“When’s the dance, Lily?”
“In two weeks. Why?”
“Just don’t show anyone else the necklace just yet, okay? I think I have something that will just set it off. Give me a few days, will you?
Lily’s glance told me she thought I was short a few circuits, but she agreed.
When I showed the earring, that I had kept in my jewelry box for so many years to Miss Harriet, she was stunned. She sank down into a chair beside the portrait of Emily. One hand on her cheek, she examined the earring, turning it over in her hand.
“Maggie, can you get the other one from Aunt Emily’s jewelry case?”
I’d like to say I tore up the stairs two at a time, but these legs don’t do that anymore. I felt almost as wobbly as Miss Harried looked as I handed the matching earring to her. She held both filigree earrings out before her, each topaz glittering inside its silver basket as the two swung slowly in her trembling fingers.
“These are Aunt Emily’s jewels.” A few tears slid down her wrinkled cheek.
“Miss Harriet, there’s someone I want you to meet. Would you come into town tomorrow for a special visit? I’ll come pick you up.”
I set my stage with such great care that I should have received a prize. I told Lily I had a surprise for her and Mrs. Yoder and I wanted to introduce her to a friend of mine. I stressed it was important that she not tell Rosa anything. Everyone loves a secret and Lily’s eyes sparkled as she agreed. I called Miss Harriet to arrange to pick her up, but she had made her own plans.
“Thank you Maggie. Eddie will drive me into Tuxford. He knows where Mrs. Yoder lives. I’ll be there at half past two.”
I mentally crossed my fingers and told Donny my plans. She agreed to pull herself away from the office for about an hour and meet me at Mrs. Yoder’s house. Donny’s curiosity was as intense as mine and we arrived at the same time. Lily met us at the door and led us to the book room. Mrs. Yoder sat in her usual chair beside the low table.
“I always enjoy a visit from you, Maggie and you too, Ms. Thatcher but, had I known, I would have asked Lily to prepare something special.”
“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Yoder. Lily can fetch tea later. Right now, I have something else for her to do.” I pulled Lily to the side and whispered a few words in her ear. She smiled, nodded and left the room. I sat down beside Mrs. Yoder and took her hand. “I have taken it upon myself to invite another friend of mine to join us. I hope you won’t mind. I have a special reason.”
“Of course I don’t mind, my dear. Who is your friend?” Just then I heard the slam of a car door. I jumped to my feet. “I’ll be right back.”
Eddie Coblet helped Miss Harriet up the steps as gently and carefully as though she was one of her china cups. I held open the door for both of them.
“I have some errands to take care of Miss Harriet. I’ll come back as soon as I finish and wait in the car.” Eddie nodded to both of us and clattered down the steps.
Miss Harriet followed me along the short entry hall, her steps and posture stately and deliberate. We entered the book room, where I introduced her to Mrs. Yoder.
“Miss Harriet Washburn, Mrs. Rosa Yoder.” She gave a small bow to Mrs. Yoder and sat in the fat plum chair opposite her.
“Miss Harriet do you have the items I asked you to bring?” She nodded. I went to the foot of the stairs and called Lily.
Miss Harriet nodded and smiled. “Maggie, you’re being very mysterious. Why?”
Donny stood behind her looking ready to burst with suppressed curiosity.
Lily followed me into the room. She wore her new gold dress. She had pulled her dark hair up onto the top of her head in a cluster of curls, leaving one curl hanging down to bounce against her shoulder. She was a vision of gold. She wore the silver necklace with the topaz pendant.
I motioned her forward to meet Miss Harriet. She held out her hand to her, but Miss Harriet sat like a marble statue in a black suit. I felt as though we were all caught in a snapshot. Nobody moved for what seemed a very long time. Finally, Miss Harriet made a small soft sound.
“Where did you get that necklace, my dear?” she asked in a ragged whisper.
Lily touched the pendant.
“It belonged to my mother. I don’t remember her; she died when I was just a baby. Pops, my grandfather gave it to me on my eighteenth birthday.”
