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"PUT THOSE GLOVES on just in case," Carol warned me.
"Maybe they’re not old," Easton said.
Carol didn’t even bother to look at her. "I happen to believe Marmalade’s nose. As trite as it sounds, I’d rather be safe than sorry."
"I’ll bet nobody else ever used gloves on those," Easton said.
"All the more reason not to add more oils from our fingers." Carol sounded like she was getting as fed up as I was with Easton’s objections. About the only times Easton was excited was when she found something herself.
"You’re right, Easton," Sadie said. "Most people never think of gloves."
Sadie was right. Easton had made a valid point. I really needed to stop reacting so strongly whenever that woman said anything.
I pulled out a stack of maybe ten or twelve typed sheets of paper. I could tell from all the sharp creases that they’d been folded, but somebody had obviously smoothed them out.
I looked through the stack at the first few letters. They were from Elizabeth Endicott, and most of them started, My dear brother.
When I told that to the group, Sadie said, "Endicott was Elizabeth Hoskins’ maiden name."
Carol mumbled something, and then said, "Elizabeth was the one you bought this house from, right Biscuit?"
I nodded.
"Are there envelopes in there with the letters?"
I spread my hands. "It’s just letters, and it looks like all of them are from her to him."
"None from him to her?" Several people asked that at the same time.
I double checked. "Nope."
"That’s strange," Rebecca Jo said. "People keep letters they’ve received, not one’s they’ve sent. Unless these are carbon copies?"
I shook my head. "They sure look like originals."
"Let’s hope she’ll give us some answers." Carol nodded at the first letter. "Why don’t you read it to us?"
"The pages are smaller than usual," I said.
"That was to conserve paper," Maddy explained.
Friday April 20, 1917
23 Sayers Lane
Enders, Georgia
I stopped reading. "Enders?"
"Of course," Rebecca Jo said. "That’s where all the Endicotts came from. She probably lived there up until she married Perry Hoskins and then she brought the letters here with her."
"I wonder how she met Perry if he lived here and she lived there?"
Nobody had an answer for that one.
My dear brother,
It seems silly to be writing to you when you left only this morning, but I promised you a lot of letters. I’ll have to hold this one until you send me an address!
I’m typing it for several reasons. It gives me a chance to practice my typing skills so Miss Grogan, better known as the gorgon, will be impressed when I get such good marks on our next test. But more important, I can get more writing on this piece of paper if I type it instead of writing it out. You know how you’ve always berated me for putting such enormous loops and whorls on my alphabet. Now you will have no reason to scold your little sister.
Mama has been crying for the last two hours. Don’t feel bad. You know how she likes to cry. I long ago stopped paying any attention to her, but she does it anyway, probably because Papa pats her on the shoulder when she does it.
Please write me soon with your address.
How silly of me. By the time I send you this letter, I will already have your military address, and you will no longer need to send it to me.
I miss you already.
Your loving sister,
"She was right about all the whorls and loops," I said. "I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many unnecessary flourishes in a signature." I passed the letter around so everybody could see Elizabeth's elaborate name. "She wrote the second letter the next day."
Saturday April 21, 1917
23 Sayers Lane
Enders, Georgia
My dear Elmer,
I plan to write to you every single day, in case you hadn’t noticed.
"At least we know his name now," I said. "When did the United States enter the war?"
"That month," Maddy said. "April sixth, 1917."
"So, he must have enlisted right away." I leafed again through the remaining letters. "These go from"—I pointed to the first letter still making its way around the circle—"April twentieth to, uh,"—I shuffled down to the bottom letter in the stack—"Thursday May third. Then they stop."
"I think I can clear up that mystery." Sadie had a strange note in her voice that caused all of us to turn to her. "I was never a close friend of Elizabeth. She was a bit difficult in a lot of ways."
Glaze snorted. "Ya think so?"
"Serial killer," I said when I saw Carol’s questioning look. "Long story."
She looked like she didn’t believe me—why would she? Did this look like the attic of a serial killer? I’d mentioned the bodies in the yard, but she probably assumed there were only a couple of them, hardly enough to qualify as serial killings. Sadie ignored us and kept talking.
"After Wallace died, I was going through some of his papers, and I found a letter from Ruel—that was Wallace’s older brother," she explained to Carol. "Ruel died on Flanders Field. But in this letter, he told about a boy named Elmer who died in the training camp."
"Oh no!" I clutched the remaining letters tighter to me.
"Oh, yes. All the Georgia boys from this general area ended up in the same camp. Ruel sent that letter to his father. He asked Mr. Wallace not to show it to his mother. You’ll understand about this, he wrote, but I do not want to distress Mama." She looked at Carol again. "Wallace and Ruel’s father fought in the Civil War, so I guess Ruel thought he wouldn’t be overly affected by the news. It sounded to me like Ruel just had to get it off his chest."
