Which means—"

  "That Susan did." I took a closer look. "David Barkwill has one. So does somebody named Jack Edwards. There are four or five others with stars, too." One of them was Thomas Ross Howell but I didn't bother to mention him. There was plenty I wanted to know about him, but I was saving that for later. "Why these guys?"

  She squinched her eyes shut, thinking hard. "Read the names again."

  I did, leaving out Howell completely. "Barkwill, David. Edwards, Jack. Javits, Michael. Paskovitch, Ken. Simpson, Daniel."

  "And the ones who don't?"

  This list was longer, but I went through it, too.

  Didi chewed her lower lip. "Well, I know Jimmy Anderson ended up in the Ohio Penitentiary. Something about stolen cars. And Tony Antonucci…" She shivered and hugged her arms around herself. "He was dreamy. Just like that cop of yours. He drove a milk truck."

  "And those names don't have stars. And this Daniel Simpson, he has a star, but it's crossed out."

  "Dan Simpson died fifteen years ago," Didi said. "Had a heart attack. He was playing golf at his country club."

  Listening, I drummed my fingers against the yellowed pages of the book, and maybe it was the rhythm of the clump, clump, clump that got my brain to work. "The guys who do have stars… " I thumbed through the pages, finding the names again. "Do you know what became of them?"

  Didi nodded. "Dave Barkwill, he owns a big construction company now. He has scads of money. Kenny, he was a banker. Mike Javits, you've probably heard of him. He played professional football for a while. I think he's in the Hall of Fame. And Jack Edwards… well, you must recognize that name."

  I didn't and told her as much.

  "Reverend Jack?" She looked at me in wonder. "He's the televangelist who has that huge church down in Akron. Writes books and appears on TV talk shows and all. Back when I knew him, he was preaching out of an old gas station. The owner was a member of his congregation who let Jack use the place on Sundays."

  Even without Howell, I saw the glimmer of light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. "What you're telling me is that all the guys who have stars are successful, right? They have money."

  Didi thought it over, but I didn't have to wait for her to confirm my suspicions. I knew what Susan was up to. "Didi, she's blackmailing them."

  "What?"

  "It's Susan. She's shaking them down. She knows that you and these guys were lovers all those years ago. She's holding it over their heads."

  "No way!" Didi waved away the possibility. "It's been fifty years. Why would she care? Why would they?"

  I pointed to the first name. "You tell me. David Barkwill. Why would he care?"

  Didi looked up at the ceiling. "Well, he was married. The money for the construction company? It came from her father, and last I checked, Daddy was still alive and kicking. He was a mean old son of a gun even back then. I bet he's still holding on to the purse strings."

  "And Reverend Jack?"

  Was that the trace of a blush I saw beneath the green goo? Didi looked away before I had a chance to know for sure. "He preached fire and brimstone," she said.

  "And you were the hottest number of them all." I looked at the book. "It's true for every one of these guys, isn't it? Every one of them had something to hide then and they don't want that same something to come back and bite them in the ass. Not even now."

  "It's possible."

  "It's more than possible," I told her. "I'm sure of it. That's why Susan lifted the address book out of your desk. It's how she's parlayed her salary from the steno pool into a fortune. Wise investing!" I remembered what Susan said back at the house. "She's got something on these guys because you told her all about what you did with every single one of them."

  "I may have mentioned them," Didi admitted. "You know, the day after our dates. I may have told Susan what happened."

  "And she's been living on it ever since." I told myself it was the last time I'd underestimate a little old lady and watched Didi carefully as I spoke. "She's got Howell's name starred, too," I said, but I kept my voice light. Like it was no big deal. "My guess is that's why she defended him so vehemently. She can't afford to let the cat out of the bag when it comes to Howell and ruin a good thing. She must know some secret about him, huh? I mean, to keep a guy as powerful as Howell under her thumb all these years. What do you suppose that secret is, Didi? Does Susan know that Howell was Judy's father? Do you think she suspects that he was the reason you jumped?"

  As if my words were slaps, Didi trembled when they slammed into her. But she didn't run and she didn't hide, and I had to give her credit. Running and hiding were two things ghosts were very good at. The fact that she stayed there to face me and my hunches said a lot for Didi.

  "We were supposed to meet," she said. "Thomas and I. That night. On the Lorain/Carnegie Bridge. You know, so we could leave town together."

  A nighttime meeting. A married man. A hot-to-trot secretary who'd just had his baby.

  It didn't sound like the respectable judge I'd met, but that was then and this was now. Then, Howell was young and his career was just starting. If I stretched my imagination, it almost seemed possible. "He was going to leave his family?"

  Didi nodded. "We needed a fresh start and we knew we'd never get it here. He had a busy law practice, a reputation, and big dreams. He couldn't afford to jeopardize any of that. And yes, he had a family, too. Judy was only nine months old." Her voice faded, and I knew if I let her slip too deeply into her painful memories, I might never find the answers I was looking for.

