OMG, A CUL8R Time Travel Mystery (10 page)

Kelly depressed the microphone button.
  “Wendy . . . Wendy can you hear me?  This is Kelly, Wendy, are you there?” She released the button.

Austin, Scott and Kelly waited patiently for Wendy to answer back. 
Kelly tried again and again.  Austin began to pace around the small room and Scott checked and double-checked his antenna connections.

Suddenly a voice separated from the rest.
  “
Kelly . . . Kelly?
”  The voice faded, then surged again.  “
Kelly . . . this is Wendy . . . I’m sorry . . .
” Her voice was overtaken by a younger man’s voice who sounded as if he was crying and apologizing for something.

“Is
there anything you can do, Scott?” Austin asked.

“
Kelly, ask her where she lived and when,” Scott prompted.

“Wendy
, are you dead?” Kelly asked, needing to have some sort of confirmation.  She still wasn’t sure she believed this whole talking to the dead premise.

“
I died in . . . 66
.”  The static swelled, crackling from the speakers.  Wendy’s voice pushed its way through, “. . .
South Beach High
. . .”

“Wendy, was that in Fort Myers?”

More voices, then Wendy’s surged, stronger than ever. “
. . . I couldn’t graduate . . . I thought he loved
. . .”  Wendy’s voice fades.

“Was that South Beach High in Fort Myers?  Did you live here?  Wendy . . . please answer me
!” Kelly let her head fall against her hand, exhausted emotionally and physically.

A burst of static and
the voices ebbed.  Wendy’s voice came forward. “
South Beach High . . . . Fort Myers Beach . . . shouldn’t have done it . . . help me.
”

In unison Scott, Austin and Kelly turned and faced
each another. Their eyes were wide and mirrored their shock and confusion.

“Is it possible?” Kelly asked.  “How can we check this out?”

Austin threw his hands up in exasperation.  “It could be 1966 or 1866 or 1766.  Or that might have been some sort of address.  Where do we start?”

“I
t’s probably not 1866 or earlier because Fort Myers wasn’t established until around 1886.  The original South Beach High School was built in 1926.  All grades from kindergarten through high school were in the same building.  They separated into different campuses in 1959, so it has to be 1966.”

Austin and Kelly stared at Scott.  “How do you know all that stuff?” Austin asked incredulously.

Scott didn’t appear to hear the question.  He was deep in thought and trying to mull through the mystery.  “If we could get a whole name, we could look it up on the internet.” Suddenly, his expression brightened.  “1966, South Beach High? Kelly, weren’t there some old yearbooks in your garage?  Your grandmother would have been about that age.”

“This is sick,” Austin
said with growing excitement. Even he was beginning to buy into the possibility that they had been talking to a dead girl.

Like ants to
sugar Scott and Austin followed Kelly as they paraded out of Scott’s lab, down the drive, across Aunt Jane’s grass and to the garage doors.  Her aunt had given her the combination to the keypad outside, and she punched in the code.  They waited anxiously as the door slowly rose in front of them.

Scott
walked straight to the exact row and box holding the South Beach High School yearbooks.  “It’s the third one from the top in that stack.”

“Mind like a steel trap,
” Austin muttered, but he was clearly impressed with his friend.

Austin
ignored his sore muscles as he removed the top two boxes and set them aside.  He picked up the third box and placed it on the floor where Kelly had made a space.  They all three crowded around as Kelly opened the lid off the storage box.

“196
5 . . . 1966 . . . here it is, 1967.”  She handed one of the earlier ones to Austin and the other one to Scott, and she took the one from 1967.  They unfolded three lawn chairs, sat down and started the tedious task of looking through every class for someone named Wendy.

“I found her,” Kelly exclaimed.  “Look, here’s a whole page in memoriam to a Wendy Summers.”

Austin and Scott leaned over to see the page.

“It doesn’t say why she died,” Scott noted.

“She was hot,” Austin said.  Kelly and Scott frowned at him.  He picked up his yearbook and started looking for her in it.

K
elly flipped to the appendix in the back of the book and looked down the columns of names for Wendy Summers. “She was pretty active in school.  She’s on five other pages.”  Kelly searched for the pages listed.  “Cheerleader.”  A couple pages forward.  “Homecoming queen.” Kelly found the third page. “President of the drama club.”  She found the fourth page. “Debate team.”  Kelly leafed through to where Wendy’s senior picture was. “And her senior picture.”

“She was on the homecoming court when she was a sophomore,” Scott said as he pointed to a picture of a smiling young woman being presented with a bouquet on the football field at half time
.

“
She was junior prom queen in May, 1966,” Austin said.  “That means she died in the fall of her senior year.”

Kelly
had turned back to the memoriam page and read aloud, “
In Memoriam, Wendy Summers, 1949 to 1966.  We will never forget her life and the joy she brought to all of us every day.  She will remain in our thoughts and prayers forever
.”

They sa
t in silence.  The warm South Florida sun now angled into the garage, but they didn’t notice.  They were all lost in their own thoughts.

“Don’t you wonder why she d
ied so young?  What happened?  Why did she keep asking for help and saying she didn’t do it?  What didn’t she do?”  Kelly asked.

“Let’s go back to my house and get on
-line and see if we can find any other information.  Can we take the books with us?” Scott asked.

“I’m sure
.  My aunt doesn’t want them.”

After closing the garage doors, t
hey retraced their steps back to Scott’s lab with each carrying a yearbook.

Scott
opened up Google Search with a swift click of the mouse.  He typed in
Wendy Summers South Beach High
.  Within a split second, hundreds of results were jamming the screen with data.  There were dozens of Wendy Summers on the list, but none from Fort Myers.

