Chapter 25
Penelope Branford was my go-to partner in fighting crime. Today I needed her more than ever. I couldn’t shake the importance of the box in Esmé’s closet. I thought back to when I’d told her I’d been in her room. She’d said that KM, whose initials were on the box in her closet, had not been the reason she was at Crosby House. But there was something about her face. The way she’d stammered through that conversation.
I knew what I needed to do, and I needed Mrs. Branford to help me.
“It’s high time you came around, Ivy,” she said from the passenger seat of my car.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. With my new hours at the bread shop, the website and blog, and digging around about Ben Nader and Sandra Mays, I’d been neglecting our May-December friendship.
She’d rolled down the window, the ocean breeze not ruffling a single curl of her snowy-white hair. Mrs. Branford had leisure sweat suits in every color of the rainbow. It was a rare occasion to see her in something other than velour. Today she had on a periwinkle number with white stripes running up the side. Her pristine white orthotic shoes kept her balanced as she walked. “What is your plan?” she asked above the sound of traffic and wind.
“I need you to create a distraction.”
“And while I’m entertaining the women and children?” she asked.
“I’ll be doing something you shouldn’t know about.”
“Ah yes, plausible deniability.” She pressed a button on her door and her window zipped up, shutting out the sounds from outside. She patted her hair. Once she seemed satisfied that her curls were all still in place, she angled her body to the left, turning toward me. “Have you figured something out, then?”
I wish. “Not exactly. But there’s something Esmé’s not saying, and I feel like it’s important.”
“To intuit is an itch that must be scratched.”
I chuckled. “Is that you or Kevin Shakespeare?”
“Dead as a doornail. Good riddance. What’s done is done. Many of our idioms we owe to Kevin, but no, not that. That is all Penelope Lane Branford.”
I spun my head to look at her. “Your middle name is Lane?”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “It is. I spent a summer in Liverpool when I was a young girl.”
My jaw dropped and my heartbeat ratcheted up. Was she saying . . . did she meet . . . was she the inspiration for . . . “Mrs. Branford, oh my God. Are you telling me . . . you are Penny Lane?”
She chuckled. Or maybe it was a chortle. “For heaven’s sake, Ivy. For such a clever girl, you are far too gullible.”
My heart slipped from my throat back into my chest. I exhaled. “Wait. So you’re not?”
She had her cane resting on her thighs. She spun it absently. “My name is Penny Lane. Penelope Lane, technically, but everyone—except you, of course, calls me Penny.”
My head spun. “So you are . . .”
“I’m not. Of course I’m not, Ivy. Penny Lane is a road in Liverpool.”
“But the song . . . ?”
“The song is actually a reference to the Penny Lane bus station.”
I thought about the lyrics. Did that make sense? “A bus station?”
“The story goes that Paul was sitting at the station waiting for John. While he waited, he noted things around him. A barber shop. A girl selling poppies from a tray. As Paul was known to do, he turned those notes and scribblings into a song. No girl involved at all. I’ve just had the good fortune of having the same name.”
Which made for a good story. I slapped my hand against my chest. “If you’d met Paul McCartney and he wrote that song about you, I think I would have had a heart attack just now.”
She chortled again. “Buck up. Your heart is just fine. Now, back to the plan,” she said.
“Back to the plan,” I agreed.
I’d called ahead to ask Vivian Cantrell if I could bring Mrs. Branford. “It’s highly unusual,” she’d said, but after I explained Mrs. Branford’s background in education, she reluctantly agreed. I was glad Vivian was a bit loosey-goosey with her rules, but on the flip side, I wished she wasn’t. It was a bit concerning.
I parked and led Mrs. Branford in, entering my code on the keyless entry system I’d been given access to. Inside, I gave Mrs. Branford a brief tour, then brought her to the living room. A few moms sat on the sofas while their children put together puzzles, watched Sesame Street, or drew at the table. It took all of five minutes for Mrs. Branford to command an audience. She began by picking up a book from a little stack on a side table. Before long, she was embellishing, and soon after that, she was telling a story about a little girl who’d stowed away on a pirate ship. The kids gathered round her, sitting cross-legged. They jumped when she pounded her cane against the floor, the sound mimicking the peg leg of the dastardly pirate ship captain. One of the mothers ran out to tell some of the other women to come listen. Slowly, they trickled in and before long, twelve of Crosby House’s residents were there. Meg and Angie both came in. Angie sat on one of the armchairs, while Meg perched on the arm. I hung back, half hiding in a corner, waiting for Esmé to come.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. There was no sign of her. Maybe she wasn’t here. I debated. Did I take the chance? The last thing I wanted was for her to walk in on me searching her room. But I had to follow my hunch.
I caught Mrs. Branford’s eye and nodded my head. I was going in. She nodded, knocked her cane against the floor again to keep the attention on her, and I slipped away, racing down the hallway to Esmé’s room.
I looked up and down the hallway. No one was in sight. I stepped up close to Esmé’s door and rapped my knuckles against it. Three quick knocks in rapid succession. Nothing. I tried again. No answer. The coast was clear. I turned the knob, registering the irony that I was breaking and entering just like someone—maybe Esmé—had done at my house. Did the fact that I was trying to solve a murder justify my actions? I wasn’t sure, but I also wasn’t going to stop to think about it right now.
I closed the door behind me, turned, and leaned back against it. For the second time in less than an hour, my heart was beating like a jackhammer. I surveyed the room. The bed was rumpled. The lamp on the nightstand was on and the blinds were open to the front. I remembered that Meg and Esmé had switched so that Esmé could avoid the angular shadows of the tree limbs in the backyard. That was a good friend. These women did look out for each other.
Something was different in the room. The books, I realized. They weren’t on the nightstand anymore. I opened up the drawer to take a quick peek inside. No books on grieving, but there was a book on baking traditions in Mexico. I knew from being with her in the Bread for Life classes that Esmé was passionate about what she baked. I could see her taking the skills she already had, coupled with everything she was learning from Olaya, and going far with them. Maybe she’d decided her grieving was over. Or maybe she’d donated the books to the Crosby House library.
I’d come to get a closer look at the box in the closet. The one marked KM. I strode across the small room, slid open the closet door, and stared. There was no box. Clothes hung in the closet and several pairs of shoes, including the closed-toe black pair Esmé favored when working in the kitchen. Were these the same clothes that had been hanging here before? I rifled through the contents on the shelf above the rod of clothes. Nothing of interest. Poor Esmé had escaped her situation with—what was his name? I thought back. Eduardo. Right. She’d escaped from Eduardo with hardly anything.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the missing box. Where had she taken it? I was about to slip out the door again, but stopped at the last second at the dresser. The bottom drawer had held a baby blanket and some drawings. The drawer, when I pulled it open, however, was empty.
Empty. What in the world was going on?
I stood out in the hallway for a minute, trying to understand. Why would Esmé suddenly get rid of what seemed to be the only sentimental things she’d brought with her? I couldn’t make sense of it.