The PMS Outlaws: An Elizabeth MacPherson Novel

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Geoffrey yawned and stretched. “I could put up with the physical discomfort if I thought I was getting anywhere,” he said. “It’s the futility that makes it all so maddening.”

  “Perhaps I could help?” she said. “I need to rest my hands for a bit, anyhow. Not to mention my brain. What family names are you looking for?”

  “Oh, I’m—” Geoffrey had intended to say “not doing genealogical research,” but just as his mouth began to form the words, it occurred to him that barking up one’s own family tree would be the perfect excuse to root around in the past history of any of Danville’s citizens. While Geoffrey considered his fellow researcher’s offer of help, he studied her with the practiced eye of a socialite. The silver-haired woman had carefully styled hair and a strand of baroque pearls that seemed quite genuine. In Geoffrey Chandler’s sphere of life, her name was legion. If anybody knew the history of this part of Virginia, surely it was she.

  Thankful that he had not denied an interest in genealogy, Geoffrey took a deep breath and began again. “It’s very kind of you. I’m so new at this that I’m completely hopeless, but I did promise Mother, you know.… Well, I’m trying to find information about the Dolans.”

  The woman’s encouraging smile turned to a look of bewilderment. “Dolan.” She stared upward at nothing, the way people do when they are searching their memories for some elusive bit of information. “Dolan …” she said again. “Now, that is odd. I thought from the look of you that you would certainly have family connections here.…”

  Geoffrey nodded complacently. She had spotted the look by which the gentry know one another, much as he had recognized her. She noted that he was tall and thin, with an aquiline nose, long narrow feet, and aristocratically high cheekbones. He was expensively dressed and shod, but without any ostentation in his appearance. Geoffrey Chandler knew that he would look like a somebody in any Anglo-Norman outpost of civilization, and therefore he would be treated with respect and accorded the presumption of wealth and position. How very reassuring, he thought smugly.

  “There must be two dozen family names I was waiting to hear you say, but do you know, you have me quite buffaloed!” She shook her head, still puzzled. “Dolan.”

  “Oh, well,” said Geoffrey, turning back to his microfilm reader. “It was very kind of you to offer, anyhow.”

  “I wish I could help,” she said. “But really, there’s no family of that name in the county.” She laughed. “Except the notorious Jack Dolan, of course. But you’d hardly be related to him.”

  Old Miss Nicholson, who was nearer ninety than eighty, sat in a soft, high-backed chair in front of the bay window, staring out happily at the well-tended flower gardens of Cherry Hill. The leaf colors and the flower variations seemed to change every day of the growing season, and the weather was always interesting. So changeable, such a range of temperature and patterns of sun and cloud. Sometimes she thought it was as if the fifty-two weeks of the year were a deck of cards that someone had thoroughly shuffled, so that instead of getting all the weeks of one season in order, you got them randomly: spring, spring, summer, fall, winter, fall, fall, spring. She didn’t mind the variables of temperature; the novelty, she thought, was worth it.

  She seldom spoke to anyone, but she gave no trouble. She just sat there with a vague, secretive smile, which made people wonder what this ancient being with no close relatives could possibly have to be pleased about. It was this: Miss Nicholson quite liked her new home. She had been planning for it all her life.

  When Caroline Nicholson was a little girl, she’d always dreamed of the day that she would grow up to marry some capitalist version of the handsome prince, and go off to live in a beautiful white-columned mansion on a hill. The prince never came, but Miss Nicholson never stopped planning for the day when she would be the lady of the manor. She began a hope chest as a teenager, putting in linens and tablecloths that she meticulously embroidered in the evenings as she sat alone in front of her small black-and-white television. Later on, her parents’ legacies and then her job at the local library had enabled her to purchase more accoutrements for her someday home. She would drive to estate sales in the better part of town and to auctions in the surrounding counties, using what money she could spare to buy beautiful things for the house: a set of Limoges game plates, a sterling silver tea set, enough crystal stemware to serve a hundred guests at the lawn party she never had.

