by Ann Cook
“I’ll be with people. Not to worry.” She left him unlocking his door.
But on the way to Mount Dora the wiper slashing across the windshield seemed to echo his warning. She drove past foggy outlines of trees and buildings, listening to the murmur of the rain and feeling vulnerable. Only a few people knew she was unharmed in the garage, but when she thought of the figure in the mansion’s dormer window and the shadowy form on the lawn, her fingers tightened around the wheel. Beyond the wet streets yawned that unknown world.
Brandy shook her head, as if it still needed clearing. She needed to be rational, like John. That note had been typed with mortal hands. How many of her suspects had access to a computer? Blackthorne, certainly. She saw one in his office. He had admitted he was responsible for the chase across Lake Dora. Maybe he was up to his old tricks.
Sylvania probably did her genealogy research on a library computer, and Ace Langdon dropped into the office of A & S Citrus now and then. It would have computers. Even Grace Able helped produce a newsletter. Logic seemed to get her exactly nowhere—yet.
By the time Brandy reached the outskirts of Mount Dora, the rain had been replaced by a sullen, overcast sky. She tucked a rain hood in her bag, and within a half hour was walking between beds of pink impatiens up the porch steps and knocking on the door of a trim, concrete block cottage on the east side of town.
“Brandy O’Bannon, Tavares Beacon,” Brandy said when the door opened. “Mrs. Hall is expecting me.”
The woman before her was of average height, stylishly dressed in a tailored cotton suit and hose, a shoulder strap bag slung over one arm, and plainly too young to have been an adult in 1945. Her voice was formal and guarded, as the old woman’s and the small boy’s had been yesterday.
“I’m Mrs. Hall’s daughter,” the woman said. “We just finished lunch, and Mama’s lying down. I’ll ask if she’s ready to see you.” She retreated into an adjoining bedroom and in a few minutes reappeared, guiding an older woman by one stout arm.
Mrs. Hall moved to a rocking chair near the kitchen. “I been kinda poorly lately, but you come right on in. I recollect you called. I reckon visitors is always welcome.”
Her daughter opened the screen and stepped aside for Brandy. The linoleum on the living room floor was immaculate, the oil heater in one corner and the small end tables dusted, and another rocker invitingly set to face Mrs. Hall’s. On an uncluttered shelf lay a Bible.
“I was just fixing to leave,” the daughter said. “I need to grocery shop for Mama on my day off.”
Her mother looked up. “Go along, child. I’ll be fine. I don’t mind talking to this young lady.” Toward Brandy she turned a pair of gentle, intelligent eyes. She was heavy set, her hair slate gray. With crooked fingers——probably bent by arthritis and hard work, Brandy thought——she reached for a needlepoint hoop on a side table.
“My childrens, I declare, they sees to everything for me these days, now I retired.” The old lady looked again at her daughter, her voice even more insistent. “Go along now, girl. You got your Saturday chores to do.” Her attention shifted once more to Brandy. “My daughter’s got a big position at a Leesburg bank. Proud to say all my childrens got an education.”
Embarrassed, her daughter glanced down and then locked eyes with Brandy. When Brandy gave her an understanding smile, her daughter opened the door. “If you need anything, Mama, call, you hear?”
“Bobby’ll be here directly with my grand baby,” Mrs. Hall said. “I might as well get my lazy self up now,” She laughed, throwing back her head. “I reckon I won’t be laying down when little Sammy get here.”
As the door closed, Brandy settled into the chair opposite Mrs. Hall without setting up a tape recorder or pulling out her tattered note pad. She did not want to inhibit her witness. She would have to trust her memory.
Brandy began forthrightly, but not with the discovery of Eva Stone’s skeleton. Perhaps Mrs. Hall had not read about it yet. “I’m researching the history of the Able homestead,” Brandy said.
“I understand you worked there years ago. Maybe you could help me reconstruct the period of the nineteen forties.”
Mrs. Hall studied her needlework, shrewd eyes lowered. “I expect you wants to hear about Miss Stone,” she said simply. “I was the onliest witness, worse luck. I had a lot of talking to do in those days with newspaper folks.”
