Songbird Cottage

by Barbara Cool Lee

  She went through other files, trying to find some mention of the place, but the only thing she came across was a receipt for a load of redwood boards dating to the end of 1966.

  She photocopied it, just in case. Then, reluctantly, she went back to the front desk to talk to Mabel.

  Mabel was so busy filing that she didn't see Robin for a good minute. But Robin waited her out, and finally Mabel looked up at her and said, "yes?"

  "So, I was looking through the Stockdale papers," Robin began.

  "Well, it's a free country," Mabel said.

  "Yes," Robin said. "And that's what the papers are here for. But I didn't find Stockdale's obituary."

  Mabel frowned. "Well, that's hardly my fault."

  "I didn't say it was," Robin said.

  "Well, anyone will tell you my work here has always been above reproach."

  Above reproach. Wasn't that Robin's line? Wasn't that how she felt all the time? Worried about being singled out, trying to stave off any negative attention by doing everything so perfectly no one could criticize her? Never opening herself up so she couldn't get hurt? She felt an uncomfortable kinship for Mabel at that moment. She was looking into a mirror of her own belief system, and she didn't like what she was seeing.

  "Thank you for all your hard work, Mabel," she said, and she must have sounded like she meant it, because Mabel looked startled. "I know how much you've volunteered to keep this place going for the community. I'm sure it has nothing to do with you, but I was wondering where that paper might be if it's not here. I thought you might know better than anyone."

  Mabel's feathers almost visibly unruffled. "Well, I…," she was embarrassed and showed it. "Well, I really don't know." The admission was hard for her, and Robin knew that feeling, too.

  "So if you don't, no one does," Robin said. "Any suggestions where I could look?"

  That comment usually would have led to a sarcastic retort, but this time Mabel just looked off into the distance while she thought about it. "I suppose something could have been overlooked when the documents were sent over from the newspaper office. You might check there."

  "Thank you. I will."

  And with that, Robin gave her a smile—and got the friendliest one she'd received in years in return.

  She turned to go, feeling pretty good about herself, right up until her phone buzzed.

  She checked her texts, and got the news from Dylan that some investor had outbid her on Songbird Cottage.

  The door to the old newspaper office stuck, and Robin had to push hard to get it open.

  "Hey," she said to the editor, Alec O'Keeffe, when she got inside. "You ever think of updating this place?"

  The former cannery building had a lived-in look, with a couple of cluttered desks in the middle, and file boxes stacked high along one wall.

  Alec looked up from his computer screen with a glazed-over expression. "Hmm, yeah. When I hit the lottery, that'll be first on my list. Got some news for me? I've got an opening on page seven."

  "No," she said. "Just want to look through your records."

  He waved toward the newspaper's morgue in the back room. "You know the way. Be my guest. What are you looking for?"

  "Jefferson Stockdale's obituary," Robin said, heading toward the morgue.

  "That's at the Stockdale-Robles Room at the library," Alec called out. "The Sentinel donated all the Stockdale and Robles records to them way back in the day."

  Robin turned back to him. "I just came from the library," she said. "His obit's not there."

  Alec got up and led her into the back room.

  The little storage space was about the size of a walk-in closet. Windowless, with a battered and rickety table in the center, and cubbies lining the walls on all sides. Each held newspaper clippings—some just a couple of dusty pages, others stuffed full to overflowing, depending on the importance of the topic to the town and its history.

  There was a metal label holder above each one, and the labels varied from newer (neatly computer printed) to ancient (handwritten in faded brown ink).

  Alec pointed to the Stockdale-Robles label. Inside, unlike the others filled with yellowed newsprint clippings, there was a single neat stack of printer paper.

  "Yeah," he said, "those are the Xeroxed copies. The original newsprint is at the library. But be my guest. We sure could have missed a page along the way."

  He went back to the story he was working on, and Robin sat down at the table, spreading the photocopied clippings in front of her.

  It took her a while, but she eventually realized she wasn't finding anything that she hadn't already seen at the library. Just as Alec had said, these were copies of the donated pages. She put the stack of pages back into their slot, and then went back into the main room.

