Dead Girl. Craig Nybo

here in Bridgewater.”

      DeeDee picked up a napkin from the tea tray and wiped new moisture from her eyes. She rummaged in the cigar box until she found a small journal, bound in age-flaking brown leather. Post-it notes marked pages in the old book. She handed it to me.

      I opened the journal. A man had penned it; women tend to write neatly with swooping letters and looping O’s. Men spend less time on their penmanship. To men, it’s all about getting the information down. “Is this Stan’s?”

      “It is. You are free to read the entire thing, but I have flagged a few important passages to help you compose your story.”

      The longhand script allured me. Even if DeeDee was just a cracker, off her rocker with Alzheimer’s, the journal would undoubtedly be an interesting read. Call me a literary voyeur, but I like getting at the dirt on anybody, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

      The front door banged open, jarring me from the journal. Both DeeDee and I turned to see who had come into the house. A young man with the same sharp chin as Stan stood in the jam. The kid’s mirror sunglasses reflected the vacant stares of hundreds of curio animal eyes back at me. He wore his hair up in a mod pompadour.

      “Who’s the dude?” the kid asked.

      DeeDee gestured toward the kid. “Let me introduce you to my grandson, Torre.”

      I stood up and extended a hand. Torre left me hanging and walked past me into the kitchen. On his way by, he noticed the tea and biscuits sitting on the coffee table. He slid his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose so he could look over their mirrors at me. “You didn’t eat one of those did you?”

      I smiled.

      “Brave man.” Torre pushed his sunglasses up and strode into the kitchen. I watched him open the fridge, pop the lid from a gallon of milk and chug away, right out of the bottle. I hoped DeeDee hadn’t used that milk in her tea.

      “He’s a good boy,” DeeDee said, using a low voice. “He’s just young, that’s all. You remember what it was like to be young, don’t you?”

      I nodded and sat down.

      “You telling him your ghost stories, Nanna?” Torre said as he walked back into the living room, a gallon of milk in one hand, half dozen cookies in the other.

      “He’s here to help us, Torre, and I want you to treat him with respect.”

      “Fine,” Torre said through a mouthful of cookie. “Chocolate chip?” He held out a handful of cookies

      “Don’t mind if I do.” I took his whole stash, five in all. His eyebrows rose as I popped one in my mouth.

      I plucked up the journal and both pictures. “You want some advice, kid?” I said, chewing on cookie.

      Torre gawked at me.

      “Lose the chicken hair and pick up some Clearasil. I popped another cookie into my mouth, picked up my licorice tea and drained the whole cup. I snapped off my micro recorder and dropped it, along with the journal and photographs, into my attaché.

      “We’ll be in touch, DeeDee.”

      “Does this mean you’ll take the story?”

      “What the hell, sounds like a peach.”

      DeeDee nodded.

      I ambled across the living room to the front door, Torre followed me with his eyes the whole way, his brows drooping into a dour.

      “One more thing,” DeeDee said, standing up from her wingback chair.

      I stopped.

      “I need you to come back here tonight, no later than precisely 11:50 PM.”

      “Why?”

      DeeDee pointed to the owl clock on the wall, but kept her eyes locked on me. “No later than 11:50 PM.”

      “It’s a date,” I said and wheeled around on my heel. I showed myself out of DeeDee Corelis’s place with no idea that what I would witness that night at 11:56 PM would change my perceived rules of reality

      Chapter 4

      Jo Ellen’s Diner smelled like bacon even at quarter of seven in the evening. They served breakfast all day long but I’m more likely to order a hamburger, Coke, and fries over a plate of eggs, sausage, and hash browns no matter what the time of day. I looked at the menu, a single, photocopied sheet of paper with a cheery logo of a hamburger whistling a tune in the header. The waitress--her nametag read, Vickie--stood above me. The wrinkles in her face gave her a perpetually sad expression, as if she had frowned for too many years of her life.

      “What’s good?” I asked, glancing over the menu, thinking less about dinner and more about Stan’s journal, which sat on the white, Formica table in front of me.

      “Throw a dart; I’m sure you’ll hit a winner.”

      I looked up at her just in time to catch the end of a well-rehearsed eye roll. I smiled and pointed to the third item on the menu: “World famous chili,” I said and handed her the menu.

      “Toppings?” Vickie asked.

      “There are toppings?”

      She sighed, long and bored. “Pepper jack, cheddar, mozzarella, lettuce, cilantro, onions, and bacon bits. Sorry, no noodles shaped like letters from the alphabet, robots or mini weenies.”

      I wasn’t sure if I liked Vicky or not. “Disappointing, I was hoping to spell customer service in little, white letters.”

      “That’s funny,” she said humorlessly. “Now which toppings are you jonesing for?”

      I decided I liked Vicky. “Why don’t you give me the works?”

      “You’re a man of means and taste.” She wrote my order on her pad and walked toward the kitchen.

      I glanced around the dining room. A handful of high school boys sat at a table deeper in the hall, yakking and cracking about some girl one of them had just broken up with. A young couple, probably no older than 17, sat two booths up from me. The girl wore an uneasy smile as she watched her date eat. Her man, a muscular kid with long sideburns, consumed his hamburger in large chunks, washing it down with soda. As he ate, he spewed out flecks of burger and bits of a sports related diatribe. His letterman jacket said more than his doughboy face. Call me a grudge keeper, but I still have a negative stigma when it comes to high school jocks. I suppose it has something to do with the time one of them decided to lift me up by my jockstrap in gym class and throw me against the wall.

      I gave up on people watching and got to the reason I had come to Jo Ellen’s Diner in the first place. I flipped to DeeDee’s first post-it marker in Stan’s journal. I spread the little book out on the table and smoothed the pages, manila-colored, almost fabric textured with age. I read.

      April 27th, 1962

      We’ve done it. I can’t believe it. I told pop to take a hike and emptied my savings, along with Joss, Ben, and Deloy. We took Joss’s Olds down to Salt Lake City and picked up a brand new bubbletop. She’s a work of art, sleek, black, almost makes me horny just thinking about her. We decided that if we were going to do it we were going to do it right. We went for the Super Sport model with a Hemi 409, the biggest block ever to be loaded under the hood of a car. And, man, does she scream. We opened her up through Sardine Canyon and hit nearly 200 miles per hour.

      We talked about taking her to the Milvian Bridge to race for pinks. I’m all for it, but I think we need to get to know her a bit, learn how she handles, get some experience. There isn’t a car faster than her on the road. Performance isn’t the problem. I know we can win some pretty hard dough once we get some experience under our belts. For now, I just get off on feeling the wind in my hair as I open her up. There’s no feeling closer to heaven or hell, either way you want to play the coin.

      Maybe if I can drum up the confidence I can take that ass, Biels, down a notch,