Chapter 34

After Etta Mae left for work, I decided to make good use of the morning to go through the closet in Mattie’s guest room—at least to clear it out and to transfer any valuable papers to my house, where they would be safe. And, I determined, I would urge Diane and Helen to finish their appraisals so we could get the furniture out of there as well. When that was done, there would be no need to spend another night in somebody else’s lumpy bed. I had absolutely no desire to actually move into Mattie’s apartment for an unlimited span of time. One night was enough for me.

Telling Lillian where I was going, and being told in turn to take my cell phone, I checked my checklist and said, “One of these days it’ll become a habit and I won’t need to be reminded. But it better be quick because Mattie’s phone will be cut off tomorrow, which means one less bill to pay.”

_______

I met Mr. Wheeler in the building’s vestibule as I was going in and he was coming out.

He smiled, wished me a good morning, and said, “I hope you and your friend rested well last night.”

“As well as could be expected under the circumstances, thank you,” I replied. “But I’d as soon not do it too many times. I intend to light a fire under Diane and Helen so we can get this place empty and off my hands.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said with an easy smile. “But you have somebody new helping you now, don’t you?”

“Oh, you mean Etta Mae? No, she’s my houseguest and insisted on keeping me company last night. I couldn’t ask her to help. She has her hands full with her own job.”

“Well,” he said, as I moved on toward Mattie’s door, “maybe I’ll see you both tonight. That is, if you’re planning to stay over again.”

“I am. I mean, we are, and I guess it’ll be for the duration.”

“Good,” he said on his way out. “Call me if I can help. I’ll be around.”

Hm-m, I thought, as I closed and locked Mattie’s door behind me. If I wasn’t mistaken, Mr. Wheeler was exhibiting interest in a certain young woman, when all the while I’d thought it was Helen who had taken his eye.

I stopped in the middle of Mattie’s crowded living room and thought, Hm-m, again. Maybe that nice Mr. Wheeler had eyes for the ladies—any ladies, that is. Whoever happened to cross his path, which made me wonder about the accuracy of my earlier assessment of him.

“Well, you never know about people,” I mumbled aloud with a little thump of disappointment.

Then I headed for the guest room closet, where I found my work cut out for me—it was still crammed full of coats and jackets and wool skirts and dresses—all of which meant another trip to Goodwill. The top shelf was stacked high with boxes, and as I lifted armloads of clothes off the rod, I saw that the back corner of the closet was also stacked high with more boxes, albums, and who-knew-what-else.

After emptying the rod of hanging clothes, I reached up and took down a stack of boxes to put on the bed—one good thing, I would have to get this task done before nightfall so I would have room to crawl in. Another good thing, the boxes weren’t heavy. One held a collection of gloves, some with mates, some without. Another held woolen scarves, and another was full of pages torn from magazines—for the recipes, I supposed.

I started a Goodwill stack on one side of the bed, opened a trash bag at my feet for the magazine pages, and placed a few grocery store boxes nearby for anything valuable that should go to my house for safekeeping.

Then the problem cropped up—what was valuable and what was not? Mr. Sitton had said that I should use my own discretion in determining value, but after possibly misjudging Mr. Wheeler, how could I trust my own discretion?

I could just hear Lillian: “Jus’ do the best you can, that’s all anybody can do.”

Then my cell phone rang, startling me because it rarely did so. When I hesitantly answered it, Etta Mae said, “Miss Julia, I know what it is. I was standing here ready to give a bed bath, and it just came to me. You have a pencil and paper?”

“Yes,” I said, scrounging in my purse until I found a pen and a receipt from the bookstore. “I’m ready.”

“Okay, it’s the combination for a safe.”

“What safe?”

“There has to be one somewhere. Write this down: left seven, right ten, left twenty-three, and right ten again. I’m taking every little scribble at face value, but I’ll bet you anything it’ll open a safe somewhere.”

_______

Where in the world would Mattie have kept a safe? Excited by the thought of finding one, I hurried through the apartment, looking under beds, peeking behind portraits for a wall safe, and opening cabinets for hidden dials. All of that was just to reassure myself because I knew where a safe had to be. If, indeed, there was one—that deep, dark guest room closet that I had yet to explore. So I went back to it, reminding myself that there was more to look for than an imaginary safe. I was responsible for sorting through everything before Andrew F. Cobb got his hands on it. Removing the last of the clothes hangers, lifting down boxes from the shelf, and going through each one of them, I learned little more than that Mattie had pretty much saved everything she’d ever come across.

But then, blowing dust off an old shoe box that had once held a pair of Thom McAn oxfords, size 10D, I hit pay dirt—of a sort. Fewer than a dozen letters, some held together with faded pink ribbons, and a few in the distinctive red-and-blue-bordered flimsy envelopes, stamped AIRMAIL, that I knew at once were from Tommy. How had she received them with an irate father watching her every move? There was no telling, but get them she had, for here they were in a shoe box.

I opened one at random from each pack to confirm the sender, and a quick scan identified one as a missive from prison and the other from a war zone.

I sat for a moment, there on the side of the bed, holding a box of sad memories on my lap, and thought of Andrew F. Cobb. If he was who he said he was, these things belonged to him, whether or not he was writing a family history. And if he was writing one, the letters would be a treasure trove for him.

I carefully set the box aside—it would go to my house until it could be legitimately claimed. And if it never was, perhaps a library somewhere in Kentucky would archive them for future historians.

With the shelves now empty, I felt around in the dark corner at the back of the closet and brought out several dusty photograph albums from a stack of books, ledgers, and boxes that was almost shoulder high. Flipping through albums, I saw that they contained pictures that looked as old as the hills—some had come loose from the little corner tabs, others had faded to a sickly yellow, and some were so old that they could’ve been tintypes. Whatever tintypes were. Most were of what I assumed were family members—perhaps grandparents, both tall, broad shouldered, and of wide girth, standing stiff and unsmiling on the porch of a stately two-story farmhouse. There were several pictures of two little boys in knee britches and a few of a little girl in a pinafore who looked as unhappy as Mattie often had when I had known her.

Looking through another album in the stack, I came across the wedding picture of Mattie and Tommy. I knew what it was because of the studio background with handpainted wedding bells in each corner. So young, I thought as I studied the happy faces, it was heartbreaking. Especially since I knew what the future held for them. Mattie was wearing a white dress down to her ankles, but it wasn’t an evening gown. With black buttons down the front and a black belt at her waist, it looked more like a housedress. She wore dark shoes with a small heel and—my word—white socks.

And Tommy? He was in shirtsleeves without a tie and pleated trousers that looked a size or two too large for him, but the smile on his face as he held his bride close would move the heart of a person of stone. Unless it was his bride’s father, whose heart was apparently never moved.

Lord, I thought as I closed the album, it’s a good thing that none of us knows the future. If those two had known theirs, they wouldn’t have had even that one happy day.

I sighed and consigned the albums to my take-home-with-me pile, thinking that they might be archived along with the letters. If, that is, no legal heir appeared—or wanted them, if one did.