I hesitated, then decided to err on the side of honesty. After all, she’d probably forget whatever I said by the time I left. “Yep. That would be me.”
“Good for you,” she said. “Live your life.”
Whew. “I’d really like to know more about her,” I prompted.
“Who? Bubbles? Great swimmer. Heck of a gal.” Marta smiled as if at a pleasant memory.
“What about the girl who lived in the house?” As nice as it was to hear about my grandmother, I still needed information.
Sprocket nudged her hand and she went back to scratching behind his ears. “Not much to know. That girl kept to herself. Then she was gone.”
I froze for a second. “You knew her?”
She looked up at me. “Didn’t I just say that everyone knew everyone else?”
“What was her name?” I asked, leaning forward. Finally, some information!
“Whose name?” Marta gave me a funny look.
“The name of the girl who lived in the house where my shop is,” I prompted, anxious to hear the answer.
“What shop?” Marta patted Sprocket some more. “Who are you, handsome boy?”
“That’s Sprocket. I have a popcorn shop. It’s in a house that you used to own that you sold to Allen Thompson.” I had a sinking feeling.
“Who?”
I put my face in my hands. We were playing the worst game of “Who’s on First?” ever and I had a feeling there was no way for me to win.
Five
“So you didn’t know the dead guy?” Cathy asked.
“Nope.” I patted Emily on the back until she gave a little burp.
Cathy wrinkled her nose. “You didn’t give him the poisoned popcorn?”
“Nope.”
“You answered all of Dan’s questions?”
“More than once.”
Cathy got up from her bunk and began to pace her cell. “But somehow you’re obstructing his justice?”
I shrugged. “According to Dan.”
Cathy paused mid-pace and turned to look at me. “Just Dan?”
It hadn’t been just Dan. I’d been betrayed by my boyfriend, too. “Well, Dan and Garrett.”
“Just Dan and Garrett?”
I bit my lip, remembering what Cynthia had said about me being guilty. “I’m not sure.”
She made a “keep on rolling” gesture with her hand. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”
I didn’t have a chance, though. Dan came into the cell block. He stared at me through the bars. “What is my infant daughter doing in your cell?”
Cathy sauntered up to the bars. “Near as I can tell, eating, pooping, and playing peekaboo. Oh, and burping. Can’t forget the burping.”
He glared at her and then back at me. “Seriously, Rebecca, what is Emily doing in there with you?”
“Hanging out while Haley and Evan go to gymnastics.” I picked up Emily and touched my forehead to hers. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you hanging out with your Auntie Rebecca?”
Emily gurgled and gave me a gummy smile. My heart melted into a tiny puddle of goo.
“Put her down and come put your wrists through the bars.” His teeth were gritted so hard, I was surprised he could speak.
“No.” If I put my wrists through the bars, he would cuff me. Then he would unlock the cell and take Emily. I wasn’t having it. Emily had given me more joy in the past thirty minutes than I’d had in a while, and that included the changing of a poopy diaper.
“Damn it, Rebecca. Give me my baby.”
“I don’t think so. Haley asked me to babysit. I intend to do as she asked.”
Dan turned and stalked back to the door, opened it, and yelled, “Vera, you are so fired.”
Vera appeared in the doorway and pulled a piece of paper from her pants pocket. “Haley thought you might say that. She told me to give you this.”
Dan unfolded the paper and read it, his face getting redder and redder as he did. He looked up at Vera. “Did you read this?”
She shook her head. “Haley asked me not to.”
“Good,” he said and walked out the door, his back stiff.
“Did you really not read it?” Cathy asked.
“What do you think?” Vera replied, a small smile playing across her lips. “Keep in mind that I totally want to make detective some day.”
I slipped Emily onto my hip. “What’d it say?”
She shook her head. “I’m not telling. Well, I’m not telling the details. She did mention how early Evan goes to sleep on nights that he goes to gymnastics, though, and how much better she might feel with a little sleep. Also, your sister has quite the imagination on her. Dan’s a lucky man.”
She left and Cathy and I collapsed into a fit of giggles.
Cathy wiped her eyes. “So I’m still not understanding your obstruction-of-justice charge. Is Dan going to rearrest you for babysitting his kids? I mean, he looked like he wanted to today, but you didn’t take Evan to a jail cell, did you?”
“I’m getting there,” I said.
• • •
I’d left Loving Arms feeling like I’d made progress. I practically skipped back to POPS. “I’ve got a lead on a name,” I told Carson.
“As near as I can tell, you’ve had a name your whole life.” He handed me the end of a tape measure. “Hold this, will you?”
“A name for our diary girl, smart-ass.” I took the tape measure end and watched as he walked backward across the kitchen.
He stopped. “Seriously? An actual name?”
“Yes! Someone Italian. Or possibly Jewish. Who lived there in the 1950s. At least, that’s what it will be according to Marta Hansen.” I adjusted to keep the tape as level as possible.
“Marta Hansen also occasionally thinks she’s descended from British royalty.” He marked down some numbers on his notepad.
“Who says she’s not?” I asked.
He laughed. “Pretty much everyone.”
