Lost Are Found (A Prairie Heritage, Book 6)

by Vikki Kestell

  Oskar climbed into the passenger seat. “This vehicle has an 8-cylinder, 390-cubic-inch engine with a 4-barrel carburetor, Kari,” he grinned. “It’ll go, all right, mind my words. Jack Peters told me to tell you, too, that the engine is still in factory-new condition. Never was broken in properly. He suggested a nice, leisurely road trip at about seventy miles an hour to do the trick.

  “And you’d better brush up on your parallel parking. This boat will take some getting used to,” Oskar teased.

  Kari and Oskar drove for half an hour, and Kari raised her eyes to the open sky above her, breathing deeply of the moist air.

  A nice, leisurely road trip? Kari had seen advertisements for a new movie about two women taking a road trip in a 1966 Thunderbird convertible. In the posters she’d seen, the women were wearing sophisticated-looking sunglasses, scarves, and attitude.

  What was the film’s name? Thelma and someone.

  Kari felt the sudden urge to shop. I need designer sunglasses, she laughed. And a couple of delicious-looking scarves. She placed her elbow out the open window and leaned back, one-handing the steering wheel. I already have the attitude.

  After their drive, Kari and Oskar returned Kari’s rental car and Kari dropped Oskar at his office. When she returned home, she parked the Coupe de Ville in the garage. She pulled down the garage door and locked it, sighing in satisfaction.

  “Mighty fine automobile, Ms. Hillyer,” Toller Bodeen called to her from where he was deadheading a flower bed. When he said “automobile” he placed emphasis on each syllable.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bodeen!”

  No doubt about it, Kari blushed with delight. I’m in love with a Cadillac!

  That night, across the miles Ruth guffawed. “You have a Cadillac?”

  “Oh! I hadn’t told you? It was in the garage and had been sitting there since Great-Uncle Peter bought it in 1959. It only has a few thousand miles on it.”

  “A Caddy.”

  “Not just a Caddy, a vintage Caddy—a Coupe de Ville—convertible, Ruth! I can’t tell you how I love this car. It’s like the best part of all of this.”

  When the words came out of Kari’s mouth she realized it was true. The car felt like freedom while the “estate” felt like a tub of cement hardening around her ankles. But when she was in the car, driving, she felt alive and free—without cares. Just wonderfully, wonderfully free.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 11

  Owen Washington called Kari later that evening. “Are you ready to read that envelope?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, indeed! What do I need to do?”

  “Meet me at this address at nine in the morning.” He rattled off directions and they hung up.

  Washington was waiting in front of a modest home when Kari arrived the next morning.

  “Good morning, Mr. Washington,” Kari called. She couldn’t stop grinning because instead of looking at her, he was ogling her car.

  “My word. Where did you come by this gorgeous ride?” He walked all the way around the car, admiring it and shaking his head as he did.

  “Would you believe it was in Peter Granger’s garage? Clover says Daddy’s uncle bought it new and hardly drove it. It’s been sitting on blocks in dry storage since Great-Uncle Peter died. Isn’t it sweet?” She ran her fingers over one of the rear fins.

  “It’s a beaut,” he admitted, tearing his eyes away. “Well, then. Did you bring that envelope?”

  “I have it right here, Mr. Washington.” Kari pointed to a small box she carried under her arm.

  “Miss Kari, would you mind calling me Owen? I would take it as a kindness.”

  “It would be my pleasure, Owen. And thank you.”

  His knock on the door of the house was answered by a tall, long-boned woman. “Good morning, Priss. Wayland at home?”

  “Shore is, Owen. Come on in now.” She held the door open and Kari followed Owen into the house. “Wayland! Wayland, honey, Owen is here.”

  Owen’s friend, Wayland, was a large man—both tall and wide—but he moved with the grace of a dancer. He grabbed Owen in a bear hug. Kari, not used to seeing men hug each other, stared—a little in awe, a little uncomfortable.

  “And who’s this pretty lady, Owen?”

  “Priss and Wayland, this here’s Ms. Kari Hillyer.”

