Bath Bombs & Beyond Read online

  “What the?” My hands flew to my hips.

  As she passed through, sounds filtered out, glasses clinked, a note or two of saxophone drifted past, and I heard a woman’s laughter. The building was once the infamous Southern Club, what some called a blind pig, because the police turned a blind eye to its criminal activity. In the roaring twenties, the speakeasy catered to gangsters and their dames and was a huge boost for the Spa City’s economy. Sometime in the 1960s, the more conservative political climate in Hot Springs outlawed gambling, forcing the club to close.

  I have visited the museum, to entertain out of town guests, and not once had I heard party sounds or music coming from within the old building.

  “Where’d you go?” I clutched my purse close. “You better come back. I’m not going in after you.”

  During Fanny’s lifetime, potential shirt buyers would have had to walk past her seamstress shop to visit the club. The less than wholesome, but rich gangsters, visiting the popular vacation destination were mostly her best customers. With Angus’s connections to bootlegging and trafficking illegal whiskey, he would’ve know plenty of men, like him, who loved wearing nice clothes. Al Capone’s history with the notorious Southern Club was well documented, and it made sense he’d owe her money for shirts. On Black Monday, during the panic some of the gangsters might have gotten into a shootout on the street.

  Was Fanny possibly shot by a stray bullet? The newspapers would’ve printed an article about her death, if other more important news did not distract them. I would need to ask Anita to look in the newspaper archives.

  I took a step toward the museum’s entrance, but hesitated. If I pushed through the museum doors, asking the ticket seller if they’d seen a ghost… well, I didn’t want to know what they’d think.

  Not able to decide, I turned and looked at the Arlington’s daunting entrance. From the outside, with its two beige bricked towers, the hotel had as much style as a covered wagon and neither choice seemed inviting.

  With or without Fanny’s help, finding clues about Veronica’s murderer were more important than talking to myself outside the entrance to the wax museum.

  “Okay. I’m leaving without you.” I made my choice and took a step toward the hotel, but Fanny grabbed my elbow.

  “Not so fast. Come inside. There’s someone I want you to meet.” She pulled me toward the museum’s entrance.

  “No, I won’t.” I braced myself with a hand on the wall beside the door.

  “Don’t be scared. It’ll be fun.” She pulled me giggling softly. “Trust me. I’ll sneak you in.”

  “I better… not.” The museum’s owners were friends, and I wouldn’t stiff them on an entrance fee for anything.

  Central Avenue business owners counted on every penny running a tourist dependent business. Customers ebbed and flowed depending on the season. September and October were high season with the fall colors attracting visitors, but soon the winter’s chill would send customers scurrying south for warmer vacations. At the end of January, the warming winter sun made the grass green and flowers popped out. Oaklawn Racetrack opened for the spring, and then business picked up until the heat of summer discouraged even the heartiest tourists.

  Fanny pulled, and magically I was transformed, instead of opening the door, and walking in, I passed through the museum door. My heart raced fearing splinters and shards of glass, but nothing bad happened. I stumbled along awkwardly letting Fanny drag me into the club.

  The kid manning the ticket counter didn’t look up as we whisked past him.

  Music played, but it wasn’t the ordinary loopy soundtrack the museum used. I smelled cigar smoke. Coins clinked and the roulette table racketed.

  “I don’t like this one bit.” I jerked from Fanny’s grasp.

  “Don’t worry… only my people can see me… and you.”

  I noticed Fanny’s appearance had changed. Instead of her work dress, she wore a pale beige fringed flapper dress, dressed more like a starlet than a seamstress. A Marcel wave replaced her messy chignon, and she wore a bandeau decorated with a flouncy ostrich feather.

  “Where are your regular clothes?” The place was completely transformed into a ‘20s speakeasy. I turned in a circle. “Astonishing!”

  “Isn’t my dress the best?” She threw back her head with a grin, her eyes sparkled. She had lost her flickering Technicolor and looked more human.

  Between two fingers, she pinched a long cigarette holder and puffed on its stem. The smoke drifted around her head. I looked at where her bullet hole should have been but it wasn’t in the dress’s nicer fabric. I’d take a guess that when she was dressed like a flapper, she forgot her smoking wound.

