Paging the Dead

by Brynn Bonner

  “That won’t be happening,” I said.

  “Maybe she won’t even try,” he said. “I think she’s following up more reasonable leads. She says there’s a witness who saw someone in the vicinity of High Ground around the time Dorothy died.”

  “Really?” I asked, perking up despite the delay in my caffeine infusion. “Does she know who it was?”

  “The witness or the lurker?” Jack asked.

  “Either.”

  “Not that she was willing to tell me,” he said.

  Much as I wanted the info, the fact that Julie had been unwilling to share something with Jack just tickled me pink. What was wrong with me?

  “Gotta go,” Jack said. “I’m at the job site.”

  “Later,” I said. When I put back the receiver I noticed Esme’s coffee cup already in the sink. I thought I’d crawled out of bed before she did, for once.

  I went to the workroom and found her at the scanning station.

  “What time did you get up?” I asked. “It’s only seven-thirty.”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Figured I might as well do something productive.”

  I stood in the doorway sipping my coffee. We have an ironclad rule, no food or drink in the workroom. I told her about Jack’s failed tactic with Julie and about the lurker.

  “Good. Maybe this witness will break the case, but if not we’re gonna have to accept that this thing is going to take a while to run its course and there’s not much we can do to speed up the process.”

  “Since when did you get so zen? Yesterday you were ready to put on the boxing gloves and climb in the ring.”

  “I know,” she said, resting her elbow on the desktop and cradling her forehead with her hand.

  I set my coffee mug on the occasional table just outside the door and went to sit beside her. “You okay?” I asked, reaching over to clasp her arm.

  “Yes, I’m fine—sorta fine,” she said. “Another nighttime visit, but at least this time I know who it is. It’s Dorothy’s grandmother, Sarah. She’s reached out again. Seems we’re buddies now.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “What’d she have? Does she know who killed Dorothy?”

  “No, nothing that helpful,” Esme said. “As usual the message is open to interpretation.” She gave another heavy sigh as she carefully placed an old cabinet card photo of Sarah Malone Pritchett into a protective sleeve. “She says, and I’m quoting here: The time is nigh. All the black-winged ravens may come home to roost for no innocent will suffer.”

  “What is that, some kind of failed haiku? What does it mean?”

  “How I wish I knew, Sophreena. I swear I don’t understand why they ever started calling this thing a gift. Most times it’s more like a curse.”

  I picked up the protective sleeve and studied the photo of Dorothy’s grandmother. Sarah Malone Pritchett. It was a cabinet card, popular in the late 1800s and into the early 1900s. The paper photograph was affixed to a commercially produced mounting card with the name and location of the studio in elaborate calligraphy on the back. These images were larger than the older tintypes or ambrotypes. They could be viewed from a distance when they were set on a cabinet in the parlor, hence the name.

  Sarah Malone had been a hauntingly beautiful woman. As was the convention of the day, in this headshot she was looking off into the distance, not directly at the camera. She was smiling but it was a wistful, Mona Lisa smile. No say-cheese grins back then. Her hair was piled on top of her head and clasped with a jeweled sunburst. A matching brooch was pinned to the scooped-neck bodice of her fru-fru dress, which had all manner of gathers and ruffles and tulle puffs for sleeves. Neither her ears nor her peaches-and-cream neckline were adorned. The photograph had an ethereal quality to it and as I studied it somehow it didn’t seem unnatural that this woman would be contacting Esme from beyond the great divide.

  “Sarah Malone Pritchett seems to have something she needs to get off her chest. Let’s see what all we know about her.” I turned to the computer and started to open folders.

  “Sophreena, you do realize we only have a few days to finish all this, right? We’ve got to stay on task. That’ll have to wait.”

  Esme was right and I dutifully buckled down to work. We scanned for hours and hours, stopping only for a scarfed-down salad for lunch. By mid-afternoon I was sick of the hum of the motors and the strobe of the light. My back hurt and my bottom had gone completely numb. So when Winston tapped on the door announcing he’d brought fresh raspberry scones I wanted to kiss his feet.