“May I see it?” Miss Harriet whispered. Lily took off the necklace and handed it to her. She shot me a look full of questions. I nodded and winked at her.
Miss Harriet held the necklace in both hands shaking her head slowly. With a deep sigh she silently handed it back to Lily.
“What was your mother’s name--Lily, is it?”
“Her name was Allilie.”
Miss Harriet reached for her handbag. She took out a tissue and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. Then she pulled out a small box.
“My dear Lily, the necklace you’re wearing, once belonged to my aunt, Emily Washburn. These also go with it. I’d like you to have them to wear with your necklace.”
Lily opened the box and her eyes widened at the sight of the matching earrings.
“I don’t know what to say.” She sat down on the nearest chair with a little thump, staring at the filigree earrings.
I motioned to Donny to follow me. They needed some time and Donny and I were in the way. We clattered around in the kitchen and made tea. Donny found the tin of cookies and spilled some into a shallow bowl. When the tea was ready, and we thought we had dawdled long enough, we carried the tray back to the book room.
I invited Eddie inside to have some cookies, too. Mrs. Yoder called Miss Harriet’s attention to the photo album on the table. When Eddie saw Lily in her golden dress, looking like a candle flame, he stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth forming a silent whistle. I introduced them, then stood aside, observing. I could almost see the sparks.
At the risk of appearing more nosy than usual, I followed Lily upstairs to her room. She placed the necklace and earrings in a small box, and slipped off her dress, hanging it carefully in the closet.
“Maggie,” she said, as she pulled on her jeans and shirt, “I feel like I’ve wandered into someone’s daytime opera. It seems that I’m related to Miss Harriet. There’s so many years between then, and now, but I guess she would be my great aunt.” She started crying. “I wish I could tell Pops about her. After he died, I was so alone until I found Rosa. Now I have not only a great grandmother, I have a great aunt, too. Pops would be so pleased. Family was very important to him.”
“I’ve been searching for the last few weeks for information about Emily Washburn. I can fill in some of the gaps for you.” I noticed an old book lying on her dresser. I picked it up. “What’s this?”
“It belonged to my mother, too. I think it’s a diary, but I haven’t read it. I looked at it once, but it’s in some language I don’t know, and besides a lot of the writing is pretty faded.”
When Lily and I returned to the book room, Rosa and Miss Harriet were side-by-side, busy turning pages in the photo albums. Eddie stood over by a window, munching cookies.
Lily knelt beside Rosa’s chair.
“Rosa, I have this old book that Pops gave me along with the necklace. I can’t read it, I don’t understand the language, but he told me it belonged to my mother, too. Maybe you’d like to look at it.” She placed it in Rosa’s lap.
Mrs. Yoder patted Lily’s cheek.
“Dear child. This afternoon has been so amazing, so wonderful. I have finally learned about Roberta. It means more to me than you can imagine. I promise I’ll look at your book later.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The puzzles of Emily Washburn and Max Williams had occupied all my thoughts almost from the time I arrived in Tuxford and I felt as weary as I had when I left home. I decided I needed a day off, so after breakfast next morning, I set out to explore the rest of the town to see what had changed and what was still the same.
Main Street us
ed to be where everything important was located. It still was. Carver’s drug store still squatted on the corner of Main and Harrison. The blue and white tile floor was still bright, although worn. The tall, round stools huddled close to the counter as though protecting it. The seats were now blue instead of red, but they still twirled around when I climbed, a little awkwardly, onto one. When I was in high school, my friends and I stopped here after school many afternoons. On cold afternoons, we ordered hot chocolate and it was served with a fat marshmallow floating on the top. Today, I asked for a cherry phosphate. The child-like clerk stared at me and squirted a stream of cherry flavor into a Cola. I guess he never heard of a cherry phosphate.