  This ghost life was amazing. You could have bullet wounds, smoke cigarettes, visit a has-been speakeasy, and play dress-up without batting an eyelash.

  Death wasn’t all that bad.

  Other ghosts… I was assuming they were dead folks… floated by.

  “Oh, there’s a dapper boy.” She wiggled a finger at him. He ducked his chin, inviting her over. “Gotta go dance. The night is young.”

  Fanny cha-chaed happily away, dancing the Charleston without feet. Her fringe fluttered and the feather flounced. Fanny bebopped like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  On a stage, a dead Benny Goodman knockoff band performed. A singer sang, “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Saxophone music crooned. Figments of spirits vibrated on the same vivid wavelength as Fanny. The whole scene was super-charged with electricity—my hair stood on end and my metal fillings hummed in tune with the music.

  A gauzy figure of a man bumped into my shoulder, and I moved aside. “Pardon me.”

  Dashing men wearing two-toned Oxford shoes tapped their toes, smoked fat cigars and escorted chic women who drank from martini glasses. The glasses tinkled, music hopped, and laughter grew more intense.

  The wax museum touts the original Southern Club’s opulent chandeliers in their brochures, and I shaded my eyes from the brightly lit crystal droplets. Squinting deeper into the smoke-filled room, I searched for Fanny. In the middle of the crowded dance floor, I glimpsed her ostrich feather bobbing above the other dancers.

  A new pain shot out through the bridge of my nose. Am I laid up in St. Vincent’s hooked to IV medications, on life support and hallucinating everything that has happened since I fell off the ladder?

  What just happened wasn’t possible, even if Anita believed the impossible was possible. I couldn’t just magically pop into the past.

  Truly, honestly, the Southern Club was defunct and I was scared. What if, all this time, I was dead and Fanny was my escort to the Beyond?

  If I am dead, I truly don’t fit in. I’m too old... no too young to enjoy the 1920s. Nothing could be worse than being dead and living in the wrong generation. I need rock and roll, peace, love and flower power. I was a misfit and couldn’t dance a lick of the Charleston.

  “Fanny! I want to go. I don’t… don’t belong here,” I called over the music.

  I felt a sharp prick pierce my behind. “Ouch!” Fanny glimmered gleefully in firefly yellow. “What did I tell you about that needle?”

  “You said not to poke the hotel’s guests.”

  “Oh, you!” She had me there. “Don’t poke me or anyone else. It could be considered a deadly weapon.”

  “Okay, have it your way. You’re so…”

  Just as suddenly as Fanny drew me into the 1920s, she snapped us back out onto the sidewalk in front of the building, and boy, was I grateful.

  She was dressed in her regular clothing. A messy bun replaced her chic Marcel wave. Her white blouse was buttoned closed at the neck and her cummerbund cinched in her tiny waist.

  Relieved, I chuckled, finishing her sentence. “Boring?” My boring old self was glad to be back in my normal world. “Don’t pull me into your world again. It frightened me.”

  “I won’t. But it was fun, wasn’t it?” Fanny scurried toward the hotel towing me along.

  I grinned, but
didn’t agree.

  As frightening as it was, I enjoyed a glimpse into her world. No wonder she stayed behind. The 1920s were tumultuous, but historically the period had freed women from the confines of the rigid Victorian lifestyle. If I could go back, I’d choose the 20s, or maybe the 60s. Both decades created freedom, but as buxom as some gals were today, burning a bra wasn’t a good idea anymore.

  “Who did you want me to meet?” I was becoming a master of changing the subject.

  She looped her hand in my elbow, pulling me along. “He wasn’t there, but I found out what you want to know.

  “What’s that?”

  “Veronica Lake is over at the hotel, waiting on us.”

  22

  The Arlington

  Together, Fanny and I climbed the Arlington’s front steps. Well, she floated beside me while I poked up them. “You shoulda seen the fire. I could feel the heat from my shop."

  “What fire?” If the Arlington burned, I didn’t have the information stored in my crowded memory bank. Anita could fill in those blanks, if I remembered to ask her.

