Slow Dance in Purgatory

“Hi,” Maggie chirruped cheerfully, smiling her best how-to-butter-up-a grown-up-smile. “I’m doing a little research on Honeyville High School for my school paper. We’re doing a big spread called ‘Back to the Past,’ and I wondered if you had some old newspapers from around the time when the school was built?” Maggie didn’t like to lie but, unfortunately, her time in the foster care system had helped her to cultivate the ability to tell a pretty convincing whopper when she needed to. She supposed she could have just said she wanted to do research on the Johnny Kinross disappearance, but she didn’t really want to explain herself. Defensiveness was also a by-product of living in seven different homes in seven years.

“What an interesting idea!” The librarian seemed impressed with her lie. Maybe she should make some suggestions to the school's newspaper editor, Maggie thought with just a twinge of guilt.

“Well, you are in luck!” the librarian continued happily. “We have a new, state-of-the-art microfiche system that has been updated with articles from the last 100 years of Honeyville history. It is so much easier than digging through those old binders of newspaper print.”

The trim librarian bustled down a long flight of stairs and into a room lined with tall stacks of very old books and a couple of cubicles with computers housed on metal desks. Instead of old books, the whole room smelled like paint and new carpet, courtesy of the recent renovation.

The librarian led Maggie to one of the cubicles and showed her how to access the microfiche records. The librarian punched in a series of dates and started scrolling through the available records.

“Do you know the year it was built, dear?” The librarian asked kindly.

“Yes ma’am. It was completed in 1958,” Maggie answered, her eyes glued to the screen in front of her. She had wheedled that information out of Gus.

“Well, this should be about the right time period then. Just click through these dates. You can also enter key words to narrow your search. If you have any questions just come back upstairs, and I will be glad to help you.”

Maggie thanked the nice lady and waited until she climbed the stairs before she started clicking through the newspaper articles that might help her unravel the mystery of Johnny Kinross.

She found articles that talked about the construction of the school. She saw a picture of Aunt Irene’s father-in-law, Mayor Clayton Carlton, with a shovel in his hands at the ground breaking. He was a handsome enough man, if a guy in his forties could even be handsome, which Maggie wasn’t convinced he could.

She clicked ahead until she found a headline that caught her attention. “Tragedy at Honeyville High,” it shouted in bold print. There were several pictures below the article. One picture had a shot of what looked to be Mayor Carlton, his wife, and a young Roger Carlton exiting the school. They all looked harried and upset, and the caption read “Roger Carlton shown leaving the scene of the terrible accident of which he was a witness.”

Another picture was of a pretty woman who was clearly distraught being led from the school on the arm of a policeman. The caption identified her as Dolly Kinross. Johnny’s mother.

Maggie scrolled down farther, and her breath caught in her throat. The two brothers, in what were clearly yearbook shots, stared back at her from the screen. Billy Kinross, the caption indicated his name below his photo, wore thick black glasses not unlike hers, and he was smiling shyly into the camera. His hair was buzzed short, and it appeared several shades darker than his brother’s. He looked young and innocent, and Maggie felt a stab of something very close to grief when she looked at him. Life really sucked sometimes.

The other picture was of Johnny Kinross. She would have known it was Johnny without the caption. After all, she’d seen him before. He was the boy who had saved her from falling. In the picture, he was smirking at whoever was behind the camera, and one eyebrow was slightly raised, telegraphing his disdain for the photo shoot. He was so handsome it almost hurt to look at him. His hair was the same, down to the unruly curl on his forehead. He was dressed in a black suit and tie with a white dress shirt. She guessed all the other senior boys would have worn the same thing, just like they had done for senior pictures a couple months ago. That much hadn’t changed much in 50 years.

He looked exactly the same. He hadn’t aged at all. Maggie shook her head in disbelief. How could that be? She supposed it would make sense if he were just a ghost, but she had clasped his arms in her hands and felt the warm skin and the strength of the sinewy muscle beneath when he had pulled her from the shaft. He wasn’t a ghost.