When we got to town, he turned up a quiet street off the main drag and stopped in front of a large brick-and-clapboard house with a swing on the front porch and a sign on the lawn: Room and Board. Rooms Available.
“Maggie will fix you up,” Sheriff Hicks said. “You keep your nose clean, you hear?”
I followed the flagstone path up to the porch and rang the doorbell.
No one answered.
I rang again and was about to give up when the inside door opened and a face looked out at me from behind the outer screen door.
“I’d like a room for the night,” I said.
The woman, middle-aged, her long hair pinned into a bun, wiped her hands on a cloth and swung the screen door open. “Come on in. You look like you could use a cold drink.”
She ushered me through the dark, cool front hall and into a huge, sunny eat-in kitchen at the back of the house with a view overlooking a lawn filled with flower beds and shade trees.
“Have a seat.” She busied herself getting down a glass and filling it with icy lemonade from a pitcher in her refrigerator. She set the glass and a plate of lemon loaf in front of me. “Everything is homemade. I’m Maggie. Maggie Nearing.”
“Cady Andrews.”
Maggie sat in the chair across from mine. “What brings you to Orrenstown?”
“It’s a complicated story. Have you lived here long?” If she had, she might be a source for my story—and my quest.
“I was born and raised here.”
That was another similarity between Orrenstown and Hope. Most of the people had been born in town and clung to it like burrs to an old sweater.
“But no, I haven’t lived here long,” Maggie said. “I moved away when I was seventeen. Went to college. Got married. Lost my husband in the war. Did the war-widow thing for a while.”
“I’m sorry.”
Maggie shrugged. “It was a long time ago, and I was hardly the only war widow. When my dad died two years ago, I moved back here to take over the paper.”
“Paper?”
“My dad was editor, publisher, reporter, salesman and circulation manager of the Ledger, our local newspaper. He would have added ‘chief cook and bottle washer.’ Mr. Everything. Of course, the paper was a bigger deal in his day. It ran out of a real office and published six days a week. Covered the whole county. We still cover the county, but there’s not enough revenue to publish as often. And I run the paper out of the house. We come out twice a week, and the Wednesday edition is only possible thanks to the weekly sales flyers local merchants use to get people into their stores. Hallelujah for that.”
“So you run a newspaper and a boardinghouse?”
“Neither of which is making me rich.” She laughed. “I have one regular boarder, and from time to time we get salesmen coming through or travelers who need a break from driving. Occasionally, we get a visiting politician. It keeps me going.” She nudged the plate of lemon loaf toward me, and I took a piece. It was moist and tangy and reminded me that I hadn’t eaten all day.
“I need a room for the night,” I said. “And I was hoping you could suggest a place where I can get something to eat. Is the diner any good?”
“It’s good enough. But my cooking is better. Let’s get you settled, and while you clean up, I’ll get supper ready.”
I thought about the small cache of paper and coins in my pocketbook. “How much will it be?” I asked tentatively.
“Less than you think. Come on.”
She showed me to a large, bright room that overlooked the shady backyard. The big double bed had the thickest mattress I’d ever seen, and when I tried it out, I felt like a princess lying on a bed of feathers.
“The bathroom is at the end of the hall, if you want to take a shower or a bath. There are towels in your wardrobe.” Maggie nodded to the large cupboard against one wall. “Supper’s in an hour.” She left me and went downstairs.
I sat on the edge of the bed, pulled the newspaper clipping from my pocket and smoothed it out so that I could look at it again. Would I get to the bottom of it? If I did, would I like what I found? Would I really want to write it up and show it to a complete stranger? What if I found out something horrible? How intrepid would I feel then?
I set the clipping on the bedside table, took my few clean clothes out of my suitcase and padded down the hall in bare feet to run a bath. I filled the tub fuller than I had ever been allowed to at the Home. There was a bottle of bubble bath sitting at the end of the tub. I twisted off the cap and smelled the contents. Lilac. I glanced around nervously, even though there was no one to see me, and tipped just the smallest amount of the violet liquid into the bath. The water started to foam. I stripped down and slipped into the hot water, stretching out full length and resting my head against the back of the tub. Slowly, I started to relax. It wasn’t until I heard Maggie’s voice calling my name from outside the door that I realized I’d fallen asleep.
“Five-minute warning,” Maggie called through the door.
“Coming,” I called back.
I leaped up, pulled the plug and toweled myself dry. It didn’t take long. Before I went downstairs, I cleaned the tub—a habit that had been hammered into all of us at the Home—and hung my towel to dry. I took the newspaper clipping downstairs with me and followed the aroma of cooking into the kitchen, where the table, covered in an oilskin cloth, had been set for three. A man was already seated in one of the chairs. He was middle-aged, like Maggie, and was wearing overalls and a short-sleeved shirt like the old men in the diner. His face and his arms were brown from the sun, but his forehead was a band of blinding white.
“This is Arthur Malone,” Maggie said. “Arthur, this is Cady. She’s staying the night. Arthur comes through here every year about this time and stays until after harvest. There’s always someone around here who needs a field hand, isn’t that right, Arthur?”
Arthur nodded.
I slipped into one of the two vacant chairs.