  “Back when.” Fanny looped her hand in my elbow, dragging me faster. “I remember it well. It was a warm spring night right after I opened the shop. It was full of rats. They were running everywhere. Right up your skirt if you didn't watch out.”

  Her mention of rats reminded me of Teddy. Where was he? Did Dick have him locked up in the Garland County clink while I lollygagged with a flapper ghost, looking for ghosts at the Arlington Hotel? He would chuckle at that. As soon as Fanny found Veronica’s ghost, and I questioned her, I’d text him to check on his well-being and whereabouts.

  In the meantime, I would check out the hotel and bar, and hopefully find some living people who wanted to talk about Tuesday night.

  At the lobby entrance, Fanny let go of my arm and moved ahead through the glass. I pushed open the heavy brass doors. Compared to passing through solid walls and glass, opening a door was tedious work.

  The outside of the Arlington wasn’t much to look at and the interior lobby wasn’t breathtakingly beautiful either, but the Art Deco style was a testament to its era’s flamboyance.

  Thick plastered columns reached up to arched ceilings. On each side of the bar entrance, giant candelabras loomed over the lobby, flickering with fake gaslights. Surrounding each candelabra was an upholstered sofa, which offered guests a unique place to sit. Underneath our feet... my feet, Fanny still didn’t have any... the native white Arkansas granite floors gleamed.

  To the right, a scalloped band shell held a baby grand piano. To the left, a marble staircase wound around upstairs. On Friday and Saturday evenings, during high season, a pianist would accompany a singer dressed like a flapper in the band shell. It was rare for a singer to perform on a weeknight. Someone must’ve pulled a string to give Veronica an opportunity to sing on a Tuesday evening.

  Back before Dalhart and I divorced, we would come to the lobby bar. He loved to imbibe here, but I wasn’t much of a drinker. Like the wax museum, I have entertained visitors and friends at the Arlington because of its local flavor. The Sunday Breakfast Brunch in the Venetian Room was an elegant affair, but dining there alone wasn’t much fun.

  Standing beside me, Fanny sighed. “It’s been a while.”

  “Rats? Huh?” I gazed up at the arched ceiling, shivering. A rat dropping from that height would’ve cleared the lobby and the bar.

  “The rats were huge.” She put her hands a foot apart. The rats that chewed into our bulk soap supplies weren’t a foot long, but were bad enough to get our attention. Too bad Myra hadn’t thought to just burn her building, instead of having Teddy sprinkle rat poison, I wouldn’t be worried about him spiking the bath bombs.

  “The best part was the 1924 New Year’s Eve party. It was a gas.”

  A gas reminded of Dick’s explanation of how Veronica died—quick like.

  “Stop talking about rats. Do you see Veronica?”

  “Gahd. No.” Fanny hurried toward the corridor, disappearing into a haze, right through a solid paneled wall.

  “What the…?” Following her, I saw no one watching me and paced outside the wood panel. I didn’t dare try to follow her. If I went through, I wouldn’t know what to do. If I didn’t pass through, and bumped into the wall, I’d die of embarrassment.

  I paced, staring at the panel and another minute passed. Guests passing by noticed at my odd behavior, and I returned their greetings with grimacing smiles.

  Fanny reappeared a few feet from where I stood staring at the panel. “Psst. Over here.”

  I hurried over to her, but hid my mouth behind my hand. I didn’t want passing hotel guests to see me talking to the wall. “Where’d you go?”

  “Looking for friends. They said Al ain’t here. I want my moolah.”

  “He isn’t here?” Why does that surprise me?

  “Heh! No. He’s never here.”

  Should I tell her Al died elsewhere?

  Anita told me after leaving Alcatraz, Al was treated for dementia, attributed to a long-term infection. She’s good at interjecting random stuff while we’re eating her baked sweets. She put it delicately, but he suffered from paranoia, caused by untreated syphilis. Penicillin wasn’t available until the 1940s.

  “What about Veronica?” I changed the subject so I wouldn’t dash Fanny’s plan to recoup her losses.

  Fanny jabbed a finger up. “I asked about. Everyone says she’s still upstairs waiting.”

