Page 43 of The Ghostwriter

It’s common knowledge that the guy who takes a girl to get an abortion is usually the father. That’s what my father told me Danny had whispered to him, while Joni Mitchell played in the background. The words that had launched him at his older brother. That had them careening in a tangled mess of limbs and half-landed punches into the hallway. That had been the moment Poppy had captured on film—either intentionally or not. Her diary entry: May 30: Vince/Danny fight. Did he learn the truth??? Everything feels different now. May #4, Clip #9

I’d asked my father who took my mother for the abortion, but that part seems lost to him as well.

I’ve spent the last three days revising the chapter about the fight, inserting my father’s perspective, and I finally feel the intoxicating momentum of a book underway, moving toward a completed draft. I’ve also spent time going through the transcripts of my conversations with my father and the notes I wrote after talking with Mark and Margot. I’ve watched Poppy’s movies so many times I’ve got them memorized.

Then I created a tentative timeline, which I’ve taped to the wall with some old note cards I found in one of the boxes, faded and yellowing around the edges. In February, I have the estimated date my parents started dating, and the bonfire in March. In April, I have the Pink Floyd concert. I have the abortion sometime in early May, since Poppy was writing about it on May 6. Counting backward, my mother couldn’t have gotten pregnant before she started dating my father. It’s obvious she cheated on him—but with whom isn’t clear.

In the middle of May, I have the vandalism at the school, which my father still insists wasn’t done by him. And on May 30, I have the fight between my father and Danny, the one that revealed the abortion. Then in June, Margot’s story about my father threatening Danny with the murder weapon, which makes sense considering what Danny had told my father just days before.

Then I’ve got the day of the murders, the timeline mapped out as best I can, based on what my father has been able to remember.

3:00—Finish school

5:00—Go to carnival

6:45–8:30—Lydia and Vincent meet with Mr. Stewart in the oak grove

7:00–7:45—Time of death

9:15—Bodies are found

I’ve met with Mark, Margot, and one of the district attorneys on the case. I’ve heard their version of events, and aside from my mother, Mr. Stewart is the only one I haven’t yet talked to. After my conversation with Margot, I did a Google search for him, which didn’t turn up much. No social media presence, nothing offering me his address or phone number if I paid a fee, making me wonder if he was even still alive. I pick up my phone to call Jack.

“Mr. Stewart?” Jack asks when I tell him what I want to know. “I never had him, but he had a reputation as kind of an old-school lech. Harmless, but out of touch really.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I say.

“It was subtle. Just a vibe he gave off. A gaze that would linger on a chest or an ass just a little too long.”

“Is he still alive?” I ask.

“He bops around the downtown area every weekend in his short shorts and tank tops. For an old guy, he’s still in pretty good shape. Goes to the gym out on Highway 150 where all the bodybuilders go.”

“Do you happen to know how I could reach him?” I ask.

“Let me put you on hold and call my dad. See if he knows.”

I hear a click and the hold music from the winery fills my ear, a soothing classical symphony. After about five minutes, Jack’s back on again. “You’re not going to believe this,” he says. “But Mr. Stewart still lives in his old house.”

“You’re going to have to tell me more, because that doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“He lived next door at the time of the murders. Apparently, he still lives there.”

The neighbor. The older man who’d tried to chase me off. “I think I’ve already met him. He doesn’t seem much older than our parents.”

“He’s not. Maybe fifteen years? Less? I think he was about fifty when we were in high school.”

I think about what Mark told me. The parties. The beer. The pot. Imagining what it must have been like to live next door to a double murder. To wake up every day knowing what had happened there and deciding to stay.

***

Mr. Stewart answers when I knock, his expression morphing into suspicion when he sees me. “What can I do for you?”

“My name is Olivia Taylor,” I tell him. I wait to see if the name holds any meaning for him, but he just stares at me, waiting. “I’m Vincent Taylor’s daughter.” I gesture toward the house next door. “Poppy and Danny Taylor were my aunt and uncle. I was hoping you’d have some time to talk with me about my father’s family. Or maybe my mother, Lydia. I hear you were her coach?”