“Oh.” I turned in a circle around the kitchen. “Why are we measuring? I thought we’d already ordered everything.”
“Doesn’t hurt to double-check. I’m pretty sure you’ve heard that whole ‘measure twice, cut once’ saying. So assuming this person actually existed, how will you find out her actual name and where she is now?” He made some more notations.
“I’m not sure.” I wasn’t sure about my next step. Marta had said over and over again that everybody knew everybody else, but somehow nobody knew this girl. “Marta kept saying that everybody knew everybody else back then, but I wasn’t exactly around in the 1950s. Neither were you or Dan or Haley.”
“So maybe you should ask someone who was around in the 1950s?” Carson suggested. “How many Italian or Jewish families could have lived here in Grand Lake back then? If everybody really did know everybody else, you’d have a shot. Know anybody?”
Of course I did.
• • •
I opened the door of Barbara’s antique and collectables shop, Granny’s Nooks and Crannies, and called out, “Hello! Anybody home?”
Barbara popped up from behind the counter near the back of the crowded shop so quickly it made Sprocket bark. “Rebecca, what can I do for you?”
I laughed. “What were you doing down there?”
“Trying to organize the invoices from the in-store purchases. It’s a never-ending battle. I don’t know why I even try.” Barbara had started doing a pretty brisk trade on eBay. I was beginning to suspect she was only keeping the store open so she’d have some place to go during the day.
Not exactly being a big fan of paperwork myself, I understood what she meant about the invoices, though. I also knew my own reasons for getting things done. “Near as I can tell, the only reason to keep your files in order is so Annie won’t yell at you when you don’t know if you paid your quarterly taxes or not
.”
“It might not be the right motivation, but I guess it’ll do.” She shrugged.
I set the tin of popcorn I’d brought with me down. “I brought you a snack.”
“Minus the poison, right?” She eyed the tin, but didn’t touch it.
I glared.
“Oh, lighten up, girl. I know you didn’t poison that popcorn. Everyone knows that. It’s giving people something to fuss about and you know how people like to fuss.” She opened the tin and ate a chunk of popcorn. “See? I trust you.”
“Why can’t they fuss over something besides me?” I sat down in a velvet Queen Anne chair with a thump, then sneezed from the dust that rose out of its cushion.
“Because you give them so much to fuss about. Try to be more boring. So did you stop by to whine or did you have other business?” Barbara asked.
“Other business.” I traced my finger along the carved arm piece. “Do you remember who lived in the house where my shop is back in the 1950s?”
Barbara made a face. “Why on earth would you want to know that?”
“Carson and I found an old diary in the wall behind the stove. I’m trying to figure out whose diary it was.” I leaned forward.
Barbara shook her head. “You are a Nosy Parker, aren’t you?”
I sat back, causing another dust cloud to rise. Sprocket sneezed this time. “Why do you say that?”
“Because most people would find something like that, decide it was trash, and throw it out. They wouldn’t spend time trying to figure out whose diary it was. Why do you even want to know?” Barbara wiped off her hands and came around the counter.
“At first I wanted to know because I think this person knew my grandmother. She talks about swimming with Bubbles and then going to her house for popcorn.” Barbara had known my grandmother.
“This is how you become known as a Nosy Parker. You actually read it. You didn’t pick it up and decide it was an icky mass of old paper probably coated with mouse droppings and throw it directly into the trash.” Barbara pulled another side chair up next to the Queen Anne.
I sat back. “You really think someone would do that?”
“I think almost everyone would do that,” Barbara said.
It seemed inconceivable to me. “Then everyone has no natural curiosity and no imagination.”
“And you are cursed with too much of both. You said your grandmother was why you wanted to know more at first. What happened next that kept you from pitching it?” Barbara asked.
“I think something might have happened to this girl. The diary ends abruptly and the last entry says that she was frightened of something.”
“Of what?”
This was the part that sounded crazy to me, so I could only imagine what it was going to sound like to Barbara. “She thought someone here in Grand Lake had been a guard at a Nazi concentration camp. I think she was going to expose somebody.”
Barbara snorted. “A Nazi? Here in Grand Lake? You’ve got to be joking.”
“My jokes are generally pretty funny and I don’t see much humor in secret Nazis in my hometown.” Nazis in general weren’t funny. Pretty much only Mel Brooks could make Nazis funny.
“It’s funny because this entire town was completely united in the war effort. You don’t know what it was like here then.” Barbara stabbed at her chair arm with her index finger.
Hard to argue that. World War II ended several decades before I was born. “So tell me. What was it like?”
“Everyone had victory gardens. We had scrap-metal drives every weekend. I started Knitting for Britain in kindergarten. First I knit squares to be stitched into shawls, but by second grade I was turning out a pair of socks a week. We were united in the war effort. Grand Lake would no more tolerate a Nazi in their midst than they would have tolerated a witch.” Her eyes narrowed as if she might make out witches or Nazis in her shop at the moment.
“That’s the point. No one knew he was a Nazi. He was a secret Nazi. Or I guess a secret ex-Nazi.” Until CG started pointing fingers and getting slapped on Main Street.