“What do you do the rest of the year?” I asked him.
Maggie answered for him. “He’s got a place in Florida, in the Keys. He says all he does down there is kick back and fish.”
“Marlin,” Arthur said. “And tuna. I’ve been trying to get Maggie to come down for a visit, but so far she’s turned me down every time.”
“I have a business to run.” Maggie set down a platter of fried chicken, a bowl of potato salad and another of peas. Moisture had beaded up on the glass pitcher of iced tea in the middle of the table.
“Business can wait,” Arthur said firmly. There was a real fondness in his eyes when he looked at Maggie. “Everyone has to take a vacation from time to time.”
“If they can afford to, which I can’t.” Maggie sat down and poured the iced tea.
The food was passed around, and we all served ourselves. I was nervous at first. The only person I had had a meal with outside the Home was Johnny, and that was just hamburgers at a place on the edge of Hope where none of his mother’s friends were likely to see us. I ate slowly at first, the way Mrs. Hazelton had said young ladies should eat. But the chicken was the best I’d ever tasted, crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside. The potato salad had chunks of onion and celery in it and pieces of hard-boiled egg. And the peas were sweet and fresh. Before I knew it, I had cleaned my plate. I looked up to see both Maggie and Arthur grinning at me.
“Well, someone sure is hungry,” Arthur said.
My cheeks stung. I knew I must be as red as the boiled beets that had appeared on the table at the Home every Sunday night.
Maggie offered me more chicken, but I was too embarrassed to accept.
“Go ahead,” Maggie urged gently. “There’s nothing that makes a cook happier than an appreciative eater.”
“There’s nothing that makes a boarder happier than a landlady who cooks like Maggie,” Arthur said, serving himself some more potato salad.
I looked at the golden-brown chicken. It had sure tasted good. One more piece would
n’t hurt. It wasn’t as though anyone else was going to go hungry. I chose a drumstick and accepted the bowl of potato salad from Arthur. I added a spoonful of peas to my plate and ate until I was stuffed, something I’d rarely had the chance to do. When Maggie got up to clear the table, I jumped to my feet.
“Let me do that.” I scraped the plates and set them into the sink.
“There’s a pie on the counter,” Maggie said. “And some dessert plates to serve it on.”
The pie was apple sprinkled with cinnamon, and it was warm from the oven. The flaky crust melted in my mouth. This time when Maggie offered seconds, I didn’t hesitate. I said yes right away. I’d never tasted anything so divine. By the time I had cleaned my plate and leaned back in my chair, belly pleasantly distended, I felt relaxed. Maggie poured mugs of coffee for everyone. When she was seated again and stirring a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee, I pulled out the newspaper clipping and handed it to her. She examined it closely.
“I’m pretty sure that came from the Ledger,” she said.
“Do you know anything about what happened?” I asked.
She shook her head and passed the clipping to Arthur.
“I heard about this,” he said. “It was before my time, but when I first started coming through here six or seven years ago, looking for work, someone made mention of a murder in town.”
“Murder?” Maggie snatched the clipping from Arthur and looked at it again. “It doesn’t say anything here about a murder.”
“Doesn’t say it, but that’s what happened.” Arthur sipped his coffee, which was a light tan color from all the cream he poured into it. “That fella Jefferson murdered some white man that was passing through town. At least, that’s the way I heard it. Jefferson got life. He was shot trying to escape from prison.”
“Well, that’s news to me,” Maggie said. “Right after I came back here, I went straight to the morgue to read up on what had gone on in my absence. But I didn’t see anything about a murder. Or about anyone named Thomas Jefferson.”
“I’d love to take a look at the morgue myself,” I said. Every newspaper had a morgue. It was where back issues were kept. “If you’d let me, that is.”
“Be my guest.” Maggie stood up and led me to a room beside the kitchen, which I could see was the newspaper office. It was equipped with a couple of desks, two typewriters, a phone and some filing cabinets. Maggie pointed to a door beside one of the desks. “It’s in the cellar. The light is at the top of the stairs. I have to warn you though—one of the shelves collapsed a while ago, so things aren’t in strict chronological order.”
I made my way down a flight of wooden stairs into a room lined with shelves. On one side of the room, they were new and sturdy. On the other side, they were older, water-stained and sagging. Besides the shelves, there were half a dozen six-drawer filing cabinets. If the photo I had been given came from Maggie’s newspaper, then I would find it down here, together with any news story that might have accompanied it. I would finally find out exactly what had happened and maybe get some clue about what Thomas Jefferson and his grave meant to me.
Chapter Eight
I DISCOVER THAT NOTHING
IS AS EASY AS IT LOOKS
THE NEWSPAPERS, IT turned out, weren’t bound into neat volumes the way they were back at the Weekly Crier. And Maggie was right about them not being in strict chronological order. In fact, they were in no order whatsoever that I could discern. From the look of things, whoever had cleaned up after the old shelf collapsed had simply scooped up stacks of newspapers and piled them willy-nilly on the new shelf.
