Slow Dance in Purgatory (27 page)

             
“That’s right!  Then you come along.  You, who are less than nothing.  Now she thinks she’s in love with you, and what does that get her?  You guessed it – NOTHING!”  Shad’s voice broke again, but this time it wasn’t hormones, it was outrage, outrage and grief for Maggie’s sake.

             
He suddenly didn’t feel like screaming anymore.  He felt like sitting down and crying, just like Maggie had done.  He turned and walked back toward the door he had come in.  He just had one more thing to say.  

             
“Just leave her alone, Johnny.  Whatever you are, whoever you are – just go away.  Disappear for good, okay?  Maggie doesn’t need what you have to offer.”

             
Shad pushed on the door in front of him, but it stuck like it had been locked from the inside.  He fished out Maggie’s key, fumbling to see where to unlock the door, when the hair on his neck started to stand on end.  He shivered, glancing furtively behind him, but no ghostly specter was looming.  He reached for the door again, and a bolt of static electricity zapped him, sending him stumbling back a step.

             
Then, right before his eyes, the glass on the door fogged over, like ten people breathing on it all at once.  Letters started to appear, then words, like someone was using their finger to communicate a message.  Shad swallowed a scream and pushed at the door frantically.  Then the message was complete, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the words spelled out on the glass pane in front of him.

             
Take care of her

             
The door released suddenly, and Shad burst out into the cold December sunlight, panting and wheezing with fright.  Jumping on his ten-speed, he wobbled across the grass and bumped over the curb, hitting the street with his legs already pumping harder than they had ever pumped before.

***

             
Johnny stood by the door Shad had just thrown himself through and watched his message fade to nothing.  He’d meant every word, but he’d scared the kid.  Served him right.  Man, that boy had a mouth on him.  Johnny liked him, though.  He had guts, and he was loyal.  Maggie couldn’t have a better friend.  He’d do what the kid said.  He’d disappear – as best he could, he’d disappear.

17

“Since I Don’t Have You”

The Skyliners - 1958

             
Maggie spent most of Christmas vacation trying to be the best niece in the universe.  She cleaned Irene’s house from top to bottom, discovering a few unbelievably cool things in the process: old vinyl records, a working record player, clothes and handbags and shoes that would make any little girl – or big girl - squeal with delight.  Irene told her she could have anything she wanted, but Maggie realized playing dress-up would only remind her of the blue dress and dancing with Johnny.  The blue dress had been relegated to the farthest corner of her closet, tucked away from sight in its protective zipper bag.

             
She set a few things aside, unwilling to try them on but unwilling to give them away, and organized and catalogued everything else, filling several boxes with items Irene was ready to get rid of.  The spring clean reminded her of the locked window seat in her room.  She’d never said anything to her aunt about it, obviously.  You can’t exactly bring up ghostly apparitions over the breakfast table. 

             
“Aunt Irene?”  Maggie asked tentatively, brushing her dusty hands on her faded jeans.

             
Irene looked up absently from the photo album she was lost in.  Her hair was disheveled and there was a dirty smudge on her nose.  Maggie started at the resemblance between them…she had only to look at her aunt to see what she would like in fifty odd years.

             
“Hmmm, dear?”

             
“The window bench in my room.  It’s locked.  Is it some kind of chest or something?”  Sometimes the direct approach was the best one.

             
Irene frowned and tilted her head to the side charmingly.  “I’m not sure what you mean, sweetie.”

             
“There’s a lock underneath the cushion.  You wouldn’t know where the key is, would you?  I wouldn’t mind using it if it’s empty.”  At little less direct that time. 

             
Irene smacked the album closed and stood from the old stool she had been seated on.  “Show me.”

             
They made their way down the stairs from the attic to Maggie’s room.  Maggie eased the cushion off the seat, pointing to the little lock set in the smooth wood of the bench.

             
Irene stared blankly at the lock and then looked at Maggie with a puzzled frown marring her pretty face.  “I never knew this was here.”

             
Maggie wrenched up on the lid, wiggling it without success.  “Someone locked it…maybe…it was Mr. Carlton?”  She said lamely, blushing at her attempt to be blasé and innocent.

             
Irene raised one eyebrow imperiously.  “This is my house….at least for now.  I won’t abide secrets.  Especially Roger’s secrets.”  She huffed out of the room and returned a minute later, slightly breathless and clutching a huge ring of keys. 

             
“These were Roger’s.  He kept them on him at all times, even after we no longer owned the businesses or properties they once opened.  I almost got rid of them, but ended up shoving them in the back of his desk drawer, worried that I might need them at some point.  Looks like I was right.”  Irene bent and began trying to fit one key after another into the little lock.  Several minutes later she cried out triumphantly.

             
“We have a winner!  Let’s see what you’ve been hiding, Roger Carlton!” 

             
Irene lifted the lid, and Maggie moved up beside her to peer inside.  The book she had seen in Roger Carlton’s ghostly re-run lay on the bottom of the wooden enclosure.  Next to it laid a thick folder held together with several elastic bands and a brown leather book with a snap closure on the front.  Irene pulled each item out, one by one, and then shut the lid.  Sitting side by side on the window bench where Roger had likely positioned himself many times before, Irene and Maggie opened the scrapbook that he had painstakingly compiled.

             
It was filled with articles and information about the disappearance of Johnny Kinross.  Page after page held yellowed news articles both big and small, from publications both mainstream and obscure.   Roger had organized them in a time-line according to the date they were published.  He had fliers that had been posted in different counties and around the town.  He had maps of possible sightings, and scenarios put forth by reporters and police alike.  In one section, he had old black and white photos of Johnny Kinross that he had obviously taken from someone who knew him well. 

