Haunting Melody (14 page)

He didn’t believe me. I wasn’t surprised, but
given the urgency of the situation of missing friends and
colleagues, it was imperative that I make him understand I wasn't
kidding around.

“Briley. I know this all sounds silly. It’s
not logical or scientific or sane. But I swear to you I am tellin'
you the truth. Please listen to me.”

I spent the next twenty minutes carefully
walking him through the events that had occurred the past few
weeks. I began with the tale of the locks clicking in the
apartment, the lights going on and off, the suspicion that I had a
ghost, the talk with Fiona Belle, the tea party, the music box
shaped like a doll, and the sheet music to "A Pretty Girl is like a
Melody." I did not tell him I was now pretty sure the ‘ghost’ was
me. Definitely too much information.

“So, I woke up in Saree’s dressin' room. I
thought I was dreamin' or had fainted and was hallucinatin'. Then
Saree told me it was 1919 and I passed out again. Can you imagine
waking up in a strange place and being told you’d just traveled
into the past? I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t tell anyone,
they’d think I was nuts. Like you do. And I’m sure you’re saying to
yourself that I need to be locked up in a rubber room somewhere.
But it’s all true. Every word. I don’t understand it, don’t get why
or how it happened, but here I am.”

He could see I was serious. He stared at me.
“This is insane. How am I supposed to believe this is even
possible?”

“Like I have any real answers? I only know
when I turned the key of that musical doll and held that sheet
music, well, one minute I was home working on sketches for a show I
was designing. The next minute, I was backstage of the New
Amsterdam Theatre in another century.”

Briley started pacing across the small room.
“You said you could prove this ridiculous story. Would you mind
telling me how?”

“I’m not goin' to tell. I’m goin' to
show.”

I picked up the Elvis carryall bag and dug
inside, first pulling out my phone.

“This is a cell phone that also acts like a
computer. Not only can you call people but you can play games on it
and connect to the internet and do all kinds of fun apps.

“Apps?”

“Applications. Computers started bein' used
all over the world by ordinary people in the 1980s or so. They, uh,
store information. They act like a typewriter. They can calculate
figures. They can even send mail.”

I stopped. I didn’t need to get into a
discussion about email. Trying to explain computer functions to a
man who probably didn’t know how images got onto a movie screen was
going to be tough. Hell, I didn’t know how images got onto a
screen. Totally tech-challenged. I’d been the despair of my entire
Physics Class in college and my Computer Aps course back in high
school. And now I was going off point in my own mind. I needed to
focus.

Briley was looking at my phone with an
expression of total suspicion. As though waiting for it to begin to
speak to him. I hoped the battery was still working. I took it from
him and typed in an address, then pressed voice-activate.

“Thirty-three Christopher Street.”

Briley jumped. “It’s talking! It’s not
talking well, but it’s talking.”

“Yep.”

He looked at me. “Whose address is that?”

“My best friend. Her name is Savanna. She’s
getting her Masters from NYU. You’d like her. Bouncy personality,
funny; a meddler from the word go. That isn’t relevant, is it?”

“No. And while this is interesting and
certainly a scientific breakthrough, it doesn’t prove you’re from a
different time.”

Not buying it. I pulled out my check register
and opened it to the first page that held that the wonderful
four-year calendar. I pointed out the date to him.

“See? How could I possibly have gotten that
printed?”

He’d turned a bit pale. “Well. Maybe you went
to a printers and had them print this out as a joke.”

“Briley. This is not a joke. This is real.
How the heck am I goin' to convince you?”

I frantically began diving through my bag to
see what wonders I’d brought from the next century. Ha! My wallet.
Not only did it contain a valid and up-to-date New York driver’s
license but in the coin section were quarters, dimes and a nickel
engraved with dates as old as 1985 and as late as 2009. I dumped
everything into his lap. He slowly made his way through the entire
lot.

When he got to my license, he turned pale
then tried to smile. “I can tell this is official. It’s not the
best photograph I’ve ever seen.”

