I glanced at my watch. Pleased to see there was still time to do a little digging in the attic after my morning phone calls, I grabbed my key ring and headed upstairs, pausing to unlock the door that led to the top level of the house.
I’d learned to keep the door locked after finding a few guests rummaging around in the attic during the first literary event I’d held at Chapters. I wasn’t worried about items being stolen—many of the books in the library were much more valuable than anything in the attic—but I feared a lawsuit if someone got hurt tripping over the clutter.
The heat rose as I climbed the narrow wooden stairs. I was glad I’d opted for open-backed sandals along with a pair of lightweight shorts and a gauzy cotton top, rather than my typical hostess outfit. The unfinished attic was no place for nice clothes.
I flicked the light switch at the top of the stairs, turning on the three bare bulbs that dangled from the rafters. The attic ran the entire width of the older portion of the house. It included windows on either side, which helped to relieve the gloom of its aged-wood interior. But nothing could quite chase the shadows from the far corners or dispel the haze created by two centuries of dust.
Wrinkling my nose at the musty smell rising from stacks of old National Geographic magazines and a motley assortment of leather-clad trunks, I picked my way through teetering piles of boxes to reach one of the side windows. After previously digging through the attic to find Great-Aunt Isabella’s stash of costumes, I’d moved all the boxes containing her personal effects to an area lit by one of the windows, hoping to eventually catalog them properly.
Not in the summer, though. That had never been the plan. I pulled a wad of tissues from the pocket of my shorts and wiped the sweat from my upper lip and forehead. Lacking air conditioning, the attic was at least twenty degrees hotter than the rest of the house. Opening one or both windows would’ve helped, but I knew from prior attempts that the frames were too old and warped to allow the sashes to move.
I decided to collect some material and sort through it downstairs. It wasn’t safe to stay in the attic too long when it was hot enough to immediately plaster my hair to my head and neck. I picked up one of the boxes that held Isabella’s photos and papers. Rising unsteadily to my feet, I headed downstairs. I could return for another box once I had sorted through the first batch.
Back in my bedroom, I kicked off my sandals before pulling the papers and photos from the box and arranging them in piles on my white chenille bedspread. I tried to sort roughly by decade. The loose documents and notebooks were dated, which helped me place them in their proper pile, and while most of the photographs didn’t include inscriptions, I could make approximations based on hairstyles and clothing.
I picked up a photo taken at one of our family reunions. There I was, looking gawky and owl-eyed in the glasses I’d had to wear until I was old enough to handle contacts. Behind me, my mom and dad stared resolutely at the camera, their smiles frozen in the fixed expression common to posed photos. My grandparents flanked them, also looking stiff and uncomfortable. But off to one side, Isabella appeared poised to fly off into the woods, her attention captured by something unseen by the others.
She looks like some wild or supernatural creature, trapped with these stodgy mortals, I thought. A long-forgotten memory flashed through my mind—Isabella flitting from table to table at a party while Grandma Ruth admonished her to “sit still for once, for heaven’s sake, Bella.”
I tapped the edge of the photo against my palm. As a child, I’d been fascinated by my great-aunt. Her vivacious beauty, undimmed even in her later years, had seemed far too exotic for our rather unexceptional family. Like a butterfly among the moths, I thought, as I laid down the photo and picked up another.
This was an older picture. Slightly out of focus, it looked like a random shot of Isabella working in the garden at Chapters. And there, in the background, near a much shorter holly hedge, stood a tall, well-built man.
I squinted, hoping to make out who it was. Perhaps her father, my great-grandfather? No, this man looked to be closer to Isabella’s age. It also wasn’t her brother-in-law. As a young man, my grandfather’s hair had been almost black, and this man’s hair was light enough to read as blond in the black-and-white photo.
Rummaging through the drawer in my nightstand, I pulled out a magnifying glass. But even enlarging the photo didn’t answer the question of who had accompanied Isabella in the garden that day. The man, handsome in a rough-hewn, strong-jawed way, was a stranger to me.
