Shattered Spirits

by L. L. Bartlett

  I nodded.

  “I don’t dislike it.”

  “Him.”

  “Him.”

  “Then why can’t he come stay with me while I recover?”

  Richard’s gaze remained on the road, but I could see the muscles around his jaw tighten. “It’s because of Betsy.”

  Liar.

  “Cats have been known to sleep on infants’ faces and smother them.”

  “That’s an urban legend. Name one incident.”

  “Of course I don’t know anyone who’s personally experienced it. I’m sure if I Googled it I could come up with a handful.” He braked for the next light.

  “I’m in cast prison,” I said looking down at my lower leg, “but Herschel has been sentenced to solitary confinement until I can go back to my apartment.”

  “Brenda goes over to feed him twice a day.”

  “Yeah, and probably spends an entire five minutes with him.”

  “She has a house and a baby to take care of. And now you,” he rather pointedly reminded me.

  Like I asked to be in that situation. If it weren’t for the damn stairs that led to my apartment over the garage, I could take care of myself. It wouldn’t be easy, but I’d taken care of myself for eighteen years before I’d been bonked on the head by a baseball bat and had to once again depend on Richard.

  I decided not to press it. I’d wait for a better time to push my own agenda.

  As we approached the cemetery, Richard asked. “So, how are you going to play this? As a human Geiger counter?”

  “It’s worked before.”

  He nodded. “Say you get some insight on a dead person who needs an intervention; what do you intend to do?”

  “I’ve made a few contacts with cops since I’ve been back in Buffalo—”

  “You mean Detectives Hayden and Wilder?”

  “Yeah. They vouched for me with Detective Baldwin down in Manhattan. If I ask nicely, they may be able to introduce me—us—to cops in other jurisdictions, depending on what I learn today. If I learn anything.”

  “Do you get the feeling this is a cold case?”

  I thought about it. “Yeah. Pretty damn cold. Like multiple decades cold.”

  “I like the sound of that. I told Brenda we wouldn’t look into current cases. She’s concerned that we could put ourselves in harm’s way. But if you’re talking about a crime that happened closer to a century ago, then there can’t be anyone alive who could come after us.”

  “One would think.”

  Richard frowned. “You think otherwise?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know if we’ll come across anything of interest. Right now I just have a gut feeling. Unfortunately, I’ve been mistaken before,” I reminded him. Yeah. When I’d thought I’d come across a couple of bodies buried in a yard, when in actuality it was cremains that had been scattered.

  We approached the corner of Delaware and Delavan Avenues and Forest Lawn’s southwest gate and Richard drove right in. “Do you want to go in the Main Office?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to get out of the car until I absolutely have to. But maybe they have a map of the place.”

  “I’ll go inside and see.” Richard pulled the car into a parking spot, killed the engine, and got out.

  I sank back in my seat, closed my eyes, and tried to glom onto whatever feeling I might perceive. Almost instantly, the vision of the headstone came back to me, but it was only visible from the backside. No carvings marred the pristine rose-pink granite. Did the color of the stone indicate the gender of the person buried beneath the monument?

  Yeah.

  Okay, it was a woman who had died … but how? And when?

  Richard returned with a couple of brochures, one of which unfolded into a big four-color map of the vast cemetery. Although it was over a century and a half old, the graveyard was still accepting new eternal residents.

  Richard studied the map, pointing out its legend. “A lot of famous people are buried here. There’s Millard Fillmore, our thirteenth president; politician, Shirley Chisholm; Rick James, the punk rock star. There’s that Blocher Memorial, and over there is the Darwin Martin grave.”

  The latter was well known for employing famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright to not only build the long-demolished headquarters for the Larkin Soap Company, but his own now-beautifully restored prairie home on Jewett Parkway, which Maggie and I had visited and I’d taken at least fifty or sixty photos of.

  “We should steer there,” I said. Yeah, that felt right.

  “Okay.” Richard started the car, backed out, and turned right.

  We drove slowly down the dark ribbon of asphalt and soon came upon Frank Lloyd Wright’s Blue Sky Mausoleum. “Wow,” Richard said, and braked. “Do you mind if I get out to look?”

  “Go ahead.” I’d already seen it—and more than once.

  He pulled the car off the road, killed the engine, and got out. While he used his phone to snap pictures of the beautiful memorial and the goose pond beyond, I traced my finger over Section H on the map. Things started coalescing in my brain. The tombstone I’d been seeing belonged to a woman. A wife? A daughter? Yes, at least one of them—but at that moment, I wasn’t sure which. The more I considered the situation, the more convinced I was that I had to be alone to encounter whatever or whoever I was to connect with. Oh, yeah—Richard was going to love that. Not.

  Richard came back to the car, all smiles. “Wow, that was an experience.”

  “You think that’s cool, you should visit all the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff that’s available locally. Once my leg heals, I’ll babysit so you and Brenda can tour the homes and the boat house.”

  “I’ll take you up on that.” He started the car and we took off once again. “Do you want to visit Rick James’s grave?”