  Alec was still furiously typing away. "Newspaper prints at midnight tonight," he said shortly to her. "Going to two issues every week might be the death of me."

  His phone rang and he answered it. "Yup. Got your ad right here. It will be on the same page as the high school scores." He grabbed a note pad. "Yeah. Skirt Steak Enchiladas two for a dollar because you made too many. Got it."

  "Santos' Market?" she asked when he hung up.

  "Yeah," he said. "I think I'll buy a dozen for the freezer. So, what else can I get for you before things get even crazier here?"

  "I just have a quick question: any other place I might find Stockdale's obit? It wasn't in that stack."

  Alec jumped up. "Sure." He led her back to the morgue and pointed to a couple of paper boxes on the floor. They were labeled OBITUARIES 1, 1878-1941, and OBITUARIES 2, 1942-. He placed the second one on the table for her.

  She opened the box. It held stacks of file folders labeled by decade, each stuffed with clippings.

  "This is a small town," she said in astonishment. "Surely this many people haven't died in Pajaro Bay."

  "About 800 deaths per 100,000 per year is normal," he said.

  "How on earth do you know that?" she asked.

  "It's my job. Research, fact-gathering. The Fourth Estate. That's kinda what I do here. So yeah. In a village this size, an average of eight to ten people per year pass away. More during times of war or epidemics. This box was started when our soldiers began going off to WWII, and the records overflowed the first box."

  "Wow," she said, seeing the thick folder for the 1940s. "How sad."

  "Yup," he said. "Around 1918 was the big Spanish flu epidemic, so that's a thick folder, too. The 1960s are the same, with Vietnam. And then, unfortunately, we've continued the pattern, with the Hernandez brothers from Wharf Flats dying in Afghanistan just a couple of years ago."

  "Are the pages in order by date?" she asked.

  He laughed. "People come here to do genealogy research, and for school projects. All kinds of things. We're the paper of record in this little town. So, yeah, theoretically, the clips should be in order. But don't bet on it. One of these days I'll get all this scanned for computerized research." He winked at her. "Right after that lottery jackpot comes in."

  He went back to work, and she placed the file labeled 1960s on the table in front of her and sat down to go through it.

  Sure enough, they were in no particular order. There were about a hundred clippings, and she slowly worked her way through them. Some had photographs, some didn't. Some were of important figures in the town, some were little-known ranchers who'd died peacefully in their sleep. Each was an important person to someone in the village, and so each received a full write-up in their local newspaper.

  She found herself getting distracted. Each story was unique, yet different. Each person had a family and friends, a life of work, school, social activities. Each life mattered in this town, and so each was treated with honor.

  About halfway through the stack, she came across a page that stopped her short. Monday, July 4, 1966. MICHAEL ROBLES STOCKDALE KILLED IN ACTION the headline read. Printed at the top of the tribute was a photograph of a heartbreakingly young man, clad in a cri
sp new infantry uniform. The lost son of Jefferson and Ramona Stockdale had been a handsome nineteen-year-old boy, with the same sort of serious and brave expression her own young father had shown in his final photograph.

  The obituary was simple enough, telling that he had played baseball in high school, was engaged to his high school sweetheart, and that he was the son of the famous couple. It noted that the Stockdales asked for no visitors at this time, and had secluded themselves at their home, the Honeymoon Cottage, after receiving the devastating news that their son had died only two weeks after shipping off to Vietnam.

  She put the page back and went on. Finally she found what she was looking for, about two thirds of the way through the stack. The headline was in two-inch type: GREAT MAN GONE. The date was February 15, 1967. She read the long write-up, which included mention of many of his buildings, including… turn to page five for more.

  She turned the page, and stapled to the first was a big article about the grand opening of his final project, a commercial building downtown. "Los Colores," she whispered, seeing the familiar shape of Dylan's office building, with its white stucco exterior wall, brick courtyard, tile fountain, and—turquoise tile roof!

