Page 31 of The Ghostwriter

Margot Gibson was Poppy’s best friend. The one Poppy was supposed to meet at the Tilt-A-Whirl after a quick trip home to grab her sweater. The one who’d waited a half hour and then figured she’d misunderstood. The one who’d spent the rest of the carnival looking for her best friend among the crowds, until news had finally filtered back to her about what had happened. Where Poppy had been found.

Honestly, it’s a miracle Margot didn’t go to the house and find them herself. Or, worse, become a third victim.

I’d looked up the basics about her. Public records searches and social media show that she’s owned Ojai Valley Books since 2016 after retiring from her job as a paralegal for a local attorney. When I was younger, I used to see her every now and then, my kid-radar picking up on the whispers of the adults. Poppy’s best friend. Such a tragedy. But she’d never spoken to me or acted as if she knew who I was.

I find the bookstore on the eastern stretch of Ojai Avenue in what used to be a video rental store, gold lettering over the plate-glass windows framing a colorful display of books.

Inside, the shelves are painted a light blue and line three walls. The fourth is taken up by a long counter and a small alcove where I imagine they set up chairs for author events. Lower, free-standing shelves are arranged throughout the shop, creating a thoughtful maze that carries shoppers deeper into the store.

“Be right out,” a voice calls from the back.

I use the time alone to look around, my gaze scanning past the cookbooks and self-help section to the nonfiction shelves, automatically finding several of my own books. Projects I’d poured my heart and soul into, passion for each subject taking over my life for a period of weeks or months. A time when my father was relegated to a dark corner of my past, not someone front and center, demanding once again to be dealt with. A time when I didn’t owe a misogynist hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking the truth. A time when I was simply falling in love with the architect designing my studio, before I knew what my mistakes would cost me.

A voice from behind me says, “Can I help you find anything in particular?” She’s standing behind the counter, looking at me over the top of a pair of black-framed readers.

I walk toward her. “I’m Olivia Taylor,” I say. It’s the first time in over twenty years I’ve said it aloud, and the name rattles around in my ear.

She takes a step back, as if unsure whether to talk to me or not.

I hold my hands up and say, “I’m not here for anything other than to learn about my aunt Poppy.” I wait to see if she’ll retreat, but the mention of her friend pins her in place. “I’m sure you’ve heard through the grapevine, but my father is ill. I don’t know how much time he has left, and there are things I’d like to know before he dies. What happened to Poppy and Danny is one of them.”

Approaching someone cold is what I used to have to do as a journalist. We were taught that when people might be unwilling to meet, it’s better to seek them out. Ask a few questions and see what you get. But I vowed when I transitioned into ghostwriting that I’d never do that again. Ambush someone, asking about their most painful moments. Pressing them to talk about things they don’t want to remember. And yet, here I am, doing it again. “I know this is hard for you and I really don’t want to cause you any more pain.” I look at her, beseeching. “I’ve read everything there is to read about what happened. Every retrospective. Every piece ever written, from every angle. You’ve been interviewed in all of them.” I shrug. “I just figured you’d be willing to answer some of my questions as well.”

“Does your father know you’re here?”

I’m glad to be able to answer truthfully. “He absolutely does not, and I have no intention of telling him.”

She nods once, and gestures toward two chairs in the alcove.

I sit in one and set my computer bag on the floor next to me. “What can you tell me about Poppy?” I ask.

Margot sighs. “She was sunshine personified, and when you were around her, you felt like anything was possible.”

My heart breaks to think about the kind of aunt Poppy might have been to me. The kinds of things we might have done together, had she been given the chance to grow up. “How long were you friends with her?” I ask.

“Since the third grade. Poppy had skipped second grade and didn’t have many friends in our class yet. We sat next to each other at lunch one day and were inseparable from that moment onward, until the day she died.”

“I read that the police focused their energy looking for a mysterious car that had given Poppy a ride the weekend before. Can you tell me more about that?”

Margot rolls her eyes. “Not that again.”

“You don’t think that was worth looking into?”

“Maybe,” she admits. “But not exclusively.”

“Why was Poppy hitchhiking?” I ask.

“There was an ERA rally in Ventura. We were both going to go, but I had to visit my aunt instead,” Margot says. “I assumed she would skip as well but turns out she went anyway.”

“Bold, for a fourteen-year-old to hitchhike alone,” I say, thinking of that stretch of highway. Of how deserted it must have felt in 1975 before Ojai became a vacation destination for the wealthy.

“That was how it was in 1975, but that was also Poppy,” Margot says. “Her parents had a double standard that used to drive her crazy. Why should my brothers get to hitchhike wherever they want to go but not me? she’d ask. I refuse to accept there are things I can’t do simply because I’m a woman .” Margot smiles a sad smile that makes her whole face wilt.

My fingers itch to take notes or, at the very least, record the conversation on my phone. But I hold my focus on Margot. “What did she say about it afterward?”

“She got a ride into town from a woman with a kid. But on the way back she said it was some guy. Kind of creepy, so she said she had him drop her at the high school so he wouldn’t know where she lived. The police latched on to that. Said that he must have seen them setting up for the carnival, or perhaps Poppy said something about it, and he returned the following week looking for her.”

