Blue Dahlia

o’clock in the morning, and I’m packing four kids in the car so I can take one of them to the ER for stitches.”
    “We were out there before sunset, out near the west edge of the property. By ten we were all of us half sick on hot dogs and marshmallows, and had spooked ourselves stupid with ghost stories. Lightning bugs were out,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “Past midsummer then, and steamy. We’d all stripped down to our underwear. The younger ones fell asleep, but Harper and I stayed up for a while. A long while. I must’ve conked out, because the next thing I knew, Harper was shaking my shoulder. ‘There she is,’ he said, and I saw her, walking in the garden.”
    “Oh, my God,” Hayley managed, and edged closer to David as Stella continued to type. “What happened then?”
    “Well, Harper’s hissing in my ear about how we should go follow her, and I’m trying to talk him out of it without sacrificing my manhood. The other two woke up, and Harper said he was going, and we could stay behind if we were yellow coward dogs.”
    “I bet that got you moving,” Stella commented.
    “Being a yellow coward dog isn’t an option for a boy in the company of other boys. We all got moving. Mason couldn’t’ve been but six, but he was trotting along at the rear, trying to keep up. There was moonlight, so we could see her, but Harper said we had to hang back some, so she didn’t see us.
    “I swear there wasn’t a breath of air that night, not a whisper of it to stir a leaf. She didn’t make a sound as she walked along the paths, through the shrubs. There was something different about her that night. I didn’t realize what it was until long after.”
    “What?” Breathless, Hayley leaned forward, gripped his arm. “What was different about her that night?”
    “Her hair was down. Always before, she’d had it up. Sort of sweet and old-fashioned ringlets spiraling down from the top of her head. But that night it was down, and kind of wild, spilling down her back, over her shoulders. And she was wearing something white and floaty. She looked more like a ghost that night than she ever did otherwise. And I was afraid of her, more than I was the first time, or ever was again. She moved off the path, walked over the flowers without touching them. I could hear my own breath pant in and out, and I must’ve slowed down because Harper was well ahead. She was going toward the old stables, or maybe the carriage house.”
    “The carriage house?” Hayley almost squealed it. “Where Harper lives?”
    “Yeah. He wasn’t living there then,” he added with a laugh. “He wasn’t more than ten. It seemed like she was heading for the stables, but she’d have to go right by the carriage house. So, she stopped, and she turned around, looking back. I know I stopped dead then, and the blood just drained out of me.”
    “I guess!” Hayley said, with feeling.
    “She looked crazy, and that was worse than dead somehow. Before I could decide whether to run after Harper, or hightail it like a yellow coward dog, Mason screamed. I thought somehow she’d gotten him, and damn near screamed myself. But Harper came flying back. Turned out Mason had gashed his foot open on a rock. When I looked back toward the old stables, she was gone.”
    He stopped, shuddered, then let out a weak laugh. “Scared myself.”
    “Me, too,” Hayley managed.
    “He needed six stitches.” Roz scooted the notebook toward Stella. “That’s how she looks to me.”
    “That’s her.” Stella studied the sketch of the thin, sad-eyed woman. “Is this how she looked to you, David?”
    “Except that one night, yeah.”
    “Hayley?”
    “Best I can tell.”
    “Same for me. This shows her in fairly simple dress, nipped-in waist, high neck, front buttons. Okay, the sleeves are a little poufed down to the elbow, then snug to the wrist. Skirt’s smooth over the hips, then widens out some. Her hair’s curly, lots of curls that are scooped up in a kind of topknot. I’m going to do an Internet search on fashion, but it’s obviously after the 1860s, right? Scarlett O’Hara hoop skirts were the thing around then. And it’d be before, say, the 1920s and the shorter skirts.”
    “I think it’s near the turn of the century,” Hayley put in, then shrugged when gazes shifted to her. “I know a lot of useless stuff. That looks like what they called hourglass style. I mean, even though she’s way thin, it looks like that’s the style. Gay