  Kari shook both of their hands and smiled; she found right away that she rather liked both Priss and Wayland.

  “I understand you have some faded writing you wants t’ read?” Wayland asked.

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “Right this way, then,”

  Wayland had his laboratory in the back of his garage. What for most men would have been a workbench for mechanical tools or yard work, Wayland had turned into a finely organized worktable for his chemicals and lab tools.

  Kari scanned the counter with its two microscopes, Bunsen burner, and various pipettes, slides, spoons, and tongs, all tidy and in their places. Above the bench she saw a shelf stocked with rows of neatly labeled glass jars and bottles.

  At Wayland’s gesture, Kari placed the cedar box on the table and removed the cloth bag. She gently pulled out the envelope and handed it to Wayland, who had slipped on disposable gloves.

  “Let’s see what we got here, now.” Wayland studied the front and then the back, his long fingers as graceful and agile as the rest of him. “Should be easy enough . . . but first we’ll get us a camera ready.” He reached inside a drawer and removed a sophisticated-looking camera. He inserted a roll of film, wound it, and set the camera on the bench.

  “What will you do with the camera?” Kari was curious.

  “We’ll take some pictures of th’ writing when it comes clear, just in case it fades again after th’ solution dries.”

  “Oh! How very ingenious.”

  “That’s Wayland for you,” Owen agreed.

  Kari watched, intrigued, as Wayland mixed a few droppers of two different chemicals in a small jar. Then he dipped a fine brush in the solution and touched it only to the end of the line of writing on the front of the envelope.

  “A little test area, see?” he murmured.

  The blue of the ink instantly materialized.

  “It works! I think it’s an ‘s’!” Kari breathed.

  Owen peered over her shoulder. “Yes ma’am. It sure is.”

  Wayland stroked the solution across the entire line of writing. As the ink appeared, he took several shots with the camera.

  “Looks t’ me that this is ol’-fashioned fountain-pen writing, Miss Kari,” he grunted, leaning in close for another shot. “And like th’ nib on that pen was broke, too. See all them scratches on th’ paper where th’ ink don’t flow smooth? Where th’ writing goes thin?”

  Kari hardly heard him. She was staring at the name that had—almost miraculously—appeared on the envelope:

  Joy Thoresen Michaels.

  Joy Michaels. Rose’s daughter!

  “Joy Thoresen Michaels,” Owen read aloud. “You know who that is?”

  Kari didn’t seem to hear him. She was still staring at the envelope, wondering who had left it.

  The puzzle was growing more curious.

  “Shall we do th’ other side now?” Wayland asked Kari.

  “Yes, please,” she whispered.

  Wayland dipped the brush in the solution and gently brushed it across the writing that crossed the seal. The scratches he’d alluded to were worse on the back and the ink had bled from the broken nib. Whole letters and parts of letters had ink “blobbed” over them. The three of them watched the ink clarify, leaving these letters and illegible smears:

  “Jo i ael . Pers al nd C fid n al.”

  After a moment, Kari translated the words aloud. “Joy Michaels. Personal and Confidential.”

  “I think you’re right,” Wayland muttered. While he was snapping photographs, Kari stepped away from his bench shaking her head, deep in thought.

  Joy Michaels. Personal and Confidential. Who wrote those words? Who hid
the journal and this envelope—together—in the trunk? And why?

  The obvious candidate, of course, was Peter Granger—but what possible connection could there be between Great-Uncle Peter and Joy Michaels?

  “Miss Kari?”

  She turned to look at Owen. “Yes?”

  “Do you know who this ‘Joy’ person is?”

  Kari glanced down, her possessiveness of Rose’s journal making her cautious: She wanted to keep the journal and its precious story to herself. Kari felt Rose’s journal too . . . intimate an experience to share with someone else.

  “I might have heard of her.”

  Now it was his turn to be puzzled. “Might have heard of her? Might have?”

  Kari sighed, unable to make up her mind what to tell him.

  Wayland had finished taking the pictures and was winding the film out of the camera. “Miss Kari, here’s th’ film for you to develop. Do you want to open th’ envelope now? Pretty sure I can do it ’thout tearing it.”