Scott read aloud as Kelly and Austin hover
ed over his shoulder. “Maybe the newspaper archives will have something.”  He typed in the name of the newspaper and hit the enter button.  At the bottom was the link for searching the entire archives on-line from their local paper.  “Crap . . . it only goes back to 1999.”

“We’ll have to go to the library!” Kel
ly declared.

“The l
ibrary?  In the summer? Is it even open?”  Austin tilted his chair back and propped his feet up on the lawnmower.

“Kelly’s right . . .
the old newspapers would be there on microfilm or in stacks somewhere.  I’ve never looked anything up like this before, but it should have the whole story.  This was bound to make the news.” Scott was energized.

“
Old school research, huh Scott?” Kelly teased.

“Tomorrow
.  You drive Austin?”

“10
a.m. sharp.  I need my beauty rest, you know,” Austin agreed.

Kelly hated to be the one to bring it up, but her stomach was growling.
  “Anyone hungry?”

“I could eat,” Austin
said. “What did you have in mind?”

“I
saw a grill in Aunt Jane’s backyard by the pool.  Maybe we could get some dogs, buns and stuff.”

“I’m in.” Scott
got up from the chair.  “Will your aunt mind?”

“I don’t think so
.  You’re my friends and we’re bringing our own food.  She gave me money today to spend . . . should be fine.”

“Let’s head to the store.
” Austin walked outside, followed by Kelly and Scott.

Within
an hour, the gas grill was heating up and the hamburgers and hot dogs were ready to put on the rack.  Condiments, several bags of chips and paper plates to make clean-up easier waited on the patio table.

“Who’s the cook here?” Scott ask
ed.

“Hey,
move over caveman.”  Kelly grabbed the utensil out of Scott’s hand and gave him a hip bump that was a little more vigorous than she intended.  Instead of moving him out of the way, she nearly knocked him over.  “Oops . . . sorry.”

“Sure
, pick on the geeky guy.  One day you may need my protection,” Scott promised ominously.  “One day.”

“
Better look out, Scott. She’s surprisingly strong.”

“Kelly,
heads up,” Scott mumbled to her.  “POS.”

“What?” Kelly asked.

“Parent over shoulder,” Scott whispered.

Kelly turned ar
ound and smiled.  “Hi Aunt Jane . . . can we cook you dinner?”

“Why
. . . sure.  That sounds good.”  She focused a steely stare at the boys.  It was the same look she gave suspects when she was interviewing them.  “This must be Scott and Austin.”

“Yes ma
’am.  I’m Scott.  I live next door.” He pointed over the fence toward his house.

“Hello
, Ms. Jane. I’m Austin and I live one more house down.” His hand performed two bounces over the backyard fences for emphasis.

“I
t’s nice to meet you guys.  What did you all do today?”

“We hung at Scott’s and went to
the store for this food.  Tomorrow they’re going to take me to the library downtown,” Kelly spoke up.  “Maybe we can swing by the high school.  I’m anxious to see where I’ll be going this fall.”

“I need to change out of these lawyer
threads.”  Jane smiled.  “I’ll take my hamburger rare.”

“I’ll wait until I see you walk out before I
put it on,” Kelly said.

Her aunt returned to the house as Kelly started placing meat on
the grill.

“She seems pretty cool
,” Scott concluded.  “Nobody in the neighborhood even knew what she looks like.  We sort of believed the house was haunted.”

“
Oh great, now I have to worry about ghosts, too?” Kelly exclaimed.

“Like we haven’t been talking to one all day,” Austin added.

“Oh, right.  A plain old ghost would be sort of anti-climatic now, wouldn’t it?”  She laughed.

“Wendy’s story really creeps me out,” Austin said.

“I agree.  It’s so sad. No one should die young.”  She couldn’t help but think about her parents.  “Good people should live a long life.”

“I can’t get over how desperate she sounded.  What did she mean it wasn’t her and
she didn’t do it?  What was
it
?”  Scott shook his head.  “I do know this, we can never tell anyone about the radio and what we’ve heard.  This could cause a lot of trouble if anyone knew it existed and what we’ve done with it.”

“
Actually, we haven’t done anything.  Tomorrow we’ll learn the truth and maybe the answers. But there’s really nothing we can do to help her.” Kelly sighed with frustration.

“Maybe there
is
something . . .,” Scott started to say, but stopped abruptly.

“Okay
, throw the cow on the fire,” Jane said as she walked out, dressed in a tank top and shorts. She gracefully sat down on a rattan patio chair next to a matching table.

“Now you look
like you’re off the job.”  Kelly gave her aunt a smile and put another hamburger patty on the grill.  “How was your day?”

“
It was a real good day . . . got one conviction and two plea bargains, so now my case backlog is down to just two months.”

“You like
being a lawyer?” Austin asked as he delivered her hamburger to her.

“
Yes, I really do enjoy it.  Every now and then I get bummed out by the horrible way people treat other people, but someone’s got to take up for the underdog.  It feels good when I can right a wrong.  Unfortunately, there’s just no end to it, it seems.  Why do you ask?”

“No reason in particular. 
I just never talked to a lawyer before.”

“Who knows
?  Maybe one day you’ll decide to become one.  You could shadow me on the job and see if it’s something you’d like.”

Kelly thought to herself that her
aunt hadn’t offered that to her.  And here she’d just met Austin. She shook her head.  “I’d like to do that, Aunt Jane.”

Jane looked at her and smiled but made no comment.

“The dogs are ready and the rest of the hamburgers are almost done,” Kelly said.