Treasured Legacies (A Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery) (12 page)

Dale appeared next to Mary once the elevator doors closed.
“She could hear me,” he said. “How do you explain that?”

“Love,” Mary said simply. “She misses you and part of her
yearns for any contact she can make with you.”

“Sometimes you take your children’s love for granted,” he
muttered. “Sometimes you don’t realize what your absence will do to them.”

“It sounds like you were a great dad,” Mary said. “And that
Jessie knew she was loved. You can’t do better than that.”

He sighed deeply. “I don’t think Jessie had anything to do
with my death.”

“Well, I’m inclined to agree with you,” she said. “But until
I have all the facts, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.”

The elevator stopped and as the door slid open, Dale faded
away. Hurrying across the lobby, Mary stepped out into the bright, late spring
day.
 
The air smelled fresh and the
Freeport Downtown Development Foundation had planted flowers in the planters
throughout downtown, so everything looked a little brighter.
 
Looking at her watch, she decided she still
had time to meet with Abe at the repair shop.

She crossed the street and walked the two blocks to the auto
repair shop.
 
Pushing open the glass
door, she walked to the service desk and waited.
 
A tall young man who immediately reminded her
of Dale came walking in from the garage area, wiping his hands on a shop towel.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Mary studied him for a moment. She had never seen a person
so devoid of emotion, like he was just empty inside. “Hi,” she finally said
with a smile. “I’m looking for Abe Johnson.”

Cocking his head, it was his turn to study her for a moment.
“I’m Abe,” he said. “And I’m not interested.”

“Not interested?” Mary asked.

“Not interested in whatever it is you’re selling.”

“Really?
Do I look like a
salesperson?” Mary replied with a grin, looking down at her outfit. “Do I at
least look like a successful salesperson?”

“Listen lady,” he began impatiently.

“Mary. Mary Alden,” she said. “And I’m here about the house
you and your
family are
selling.”

He was instantly taken aback. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But my
sister is handling that. Her name is Jessie…”

“I’ve already met with Jessie,” Mary replied. “And now I
need to meet with you. There’s a lien on the deed and I need your signature
stating that you, and the rest of your family, will be responsible for any
obligation incurred if the lien is optioned.”

“A lien.
What the hell?”

“It seems that a contractor who did some work on the house
years ago placed a lien on it, until the work was paid for,” she said.

“The work was paid for,” Abe said forcefully. “My dad paid
all his debts.
On time and in full.
My dad didn’t
believe in credit. I know it was paid for.”

“He sure has a lot of confidence in me,” Dale said softly in
Mary’s ear.

“Your dad’s payment isn’t in question,” Mary said. “Through
some error, the lien was never taken off the property. The contractor is no
longer alive, or I’d go to him. But, in case his estate decides to try and come
after the property
,
 
which
they probably won’t, I need your family to agree to be
responsible for the obligation.”

“And if I don’t sign?” he asked.

“Don’t be an ass, boy,” Dale criticized. “She hasn’t done
anything to you.”

Mary shrugged. “Then I don’t buy the house,” she said. “And
more than likely, no one else will buy it either.”

Abe took a deep breath. “I apologize,” he said contritely.
“You haven’t done anything to me; I’m just a little sensitive when it comes to
the house.”

“I understand your dad died at the house,” Mary replied
sympathetically.

“Yeah, but what you don’t understand is that I killed him.”

“What?” Dale yelled in Mary’s ear.

Trying not to react to Dale’s outburst, Mary took a deep
breath and met Abe’s eyes. “I understand it was a farming accident,” she said. “How
could you be responsible?”

He tossed the rag down on the counter and ran his hand
impatiently through his hair. “One of the first rules of farming, one of the
first things Dad ever taught me was to check and double check,” he said. “I
should have checked the grain silo before I emptied the truckload into the
silo.
 
I should have opened it up and
gone inside. If I had done that, he wouldn’t have died.”

Dale snorted. “Abe was the most diligent of the
three,
I can’t believe he didn’t check it.”

“So, you didn’t check the silo at all?” Mary asked.

“Well sure I did,” he replied. “Before I went out to the
field I checked it. Looked it over and then latched the door good and tight.”

“Then why the hell is he blaming himself?” Dale shouted.

“You checked it once and everything was fine?” Mary asked
again.

“I said it was,” Abe replied.

“Would there be any reason to check it again?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Not normally, but if I had…”

“Did you ever think you were set up?” Mary asked
impatiently.

“What?”

“You’re so busy blaming yourself that you never stopped to
figure out why your dad would have gone into the silo and locked the door
behind
himself
?”