  "What about Judy?" I asked. "What did Howell think about having another child?"

  Didi snapped out of her thoughts. "He was thrilled. He loved her very much. That night, Judy was with Susan. You're right, Susan knew about Thomas. She knew we were going away together. After Thomas and I were settled, we were going to send for Judy. That was the plan. But then…"

  "But then he never showed up."

  Don't ask me how I knew, I just did. It was the only thing that could explain such a sad ending to a situation that seemed to have held such hope. "You waited, right? And the creep never came to meet you."

  "It wasn't his fault." Tears scored Didi's facial mask. "It was all because of his wife, Tammy. You see, she told him that if she ever found out he'd been unfaithful to her, she'd kill their children and then she'd kill herself. I know
that's what happened. Thomas tried to leave. He wanted to leave. More than anything, he wanted to be with me and Judy. But somehow, Tammy found out. And he couldn't take the chance that she'd hurt the children. Thomas loved them too much. Just like he loved me."

  "He didn't love you enough to come to that bridge and explain what was going on." No problem with Didi thinking my comment was insensitive. She never even heard me. Her gaze was a little out of focus. Like she was seeing through me. Beyond me. Straight back to that painful night.

  "It was one of those damp, gray days in March. Just past dark. The wind was blowing from the north, right off the lake." She hugged her arms around herself, and when Didi turned away from me, then turned back again, she wasn't in her pajamas any more. The green goo was gone, too. She was dressed in high-heeled pumps and a black cloth coat that went down to her knees, and she had a suitcase clutched in her gloved hands. Her hair was pulled away from her face and tucked under a small velvet hat perched atop her head. It was trimmed with feathers that ruffled in the bone-chilling breeze that suddenly filled my room.

  "Whoa!" I protested, but Gift or no Gift, I apparently had no control over what was happening. The air was suddenly damp against my skin. A wisp of fog blew by me, and the lights faded.

  When they came up again enough for me to take a look at the scene around me, I realized that—somehow—I was outside. With Didi. A spectator to a scene that had happened fifty years earlier.

  "The street lamps looked like hazy balls of light." Didi's voice was muffled by the fog that swirled around our feet. We were standing on the sidewalk, and when I looked up and down the street, I saw that she was right. The streetlights glowed a ghostly sort of yellow, their light soft around the edges.

  "I remember thinking that I should write down the thing about the streetlights and the fog," Didi said. "So I would remember. Because the whole image… well, you have to admit, it's pretty good, and I thought that maybe someday I'd use it in a book. I looked through my pockets…" She set down her suitcase and did just that, pulling out a hanky and a piece of gum wrapped in foil before she fished out a folded piece of paper. "But I couldn't find a pen so I repeated it to myself over and over. Hazy balls of light. Hazy balls of light. Just so I wouldn't forget."

  She stuffed her hands in her pockets and walked back and forth beside a wall as high as her waist. When she walked past me and down the sidewalk, the fog cleared for a moment, and I saw two giant stone pillars, one on each side of the street. Each was carved with the image of a man holding an automobile, a tribute to the area's industry.

  I was a Clevelander, born and bred, and like any Clevelander, I recognized the place. These days it was called the Hope Memorial. Back when Didi was alive, though, it was known as the Lorain/ Carnegie Bridge.

  Yeah, the same bridge Didi had jumped off.

  Realizing where we were, what night it was, and what was about to happen, my stomach knotted. I raced forward to warn her, but it was as if Didi didn't even know I was there. She paced up and down the sidewalk.

  "It was quiet," she said. "You know, the way it can be on a foggy night. Like the whole world is wrapped in cotton batting. I heard the sound of a foghorn from a ship out on the lake…" The haunting noise echoed through the night. "But I didn't see anyone or hear any cars. After a while, I was so cold and damp…"

  "That's when you realized you'd been stood up."

  She had forgotten I was there. Didi whirled around. She shook her head violently. "No. I knew he'd come. I knew he wouldn't leave me. He'd never—" Her voice breaking with tears, she turned toward the stone wall that looked down over the Cuyahoga River, some two hundred feet below. "I waited for hours. I was so cold, I couldn't feel my feet. I walked back and forth, but that didn't help. I told myself he'd come. I knew he would. But then he didn't, and I don't know what got into me. It felt as if there was an animal deep inside me, eating out my heart. I… I climbed up on the wall."

  She did just that, and though I knew what I was watching was nothing more than leftover traces of the energy that had fueled the tragedy so many years before, my heart raced and my stomach flipped. I stepped forward, one hand out to her. "Didi, don't!"

  My words echoed back at me from the fog. At least I think it as my own voice I heard. It was hard to hear when my heart pounded in my chest and my blood rushed inside my ears. I stood there, wondering what I could do to change the course of the events that had happened so many years before, and even as I watched, a figure moved past me and toward Didi.

  Man or woman? Honestly, I couldn't tell. The figure was as insubstantial as the fog that swirled around us, no more real than the shadows that hid its face and distorted its shape.

