by Etta Faire
“Most of ‘em are already pretty revolting,” Dr. Dog laughed from across the room.
The mayor chuckled. “It’s funny how famous you think you are. I doubt losing the Purple Pony would even make the papers.” He tsk-ed. “And to think, I had such high hopes for that seance to help y’all out over here. Such a shame. Heard it got cancelled.”
“You heard wrong,” Rosalie said, coming out of the backroom. “It’s actually going on, for free. Here at the Purple Pony. There’s a demand for it, from my new clientele. The college kids.”
“The college? Everyone hates the college. They’re out-of…” he stopped himself.
“Out-of-towners?” I said through gritted teeth. I took a deep breath. “Yes, most of them are. And so am I. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested in an accident that involved a couple of out-of-towners, even though it happened way back when. And that reminds me. I’m actually glad you’re here, Mayor Bowman. I have some questions for you about that night. Thank you for saving me the trip in to see you.” I strutted across the room to the checkout counter, a new-found confidence in my step.
I grabbed my purse and plopped it on the counter, careful not to let his aunt’s notebook out. “Let me just find my recorder. You don’t mind if I record your answers, do you?” I said, sifting through my stuff. I looked up when the wind chime clanged again. He and Dr. Dog were gone, for now.
I turned to Rosalie. “When were you going to tell me about the rent?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t even cuss. She just put her head down and shuffled into the backroom again. I grabbed my phone from my purse and texted Lynette about the seance. This needed to be my best one yet.
Chapter 23
A Little Bird Told Me
On my way up Gate Hill, it hit me. B wants article on FM. DS driving him crazy. Bury it.
B had to be Bill. I was guessing FM was Feldman Martin. But who or what was DS? Not too many people in life were allowed to drive Bill Donovan crazy.
I put my car into park, flicked on the overhead light, and went back to that page. I glanced up at my gas tank to make sure I had enough gas not to get stranded on Gate Hill, seeing how I no longer had rations.
Then, I checked through every page. Sure enough, in between the egg-nog recipes was an almost complete article about Feldman-Martin, including scribbled notes in the margin that read, “Bury behind the recipes, just before Santa’s mall location.”
Local Financial Firm to Close Its Doors Early Next Year
After forty years, local brokerage firm Feldmen Marten is going out of business amid allegations of fraud and embezzlement with a scheme some experts are calling reminiscent of Charles Ponzi.
The firm allegedly took money from new clients to pay off earlier investors until too many clients demanded payment and it became apparent that they could not cover the amounts.
“It’s devastating to realize you’ve been a victim,” Mrs. Delilah Scott said, of Potter Grove. “You trust people and consider them family.”
DS was Delilah Scott, Bill’s cousin. The only person allowed to drive Bill crazy over a bad investment, and probably the only reason the article about Feldman Martin had even been written.
Carefully, I inched my car around so I could head back down Gate Hill without getting stuck in the snowbanks around me.
Ten minutes later, I found myself trudging up the front walkway to Delilah Scott’s door. I actually had no idea if she was even home. Ninety-year-olds rarely strayed from home, except this one.
Delilah Scott liked to go on safaris to exotic lands when the weather here in Wisconsin didn’t suit her tastes. My breath surrounded me in a puffy, frozen cloud as I scanned the snow piling up along her garden boxes. I could not imagine this suiting anyone’s tastes.
Delilah’s cottage could only have been described as “straight out of a storybook.” It was cream colored with dark green accents and a rich chocolate colored roof that made you want to eat it. Or maybe I was the only one who got hungry over roofs. I made a mental note to my growling stomach that I would replenish my emergency car rations as soon as I got home.
I knocked at the door, surprised when it opened. Delilah Scott looked around her front porch when she saw me. “Come on in,” she said like she’d been expecting someone else. She motioned for me to hurry inside and offered me tea. The room smelled like vanilla and chamomile, and I couldn’t accept the offer fast enough.
I’d only met Delilah a few times, but this was the first time I’d ever been inside her house, which was equally as adorable on the inside, decorated with the kind of handcrafted antiques that were designed to outlive all of us. They were at least a hundred-years strong and just getting stronger.