  “No!” Kari startled both of the men.

  “I-I’m sorry. That came out wrong. What I mean to say—and not shout—is, I don’t feel comfortable opening this envelope. It is, as it says, personal and confidential.”

  Wayland shrugged. “It’s your call, Miss Kari,” but Owen was still studying her, a speculative look on his face, as Wayland looked from him to Kari and back.

  “Where should I send th’ bill?” Wayland asked, to break the awkward silence.

  “Write it up now, if you like. I’ll see that it gets paid,” Owen answered.

  “Thank you.” Kari nodded her thanks to Wayland and then whispered to Owen, “Could we go somewhere to talk? Privately?”

  Owen bent his head once. They waited without saying anything as Wayland wrote and handed Owen the bill and saw them out of the garage and down the drive to the curb.

  “Well? Where would you like to talk?” Owen murmured.

  “Over coffee?” Kari wanted a few minutes to decide how much of her private mystery she would share. How much of Rose she would share with someone else.

  “All right.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were seated in a quaint café sipping café au lait and waiting for fresh beignets. Kari knew Owen was watching her, waiting for her to open the conversation.

  “I want to tell you something, Owen,” Kari began, “but it is something that is important to me. Please don’t laugh and please tell me that you will respect my confidence.”

  “Certainly, Miss Kari. If it’s important to you, I would never make fun of it.”

  “You might change your mind when you hear it,” Kari sighed.

  “No; you have my word.” He held up his hand as though swearing an oath.

  “Well, all right then.” She lifted her cup, savoring the first sip of the creamy beverage. “A few weeks ago when I found the Caddy in the garage, I also found a little attic room above.”

  “Find some treasure up there, did you?”

  Kari frowned. “You’re laughing.”

  Owen sobered immediately. “I’m sorry. You must have found something up there that means a lot to you.”

  “Yes, I did. I . . . I found an old journal.”

  “An old journal? Like a diary?”

  “Yes, like that. The woman it belonged to was named Rose Thoresen.”

  “As in Joy Thoresen Michaels? That Thoresen?”

  “Yes. Joy was Rose’s daughter. I found the envelope where I found the journal.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . I’ve read the journal. It was written over a two-year period—1909 to 1911. The thing is . . . the thing is, something about Rose has become quite dear to me. I can’t explain it, Owen, except to say that she—Rose—seems so real to me . . . and what she writes about is, well, incredible.”

  Through two cups of coffee and a piping-hot beignet, Kari rehearsed to Owen all she’d learned about Rose Thoresen. “At first I thought Jan and Joy were her children, but later, in other entries, I realized that Jan was her husband and that he’d recently passed away. She missed him very much, Owen. I ached for her loss!”

  Then Kari told Owen about the women Rose and Joy had rescued from two “high-class” brothels in a little mountain town outside Denver named Corinth. She told Owen about Joy’s husband Grant, lost at sea, but returned to her long after he was thought dead.

  “Owen, when Rose wrote that Grant was alive and had found his way back to Joy, chills ran through my body. I . . . broke down and cried. It was too wonderful.”

  Kari went on to describe the empty house Martha Palmer had given them in Denver, how they and those with them had worked to make it livable again and make it a home and a refuge for fallen women.

  She blinked against sudden moisture. “Rose wrote about this young girl, Martha Palmer’s only child, how she became mentally deranged as she grew up. How she was left in the care of trusted servants and nurses . . . and one of them violated her.

  “The little mad woman was pregnant and no one knew it. Then she began to miscarry and . . . she didn’t know what was happening—because she was innocent! Completely naïve. She went to the attic of the house where she often played and lay down there . . . and died.”

  Owen’s eyes were large. “All this is in that journal you found?”

  “All this and oh! So much more, Owen! More than I could tell you right now. But then the journal just stops! After April of 1911 there are no more entries.”

  Kari stared at her coffee. “Owen, I know you are an investigator and you were assigned to find me. You must . . . know a lot about me.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he nodded his head.