  She finished the article, and turned it over. That was it. No mention of another, unfinished house outside of town. But that hardly mattered, because the article gave the most important detail: The Robles Tileworks' largest order of the year had been the roof tiles for Los Colores, in a custom shade of turquoise that had taken extra time to finish, because they had never done that color before. The exterior of the building had been completed in December of 1966, just a couple of months before Stockdale died.

  "That's it!" she said aloud. The tiles for the little cottage on Songbird Lane must be leftovers from Los Colores. She read back through the article. So the roof of Los Colores was completed in December, 1966, and Stockdale himself died in—she flipped back to the first page—February of 1967.

  She set the page down on the table in front of her. She had the answer to the cottage's identity. The cottage was a new job Stockdale was working on. It explained the unfinished cottage. The lack of custom tile work. The turquoise tiles. He was probably building this little home on commission, using excess materials from Los Colores, everything from leftover bricks to the roof tiles. And when he died, for whatever reason, the project died with him and was just shut away.

  She gathered the obituaries she had scattered on the table and started to put them back into the folder.

  A couple had fallen off the table, and she bent down to retrieve the scraps.

  He hand froze an inch above the clipping staring at her, face up on the battered oak floor.

  For whatever reason, the project died with him and was just shut away.

  She saw the reason. The woman in the obituary stared back at her.

  With unsteady hands, she picked up the scrap of newspaper and placed it on the table in front of her.

  Tuesday, March 28, 1967. LOCAL FAVORITE PASSES AWAY. Eugenia "Birdie" Johnson tragically passed away at the Pajaro Bay Free Clinic this morning due to complications of childbirth. She was 42 years old.

  She was the owner of Tinsel Town Dressmakers, a popular shop with the ladies in the village. She had come to Pajaro Bay recently to open her business, after apprenticing with one of the top dressmakers in the motion picture industry. The ladies in town had swooned at the opportunity to purchase custom-made gowns in the latest, most fashionable styles, and Birdie, as she was known, had become an overnight success.

  She was predeceased by her husband, Lewis Smith of Los Angeles. She is survived by her newborn daughter, Genie Smith.

  A graveside service is planned.

  She stared at the photograph that headed the article, of the fashionable woman with her halo of hair and her infectious smile.

  She took out the folder of her family treasures from her tote bag and laid the photograph found in the cottage on Songbird Lane next to the obituary.

  It was the same woman in both pictures, no doubt about it.

  Robin got out the obituary of her biological mother, and placed it on the other side of Birdie Johnson's.

  She looked from one to the other.

  Birdie Johnson, died March 28, 1967 due to complications of childbirth.

  Genie Smith Walker, born a fighter on March 28, 1967, raised in foster care, with no family of her own until she'd created one with her husband, Anthony Walker, and her young daughter, Robin.

  This was why her mother had come to Pajaro Bay. This was the connection between the little abandoned cottage, and her mother's tears, and the emptiness in Robin's own heart.

  She had found her grandmother.

  Chapter Nine

  "Do you have a minute, Ms. Zelda?" Robin asked.

  Zelda Potter, the elderly retired movie star who ran the Historical Society, paused in the doorway of the society's office. "For you? Of course."

  She led Robin inside. Zelda was dressed all in rust today, from her ever-present hat (sporting a jaunty pheasant feather), to gorgeous suede ankle boots that, under less-stressed circumstances, would have made Robin drool.

  "So what can I do for you?" Zelda asked. Her trademark wide blue eyes, framed by pale wrinkles, looked kindly at Robin.

  "Hollywood's a big town," Robin started, a bit unsure how to begin.

  "In some ways," Ms. Zelda said. "In others, it's a smaller town than this one." She just stood patiently, waiting for Robin to continue.

  "I…," she started, but then stopped.

  "Let's sit over here," Ms. Zelda said, leading her to a chintz-covered window seat that overlooked the back garden.

  When they were settled, Zelda looked at Robin calmly. "My dear, all you need to do is ask."

