by Karen White
The water was everywhere, a constant presence that reminded me of a bear in the woods that needed to be kept at bay. From my front porch I could see the ebb and flow of the tides, the river leaching the water from the marsh twice a day, and then refilling it with stealth. It fascinated me as much as it terrified me, and I’d gotten in the habit of looking up the time for high and low tides during the day to reassure myself that the water wouldn’t come any closer to my house. Maybe that was why I hadn’t strayed too far, fearing that the water would creep too close if I weren’t there to keep watch.
“That would be nice. Thank you.”
Gibbes pulled out of the driveway and took a right on Bay Street, away from the downtown area, driving slowly so I could get a good view of the antebellum mansions that perched on the bluff like proud matrons surveying their domains.
He slowed in front of several of them, pointing out historical facts about the owners and about events that happened in the houses during the Revolutionary and Civil wars. The white clapboard Federal-style homes reminded me of Maine, but only briefly. The palmetto trees and giant magnolias in their front yards were an easy reminder that I was far from home.
“They call this one the Secession House,” Gibbes said, pointing to an antebellum mansion on Craven Street with a pink-painted first floor. “There’s an inscription on the basement wall in this house saying that the first meeting of secession in South Carolina was held there.”
I nodded, only half listening. Not because I wasn’t interested—I was. I loved history, and had enjoyed visiting historical sites with my father when I was a girl. There was something about the past; the reassurance that others had lived and loved and survived before me gave me something to cling to in the present. And Southern history was new to me. I’d studied the Civil War in school, of course, but to see the small Confederate flags on graves as we passed St. Helena’s churchyard made it somehow more relevant.
But mostly I was busy studying Gibbes and the relaxed way he held the steering wheel with only one hand, the other arm resting on his door. Cal had gripped the wheel with both hands, his jaw set as if he were ready for battle. And we’d rarely spoken on car trips. Saying the wrong thing in the small confines of a car would have had consequences I hadn’t wanted to contemplate.
“Merritt?”
I jerked my eyes to meet his and for a second I thought it was Cal. But only for a second, until I realized that just the eyes were the same. Ever since our trip into the marsh, I’d stopped seeing Cal when I looked at Gibbes. The marsh had exorcised that ghost, at least. Or maybe it was Gibbes himself who’d done that.
I realized he’d asked me a question. “I’m sorry. I must have been woolgathering. What were you saying?”
“I was asking how you and Cal met.”
“Oh.” I stared out the window at a small white clapboard church with colorful stained-glass windows. “There’s nothing much to say, really. It’s all in the past.”
“Those who refuse to acknowledge the past are condemned to repeat it.”
I glared at him. “You’re starting to sound like Loralee.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
I didn’t argue. Gibbes turned on his signal to take a left on a small street with weeds and grass escaping from large cracks in the asphalt. I felt an odd affinity for the spots of green, knowing what it felt like to think you’d escaped, only to be hit by the next oncoming car.
“My brother is dead, Merritt. But I started missing him a long time before that. I just want to know a little bit about him, about his life after he met you.” He paused, his fingers thrumming on the steering wheel to a beat only he could hear. “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable or sad.”
I looked down at my hands, wanting to tell him about the Cal I’d first met. The man who sensed my loneliness and filled up all the empty spaces in my heart. At first. But I couldn’t tell Gibbes any of that without telling him the rest. I don’t want to hurt you. I turned back to the window. We were back on Bay Street, passing the marina with the sleeping sailboats rocking lazily on the water, their sails folded like window shades. The tide was high, only the tips of the sea grass visible, and for a moment I imagined they were holding their collective breath, waiting to be pulled from the water.
I cleared my throat. “He came to the museum where I worked. He said he was there from the fire department and was doing a safety inspection.” I remembered myself stammering and flushing, completely taken off guard by the tall, strong fireman who couldn’t seem to stop looking at me. “He asked me out to dinner that night. We were married five months later.”
Gibbes didn’t say anything, and when I looked at him he seemed deep in thought.
“It’s funny, really,” I continued. “Because I found out later that he wasn’t officially a fireman yet—he’d applied, but he hadn’t been offered the job. After we were married, I was going through some paperwork and saw that the dates didn’t make sense. When I asked him, he said he’d seen me on the street and followed me to the museum and figured out an excuse to meet me.”
Gibbes parked the car in front of the Heritage Society offices, a converted Victorian house with pink fish-scale tiles and a green roof. He pulled the key from the ignition, but didn’t move right away. Finally he turned to me. “Didn’t you find that odd?”
My fingers plucked at the skirt of Loralee’s dress. “Not at first. I thought it was romantic. It wasn’t until . . . later. After we’d been married for a while. It was as if . . .” I stopped, remembering to whom I was speaking.
“It was as if what?”
It was getting warm in the car with the air conditioner off. I lifted my hand to my throat as if that would help me breathe. “It was as if he were a child who wanted a toy very badly, but then lost interest as soon as it was his.” I met Gibbes’s eyes. “Every time he looked at me, it was like he expected to see somebody else.”