  Esme asked for a few minutes to finish her stack of photos and I tried to admire her work ethic, but really I was just annoyed that she was keeping me from those scones.

  Obeying the workroom rules, Winston set the bag on the table outside and strolled in to marvel at the piles of material covering every available surface. He gave a long, slow whistle. “Whatever you two are getting paid, it’s not enough.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said. “I underbid. I had no idea there’d be this much material.”

  Winston pointed to a photograph on the top of a pile. “See there, told you she was a pretty girl. I think I remember this picture. Must have been her high school graduation.”

  “Right you are,” I said. “Nineteen fifty-seven.”

  Winston smiled. “Dorothy was the queen of the school, pretty, popular and from a wealthy family. I was a lowly freshman, the awkward offspring of a cabinetmaker and a grocery store clerk. Her daddy had hired me in the summertime to cut their grass and do little odd jobs around High Ground so she knew me. And she was very nice to me. Would always say hello to me in school and not stick her nose up and walk by like she couldn’t be bothered like most of the girls from up on Crescent Hill did.”

  I’ve always believed a good family history should put family dates and events into the context of their time, and I’ve been at this so long I now have a mental almanac that starts to run in my head at the mention of a date. “Nineteen fifty-seven,” I repeated slowly. “Eisenhower president, Sputnik launched, mob threatened nine black kids integrating Little Rock schools, Asian flu pandemic, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road published, new cars cost less than three thousand dollars and sported huge tail fins, gas at twenty-four cents a gallon, hula hoops and Slinkys the hot toys, and black and white TV premiered Leave It to Beaver and Perry Mason.”

  Winston chuckled. “It’s like you were there. Course, I was probably more concerned with where I was going to scrape up the money to go see Elvis in Jailhouse Rock at the movie theater over in Chapel Hill than with any of those things.”

  He picked up another photo safely tucked inside its protective sleeve and looked at it more closely, “That baby she’s holding in this one, that’s Ingrid, right?”

  “Right again,” I said. I raised my arms and stretched, trying not to drool as I thought of those scones out there waiting for me.

  “Dorothy was really attached to her baby sister, looked after her night and day. Mrs. Pritchett was a frail little woman and I think something went wrong when Ingrid was born. She never really recovered and died a couple of years later.”

  I glanced up at the timeline we had tacked up on the wall. “Yes, I think Dorothy would have been about twelve in that photo. Expecting a girl that age to take care of a baby all the time was a lot to ask.”

  “They had a nanny for a while, I think,” Winston said. “Or a governess or whatever you want to call it. Some gal they brought in from out in the country. Anyhow, she didn’t last long. Old William Pritchett was a hard man to work for; I can attest to that. Dorothy had to take on a lot of responsibility. Then after Mrs. Pritchett passed, William hired an older widow woman as a live-in housekeeper to cook and clean and look after Ingrid. Mrs. Stoddard was her name, cranky old fussbudget. Really, I think Dorothy still looked after Ingrid most of the time, or looked out for her anyway. You know how it seems like the baby usually gets doted on? Well, their daddy not only didn’t spoil Ingrid, he singled her out as a target for his meanness. He wa
s awful hard on her.”

  “Might have blamed her for his wife’s death,” Esme said. “That happens sometimes in situations like that.”

  “Could be.” Winston shrugged. “Though, truth be told, he didn’t seem that attached to his wife either. All I can say is it didn’t surprise me when Ingrid ran away.”

  Esme closed the lid to the scanner and clicked it off with a flourish. “Lead me to those scones, my dear man.”

  We fixed iced tea and went out onto the patio. It was hot out, but there was a breeze and it felt great to be outdoors.

  “I ran into Vivian Evans this morning,” Winston said. “She didn’t look too good. She’s taking Dorothy’s death hard.”

  “They’ve been close friends for a long time, I take it,” Esme said.

  “Not really,” Winston said, frowning. “I mean, maybe the close part, but not the long. There’s a big age gap. I think Vivian’s more Ingrid’s age. Vivian didn’t grow up here in town, though I think their families might’ve known each other. But Vivian and Dorothy surely got to know each other real well during Dorothy’s beautification campaign.”