  The years seemed to slide by in a haze of tag sales and silver polishing, as she sketched room plans for her perfect house, while scarcely bothering to dust the one she currently occupied. It didn’t matter. It was only a way station to her true home—the one she would have someday, the one that all her silver and linen belonged in. She grew quite knowledgeable about antiques—one year she caught herself putting the Batemans, the Burrows, and the Chawners on her Christmas card list, before she remembered that those renowned silversmiths of Georgian London had been dead for well over a century. Although her knowledge of fine things increased with endless study, she seemed oblivious to the passing of time.

  Her retirement from the library came, but a few weeks later Social Security checks began to arrive in her mailbox, so that was all right. Now she had more free time to go to the auctions, and to wait for her real life to begin. She was blessed with good health for many years, and indeed, her body was still remarkably fit when her mind began to show the signs of age. The house became more of an untidy wilderness, and Miss Nicholson, absorbed in her decorator magazines, could no longer be bothered to shop for groceries.

  At last the neighbors notified a nephew, an elderly man himself, who scarcely remembered Aunt Caroline from his boyhood visits. Still, he was the one living relative she had in the world, and it was clearly his duty to see that she was cared for. So one day, having finished all the legal formalities with the lawyers and county officials, the nephew came for Miss Nicholson in his large, gray car. She thought him a very nice looking man, although a trifle old, but he was obviously well-to-do, and she went with him happily.

  After a longish but pleasant drive through the country, they came to a large tree-shaded drive that curved for nearly a quarter mile before it ended in a circle in front of a large, white-columned mansion. Caroline Nicholson was enchanted. It was perfect.

  Her escort seemed a bit nervous as he stopped the car, as if he wondered whether the place would meet with her approval, but she nodded and smiled, eager to inspect her new home and to meet the servants.

  That had been many months ago, and Miss Nicholson couldn’t remember seeing the man lately, but she supposed he was busy in the city, earning the money to keep up such a splendid estate. She settled in happily, planning for new curtains and a rearrangement of furniture, but really, she seemed so tired nowadays that she had never managed to make the effort. Still, it was a lovely place. The home she had always dreamed of. She gathered that the place was called Cherry Hill, such a nice, elegant name for a country place. She was quite content.

  For his part, the nephew was relieved that matters had been settled with a minimum of fuss, and that the old lady seemed genuinely pleased with her new place of residence. Money was no problem, either. When he auctioned off all his aunt’s possessions, the money raised amounted to more than enough to pay for her care.

  Chapter 12

  “You seem a little anxious today,” said kindly old Dr. Dunkenburger, observing his fidgeting patient.

  Of course I am, thought Elizabeth. You’re interrupting my investigation. Just when she had managed to muffle the pain of Cameron’s disappearance behind a regimen of possibly meaningless—but nonetheless interesting—activity, Dr. Dunkenburger hauled her in for another excruciating analysis of the nature of grief.

  “Are you sleeping well?” he asked, making a little note on his legal pad.

  She barely glanced at him. “How could I not be? The pills

  I’m given would stop an elephant in its tracks.”

  Dr. Dunkenburger looked at her thoughtfully. “
Do you feel ready to do without them? You will have to reach that point sooner or later, you know.”

  Elizabeth hesitated, and then shook her head. She had almost forgotten the intensity of emotion that she had felt without them, but she was quite clear on the fact that she never wanted to feel it again. “Let’s keep things as they are for a while longer,” she said.

  He scribbled another note. “I think we’ll try you on a different medication. See if that helps. And how are you feeling otherwise? Settled in all right?”

  “Never a dull moment,” said Elizabeth. “Emma O. may be lengthening everyone else’s stay, though. Last night in the common room she reduced half of us to tears by asking if we had any friends who were substantially thinner, prettier, or richer than we considered ourselves to be. Of course everyone’s answer was no, and Emma grinned and said, ‘See? The cliques go on. Junior high school is forever.’ ”

  Dr. Dunkenburger nodded. “I’ll ask Dr. Skokie to have a word with her. Everything all right otherwise?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “It’s interesting. Sometimes I feel like I’m attending an evening of experimental theatre.”