“He wouldn’t have done that,” he said. “He knew better.”

“So, if you checked earlier and your dad wouldn’t have done
it himself,” Mary explained. “Then someone put your dad in there and locked him
in, knowing you already checked.”

Abe staggered back against the wall, his eyes wide and his
face white. “Someone murdered my dad,” he said and then he turned to Mary. “Why
didn’t someone investigate his death?”

Mary met his eyes. “Because everyone in your family thinks
they are protecting someone else in the family.”

He suddenly clapped his mouth shut and he was silent for a
few moments. “I got no more to say to you,” he finally said. “I’ll sign your
paper, but then you and your crazy ideas need to stay the hell away from my
family.”

“He thinks
it’s
Josh,” Dale said.
“He’s protecting Josh.”

Mary handed Abe the paper and he scrawled out his signature.
“Thank you, Abe,” she said.

“I better not hear that you’re spreading rumors about
members of my family,” he threatened. “I’ll sue you. I haven’t touched a penny
of the money we got when we sold the land, but I’ll use it all to protect my
family.”

“Don’t worry, Abe,” she said. “I’m not out to hurt your
family.”

Mary turned and left the store; she was a little shaken by
Abe’s vehemence.

“I never taught him to treat a lady like that,” Dale said.
“But I can’t say I wasn’t a little bit proud when he stood up for family like
that.”

Mary inhaled deeply and nodded. “Yeah, even if he thinks
Josh did it, he’d fight for him,” she said.

“He’s a good brother,” Dale said.

“And a good son,” Mary added.

“Yeah, a good son…a great son,” Dale said and then he faded
away.

The phone rang as Mary entered her office and she hurried to
answer it. “Mary O’Reilly,” she said, holding the phone between her chin and
shoulder as she put her briefcase down and pulled out her laptop.

“Girl, when are you going to remember you’re married?”
Gracie Williams teased on the other end of the phone.

“Gracie,” Mary said with a smile. “Thanks for reminding me.
I was wondered what he was doing sleeping in my bed.”

“Honey, when a man looks that fine I sure hope he’s doing
more than just sleeping in your bed.”

Mary blushed. “Gracie,” she replied with shock in her voice.
“Of course he is. He’s stealing the blankets, taking up my side of the bed and
snoring. Is that what you mean?”

Gracie chuckled. “Well of course that’s what I mean,” she
said. “This is during working
hours,
we wouldn’t want
to talk about anything scandalous.”

“Oh, and it would be scandalous,” Mary assured her.

“So, since we can’t talk about it, why don’t you tell me how
your conversation about the baby went?”

Mary sighed softly. “It was so great,” she said. “Well, once
we figured out that I wasn’t dying and Bradley wasn’t leaving me. But after
that, it was great.”

“I’m not going to even ask what all that in between stuff
was, but he’s happy about the baby?”

“He’s thrilled and he’s trying so hard to take care of me,”
Mary said. “Yesterday morning he got up early to make me my favorite breakfast-
burritos with green peppers and onions.”

“No he didn’t,” she replied. “Did you puke right there in
the kitchen or did you make it to the bathroom?”

“Actually, I smelled the green peppers and onions when I was
still upstairs, so I got to take care of it in the privacy of the master
bathroom,” she said with a laugh. “And once he realized how it affected me, he
got me a tea to go and some soda crackers.”

“He’s a good man,” Gracie said. “And now, how did your
meeting with the child psychologist go?”

Mary sat back in her chair and pondered for a moment. “You
know, she wasn’t as warm and fuzzy as I thought she would be,” she said. “I
mean, she seemed competent and professional, but for some reason I thought she
would be more approachable.
Especially since she is working
with children.”

“Well, sometimes being a little distant can be helpful,”
Gracie said. “She’s not their friend, but she is there to help them.
An authority figure, like a teacher.”

“I suppose that might work,” Mary said. “We had some good
conversations yesterday and really had some important breakthroughs. So, you
might be right.”

“But?”
Gracie asked with humor in
her voice.

Mary chuckled. “You know me so well,” she said. “But, she
just didn’t seem happy.”

“Mary, your responsibilities do not include making everyone
around you happy,” she said. “Sometimes people just need to work things out.”

“You’re right…”

“Of course I’m right,” Gracie interrupted. “That was never
in question.”

Mary laughed out loud. “Gracie, I miss you,” she said.

“When are you coming to Chicago?” Gracie asked. “We need to
do lunch so you can enlighten me on your scandalous life.”