  "Did you ever meet Birdie Johnson?" Robin blurted out, then wished she hadn't even come here. She didn't want to explain, to tell her about her personal business and have it blabbed all over town.

  But Zelda took the question at face value, not asking her to explain. "No, I don't believe I ever did. You mentioned Hollywood—is she an actress?"

  Robin shook her head, relieved at Zelda's matter-of-fact response. And, surprising herself, she found herself telling her about it. Not all of it, but about Tinsel Town Dressmakers, and her grandmother moving to Pajaro Bay from Los Angeles in the 1960s.

  "That was before my time," Zelda said. "My time here in Pajaro Bay, I mean." Her laugh was self-deprecating. "Obviously, not before my time in Hollywood, which doesn't go quite as far back as silent films, though it sometimes feels like it."

  Robin was too distracted by her own worries to even smile. She pulled out the copy of Birdie's obituary. "She would be—" She looked at the paper in her hand— "92 years old now, if she had lived this long. She passed away in 1967."

  "So she'd be an old coot like me," Zelda said with a smile. "Is that why you asked if I knew her?"

  "No. I asked because she came to Pajaro Bay after working for—" She looked at the paper again, "a costume designer in Tinsel Town. I thought you might have run into her there."

  Zelda perked up. "Ooh, let me look."

  Robin handed her the paper.

  "I worked with so many people. It took hundreds of talented people to make me look like a glamorous movie star." She read the obituary. "So, she was African American, I presume?"

  "Yes."

  "It would be difficult to find her through screen credits, I imagine. It was rare for African American people to get the top-level jobs in Hollywood in those days. There was a wonderful milliner who I believe should have gotten an Oscar for costume design, and…."

  She stopped when she apparently realized how agitated Robin was. "So tell me more about Birdie Johnson. Maybe I can think of a connection."

  Robin took out the little photograph of Birdie in her orange plaid skirt and go-go boots, and showed her. "I don't know much. I'm trying to find out anything I can about her."

  "Oh, my! She was a looker, just like her granddaughter. I'm sure
I would remember her. No, I didn't work directly with her. But that doesn't mean I never wore her clothes. I didn't always know everyone working on a film. And sometimes I didn't even meet the dressmakers. Only the fitters, who worked on set."

  Robin tried not to look disappointed.

  Then Zelda said softly, "Johnson. A dressmaker. And Pajaro Bay." Then she nodded. "You don't mean Birdie. You mean Sparrow."

  "Sparrow?"

  "Sophronia Johnson."

  But Robin shook her head. "No. Her name was Eugenia."

  Zelda smiled. "No, her name was Sophronia Johnson. The woman I knew, that is. She was a costume fitter." She leaned forward and patted Robin's hand. "Tall and willowy like you, and like this woman in the picture?"

  "I don't know. But I know that wasn't her name."

  "It was," Zelda said firmly. "I'm sure of it, because it was such an unusual name. She went by Sparrow. Miss Sparrow, she was called."

  Robin leaned back in the seat. "But I know her name was Eugenia. I'm sure of that, even if I'm not sure of much else."

  She must have looked upset, because Zelda patted her hand again. "You don't understand, dear. I'm sure the woman you're looking for was named Eugenia, or nicknamed Birdie, as you said. But I'm telling you that I worked with an African American dressmaker named Sophronia Johnson, known as Miss Sparrow."

  "But that's not the woman I'm looking for."

  "Are you positive?" She smiled. "People have families, Robin. And Miss Sparrow would have been far too old to be your grandmother. When I knew her—" she paused there, recollecting. "It would have been the late '50s, maybe 1959. Well, you can look it up. The year I filmed Lost Love."

  Robin remembered the epic romantic adventure set during World War I. Zelda had gotten a bunch of awards for that part.

  "Yes," Zelda continued. "The costumes were extremely elaborate on that one. Miss Sparrow was the main costume fitter on that film. And she must have been nearly sixty years old."

  When Robin still didn't respond, Zelda said, "Don't you see? You're looking for your grandmother. And I'm telling you about your great-grandmother."