  “These people’s problems are very real, I assure you,” he said gently. “And so are yours. Trouble won’t go away because you ignore it. It might manifest itself as depression, or a sleep disorder, or irritability, or a series of aches and pains, but either you deal with it on its own terms, or it will sabotage you from now on in a dozen little ways.”

  “My problem isn’t me,” said Elizabeth. “If Cameron gets found, I’ll be well in a heartbeat.”

  “That sort of thinking postpones healing, doesn’t it?”

  “How do you heal if your problems are real? How does Mr. Randolph come to terms with being disfigured? That isn’t all in his mind.”

  Dr. Dunkenburger gave her that uneasy look that meant she had strayed into unsound topics. “Well,” he said. “Staying angry won’t solve anything, will it?”

  Just after lunch an orderly had delivered to Elizabeth the latest fax from Cousin Geoffrey. Elizabeth walked into the meeting room for group therapy ten minutes early in order to read it before the session began. Emma O. was there already, hunched over a legal pad, composing a new letter of apology on behalf of society. Elizabeth could not resist peeking at the salutation, which read, “Dear Ms. Reno …”

  Emma looked up at her and grinned. “I think I can get Warburton to sign this one.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I expect you can.” She took a seat near the window, pulled out the fax from Geoffrey, and began to read.

  MacPherson & Hill

  Attorneys-at-Law

  TO: Elizabeth MacPherson, Patient

  Cherry Hill Treatment Center

  FROM: Geoffrey Chandler, President & Founder,

  Geoffrey Chandler Design Inc.

  (What do you think? Has a ring to it, n’est-ce pas?)

  Danville, Virginia

  NOTE: Attachments

  Dear Cousin Elizabeth:

  I trust that you are well. Hmm. I suppose the conventional pleasantries do not work when one is addressing the—what is the word? Not “incarcerated,” which means to be in prison. And you are not precisely “hospitalized.” … “Facilitated”? Perhaps not. Well, anyhow, I hope progress is being made, or that little chemical miracles are taking place in your cranial cells so that you can come up here and do your own dirty work.

  Not that I lack entertainment here. I always contrive to enjoy myself hugely. Nothing annoys other people quite so much, you know. Anyhow, the chance to annoy Cousin Bill is in itself a vacation. I have taken over a sunny south-facing bedroom upstairs, just across the hall from him, and we are currently conducting a war of attrition to see who can occupy the bathroom for the longest time morning and evening, while the other one paces the hall, muttering imprecations under his breath. Also, I occasionally drag in fabric swatches designed to spike his blood pressure. You should have seen him when I suggested purple tubular neon artwork for the walls.

  But I do need to work seriously on this renovation plan.

  I’m on Bill’s computer again, and I plan to do a little hardware shopping on-line as soon as I finish this progress report to you. It is nearly eleven here. Mr. Jack is on the sunporch sleeping the sleep of the just (well, perhaps not the just, but anyhow, he’s snoring quite soundly). Bill is upstairs running virtual road races on his Nintendo. Today he moved some more belongings from his apartment to his room upstairs. I told him that he could put things in the closets without disrupting my renovation plans. He insisted on hauling in his television and his electronic game system as well. In fact, I believe his clothes were an afterthought. Nevertheless, he is busy and happy, and I have taken advantage of his absence to use his computer, about which he is inordinately possessive.

  Normally, I would at this point share with you the details of my efforts at transforming the house, but I can sense your growing impatience boring right through the page like the glare of an oncoming train. I am happy to report that I have been successful in my quest. I found out just the sort of thing you wanted to know.

  Libraries really are the most wonderful repositories of knowledge. Particularly the archive room containing newspapers and census records, which is the place they have set aside for people who want to do local historical research. All one has to do to find out about some point in local scandalmongering is to hang about in the local archives room looking personable and helpless. Sooner or later, some chatty biddy will come along, strike up a pleasant conversation, and Bob’s your uncle! Or your second cousin once-removed on your mother’s side, anyhow. Ask the right leading questions, and the biddy will proceed to tell you everything you wanted to know, thus saving you from having to do any work at all. Wonderful, I call it.

