by Etta Faire
I stared at my screen. Mandy hovered behind me, looking over my shoulder. She looked away, then looked back over again. She was doing a lot of hovering behind my dining room chair, and it was really distracting.
House Fire Kills Beatnik in Landover
“Oh god, the beatnik article,” she said. She closed her eyes. “Don’t read this one. Keep looking.”
There was no way I wasn’t reading this now.
She went on. “This is the second article. About a week after the fire, we all did this press conference that I didn’t want to do, and the paper showed up and asked questions that I didn’t know they were going to ask. The lies got bigger here.”
It sounded like she was desperate to explain things before I could see them.
“Everything Ruth says in this one… it’s all a lie. A lie that I allowed, and okayed ahead of time, but I’m not sure I really had a choice,” she confessed. “Like I said, Ruth and I were playing roles. We had to tell the police we were all friends hanging out while Ruth babysat. We had to say we knew this girl, this poor girl who’d just shown up with Ned, when really, we didn’t have any clue who she was. Ned, Graham and Barry. None of them told us what to say. There wasn’t time for that in the van when we were all screaming at each other. Ned just said to tell the police we met the girl at the film festival in town and we were all hanging out. She fell asleep and we couldn’t get to her when the fire broke out. That was all we were told to say, so we said it. But the police had more questions than that. They wanted details about the film festival, and how we’d met. They wanted to know why someone would fall asleep in the middle of the evening… I couldn’t tell them she’d been drinking the family’s liquor.”
Mandy hovered around my living room as she explained things, her hands wringing together, bangles never clanging. “Right before this press conference, we found out the girl was on drugs or something, hanging out with a traveling group of beatniks. So right before they put the microphones in front of us, Ruth was shoving her on me, saying that I should tell everyone that the girl was my friend and that she never really knew her. My parents weren’t like her parents, Ruth said. Hers were both doctors, and the drug stuff would kill them. My mom worked at a laundromat and my dad was a cook at a diner. So, I went along with it. And, in doing so, I let everyone I loved think I could be a drug addict too. Ruth made me think my family didn’t matter as much as hers. My role got bigger then.”
I could see why Mandy was hiding this, even on a subconscious level. There was a lot to unpack here. I read the article in front of me.
A fire broke out in one of Landover Lakes largest mansions, owned by Seymour and Kathy Jordanna while they were away at a conference in Chicago, killing one person.
Mr. Jordanna is the owner of Creating Capital Wisconsin, the popular firm specializing in helping individuals gain money for retirement and other savings needs.
He and his wife hired Ruth Farrow, the 18-year-old girlfriend of one of Mr. Jordanna’s employees, to watch their house and their six-month-old son, Felix.
“Thank God she was so quick-thinking. Felix was sleeping, and she made sure she got him out,” Mrs. Jordanna said through sobs. “We owe her a lifetime of gratitude. Houses can be replaced, but babies cannot.”
However, one young woman was not as lucky. Alice Wellington, 22, was asleep in an upstairs bedroom and succumbed to the fire.
Miss Farrow outlined the events of that evening. “I didn’t know Alice Wellington. My roommate at the dormitory, Amanda McClusky, and I met Alice briefly at a film festival. I guess Alice had been traveling around to all the film festivals. I had no idea she was even coming over that day. Amanda had her boyfriend drop her and Alice off at the Jordannas’ house. But the girls spent most of their time together, hanging out on the lake, doing who knows what, while I took care of little Felix. Babies need a lot of care and responsibility. Next thing I knew, there was a fire, and I thought of Felix only, who was upstairs napping. I’ve been taking psychology classes lately, and children rely heavily on adults, not just physically, but mentally. I made sure he hardly knew what was going on. I talked calmly to him the entire time. I’m only sad I didn’t know someone else was in the house. Or, I would have saved her too.”
It was later discovered that Miss Wellington was a part of the counter-culture group known as beatniks. A dropout from UCLA, Miss Wellington traveled the nation, watching films and living on other people’s couches and money. She was passed out in the spare bedroom upstairs when the fire broke out.
According to Officer Alan Krebs of the Landover Police Department, illegal substances are suspected but criminal charges will not be pursued.
The fire was thought to have started in the kitchen, and is presumed to be accidental.
“I sure learned a hard lesson,” Miss Farrow said. “Not to let anyone over while I’m babysitting. I’m just glad Felix was safe. I may change my major to psychology now. I really get it.”
When the Landover Gazette asked Miss McClusky why she did not rescue the friend she brought with her to someone else’s house, she only shrugged.
Jackson appeared by my side as I finished the article. I could tell he’d heard and seen everything. “You shrugged?” he asked Mandy. “Your role was getting larger, but when the local paper shouted a question at you, you didn’t just look away or say ‘no comment’?”
“I never said I was good at improvising. My boyfriend and his friends were nowhere to be found. Ruth was claiming all the good stuff, even the stuff I’d done, like saving baby Felix. After that article, my parents were furious when they heard what had happened and that I was hanging out with druggies. They almost made me move back to Hamperville. I kept everyone’s secret, and twenty-five years later, I paid for it.”
