Goodwill

The man following me thought he was being a spy like James Bond. He was, in reality, more like Peter Sellers trailing the Pink Panther. In other words, pretty obvious. Why he’d be tailing me I had no idea.

I was on my way to Skywalker Antiques, my after-retirement project which consisted of a store owned by me and co-opped with five others. Antique hunting was addictive and fun. Yard sales were the best, people just wanting to get rid of stuff. Estate sales were hit or miss, often the prices the controllers wanted were what we’d be able to sell the items for. Thrift stores were good, Goodwill was a gamble--you went on hunches often and sometimes discovered a hidden flaw, crack, or chip in an item that seemed too good to be true.

The shop was on Main Street in our small town. As I passed by the large windows of the neighboring shops along the street, I kept watch on the oh-so-not sneaky man who’d been tailing me since I’d parked my truck four blocks from the store. I’d normally just think the guy in the long trench coat was just a street wierdo acting appropriately weird. He ducked into alcoves or turned around and looked at a tree that lined the street, perhaps emulating a birdwatcher spying a pigmy nuthatch. (They were a fav of mine, and I actually did stop to watch them along with marsh wrens, chickadees, golden finches…yup, pretty much any tiny cute, chirping, feathered thingy…)

However, in our small town of Boulder Creek, us locals, merchants and shoppers alike, knew by name all three of the street people here. To the point that if one was not seen for a few days, we began asking around about them.

In the window of the deli next door to my shop, I observed the man glaring at me and reaching into an inner pocket…I put down the plastic bin I’d been carrying and turned to face him.

“Come on then Fucker!” I shouted, drawing the attention of the pedestrians near us.

He looked like a homeless person---crazy eyes and scraggly beard. Before his hand came out, I rushed at him. His eyes got very wide, his mouth formed a big O…and then he roared and ran at me, brandishing a chopstick!

When he was two feet before me, I grabbed his left arm, jumped so that my feet were against his knees, and fell backwards taking him with me. We rolled to a stop with me on top of him, my knees pinning his arms to the sidewalk.

 “Hey! Hey Tanya. It’s okay, we’ve got him now, let him up.”

It was our local sheriff whose station happened to be on the next block down. Apparently, they’d been aware of a shit-disturber in town and had been on high alert. A pedestrian had called Sherrif David Ness as soon as the yelling had started.

In the calm quiet of the antique store Sheryl, my co-worker, said, “What. The. Hell. Was that?!”

“What?” I said, feigning innocence. I turned away so she couldn’t see my red face, leaned under the storage cabinet and brought out the white, mail carrier’s crate I’d been carrying full of my latest thrifting finds.

“That martial arts stuff…that was so cool. I didn’t know you trained. My brother…”

I tuned out her words. I had never trained in martial arts. In hindsight then, I guess I hadn’t been feigning innocence. I really had no idea how I’d done what I’d done.

“…blah blah blah…” she was still going on as I unpacked the items from their bubble wrap.

“What?” I asked when she mentioned the Sheriff.

“Yeah, total freakazoid. Sheriff Ness will want to get a statement for sure.” She batted her sixty-eight-year-old eyes and made a swooning motion any 1880s wench in a too tight corset would have coveted.

David Ness was a hottie. We couldn’t help but admire his buttocks in the clinging khaki pants he wore. They competed with the way his biceps strained the matching fabric of his sheriff’s shirt. He was young enough to be my offspring. I thought of the nice young man’s Andy Griffith smile as I unwrapped a gorgeous carved mahogany box.

I couldn’t tell Sheryl or anyone about stuff I knew nothing about, so I blew the incident off with a wave of my hand, mumbling about ‘just something I’d picked up from a self-defense class a couple years ago.’ No one questioned the fact that I’d retired from the USPS due to two fractured vertebrae caused by osteopenia, recurring bursitis in my left shoulder, and knee joints that popped out of place with a single mis-step.

As I examined the box on the counter, Sheryl said, “That’s gorgeous, what’s inside?”

The box was lacquered on all sides except the front that was carved with intricate roses and vines with tarnished brass corners and a blank plate nestled amongst the roses on the front. I said, “I don’t know, I can’t get it open. It was at the Santa Cruz Goodwill, for like, five bucks. I couldn’t resist that deal…figured I’d figure it out later. The brass alone is worth over five bucks.”

“Well, at least it’d make a nice doorstop or bookend.”

Two nights later…

I opened my eyes when the dog started barking. ‘Dog?!’ I thought crazily.

It was dark. I was outside and appeared to be in a field. A wet, soggy, muddy, grassy field. ‘Wait. There’s a light on behind me.’ It was about seventy-eighty feet away and lit up a large wrap-around deck. A backyard then.

