by Rita Kano
Shirley found no consolation in her foresight into the unfortunate fate of the man who loved Glory. She drifted off to sleep planning Friday’s activities at work and a trip to Nash’s place afterwards.
Off to the side, she gnawed on a feeling there was something important he hadn’t told her. And even if she was wrong about that, it was time she learned more about the missing and dead women in the Lovett and Britt families.
Chapter 11
Ghosts and Slithering Shadows
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Why Miss Shirley? What a pleasurable surprise.” Nash spoke from the doorway.
Shirley didn’t return the greeting. “Have you heard about Bessie Redding?”
Nash took Shirley by the arm. “Come in. Sit down. I’ll get you some ice tea or hot, whichever you like. I’m making a fresh pitcher right now. You just settle down. I’ll be back as soon as I stir the sugar in.”
From the middle cushion of the den couch, Shirley heard the tinkle of a spoon stirring sugar into tea. “Warm,” Shirley called out. “No. No. Cold. I’m sorry. Please make it cold … but not too much ice.”
“Not too much ice,” Nash repeated.
In a moment he returned. “Take a few sips,” he said as he handed Shirley the glass, “then we’ll talk.”
“It’s very good.” After a few more swallows, she settled closer to Nash’s calm demeanor. “Do you have a secret?”
“A secret?” Nash questioned.
“The tea. It’s really good. Excellent. Mine always leaves a bitter aftertaste.”
“No secret of mine. Maybe it’s the brand. I’ll give you a box to take home, if you’d like.”
“Thank you. I would,” said Shirley.
Nash sat down next to Shirley and placed one hand on her shoulder. He had an exceptionally warm body. She felt his heat through her dress.
“You seem awfully upset over Miss Bessie’s death. I’m sorry about it too and I’m sorry you were the one that found her, but I have to say I’m puzzled over your reaction. She was up in age and the doctor, hard as he tried, couldn’t get her to give up sausage and eggs or bacon for breakfast every morning. And pork barbeque … Lord, she ate enough for 10 people. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but she was lucky to have lived as long as she did.”
“It was murder,” Shirley bounced her conclusion off Nash’s eyes.
“Murder?” He tilted his head, “I heard it was a heart attack.”
“Yes. It was murder and a heart attack. It was both,” explained Shirley.
“Miss Shirley, you’re going to have to begin from somewhere closer to start for me to figure out where you’re going with this.”
“You were right about there being another letter, Nash. Miss Bessie brought it to me early yesterday morning.”
“Just like I figured. But, something’s telling me to put a reign on getting my hopes up too much.”
“It’d be best not too,” Shirley agreed.
Nash withdrew his hand from Shirley’s shoulder and closed his eyes.
“Anyway,” continued Shirley, “I knew when I read the other letter that I had to read Sadie Redding’s diary if there was any chance of finding Martha Ann.” Shirley paused as she tripped on the words any chance. It wasn’t her intention to squash Nash’s hopes, but the slip of her tongue couldn’t be taken back now. She didn’t mean to be cruel, she just wanted to prepare the heart of a loving grandpa for what not only might be, but what her intuitions kept reminding her was most likely true.
“I ain’t giving up on finding Martha Ann.” Nash braced his arms over his chest. His words rang solid and sure. The worry lines crisscrossing his face revealed that his gesture of defense against an invisible enemy gave him little comfort.
“I’m not either,” replied Shirley.
Nash’s forehead released a line or two. “Did you get the diary?” Before Shirley could answer, he leaned over, buried his face in his hands for a moment and then raised his eyes up toward the ceiling. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Miss Bessie. No disrespect intended.” He turned to Shirley. “Is that how you come to find her … going after the diary … and she was dead when you got there?”
Shirley reached for Nash’s hand. “Yes, she was… by the time I got inside. But Nash … I found the diary. I read it last night.”
