Dead Girl. Craig Nybo

to the entrance, squatted in the middle of town. A two-story hospital where nurses probably still wore smocks and traditional nurse’s caps stood across from the cop shop. I noticed a barbershop, complete with a candy-stripe pole. The barber, frocked in white, sat on a paint-flecking bench out front, reading the morning paper. It felt like Mayberry only with a black bag of dark secrets hidden under the skirts.

      I stopped at one of the two traffic lights. I heard the telltale sub-woofer heart of an approaching teen hot rod. A Toyota Civic tricked out in Barney-the-dinosaur purple with yellow accents pulled up next to me at the intersection. A teenager full of angst and testosterone, his sunglasses way too cool for his spotty face, sat in the driver’s seat. The kid looked over at me. I decided to put Bridgewater’s hospitality to the test and waved. The kid sneered and turned back at the road. The light turned green and the rice-burner launched off the line, screeching down a double black patch of tire rubber and smoke. I didn’t even know we were in a race. Before I could move through the intersection, two more candy-colored rice-burners shot by, curling up a dust devil in their wake. What was it with Bridgewater, fat pipes, and glass packs?

      I cranked up the Beach Boys, “California Dreamin’,” one of my personal favorites. Using an address and some hurriedly scrawled directions DeeDee had dictated over the phone, I drove to her place. She lived on the outskirts in the land of backyard engine blocks and sheet iron cowboys. I pulled up to her rambler--nice, wraparound porch, neatly trimmed lawn, pea-stone gravel driveway. A utilitarian garage-slash-workshop outbuilding stood in the backyard, fashioned of gray cinderblock and mortar. I found it interesting that someone had installed a set of iron bars in front of the rolling garage door. The bars stood fixed into the cement and bolted to the cinderblock building with no access, making it impossible for a vehicle to enter or exit the garage. I made it a point to take a look inside the garage at a later time to see what warranted the security overkill.

      DeeDee’s next-door neighbor, a lumpy guy wearing overalls that flooded halfway up his scabby shins, stood in his front yard spraying down a yellow patch of lawn with a garden hose. The guy looked up at me as I rolled over DeeDee’s pea-stone pull-out. His head swiveled atop his tree trunk neck, tracking me as I moved by. I began to wonder if visitors were welcome. My Grand Fury seemed to fit in, especially if it was dismantled and sitting in a back yard. But I felt out of place dressed in my sport coat and ivy hat.

      I killed the engine and got out of my car. I smiled at Mr. Congeniality with a garden hose and thumbed over my shoulder toward DeeDee’s house. “DeeDee Corelis live here?” I asked.

      “You a relative?”

      “No, just a visitor.”

      “Good thing, that,” the man said and went back to watering his lawn.

      “Why do you say that?”

      The man shrugged and turned away, giving me a clear signal that our conversation was over.

      I shrugged and climbed a handful of steps up onto DeeDee’s porch. I rang the doorbell. It took a half-minute for DeeDee to answer. Her smile greeted me first, full frontal, a bank of too-perfect caps surrounded by, I swear, salmon colored lipstick. Although that smile seemed to set her face aglow, her eyes betrayed her and told a story of sadness and difficult living.

      “You must be the newspaperman.” There was a lilt to her voice. I expected a worn out vessel, she came across as somewhere just south of stately. She opened the screen door.

      “Call me Block,” I said and let myself in. The scent of cloves and ginger assaulted me. I visibly recoiled, hoping I hadn’t offended DeeDee. The Queen Mary of curio cabinets towered against one wall, displaying every kind of knick-knack I could imagine, including a shelf completely dedicated to porcelain panda bears. One of the pandas lay on its back, rolling a circus barrel with its feet. Another held a diploma and wore a cap and gown. A pair of lumberjack pandas cut an oversized log with a two-man crosscut saw.

      A wall clock shaped like an owl ticked off a slow tempo that seemed to act as the house’s heartbeat. As the owl ticked, its eyes shifted from left to right, panning the room over and over for interlopers with mal intent. Did I have mal intent? I hoped not.

      “Why don’t you sit down, dear, and I’ll fetch you a cup of tea. Would you like Licorice or camomile?”

      I’m a Coke and taco man; I didn’t know tea from Kool-Aid. I picked licorice because camomile sounded too highbrow for my tastes. She left me under the scrutiny of a thousand curio-dwelling eyes. The owl clock’s ticking seemed too slow, proving Einstein’s theory of relativity as I waited for several minutes to ooze by. I opened my attaché and took out my micro recorder. I placed it on the glass-topped coffee table in front of me, folded my hands in my lap, and did something for which I had no skill; I waited.

      DeeDee returned with a cedar cigar box under one arm and a tray laded with tea and biscuits. She placed the tray on the coffee table and pulled a wicker chair up close. I thanked her but didn’t touch my cup.

      “The biscuits,” she pointed at the mushroom shaped loaves sitting next to my teacup, “are home made.”

      I thanked her again.

      DeeDee put the cigar box on the coffee table and lifted the lid, releasing the piney smell of cedar and old paper. The box contained odd keepsakes, an aged matchbox car, probably a collector’s piece, a few yellow newspaper clippings, a roll of one-penny stamps from the 60’s, a rubber band ball.

      She rifled through the box until she found two photographs, both in cheap frames. She handed them to me. I picked up my micro recorder. “You mind if I record this conversation?”

      “Of course not; I’ve invited you to write my story haven’t I?”

      I smiled and clicked the record button. I placed the device on the coffee table.

      I looked at the two photographs. Both featured a badass muscle car, a real throwback. In the older of the two photos, four young toughs, probably in their early 20’s, dressed in white T’s stood around the car, their feathers combed back into ducktails. Two of the kids wore packs of cigarettes rolled into their sleeves. One of them wore a gray fedora with a black band, probably the kid’s signature lid. The car squatted behind them like a panther. I wasn’t up on my muscle car trivia but I pegged the ride as a Pontiac or possibly a Chevy.

      I looked at the second photo, a more recent snapshot of what looked like the same car harbored in a cinderblock garage. A man stood in front of the beast, his expression distant, sad, full of loss. The man wore what looked like the same gray fedora, black band and all.

      I put the two photographs on the coffee table and looked up at DeeDee. “Same car?”

      “That’s correct.”

      I pointed at the car in the photos. “Chevy?”

      DeeDee glanced at the photos. She canted her head sideways and smiled. “She’s a bubbletop. 1961 Impala SS 409. It was Chevy that came up with the idea of putting a big truck block into a car. She had a 6.7 liter V8, 350 horsepower, and was she loaded? Station wagon wheels, springs and shocks, sintered metallic brake linings. Had more guts than a slaughterhouse, that’s what Stan used to say about her.”

      For being a June Cleaver, this broad knew her muscle cars. I sipped my licorice tea and grimaced at its flavor. “Is this Stan?” I pointed to both versions of the man wearing a fedora, the old and the young.

      She looked up from the photographs at something behind me. I followed her gaze and noticed a gray fedora resting on one of the curio shelves. I’d missed it before.

      “Stan was my husband. You know he just died three weeks ago.”

      “I’m sorry for your loss.”

      “Probably for the best. Stan could never be happy.”

      “I’m sure you two had your good times.”

      DeeDee sighed, her tallow eyes suddenly moist. “You don’t understand. Stan could never be happy because he wasn’t capable of happiness, at least not since he and his three friends