“Who? Who was this hidden Nazi?”
“I don’t know. My little diary writer uses a lot of initials and nicknames.”
“Well, what’s her nickname for this war criminal?”
“FW. Any idea who that could be?”
Barbara leaned on the counter on her elbows and drummed her fingers for a second. “Nope. Nothing’s coming to mind. I can’t think of anyone with the initials FW at all.”
“It might not be initials. It might be kind of a code.”
Barbara shook her head. “Still nothing.”
“So do you remember who lived in that house back then? A girl? I’m guessing she would have been a little older than you if she was the same age as my grandmother.”
Barbara squinched her eyes shut. “Nope. It’s kind of fuzzy.” She snapped her fingers. “I’ll dig out my old yearbook and look through and see if that jogs my memory at all.”
I sighed. “Thanks.”
Barbara went to a shelf and plucked a slim volume out. “Got it right here.”
“You keep your old yearbooks here at the store?” I was pretty sure I kept mine in a box at the back of my closet underneath a hair removal kit I bought from an infomercial during a fit of insomnia.
“You think I would keep an old dusty thing like this at my house?” She held up the book with the same look Dan got on his face holding up a dirty diaper.
Barbara’s house was all sleek leather, chrome, and glass and was very, very minimalistic. Dusty yearbooks would really have no place there.
Barbara plunked the yearbook down on the counter, opened it up, and started turning pages. “There’s your grandmother.”
I came around the counter so I could look over her shoulder. It was one of those classic black-and-white photos of a girl with a helmet of hair, a sweater, and pearls. The caption read: “Bubbles Conner. Most Likely to Swim the English Channel.” I ran my finger along the edge of her photo. “She looks nice.”
Barbara nodded. “As nice as they come. Well, not nice enough on occasion to be fun. Too much niceness gets boring sometimes.”
“If it helps you think about who might have lived here, Marta said something about Italians and Jews being trouble.” I felt icky just saying the words out loud.
Barbara smacked her head. “You should have said! Of course! Esther Brancato!” She flipped through the pages and jabbed a black-and-white photo with her index finger “That’s who lived in that house in the 1950s. Esther Brancato. She was two years ahead of me, class of 1954. Italian and Jewish.”
I turned the book to look at the photo. It was a little hard to make out much detail. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Her face a pale oval, held at a slight angle. Glasses that would be hipster now, but were probably just embarrassing and unattractive then. I traced the outline of her cheek with my finger. “What was she like?”
“Smart. Quiet. A good girl, but not a Goody Two-shoes, you know?” She smiled.
“Kind of. Anything you can remember in particular?” The face looking back at me from the yearbook looked so calm and peaceful. It was hard to connect it with the angsty, troubled girl from the diary.
“Oh, yes. Probably almost anyone who was around back then would. She disappeared.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Disappeared? When? How?”
“That part’s harder for me to remember. There were lots of rumors. She met an older man who seduced her away. She was abducted by white slavers or maybe aliens. She ran away to New York to be a writer. I don’t remember which one of them ended up being true.”
“Do any of her relatives still live around here? Is there anyone I could ask?”
Barbara shook her head. “Not that I know of. I think they moved away.”
“I wonder how I could find out.”
Dan. Dan would have all the files. “I’m not sure he’s much in the mood to help me out,” I said.
She shrugged. “You could start with the newspaper, then. They covered it pretty extensively.”
I pointed at her. “Good thinking.”
“It’s one of my specialties.” She cocked her head. “If you leave the diary with me, I could look it over, see if I can pick out anyone else.”
I started to agree, but then got a funny sensation. The same sensation I got when Antoine used to take bites of my meals without asking. I didn’t want to share. On the other hand, Barbara would be what Sheri had called a primary source. Maybe she would recognize people or descriptions. “How about I make a copy and drop it off to you later.”
“Sounds perfect.”
• • •
This first call came in at ten on Thursday morning. Sprocket and I had just left the copy shop and I’d started getting ready for my big afternoon. Fridays were my busy day. I had special orders up the wazoo. It was one of the few ways I was keeping my head above water as the shop was fixed up. I counted on those orders. I needed them. I’d prepare most of them Thursday evening so they’d be ready for pick up on Friday.
“Oh, hi, Rebecca. I thought I’d get your voice mail.” Wallace Thomas sounded weird.
Usually people were hoping to speak to real me when they called, but whatever. “Nope. You’ve got the actual me. What can I do for you?”
“I was, uh, calling to cancel my usual Friday order.” Wallace had ordered a dozen Kahlúa Caramel Balls and an order of Coco Pop Fudge every Friday for months. Every Friday. No exceptions.
“I hope everything’s okay. You’re not sick or anything, are you?” Wallace was a sweet guy.
“No. Nothing like that. Just doing something different this Friday.” He laughed a weird high-pitched giggle.
Not good timing for me for him to suddenly be experimenting, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, either. “Sure. I understand. I’ll see you next Friday.”
He made a funny noise in his throat and then said, “Uh, maybe not then, either.”
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