Maxine looked stunned, and a little annoyed at having the spotlight taken off of her. “That’s right,” she said. “She died three years ago.”
“I don’t understand,” Melissa chimed in. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” Paul said. “I suspected. There’s a difference. When I tried to send out a general message and mentioned her name, two people got back to me saying they knew a ghost named Barbara Litton, but couldn’t be sure if it was the same one.”
“That was the interesting information you’d gotten,” Alison said. Paul nodded.
“But I don’t understand,” Melissa said. “Even if Sergeant Elliot’s girlfriend died three years ago, he’s been a ghost for forty years. What does it have to with the bracelet?”
“You’re so smart,” I said to my granddaughter.
“Well, maybe this starts to explain it,” Maxine answered, perhaps trying to get a little bit of the credit she thought she deserved for discovering that Barbara Litton was dead. “I tried to find a POW bracelet with Sergeant Elliot’s name on it online. I looked on eBay and a few other sources—it’s not hard to find them now, and they’re really pretty cheap.”
“It’s truly frightening what you can find out,” Alison told Maxine.
“You have no idea.”
“But you couldn’t find one for Sergeant Elliot,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Maxine or to myself; the fog was starting to lift in my head.
“No,” Maxine answered. “And there were plenty with other names on them.”
But before anyone could respond, I began to understand. And I started to think about the chicken.
When I first saw Sergeant Robert Elliot, he was attempting to steal a roast chicken that he couldn’t eat from a pan in Alison’s kitchen. And his explanation, that he was taking it to some homeless friends, was clearly a lie. Later, Mac had found the measuring cup of chicken gravy in his room, even as he’d been pulled from his bed by the wrist that held the bracelet.
“I think the bracelet on Mac’s arm might really be the last one with Sergeant Elliot’s name on it,” I told Paul. “And as long as there’s one on a wrist somewhere, the sergeant is stranded.”
Chapter 9
“I think it might be time to go wake Mac,” Paul said, “because I think you might be right, Loretta.”
“I’ll go,” Alison said and stood.
“Hold on,” Paul told her. “We need to coordinate our plan.”
“Our plan?” Alison asked. “We have a plan?”
Paul didn’t acknowledge her humor. “I think you need an excuse to ask Mac to come out,” he told Alison. “Something that’s not about the bracelet.”
“Tell him you’re making lunch,” I suggested.
“That’s not bad,” Paul continued. “He can’t go out for food in the storm; nothing will be open.”
“Mom?” Alison said. She knew we had no lunch prepared.
“I’m on it, honey,” I said. I went to the fridge, taking a mental inventory of its contents as I went. I took out the challah bread, some sliced turkey and the leftover chicken from the night before, along with some lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. I’d brought everything but the mayo in my backpack yesterday. “We’ll have chicken or turkey sandwiches. I hope Mac isn’t a vegetarian, but I can work something out for him if he is.”
As Alison left the kitchen to get Mac and I started preparing plates with all the different ingredients so we could assemble our sandwiches personally, Sergeant Elliot appeared in the kitchen doorway with a sheepish expression on his face.
Paul looked up at Robert with a quizzical expression. “Sergeant?”
“I . . . regret leaving so abruptly before,” the new ghost said. “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you. That was a mistake.”
“You weren’t really searching for the bracelet, were you, Sergeant?” Paul asked. “You knew Mac had it, and you were trying to get it away from him.”
“I need it,” Sergeant Elliot answered. “What I told you about it was true.”
“You want to evolve, to move on to the next level of existence,” Paul agreed, “but you need that one bracelet. Is it the last one?”
The sergeant nodded. “The last one still being worn. And that crazy hippie won’t let it go.”
On cue, Alison ushered Mac into the kitchen as I started to put the food out on the island, where Melissa had been busy setting four places.
“Come in, Mac,” I said. “We’ve got some sandwiches for you, if you’re hungry.”
“Thank you,” said Alison’s guest. He was dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt with a peace sign over a tie-dyed pattern and had changed his headband to one in a khaki camouflage pattern. I noticed that Sergeant Elliot’s lip curled into a small sneer.
“Look at him,” he said, pointing to Mac. “He wears my name on his arm like another souvenir. Me and Janis Joplin are the same to him. He doesn’t begin to understand loyalty, responsibility, respect. He thinks we went to Vietnam because we wanted to kill people, and now he treats us like a black light poster or a set of love beads.”
At that moment, I began seeing a way to help. But I wasn’t sure if I should try yet. Paul seemed to have a plan. I decided to let him try and see what happened.
“How long have you been trying to get that bracelet from Mac’s wrist?” Paul asked the sergeant.
“Over a year,” was the response. “First, I spent years tracking down a lot of the others. Most of them the people just took off eventually, and I didn’t have to worry about them. They ended up being sent back, thrown away, put in a drawer or forgotten. Their bond to me is broken and can’t hold me back. But the ones that were left—there were only six—were easy enough to get. One person left it behind when he went to the beach, so I grabbed it. Another took it off for bed. Easy. I got the first five in about two years, including the time it took to travel from spot to spot—you can feel when there’s one nearby. But this one.” He pointed toward Mac. “I’ve been with him every minute of every day for fourteen months, and he never takes it off.” He looked at me. “Yes. That’s why I was trying to get the bracelet off with some of the chicken grease.”
I sniffed. My chicken is not greasy. But I couldn’t say anything.
“If the little creep had put that determination to work in the army, instead of protesting and complaining back home, he might have made a decent soldier,” the sergeant added.
Alison’s eyebrow twitched. She’s very protective of her guests.
We sat down and started passing plates of food to go with the challah, and sandwiches were being assembled. I think everyone in the room except Mac was focusing on his left wrist, where the POW bracelet bearing Sergeant Elliot’s name glinted.
“Was that why you asked your ex-fiancée to help you get it?” Paul asked.
The sergeant looked more flustered. “You know about Barbara?” he gasped.
Maxine seemed especially pleased with herself when she said, “Barbara Ann Litton was born in 1948. She graduated high school in Madison, Wisconsin, just like you, and moved here to New Jersey when you were transferred to Fort Dix. You shipped out to Vietnam, and she stayed here even after you were declared missing. She waited six years, then met and married . . .”
“We get it, Maxie,” Paul said. “Very good research.” He turned toward Sergeant Elliot as Alison, Melissa and Mac discussed the severity of the storm and I listened. (Mac said the wind was “mind-blowing,” and I don’t think he was being ironic.) “You started searching for the bracelets at about the same time Ms. Litton passed away. You must have found her fairly quickly. Why were you so eager to find the other bracelets?”