Deb Baker - Ding Dong Dead

Bonnie was in the passenger seat. Julie sat alone in the back.

“Nina will be here in a few minutes,” Gretchen said.

“Smart thinking,” April said. “You would have been in big trouble if you left her out. Again.”

Exactly! Gretchen wasn’t going to subject herself to Nina’s wrath unless she absolutely had to.

“Here she comes,” Julie said.

Nina parked in the shade of an orange tree.

“Tutu can wait in the car with Enrico,” Gretchen said to her aunt. “It’s a nice day. She isn’t going to roast.”

“Why can’t she come?”

April snorted. “She might wee-wee on the graves, that’s why.”

They piled into Gretchen’s car, and she drove inside the cemetery gates.

“I love visiting cemeteries,” April said from the backseat. “Especially old cemeteries. It’s one of my hobbies. I can hardly wait.”

“That’s creepy,” Nina said, turning her lithe body to glance into the back.

“And ghost chasing isn’t?” April replied.

“I can’t help it if I attract otherworldly beings,” Nina said. “They gravitate to me because of my ability to communicate with them. It’s not like I have a choice. They pick me. Flora’s situation is a perfect example. She didn’t show herself to anyone until I arrived, did she?”

“That’s true,” Bonnie said.

“Cemeteries are steeped in history,” April said. “You get a flavor of the different eras and cultures when you take the time to read the headstones.”

“My hunt to help a ghost is steeped in history, too,” Nina reminded her.

Gretchen’s hands were sweaty on the steering wheel. She stopped the car next to the same palm tree that she’d leaned against after running away from the dead woman’s frozen stare.

The cemetery didn’t look as forbidding in the light of day. Mountains framed the skyscape, and ancient red earth spread underfoot. To Gretchen, the lack of greenery looked exotic, and the desert hues warmed her. Living in Arizona was like living on another planet, the smells and visuals so different from Boston where she had grown up.

Gretchen looked around-palm trees, several native shade trees, white crosses rising from tall grave markers, the sun glistening from metal grave sculptures and ornaments.

“Ever been to Tombstone?” April asked, hefting her body out of the back of Gretchen’s car. “Boot Hill Cemetery is where many of the old-time western gunslingers are buried. One of my favorite tombstones says, ‘Here lies Lester Moore/Four slugs from a 44/No les, no more.’ ”

The women stood outside the car. Julie hadn’t said a word since getting out of April’s car. Her dyed black hair looked harsh in the daylight. Both her and Bonnie’s faces were pale.

“Are you feeling all right?” Gretchen asked them.

“I’m a little jittery,” Julie said.

“Me, too,” Bonnie agreed.

“If you ever get to Key West,” April went on, “go to the old cemetery in the ‘dead’ of town.” She elbowed Bonnie. “Pun intended. That’s the spookiest cemetery and the most interesting. The graves are aboveground. The coffins are stacked on top of each other because the bedrock is too hard to dig into. One of the graves reads, “I told you I was sick.’ ”

“Shush,” Nina said. “We have to show proper respect for the dead. And you’re scaring Julie. Gretchen, lead the way.”

“Over here.” Gretchen retraced her steps as she remembered them. First to the tree, then at an angle to Matt.

An eerie silence permeated the spring air. A light breeze ruffled Gretchen’s hair.

“Where is the first headstone?” Nina asked her. “You have a lost expression on your face, like you don’t know where you are.”

“It was dark. Let me see.” Gretchen stopped and studied her car, parked where Matt’s had been two nights ago. She visualized an imaginary line from the car to the palm tree, then to the lipstick-marked grave. “There.” She had been off by only a few graves. The women followed her as she realigned.

There weren’t any signs of lipstick markings anywhere. She still hadn’t told her friends about the handwriting on the headstone. If Matt’s intention was to keep that information from the public, she’d support him. But she wanted to ask him about it. She’d have to tell him about the note also.

April squinted over the top of her reading glasses. “William Hayden,” she read. “Anybody know that name?”

They all agreed that they didn’t.

“Sure are a lot of Haydens buried together,” Bonnie observed.

April read off the names of others buried close by in case Gretchen was mistaken about the specific grave marker. None of the names sounded familiar to any of them.

“Show us where the body was found,” April said.

Gretchen had been avoiding the spot, focusing her attention instead on the mountains in the distance or the gravel at her feet. Any place other than where Allison Thomasia’s body had been discovered. When she forced herself to glance in that direction, she half expected to see a body, the blood, the stare. Instead she gazed at more of the same: red earth, white crosses, heavy marble headstones. Nothing to remind her of the other night except for the images seared in her memory.

“Right here,” she said. The women formed a circle around the plot she was staring down at.

Cemetery protocol eluded her. Were they supposed to stay off of the graves? She thought the answer was yes. But how? Hard to do considering there weren’t any obvious walkways between them.

April was standing right on top of the one she had indicated, scanning the ground over her glasses, looking for clues.

“The ground’s soaked in blood,” Bonnie announced, confirming Gretchen’s silent opinion.

The sandstone earth did seem slightly redder over the grave. It wasn’t Gretchen’s imagination.

“Oh my Gawd,” Nina said. “Get a load of this.”

Gretchen turned to find Nina standing in front of one of the headstones.

“This is the same man who built the house,” Nina said when April and Bonnie didn’t make the connection.

But Gretchen had. “We’ve located John Swilling’s grave.”

“And his wife Emma is buried beside him,” Nina said, reading the inscription aloud. “Wait.” She pulled a small notepad from her purse and flipped through it. “I should have made a copy of the historical records instead of jotting notes, but how was I to know at the time?”

While her aunt went through her notes, Gretchen read the scant information on the gravestone. John Swilling had been forty-eight when he died in 1946, his wife even younger when she’d been placed in the cold hard earth. She’d been only twenty-four years old at the time and had died the same year the house was constructed. Births, names, deaths were the only part of their story that the gravestone gave away. Side by side for the rest of eternity.

“I thought so,” Nina said. “Flora’s birth record was in the files at the historical society. According to these dates”-she waved at the headstone-“Flora Swilling was born on the same day that Emma passed away. Emma must have died giving birth to Flora.”

“How sad,” Bonnie said. “She never knew her mother.”

While her friends made sympathetic noises over a little girl who never had a chance to experience the comfort of her mother’s arms, Gretchen walked away from the stone and stood at the foot of the graves.

There was space for at least one more family member, maybe two.

“Is your friend working in the office today?” Gretchen asked Bonnie.

“I think so,” Bonnie answered. “Let’s go see.”

“Let’s leave,” Julie said. “I’ve seen enough.”

“I told you not to come,” April said. “You’re too nice.”