“Soon, I’ll be coming soon,” she said. “I thought I’d wait
until I’m past my first trimester to tell my family about the baby.
 
So, we’ll probably be coming in next month.”

“Well, you just tell me when and we’ll schedule a long
lunch,” Gracie said. “And maybe by then you’ll have a little meat on your
skinny self.”

Mary eyed the bag containing the corned beef sandwich and
large deli pickle now sitting on her desk. “Well, if I keep satisfying my
cravings, I’ll have more than meat,” she said. “I’ll have fat.”

“As long as you’re eating healthy and limiting your sweets,
you’re just fine,” Gracie said. “And I’m a doctor.”

“You’re a psychologist, that doesn’t count,” Mary countered.

“Honey, when you want an excuse to eat chocolate, who are
you going to listen to?” Gracie asked.

“Now that you mention it, I’ve always thought that you were
much smarter than any other doctor I’ve seen.”

“Now you’re talking,” Gracie replied with a laugh. “Well, I
gotta
run now. You take care, here?
 
And call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” Mary said. “Take care, Gracie.”

After finishing her lunch and making a few phone calls, Mary
found that she had a couple of hours before she could do anything more on the
Johnson case.
 
But ever since Gracie had
mentioned chocolate, Mary couldn’t keep her mind off of the dark chocolate ice
cream at Union Dairy.
 
Of course, she
couldn’t go there unless she had at least started her investigation about
Erika.

“Okay, library first,” she said aloud. “And the fact that it
is right next door to Union Dairy is just a coincidence.”

The public library was nearly empty, but since it was the
middle of the day during a school and work day, Mary wasn’t surprised.
 
She walked up the curving steps to the second
floor and headed to the local history section.
 
One entire section of shelving held copies of the Polaris, the yearbook
of Freeport High School.
 
The first copy
was dated 1905 and the library had copies of most years since then.
 
By the kind of clothing she was wearing and
her hairstyle, Mary estimated that Erika was in school in the fifties.
 
But the song she chose, The
Everly’s
Brothers’
All
I Have to Do Is Dream,
was released in 1958, so Mary picked up the 1958
Polaris first.
 
Flipping through the
yearbook she smiled at the bouffant hairstyles and cat-eye glasses so common during
that era.
 
They boys had slicked back
“flat tops” or crew cuts and the girls looked like carbon-copies of Sandra Dee
or Elizabeth Taylor. She also noted that the boys all wore suits and ties for
their class photos and most of the girls wore starched white embroidered
collars over buttoned up sweaters. She studied the names underneath each photo,
but no “Erika” was listed so she flipped over to the section that had the class
photos.

Instead of individual pictures, like the
Seniors
,
the Juniors had a large group photo. The Junior Class photo was shot in the
gym, with students lined up on bleachers so everyone could be seen.
 
There were only two hundred students in the
Junior Class, so eight rows of twenty-five were assembled on the
bleachers.
 
Mary studied the photo for a
moment when something at the very top of the group caught her eye.
 
She pulled the book closer and studied the
black and white photo.
 
There on the very
top, a level above the final row, the face of the young girl peeked out between
the heads of several very tall boys.

Mary placed a piece of paper between the pages, closed the
book and walked out from between the shelves.
 
A librarian was sitting behind a desk next to the local history area.

“Hi,” Mary said as she approached the woman. “I was
wondering if you might happen to have a magnifying glass.”

“Looking at old photos are you?” the librarian asked with a
smile as she slid out a desk drawer and reached in for a large black-rimmed
magnifying glass.

“Yes, I am,” Mary said. “But it’s hard to see some of the
details.”

The woman handed her the glass. “You might want to go over
there by the microfiche machine,” she suggested. “The light is much stronger
over there.”

Thanking her, Mary made her way to an empty table next to
the microfiche machine and opened the book to the Junior Class photo. Using the
glass, she leaned over and studied the face in the photo; it looked like Erika,
the ghost at Union Dairy Ice Cream Shop. But as she looked closer, she realized
there was something very odd about her face.
 
Not only was she above the rest of the group, but when you looked close
enough, you could see the row of bleachers through her face.

Mary slowly sat up, still staring at the book.
 
That was a photo of a ghost. Erika had died
before her Junior Class photo shoot and her ghost took her place.

“I wonder how many other people realized she was in the
yearbook,” Mary wondered. “She’s not really hidden at all.”

Picking the book up again, she scanned the caption of names,
at the very end of the list was a note.
Deceased:
Erika Arnold

“Well, at least I know who she is,” Mary whispered. “Now all
I have to do is find out how she died and why she’s still hanging around.”