  Guessing, I asked, “In Al’s suite? Waiting on what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s her time to go. No sense hanging around, if you don’t need to.”

  “She’s ready to go to the Beyond?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  I wanted to see the room, but knew I probably couldn’t get access to it. Dick probably had it cordoned off until he finished his investigation, with a guard outside the door. If he didn’t have it secured, he would lose his next election. I’d make sure of it, even from my prison cell.

  I motioned toward the elevators. “C’mon. Let’s go upstairs.”

  “I just come from upstairs.” Fanny’s colors dimmed.

  “Yeah, I know, but I’m curious.” I wanted to make sure Dick had the crime scene guarded. I headed toward the elevator and punched the button.

  “Remember you said Veronica was waiting for us?”

  “Yeah, but…” Fanny came into the elevator. “I checked. Everyone said she was waiting, but she isn’t in Al’s room.”

  It didn’t surprise me Veronica wasn’t waiting in Al’s suite. Hanging out to help solve your own murder wasn’t a good idea; Fanny had been in the Row forever and still didn’t know who killed her.

  “Maybe you missed something. Get in.”

  Fanny stepped into the elevator. “I don’t know about this.”

  “It’s easy.” The doors hissed closed. The lift rose, but Fanny passed through the floor.

  “Whoops!” I glanced between my feet and quickly back up at the security camera perched in the corner. “Meet me upstairs.” Shrugging, I grinned into the camera.

  On the fourth floor, the elevator lurched to a stop, and my belly flopped. Elevators do that to me. I was about to step off into an unknown territory. For all the paper I’d pushed at the sheriff’s department, not once have I done any kind of independent investigation. Hesitating, my finger hovered near the button to stop the doors from opening. Involving myself in a murder investigation was against my better judgement, but I let the doors slide open.

  Fanny swished in. “What took you so long?”

  “Never mind.” I didn’t want to dillydally discussing Fanny’s inability to ride an elevator. It would’ve been too slow for her anyway.

  “C’mon.” I stepped from the elevator.

  Fanny looped her hand in my elbow, pulling me along. “You’re walking too slow.”

  Dim sconce lamps dotted the walls of the echoing, dank hallway.

  “Sorry, dawdling.” Truthfully, the hallw
ay scared the daylights out of me. I conjured the scene from the movie The Shining, just before the dead twins wearing blue dresses appeared to Jack Torrence. I learned everything I didn’t need to know about ghosts from the movie. My heart pounded thinking of the horror in that movie. Right then, if those scary twins or anything vaguely resembling them materialized, I surely would drop dead.

  Fanny stopped beside Al’s suite door. “You ready?”

  There was no guard outside the door. I had Dick. I’d shout from mountain tops to tell his constituents about this mistake. The tarnished and pitted commemorative plaque on the door wasn’t as shiny as I remembered it.

  “Uh-huh.” I was as ready as I would ever be. Did I really want Fanny to pass through this door to find out what’s on the other side? Maybe not.

  “How ‘bout you?”

  “No. I might meet Al.” Fanny shimmered in her original hazy grayscale, clearly unhappy about the prospects.

  “I thought you wanted your money.”

  “I do, but I can’t spend it so…” She shrugged. I knew what she meant. What was the use of having money you couldn’t spend?

  “When was the last time you saw Al?” He had become such a prominent figure in my lifetime, it felt comfortable using his first name.

  “Back when. He always paid his debts. He wasn’t a crook. Not to me, at least.”

  “Back when, when?”

  “You know. Before I was shot.” Fanny sighed, and I felt her breath, which was weird. If ghosts were remnants of life, why did they need air?

  “I wouldn’t want to be a ghost.” I was stalling, staring at the plaque.

  “I didn’t either. It just happened.”

  “That’s the way it is. Things happen. Then you live with the consequences.”

  “Like never getting paid?”

  “Yep. So technically, you’ve never seen Al’s ghost?”

  “Gahd! Never.” Fanny dissolved through the door.

  Behind me, the elevator doors swished open, and an elderly couple holding hands left the elevator. I lounged against the wall trying to feign composure.

  “Howdy do?” the lady asked.