  “Maybe that’s why they were close, they were joined in the cause,” Esme said.

  “Oh, no,” Winston said with a chuckle. “That’s not how it was at all. Vivian’s husband, Frank, owned a little diner right downtown. It’s the Sunrise Café now, but it used to be just a plain storefront diner. Didn’t even have a name. Everybody just called it the Diner. When the pressure came on the downtown businesses to pretty up their places Frank didn’t comply. He was barely holding on as it was and didn’t have a nickel to spare. When Dorothy pushed through all the new ordinances he couldn’t afford the upgrades and had to sell out.”

  “Dorothy put Vivian’s husband out of business?” I said. “And yet they became friends? How did that work?”

  “I’m not sure,” Winston said with a shrug. “Frank died not long after that—heart attack. Shame. He was only in his late forties. Maybe Dorothy felt bad. There’s some around who’d say she should have felt bad. I know she helped Vivian get started in her event planning business after that. It was a peculiar start to a friendship, I’ll grant you that, but it seemed like they got real close over the years.”

  I’d polished off my scone and I was ogling another one, which I didn’t need. I distracted myself by asking Winston how his research was going.

  “That’s one reason I came by,” he said. “I just had to tell y’all the latest.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “Got a call from that woman at the historical society down in South Carolina and she’s located a relative who has lots of information about the Lovett family. We had a long phone conversation this morning. Erik is his name. He lives up in Maryland, sounds like he’s not much older than my oldest grandson, but he’s graduated from college already. Smart fella and nice as he could be—”

  “What did you find out?” Esme cut in.

  “Sorry,” Winston said. “He says he’s got an old diary I need to read. He’s going to send me a digital copy.”

  “So you haven’t really found out anything concrete yet,” I said.

  “No particulars, but this fella says it’s certain my twelve fathered children with a slave woman and that I’m a descendant of theirs. But he tells me there’s lots more to the story and I shouldn’t judge the man until I know it all.”

  “Always good advice,” I said, thinking of how I’d judged Dorothy without knowing much about her life. I knew about her ancestors and had admiration for some of them, but I’d dismissed Dorothy as nothing more than a society matron with entitlement issues.

  Just then I heard the bells tolling at the Presbyterian church six blocks away: Dorothy’s church. I glanced at my watch. The funeral was over. Dorothy herself had now passed into the Pritchett family history.

  • • •

  When the day’s scanning was done I organized the electronic files while Esme set out the scrapbooking supplies on the long table in the middle of the room.

  As I was going through the folders I ran across a photo of the Pritchett ring I’d taken with my cell phone just after we found it. I’d completely forgotten about it with all that had happened afterward. It was a close-up shot and not the best quality, but not bad for a cell phone camera.

  Esme wasn’t happy but after some discussion we decided we needed to call Detective Carlson. If this had been a robbery the photo could be helpful to the case.

  When Carlson arrived an hour later he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He was off duty, though as he said, “Nobody’s gonna be really off-duty ’til this one closes.”

  I’d printed off the photo with the best resolution I could get and burned it onto a disc in case the department techies wanted to take a whirl at enhancing it.

  “What else do you know about this ring?” he asked, absentmindedly reaching to a breast pocket that wasn’t there. He seemed a little off his game without his trusty notebook and ballpoint. I slid a stack of sticky notes and a pen across to him.

  “We don’t know anything else about it,” I said. “But I’m sure it’s quite valuable.”

  “Seems odd, though,” Carlson said, almost to himself. “If robbery was the motive why didn’t they snatch the other stuff, too? She had on another impressive ring plus one of those tennis bracelets and earrings, all diamonds. And I’m pretty sure they were the real stuff. Why didn’t the perp take those?”

  “Interrupted?” I offered.

  Carlson pursed his lips. “Could be.”