  A voice came from behind me somewhere.

  "He's not coming," it said.

  The voice shook Didi out of the spell that held her. Still perched high above the city, she turned. In the anemic yellow light, her face was radiant. "He will. He has to. He said he'd be here."

  "He'll never leave her."

  "He said he's coming for me."

  "He didn't mean it."

  "He wouldn't lie."

  "Are you sure?" I heard a chuckle and the sound of something scraping against the concrete. The next thing I knew, the figure had closed in on Didi. It grabbed hold of the sleeve of her coat, holding her in place, keeping her from harm.

  Didi took one more look over her shoulder at the panorama of Cleveland skyline and held out her hand to the figure, preparing to step down.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Maybe things hadn't really happened the way Didi remembered them.

  Maybe I wouldn't be forced to watch her die in the fog and the cold.

  Maybe—

  I saw the figure glance not at me, but at the person who stood somewhere in the shadows behind me.

  "Go ahead," the voice said.

  The figure nodded, tightened its hold on Didi, and pushed.

  Chapter 17

  "Why the hell did you tell me you committed suicide?"

  Okay, so my question wasn't exactly tactful. And I wasn't precisely composed. How was I supposed to act when I had just witnessed a murder? Yeah, yeah. It was a fifty-year-old murder. But still…

  Safely back in the present and right where I'd started out from, I sat on the edge of my bed, pulling in shaky breath after shaky breath, one hand pressed to my heart and the other swiping at the tears on my cheeks.

  "You were murdered, Didi." I said it pretty loud, partly because it didn't seem to be sinking in with my resident victim. Mostly because I was so rattled, I couldn't help myself. "How did you not know you were murdered?"

  Across the room, Didi stood with her back to me. Her head was tipped to one side.

  "I know it sounds crazy but…" She turned to me, and when she did, she looked just like she had before we started our frightening little journey into the past. Pajamas. Turban. Green goo. "I never thought about it before. I didn't remember…" As if the fog still sat heavy on her shoulders, she shivered inside her flannel pajamas. "I remember being on the bridge. I remember that first step off into nothingness. It felt like I was flying. But I didn't know…" She shook herself. "I was so confused that night. I was out of my head! And, remember, I did leave a suicide note. I heard people talking about it at my funeral. What else was I supposed to think?"

  I thought back to the scene on the bridge, and maybe this whole detective thing was finally starting to sink in. Instantly I saw the flaw in Didi's theory. "You left a note, huh? But you didn't have a pen. I know because I saw you looking through your pockets for one. Bet the person who pushed you didn't know that."

  Didi's blue eyes widened. "I forgot. I mean about the pen. I didn't—" She shook her head as if she was trying to clear it. "First at my funeral, then over the years… I heard suicide so often, I really believed it. I thought I killed myself."

  The enormity of the news settled in on me. "Shit," I grumbled.

  "I'll say." Didi dropped down on the bed next to me.
"Now what?"

  All right, I admit it wasn't exactly the right thing to do to inspire confidence in a client, but I shook my head, confused. "I guess we've got to wonder if your death had anything to do with the manuscript," I said. "That all depends on who pushed you." When Didi didn't say a thing, I tried a more obvious approach.

  "Who pushed you?" I asked. "I couldn't see clearly. At least I couldn't see any more than shadows. You know, like a TV when the cable is out. Any chance it was Merilee?"

  Didi shot off the bed like it was on fire. "Don't be ridiculous. Merilee is my sister. My own sister wouldn't—"

  "Steal your manuscript?"

  "That's different."

  "Is it? If she wanted the manuscript bad enough—"

  "She didn't. All she ever did was make fun of my book. I'd tell her about it, and she'd criticize my research or tell me my characters wouldn't do the things they did, that they wouldn't talk the way I had them talking. She didn't want the manuscript at all. Not while I was alive. It wasn't until after I was dead that she realized it would never be published if she didn't—"

  "Revisionist history!" I jumped up from the bed and faced off against Didi. "Listen to yourself. Suddenly you're excusing her."

  "I'm not. But you said—"

  "Hell, Didi, I just saw someone push you off a friggin' bridge. All I'm saying is that we have to figure out who it was."

  "No. You're the one who doesn't get it. I'm dead. I've been dead longer than I was ever alive. I missed out on turning thirty. On seeing my daughter grow up. On holding my granddaughter. I never got to marry the man I loved." Her shoulders slumped. "I killed myself, Pepper. That's what everyone said, and they were so sure of it, no one ever even bothered to question it. Everybody just figured I was another unwed mother who couldn't face the humiliation. No one cared enough to even look into my death. Don't you see, after all these years of them not caring, I don't care, either."

  I couldn't exactly empathize with a lot of what Didi said. I'd never had a kid—heck, I didn't even know if I ever wanted one—so the whole maternal thing… well, that was foreign to me. But I wasn't completely heartless. I did understand what it was to be young and alive. I knew what it felt like to have dreams shattered and hopes dashed, too.