  After a twenty-minute conversation with a Mrs. Verger, whose family apparently has been in Danville since neolithic times—No, that can’t be right. They had to take time off after the Crusades to be kings of France and whatnot—but anyhow, Mrs. V. reckons herself a member of one of the area’s first families, and I wisely did not bring up the subject of certain indigenous tribes of Native Americans or the buffalo that preceded them.… With her talk of “first families,” I believe she was speaking euphemistically. What she meant was: we the people who do not have to buy our silver. We understood each other perfectly. And as Mrs. Verger could talk the hind leg off a donkey, I learned a great deal in a comparatively short time, without having to fiddle any more with those tiresome microfilm machines, or whatever they’re called. I had been at it for most of the afternoon until my brain was beginning to glaze over, so I was no end grateful to the old dear when she began to natter away about Jack Dolan.

  You probably want to know what she told me, and the answer is: nothing that would be news to any of the old-timers around here. The trouble with you and Bill is that you grew up too far out in the suburbs to know Danville, and you were born too late to catch the gossip of the Truman era. Fortunately, Mrs. V. is qualified on both counts to dish the local dirt, and she did so at length.

  Jack Dolan is much more interesting than one would think to see him today: a stooped old man with skin like the cover of a Bible, tottering around looking sweet and fragile. According to Mrs. Verger, fifty years ago, Jack Dolan was the Butch Cassidy of Danville, Virginia.

  An outlaw, I mean. He did not precisely rob trains or banks, but he did manage to stay afoul of the law on a regular basis. (Note: I was able to document much of this gossip via the old newspapers on microfilm once I knew what—and when—I was looking for. I photocopied a few choice articles and will fax them to you along with this letter.)

  I even think I know why your inmate—er, patient—might have believed Jack Dolan was dead. At least if he got his injuries when I think he did. May 1953, right? The story stayed on the front page for most of the week. The “feds,” as we in the detective business call them, had been keeping Jack Dolan under surveillance for a couple of months, apparently, and that particular n
ight in May was the time for the big bust. Dolan was moving a shipment out that night, and there was to be an ambush outside Danville to catch him red-handed with the goods. Unfortunately, the plan turned out to be a disaster. Instead of stopping at the roadblock, the car plowed through one of the government agent’s cars, and they ended up with a fiery two-car wreck, an officer burned into an unrecognizable crisp, and the driver and passenger of Dolan’s car incinerated. So for the first couple of weeks of the story, the newspapers were all proclaiming Jack Dolan dead. I guess that’s the last news your guy had on the matter. If he was in a burn unit, I’m sure he had a lot of other things to think about, and after he recovered, it never occurred to him to ask for an update. Or did you tell me that he quit his job after that? I guess he would have, because of his injuries.

  Anyhow, then one night a couple of months later, Jack Dolan got arrested for speeding on a country road outside Danville. The trooper was a local man who knew Dolan on sight. So now they’re wondering who died in the fire. The driver on the night of the wreck was a fellow called Larry Garrison, but as far as I can tell, the second passenger was never identified. Probably doesn’t matter after forty-something years. Dolan spent a couple of years in prison for a smorgasbord of charges. When he was stopped for speeding, the trooper found “controlled substances” in his vehicle. In the Fifties, I’m guessing alcohol, not drugs. As far as I can tell, though, Jack Dolan is not a wanted fugitive these days. He’s just an ancient old man haunting a house, even though he hasn’t quite died.

  Your fellow patient appears to be simply the victim of incomplete information—not an unusual occurrence when one’s source is local newspapers. Sometimes you could go over their articles with a divining rod and not find any facts. But I digress.…

  Shall I broach the subject of Mr. Dolan’s checkered past? Do you want to know more? What if he tries to beat me up with his walker? Aside from that, would it be in good taste to inquire about his criminal history? I cannot find anything in Miss Manners on Etiquette Regarding Felons. Please advise, but be quick about it. I have done all I can in the way of decorating advice at this stage of Bill’s patience and budget, so I am coming back to Georgia tomorrow. As it is on my way home, I will stop by and see you for an hour or so: a ray of sunshine in your somber existence. But I warn you: I will not be undertaking any more errands in the way of grief therapy. This is merely a social call.