  “I already have,” I admitted. “Do you?”

  “Not today. Maybe I’ll bring Brenda and Betsy here and we’ll do the whole self-guided tour.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said, distracted. I kept rubbing my fingers over a certain area of the map, which I was pretty sure would reveal pay dirt, although what that motherlode was to deliver was still beyond me.

  Up hill and down dale we went until we approached Section H. “You need to slow down.”

  Richard braked until the Mercedes came to a halt.

  “This is it,” I said.

  He looked around. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  Richard consulted the map once more. “The Darwin Martin site is just up that branch of the road. Do you want to see it?”

  “I already have, but I think I should get out of the car.” I pointed across the way to a large white granite bench that doubled as a monument. “I could go sit over there.”

  Richard nodded, cut the engine, and got out of the car, crossing in front to extricate me from the passenger seat. He leaned me against the car and handed me the crutches. “Do you mind if I take a look at the grave?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  Richard went right, and I hobbled left.

  The stone bench resembled a church pew. A greenish lichen had infiltrated any tiny crevice and had spread across the stone. The family’s name had been chiseled with pride, although they’d evidently died out for the last burial had been in the nineteen fifties, but the cemetery’s maintenance crew kept the grass from growing too high around the memorial.

  I sat down on the cold stone, glad the ambient temperature hovered in the mid-seventies, and set my crutches against the armrest. I considered hoisting my broken leg up to rest on the bench, but decided against it. Would I regret that decision later? I wasn’t sure. Gravity wasn’t my friend and I knew it would ache later in the day if I had to leave it down for too long. The truth was, all of me would ache after this foray, but I knew I needed to be here. I just didn’t know why.

  My gaze traveled up the road and I watched Richard inspect the Martin gravesite and take a number of pictures with his cell phon
e before he headed back to join me.

  “What happens now?”

  “You need to go away for a while.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes, way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you’re here—she won’t come.”

  “She who?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met her yet.”

  “A ghost?”

  “A restless spirit,” I suggested.

  “Who is it?”

  “I won’t know until I meet her. But I know she won’t show up if you’re here.”

  Richard looked around us. There wasn’t a living soul in sight—and, as far as I could see, no dead ones, either. It was eerily quiet, too. We were acres and acres away from civilization.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Richard asked doubtfully. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone and helpless.”

  “I’m not helpless.”

  “Well, there’s no way you could run away if something happened.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  He glowered at me. “How long do you think this is going to take?”

  “I don’t know. But I know nothing’s going to happen if you don’t leave.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “Drive around—go back to the cemetery’s Main Office. I’ll call you when I’m ready to go.”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t like this.”

  “It’s broad daylight. Ghosts aren’t supposed to have a lot of power—if they have any at all—then.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right.” Richard looked back to the car, then to me. “It’s against my better judgment, but I guess if we’re going to go into business we have to trust each other’s decisions.”

  “I’m not saying I won’t listen to your objections in the future, it’s just that we’re going to have to establish some ground rules, and one of them is that I know how this psychic crap works better than you do.”

  He nodded. “Okay. I’ll circle the cemetery and park just over that hill so I can get here fast if you need my help.”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

  “If you could only promise that,” he muttered, turned, and got back in the car. I watched him slowly drive away, sure he was watching me in the rearview mirror. Then the car was out of sight.

  The wind rustled the leaves on the large maple behind me. A sparrow hopped around one of the nearby tombstones, picking at the ground, looking for something to eat. I studied my surroundings. No sign of anybody.

  The cemetery really was a serene place. I thought back to the morning of the accident and wished Dave and I hadn’t had our day—and my life—disrupted. If I’d stopped my bike just twelve or eighteen inches to the left, the SUV wouldn’t have hit me, and I wouldn’t be stuck in “cast prison.”

  A wave of frustration—bitterness at my situation—passed through me and I closed my eyes and leaned against the back of the bench. Maybe I’d just sit and soak up my fifteen minutes of sunshine, get my daily requirement of Vitamin D, and then call Richard to come get me.

  “Excuse me,” a woman said, her voice soft. “Is this seat taken?”

  I opened my eyes and turned to see an attractive brunette dressed in old-fashioned attire standing between me and the sun. I had to squint to take her in. She looked like a flapper from a bygone age. “No,” I said, and scooched over to the right, glad I hadn’t rested my legs across the bench.

  She settled at the far end of the cold granite seat, her back to the arm of the stone memorial.

  “I’m Alice.”

  “Hi. I’m Jeff.” I didn’t offer her my hand.

  Her smile was shy and tentative. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”

  “I haven’t been here much,” I admitted.

  “Are you visiting anyone special?” she asked.

  “Darwin Martin,” I said, and nodded up the lane to where the relatively new craftsman-style obelisk stood. The man had been buried many decades before, and his original headstone had been replaced to commemorate his friendship with the late, great architect Frank Lloyd Wright. “How about you?”

