by Jessa Archer
“Well, that would explain a lot,” I said. “But to get back to your question, I doubt I’ll talk to either of them today. I have no idea how long it will take to go through the copies in the morgue, and I also want to track down Patsy’s mom, so it’s unlikely that I’ll have time.”
“Teresa might be working the cash register at the diner today. Maryanne usually asks for Sundays off.”
“It’s Sunday?” I said. “Wow. My days are starting to merge together.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, they tend to do that when you stay out partying ’til the wee hours.”
“I’ll drop in at Pat’s this afternoon,” I told him, “since I can’t go anywhere near the place until Cassie’s date is finished. Although I guess she and Nick might have been going somewhere else. I didn’t think to ask. I’ll probably tell Teresa that Edith’s death got me to thinking about the old factory, and I’ve decided to do a historical piece for the paper.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Ed took his empty coffee cup to the sink and rinsed it out, then grabbed his jacket and the little bag that he’d brought with him last night. “I’ll drop by the Star when I’m finished for the day. And Ruth, please make sure your phone is with you, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” I said with a mock salute as I walked him to the door so that I could lock it behind him.
He narrowed his eyes. “And make sure it’s charged.”
I was already ahead of him on that one. “It’s next to my bed guzzling electricity as we speak.”
“Good.”
He climbed into the Silverado and started the engine. I waved and was about to step back inside, but he rolled his window down. “Oh, and one more thing? Try to avoid climbing on any rooftops today.”
And then he drove off before I could ask how the heck he knew about that.
✰ Chapter Eighteen ✰
I’d never really liked hanging out down in the morgue, even when I worked at the Star back in high school. It’s possible that it was just the name, but the room was also covered in dust—both the normal dust that accumulates in rooms that haven’t been disturbed and the special dust from the slowly crumbling newspapers in the binders that line the walls of the small basement.
There were exactly 117 binders on these shelves, each with the year written on the spine in black ink. The vast majority of the binders held fifty-two eight-page copies of the Star, one for each week of the year. I began a new binder when I published my first copy as owner and editor during the first week of January. One of the binders is only half filled, because Mr. Dealey died in May of that year. And even though the binders aren’t exactly dirt cheap, there are five that are totally empty, for the five years since his death. I couldn’t bring myself to just skip ahead. And maybe one day I’ll have the time to go back and pull up the obituaries and other key stories that ran in the county paper, so that the Star remains a relatively complete historical record for the town of Thistlewood.
It took me a couple of trips, but I lugged six of the binders from the mid-1950s up to my desk where the air was free of particulates—although it probably wouldn’t be by the time I skimmed through a few volumes and the pages started crumbling beneath my fingers. I needed to upgrade the morgue with some protective folders for these things. Or alternatively, as Cassie would no doubt tell me, I needed to digitize. And maybe I would at some point. Invest in a scanner and hire someone to come in and make all of this searchable with just a few keystrokes.
It was a nice dream, but for the time being, I was stuck doing things the old-fashioned way. I opened the binder for 1955, since that seemed the most likely year based on Elaine and Clarence’s conversation, and began skimming. The toughest part was not actually the dust—even though I did end up sneezing quite a bit—but rather the tendency to get caught up in stories that weren’t relevant. That was especially true when I saw Jim Dealey’s byline. This was long before I knew him, back when he was in his thirties and his dad was still the editor. I couldn’t resist reading in full a story he wrote about a murder that year at a fishing camp a few miles up the river. There was also a story about the “new” gym being built at the school, which hadn’t seemed new in the slightest by the time I attended. A few help-wanted ads caught my eye as well. The garment factory had either been expanding in the 1950s or else they’d had a lot of churn in their workforce, because they ran an ad in the classifieds almost every week.
About an hour later, I found something that was both interesting and possibly relevant. Wedged between an engagement announcement and an ad from the drugstore, at the center of what Mr. Dealey always jokingly referred to as the society page, was a picture from the annual company softball game at Woodward Mills. Two teams, all girls, each coached by one of the sons of Reggie Winters, the factory’s owner.
I could tell instantly which one was Samuel Winters, even with the baseball cap partially shading his face. His brother, Marvin, who looked a bit older, was a bit pudgy, with a wide, friendly smile. While I wouldn’t have said Sam Winters was handsome, even back then he simply oozed the cocky, cavalier attitude that some women—especially, in my experience, the very young and not-particularly-bright—seem to find appealing.
He was quite the ladies’ man back in the day.
Nick’s comment about his grandfather echoed in my head as I looked at the two teams. The faces were a bit blurry, and so small that it was hard to make out any features, but there were roughly twenty young women, mostly in their teens or early twenties, half wearing dark shirts and half wearing light. I’d guess that many of them were either fresh out of high school or else dropped out early. Sam Winters struck me as precisely the type who would have considered his father’s employees to be his personal dating pool, and I’m using the word dating in the very loosest sense.