I had no idea when the murder had been committed or how long Mr. Jefferson had been in prison before he’d tried to escape, so I worked my way through the stacks, pulling out all of the issues from the time of his death back to the beginning of the 1940s. I separated the papers into eight piles, one for each year. That alone took me more than an hour. Once I’d done that, I thumbed through the papers in reverse order, beginning with June 30, 1948, the date on Mr. Jefferson’s gravestone. I didn’t have to go far—only three days—before I spotted a brief news item: Thomas Jefferson, 25, of Freemount, was fatally shot while escaping from prison. ‘It was a daring attempt,’ Warden Albert Drudge said. ‘I hate to think what he would have done had he made it.’ Jefferson was serving a life sentence after being convicted of the first murder in this county in more than two decades.
That was it. No larger or related articles, no pictures, not even the date the murder had occurred. I flipped through the rest of 1948 in case it had been an open-and-shut case—maybe Mr. Jefferson had pled guilty—followed by a quick stop in prison before the attempted escape.
There was nothing. But that didn’t mean I was ready to quit. If Jefferson had committed the county’s first murder in decades, the Ledger must have covered it. I paged through the papers from 1947. Then 1946. Still nothing. Nothing in 1945 or 1944 either. I even went through 1943, just to be sure.
I drew a complete blank.
I looked in exasperation at the piles of Ledgers. It didn’t seem possible that the local newspaper had neglected such a big event. There must be something. That’s when I noticed that the stack of papers for 1947 was half the size of the ones for other years. It turned out there were more issues missing than were in the pile. Once I put them in chronological order, I realized that every paper from mid-April until the end of October was missing. Was that it? Was the reason I’d found no mention of the murder or the trial that they had happened after mid-April and before November? In other words, during the time covered by the missing papers.
But why were they missing? Had the murder been such hot news that those issues had sold out? I supposed it was possible. Or maybe someone had gotten rid of them on purpose. But why?
I set all of the newspapers back on the shelf. The Ledger must have covered the murder and the trial. There had to be something somewhere. I looked at the bank of filing cabinets. I opened the top drawer of the closest cabinet and shuffled through the folders inside. They were all old. Some of them went back to the 1920s. The newest ones—at least, in this drawer—were from the late 1950s.
I stepped back, located the drawer marked J and worked my way from JA to JE and then from there to JEF. There were two files with the name Jefferson on them, but neither with the name or even initial T. I pulled out the folder for M. Jefferson. The papers inside were all from 1951 and were about May Jefferson, who ran successfully for the school board. W. Jefferson was a politician in the state capital who ran afoul of the locals by lobbying against the placement of the new state-funded mental hospital in the county. That was it for Jeffersons. I know because I combed through the whole drawer and even checked the Is and the Ks (there weren’t many), in case information related to the murder had been misfiled. I wished I’d thought to ask the name of Thomas Jefferson’s victim. It was possible information had been filed under his name.
I trudged upstairs empty-handed. Maggie and Arthur were still at the kitchen table, but it had been cleared and a checkers board now sat between them. Maggie made a move before glancing up at me.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No.” I was discouraged. “Did anything unusual happen in town between April and October in 1947?”
Maggie looked puzzled. “I was long gone by that time. What did you have in mind?”
“I know there was a flood in 1949. Was there one in 1947?”
“If there had been, I would know about it. Dad would have told me. No, 1949 was the first flood in decades, and there hasn’t been another one since.”
“What about a fire?”
“I suppose it’s possible.” She looked at Arthur. He shook his head.
“I mean a fire in the newspaper office—or in this house.”
Maggie shook her head. “Why are you asking?”
“Because every newspaper between April and October 1947 is missing.”
“That’s odd. Did you check the files? Maybe�
�”
“There’s nothing there either.” I thought for a moment. “Is there any other way a person could find out about a trial that took place in this town besides reading about it in the newspaper?”
“The courthouse must have records,” Maggie said. “And transcripts. If it’s important to you, you could go over there tomorrow.” She looked me over. “Is it important?”
I nodded, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet anyway. Besides, it was getting late.
I was at the courthouse when it opened at nine in the morning. A man who looked like a security guard unlocked the front door, and I followed him into a two-story atrium floored with marble and hung with paintings of former mayors, all men. When I asked about trial transcripts, he directed me to the basement.
“Take the stairs next to the elevators.” He pointed.
The basement was brighter than I’d expected, thanks to the neon lights that ran like landing-strip markers down the center of the ceiling. The hallway formed a large square. I know because I’d made a circuit of it and was almost back where I had started before I saw a sign that read Court Archives. I knocked. A muffled voice called from inside: “Enter.”
A thin man with skin so pale he looked as though he’d been held prisoner in this basement for decades looked up from his folding chair at a small table behind a broad counter. He was stirring cream and sugar into coffee poured from a thermos. He stared at me and waited for me to speak.
“Is this where trial transcripts are kept?” I asked.
The man stirred his coffee, took a tentative sip and nodded with satisfaction. He didn’t speak. Maybe he couldn’t. Or maybe he was hard of hearing.
I raised my voice. “I’m looking for the transcript of a trial that I think happened about fifteen years ago.”
The pale man took another sip of coffee and dabbed his lips with a cloth napkin.
“Name of the accused?”
My Life Before Me Page 5