Brandy kept her voice quiet. “Perhaps you’d tell me as much as you can about the weekend she disappeared.”
With sure movements, Ms. Hall’s needle began to puncture the fabric, working a blue thread into an intricate floral design. “In the first place, old Mr. and Mrs. Able didn’t live out there all the time——only in the summers to get away from the heat in town, or in the fall for the hunting. Times like that. But Lordy, what a weekend that was!
“The party was just fine until poor Miss Stone done such a terrible thing. Mrs. Able had me and another girl tricked out in aprons and caps like we was really something.” She giggled, remembering. “I was as young as the guests that weekend, but I was supposed to take care of the upper floor where the girls all stayed, and then help serve the dinner that night.
“I had to be up and around the next morning early to help with their breakfast and then clean up after they’d all gone. I was busy, I can tell you. They had a woman to cook that big dinner and another girl to help me serve it. And old Henry Washington——God rest his soul——to take care of things outdoors and to help the menfolks.”
She set her needlepoint in her ample lap, eyes alight at the memory. Brandy settled back. At last she would hear an impartial account.
NINETEEN
Mrs. Hall rocked back, smoothing the colorful fabric over one knee. “We had us seven couples of young folks that weekend, and then old Mr. and Mrs. Able and the Southerlands, though they didn’t stay the night. They just come for the dinner, and the announcement about their daughter’s engagement to Mr. Brookfield. Somehow there was an extra girl when Miss Sylvania decided to stay. She’d been threatening to leave all week. She hated parties, and small wonder. Land, she was one girl didn’t have none of what Mrs. Able called the social graces.”
“Did you notice Eva Stone much that first day and evening?”
“I was the one that had to meet the girls at the door when they got there and show them up to that big attic room——like a big dormitory it was——with double–decker beds and some cots. Henry met the gentlemens and took them to the third floor. Most of the girls, they come together two or three to a car. But Mr. Brookfield’s fiancée, she come first by herself. They had lots of planning to do. She brought the towels and sheets from her mother’s for the guest rooms. Miss Grace was nervous, anyway, and anxious, I reckon, for everything to be nice. That evening all the girls——or most all of them——bunched around her and helped her dress and took on like no one ever got engaged before.
“Eva Stone, poor little thing, ‘bout as big as a minute——she come last, by herself. She didn’t look happy the whole time. But she was the prettiest girl there, for a fact. I couldn’t make out exactly who she was supposed to be paired with. Maybe her date couldn’t come. Some of the young folks had gone to high school together and some of them, like Miss Grace, had got to know Mr. Brookfield later, before he went into the war.” She looked toward the spotless kitchen. “Lord–a–mercy, I didn’t even offer you a cold drink. Be glad to get you some soda pop or iced tea.”
Brandy smiled. “I’m fine, thank you.”
Mrs. Hall nodded, satisfied. “Mr. Brookfield had a buddy, too, come down from up North. A Lieutenant Langdon. ‘Ace,’ they called him. He’d visited once before when Mr. Brookfield was home on leave. Didn’t have much family left. They said his daddy had a big name but not a lot of money. Him and Mr. Brookfield had been together in the air forces, and they’d just gotten out after the war. I think the Langdon fellow was supposed to be Miss Sylvania’s date.” She laughed again and shook her head. “Now wasn’t she a caution at a
big party like that! All the girls with their pretty long dresses, and poor Miss Sylvania with no more figure than a hat rack.”
“Still, she did marry.”
“Oh, yes, m’am. Later she marry that same fellow Mr. Brookfield carried home from the war. I heard that Lieutenant Langdon had tried to court Miss Stone hisself, but I reckon old Mr. Able could offer a young fellow some pretty good prospects in his citrus business. I expect where Mr. Langdon come from, he didn’t have the chances old Mr. Able gave him here. I reckon that could change a fellow’s mind. Miss Sylvania, well, I don’t think she ever had what you’d call a real beau around here. Thing was, that big, strong build her brother had looked good on a man, but, lordy, it was a sight on a woman. Miss Sylvania’s skinnier now, last I seen her, than she used to be.