The caption below the picture read Brothers Battle it Out! That seemed a little sexist to me, since all of the actual physical labor was being done by the girls kneeling in front of the dugout as they smiled for the camera. In the short blurb accompanying the photograph, Marvin was identified as vice president and Sam as general manager. This was followed by a list of names, including two that seemed relevant. The first was Teresa Strumm, who might or might not be Patsy’s mother. Teresa was a fairly common name. The second, however, was clearly related—Mrs. Edith Morton.
There was, of course, nothing in the picture that I didn’t already know, aside from the fact that Edith played softball when she was younger. I grabbed my phone and took a picture of the team photo so that I could check it out with Patsy’s mom if I tracked her down later, and then I continued my search.
In an edition printed two months later, the classifieds yielded something that I almost missed. I’d only been scanning the help-wanted section, and this was under Real Estate—Rooms to Let. If it hadn’t been roughly parallel with the ubiquitous Woodward Mills employment notice, it would probably have slipped my notice entirely. The address was 109 James Street, and it offered a room and two meals daily, with a private bath and separate entrance through the garage.
I was almost certain that was Edith’s address, but I pulled the map up to double-check. It was her house, all right. The mention of a separate entrance had me confused—and a little wistful, since a separate entrance would have come in very handy the night before. But I supposed the place might have been remodeled at some point since the 1950s. The same classified ad ran for three weeks and then disappeared in mid-September. Either Edith Morton had changed her mind about renting out a section of her home or else she’d found a boarder.
There were no other mentions of Edith or Woodward Mills until late December, when a story in the About Town section nearly caused me to spew coffee all over the page. In years past, the Woodward Mills holiday party had been held at the factory, but with the new high school gym now available, the company had decided to rent the place out and hold a sock hop. Three photographs—one large and two small—were included in the article. One was the obligatory group photo, showing about fi
fty workers seated on the bleachers, the vast majority of them women. The only ones identified by name were the occupants of the top row—Samuel Winters, now identified as vice president, and Marvin, now president of the company, so their father must have either died or retired that year. Sam’s eyes weren’t focused on the camera. They were locked on the woman seated just below and to his right—Edith. Another woman and two middle-aged men were on that row as well, probably middle management and other office staff. Below them, the next three rows were filled with young women, all in full skirts and bobby socks. The only other male was a dark-haired young man standing at the edge of the bleachers, looking a bit uncomfortable.
What caught my eye the most, however, were the smaller photographs, which featured two different girls dancing. I’d seen both pictures before. In fact, I’d seen them almost every day since moving back to Thistlewood. The one on the left was definitely Patsy’s mom, because I remembered her pointing to it that afternoon when she gave me the guided tour of the diner’s photo collection. And the one on the right, with her head back and smiling, was Edith Morton.
Had Patsy’s mom told me that? Maybe. She mentioned so many names that day, however, that they’d all run together. Teresa Grimes had saved that photograph of her younger self, with her skirt twirling above her knees, for the last exhibit in her presentation. “And that one,” she’d said with a little giggle, “is me, when I took first prize in the jitterbug contest.”
I grabbed my phone again and snapped the group photograph, not really sure why, except for the vague hope that it might trigger something in the woman’s memory. Then I glanced at the time. Nearly two o’clock. Wow. I’d been at it for over three hours.
Cassie had promised to stop by and help after her breakfast with Nick Winters, so I was a little hesitant about going over to the diner. But I wasn’t even certain that they’d gone to the diner, and even if they had, a breakfast that lasted until two in the afternoon—more than three hours—probably needed to be broken up. If they were still there, I’m sure Patsy was beyond ready for them to clear out.
So, I dropped the phone into my purse, flipped the CLOSED sign on the door, and walked to the end of the block. I stood on the corner across the street from the diner for a minute and peered through the windows. About two-thirds of the tables and booths were full, which wasn’t too surprising on a Sunday since a lot of people stopped in after church. Teresa Grimes was indeed working the cash register, just as Ed had predicted. And if Cassie was there, she and Nick had to be at one of the booths in the back. Oh, well, I thought. If she gets annoyed at me for interrupting her date, so be it.
I crossed the street and quickly scanned the booths at the back through the window. Cassie wasn’t there. That triggered a tiny twinge of worry. Normally, I’d have simply shrugged it off, thinking that she might have decided to go home and change or something, but that seemed unlikely given our creepy visit from the man in the woods yesterday. While Cassie hadn’t been as freaked out by the experience as I had, she was still unnerved.
The rational voice in my head chimed in to note that the weather was lovely. They might have decided to go for a walk in the park.
The irrational voice in my head, always a tiny bit louder and more insistent, pointed out that I hadn’t trusted Sam Winters one bit when I met him. Two of the photographs I’d found in my research that morning included Winters. And while that was largely due to bias on my part, since I’d been looking for information about Woodward Mills, I didn’t like the way he’d been staring at Edith in the holiday photo. Yes, Nick had seemed nice enough, but the apple—even the grandapple—rarely fell far from the tree.
I walked around the side of the diner to the parking lot out back. Cassie’s Honda was there, which ruled out the possibility that they’d eaten elsewhere. I yanked my phone out and called her. No answer. It could be a cell coverage issue, though. My phone was at a measly two bars, and we shared a plan. So I texted her.