The words stung as they exited my mouth, and I realized I’d never spoken them out loud before. Maybe being a doctor made Gibbes a good listener, or maybe I was desperate to dissect my marriage, to understand where I’d gone wrong, and it didn’t matter who was available to listen.
“The man you’re talking about wasn’t my brother.”
I reached for the door handle, eager to get out of the truck and suck in the thick, heavy air. The metal slipped from my hands twice until Gibbes reached across and pulled it for me. I slid from the SUV and leaned against the door, breathing heavily, my skin clammy with sweat.
“I’m sorry, Merritt. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just . . .” He shook his head. “My brother was so shy around girls. He always had a girlfriend, but that’s because they usually threw themselves at him so that he couldn’t say no. And they . . .” He stopped.
“They what?” I prompted.
“They weren’t like you at all. They weren’t like any girls we went to school with, or even like my grandmother or her friends.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
Gibbes glanced at his watch. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”
I didn’t press him for an answer as we headed toward the front door, but only because I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.
The building smelled like an old house—of wood polish, cedar, and the faint aroma of ashes from the fireplaces. Heavy Victorian furniture filled the foyer and was set up much like I imagined it would have been when it was a home, complete with lace doilies thrown over the backs of upholstered chairs.
Cynthia Barnwell was in the front parlor at a large rosewood desk with heavily carved legs, an ancient computer monitor and keyboard on top. I heard the click-clack of the keys as we walked in, and she peered over bifocals at us and smiled.
“So good to see you both. I can’t tell you how much my granddaughter enjoyed last Saturday with Owen. She just can’t stop talking about it. I warn you, though: She’s already planning your next outing.”
“We all had a good
time, and Maris is a lovely girl,” I said. “I’m so glad Owen’s met a friend before school starts.”
Cynthia’s face got serious. “I know it’s early, but I would suggest putting in his application for Beaufort Academy as soon as possible. I’ll be happy to send a recommendation.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But I’m not sure Loralee wants to send Owen to private school. Regardless, the decision really isn’t mine.”
Cynthia frowned. “Well, she definitely expressed interest in Beaufort Academy when I spoke with her, and she asked me to send her some information. It’s where Maris goes, and we couldn’t be happier with her education.”
I wasn’t going to discuss Loralee’s financial status, so I let the subject drop, making a mental note to ask Loralee about it later. “We have an appointment to see Deborah. Is she in?”
“Oh, yes, and she’s expecting you. Her office is at the top of the stairs, first one on the right.”
We thanked her and headed up the long, straight staircase, holding on to the thick, dark wood of the banister as the old steps creaked beneath our weight.
Deborah’s office more closely resembled a library’s archive room, with four walls covered with shelves, leaving space only for the window and stacks of papers teetering on and around the perimeter of a metal teacher’s desk. I didn’t spot her until a loud thud came from a spot in the room behind us, and we turned to find Deborah standing on a tall stepladder, her arms overstuffed with books, the one on top threatening to join its partner in crime on the floor, where it lay with spine splayed, like a dead bird.
Gibbes reached up and took the stack of books from her, then stayed beside her while she carefully made her way down the steps. “Thank you,” she said, peering over her glasses at him. “If you could put them on my desk, I’d appreciate it.”
There were no exposed parts on her desk, so I began carefully stacking folders and books to make room. I noticed two small frames perched precariously on the edge, both containing photos of the same two cats. There were no photos of children or grandchildren, just the cats. I wondered whether, after Loralee and Owen were gone, and Gibbes had finished taking what he wanted from the house, and I was alone again, I’d need to get a cat or two to keep me company. The thought stung more than I cared to admit.
Deborah wore a quilted vest with appliqués of cats and balls of yarn. Her khaki pants were pulled up higher than current fashion dictated, and she wore the same sensible shoes she’d had on when she visited the house. But her eyes were bright with anticipation, and when she clasped her hands in front of her, I almost expected her to rub them together with glee.
“Thank you both for coming. And it’s so good to see you, Gibbes. I haven’t seen you since your grandmother’s funeral.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve been working hard. One of the doctors has been out on maternity leave, so we’ve all been a little busier than usual.”
She’d said it so bluntly that I wondered whether she wasn’t originally from Beaufort. I knew she’d babysat for Cal’s father, but that would have been when she was a teenager. And she didn’t sound anything like Loralee—or Gibbes for that matter—where syllables were added to even the shortest words, and consonants were sometimes dropped completely.
“Are you from Beaufort, Ms. Fuller? I can’t place your accent.”
Her eyes continued to sparkle, and I could describe them only as mischievous. “I’m a true Beaufortonian. My family has owned land here since the original land grants. As for my accent, my mother taught me how to speak correctly, without a lazy drawl, and to clip the ends of my words. Some people mistake it for a New England accent.”
I smiled, thinking I knew now why I’d taken a liking to her when I’d first met her. “The last time I saw you, you said you had something here that I might be interested in seeing.”
She nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes. And Gibbes, too, I would suspect. Follow me.”