He nods and says, “What is it you want to know?”

I gesture toward the living room behind him and say, “Maybe we could sit down?”

He hesitates, then steps aside to let me enter. The furniture is dated but well cared for, and I settle on a brown corduroy couch. A flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall, and two wicker chairs flank the ends of the coffee table. On the wall leading to the kitchen is an assortment of photographs.

He gestures toward the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink? Some water?”

“Water would be great. Thanks.”

While he’s gone, I stand and wander over to the wall of pictures. Some are old, of Mr. Stewart and former students at their graduations, smiling in caps and gowns. Others are more recent—Mr. Stewart whale watching. Another one of him with a surfboard.

I’d looked him up in the 1975 yearbook at the library before coming over. Shaggy blondish-brown hair. A wide, white smile. Handsome. Definitely better looking than the other PE teachers. Next to them, Paul Stewart exuded youth. Vitality. Charm. I could see why my father might not have loved how much time my mother had spent with him. I stared at his photograph wondering if there could have been more between them. It wasn’t impossible to imagine.

He returns, handing me my water. I sit again on the couch, placing my glass on a coaster. He takes a seat in one of the wicker chairs across from me, waiting.

“I apologize for not telling you who I was the other day,” I say. “As you can imagine, I’m careful about sharing my name with strangers. Especially in a town where memory is long. I didn’t realize you were the same person who’d been living next door at the time my father’s family lived there.”

“What happened to them was such a tragedy.”

I think of my cell phone, tucked into my purse. I’d set it on record before leaving my car, wanting to capture this conversation. Not caring whether I had permission or not. “When did you move in?”

“I bought the house in March 1975. Back when a teacher could afford property.” He shakes his head. “The middle class has vanished.”

“Did it bother you to live next door to your students?”

“Not at all,” he says. “I loved the Taylor kids. Even your dad. He wasn’t much of an athlete, but he had a wicked sense of humor.”

“My father told me you and my mother were very close.”

Mr. Stewart nods, visibly warming up to the subject. “She was a talented runner. She could have gotten a scholarship to a Division I school if things had been different.”

“What do you mean?”

“After the murders, she stopped running. Quit the team and withdrew from everything.” He looks at me, his expression softening into one of concern. “She loved your father very much. But to be honest, it seemed unhealthy. I saw very little of them after that. They spent most of their spare time at her house, understandably. Then the Taylors moved.”

“Mark Randall told me about a party you had the week of the murders.”

Mr. Stewart gives an uncomfortable chuckle. “I used to have a lot of parties, but that was my end-of-the-year celebration. It was something of a tradition at the time. That was the last year I held one of those.” He looks down at his hands, then back up at me. “After the murders, I realized I needed to do a better job of being a role model to my students and athletes, and not a friend. I got hired in 1969 when I was only twenty-three. Barely an adult myself. Danny was in my very first outdoor survival skills class. You know, building shelters. Purifying water. That kind of thing. He loved it.”

“Did my parents go to the end-of-year party that last year?” I ask, hoping to pull him away from reminiscing about his teaching and back to the week in question.

“Gosh, I don’t remember,” he says. “There were a lot of kids there.”

“Can you tell me about that day?”

“The day of my party?”

I shake my head and wonder if his confusion is feigned. “The day of the murders.”

He blows out hard and looks away. “It was the last day of school,” he says. “The kids were wild, and the teachers were exhausted. Just trying to make it to three o’clock.” He gives a quiet laugh. “I came home after school, went for a run, took a shower. My girlfriend at the time, Amelia, made us an early dinner. She was going out that night with some friends to a local bar. I was going to do a lap through the carnival, maybe eat a funnel cake, and make it an early evening.” His voice is low and melodic, but I could imagine it growing in volume as he yelled directions at my mother on the track. Blowing a whistle. Demanding she push herself harder.