“Not a terrible theory,” I say.

“A complete dead end,” Margot insists. “Especially when there was so much going on inside that house to look at instead.”

This is what I’ve been hungry for. It’s why ghostwriters always find people close to their subject and spend hours interviewing them. Because there are always things people will censor about themselves. “Tell me more about that,” I say. “What were the weeks leading up to the murders like for her?”

Margot grows thoughtful, thinking back nearly fifty years. “She was troubled by something,” she says. “She wasn’t herself. Distracted. Unwilling to do things she normally would enjoy doing. A couple of days before the murders, Mr. Stewart hosted his annual end-of-year party for all the kids and she didn’t want to attend, which was unlike her. I had to beg her to go with me, and then she proceeded to drink too much and caused a scene.” She pauses, as if trying to remember the specifics. “That entire last week…” Margot’s voice fades for a moment. “She wouldn’t tell me what was bothering her, which was also unlike her. We told each other everything.”

“Do you have any guesses?” I ask.

“Things between Danny and Vince were escalating. There seemed to be something new every day. She didn’t talk about it much, but I got the sense that Poppy was scared of Vince.”

Again, it seems my father has flipped the script, and my decision to speak to people who were there feels like the right one. “What specifically was scaring her?”

Margot hesitates, as if making a decision, and then says, “A week or so before she died, Poppy told me your father pulled a knife on Danny. Pressed it against Danny’s chest.”

I wanted to kill Danny. The note from the margin of my father’s manuscript floats through my mind.

“She was rattled,” Margot continues. “Scared. She said things were getting physical between her brothers, but that Vince was the one instigating. Coming after Danny.” Margot looks at me, her expression willing me to see things the way she sees them. To see the threat she so clearly sees.

“So you think Danny was his target and Poppy got in the way?”

“I’m certain of it,” she says. “I think your father would have killed him a hundred times over, if given the chance.”

I wanted to kill Danny. A confession?

“Why?” I ask.

“I never could figure that out. Danny was fun. Handsome. Poppy worshipped him.” She gives me an embarrassed smile. “So did I for a while.”

I choose my words carefully. “My father never spoke much about Poppy or Danny, or about that time. But the things he’s been telling me recently lead me to believe Danny was the dangerous one. That Poppy was scared of him, and my father was too.”

Margot thinks for a moment, then says, “Poppy was growing scared of both of them. Danny could sometimes be cruel, but Vince was truly frightening.”

I sit with that for a moment, thinking again of how tricky memory can be. Of how our brains will lead us toward a story that fits into our own worldview, and no amount of evidence can convince us otherwise. I lean forward in my chair. “I’ve always wondered, why didn’t you go back to the house and look for Poppy?”

Margot looks sad. “I don’t know. I’ve thought a lot about that over the years, because it’s certainly something I would have done. But Poppy had been so troubled that week. It wasn’t very cold that night, so I figured she just used the excuse of a sweater to get some space.”

“In one of the interviews, you communicated skepticism about my parents’ alibi. Do you still feel that way?”

Margot sighs. “I think when you have a county coroner who is abusing drugs while doing autopsies, it’s not a big leap to question the time of death. Mark Randall overheard your father making plans to meet Poppy at the house. And after that conversation, that’s where Poppy went.”

“Wait. What?” I ask. This is new information, and it unsettles me, how easily my father’s narrative is unraveling, and what could have happened if I’d accepted it at face value and published it. “No one saw my father go to the house. Or leave it?” I say. “According to my parents and their teacher, they were all in the oak grove.”

Margot shakes her head, as if I’m not understanding. “Vince would never have stood Poppy up.”

“Who would my father have prioritized?” I press. “He’s supposedly in a huge fight with a girl that he worships. If she’s demanding they go somewhere to hash things out, is he really going to make her wait while he goes to talk to his sister?”

Margot looks out the front window at the people passing by the store—some carrying shopping bags, others just window-shopping on a beautiful spring day in Ojai, and I wonder what she’s really seeing. Perhaps two young girls from long ago, arms linked, laughing and sharing secrets. Believing they’d have decades more of them to share. “You can know something in your bones and not have any concrete evidence to prove that it’s true,” she says, looking back at me. “I believe your father was in the grove with Mr. Stewart and Lydia. But I also think he killed Danny and Poppy. Which means it was the coroner who got it wrong.” Margot looks down at her hands. “Your father killed them,” Margot continues. “I don’t know why—there could have been any number of reasons. He was a messed-up kid. But if I could prove it, he’d be in jail.”

I decide to switch gears. “I heard there were rumors that my mother had an abortion and that the baby wasn’t my father’s. Do you think it’s possible Poppy found out who it was and told him?”

Margot gives me a weak smile. “It would definitely explain her behavior that last week,” she says.

“Who do you think the father was?” I ask.

“Poppy and I spent a lot of time theorizing about that, but I really don’t want to speculate.” She shakes her head, at a loss. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if Lydia was ever pregnant. It was a rumor and nothing more. You know how kids are.”

