Evening
Beth had remained at her window watching the empty street after Shane’s departure. It seemed a lot more desolate than she’d ever noticed before. Finally, she refocused on Connie, who’d gotten comfortable on the couch in the meantime. Connie’s arrival, shortly before Shane’s departure, was an interesting bit of timing. “So, you’ve finally met Shane.”
“Yep... and he’s a hunk. Not quite what I expected... from the photo.” Connie smiled dreamily. “Yet, quite a bit more.”
Beth started to say something, but it would have been sharp so she let it ride.
“So, any updates from your forensic librarian?” Connie squirmed slightly on the cushion she occupied.
“I haven’t talked to Jeff today. And you’ve already heard his totally cool clinical observations about that handwritten manuscript.”
“I think you’re both over-analyzing, Beth. It’s just an old story about an ancient event... that maybe didn’t even happen to begin with.”
“We don’t know it never happened. Maybe Jeff can find some newspaper coverage of that event... or something like it.”
“Okay,” Connie sighed. “So maybe he finds an article about the hanging of Jones in 1889. What could it possibly have to do with our girl Lynette?”
“Don’t know yet. But I’ve got a feeling it does.”
“You need to drop this old Jones thing and get back to why people are breaking into your house, following you around at night... and jabbing knives in your throat.” Connie took that moment to peer at Beth’s thin reddish scab.
“You want to know what Jeff found out about it... or not?”
“So when is he coming over?” Connie looked toward the front door.
“He’s not.” Beth shook her head slowly. “I’m supposed to call him in a minute. We’ll be on speaker so everybody can hear.”
“Call? Mister I’ll Be There In Three Minutes is going to phone this in?”
“He figured Shane might be here—”
Connie just opened both hands, palms up.
“I think Shane has Jeff a little spooked.” It came out in a whisper.
“Jeff is spooked by Californians?”
Beth slapped her forearm again. “No... bikers.”
“Everybody’s spooked by bikers!”
“You didn’t seem to be... spooked.”
Connie giggled. “Well, you know, it’s that holdover from my bad boy crush in school. ‘Leader of the Pack’.”
“Whatever.” Beth checked her watch. “Well, Jeff said to call after you got here.”
Connie visited the bathroom while Beth made the call.
After they got the speaker properly arranged, Jeff covered additional details which reinforced some of the observations he’d previously explained. Then, as a summary of sorts: “Besides all the improbability—as a story, it’s incomplete and rather weak in a literary sense.”
“But the tale itself, about the crime, the hurried trial, the interrupted hanging, the rescue of the innocent man—that’s great stuff.” Beth leaned forward, into the phone.
“Exactly, but it’s buried inside such an unbelievable context that I think it must have been written that way on purpose.”
Connie waved her manicured fingers. “Somebody deliberately wrote an improbable story?”
Near the opposite end of Highland Drive, Jeff cleared his throat. “I’m not sure it is a story, strictly speaking. I think it could be more like a map or something.”
“You lost me.” Connie’s hands fell onto her knees.
“If you had some information and wanted to save it for some reason. You could write it down and label it ‘important information I want to save’ and maybe you’d explain why.”
“And who you’re saving it for,” Beth added.
“Right. But if it was a secret, at least for the time being... maybe you’d save the information in a format—or location—that nobody would look for it.”
Connie actually clapped her hands. “Like in a story that’s not actually a story.”
“Yes! Think about it. Everything’s too convenient... too neatly wrapped up. The implausibility factor is through the roof. Nobody would write anything that superficial... unless they were just using those pages to conceal some other information.”
“So you think it’s a way—presumably by somebody Lynette knew—to safely keep some bits of information, without anyone else knowing what... or why?” Beth finally straightened her neck and leaned back against the couch.
“Well, unless we can corroborate the hanging.”
Connie’s turn to lean in closely. “What about that Hickman newspaper you were looking through?”
“Nothing about a hanging around that date.” The voice on the phone.
“Could they have the date wrong?” Beth crossed her fingers.
