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BOB SLIPPED INTO the office and closed the door. Locked it. "Anything, Garner?" Even as he asked, though, he could see Reebok had been successful.
"I love small town police forces, Sir. Everybody knows somebody and there’s always at least one person who can help answer a few questions."
Bob wondered how long Reebok was going to string this out. "Yeah?"
"Seems the chief there has a sister who works at the college and has access to the computers. She found out that our Charlotte Ellis roomed all four years with"—he looked at his list and put a checkmark next to one of the items, but Bob was pretty sure that was just a flourish—"with a Patricia Moody. Last anybody there saw of either of them was when they left the day after graduation. Three years ago."
"And?"
"Seems that Charlotte’s parents both died while she was in college. Home address turned out to be in Atlanta. I have a friend in that area—"
"Of course you do."
"—who checked and said the house was abandoned three years ago."
"And?"
"Neighbors haven’t seen anyone there since the roommate, who was supposedly renting the place, left. Three years ago. Only stayed for a couple of weeks before she took off."
"Address for the roommate?"
"It’s a PO box." Check. "Both parents deceased."
"And what about Charlotte?"
Reebok looked back through his notes, although Bob again thought that was just frosting on the cake. "I called one of the next door neighbors. A Mrs. Palmer." Checkmark. "She hasn’t heard from Charlie since the day the roommate arrived. Charlie called Mrs. Palmer that morning and told her Tricia—that’s the name the roommate went by—was going to follow her home." He checked off another item. "She said the roommate showed up and told her Charlie had gone looking for a job in some little town where she used to live when she was a kid. Didn’t know the name of the town. Hasn’t heard a word from the roommate since."
"And?"
"I called to find an exact location for those bones that were found." He checked the little box he’d drawn next to another item on his list. "Looks like it was in deep woods a couple miles north of the road that runs from the college town to Atlanta. About half way between the two."
There was more. Not a lot more, but it was enough to start with.
"I have something else for you to check on. A picture I just took of the Charlie we have here."
––––––––
"HER SON’S REPUTATION," I said. "I think that was more important to her than any thought of herself."
"All of you are wrong about her politics." Ida had been reading the diaries way too long. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about. "Mary Frances never really took sides one way or the other. She keeps talking about being glad nobody can find them—nobody from either side of the conflict."
"I’m sure there were a lot of people who felt that way," Carol said. "Indecisive. They had no way to know how it was going to turn out. When you think about it, it’s a wonder this country ever got started."
"She just didn’t want to see soldiers invade the valley," Dee argued. "I don’t think it had anything to do with whether she supported the king or the rebels."
"You may be right, Dee," I said, "but I sure wish we knew what her son thought about all this."
"What we really need is to see if the Record has a newspaper morgue that goes back to the beginning. Surely somebody saved those old editions somewhere."
"Maybe not, Maddy," Rebecca Jo said. "The newspaper changed names a couple of times."
"I bet they just sold the printing press to new owners who renamed it."
"But nobody," Easton said, "is going to save two hundred years worth of newspapers."
Dee let out a theatrical sigh. "Another field trip." She sounded resigned.
"Yeah!" Maddy sounded excited.
"Do you suppose John hared off and joined the fight?"
My mom, who’d hardly said a word up here, answered me. "If her child goes to war, she’ll definitely tell us about it."
Ida sniffed. "If you’ll all quit jabbering and let me keep reading, we might find out."
Friday 18 April 1777
We have been for more than a month without any rainfall, and I begin to despair for my garden, although I must admit I have less enthusiasm for it now than I did when I felt responsible for feeding my small family. John has taken on the hard work of turning the earth in preparation for planting, and I depend on him for much of the harvest work as well. At fifty-seven years of age, my knuckles have begun to swell somewhat, especially when the rains fall. Perhaps I should be glad for this month-long drought, for my hands feel considerably better!
Rebecca Jo laughed at this. "I know just how she feels."
This drought—temporary as I hope it is—brought with it at its beginning a new preacher who has set the town in a whirl with his talk of hellfire and damnation. I must say I prefer the gentler preachings of Reverend Jonas Russell, who is so like his grandfather was. He seems not to have absorbed any of his mother’s attitudes. Mary Anne Breeton Russell was always ready to speak her mind, but her son says that there is room for many ways of believing. There are more than a few in town who have begun to attend services in what is now being referred to as the New Church, as opposed to our Old Church, the one with my husband’s doors. For that reason alone—the doors I mean—I would never consider following Brother Adcock, as he deems himself, even were his doctrine more acceptable to me, which it is not.
"Well," Rebecca Jo said, "that explains that."
Ida set the journal down. "Explains what?"
Rebecca Jo gestured across the attic in the general direction of the Old Church. "Why it’s always been called the Old Church."
"I thought it was because of St. Theresa’s," Maddy said, referring to the Catholic church where her brother served as priest.
"Oh, no," Sadie said. "It’s been called the Old Church as long as I can remember."
"There are only the two churches in town, though," I said. "I wondered what happened to the other one? The New Church?"
"Maybe people got tired of hellfire," Pat drawled.
"Not likely," Glaze said. "There’re always people who gravitate to that kind of thinking."
Hopefully not too many, I thought.
"Does she say where the new church was located?"
Ida checked the next page before she answered Glaze. "Nope. That’s it for this entry. Next one’s the following April."
"Good," Amanda said. "It’s my turn."
