The next day was even busier at the lemonade stand. Word had got out about Andy El’s homemade jam being for sale, and I sold all of the jars on the table. I refilled the lemonade jug three times, and even sold four more of Mrs. Williams’s books.
Between customers, I read the Miss Marple book, trying to take notice of how she used her skills of observation to solve the murder. By about three o’clock, I was pretty hot and worn out, and I figured that everyone who wanted lemonade had come by the stand today already, so I packed up the last of the books and cleaned up the stand. I washed the dishes and left them to dry in Andy El’s drying rack beside her sink.
I headed down to Clarice’s trailer and found her getting ready for work at the tavern. She was humming and happy, finishing her pre-work drink. The sewing must have gone well; I could see a stack of finished costumes on the table. The remaining ones were all pinned together, waiting on the couch to be sewn. That was a relief for me. Because if her sewing had gone badly, somehow Clarice would figure that I was to blame, even though I had stayed away from the trailer all day.
“You can find something in the fridge to eat when you get hungry,” she said. “I’ll be late tonight. I got a date after work!”
That meant either another meal of hot dogs or a boiled egg, which was the extent of my cooking skills. That was okay with me. I could go over to Andy El’s later, as I knew that she had made some clam chowder earlier. And I knew there was always a place for me at her table, as she liked to say. The chowder was made with fresh clams that Esther and her girls had dug up on the beach earlier this morning. I had heard them all in her yard, laughing and chatting as they scrubbed the clams and shucked them under the tap by Andy El’s outdoor worktable, which was an old Formica-topped kitchen table.
I didn’t say anything to Clarice about the chowder, though. I sat on the edge of the couch quietly and watched as Clarice breezed through the trailer, finding her shoes, then her keys, and then, draining her clinking glass with a final gulp, she was finally ready.
“How do I look, kiddo?” she asked, as she peered in the mirror, checking her hair one last time.
“You look real pretty, Clarice,” I said. She gave me a distracted smile, and then, with an “Oh shoot — my lipstick!” she rushed back to her jumbled bedroom for a frantic search.
It was weird to me that I didn’t look much like Clarice. I never asked her about my dad, but I figured I must look like him. I knew that I was Clarice’s daughter, though, because she wouldn’t have put up with me if I was someone else’s kid. That much I knew.
“Okay, stay outta trouble, Truly,” she yelled as she headed out the door and off to work.
I was relieved that I could go over to Andy El’s for that clam chowder. I knew there wasn’t much in the fridge to eat, and anyway, it was best if I stayed clear of all of the sewing.
I was just heading over to Andy El’s when I saw Elvis’s gold Sun Bug pull up and park next to his trailer. Elvis got out, reached into the back seat, pulled out a couple of grocery bags from the Food Mart, then headed inside his trailer. I decided that I would take my time getting over to Andy El’s and that I could start to hone my Miss Marple skills on the way.
So I sat on the grass by our trailer to kill some time and got busy making a daisy chain with some dandelions that grew in our unruly patch of lawn. I figured that would give Elvis some time to put his groceries away, and then I would wander slowly over, making my way casually past his trailer. That way, I could be on the lookout for more clues.
After a few minutes, I thought that I could hear music coming from his trailer. I stretched casually, got up, tossed the daisy chain on the grass, and idly sauntered over behind his trailer. I pretended to be interested in Mrs. Williams’s roses. All the while I was checking for more Elvis clues. The roses really did smell beautiful, sweet and musky in their well-cared-for garden bed.
The little living room window of his trailer was open, so I leaned in a bit to see if I could hear anything.
Singing. I could hear singing. Elvis was singing! And he was playing his guitar. I strained to hear what the song was. He was singing “Love Me Tender.” I was impressed with how good he was. And boy, did he ever sound like himself. He sounded just like he did on the record.
What more proof did I need? My suspicions were right. He really was Elvis! And here he was, living under a secret identity in our trailer park. And after hearing his singing, I had another really big clue to add to my notebook.
Elated, I headed over to Andy El’s for dinner. Raymond was there, and it was so hot that we all sat outside on the grass and each had big a bowl of her homemade clam chowder. Raymond had us laughing all through dinner. He had a gentle way of teasing that wasn’t at all mean. Raymond’s teasing was kind and showed that he really knew us well. We sat out in the dusk, laughing at the stories he told about working in a logging camp when he first left school. He made it sound like a lot of fun, but I knew that logging was hard and dangerous work.
When there was a lull in the conversation, I timidly asked him, “Why didn’t you stick with it? It sounds like you had a lot of fun.”
Raymond sighed and said slowly, as though carefully choosing his words, “Well, I was pretty young, just out of high school. At first it was a real adventure, being off on my own like that. It’s real hard work. And dangerous. And not everyone there was happy having a Native guy in the camp. Even though I worked hard, there was a lot of prejudice, and that made it hard to be there so far away from home. At least I earned enough money to go to college over in Vancouver. So, I headed off to the big city, and school, and then discovered that I was happier being home here at Eagle Shores, where my family is.”