“The carnival was held on the high school field and adjacent parking lot. Not a huge space, but it backed up against what’s now the preserve, so you got the sense, walking through, of being delivered into a magical fairyland of rides, music, twinkle lights. I got my funnel cake, joked around with some graduating seniors, and then came across your parents in a heated argument near the back of the venue.” He pauses, as if remembering the scene. “Your mother was crying. Your father was standing in front of her, and I’ve never seen him so angry. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but he was demanding answers, and she was crying too hard to give them.”

I think about what I know. About what my father had learned just a week or so prior.

“I offered to help, a listening ear, you know? Teenagers are all the same. What they really want is to be heard. To be understood. I probably said something to your dad like I know what it’s like to be in the doghouse. Is there any way I can help? But he didn’t seem inclined to want me around.”

“So how did you end up convincing him?” I know the story well—Mr. Stewart, everyone’s favorite teacher, helping my parents mediate their argument in the oak grove while back at the house Danny and Poppy are brutally murdered.

“It was Lydia who finally convinced him,” he says. “Your father wasn’t my biggest fan. I’d tried to befriend him. Tried to show him I meant no harm, that I wasn’t a threat to him or his relationship with Lydia. But he never warmed up to me. Danny? He would steal my beer and leave the broken tabs all over my back porch. Poppy loved to come play with my cat. But Vince never had any use for me.”

The mention of the cat draws a chill through me, but I push forward. “So my mother wanted you to mediate, and my father agreed?” I ask.

“Reluctantly, but yes. We decided a walk to the oak grove would be far enough away where we wouldn’t be interrupted.” He’s quiet, thinking. Remembering.

“What was their fight about?”

Mr. Stewart becomes guarded. Unsure. “I think maybe it’s best if I let your parents tell you about that,” he says.

“Was it about my mother’s abortion?” I ask. The mask of friendliness slips from his face, just for a second. “My father remembers a fight he had with Danny, where Danny was antagonizing him,” I continue. “Telling him about the abortion and that the person who takes a woman to get one is usually the father. Do you know who took her?”

“I did,” he says, defiant. “And I have no regrets. She needed a trusted adult, and I was glad to be that for her. But the baby was definitely not mine.”

I look at him, trying to gauge his truthfulness and he holds my gaze. “Did you know whose it was?” I ask.

His eyes narrow, as if wondering what I’m suggesting. “I assumed it was Vince’s, but I didn’t ask and she didn’t volunteer.”

I think again of the words Poppy was too afraid to write in her diary. The way my father attacked his brother, an idea forming. “Do you think it could have been Danny’s?”

But Mr. Stewart shakes his head. “I doubt it,” he says. “Your mother didn’t care for him very much.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Trust me. Danny was horrible to your father. He tormented him constantly, and it bothered Lydia. I tried to tell her that was just how brothers were.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t consensual,” I suggest.

“Honestly, I don’t see it. She didn’t behave in a way that would ever have led me to believe she’d been assaulted.”

I have to bite my tongue to keep myself from asking how, exactly, a woman who’d been assaulted should behave. What clues she was supposed to give that would allow others to pick up on her trauma.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, but this is still a very painful topic for me.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about that day?”

He shakes his head. “I wish I had more answers for you. I’ve gone over it again and again over the years. None of it makes any sense.”

“I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me,” I say, standing.

He walks me to the front door and opens it. “I used to always tell my students Information is power. It’s never wrong to seek the answers you need.”

“It must be hard for you to still live here and remember that day.”

“It’s never far from the surface, but time has a way of healing,” he says.

I can’t help but think that’s not the case for everyone. It hasn’t healed Mark Randall. It hasn’t healed Margot, or my father.

“I’ve got one last question for you. Obviously, my father wasn’t the killer since he was with you and my mother in the oak grove. So who do you think did it?”

Mr. Stewart gives a small shake of his head and says, “I’ve been asking myself that for almost fifty years. I can’t imagine anyone in Ojai wanting to hurt Poppy. Or Danny, for that matter. I think it was the man who picked Poppy up hitchhiking. The timing of it, the fact that he knew about the carnival. It seems likely that he might have returned to find her.”