"Did he say what happened to Elmer?"
Sadie took so long to answer Maddy, I wondered if she’d even heard the question.
"Yes," she said eventually. "The first time they were issued their rifles, the third day of training, Elmer bragged about being such a good hunter. Then he loaded it wrong or something—Ruel wasn’t too specific—and the weapon blew up in his face when he fired it."
I looked at the last letter in my small stack. It ended in the middle of a sentence. "Why did it take them so long to notify the family?" There was no answer, of course. That early in the war, things must have been chaotic. I could imagine someone coming to the Endicott’s door with a telegram on May third, 1917. Or did they send two men in uniform to give the notification?
I lost all interest in reading the rest of Elizabeth’s letters. Maybe later, well after the storm was over, I’d come back up here. But for now, I set them aside.
Amanda was the one who broke the silence. "Can we get to these Myra Sue letters now?"
"Not yet," Ida said. "Mary Frances has one more entry. Maddy, are there any more Silas sketches before 1768?"
"Nope. The next one is 1776."
Ida cleared her throat and began to read from the diary.
Monday 18 April 1768
There are so few pages left in this final book of mine, I have determined to write just once a year, on my wedding anniversary. A year’s worth of events, though, would fill up all the remaining pages, so I will mention here only the most important happenings. Of the others, I will write instead to my dear Myra Sue once a year in October. If she had lived, married to Homer Martin, what would have happened?
"Well, that answers that," I said. "These are her letters to her friend Myra Sue Martin."
"That would be the late Myra Sue," Maddy intoned.
Late for what?
Carol’s mouth twitched. "Late means dead," she said in Marmalade’s direction before explaining the confusion to us.
I can say with certainty that I would have remained behind in Bran with my dear husband and would thus have lost touch with Myra Sue, for all in the Martin camp were determined that no one should know where they settled.
"She did it again," Ida said, interrupting her own reading. "She started to write Brandtburg and then crossed it out."
"Do you think anybody’s ever read her journals before"—Rebecca Jo’s voice was hushed, almost reverent—"before us?"
"Somebody must have," Easton said without a bit of reverence. "Otherwise, why hide them up here?"
"I’d say just the opposite," Pat argued. "They probably hid them because they couldn’t figure them out and didn’t want to be bothered trying."
"Do you mind?" Once we all quieted, Ida went on.
I would have missed the birth of her children. I would have been unable to comfort her when Homer Martin began to treat her the way he always treated me. So, in my letters to her, I will pretend that we journeyed together, that we live here side by side, that our friendship—which always seemed set to last through eternity—did so indeed. How I miss her. I would love to have been able to introduce her to Louetta and Miss Julia. Of course, if Myra Sue had been on the journey with us, she would have met Louetta the same time I did. Our company is so relatively small, as is this town still, that nobody ever has to be introduced to anyone else.
~ ~ ~
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2000
"I’M CHARLOTTE ELLIS," she said after Anita Foley introduced herself. She wouldn’t have thought they’d have to go through introductions, since they were the only two people in the library that evening, other than the librarian. As far as she knew, Clara Martin was the only other person scheduled to be present.
She’d planned to get to the library before anybody else, but she’d been late to her meeting with Hubbard. And she hated being spied on, so she’d had to walk around for a little while to calm herself down. Luckily she hadn’t seen anybody. There were clouds moving in and a chilly wind had picked up.
Those three old women, the ones she’d seen that first day she drove into Martinsville, breezed in a few minutes later, claiming to be interested members of the public. "I assume this meeting is open," one of them said while the other two nodded like bobble-head dolls.
"Well," Anita told them, "I suppose it’s going to have to be now that you’re here." She checked her watch. "We can’t start, though. Clara hasn’t shown up yet."
"Clara? Late?" The three old women looked at each other as if they knew a secret. "Clara’s never late," the one dressed in yellow said.
But they didn’t have to wait too long, because Clara bustled in, clapped her hands, said, "Good, everybody’s here. Everybody on the Board, that is." She ignored the librarian—and the rest of them, too—and turned to the newcomers. "I assume you three are leaving?"
"We’re here to attend the meeting as community members," one of the visitors said.
Clara frowned at that, and turned to the librarian. "Was this your idea?"
"Of course not."
Clara didn’t look like she believed her, but she cleared her throat, unclenched her fists, and said, "Let’s start."
The yellow crayon lady looked at Clara and narrowed her eyes. "Are you okay, Clara?"
"Of course I’m okay."
"I’ve never known you to be late for anything and you seem sort of flustered."
Clara gritted her teeth hard enough to make a noise. "Hubbard ... uh ... he didn’t make it home for dinner. By the time I realized he wasn’t going to show up, it was almost too late for me to eat myself. And then I had to set up a plate for him and leave it so he can eat when he gets home."
