Marigolds for Malice

by Bailey Cattrell

  I wended my way past the new releases, the staff picks, and the holds shelf. The door was open a crack, and when I didn’t hear any voices, I tentatively pushed it open. The smell of toner, Pine-Sol, and orange blossoms greeted my nose. The fluorescent tubes above hummed ever so softly beneath the strains of Thelonious Monk drifting from the speaker on the file cabinet.

  Maria was head down over a small volume that lay open on her desk. She must not have heard me come in, because she jumped when I asked, “Is it considered an occupational hazard or a bonus when librarians read on the job?” I dumped my pack on her guest chair as I spoke.

  After her startled reaction, she sat back with a half smile. “A little of both.”

  Then my gaze fell on the book on the desk. “That looks old.”

  Maria nodded, her forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. “It appears to be. This morning, Chief Gibbon asked if I’d take the more valuable items from Heritage House and store them here while it’s closed to the public. Said they were technically done processing the crime scene but didn’t want to release it quite yet and didn’t want to tempt thieves. Of course I said yes. I put a few of the papers in the California history room, but most of the stuff I grabbed is in the basement.” She sighed. “It was hard to determine what might be considered valuable. I hadn’t thought about the museum being a target for burglary before, but we really do need to put in a security system.”

  “I can’t imagine the town council wouldn’t approve the funds for it after what happened to Eureka,” I said. “You moved it all over by yourself?”

  “Mostly. Lupe was there to document what I took, and she helped.”

  “I wished you’d called the Greenstockings. Someone would have been free. It must have been unsettling to go into that place.” I stopped myself before I said something that would upset my friend.

  However, she offered a gentle smile. “You know, it was unsettling, but I didn’t really even want Lupe’s help. As I chose what to bring here, I kept thinking of what Eureka would have said and used that as my guide. Oddly, it felt like I was honoring her.”

  I came around the desk and leaned down to give her a hug. Standing again, I looked over her shoulder at the book. “I don’t remember seeing that in the museum.”

  “I hadn’t seen it before, either. It was stuffed behind the old school materials on the shelf behind the reception desk,” Maria said with a frown, and closed the volume. “I was gathering some of the other items and dislodged it. There was no reason for it to be there, and I know it wasn’t part of any displays. It just seemed to call to me.”

  “What do you mean, ‘call to you’?” My pulse quickened.

  She shrugged. “Nothing weird. I’m a librarian. It’s a book. I wanted to know what was in it.”

  Her reasonable answer slowed my pulse almost back to normal. “Is it interesting?”

  Maria stroked the cover with her fingertips, making me think of Eureka’s admonition not to touch old paper with bare skin. But Maria knew what she was doing.

  “It’s the journal of a young man. So far, he’s written about paying a dollar for a pound of potatoes, visiting a saloon, and writing to his mother back home. He worked odd jobs around town and helped out at the stables.”

  “What was his name?” I asked.

  “The name Charles Bettelheim is inscribed in the front. He’s quite literate for the time. His mother apparently lived in Pennsylvania, and he left her at a young age. He must have had some schooling before coming west, though.” She tipped her head to the side and pushed away from her desk. “This isn’t why you came to see me, though. Is there something you were looking for?”

  Nodding, I grabbed my pack, opened it on her desk, and drew out the copy of Alma’s picture.

  Her eyes widened when she saw what it was. “Ellie! How did you get this?”

  “I found the picture in Library Park the night Eureka was killed, and made a copy before I gave it to Chief Gibbon,” I said, and gave it to her.

  Her eyes glinted. “And the woman in that picture looks just like you, so you couldn’t resist.”

  I made a face. “Sort of, I guess. I wasn’t thinking very clearly right then.”

  She grimaced. “No kidding. Neither was I.” She examined the black-and-white copy of the black-and-white photo. “Amazing. I wonder who she was.”

  “Alma,” I said.

  “Who?” She looked back up at me.

  I lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “Look at the copy of the back of the photo.”

  She did.

  “There.” I pointed. “In the corner.”

  Holding it at an angle as I had, she squinted. “I see. Alma. Nice, old-fashioned cursive penmanship.”

  “Any idea if we could figure out who she . . .” I began, but stopped as she suddenly whirled and grabbed the old journal.

  Quickly, she flipped it open to one of the early pages. “Oh, Ellie, look!”

  I joined her and peered down at the page she held out.

  I believe Mother would approve of the young lady I met yesterday afternoon. She was delivering her horse to the stable, a bay mare of quiet disposition, after a ride into the foothills, and we began talking. Such a charming creature. I have decided to begin courting her in earnest. Her name is Alma Hammond. She and her brother are from Pennsylvania, where it is said their parents are quite well-to-do and very respected. It is even possible Mother has heard of the family name. I shall ask her in my next letter. The brother is a bit of a firebrand, but decent to all men regardless of station, and my hope is that he will not only allow, but encourage, my friendship with his sister.