We sat for a few moments, each of us reflecting on his words, and then Andy El announced that we were going to make more strawberry jam. Raymond stood up and said with a quick wink at me, “Well, that’s my cue to head on home!”
Andy El wrapped up some pieces of fry bread for Raymond to take home and insisted he take some clam chowder too.
“You brought me all that salmon last week,” she said. “You make sure you got some chowder for tomorrow.”
“What, you’re not inviting me back for dinner again tomorrow night?” he teased, and then he gave her a hug and a kiss. “Bye, Mama, and thanks,” he said, and, turning to me, he ruffled my hair and said, “See ya, Truly. Make sure you get her secret recipe for making jam!” and with that he headed off, walking home through the Cut.
After he had gone, Andy El put me to work helping her with another batch of strawberry jam. She set up a big cooking pot on a camp stove in the back yard, and set the berries and sugar bubbling away. Then she got some apples, skinned them, and had me grate them up.
“Some people use stuff called pectin when they make jam, but you gotta buy that at the store,” she explained. “My mama taught me how to make jam this way, with apples. They cook up and dissolve, and they make your jam just as thick as the stuff you buy. Apples got that pectin stuff in them, so they make jam real good and thick.”
I carefully added the grated apple to the jam. While it simmered, Andy El broke up some bars of paraffin wax and put them into an old battered pot, which she put inside a bigger pot, which was partially filled with water.
“You got to be real careful with the wax, Truly,” she explained. “You melt it like this inside another pot of water. Never put a pot of wax right on the burner.” Then she kept her eye on both the melting wax and the cooking jam.
My next job was washing the dishes. First I washed all the dinner dishes, then I dried them and put them all away. I loved how tidy Andy El kept her trailer. Everything had its own place, and you always knew where a certain pot or dish was. It was not at all like Clarice’s trailer, which was in a constant state of chaos. Even if Clarice ever did decide to put a dish away, I don’t think she would know where to start in our little kitchen.
I put the leftover clam chowder in the fridge. There would be enough for lunch or dinner tomorrow night too.
Then I washed all of the canning jars and made sure they were rinsed out well. I shuttled them outside to Andy El’s outdoor worktable. I set them up carefully, so they were all ready to be filled. When Andy El decided the jam was all cooked, she carefully ladled it into each jar. Once they were all filled, she wiped the edge of each jar with a clean cloth.
Then she carefully took the melted wax off of the burner and put the pot down on a mat on the table. She showed me how to carefully lay a piece of string across the opening of each jar and then snip it so that there was about two inches dangling over each side. And then once I was done laying string across the top of the jam in each one, I stepped back and watched as she carefully poured the melted wax into the mouth of each jar to seal it.
“That string’ll make it easier for folks to pull the wax out when they want to open the jam,” she explained. “The wax keeps the jam sealed off from the air so it won’t go bad.”
“There now,” she said. “We’ll just wait till they all cool, and then we’ll put lids on them.”
I counted the jars of jam. We had made fourteen more jars of jam. The wax was already starting to harden, and it formed a seal on the jam about a quarter of an inch thick.
I loved working with Andy El. I learned so much from her that I never did with Clarice. Andy El actually cooked things from scratch. She was always making fry bread, soups and chowders, and canning vegetables from her garden. Way more than just boiling eggs or hot dogs, or heating up stuff from a can like Clarice did.
As we waited for the jars to cool, I figured I’d better make some more ice cubes for tomorrow’s lemonade. I opened the fridge out on the porch and pulled out the metal ice cube tray. I took it to the sink and refilled the empty squares where ice was missing, so we would have plenty for lemonade.
With a satisfied sigh, Andy El sat down on the porch couch to knit. She was working on a new winter vest for Esther’s son, Edgar Jr., using thick wool and large needles. Andy El was a beautiful knitter, and she often sold sweaters and vests that she’d knitted. There was always someone stopping by her trailer getting measured up by Andy El, and they would look at her wool colors and designs so they could choose how their sweater or hat would look. Her wools were thick like rope and came in natural colors of cream, dark brown, or gray.
This one was a cream color. On the back, Andy El had added the image of a huge thunderbird in dark brown wool, and there would be two leaping salmon on the front. She said that was to bring him good luck when he was out fishing.
I loved to watch her knit and listen to the clicking of the needles as they dove in and out of the wool. The patterns emerged quickly as we sat together.
“’Bout time I started teaching you to knit,” she commented, and I grinned at her. Andy El had more plans for me already. It did look satisfying to do. “This coming winter, I think we’ll get you started knitting. You’re about the age I started all my girls knitting.”
“I think that would be pretty cool, Andy El,” I said. I continued to watch her flying fingers for a while, and then pulled out my notebook and added to my Elvis clue list:
— Plays guitar.
— Sings Elvis songs.
— Sings just like Elvis.
The clues were piling up, and so was the proof that Aaron Kingsley really was Elvis Presley. But why was he here at Eagle Shores? I tucked the notebook away where I knew it would be safe, under the plaid couch on the porch. Then I sat as Andy El continued to knit and read my Miss Marple book. I figured that I needed all the tips I could get to be a good detective. Besides, it was a real good book.