             
There was one of Johnny with a car in the background, his arms slung across the shoulders of two other guys.  The boys were filthy and bare-chested, their jeans and bodies mud splattered. The car was unrecognizable and completely coated in sludge.  Maggie was pretty sure the picture captured the time Johnny and his friends…Carter and Jimbo?…had pulled the Bel Air from the reservoir.

             
Another shot was of Johnny in his graduation cap and gown, Billy and Dolly Kinross dressed up and standing beside him.  Their arms were around each other, and they were smiling into the camera.  Dolly Kinross stood in the center and gripped each boy tightly to her sides.  Maggie’s heart trembled at the realization that the photo was taken only a month or two before the little family in the picture was completely decimated.

             
There were shots of Johnny at Gene’s Automotive.  In one of them a toddler with his fingers stuck in his mouth clung to Johnny’s jean clad legs.  Harvey?  Another shot showed Johnny dressed up in a white sports coat with a flower on his lapel, a pretty blond girl in a strapless dress of an undecipherable color clutched to his side.

             
“That was Prom – 1958,” Irene said softly.  “Peggy was thrilled when Johnny asked her.  He was every girl’s secret fantasy and every daddy’s nightmare.  Peggy didn’t have the best reputation, and it wasn’t helped by going to the dance with Johnny, but I remember how pretty she looked that night.  I was actually kind of jealous.  They were having such a good time.  Johnny danced with several girls that night – one in particular who I hadn’t seen before...”  Irene’s voice faded off in reminiscence.  “Johnny seemed quite taken with her.  I only remember because she looked so much like me….and you.”  Irene looked at Maggie, a befuddled frown carving a deep groove between her blue eyes.  Odd….I’d forgotten all about that.”  Irene lost herself in thought once more.  Finally she shook herself and shrugged, clearly unable to puzzle out whatever she’d been stewing over.

             
“If I remember correctly, that was just about the time that rumors of an affair between the mayor and Dolly Kinross started to surface.  Roger was really out of sorts the night of the prom.  I wanted to dance, and he was too busy talking to his friends and sulking to pay me much attention.  I was sitting there, all dressed up in my beautiful red dress, wishing I were out on the floor, when out of the blue, Johnny Kinross saunters up and asks me to dance.”  Irene sighed nostalgically.

 
             
“I’m sure he did it just to get under Roger’s skin, but I was still flattered.  Roger had gone to get some punch…or spike the punch, most likely, so he wasn’t there to insist that I decline or make a fuss.  Unfortunately, it almost caused a fight right there on the dance floor when Johnny escorted me back to my seat.  I probably shouldn’t have accepted, but it was far too tempting.”  Irene giggled girlishly.  “It was a song that I loved to swing to, and boy, could Johnny Kinross dance…”

             
“Yes, I know,”  Maggie choked out softly, fighting back the heavy despair that threatened to pull her under.  She blinked back tears as she stared down at Johnny’s smirking image from so long ago.  Irene stilled beside her.  Gently, she reached up and stroked Maggie’s hair, pulling her head down to rest on her shoulder.  She said nothing and asked for no explanation.  Silently, they resumed turning pages.

             
“Roger was clearly obsessed, wasn’t he?”  Irene said quietly after several minutes and several more pages of newspaper clippings.  “In some ways, his life ended that terrible night, along with Billy’s and Johnny’s.  He didn’t have the character or compassion to let the tragedy mold him into a better person.  Instead, he let it blacken his heart and rot his soul.  He and his father never got along after that.  Roger blamed him, understandably, for the whole incident.  Mayor Carlton went on to have several more affairs - ironically, Roger had several affairs of his own after we were married.”  Irene said this matter-of-factly, but Maggie bristled indignantly at the humiliation her aunt must have endured at Roger’s indiscretions.  Irene continued, undeterred.

             
“Roger’s mother never left his father.  Very few people divorced in those days.  I don’t think Dolly Kinross had anything to do with the mayor after her boys were gone.  She remarried eventually.  Did I ever tell you that?” 

             
Maggie just shook her head.  She didn’t want to explain that she had found the information on her own.

             
“She married the police chief.  Caused quite a stir, it did.  People couldn’t believe our upstanding Chief Bailey would marry a “trollop” like Dolly Kinross.  But they proved everyone wrong; they were pretty inseparable from then on.  They were married for at least forty years and even died within weeks of each other.”

             
The manila folder that had lain beside the scrapbook was a copy of the police report from Billy’s death and a missing persons report detailing Johnny’s disappearance.  Roger had clearly had some connections.  Maybe his father, Mayor Carlton, had managed to get his hands on the copies for him, but it didn’t contain much that Maggie didn’t already know. 

             
The leather book was a personal journal filled with Roger’s scribblings over the decades.  He had done some of his own detective work, and he had several theories about where Johnny Kinross had escaped to.  None of them were even close to the truth.  He had periodically done a recap and an update of his findings and recorded them in the journal.  One thing was evident.  He didn’t believe Johnny Kinross was dead, and it had eaten at him slowly and surely through the years.

             
Eventually, Irene shut the journal and eased herself up, stretching and groaning, from the window seat.  “Do what you want with all this, Maggie.  You can throw it out or put it back inside the window seat, but it’s yours to keep or destroy.  Take the little key off the ring when you’re done here, and put the rest of the keys back in the desk drawer in the library.”  Irene hesitated for several long breaths, as if struggling with the counsel that she needed to impart.  “Just don’t let it become an obsession, Maggie, like it became to poor Roger,” she warned, looking down at her niece, who sat staring at the photos of Johnny once again.