I flipped the photo over but found no inscription. Dropping the magnifying glass onto the bed, I held up the picture and noticed the smudge of fingerprints marring its glossy finish. I’d been careful not to touch the surface of the photo, but it looked like someone had handled it often, and carelessly, in the past.
“Now who are you?” I asked aloud. “Just some random visitor, or Isabella’s very own mystery man?” I placed the photo on my nightstand, near the picture of my great-aunt and grandmother. It felt like a clue to Isabella’s possible mysterious benefactor, or more tragically, her blackmailer. I decided to keep it separate from the other items until I could examine it further.
The rest of the materials were ordinary enough—more photos from our family reunions, as well as pictures of parties at Chapters and other Beaufort events, and a few postcards and letters sent to her from members of my family. There were also copies of legal documents I thought I’d look through later, although a cursory examination revealed nothing of interest.
My first dig into Isabella’s past appeared to be a dud, at least in terms of proving, or disproving, Lincoln Delamont’s claims. So far there was nothing that explained how Isabella had acquired the funds to buy Chapters. In fact, all the legal documents seemed to date from after her acquisition of the property. Once again, it was as if her life before that date had fallen into a deep well.
I sighed and fluffed my now-dry hair. What had I expected? A signed confession from my great-aunt, detailing daring acts of thievery and other crimes? I snorted at my own naivete. If Isabella had stolen valuable items and sold them on the black market to fund her acquisition of Chapters and build her library, she certainly wouldn’t have documented that behavior.
As I slid the separated stacks of papers and photographs into an empty cardboard expanding file I’d found in the library, a small gray journal slipped out of one of the larger notebooks. I picked it up, my fingertips dimpling the soft suede cover. It was not one of the typical spiral-bound notebooks that Isabella had favored for recording random notes and recipes. It looked like something meant for more permanent, and perhaps more important, information.
The cover and spine lacked lettering or embossing of any kind, but there was a date scrawled on the inside cover—1952. A quick calculation told me Isabella would’ve been twenty-six that year.
One of the years she was out of touch with the family, I thought, remembering my mom’s comments about Isabella being at least “old enough to take care of herself” when she’d gone missing. I flipped to the first page in the journal, and slumped back against my pillows, baffled again.
The journal was filled with writing—in a hand I recognized from other documents written by Isabella—but the tightly packed script was total gibberish.
Flipping through the pages, I noticed changes in the ink used to write the curious arrangements of letters and numbers. It seemed that the journal had not been filled all at once but rather, as indicated by the fading and discoloration of the earlier entries, over a significant period of time.
I grabbed the photo of the mysterious man and slipped it between the pages before sliding the journal into the small purse I intended to carry when I drove over to Fort Macon.
Ellen Montgomery might know nothing about either the photo or the journal, but I didn’t care. I desperately wanted to share them with someone I felt I could trust.
Taking a deep breath, I stood and slung the purse strap over my shoulder as I slid my feet into my sandals. A glance at the clock told me it was time to drive to Atlantic Beach and meet Ellen at Fort Macon.
I smiled grimly as I padded over to the dresser and yanked a comb through my hair. Yes, it was definitely time to see Ellen—not just to chat about the murder of Lincoln Delamont but also to share these mysterious items from my great-aunt’s past.
Because, I thought, as I left my room and headed outside to my car, Lincoln Delamont might have been wrong on certain points, but he could’ve been right about one thing—my great-aunt might indeed have had secrets the family would not want exposed.
I climbed into my car, glad that the shade from the holly and a nearby magnolia tree had kept it relatively cool. As I placed my purse on the passenger seat, my fingers traced the edge of the journal where it pressed against the inside of the soft leather.
That ridiculous book, filled with nonsense.
No, I thought, fumbling with the key as I slid it into the ignition. You know better. You saw the patterns. You’ve already realized it might not be gibberish after all. That it could be a code.
Perhaps Isabella Harrington had not been a thief.
Maybe she’d been a spy.