I turned in my chair so I was facing Mandy more. “We don’t know that’s the reason you died. I mean, honestly, why would any one of them worry you were going to spill the beans at that point? You kept everything under wraps for twenty-five years. It just doesn’t add up. Something’s not right.”
At least I had a name now. Alice Wellington, the counter-culture beatnik. The article included photos. One was of Mandy. She was making a shrugging gesture, her tight black shirt sitting squarely along bony shoulders. She looked good with her Ruth haircut and lots of mascara.
The caption said: Miss McClusky shrugs off the death of a friend.
“My sister saw that article, our parents, the whole town of Hamperville. It was awful,” Mandy said.
There was also a photo of Alice from high school. Her senior picture where she was dressed in a black velvet drape with pearls. Her pale-blonde hair was short and curled. Freckles dotted her tan, round cheeks.
Mandy hovered closer to me. “She looks different than I remember. She’s bigger here. She’s not fat by any means, but when I saw her that day in 1962, she looked more like that.”
She pointed to the photo of Alice just below the high-school one. In this photo, Alice was willowy, her blonde hair much longer, teased and piled high on the top of her head while the rest of it draped over a shoulder. Cat-eye eyeliner lined her eyes, and a cigarette hung from her lips. I could see why the paper had called her a beatnik. She fit the stereotype in this picture.
The article continued under the photos.
Miss Wellington’s mother, Mrs. Meagan Wellington of Los Angeles, said she wasn’t surprised to hear of her daughter’s demise.
“Alice changed after high school,” she said. “They used to make fun of her, call her all sorts of horrible names. She spent way too much time trying to escape that image, trying to escape that world. She used to write about it. Write and write and write. Or paint. She was an artist and a good kid. I just want everyone to know that. She just got a little messed up.”
The paper went on to add that “Having a less than satisfactory childhood is not an excuse to turn to illegal substances or enter into a counterculture lifestyle.”
I looked at Alice’s beatnik photo sideways. There was something
very familiar about it. The angle of her head, the hair, the eyeliner.
My landline rang, and I ran to pick it up, just as it came to me.
Alice looked just like Mandy had in the poster for the sorority house horror movie.
“Hey Carly,” Rosalie said when I answered the phone, her voice frantic. “We’ve got a problem, but it is a good one, a money one.” She paused like she was mentally counting dollar signs. “Shelby’s car got attacked by birds.”
I played that back in my mind three times before replying to her. “Did you just say Shelby’s car was attacked? And that that’s a good thing?”
I knew Shelby loved her vintage pink Cadillac and would rather get attacked herself than have anything happen to it, not that it was in the best condition.
Rosalie continued. “Yep. Poor thing went off to class this afternoon but had to come back out to the parking lot because she forgot her nursing school ID, and good thing she did because that’s when she saw them. About twenty birds trying to peck straight through her windshield.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “Is she okay?”
“They scratched up her windshield, but they never touched her because she was wearing my bird repellant, thank goodness. But that’s not even the best part. You know what she did next?”
She didn’t wait for me to guess anything.
“She had my bird repellant in her trunk. As soon as she popped the trunk and took it out, those birds scattered. She said she’s never seen something happen so quickly. She never even had to open the jar.”
“Wow, that’s some powerful bird repellant,” I replied, still not exactly sure what the money news was all about.
I paced my living room as I talked. Mandy and Jackson were right beside me. Jackson was making the same mimicked “talking” hand motion he had made with his cousin. I ignored him again.
Rosalie was still talking. “She smeared a little here and there, along her car, being careful of the paint job. And it worked. She went to class, came back, and no birds. Not even one of them singing in a tree somewhere. Now, here’s the best part…”
“I thought that was the best part.”
“There are a lot of best parts because they all lead to us making more money. She told Lenny at the diner when she got to work after her class, and Lenny told a bunch of other small business owners in Landover, and so on and so forth. You get the picture.”
I was silent. I kind of knew where this was going now, but it did not sound good.
Rosalie continued. “You know, like Paula Henkel at the bed-and-breakfast and the family that owns Bob’s Bungalows. A bunch of people, and they are all ordering my special blend now. So, I need you to help me make more of it, a ton more.” She started humming We’re in the Money.
“Nope,” I said, plopping down on my couch, forgetting momentarily that it was stiff and unmoving. “You know that stuff is dangerous unless someone really is being attacked by birds. And, I haven’t heard of anyone else being attacked.”
“I’ll make sure they know the possible side effects,” she said.
I stared off at my fleur-de-lis wallpaper. I couldn’t tell Rosalie the truth because she didn’t believe in the truth. Ghosts and witchcraft were no-brainers, but shapeshifters were a myth and people who believed in them were bonkers.
But, the truth was Paula Henkel, Lenny at the diner, and the Croppers over at Bob’s Bungalows were all bear shifters with current bird-bear problems.
I was pretty sure they only wanted that special blend as a weapon against the birds.