Nash didn’t respond in the manner she expected. He stared at her. “I don’t see that usual glint of hope in your eyes. Guess that’s all I need to know.” A noticeable exhale and a pat on Shirley’s hand accompanied his assessment that the diary had failed to be of significance. “But…” Nash’s eyes wandered to a photograph of Martha Ann. “But, just for the sake of words, I take it the diary weren’t any help.”
“No. I’m afraid not. We don’t have all the pieces. Something’s still missing. There’s something going on here that stretches my imagination way beyond its usual challenges.”
“Say it plain, Miss Shirley.”
“The letter Miss Bessie brought me. I touched it to a candle flame and it burned up in a flash. It went right up. Poof.”
“Are you meaning what I think you’re meaning?”
“I may be,” answered Shirley. “The letter Bessie brought me was on the same paper and in the same hand as the ones you have. And it gave a town and a date. I think it was written later, by someone who picked up the cause, I guess you’d say. The two letters wrapped in buckskin are different from the one that went up in flames … different in a very strange way.”
“Are you … are you thinking like me now? Are you thinking there might be a spirit trapped in those letters?”
“I haven’t brought myself to say it out loud. But okay,” she sighed, “yes. I think so. That is … I don’t know what else to think but that there’s something trapped in those letters. I don’t know what to call it. Or it could be … let’s be honest, Nash … it could just be our minds are stressed way beyond our knowing.”
“You didn’t drive all this way to tell me that, Miss Shirley. What’s churning around in that pretty head of yours? Did you come here because you have an idea about what to do next?”
“Sorry. Right now, I only have more questions. Questions for you, if you don’t mind, about the women in the family who disappeared and the ones mentioned in Sadie Redding’s diary.”
“Shirley, you don’t have to tiptoe around me. This here ain’t a spring pansy sitting beside you … or a snapping turtle. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it … I appreciate everything you’re doing. Bless your kind, kind heart. I truly do. So, go ahead and ask your questions.”
Nash’s words melted through Shirley like chocolate. She blinked rapidly against the steadily growing attraction to Nash and jumped right to the obstacle at hand. “The last page of the diary said Find the Indian. I have no idea what that means. The only thing I can think to do is learn more about the deaths and disappearances in your family. Like I said, if you’re willing.”
Nash smiled, somewhat too knowingly. “If I’m willing? You seem a bit distracted, pretty lady. I thought I already made my feelings about that clear. Sure I’m willing. But what’s an Indian got to do with this?”
“It’s all in the diary,” Shirley pulled it out of her purse. “I’ll be happy to sit quietly while you read it. It’s short. Won’t take long.” She held the tiny book with gold trimmed pages out to Nash.
Nash gently pushed it back towards Shirley. “Can’t you just tell me about it?”
“Sure. But, I … I think reading it yourself would mean a lot more to you.” Shirley stumbled over her words as she tried to pick up on the reason for Nash’s hesitancy. She held the diary out to him again.
“Shirley, I…” he shook his head, “it’s a diary … a woman’s diary and … and being a man, well, kinda feels like I’d be trespassing on Grandma Sadie’s personal thoughts. It don’t … it just don’t feel right.”
With both hands on the diary, Shirley held it out closer to Nash. “Would a No Trespassing sign stop you from saving
Martha Ann?”
Martha Ann’s grandpa nodded and took the book from Shirley’s hand. “I’ll take it to the kitchen table where the light’s better.”
In a few minutes, Nash returned to the sitting room and handed the diary back to Shirley. His shoulders appeared less broad and the set of his mouth, less firm. “How do you find a dead Indian? Specially one that’s been dead for close to a century. I don’t know what’s in your head, but right now there ain’t a speck of anything in mine.”
“There’s nothing in mine either, except for a few questions. And then…” Shirley shrugged, “and then we’ll see.”
“Questions. Well, at least that’s something. Go ahead with asking your questions and…” Nash sat down across the room, “and like you say… we’ll see.”