“Onliest person she really seemed to care for was Mr. Brookfield hisself. I reckon he was a mighty good brother to her. She was as glad to see him again as anybody. He’d only gotten home on leave a couple of times since he went in the Air Forces. And after his last visit he’d been overseas for about a year.”
Mrs. Hall looked away, eyes still shining. “What a dinner that was! Hams and candied yams and roasts and I don’t know what all, candles on the tables, everybody so gussied up, and the smell of gardenias coming in through the windows. Old Mrs. Able had the place so pretty then. In the late fall that purple bougainvillea just covered the south side of the place. You couldn’t even see the scrub lands and the woods for that bougainvillea.”
Gently Brandy pulled her back to the crucial night. “So neither Eva Stone nor Sylvania seemed happy that weekend?”
Shaking her head, Mrs. Hall studied the blue and pink pattern in her hands. “From what I could see, I don’t reckon so. I figured Miss Eva was sweet on Mr. Brookfield herself, the way she looked at him. But Miss Grace, she just cozied up to him the whole time, until the mens went bird hunting the next morning. Miss Eva could of had a bad shock that night. I understand she’d been out of town. The announcement about the engagement was suppose to be a surprise, but I think Miss Grace had told some of her friends. I don’t think Miss Eva was one of those girls.”
“What happened the second day, after the dinner dance?”
“Well, the mens got up real early. You know what a to–do it take to get mens off hunting. I was sleeping in a little room off the kitchen. I could hear them traipsing around in the kitchen in their boots, and the dogs yelping in the dog–run out back. They got breakfast and loaded theirselves and the shotguns and the dogs in some pick–up trucks and were gone before sun–up. They was just going into the woods over there towards Lake Beauclair, hoping to get some quail or doves and maybe some wild turkeys. Old Mr. Able and Mr. Brookfield, they was awful crazy about hunting.
“Day before, in the afternoon, some of the young folks went out on the lake in an old rowboat they kept tied up there in front of the house and tried some fishing. But I don’t recollect that Miss Eva went.”
“What did the women do that morning?”
“Oh, they was sleepyheads, you can bet. It’d been a late night. They come straggling down all those stairs——have to be half mountain goat to keep house in that place, I can tell you——and just picked around at their breakfast the cook got ready. Some of them went out and sat around in the lawn chairs for a while, but I reckon the pleasure was gone out of the weekend for them when the mens went off. After a while they straggled back upstairs and began giggling and packing up their things. Throwing clothes around, I declare, I never saw girls leave such a mess.
“The cook fixed some sandwiches and soda pop for lunch, and then they commenced leaving like they’d come, mostly in two’s or three’s.
“I recollect one car was late getting away. When the girl got ready to drive off, they found it had a flat tire. Poor old Henry, rest his soul, had to get down in that sandy road and change it. The girl who owned the car was a regular little ninny. She drove plumb out there in the country and didn’t have no spare tire or a jack or any tools in her car. And the mens and their trucks gone! Henry got what he needed from Miss Grace’s big old Buick, and they finally got off. One of the mens was still around, and he helped some, but I don’t recollect who it was.”
Ace Langdon, Brandy thought, remembering his own account of the flat tire. He’d said Eva asked him to help.
Mrs. Hall began working with her needle again, more slowly. “I seen Miss Eva go downstairs with her bag after that. We found it later by the back door. About that time Miss Grace was getting ready to leave, too. She’d waited around a little while, helping me gather up a big basket of her sheets and towels. I think she was hoping Mr. Brookfield would get back, but when he didn’t, I reckon she left. That would’ve been before we started searching for Miss Eva. Miss Eva’s was the onliest car still parked in the road then.”
“Tell me what you saw from that upstairs window.”