She thought the meeting was fairly boring, but heck, they were paying her to sit there and listen to a long-winded report. She hadn’t bothered to read her copy of it ahead of time. Nobody asked her to offer an opinion other than to vote to accept the report. She took the two pages with her when she left and threw them away as soon as she walked in her door.
SADIE AND REBECCA JO paused by Sadie’s yellow Chevy, waiting until Esther climbed into the back seat. The three women waited, too, until Biscuit was out of sight in one direction and Clara disappeared in the other. Charlie Ellis was long gone—she’d been the first one out the door after the meeting was adjourned, followed rather quickly by Anita Foley.
Esther was the first to speak. "What do you think the chances are of the library surviving the onslaught of Clara’s board?"
Sadie patted the steering wheel she could just barely see over. "I wouldn’t be quite so pessimistic, Esther. Biscuit handled her pretty well."
"Yeah," Rebecca Jo said. "I always thought those cartoons with steam coming out from people’s collars were an exaggeration, but I could practically see it rolling off Biscuit’s shoulders."
The two other women chuckled appreciatively as Rebecca Jo continued. "If Clara ends up murdered, we know who the first suspect will be."
"Biscuit’s more likely to murder Hubbard," Sadie said, "for having approved the formation of a library board in the first place."
"No," Esther said. "It was Clara’s idea. We all know Hubbard never does anything without Clara’s say-so."
The talk turned to more mundane issues as Sadie drove her two friends home. How thankful she was for them.
Sadie went home then to her lonely bed. She still missed Wallace every single day and every single night. She pulled the pillow from his side of the bed just a little closer. She was somewhat surprised to notice that it no longer smelled like him, and she wondered when that special scent had drifted away. Without her having even been aware of the change.
AFTER THE MEETING Clara bypassed her kitchen and went straight up to her bedroom across the hall from Hubbard’s room. She turned off her alarm clock. Nothing ahead of her but a good night’s sleep. If only she could get that snippy Biscuit McKee out of her thoughts. And what had happened up above the cliff.
Next month’s library board meeting would be run quite differently. She would read Biscuit’s report ahead of time so there wouldn’t be any such horrible surprises as there were this evening. With that determined, she turned out her light.
She hoped she wouldn’t be wakened too early.
BOB LOOKED UP at me when I stomped in the front door. "How’d the meeting—" He set his book aside without finishing his question. "That good, huh?"
"I need a cup of tea." I headed for the kitchen. Even though I detested the smoky, almost bitter taste of Lapsang Souchon, I almost wished I had some on hand. Maybe it would drown out the taste of Clara’s pickiness.
Bob was way ahead of my thinking. "Licorice root," he said. "Didn’t Annie McGill always say it would calm down anybody?"
By the time we were seated across from each other at the little round table in our breakfast nook, I’d settled a bit. We both just looked at our reflections in the bay window until I felt composed enough to speak. "Clara threw a hissy fit."
"So? What else is new?"
"You don’t need to laugh at me."
He winked, and I relented.
"What did she do this time?"
"You know how she asked me for a list of all the important donations?"
He took a long swallow of his tea—I was glad he liked Licorice Root as much as I did. "I also know how hard you worked to be sure the list was complete. All those antique bookcases and the computer system, to say nothing of Ida’s old family diaries." Setting down his mug, he asked, "She didn’t like it?"
"Not only did she not like it, she accused me of deliberately leaving her donation off the list."
He tilted his head, obviously thinking hard. "Did I forget something? I don’t recall your ever saying anything about a major donation from Hubbard or Clara."
"A big box of used paperbacks, many of them with broken spines or torn pages. That was her major contribution to the library."
Bob coughed. I thought probably he was trying to cover up a laugh, but I was too incensed to pay much attention. "That hateful woman berated me for my deliberate thoughtlessness—that was what she called it—in front of the whole assembly."
Bob looked surprised. "You had a good turnout? I thought you weren’t expecting many."
I guess I had the grace to look sheepish. "I wasn’t expecting anybody. It was just the board members and my Petunias. I hadn’t known those three were going to be there."
"Plotting behind your back to be supportive, were they?"
I couldn’t think of a thing to say to that.
Bless the man, he didn’t even smirk. "It’s no fun to be reprimanded in front of others, no matter how many or how few."
"I know. I shouldn’t let it get to me, it’s just that I’d like to ..." I put my elbow on the table and leaned my chin against my clenched fist.
He reached across the table and brushed a few stray hairs away from my eyes. "If you’re going to commit murder, I’d suggest you not confess it to me. After all"—he patted his chest with his other hand—"I’m the town cop, and I might have to arrest you before bedtime."
"Okay," I said. "I’ll tell Reebok. Next month."
Laughing, we went to bed, leaving our mugs still half-full.