  “The pearls, too,” Esme said, reluctantly joining the conversation. “Those weren’t cultured pearls, they were the real thing. A whole lot of oysters put up with a whole lot of aggravation to make those. They were very old. Dorothy told us her grandfather brought them back from the Orient. I expect they were expensive.”

  “Pearls?” Carlson said, frowning. Then he repeated the word, almost in a whisper, and I could see his mind was somewhere else.

  “Pearls,” Esme said impatiently. “She was wearing them when we saw her that day. Three strands around her neck?” She demonstrated by gesturing arcs across her chest, then her eyes grew wide. “Oh, dear Lord,” she said. “Was she strangled with the pearls?”

  Carlson scribbled something on the sticky note but didn’t reply.

  “You didn’t find her pearls,” Esme said, more a statement than a question.

  Again Carlson didn’t answer. He pulled off the sticky note and stuffed it in his jeans pocket. “Thanks for calling me about this,” he said, picking up the envelope with the photo.

  “You’re welcome,” Esme said, briskly. “Now did you talk to the gal at the gas station? Are we free to leave town?”

  “You planning a trip?” he asked.

  “No,” Esme answered. “But could we if we wanted to?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Carlson said with a shrug. “I did talk to the clerk and she remembers you being there. You’re free to do whatever you please. But I—we—may still have some questions. I hope y’all will make yourselves available if we do.”

  His eyes never strayed from Esme. I might as well have been a chair. As I watched a smile crinkle up the corners of his eyes, the dime finally dropped.

  Somebody was sweet on Esme.

  ten

  IN SUMMER ESME AND I TRY TO GET IN OUR WALK BEFORE IT gets too hot. This morning we were doing our routine three-mile loop, with a stop at the coffee shop at the halfway point. I get a lot more exercise on these outings than Esme does. For every stride she takes I have to take two. She claims I have the advantage of youth so she cuts me no slack.

  As we walked by the main administration building of Morningside High School on Parsons Street, Esme pointed. “I’ve been thinking about what Winston said about how much the town has changed. Is this what the high school looked like when you graduated?”

  “Pretty much,” I answered, trying not to huff and puff. “There’s a new football field and the music building was built since th
en. Everything’s been spruced up and there’s nicer landscaping, but other than that it hasn’t changed much.”

  “What year did you graduate?” she asked, and I noticed with some irritation that she wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

  “Nineteen ninety-eight,” I said. “Bill Clinton was president and embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal; Carl Wilson, my favorite Beach Boy, died that year and so did Linda McCartney, another favorite. The embassies were bombed, Hurricane Mitch hit Central America and killed a bunch of people and an earthquake in Afghanistan killed even more.”

  “I see,” Esme said. “Tell me, Sophreena, did anything good happen in 1998?”

  “I’m sure it did, but I was in a bad place so I guess I only noticed the bad. Let’s see, there was peace in Northern Ireland, that’s good. Europeans adopted the euro, is that good or bad?”

  “Jury’s still out,” Esme said. “How about music, movies, things you enjoyed?”

  “Let’s see, for movies it was Saving Private Ryan, Armageddon . . .”

  “Okay, let’s forget movies,” Esme cut in. “How about music?”

  “Green Day, Spice Girls, Alanis Morissette,” I rattled off. Esme made a face like she smelled something bad.

  “Television?”

  “X-Files,” I said. “I loved that show.”

  “Me, too,” Esme said. “It seemed like a documentary to me.”

  “Oh, and gas was a buck a gallon,” I added.

  “Now that’s enough to make a person nostalgic,” Esme said as we turned onto Sandhill Avenue.

  Esme and I are creatures of habit. We like taking the same route every day and I knew this stretch on Sandhill was the best time to bring up a delicate subject. At least going downhill I stand a chance of keeping up if she gets steamed and starts truckin’.

  “So what do you think of Detective Carlson?” I asked, trying for casual.

  Esme wasn’t buying it. “Say what you mean, Sophreena. Are you asking if I think he’s good at his job?”

  “Do you think he’s handsome?” I asked.

  “Yes, he’s a good-lookin’ man,” Esme allowed.