The dog at my feet was pale colored, furry…with large soft ears and big eyes staring up at me in adoration. Some sort of retriever mix about the size of a beagle. A light came on in an upper window of the house; I ran out through the gate I’d apparently opened…in my sleep. I heard excited breathing and paw patters behind me and knew the dog was following. I came out on a dirt road and followed it towards the soft yellowish lighting of downtown. At night, nearly every storefront sported strings of lights along their rooftops---the soft white light of incandescent bulbs imitating old-school illumination. I came out the Main Street next to the drugstore. There was no one in sight except Crazy Laura, one of our three homeless. She was curled up in her blankets amongst her bags in the alcove by the pub---her usual spot. It had to be early in the morning. I shivered and looked down. I was in my pajamas, the navy ones with kitties drinking champagne on them; they were soaking wet from the knees down, as were my sheepskin slippers. The jammies were thick flannel, but it was November. I took off, heading north, I lived two miles from the only stop sign in town which was two blocks up from the drugstore. The dog happily trotted alongside me.

It was a girl dog, awfully cute, but way too skinny under her creamy thick fur. She had brown patches on her ears and sides and over her butt like Aussie Shepards have. Every so often, she’d look up at me with those big love-filled eyes. At a brisk pace, we’d made it home in under a half hour. It was three-forty am. I fed her leftover rotisserie chicken which she wolfed down in seconds. She looked up at me embarrassed for not minding her manners and I forgave her. She had indeed been starving, the poor thing. And upon closer inspection, I found her fur matted in places, infested with fleas and to my horror three ticks on her belly. “Eewwww.”

She belonged with me. I felt it in my heart like she’d been my dog in a previous life. She obeyed every command and took to her new name immediately, even smiling with an open mouth as if being a big fan of All My Children.

Erika Kane came with me everywhere. She became the shop greeter on the days I worked there. She loved the attention and played with the kids. Sheriff Ness was a dog person too and expressed his approval at having a dog around for security as well as companionship. Erika had needed her fur shorn a bit to remove the dreadlocks; after a week, she’d filled out and no longer looked like a bag of bones.

I lied to my friends and co-workers, too embarrassed to say I’d liberated her from a backyard at three in the morning, nevermind that I had no idea how I’d gotten there. I told them all she was a rescue dog. In that sense I was not lying. Erika was particularly fond of little girls. One came into the shop one day with her mother and the dog had bowed down at her feet and rolled over, exposing her belly for rubs. Though affectionate, she’d never before acted so ultra-beta before. If anything, she considered herself alpha over human beings including her best friend---me. The ten-year-old girl was delighted and obeyed the request gleefully.

I said to her, “Wow, she really likes you.”

She made sure her mother was occupied elsewhere in the store and shyly said, “I want a doggy so bad…but my dad is allergic.” She sighed.

“Well” I said, also making sure we weren’t in earshot of mom, “did you know there are dogs that have hypoallergenic fur?”

Her green eyes sparkled. “Really?”

“Yes! They actually have hair, like people do. And they don’t shed.”

I could see the wheels turning in her pretty head.

I said, “Google poodles when you get home. Other breeds too. Maybe…?”

“Maybe my dad will say yes!” She bounded after her mother, her red bobbed hair bouncing on her slender shoulders. Erika Kane came and sat at my feet behind the register looking pleased.

Two days later…

I stood on a bridge overlooking the river that ran behind my house and all the way down to Santa Cruz and the Pacific Ocean beyond that. I was on the verge of a panic attack. I had never been here before…and ‘where was here?’

Erika barked and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I had been at home working on an illustration for a greeting card when I’d grown sleepy and curled up for a quick nap. My dog was awesome but was still a dog…one who’d kept me awake most of the morning barking and running out through the doggy door to chase critters, most likely raccoons. She’d avoided skunks…so far…thank God.

…And then…here I was. ‘No. Not again. I really do need help…’

Erika raced up the bank from the river below, soaking wet. And then I was soaking wet also after a good shake I should have anticipated had I not been stunned by my surroundings. I heard the muffled roar of traffic and knew the highway had to be up ahead not too far.

Sure enough, a half mile later, I came out to Highway Nine by a small park I recognized. This time, I was about a mile past my house. I went to the swings in the park and sat on one, holding my head in my hands. Erika sat at my feet with her fuzzy head cocked in concern.

Then her ears perked up into points, and she raced off towards a woman in tights and a large Pink sweatshirt doing laps at the other end of the park. But it wasn’t the woman my dog was excited by. It was the little girl I hadn’t noticed at first, playing in the climbing hut with her Barbies. I raced after Erika so the child wouldn’t be scared, and the mother wouldn’t pepper spray my dog.

I needn’t have worried. Erika was being her lovable goofy self again. It wasn’t my damp clothes that made me shiver; it was the girl---about ten years old, green eyes and red hair.