Next to Carver’s drugs stretched a row of storefront windows, some full of displays, others empty with little rolls of dust and scraps of paper in the corners. Small towns have a singular charm with their storefronts built out to meet the sidewalk and the corner buildings sliced off at an angle. A grocery across the street displayed crates of potatoes and apples outside. The small step up into the angled doorway had curved into a smile by the years of wear.
I sauntered along the east side of the street past a shoe store, the old newsstand that was now a used bookstore. After browsing through tempting old books, I continued on to the lodge hall, then crossed to the west side of the street and past the Knick-Knack shop that used to be the Five-n-Dime where I got my first job. Two brick-faced steps took me up into the Fashion Shoppe where the windows displayed a beautiful and creative assortment of handbags and scarves.
***
When I was ten, Mother made me a new dress for my birthday. It was blue with little flowers sprinkled all over. She had a special collar made by the seamstress at Mercers. When it was ready, Mother handed me a coin purse with some money and sent me to fetch the finished collar. The new collar had a row of hem stitching along the edge that added that special touch of elegance to my new dress. I have always remembered Mercers as the hem stitching place. That store is now the Fashion Shoppe, and it still smells like fabrics and new purses.
Although the smells were as I remembered, everything else was different. I moved along past the glass showcases slowly, studying the assorted displays, when a piercing voice shot out over the chatter of shoppers. I recognized her instantly, and turned to see an old classmate who was apparently in charge, and in the process of giving someone a chewing out. I stepped around a display of straw handbags and managed to edge up behind her. The unfortunate clerk’s eyes slide in my direction, her face red as she endured the tirade. When it concluded, and the clerk turned away, I drawled out in my best, bored voice.
“You always did have a voice that could cut a tree in half, Gladys.”
“What?” She turned. “Maggie! What in hell are you doing here?” She didn’t give me time to answer, just grabbed my arm and dragged me after her into her office. “It’s so good to see you. How long have you been in town? How long are you staying?”
We talked almost an hour, interrupted occasionally by some business matter. Gladys always was a waterfall of gossip. She brought me up to date on other classmates, told me her story of love, disillusionment, divorce and her shop. “You and Mac are so fortunate, Maggie. Max and I didn’t get along from the beginning, but I was foolish enough to think we could make it work.”
“Max?”
“Yeah. Max Williams. When we split up, I took my name of Thompson back.”
I sat in shock. Absolutely no one had mentioned Max being married to anyone. I wondered why.
“Gladys, I didn’t know. No one ever mentioned it.”
“I’m not surprised. Very few people liked Max. As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone liked him. I thought he was a great guy, at first. Always attentive; extremely handsome; took me to meet his parents although he treated them more like servants than family. His poor, little mother was so nice to me and she absolutely doted on her Max even though he treated her like shit. That’s another story, and I have to take care of this customer. Maggie, meet me for lunch at Dutton’s and I’ll tell you about her.”
***
I continued my stroll, going around past the place where my old school used to stand. I loved school with its collection of smells and sounds, like the tangy odor of freshly sharpened pencils; their stiletto points rapidly wearing to dull bluntness. The oily smell of new crayons; I know they all taste like paraffin, but I always thought I could smell the difference between the purple and the orange. The schools of today are marvelous with their technology and special programs but I wonder whether they have any character. Things like the little personality quirks that develop in old buildings; the squeak in the floor by the entry; the cloakroom smell of wet jackets and boots. Lockers didn’t appear until high school. There was no cafeteria, most everybody walked home for lunch. Those that couldn’t go home brought sandwiches and ate at their desks.
Promptly at noon, I met Gladys Thompson at Dutton’s and listened to a biography of the Williams family as we ate club sandwiches and salad.
“Max’s mother’s name was Elspeth, his father’s Kurt. When they came to the States, he changed the name from Wilhelm to Williams. He wanted to get as far away from the bad memories as possible, I guess. The way Elspeth described him, Kurt had magic in his hands when he touched his beloved plants. He was the head gardener of Baron Kasselhoff’s estate. People would come from miles around to stare in amazement at his floral displays. He was never happier than when he worked in his greenhouse with the new plants.