  “Ohmagod,” I breathed. “Maria, that’s why she looks so much like me. Or I look like her. Either one. Let’s see.” I did some mental math, and it seemed to come out right. “Alma must be Zebulon Hammond’s sister. Probably his younger sister. No one ever talked about a sister. But they wouldn’t, would they, the times being what they were and her only being a girl.” I couldn’t help my lip curling a bit as I thought of the legions of women lost to history merely because of their gender.

  “Um, Ellie? Perhaps I should know this, but who is Zebulon Hammond to you?”

  “He’s my great-great-great-grandfather,” I crowed. “So, Alma would be my aunt!” As I peered at the photo again, I again felt the connection to the woman in it—the same connection through time that I’d felt ever since first seeing her image.

  Then something registered. Something in Maria’s voice.

  My head came up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said, a speculative look on her face. “It’s just that Eureka was interested in Zebulon. Not just him, though. All the founders of Poppyville.”

  “It was called Springtown back then, because of the hot springs,” I said.

  “Right.” She motioned me toward the door and continued talking as she led me to the reference room. “And then the town changed it in honor of Poppy Thierry. She must have been quite a woman—madam or not.”

  And she had a special relationship with Zebulon, as I understood it. But ancient family scandals didn’t seem relevant at the moment. Unless . . .

  “Was Eureka interested in Poppy?”

  Maria shook her head. “Not other than her essentially being one of the founders, too.”

  “Poppy must have known Alma,” I said, and my thoughts went to the collection of historical documents my distant cousin’s father had left her. But she’d offered to let the Greenstockings look at all of it—except for a few items that I knew about—when we were gathering content for Heritage House. Eureka had been with us and had identified a couple of handbills as worthy of the museum. She hadn’t seemed all that interested in anything else in the minutiae of my family records, though.

  Of course, that had been before we found the time capsule.

  Brigitte barely looked up fr
om her book as we went into the reference room. A few people were in the stacks, and a man was working on his laptop at one of the long tables.

  My friend unlocked a cabinet and put the journal into it. Then she pulled out a couple of books from a top shelf. She brought them over to the table where she’d set the copy of Alma’s photo. As I looked at it, I could almost smell the marigold petals that had been saved with the original. I settled into a chair and put my chin in my hands. “I wish I knew what Eureka thought about the Xavier manuscript,” I mused. “You know how you said you were drawn to the journal, but that was normal because you’re a librarian?”

  Maria nodded, a slight wariness in her gaze.

  “Well, the desire I felt to look at the Xavier manuscript was not normal. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I could tell there was something bothering you. Even before the capsule was opened. And now it’s gone with all the rest.” She nodded at the copy of Alma’s photo I clutched in my hand. “Well, almost all the rest.”

  I said, “One of the reasons I’m here is to see if—”

  “You can find out anything more about the manuscript.”

  “Yes!” I leaned forward.

  “Well, I looked it up already,” she said. “Or at least I looked up old vellum manuscripts written using more than one alphabet.”

  Of course she did. My heartbeat quickened.

  “What I could find, at least. There’s not much, even online. A Wikipedia article, and another article suggesting that it’s a relic from long lost Atlantis.”

  I stared at her. “Atlantis? I didn’t see that in my search.”

  “That’s because it’s in a thirty-year-old article buried in an obscure, pay-only database that libraries have exclusive access to.”

  “Could it actually be . . . ?” I trailed off.

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ellie.” Her tone was crisp. “The manuscript that was in the butter churn is not from Atlantis. Plato posited the utopian island kingdom of Atlantis existed a full nine thousand years before his time. First off, that’s pretty dang old, as in way older than any bunch of vellum with written language on it could be. Secondly, Atlantis was a metaphor for the perfect state, which he created as part of his teachings.” She shook her head. “So that stuff about Atlantis is a bunch of hooey.”

  “Gotcha,” I said, half reeling from the blitz philosophy lesson.

  Maria shrugged. “Anyway, we’re getting off track.” She gestured to the small pile of books she’d removed from the locked cabinet. “Eureka said she’d finished the research for her new book, but during the week before she was killed, she started up again. This is what I helped her with.”

  “Huh.” With a quick glance at Maria to make sure it was okay, I pulled the topmost one toward me. “A Bible?”

  “From the church. There was only one in town at the time, no particular denomination, just a general bulwark against the debauchery in the saloons and brothels.”

  I looked at her from under my brows, but her face was placid and her tone mild. She was simply stating the facts.

  “It’s interesting from a historical perspective because of the list of births and deaths of the townspeople.”

  “Ooh.” I flipped it open to the back. Pages had been glued in at the end, and cramped, spidery handwriting crammed the narrow lines. Skimming the page, it soon became apparent there were a great many more deaths recorded than births. I remarked on it to Maria.

  “Sure,” she said. “Most of the people in the community came from other places, and in comparison, there weren’t that many babies being born in the rough old days of the gold rush.”

  I nodded. “So, for the most part, it’s a list of deaths. Some are just names and dates, but it looks like a few entries include how people died.”

  She scooted her chair closer to mine. Reaching over, she flipped a page and ran her finger down a column without actually touching the page. “Here. This seemed to catch Eureka’s attention.”