“You can’t sell it to them. Not to anyone,” I said.
“Honey, you know I love you,” she said. “But nobody stands in the way of me and my wallet. It’s just one of those laws of nature.”
I paused for a second to think it through. Maybe there was a way to sabotage the bird repellant recipe enough to make it ineffective.
“Okay, I’ll help you,” I said.
“Good. Come on over tomorrow about 9:00 before work. I’ll pay you a cut of the sales.”
My laptop dinged from the dining room table. I said goodbye to Rosalie and went to check my messages.
Someone had messaged me back on Facebook.
Chapter 17
Sabotage
At first glance, I thought it was my mother writing me on Facebook.
The message was from Lilith. But it was written out like a proper snail-mail letter, instead of a quick messenger post, just like my mother always does.
Dear Carly,
Please don’t take this the wrong way. It’s just I’ve been burned many, many times before when it comes to my sister and her murder. I believe you are very sincere in your efforts. Therefore, I am including my number at the bottom of this exchange. However, please only contact me if you have vital information. I cannot let my hopes up again.
Sincerely,
Lilith Gunther
Mandy’s face scrunched up, like she would have been crying had her ghostly body been able to shed tears. I could tell she wanted to talk to her sister more than anything.
“She was always so proper,” she said, instead of so many other things she probably wanted to say. “You would think she was the queen of England the way she talked. A better actress than I ever was.”
I went over to my landline and added Lilith’s number to my phone so I could call her easier. I was tempted to call her right now and explain how I wasn’t just another quack. I wanted her to know how hurt Mandy seemed to be that she wasn’t able to talk to her. But, I knew I’d only sound crazy if I did that. No one believed mediums anymore.
“We’ll channel tomorrow night, as soon as I get home from work,” I said. “I think we should take up right where we left off.”
I turned to my ex. “And don’t even say it. I won’t forget this time and stand Mandy up.”
He only shrugged.
Rosalie turned down the stove and wiped her gloved hands on her dirty white smock. Like usual, all the blinds in the house were down, so even though it was summer, there was really only the dim overhead light illuminating the kitchen.
And not nearly enough air circulating around.
It was almost as bad as the feed lots.
The air conditioner rumbled on, but I still couldn’t feel it through the “formula-making” outfit Rosalie and I were both wearing: masks, gloves, goggles, and smocks.
My goggles fogged up again as I grated the tip of a long, greasy grayish black feather onto a plate. I wasn’t sure how I was going to sabotage the bird recipe yet, but, for the sake of the birds around Landover, I needed to think of a way.
“How much do we need of this again?” I asked, my voice a little muffled under my mask.
“Let me see.” Rosalie hummed to herself. She was looking over the notes she’d scribbled into the margins of the recipe book opened in front of her.
“Says here a good-sized pile,” she replied, pointing by an illustration of a bird lying on its back, feet stiff in the air.
I gulped when I saw it. But I glanced over at the recipe, checking the small print at the bottom where the side effects were to see if there was a way to change things enough to matter.
Caution: Keep the pot on a steady simmer. Not too high, not too low.
And do not add anything with eggs or yeast, as this will dilute the mixture.
I wondered why the recipe would specifically tell you things not to add, like whoever wrote the book knew the people reading it were the kind who added random stuff to their recipes.
But, for me, it meant I needed to add some eggs and yeast to the mix somehow.
“So how’s it going with you and Mr. Peters now that we cleaned out your house a little?” I asked.
Rosalie’s tiny cottage used to be filled with wall-to-wall stacked books, covering the windows in the living room and in most parts of the house. And now, the books were only stacked against one wall in the living room.
We made the change because her boyfriend, Mr. Peters, didn’t li
ke staying here with it so cluttered and Rosalie didn’t like staying at his house either because it was full of photos of his grandchildren and his late wife, a woman he kind of left Rosalie for forty years ago.
It was similar to the problem I had with Justin. We had no place to hang out.
“I tell you,” Rosalie said as she stirred the thick black goop simmering in the pot. She checked the stove, turning the heat down a little. “Louis still doesn’t like coming over here as much as he should.”
I coughed on the smell of rotten meat wafting up from the stove. “What doesn’t he like about it now?”
“He doesn’t say, but he hints. He hinted the other day that maybe I should clean out my fridge. Last week, he said I should open up a few blinds to get some light in here.”
She went back to her book, and I turned up the heat on the pot simmering on the stove when she wasn’t looking so it would have a very uneven simmer. The bubbles plopping around in the goop sped up to new heights.
“It wouldn’t kill you to open the blinds up a little,” I suggested.
“You know I hate the neighbors peeking into my business,” she said, like people were lining up on the lawn hoping to get a glimpse of the things going on inside Rosalie Cooper’s house.
I went back to the feather-grating. “Is this enough?” I asked.
She nodded and took the plate, but before she added the grated feather, she noticed the goop plopping away at an extra fast pace. “This is way too high. How’d that happen?” She turned down the heat and stirred the pot. “We’ll have to wait to add the feather for a second.”