“Okay. First…” Shirley leaned back, “first I’m going to just say out loud what I think I know and if I’m wrong, correct me. Martha Ann is 16 and went missing not quite two weeks ago. Her mother, Sandy, disappeared some time ago and no trace of her has ever been found. How old was Sandy when she went missing?”
“Nineteen. Martha Ann was still a crawling baby.”
“And your wife, Sable… she died young too, from what I’ve gathered.”
“She had just turned twenty-four. We didn’t marry as quickly as most did back then. Sandy was just learning to walk when…” Nash paused on a glance down to the floor, “when it happened to her. Where is this going, Miss Shirley, if I ain’t asking too soon?”
“It’s going to the right question, Nash. And to the answer that keeps dodging us. Or the answer we keep kicking out of the way like a worthless old tin can. I don’t know which.” Shirley got up from the couch and paced the room. “Okay. For now, we don’t know much except that age has nothing to do with all the…” Shirley stopped in front of Sable’s photograph, “the apparent deaths. Tell me more about Sable’s disappearance. What was she doing that day…” she touched the corner of the frame, “where had she been? Where was she going the last time you saw her?”
“That ain’t something I like to ponder on, Miss Shirley. It’d help if you told me why all this matters, now … so long after.”
Shirley pasted a stare on Nash and waited for him to answer her question.
“You’re a hard one to say no to. I can say that for sure. No belt whipping I ever got from my daddy left a sting like that look you just shot at me. And I deserved it. I admit that. I apologize, Miss Shirley. My stubborn streak is surfacing mighty strong and for the life of me, I don’t know why. I told you I’d be happy to answer your questions and I will.” After a quiver of his head Nash considered her question. “As I recall, the day before my precious Sable disappeared, she had gone to help a friend of ours, a neighbor who just gave birth and was ailing a bit. It was only a three-mile walk, a far piece for some folk, but not for Sable. She loved walking.” One corner of Nash’s mouth made an attempt to smile. “Anyway, she said she’d spend the night so Patty could get a good few hours’ sleep and she’d be home the next day, before noon. It was plain and simple enough. So it seemed at the time.”
“Did Patty know Sable was going to her house to help out with the baby?”
“Well I…” Nash glanced to the side, “I … well, now that you’ve asked … I think she planned to surprise her.”
“Did you ever talk to Patty about the night your wife spent there?”
Nash pushed up a frown. “It never came to mind.”
“Then as far as you know, Sable may not have made it to Patty’s house.”
A tear rolled from Nash’s eyes.
Shirley resumed her pacing. “Does Patty still live around here?”
“Yeah. She does. Same place as always.”
“Nash, I really hate to ask you this, but could you speak to Patty? We need to know if Sable spent the night there.”
“What does it matter now?” Nash threw his head back. “Dag gum it. There I go again. I don’t mean to put up such mule-headed stubbornness. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I surely don’t and I’m truly sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Shirley positioned herself in front of Nash. “Asking me why talking to Patty matters now is a good question. And I don’t have an answer. I’m not sure anything I’m doing or saying now matters. I’m just trying to find something all the deaths have in common.”
Nash nodded and after thumbing through the number directory, picked up the phone. “Patty ain’t going to know what to think about this,” he said. “Except maybe I’ve lost my mind,” Nash dialed, “…and maybe I have.”
Nash told Patty he was looking through a photo album and started thinking about Sable and wondered if she had made it to her house the day before she disappeared. Because, even though it happened a long time ago, if she didn’t make it there to help out with the baby, he wanted her to know that was Sable’s intention.
Patty remembered clearly she had not seen Sable that day and thanked Nash, none the wiser of his true intentions, for letting her know the kindness Sable had planned to do for her.
Nash hung up the phone. “That didn’t go so bad after all. So … what do we know now we didn’t know before, Miss Shirley?”
“A little … but, I have another question.”
“That’s fine. But, first off tell me why you don’t want to answer mine.”
Shirley held her ground. “It’s better left for just a little while longer.”
Nash settled back in his chair. “Okay. What’s the question?”