“Hmmm. Thank you so much. Savanna says it
looks like I just got sent to a federal penitentiary charged with
terminal bad make-up. I didn’t care. It’s my first Manhattan
drivers license and I was just thrilled to prove I live here.”

Again, I showed him the other "Heartbreak
Hotel" music with the copyright date on it.

“Don’t tell me I managed to get a printer to
come up with that too. A picture of guys with earrings and mohawk
hairdos? Electric guitars?”

He took the music, stared at it for minutes
then sat heavily down on the foot of my bed. He glanced up at me,
resting against the piano.

“I’m going to be sick.”

I stifled a laugh. “Been there! Done that!
Imagine how I felt when I landed in an unfamiliar dressing room
with two people I’d never met before givin' me the news I was in a
time not my own and urgin' me to audition for a man who’s been dead
for over sixty years?”

Briley looked pained. “He died? When?”

I hated saying it. “I’m not sure. Sometime in
the 1930s. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

Briley held on to the sheet music like a
drowning man to a raft. “Let’s suppose for a moment that I accept
this insane theory of time travel. After all, if someone had told
George Washington that there would be Ford automobiles lining the
streets of New York in the early 20th Century, I’m sure he would
have had his doubts. But, where does all this translate in terms of
Denise and Nevin being in Memphis?”

I again explained about meeting Fiona Belle
Winthorp.

“She was somehow able to send this back to me
as a clue to their whereabouts. Why else would this show up in my
room? I didn’t bring it here. And that cranberry stain. That’s her
way of tellin' me to take the hint and run with it.”

“But how did this lady even get any
information about all this?”

I took a breath before expounding on my next
wacky theory. “Because her full name is Fiona Belle Donovan
Winthorp and I’m sure she either is - or is related to - our own
Mrs. Donovan who has so conveniently stepped out the rooming house
today.”

“What does she have. . . ?”

I interrupted him before he could ask another
question I couldn’t answer.

“Briley. I am tellin’ you everything I
suspect, guess, feel intuitively, and all that jazz. The when, why,
where, and how is beyond me. I’m also tellin’ you that I firmly
believe that this music is a sign. From an angel, a time-traveler,
or a witch. I don’t care. I just keep seein’ Nevin’s face. If I
don’t follow these instincts, we’re going to lose him. And we have
no other clues, not really. The police don’t know anything, and no
one at the theatre knows anything, and no one at the Dupre's
apartment knows anything. So whether you think I’m crazy, or
fanciful, or lying to you for some bizarre purpose, let me say that
I’m goin' to Memphis. With or without you.”

Briley poured a glass of water from the
pitcher on my dresser, drank it down in one gulp, then turned back
to face me. “I can’t honestly say I believe your story. It’s a bit
too close to Jules Verne or H.G. Wells for me. But, you’re right
about one thing. I have found out nothing, nothing, at all about
where Denise and Nevin could have gone.”

He glared at me. “Do you have some sort of
lame-brained theory as to why these women could be in your
hometown?”

“No. Other than the ever-popular plot to
kidnap for um, purposes of illegal pleasure. Maybe Officer O’Reilly
really did hit that nail dead on about white slavery. I love
Memphis, but I’ve read that in the early 1900s it was pretty wide
open as to drinkin', drugs, gamblin’, and prostitution. And who’d
imagine missin’ girls were being held in a Southern town that
probably doesn’t have much importance in the grand scheme of
Manhattan doin’s?”

He was listening. Really listening. Maybe I
was starting to crack through the wall of disbelief. I couldn’t
blame him for not wanting to buy the time travel story, but just
maybe he’d agree to accompany me to my home state on faith
alone.

“All right, Mel. I can persuade Flo not to
dock our pay too much if we tell him we’re following up a lead
concerning the vanishing of more than one Follies employee. I’ll
give this theory of yours ten days, tops. And that’s all.”

I hugged him. He doubtless thought I was a
few feathers short of a Follies' headdress but he was going to
trust me. It was time to pack and catch the next train to
Tennessee.

We got off the train at the Central Station
Depot in downtown Memphis and the full force of southern heat hit
me. I turned to Briley. “What was I saying back in Manhattan? Was
there a real live reason for us to come charging down here? Before
air-conditioning exists?”