“When their son, Maximillian, was just beginning to toddle about, Elspeth would guide him to the gardens and let him play at planting just as Papa did using small stones as seeds. Max was a happy child, never still for an instant from the moment he awoke until he dropped asleep at night.
“Elspeth saw the soldiers when she went to the market one Friday. The shopkeeper didn’t talk to her except to take her order for supplies. He took her money quickly and almost pushed her out of his shop. Elspeth was hurt at first, then angry. Finally, when she stopped to pick up Wilhelm’s boots from the repair shop, she learned the terrible truth.
“Soldiers swept through the tiny village like a plague, scattering families, sending the men one direction, the women another and the children off to special schools. But the word got around that the schools were really training camps. Max was only six years old and had just started school. The old Baron urged Kurt to take Elspeth and leave immediately. They were to wait at an address the Baron gave them and he would bring their son to them as soon as he could arrange it. Elspeth cried so hard she could hardly see as she frantically packed as much as they could carry and she and Kurt escaped. They waited in the cramped, dingy hovel where Baron Kasselhoff had instructed them, but he never came. At last, word reached them that the Baron’s estate had been burned to the ground and the Baron and his family shot.
“They had no choice but to leave. Kurt and Elspeth made their way out of the country and, after a long exhausting journey, reached Tuxford. She told me she felt ‘almost safe’ here in the middle of the biggest country she had ever seen, but she missed her baby.” Gladys took a sip from her glass. “Maggie, she baked incredible little cakes for me and cried whenever she talked about her precious Max.”
By the time Gladys finished her story, her lunch hour was over, and I felt a twist of desolation at the Williams’ loss. She gulped the rest of her tea and pushed back her chair.
“I’d better get back. It’s been great, Maggie.”
As we walked back Gladys’ shop, she told me about life with Max.
“After we were married he changed. He became rude, abusive, called me names and said he didn’t want children because they wouldn’t be pure. I put up with all that for a while but, when he finally explained what he meant about ‘pure children’, I marched down to the first lawyer I could find and filed for divorce. That lawyer turned out to be Willie Manning. Ironic isn’t it? I mean Willie’s wife and Max were an item once, too.” We reached her shop and Gladys
dropped into a chair, and pulled off her shoes. She leaned back with a long sigh.
“I got the impression from Faith Manning that Max could be quite obnoxious,” I said.
“You talked to Faith? Well, she’s right. Max Williams was an arrogant S.O.B. It was only on his good days he was obnoxious. He thought all women were at his disposal. He had his own twisted idea of perfection, I guess.”
“Did Max have any children?”
“A couple, I think. There was a girl that worked out at Grover’s Stables and the teacher over in Marion and a couple of waitresses at the J-10 truck stop and lord knows how many others. That poor teacher lost her job; had to move away. Max was bad news, Maggie.”
“Gladys, was there anyone throughout all this time that would have hated Max Williams enough to kill him?”
“Ha! Maggie, you’d have to take a number and stand in line. Max used people the way most of us use paper napkins.” She sat quiet for once, pursing her lips and nodding slightly. “There was one girl named Angie Harris, or Harvester, something like that. She had an adorable, little boy who looked just like Max. They said she paid a visit to his home once, met Mrs. Williams, and Grandma cried over the boy, hugged Angie and made quite a ruckus. When Max found out, he stormed around the shop scared everyone half to death. A week later, there was a terrible accident on Highway 12, over by Cicero. A car tried to make it across the tracks in front of the 12:30 train and failed. It was Angie and her little boy.” She pointed at me. “Our garage was full of tools and car parts, like you wouldn’t believe. He said once that he was in charge of teaching mechanics before he came to Tuxford. He was a superior mechanic and was trained on every kind of engine ever invented. After I heard about Angie’s accident, I wondered whether Max had anything to do with it. And I’ve always suspected he must have tinkered with the furnace in his parents’ home, because he just happened to be away on business the night they died.”
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