That night I stood brushing my teeth and contemplating my sleepwalking/mental lapses/whatever they were…and what to do about them before I went absolutely nutballs crazy. Thank God for Erika, the one good thing to come from all this. I bent to spit the blue froth from my mouth then looked into the mirror.

I choked on the spit left in my mouth. Green eyes that were not mine stared back at me. My eyes are chocolate brown like my father’s.

My legs wobbled and I felt very woozy, then Erika was there behind my knees for support. I looked into the mirror again…brown eyes. But I know I’d seen green eyes there. I didn’t need a shrink; I needed a bloody exorcist. That night I tied a thirty-foot length of green gardener’s rope to my right ankle and the other end to my front door knob.

At two in the morning, I face-planted thirty feet down the stone walkway from my front door. My jaw creaked but wasn’t broken. My nose crunched but it didn’t feel broken either although I had given myself a colorful eye that grew darker as the day wore on.

I was working at the antique store today. Sunglasses accessorized my stylish Michale Kors pantsuit.

Sheryl came in to add some knick-knacks to her space in the store. “Woah. Don’t you look all Audrey Hepburn today. What’s with the shades?”

“I thought my purple eye would clash with the outfit.” I lifted the shades and she gasped.

Before I could explain, the brass bell over the door jangled as someone entered. I put my sunglasses back down. One of our most eccentric customers came in. She was about a hundred, with long grey hair and a milky lazy eye. The other eye was a clear, intelligent blue. Why she didn’t wear an eyepatch was anyone’s guess, although…I thought she liked scaring children and dogs with it. And making people uncomfortable. She seemed to have a closet full of long, dark-colored robes---burgundy, navy, muted florals on black, and so on. ‘I bet she’d know a good exorcist.’ She waved cheerily as she closed the door behind her and made her way with the aid of a witchy-looking twisted wooden cane.

“Hello Dabney,” I said cheerfully.

“Hello Tanya,” she said in a soft lilting voice. She took in my sunglasses curiously and said, “That’s very dangerous at our age, isn’t it?” she turned and delved deeper into the store without waiting for a reply.

Twenty minutes later, she came up to the counter with the ornate doorstop and put the box on the counter. “Take a discount on the dead body?” Dabney’s soft child-like voice was often hard to understand.

“Pardon me?”

“The body. In the box. Never thought I’d find one of these here. I outta get a discount…pretty sure it’s not legal to sell…”

“You’re absolutely right!” I grabbed the heavy box from off the counter and put in on the cabinet behind me, safely out of her reach. “That’s my great aunt Zelda,” I confabulated, “don’t know how she got there. Heh heh, she was always up to some mischief.”

Dabney pouted and gave me the stink-eye, which was extra creepy with that iris-less wandering one. She stormed out the front door more like a pffffftty-puff than a hurricane gale.

I called out to the back of the store, “Sheryl! You’re not going to believe this!”

It boggled the mind---to think someone had donated a cremated body to Goodwill.

There were seven funeral homes in Santa Cruz and a very good chance the body in the box had been cremated at one of them.

I was lucky at the second one.

“So…why did this end up at a Goodwill?”

The funeral director of The Redwoods Memorial looked as perplexed as I did but did recognize the box. “A sad story I’m afraid. She sat here for about a decade waiting for a loved one to pick her up. Her death was all over the news back then. Ten-years-old, found by a homeless man in a dumpster. She’d been brutally assaulted and beaten to death.”

“The homeless man…?”

“Not his DNA, no. the culprit was never found.” His bushy grey brows furrowed, his thin lips turned down.

“No one claimed her body?”

“We only knew of a mother. She committed suicide before she paid for a name to be engraved on the plate.”

“And no one else ever came?”

“Sadly, no. Though the stories went nationwide. Mom was a bit of a bad-ass…” he put a hand to his lips, “…sorry…”

“Lemme guess, blackbelt…jui jitsu.”

“Yes. She taught children too.”

“The daughter. Red hair, green eyes?”

“I don’t recall that. But the mother certainly did. She was as lovely as that actress…uh…oh! Nicole Kidman.”

“Huh. So…about the Goodwill?”

“Yes, well. I have no idea about that, but I can take her back…?”

“No,” I said quickly, hugging the box to my torso with both hands as if protecting the child inside. “She’s coming with me.”

That night, I slept in sweatpant joggers, a hoodie, sneakers…and gloves.

At three am I awoke in pitch blackness. I was in a strange, small room that smelled awful---old stale cigarettes, rotten meat…and all the messy things that come wrapped up in a body. Erika lead me outside where I breathed in lungfuls of cool, damp air. The kitchen knife in my hand was slippery; my leather gloves squelched with blood. The dog had not barked this time; she’d let me do my job…complete my mission.

Sheriff Ness would find the box in the house and DNA testing would indicate whose remains they were and also who had raped and murdered her.

I would no longer be haunted.