  “Then you know I was in foster care . . . you know Will and Nell Friedman adopted me.”

  Again he nodded.

  “I . . . they didn’t have a good marriage. They didn’t really want a child; I think they thought adopting me would help their relationship, but it didn’t. I don’t know, but I’ve always thought it would have been better if I’d been left in foster care. I ended up back there anyway.”

  Kari vowed she was not going to get teary in front of Owen and swallowed down the choked feeling in her throat.

  “Did you know I’ve been married? Twice?” She was ashamed to look at Owen. “Twice!”

  “Yes, Miss Kari. I know.” His voice was soft, not judgmental. “It was your recent divorce decree posted in the Albuquerque Journal that led to me finding you at last.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes’m.”

  Kari sipped on her coffee, wondering how to say what she was trying so hard to express. “I’ve never had a home or a family, Owen. Never. I always have this feeling, this feeling in my-my gut, in the deepest part of me, that I am alone—by myself in the world. Always alone.”

  The words were coming in a rush now. “Even coming here, to the city and the very house where my father grew up, learning so much about him, seeing pictures of him, being around the things he touched, even the bed he slept in . . . it just isn’t enough. It hasn’t changed that feeling. It hasn’t fixed the fact that I am always alone.

  “When I read Rose’s journal, she talks about her family—and even the people who live at Palmer House—with such love and caring, and I long to be cared for like that! I crave what she wrote about. Sometimes when I’m reading her words I even feel a little bit like I am right there with her—even if it is just in my imagination.”

  Kari had to stop. She was trembling and her voice shook. She chanced a fleeting glance at Owen and was dumbfounded to see tears filling his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Owen,” Kari began. “I shouldn’t—”

  “No, Miss Kari. It is all right. I just feel your pain. Here,” he tapped his chest. “I’m sorry you are alone in the world. It’s not right. Even the Bible says, It’s not good for man to be alone.”

  Kari laughed but tears squeezed out of her eyes at the same time. “I really don’t get the whole ‘the Bible says’ thing, Owen. I really don’t. I
f it’s ‘not good for man to be alone,’ then why does God let it happen? And I guess that . . . is just another confusing, confounding question for another day.

  “I . . . I only wanted to explain why the journal and this envelope are so important to me. I think I got a little sidetracked. A lot sidetracked.”

  “Not a problem, Miss Kari.” Owen signaled the waitress. “More coffee? Thanks.”

  While the waitress was pouring the coffee and hot milk, Kari took a deep breath and got her thoughts straight.

  “Owen, two things about Rose Thoresen’s journal hold me in their grip. They hold me so tight I can’t seem to stop thinking about them. The first is, what became of Rose? And Joy? And all the rest of them? I want to know, and I wonder about them . . . rather obsessively, I’m beginning to think.”

  She was quiet for so long that Owen finally asked, “And the second thing?”

  Kari sighed. “Oh, well. I’m not sure I can explain and it’s rather like going down that slippery slope again, but . . . you see, Rose has this way of talking . . . to God in her journal. She would write out the day’s events and—in the very same sentence—the same breath—she would talk to God as if he were right there next to her, listening and answering.

  “See, I know that’s not possible, but something—something about how she thought she knew God was there and listening—has sunk hooks into my soul. I don’t know how else to express it.”

  “Kari.”

  “Yes?”

  “Kari, what makes you think knowing God like that isn’t possible?” Owen was looking at her intently, and Kari, once caught in his gaze, could not look away.

  “But-but it’s not true, is it? It couldn’t be, right? I mean, if it were true—if God was real like that—wouldn’t everyone know by now? If you could know God like that, wouldn’t it change everyone’s life?”

  Kari’s voice, without her meaning to, had risen to a higher pitch. “I mean, wouldn’t this be the very meaning of life?”

  Owen just looked at her.

  And Kari stared back, noting the creases in his honest black face, the sprinkling of gray in his glossy hair. The conviction in his eyes.

  “Owen?” Kari swallowed. “Is this the type of Christianity Daddy found? What Rose wrote about?”