She took a lanyard off a hook screwed into the side of one of the bookshelves, about a dozen keys dangling from the end. It looked handmade, with needlepoint cats marching up and down the length of it.
Deborah stopped in front of a closed door and turned to us with a secret smile before sorting through the keys. “We only open up this room by appointment. It’s full of miscellaneous historical artifacts that have been either purchased for or donated to the society by residents who wish to preserve a piece of their family history.” She stuck a key in the old lock, then opened the door, letting it swing wide in front of us. “Take a look.”
Gibbes and I stole a glance at each other before heading inside. It took me a moment before my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Heavy shades were drawn over the windows to block out the harsh South Carolina sun, and the double-bulb light fixture in the porcelain shade on the ceiling did little to illuminate the room and its contents.
Small vitrines were set against one wall, displaying pieces of jewelry, portrait miniatures, and pocket watches. Larger pieces of furniture were set randomly around the room, with handwritten descriptions on cardboard plaques set in ornate wood frames. An antique rocking horse, a baby’s cradle, and a modern mannequin wearing a nineteenth-century dress complete with hoop skirt and feathered bonnet were crowded in one corner of the room, allowing for a labyrinthine path through the artifacts.
I met Gibbes’s gaze and he shrugged, confirming that, like me, he had no idea what we were looking for. He lifted a corset from a pile of linens and waggled his eyebrows, and I smiled before I could stop myself.
I turned to Deborah. “Ms. Fuller, was there something in particular that you wanted us to see?”
“Absolutely,” she said, not bothering to mask a simmering excitement. “Over here.” She walked toward a heavy rocking chair that looked like it had been made for a giant, and began tugging on the arms to slide it backward.
“Let me,” Gibbes said, taking over and moving it easily on the wood floorboards, revealing a small end table behind it. On top of the table sat a large open shoe box on its side that was suddenly and horribly familiar.
“Where did this come from?” Gibbes asked, his voice clipped.
“The Beaufort Police Department. Your grandmother made it.”
Gibbes stared at the older woman. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. What is this?”
“She never told you?”
He shook his head. “No.”
It was her turn to stare at him. “It’s a crime-scene re-creation based on a real case. Surely you’ve heard of Frances Glessner Lee.”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gibbes said.
Her lips clamped together, like a teacher disappointed with a star pupil’s performance. She took a deep breath. “Edith’s father was a detective in the Walterboro Police Department, and she was always interested in his work and probably would have become a detective herself if she’d been born later. In those days it was unheard-of for a woman to have such a profession. But she was quite artistic and studied art in college. It was there that Edith found out about Frances Glessner Lee. Frances founded the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in 1936—a precursor to modern forensics in this country.”
She looked at us, expecting us both to nod our heads in recognition. When neither of us did, she continued. “Frances created her crime-scene boxes in order to train detectives to assess visual evidence. She called them the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, after a well-known police saying: ‘Convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell.’ Edith, with her background in art and her knowledge of detective work, began making her own for her father’s cases and then, after her marriage, for the local police department.”
Gibbes and I moved closer to study the contents of the shoe box. It was a 1950s-style office, with no electronics in sight, but with a black telephone on the corner of a wooden desk, its coiled cord neatly wrapped around the neck of a male doll lying on an Oriental rug next to the desk. A miniature pencil holder had been upended o
n the desk, tiny pencils scattered on the surface like toothpicks. A framed photo of a woman with two children was placed prominently in the center of the desk, right in the middle of the pencils. The man’s eyes protruded slightly from his cloth face, the knot of his necktie still taut around his blue-stained doll neck.
“In this particular case, the man was stepping out on his wife with his secretary, and she caught them together. The wife came into the office when her husband was working late at night and made sure that he wouldn’t be doing that anymore. She would have gotten away with it, too.” She pointed to the framed photo. “That was the biggest clue—the placement of the frame, obviously done after she’d strangled him. Notice how his chair is facing away from the desk. She was able to overpower him because of the element of surprise.”
Gibbes and I regarded Deborah Fuller with renewed interest.
“You’re very familiar with my grandmother’s work?” he asked.
The older woman nodded. “I dropped out of law school and returned to Beaufort to nurse my mother in the last years of her life. Edith and I became good friends, even though she was closer to my mother’s age than my own. That’s how I first learned about her work for the police. She was very private about it.”
Gibbes shook his head. “I had no idea.”
“Yes, well, not many people knew. She kept it mostly to herself. Her husband didn’t approve, you see. There were more, but after Cal left she asked the police department to return them to her. She never told me why. This one was being used at a police academy in Georgia, which is why it was left behind. I was hoping that perhaps you’d find the rest in the house.”
She looked at me with hopeful eyes.
I swallowed. “Yes. We found them. In the attic. I’d say about ten of them. It was quite a surprise.”
“They’re extraordinary, aren’t they?” she said. “And the attention to detail is really remarkable. Pencils actually write, rocking chairs rock back and forth to the exact degree as the original, and every detail—a newspaper headline, blood splatter on the wall, an outdated wall calendar—becomes a potential clue to the crime.”