“Do not go on about that again. I do not want
to hear about the wonders of the 21st Century. I do not want to
hear about mysterious ways of sending messages to and fro. I do not
want you to discuss anything more mysterious than why women endure
plucking their eyebrows to change the shape. I’m so hot and tired
I’d just like to find a bar and drink some ale.”

“Bar, huh? Hmmm. That could prove
problematic. If I recall my Tennessee history they were one of the
first states to embrace Prohibition and even though Memphis held
out for years due to the efforts of Boss Crump he got deposed
before the War and the saloons were forced to go underground.”

“What are you babbling about? Underground?
Boss Crump?”

“Ex-mayor by this point in time, but still
running Memphis his way. Every good Memphis son or daughter has
heard how the man still managed to rule ‘til the Fifties. But, and
I emphasize but, to drink you have to bring your own into a saloon
and get set-ups instead."

Briley sighed. Deeply. “Forget the ale. It
doesn't go well with Coca-cola. It doesn’t matter.” His tone
changed. “By the way have you given any thought as to where we’re
going to stay on this wild goose chase you’ve started?”

“Yep. Sort of.”

“Would you care to share? Or do we need to
perform some obscure, bizarre 21st Century ritual to allow us to
jump to another time when bars are open and hotels flourish?”

There was more than a tinge of sarcasm in his
voice. I ignored it.

The trip to Memphis had been uneventful,
boring, and lonely the way one can feel in a crowd of strangers.
Briley had bunked with three soldiers who had stayed in the Army
after World War One, were now posted in Brooklyn, and on leave for
a few days. “Exuberant” was the word Briley used to describe his
cabinmates the two times he and I had shared a meal in the dining
car. I gathered Briley had to wait to get in any sleep time until
the trio was anywhere but near him.

I, on the other hand, had been sharing space
with two spinster sisters who seemed old enough to have seen not
only the Civil War but The War of 1812 as well. Possibly émigrés
from some non-English-speaking country. Neither lady had uttered
any words I’d been able to understand during the entire trip. I
spent the majority of the journey sleeping in the top compartment
listening to them sleep in the bottom compartments. Which wasn’t
all bad. I had a sneaky suspicion once we hit Memphis, snoozing
would not be part of the program.

I hadn’t mentioned to Briley that every time
I’d gone to the dining car, I’d gotten an impression of someone
watching me. Nothing specific, but I couldn’t shake the notion that
somewhere in that room, hiding behind a copy of the New York Times
or the Daily News or an issue of Life Magazine, a non-acknowledging
presence was noting my every move.

I glanced up at Briley. “This is going to be
weird.”

A trace of a smile crossed his face. “As
opposed to the last week in Manhattan? The last week since I met
you?”

I brushed off the implied insult. “I’m just
talking about my idea for where we can stay.”

“Go on,” he prompted.

“Well, my great-great-grandparents had a
house just off of Beale Avenue. There were – sorry - there are -
homes in the downtown area. My plan is to go to their place and see
if we can crash there.”

“And have you given any thought as to how
you’ll explain your presence?”

I scowled. “Yes. I am not a completely
impulsive idiot. I’m going to tell whoever’s living there that I’m
a cousin from Alabama - we have family there - and that I’m
planning to move to Memphis and needed a place to stay.”

Briley queried with a tone a shade above
sarcastic. “How do you plan to explain me?”

“Ah, yes, you do present a problem. Friend of
mine looking for work here? Brother?”

Briley’s brows shot up. “Even in our
primitive era of no air-conditioning people do understand the
concept of families usually bearing some resemblance to one
another. You and I don’t look at all alike.”

He had that right. I snuck a peek at his
strong features and inadvertently found I was wondering what a
generation of McShan/Flynn children would look like. I blushed and
found words blurting out before I could stop them. “How about
telling them you’re my fiancé? Would that work?"

Briley stared at me. I wanted to march back
onto the train and crawl into my top bunk again and not get out
until we hit California or parts further west. Perhaps the Pacific
Ocean.