“I need to know everything about the letters that showed up on your doorstep. When did you find them? Do you remember?”
“Weren’t ever a certain day. They’d come and they’d go.”
“What do you mean … come and go? Are you saying this isn’t the first time they’ve appeared?”
Nash stretched his lips over clenched teeth. “No,” he said. “No. It ain’t. At first… the first time, I thought someone dropped them off here by accident, so I held onto them thinking they’d come back to get them, once they noticed the mistake. Then one day they were gone and I… Well, there weren’t reason to give it much thought, as I could see. It was the same the second time they showed up. I still didn’t make no connection to Sable or Sandy. It wasn’t until this time, the third time, that I started thinking something wasn’t right. Before then I reckoned out my family’s misfortunes the same as most folks did. People disappear sometimes. This whole county’s built on a swamp and … and swampland ain’t a friendly place, with wild critters and poisonous snakes slithering all through it.” Nash’s eyes darted toward the adjoining room, a room without Martha Ann. “It was only when the letters showed up again, before Martha Ann went missing that I … that’s when I started thinking different … but the thoughts were too … too confounded crazy to say out loud. I couldn’t do nothing but keep them sort of ideas to myself. Nobody would’ve believed me. So, I did the only thing I could. I tried to destroy them … them letters from hell. That’s what they are.”
“Are the letters still here, Nash?”
Nash opened a desk drawer. “Yeah. Right where I left them. I make sure they stay in one spot now.”
“And they’ve been here… back here with you for less than a month?”
“No. It’s been longer this time. They showed up the week before Martha Ann’s birthday. That means they’ve been here … ah, let’s see … that’d be one month and almost two weeks’ time.”
“From moon to moon,” said Shirley, “from moon to moon … find me or find death.”
“What are you thinking?” asked Nash. “Have you figured out what that means?”
“From moon to moon,” repeated Shirley. “It’s my guess the letters show up one month before someone in your family disappears.”
Nash’s lower jaw jutted forward. “One month before someone I love disappears and ain’t ever seen again. That’s what you’re saying. Ain’t it? Ain’t that what you’re saying? You think Martha Ann’s dead. Don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Nash. But, I don’t know anything for certain. I could be wrong. I could be really wrong. I want to see it another way. I’m so sorry.”
“Martha Ann isn’t dead. It ain’t so. What you think don’t make sense. The letters are still here. That means Martha Ann is alive. No. I just ain’t hearing or feeling what you are. I’m sorry, Miss Shirley. But I … I ain’t listening to any more such talk. You need to leave. Right now.”
Blindsided by Nash’s refusal to face reality, Shirley reached for her purse. “Of course. I understand. There is one other thing, though.”
“No. There ain’t just one other thing. I don’t want to hear any more about Martha Ann not coming back home.”
“And when Lizzie disappears?” Nash’s attempt to escape into disbelief left Shirley no choice but to throw another grim reality face out into the open.
“My Lizzie? Disappear? My Lizzie ain’t never … no,” Nash’s fingers dug into the chair arms. “No. My Lizzie ain’t ever going to…” Nash doubled over, sobbing.
“Nash.” Shirley wanted to comfort him with a hug, but she held back, since he had just asked her to leave. “Nash, I can’t be sorry for speaking my concerns. I had to. I believe we can fix this. But not by hiding. No problem is ever solved by looking in the wrong direction. Please, just listen to me. This … these disappearances have been going on a long, long time … since Glory. Nash… have you heard of blood feuds?”
“Sure,” replied Nash. The one word came out muffled and hollow from behind hands cupped over his face.
“How much do you know?”
“I know it’s about revenge. Getting even for the wrongful death of a person’s kin by killing the murderer or … or taking what’s theirs.” He looked up. “Taking what’s theirs,” he repeated. “You don’t think … you can’t be saying…”
“I don’t know what else to think. If my gut feeling is right, and it usually is, that’s exactly what’s going on here. A blood feud … passed from generation to generation to avenge an injustice.”