Saturday 18 October 1777
My dearest Myra Sue,
So much is afoot in town, I know not where to begin. That is the problem with writing to you but once a year. We have had so little rain of late, the Metoochie River is shrunken to a mere creek. Yes—I am sure you noticed. The name of Mee-too-chee, which we were taught by the Indians when we first arrived, has been shortened somewhat, both in the speaking of those long sonorous vowels and in the writing of the name. That seems to be the way language evolves, as our old schoolmaster so frequ I have just returned to this letter after an absence of some two or three difficult hours. There was a fire in the Sheffield house, the floor above the cabinetry shop, and much was destroyed. Those filling the buckets in the river were sore distressed that they could no longer simply dip into the deep pool, but had to drag their buckets along the sandy bottom. Mister Sheffield is such a conscientious woodworker, though, I doubt not that he will eventually replace the furniture that was consumed. Their oldest child, almost as much of a terror as Marella, seems to have been playing with candles, which set the floor rushes ablaze. It is a wonder he was not injured, nor any of his family. Fortunately there was little wind today, so the fire did not spread to any of the surrounding businesses. I would sore miss Breeton’s Dry Goods if it were to disappear.
Amanda tried to cover up an enormous yawn, but you know how successful that was. Naturally it started the whole lot of us into yawning as well. "I don’t know about the rest of you," she said, "but I was kind of hoping these letters of hers would be more—I mean I’m sorry your house got burned down, Rebecca Jo, but ..." She trailed away to an apologetic grimace.
"That Sheffield must have built a new place after the cabinet shop burned," Rebecca Jo said. "My husband always said our house wasn’t one of the oldest in town, but I don’t think he ever knew exactly when it was built."
"Maybe we’ll find something that dates it when we go through your attic," Maddy said.
"Or the laundry room," Dee droned.
"What we need is something from the trunks," Ida said. "To wake us all up."
"You’re right." I scooped Marmalade off my lap and set her on the floor. Of course, as soon as I stood, she jumped right back up onto my chair, tucked in her little white feet, and curled her tail around her nose.
It is still warm here, but it is not as soft as your lap.
Amanda and Ida stayed where they were, reading ahead. I had barely opened one of the footlockers when Amanda joined me. "Just the same old stuff," she said. "People living, people dying, but nobody we know."
"Why don’t we just put the rest of them in the museum pile? There’s nothing that says we have to read every single one."
"I only read one more of them. Maybe they’ll get more interesting after that."
Ida had obviously been listening. "Nothing much in this next diary entry either." She picked up Amanda’s two letters and set them on top of the ones that had already been read. "Seventeen-seventy-eight was just one of those loser years, I guess."
"Here’s something," Sadie said from behind me. "An envelope with a newspaper clipping. About molasses."
"Molasses," Pat said. "You’ve got to be kidding."
"Nope. The envelope’s not too exciting—it’s addressed to our old friend the veterinarian, Gideon Hoskins, here at Beechnut House—but somebody might like to look at the stamp." She sent it on its way through the group. Nobody had sat back down, probably because our backsides were still a bit numb, but we passed the envelope around so everyone had a chance to see it.
Sadie held up the newspaper headline. "It’s the Boston Post. January 16, 1919." The font was so huge we could all clearly read it.
HUGE MOLASSES TANK EXPLODES
IN NORTH END; 11 DEAD, 50 HURT
Giant Wave of 2,300,000 Gallons of Molasses, 50 Feet High, Sweeps
Everything Before It—100 Men, Women and Children Caught in
Sticky Stream—Buildings, Vehicles and L Structure Crushed
"What’s an L Structure?" Amanda asked.
"It’s the elevated train. That’s what this photo shows." Sadie looked at a few paragraphs and explained. "Apparently the molasses—they call it a tidal wave here—was moving at thirty-five miles per hour. It crushed the supporting steel pillars."
She read us the accompanying article. The weather was mild for Boston at that time of year, but the 40-degree temp was still cold enough to harden the molasses once it had spread out, making rescue of victims difficult indeed.
"And the cleanup," I said. "Can you imagine how hard that would have been?"
"Even when I get a little bit of molasses on my fingers," Mom said, "it takes a while to get it off."
"I just lick my fingers." Maddy grinned. "That way I get every bit of it."
Pat made a face. "I can’t stand the taste of molasses."
"Then why did you eat so many of my Molasses Chewy Cookies?"
She looked at me with a blank stare. "They have molasses in them?"
"That’s why I named them the way I did."
"What’s that hand-written note say?" Glaze’s question surprised me. I hadn’t even noticed it. I was too busy peering at the photograph of the collapsed tracks and answering Pat.
The top of the page looked stained, but I could see Glaze was right. Someone had definitely written something there.
Sadie bent the paper closer, then stood and carried it over to one of the windows. "It’s so faint I can barely read it. It says, Peggy Ann and I are safe, my friend. We were three blocks from the—something-or-other, I can’t read that part—when this happened last week. I will write later with the full story when I can find the time. Perhaps when we are back in Russell’s Gap. Although we were trapped by the slowly hardening molasses, we were rescued by—something—and taken to hospital. Peggy Ann’s ankle was badly broken and required surgery, hence the long hospital stay, but she has been cared for by a most efficient and memorable nurse, whose name is Mary Eliza Mahoney. Even now that part of the city reeks of sticky sweetness and—and something something something—the harbor is stained brown.
"That must have been awfully hard on the fish," Amanda said.
"There’s a signature," Sadie said. "I think it says Hugo. This is definitely a man’s handwriting. Maybe Peggy Ann was his daughter? Or his wife?"
"I never heard of a Hugo or a Peggy Ann in Martinsville," Rebecca Jo said, "and no Dixons either."
"Of course not," I said. "They’re from up the valley. Look." I pointed to the handwritten note. "He says something about Russell’s Gap."
"But we don’t know anything else about it," Amanda objected.
Dee spread her hands. "That’s the way it’s been with a lot of things up here. You know that."
"More questions than answers," Maddy said.
That line was getting to be an increasingly irritating refrain.