“Definitely possible... but that leaves me searching all the available issues of the Hickman Courier. I’d need a lot of help with a project like that. This isn’t my full-time job, you know.”
Beth sat up straight again. “I’ll help.”
Connie went to the fridge and helped herself to a beverage. It was clear she had no intention of poring over scanned, ancient newspapers.
Beth re-focused on the speaker-phone. “Okay, suppose we do find an article about this hanging... maybe a different date. What elements could the writer be hiding in this tale?”
Connie returned to her seat and handed Beth a canned cola.
“Well, think about it. If this truly happened at all, presumably everybody in town knew about the murder, the trial, the hanging, and the escape. But the likely secret parts are that Brown was the true murderer, so Jones was actually innocent, and Brown rescued Jones and provided for him as a guilt subsidy for escaping execution himself.”
“And all those details were buried in the last few manuscript pages.” Beth sipped her beverage and smacked her lips. “So anybody reading that manuscript might just scan the first few pages, and they’d figure, ho-hum, it’s about a convicted murderer who got hanged... but escaped.”
“Exactly. But unless and until we find corroboration in the newspaper, all we have is the manuscript text itself.” Jeff paused. “Of course, I’m also reading Lynette’s journal—”
Connie swallowed hard. “But that diary was from the mid 1950s. This hanging was back before 1890.”
Beth quickly subtracted: “Um, sixty-six years later.”
“You know any better places to look?” Jeff sounded tired.
“Guess we’ll have to go through the overnighter again.”
“Beth, we’ve already handled every scrap of paper and each musty mouse dropping.” Connie wrinkled her nose.
“Find that missing manuscript page…or pages…and we’ll settle this. Whether this is just a writing exercise by somebody not even connected to Lynette—or if it’s the key to why somebody tried to rob you. And slice your neck half off.” Jeff sometimes exaggerated, too.
Connie tapped the coffee table with a flawless nail. “And why a nasty dumpster diver came all the way from California to find a little suitcase.”
“So when’s a good time for us to meet and go through the overnighter again?” Beth reached for a small notepad. “Tomorrow? That’s Thursday.”
“Is your boyfriend going to be there?” Jeff sounded rather tentative.
Connie suppressed a giggle.
“Probably not, Jeff. But my friends are welcome in my home and Shane’s got nothing to say about it.”
No phone response from the librarian.
Connie rose abruptly. “Okay, guys, it’s getting late. I can’t spend my whole life in a suitcase with you two nut jobs.”
Carrying her phone, Beth followed Connie to the door and locked it behind her. Then she resumed her conversation with Jeff, though not on speaker anymore.
Jeff was obviously worried about meeting Shane. “What if, you know... what if he doesn’t care for black folks?”
“Where did you come up with that idea?”
“You know. Bikers supposedly hate Mexicans... so it’s logical to assume...”
“Shane doesn’t hate— Where on earth did you get that?”
Jeff cleared his throat. “Movies... I don’t know. Everybody says it.”
Beth shook her head vigorously even though it wasn’t visible over the phone. “Don’t pay any attention to Hollywood. Before me... Shane had a Hispanic girlfriend.”
“Did you two fight over the biker?” Jeff sounded like he was smiling.
But Beth wasn’t. “She was killed...”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a drive-by shooting. Gang from L.A.”
“When?” Jeff sounded incredulous.
“Not sure... a little less than two years before I met him. Shane doesn’t talk about it.”
“So how’d you find out?”
“One night Shane had a few extra beers... and he let out a little bit.”
“Is that all you know?”
“Sophia wasn’t the target... just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A few seconds sooner and she wouldn’t have been there. A few seconds later and she’d have been gone.” Beth cleared her throat softly. “Shane says everything’s reduced to seconds. Timing.”
Jeff was silent for a moment. “You know anything else about Sophia?”
Beth swallowed and rubbed a spot around her sternum. “Just that anytime Shane hears the name Sophia, he looks to see if it’s her.”