“But what if it was true?” I press.

“Lydia spent all her time either at the track or with Vince. Near the end, I think Poppy was beginning to suspect Lydia’s coach, Mr. Stewart. Your father was certainly jealous of that relationship. But then Poppy died and the idea that Lydia might have had an abortion just…didn’t matter anymore. No one cared.”

Heat creeps up my neck, and I think again of the diary. I think Margot and I are right about the father of L’s baby. “Her track coach?” I ask. “The same one who gave them the alibi?”

“Mr. Stewart, yes. But looking back at it now, the idea seems absurd.” She shakes her head. “We were teenage girls. We loved a good scandal and Ojai was pretty boring.”

I’m not so sure she’s right, but I leave it for now. “I found Poppy’s home movies,” I say.

Margot’s expression sharpens. “Where were they?”

“Under the floorboards in her closet.”

Margot gives a hollow laugh. “Poppy loved her hiding places.” Then she looks at me. “Was there anything interesting on them?”

“I’m still trying to sort them out. She seemed interested in the vandalism at the school. Graffiti and a burned-out shed?”

“We thought that was Vince, targeting Mr. Stewart.” She shrugs. “We were filling in the blanks as best we could, but we never did figure out who was behind it.” I think again of the first diary entry: Something’s on that film that Vince doesn’t want me to see. And then directing me to the bonfire clip.

I pull my computer out of my bag and balance it on my knees, angling it so she can see the screen. I’ve cued it up to the bonfire. “What can you tell me about this night?” I ask.

Margot leans toward the screen, a tiny smile on her face. I watch her, looking for a hint of surprise or shock—to see if she can see what Poppy had seen.

When it’s over, she says, “We used to go to parties like that all the time.” She chuckles. “I don’t recall that particular one.”

“Can you watch it again?” I ask. “I’m curious to see if there’s anything off about it because I also came across Poppy’s diary.” Margot’s eyes latch on to me. “It’s cryptic,” I explain. “There’s nothing in there other than references to her movies, and she seemed to think this clip was important.”

Margot obliges and I play the clip again. When it’s over, she says, “I don’t see anything. It’s just a party.”

I sigh, another dead end. “I found another clip I think you’ll like,” I tell her, pulling up Poppy’s first reel in March, filled with family and friends. She’s holding the camera and spinning in a circle. You can see flashes of a table, with crumpled wrapping paper and the empty box of the Super 8 camera, her parents leaning against each other, watching her. Then there’s Danny at the firepit, feeding logs into the flames, and my father, sitting on the back steps, the house lit up behind him in the twilight, all of them wearing party hats. Around and around, we see them in flashes, smiling at her. Laughing at something someone has said. At one point, her parents are up and dancing to a song lost to time.

“That was her birthday,” Margot says, looking at me and giving me a sad smile. “The last one, in March. She was heartbroken when that camera got lost.”

I pause the video. “When was that?” I ask, thinking of the last entry in her diary. I’ve lost the proof.

“The week she died. She was devastated.”

“What happened to it?”

Margot shakes her head. “When I asked her, she just said, I don’t want to talk about it .”

“Did that strike you as strange?”

“When something like this happens, you look at every incident, every small moment, trying to see the connections. To link events into a sequence that makes sense. But her camera meant everything to her, so I could understand why she’d be upset and not want to talk about it.”

I nod and press Play again, but my mind is somewhere else. Wondering how she could have lost the thing my father claims was in her hands every waking moment.

The party disappears, and I fast-forward to a clip near the end. A younger Margot is on the screen, doing cartwheels in the backyard. Danny enters the scene, messing up Poppy’s shot. You can see her hand slice out from behind the camera, waving him out of the way.

Margot leans forward, her expression softening, allowing her mind to travel back to a time when her friend was still alive, filled with potential. She reaches out to pause the video and points to a bracelet on Poppy’s wrist, a thin gold chain with a hook clasp. “I bought that for her birthday. She was wearing it the night she died,” she says, her voice just above a whisper. “I still have it; her mother gave it to me to keep.” Margot’s words shimmer with the pain and trauma she’s carried all these years. She’d only been fifteen when she watched her best friend walk away, a last moment squandered. What kind of fiction has she told herself over the years about what she could have done differently? How many nights has she lain awake, going over it again and again, yearning to go back in time and insist Poppy remain with her?

I unpause to finish the clip. A cat streaks across the frame and Margot says, “There’s Ricky Ricardo. Poor thing.”

“What?” I say, my tone sharp.

She looks at me, surprised. “He was Mr. Stewart’s cat. He went missing and Poppy was captain of the search committee. Posting flyers, going door to door. Asking to look in people’s garages and storage sheds.”

I think again of the notes in my father’s manuscript. I had to bury Ricky Ricardo quickly. Not a delusion, a memory. Which means perhaps the other margin notes are true as well.

“Did they ever find him?”

Margot shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Probably a coyote or something got to him. Poppy searched for about a week, but then gave up.”