55

Amherst, Massachusetts

A crazy thought entered Salem’s brain: maybe this whole scavenger hunt adventure she and Bel were on was one of her mom and Gracie’s elaborate schemes to teach them something or reunite them.

A moment of elation followed by a mental picture of the thick blood pooling in Gracie’s hallway. Salem shuddered.

She, Bel, Ernest, and Mercy stood outside of Emily Dickinson’s earliest home. It was a Federal-style mansion. They marched up the museum’s cement steps, past the white columns, and through the green door. Salem knew from her research that Emily Dickinson had been born in this house, the Homestead, in 1830. She and her family left for a number of years and returned in 1855. Dickinson lived here until her death in 1886. Amherst College bought the house in 1965, and in 2003 the museum opened its doors.

According to the museum’s online furnishing plan, the Homestead and its sister building, the Evergreens, contained a wealth of historically accurate items, many of them owned by the Dickinson family, from Emily’s childhood piano to a ruby decanter and matching glasses. Salem had found no mention of pistols or rifles in the collection, but they had agreed beforehand that it was better to search the rooms themselves than be marked as the nervous, sleep-ragged foursome who asked to see Samuel Dickinson’s guns.

“Four tickets, please,” Bel said. “Three adults, one child.”

“Excellent!” The woman was dressed in period gear, a bishop-sleeved, blue-and-white checked daydress that reached the floor. She paused to smile at two new people entering immediately behind Salem. “We’ll have enough people for a tour in no time.”

“We don’t need a tour, thanks.” Bel flashed her brightest smile. “We have to get back on the road. We want to show ourselves around, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. I’m afraid I still have to charge you the forty-two dollars, though.”

“No problem.” Bel pulled out three twenties. She grabbed the tickets and her change, and they walked up the purple, twisting stairs, Bel whispering instructions. “Two of us to a room. Me and Ernest are a team. Salem, you take Mercy. You find any guns, you locate the other team and we look them over together.”

Salem nodded. Bel and Ernest stepped into the room at the top of the stairs. Salem and Mercy continued to the end of the hall and opened the door, stepping inside.

“I think this was her bedroom.” Salem took in the tiny writing table perched in front of the window, the sleigh bed surrounded by a matching washbasin cupboard and dresser. She thought of Dickinson’s passion for knowledge, and her reclusiveness. It was rumored that at her sickest, Dickinson wouldn’t let her doctor take her pulse, would merely walk past an open doorway and require him to diagnose her from afar.

She and Dickinson would have gotten along just fine.

“I like it here,” Mercy said. “I want to live here.”

Salem pushed a lock of the girl’s hair from her eyes and smiled. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Clean. No surprises. And,” she said, visually sweeping the room, “no old-fashioned rifles.”

Such was the case in every room they were allowed to enter in the Homestead as well as the Evergreens next door. As a last-ditch effort, they scanned the brochures near the front counter, scouring for any mention of a gun belonging to Dickinson’s grandparents.

“We have to ask someone,” Bel said. “It’s the only way.”

By now, there was a line at the desk. When it was her and Bel’s turn, Bel slapped her smile back on. “Excuse me. Can I ask you a strange question?”

The woman nodded. “Believe me, I’ve heard them all.”

“Are there any guns on the property? Antique ones that belonged to the Dickinson family, specifically Samuel and Lucretia, Emily’s grandparents?”

“Hmm,” the woman said. “That’s a new one. I don’t remember seeing any, but let me pull up our records.” She slid her glasses from the top of her head to her nose and turned her attention to her computer. She stroked the keys and studied the screen intently.

Salem found herself standing on the balls of her feet, leaning forward, as if she could step inside the computer and pull out the information they needed. Follow the trail, the text from her mom’s phone had read, but what if the trail died here? Salem felt like someone was sitting on her chest.

“I’m sorry,” the woman finally said, perching her glasses back on the top of her head. “No guns. A lot of the original Dickinson possessions were sold over the years, before the museum was formed, I’m afraid.”

“Any idea how we could track down where it all went?” Bel asked.

The woman made a tsking sound. “I wish. But if you want to leave your name and number, I could talk to our curator. She’s on vacation now but will be back next week.”

Bel nodded. To an outsider, it would look like she was considering her options. To Salem, it was clear she was trying to keep from punching a hole in the wall. Salem flipped open her phone and stepped to Bel’s side. “Here’s our number,” she said, reading it from the inside of the phone. “Please do call if you hear anything.”

She and Bel walked outside, Ernest and Mercy trailing behind them. The sun hit their face with a cruel brightness.

“We don’t have a week,” Bel said. She seemed to have shrunk. “Whichever of our mothers is alive doesn’t have a week.”

“I know.” Salem’s chin trembled. She could hear her mom’s life ticking away, or Gracie’s. “The note led us nowhere.”

Mercy was glancing across the lawn in front of the Homestead. “It had more dots.”

“What, sweetie?” Salem asked.

“The note had more dots.” She said this with the absolute certainty only a child can pull off. “You got excited, but there were more after that.”

Salem, Bel, and Ernest stared at each other. Salem reached into her pocket, and with wobbly hands, she yanked out the note and smoothed it on the column in front of her. She spotted what Mercy was referring to in the poem’s last stanza:

God preạches,—a noted cler

yman,—
And the seṛmon is never long ;
So instead of getting to heạṿẹn at last,
I’m going all along!

G-r-a-v-e.

“Grave.” Salem’s voice shook with excitement. “We have to go to Samuel and Lucretia’s grave!”

She charged back into the Homestead and barged ahead of the others in line. “I’m so sorry, but we just have one more question. Can you tell me where Samuel and Lucretia Dickinson’s graves are?”

The woman wore a puzzled smile. “Why, Samuel Fowler and Lucretia Gunn Dickinson are buried here in town, in a single grave. They were reinterred in the family plot in the Amherst West Cemetery over a century ago.” She pointed northwest. “It’s a ten-minute walk, as the crow flies.”

Salem had almost stopped listening after the woman said Lucretia’s maiden name. Lucretia Gunn.

Gun Samuel Lucretia grave.

The “gun” in the code hadn’t been referring to a weapon! There must be something hidden behind the first three letters of Lucretia’s maiden name on her gravestone.

Salem squealed. “Thank you!”

She ran outside, Ernest, Mercy, and Bel’s faces staring desperately at her like baby flowers to the sun. “The cemetery isn’t even half a mile away. Let’s go!”