  “I’m here on a regular basis,” she admitted. “It’s so peaceful.”

  “Yes, it is,” I agreed, taking in the nearly silent grounds.

  “You broke your leg,” she said, glancing down at the cast that poked out of the bottom of the leg of my baggy sweatpants.

  “Yeah.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not as much as when it first happened—but I don’t sleep well.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “I fell off my bike.” I didn’t feel the need to go into the details.

  “You have a bicycle?” she asked, delighted.

  “Had a bicycle,” I said. “It’s pretty much toast.”

  “I had a bicycle,” Alice said, and turned her face to the sun, closing her eyes in what seemed like rapture. “The wind raced through my hair. I pedaled with all my might, and I never felt happier.”

  “I wish I could say that. I got hit by a car. I’m pretty much done with riding as a sport.” I looked over at the crutches that leaned against the side of that cold stone monument. Yeah, I was really done with that piece of metal.

  Alice ducked her head and seemed to shrink within herself. “You’re different than most people who come through here.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked, glancing askance at her.

  She nodded. “Most people aren’t so…friendly.”

  Friendly? I’m sure most who knew me wouldn’t say I’d ever been particularly outgoing. “Do you talk to many people?”

  Alice shook her head. “No, not many. In fact, not anybody for a long, long time.”

  I had a feeling why.

  “Tell me about yourself,” I said.

  She shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. I never had a lot of friends at school—but a few good ones. I didn’t have any brothers and sisters. My parents wanted a boy. It was a big disappointment for them.”

  “I have a half-brother and a half-sister. They were cherished. Me? Not so much.” It was what it was, but damn, there was no way I was ever going to reconcile that fact.

  “Um,” she began, her expression thoughtful. “I’m wondering … do you know that I’m—”

  I turned to look at the pretty face before me. “Do I know that you’re dead?”

  Alice looked infinitely sad. “Yes.”

  “Something drew me here. I kind of figured it might be you.”

  “What do you know about me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Would you like to know more?” She almost seemed afraid to hear the answer—that I might dismiss her.

  “Yes.” It was an honest answer.

  A grateful smile quirked the corners of her mouth. She stood. “Follow me.”

  I grabbed my crutches and painfully got to my feet, then hobbled along behind her.

  Alice walked up the road a ways and then turned and ascended a hillock. I sized up the landscape, and the muscles around my chest constricted. Without crutches, the rise wouldn’t have been a problem; now, I wasn’t so sure. I took a breath to steel myself and made my first tentative steps. It was easier to move, crablike—left foot first and then steadying myself with the right crutch. But the uneven ground conspired against me and after only a few steps, I lost my balance and toppled, slamming against one of the stone monuments before falling hard on my left side. Stars seemed to explode before my eyes as an incredible shock of pain thundered through me, leaving me breathless.

  Suddenly Alice was there, kneeling beside me. “Are you all right?”

  “Not really,” I managed through gritted teeth.

  “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I never wanted—I mean, I didn’t think—”

  “It’s okay,” I assured her, still trying to catch my breath. I quickly assessed the situation. This was not going to be easy, but it was probably doable. “I think
I can scooch up on my—” I was about to say ass, but had a feeling innocent Alice would be offended by such nomenclature. “—butt. I’ll have to go up backwards. You’ll have to guide me.”

  “I can do that,” she said earnestly.

  I wasn’t sure if she could hand me the crutches, so I struggled to retrieve them and then sat and thought about my next move for a few moments. “Okay; let’s do this.”

  Alice stood, wringing her hands, and watched as I dug the heel of my left foot into the ground, tried to keep my broken leg—which suddenly seemed to weigh as much as a cement truck—in the air and inched my way up the rise.

  Dig in—scooch up. Dig in—scooch up. It became monotonous. My T-shirt was soon drenched in sweat and I felt like I might puke when Alice finally said, “We’re there.”

  Panting, I craned my neck and saw the rose granite already so familiar to me. I had to move a few more feet before I could see the front of the monument. Big bold letters proclaimed NEWCOMB.

  “This is your family’s plot?”

  Alice nodded. She pointed down at her feet. “I’m here. Well, what’s left of me.”

  “And you’re not at rest?”

  She shook her head. “Not really.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  Her bottom lip trembled, and her words came out a whisper. “Somebody killed me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, and looked embarrassed, as though maybe I might think she’d been careless with her life.

  “You don’t know who did it?”

  She shook her head, her expression infinitely sad.

  Was she telling the truth?

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Alice’s gaze met mine. “I’m not sure.”

  “You’ve been here a long time—alone. Are you ready to move on?”

  “I don’t know. But before I can make a decision like that, I have to know what happened to me.”

  “What was your last conscious thought?”

  A smile brightened her features. “All I remember is a feeling of happiness.”

  “Do you remember if you were alone, and if not, who you were with?”

  Her expression darkened. “No. I was alive; I was happy; and then ….”

  I looked down at the ground. Embedded in the earth was a rectangular piece of pink granite that proclaimed