WHERE ARE YOU?
^^Note the caps.^^ Mom is shouting, kiddo. Answer, please.
And then, realizing that I could be standing in the parking lot for quite some time before I got a response, I went inside to question Teresa Grimes, the Jitterbug Queen.
✰ Chapter Nineteen ✰
“Just missed her,” Patsy said as I took a seat at the empty stool closest to the cash register. She was making a fresh pot of coffee, which made me a little suspicious that she’d seen me when I was watching from across the street. “Well, not just missed her, I guess. It’s been over an hour now. I didn’t know she was dating Nick Winters. He’s a good-looking thing, ain’t he?”
I nodded. “Dating might be an overstatement, though. She just met him.”
Teresa was chatting about some TV show that I’ve never watched with a couple paying their tab. I glanced back down at my phone. Still no text.
“A good boy, too,” Patsy said, shoving the freshly filled basket into the coffee maker. “Not every young man would quit his job as an attorney to come manage his grandfather’s business.”
The guy two stools down from me, a regular named Jesse, snorted. “That boy ain’t no attorney, Patsy. He’s a paralegal.”
“So?” Patsy said. “Same difference, basically. He works in a law firm, right?”
“But he ain’t got a law degree. Those are the ones pullin’ in the big bucks. That boy figures he’ll make more in the long run sucking up to his grandpa.”
Patsy responded that Jesse didn’t know what he was talking about, employing rather colorful language that questioned both his intelligence and the legitimacy of his birth. This was par for the course with Patsy during the off-season. When the tourists were around, she was sweetness and light personified, as saccharine as the iced tea that flowed from her pitcher, and the harshest words that tumbled from her mouth were dang and shucks. The rest of the year, however, Patsy considered herself to be among family and under no obligation to censor herself. Having divorced one husband and outlived another, I suspected she was sizing Jesse up as a potential replacement. They argued constantly, about everything and nothing at all, but Patsy always seemed happiest to me when Jesse was on his usual perch at the counter.
“And he’s prob’ly gonna end up disappointed. He might drive a nice car, but I bet it ain’t paid for.” Jesse nodded toward me. “If your girl is trying to land herself a rich one, she might want to head on back to Nashville.” He chuckled at this last comment, and I gave him a withering look.
“She not trying to land anyone. They were simply having breakfast.”
He snickered at that and said something to the guy next to him. It occurred to me then that Jesse—and quite possibly others—thought that Nick and Cassie were having a morning-after breakfast. Why hadn’t I considered that? I grew up in this tiny little fishbowl, and I know how people can talk. I should have warned her. I’m certain she’d have responded that she didn’t give two flips what anyone thought, and on that count, I say good for her. But it still annoyed me.
“Ignore that old fool, hon. You hungry or are you just in here for coffee?” My stomach growled right on cue, audible even over the TV, which was airing some sort of monster truck competition. Patsy laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes. You aiming for healthy or happy today?”
This is her standard question for both me and Wren. Healthy means we’re doing the soup and salad combo. Happy usually means the bacon cheeseburger and fries. I was too on edge for either of those, however, so I opted for a grilled cheese with soup.
Patsy always carries one of those little order pads, but I’d never seen her use it for anything less than a table of six. She just yelled “Jack with a splash” through the window to the fry cook.
I had no idea what that meant, but he responded, “Comin’ right up.”
The couple chatting with Teresa had finally left, so I decided to make my move while my food was cooking. “Hey, Miss Teresa. You got a minute?”
“I sure do,” she said. “What do you need, sug
ar?”
“Well, when I was writing up the obituary for Edith Morton, it occurred to me that there might be an interesting story in the history of Woodward Mills. I mean, there are a couple of articles online, but they just talk about the business impact of it closing down, and things like that. I was thinking more of the human-interest side, from the perspective of the women who worked there back in the 1950s. I went through and found some old photographs, and I was wondering if you might be able to identify a few of the people and tell me if they’re still living around here.”
“I might,” she said, casting a dubious eye at the phone I was holding. “Hold on, though. Let me find my glasses.”
Smiling, I tapped the top of my head. She laughed and pulled them down onto her nose.
“Well, I didn’t have to search very far, now did I? Okay, let’s see what you’ve got. I expect most of them are dead, though. Edith and me are two of the last—although I guess Edith’s gone now, too. Maybe two or three others. And old Sam, of course.” Her nose wrinkled, and I got the sense she didn’t like Sam Winters any more than I did.
I showed her the softball picture first, and she beamed. “That’s me,” she said. “Right there. I got a triple, and we beat Sam’s team, six to three. And ain’t that funny. I couldn’t have told you the score of that game to save my life before you showed me that picture.”
When I zoomed in a bit, she scanned the other faces and names. There was a woman who lived over in Maryville, she said, who was still alive as far as she knew, and another who lived with her daughter over near Pigeon Forge. I switched to the photo from the sock hop, and she picked out one of the same women from the group on the bleachers. Teresa took her time, naming the various women, almost all of whom had either moved away or passed on.
