The Flapper Affair: 1920s Time Travel, Murder-Mystery, Paranormal Ghost Romance

The Flapper Affair Chapter One

[one]

There was going to be no more poverty,

no more ignorance, no more disease.

Art Deco reflected that confidence, vigor and optimism by using symbols

 of progress, speed, and power.

~ Robert McGregor

Eduard gaped at the bloody pictures of the 1920s crime scene. Anesthetized in black and white, the horror flashed across the wall in sterile vignettes of the Waverly Mansion.

Now a museum, the mansion's juxtaposition of curved lines and sharp angles in clean, simple silhouettes was touted as an early example of art deco style—though not called art deco by its designer. Successful businessman A. D. Waverly had been impressed with the new architectural movement in Europe and brought French architect Auguste Perret to America to design his estate. But what really put the mansion on the map were the unsolved murders of the entire Waverly family.

Eduard couldn't resist a good mystery and had been a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe since the sixth grade. While his friends read about warrior cats, dragons, wizards, or the latest young adult dystopian, he read The Murder in Rue Morgue. He didn't quite relate to the staunch Victorian fashions and uptight values in the Sherlock Holmes stories, but somehow Doyle had captured in Holmes a figure who was out of his time, too advanced, too outsider for the era he inhabited.

Eduard felt the same way. Out of sync with the modern era he was born into. Not that he was too advanced, but that the twenty-first century didn't have any humility or mystery left. In addition to cell phones, email, and online everything, the world had become cynical, sardonic, and smugly self-conscious. People lacked any real sincerity or awe of their own existence. Eduard felt isolated and apart.

This feeling was brought into sharp relief as he straggled along at the back of the tour group. The witless haha girls swung their hair and hips, chirping like mindless baby chicks, cookie-cutter girls too afraid to be different, too afraid to like anything outside the accepted high school box. Eduard had successfully ditched every other field trip this year, but he had actually wanted to go on this one, the last one of the year. He tried to appreciate the curving architectural lines against sharp corners and listen to the hot jazz playing in the background, but the haha girls wouldn't stop talking.

"Oh my God, this music sounds like crap. Doesn't it sound like something my grandmother would listen to?" The blonde girl's ponytail bounced high on her head like the tail of an Arabian show horse.

"I know, and look at the furniture. Hellloo, Abe Lincoln called and he wants his couch back. Hey, are you going to Ryan's party Saturday? His parents are supposed to be out of town and they have a Jacuzzi," replied the muffin-faced girl, her cleavage on a platter. Her curvy body was already beginning to round into the middle-aged tub she would eventually become.

The jazz music and design details were the only refuge from the girls' insipid conversations.

This year, his senior year, he'd taken to wearing black every day. He was in mourning for his disillusioned soul. Disillusioned with the modern world he lived in. The mind-numbing drivel the teachers wanted him to learn. And the girls who either tried too hard to be the same, or tried too hard to be different—anti-establishment copies of each other with nose rings, colorful hair dye, and punky fashions—though by default, slightly more interesting.

Eduard couldn't remember the first time he'd found an affinity for the vintage era. It might've been a documentary on bootleggers or one of the old movies his parents watched—before their divorce. But he remembered being fascinated by men in crisp suits, big guns, and witty mouths. Capable and smart. The women with sassy short hair, dresses that danced on their own when the women sashayed across the room, smiles walking the line of innocence and knowledge.