The older woman sighed, all merriment now gone. “I declare, I’ll never forget that long as I live,” she said softly. “We’d already toted the bed clothes down to Miss Grace’s car. I went back up and was putting clean sheets and pillow slips on the beds upstairs. Then I heard the sound of that bell that was down there by the boat. It made an awful racket. The Ables used it to call folks in off the lake for meals. When they was fishing, you know, but no one was out in a boat then. Nobody ever admitted ringing that bell. We figured later that maybe poor Miss Eva had knocked against it when she went into the lake. Or maybe she’d stumbled over the rope you was supposed to pull to make the bell ring.” Mrs. Hall paused, then went on, wonder in her voice. “If it hadn’t been for that bell, no one would’ve known she drowned.”
New information to process, Brandy thought. An odd note. Was the bell ringing important or just an accident, as the authorities then supposed.
Mrs. Hall’s fingers paused. “Anyway, I looked up and I saw——clear as I see you now——Miss Eva walking straight out into that water. She was wearing a red dress with a big, floppy white collar.”
Brandy felt a chill in the pit of her stomach. The teen witness, Charlotte, had said the figure she saw wore something red, with white around its neck. That very morning Brandy has seen a pinkish scrap of material, buried all those years in the yard.
Lost in her telling, Mrs. Hall did not notice Brandy’s eyes widen. “I saw Miss Eva dressed that way at lunch and later when she went out the back door, so I knew right away who it was. She was right stylish, even if she didn’t have the money those other girls had.
“She was just moving forward into the lake. She never looked back. She kind of raised her arms up a little when the water reached her shoulders. She wasn’t calling for help or nothing.”
Brandy shivered. She had taken her own terrifying walk into the lake, had herself stepped into nothingness.
“Well, I can tell you, I was struck dumb,” Mrs. Hall said. “And then I shouted out to her, but she didn’t turn around. The windows was open, you know. No air conditioning in those days.
“And then I run down all them stairs, fast as I could, yelling for someone to stop her. I knew there was a drop off when you went out far enough. Henry heard me about the same time as old Mrs. Able did. He run down to the water’s edge and jumped in that little boat and rowed out and kept sticking the oars over the side, prodding and calling out. By then Miss Eva had gone under. He was most crying hisself. He couldn’t swim a lick and neither could
I. I got down the stairs and I don’t even remember running across the grass. I just remember wading out as far as I could. I was already bawling.
“Miss Sylvania was the strongest swimmer there, I reckon. She swam out, but she said the weeds was something terrible and she couldn’t see a thing. You knows how brown the water is around cypress trees. Old Mrs. Able called the Sheriff’s Office in Tavares and Mount Dora both. But, lands, by the time they got there, there was no way Miss Eva could still be alive.”
“When did the rest of the men get back?”
“Oh, I r
eckon ‘round about the same time as the deputies got there. The Sheriff’s cars come tearing up the road, maybe thirty minutes after Mrs. Able phoned. And then the pick–up trucks come next, one at a time, not all together. All the mens, I think, went out looking for Miss Eva. Some swimming, some in the boat. Some of them beat through the bushes all along the water’s edge. Later, when we looked, all we found was Miss Eva’s overnight bag at the back door and her purse in her car.”
She shook her head mournfully. “Mr. Brookfield and the Ables, they went into town early that evening to tell her folks what happened. Lordy, I was glad I didn’t have that job! The Stones, they come out the next day and just sat and waited.
“The Southerlands felt terrible, too. Miss Grace come back out herself the next day, while the search was going on, and she stayed all night to help Mrs. Able. I was afraid the old lady would have a heart attack, she was so upset. And I guess Miss Grace tried to cheer up Mr. Brookfield, too, but lordy, she was so high strung herself, she didn’t help much.
“Mr. Brookfield, he went out day and night along the lake and in the boat, trying to find the body. After a few days, the sheriff’s men kinda give up. They left it to Mr. Brookfield. They said to call if anything washed ashore like clothing, but it never did.”
She dropped her voice. “Well, I reckon you know why they figured no one found the body. They needed to find it the first day or two. After that, I don’t think anyone would have reported what they found, anyway. It was kinder that way. You lives around these lakes. You knows what ‘gators can do.” They sat for a short time in silence.
The blue thread began once more to outline a needlepoint flower. “Miss Grace, she never liked the house after that, even after they got married, and I can’t blame her.” She sighed again. “Miss Sylvania, she’s let the place run down something terrible.