  Turning the Bible to better catch the light, I read,

  Alma Hammond, disappeared May 16, 1850

  CHAPTER 16

  MARIA and I looked at each other then back at the Bible. “Disappeared?” I asked. “I don’t see any other record where someone disappeared. They died from dysentery and influenza, or fell in ravines or off horses, and some died of bullet wounds, but . . .” I paused, flipped the page, and examined more entries. “Nope. No one else is listed as disappeared.”

  “Eureka thought that was pretty strange, too. I mean, there had to be some disappearances, right?”

  I tipped my head, eyes still glued to the old handwriting. “Of course. But I bet they weren’t related to a major mover and shaker in town.” I tore my gaze away. “Zebulon probably made quite the stink if his sister just up and vanished.”

  “Especially if her disappearance was never solved,” Maria noted.

  I leaned back and looked at the ceiling as if it could give me answers. “Why didn’t Alma and her disappearance make the annals of history? There are so many records from that time and place, and here I’m just learning Zeb had a little sis.”

  And that she looked exactly like me.

  Sitting up, I asked, “What other research did Eureka do?”

  Maria lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “Here in the library, she spent most of her time looking at what we’ve got on the history of Poppyville and whatever information she could find on the gold rush in this area. She had hopes of reading old copies of the Picayune, since the newspaper was established in 1847, but they didn’t start keeping a morgue until a couple of decades after that.”

  She tipped her head to one side and looked into the distance as if trying to remember something. Then she snapped her fingers. “You know, Eureka did mention that last week she’d come across a mention of a tragic death at the stables back then. She was going to go talk to Gessie, see if she knew anything about it since she owns the stables now. I don’t know if she managed to get out there before she died, though.”

  I made a mental note, then sighed. “Does Charles say anything else about Alma?”

  “Not so far,” Maria said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “I don’t suppose I could take that journal with me . . . ?”

  She hesitated, then made an apologetic face.

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked,” I said.

  She smiled. “Of course, it would be okay if you read it here, though.”

  I grinned. “Right!” Then I sobered. “Unfortunately, I’ll have to come back. I have another errand to run, and I need to get over to the Roux and pick up the food Maggie arranged for Eureka’s memorial party.”

  Maria stood. “I’ll come early to help set up.”

  I followed suit. “Thanks. It should be pretty low key.”

  “Good. Eureka would love a bit of a party, but she wouldn’t want to be fussed over.”

  I started to walk away, then stopped. “Oh, wait. I have something else to ask you. Before I go, would you take another look at Alma? Specifically, her choice in jewelry.”

  Maria shot me a puzzled look and reached for the photo I held out to her. I pointed to the tree-shaped brooch. Squinting, she examined it for several seconds, then lowered the hand that held it. Her eyes were dancing when she met my gaze again.

  I grinned. “You recognize it, don’t you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “You’ll see,” was the librarian’s cryptic response.

  Impatiently, I watched as she put everything away and locked the cabinet. I grabbed my pack, and she closed the reference room door behind us. I noticed it had a lock on it, too, and the library itself had an alarm system because it was a public building.

  If only the Xavier manuscript had bee
n safe in here instead of in that old log cabin.

  That wasn’t fair, of course. No one had broken into Heritage House.

  Wait a minute. Did that mean Eureka had let someone in? Or had she simply left the door unlocked because she thought of Poppyville as a sweet little town with a next-to-nothing crime rate? Because if she’d let her killer in, she’d probably known that person.

  I let out a huff of frustration. That wasn’t necessarily true, either. If Dylan Wong, for example, had knocked on the door of Heritage House, my bet was that Eureka would have opened the door for him. But would she have opened the door to Trixie or Warren? Hard to know.

  “Here you go, Ellie. I set this aside for you,” Maria said.

  My ears perked up at that. When Maria had a book for you, you’d better pay attention to it.

  “Brigitte, have the returns from the book mobile been re-shelved?” she asked gently as she went behind the information desk.

  Her assistant looked up and blinked, then grinned. “Nope! Haven’t done a darn thing since I picked this up. I’ll get right on it, boss.” She tucked her book under the desk and strode away.

  “How long has she worked here?” I asked, trying to remember.

  “Since before I moved here from San Diego,” Maria said. “That was fifteen years ago.”

  “Really? And she’s still your assistant?”

  My friend nodded. “She likes it. She’s good at it. Despite what you just saw, I really don’t have to tell her what to do. She knew I just wanted a little privacy.” Reaching below the desk, my friend pulled out a book and handed it to me.

  The title was Celtic Myths and Symbols.

  “How do you do it?” I asked, flipping through the pages. I stopped when I saw a picture of a tree with arcing branches echoed by the web of roots below. I touched it with the tip of my finger.

  “That’s the tree of life,” Maria said.

  “It’s very close to the one on the brooch.” I looked up at her. “And I don’t know if you noticed, but there was a drawing of it in the Xavier manuscript, too.”

  And the drawing in Gamma’s journal.