She motioned for me to sit on one of her claw-footed stuffed chairs that looked a lot like a throne. Her silky turquoise blouse billowed with every movement as she casually peeked around the curtains of her bay window.
I looked around, too, immediately noticing there wasn’t a TV, but there were a lot of properly bookmarked books and notebooks at every accent table, unlike my books that got dog-eared or left opened on their spines.
“I heard you were investigating the boating accident from the 1950s,” she said.
“Yes, the accident,” I replied, emphasizing the word accident so she’d know I didn’t really think it was one. “And, in my research, I keep coming across the Feldman Martin scandal. Can you tell me more about that? I read you were one of the victims.”
“It wasn’t just me, dear,” she began. “Most of the well-to-do in town were taken in by it.”
She poured my tea from a shiny silver tea set already sitting on the coffee table, making me wonder if she lived this way, prepared for guests at a moment’s notice, or if she’d been expecting someone else when I showed up.
She went on. “Dwight was a friend, and it hurt to have him rob me and my husband. He claimed he was innocent. It was always the firm’s fault. They had refused to pay him his owed commissions and they were unduly blaming him for their financial woes. The firm said Dwight had embezzled millions from their clients. There were lawsuits filed and then Dwight Linder had his accident, so we’ll never know.”
“I assume there was an investigation.”
“The firm quietly closed its doors, yes, but as one of the victims, I can tell you we did not receive anything. The whole thing was tainted in speculation, rumor, and sneaky trails of paperwork. I never talked to Bill again. He was the one who told me to trust this.”
“Your cousin,” I said. How could this sweet, refined woman be related to the man who beat Gloria to a pulp? “Did Bill get swindled too?”
She chuckled. “Nobody swindled Bill.”
And lived to tell about it… I thought, but didn’t say.
“Tell me about the investment.”
“By the time my husband and I invested, it was already the talk of the town,” she said. “I was actually mad at Bill for not letting us in on it sooner. I obviously regret that.”
“You seem to be doing all right,” I said, looking around.
“Yes. Thankfully, we were one of the lucky ones who didn’t put everything into it. We were all issued promissory notes, some mumbo-jumbo about investing in Eurodollars after the war that were unregulated by the Federal Reserve.” She paused to sip her tea. “It was really just a pyramid scheme that went on for years, earlier investors being paid by newer ones. That’s all I remember. You’d have to ask someone from Feldman Martin if you want more specifics. ”
“Do you know of anyone,” I asked. “I’d also like to find out what happened from their end.”
She laughed. “May I remind you I am over 90? I doubt too many of us are still around who can tell you much…” she stopped herself. “No, I do know someone. I was surprised to see her when I visited a friend at Landover Assisted Living a couple months ago. Dwight Linder’s secretary. Waved to me from across the room as if we were friends. I could’ve strangled her.”
“I’m sure the poor wo
man had no idea about the firm she worked for,” I said.
Delilah pursed her lips. “I don’t know about that. She married one of the firm’s owners right after the scandal. Tell me that’s not suspicious. Name’s Bertie Martin. I knew her as Bertie Hawthorne back then.”
Somehow, I held in my tea, refusing to do a spit-take all over the thousand-dollar Oriental rug under my feet, mostly because I’d probably be asked to pay for it. Bertie Hawthorne was the girl in the bird attack. I thanked Delilah for the tea then headed out the door.
Glancing over at the last second, I caught the older woman writing something into a notebook on the coffee table, a small glass bird sitting just to the right of her. And my heart flopped into my stomach. From the angle I was standing at, she looked just like the picture of the woman in the scrapbook with the bird figurine, on one of the pages marked “Signs.”
She closed the notebook before I could see what she was writing then stood to walk me to the door.
“Interesting figurine,” I said, motioning toward the bird. “Funny, there’s a picture of one just like it in a scrapbook I found at Gate House.”
“I’m sure it only looks similar. This is one of a kind, and has been in my family for generations.” She smiled. “I adore crystal sparrows, though, mostly because they symbolize spring. Changes. Things coming to light. And new beginnings to follow. Some people fear change. Almost as if they’re afraid to choose sides. Me? I’m having a hard time waiting this winter out.”
We walked to the door, and I somehow stopped myself from asking just what in the hell was going on here. Why had she suddenly started talking in some sort of cryptic, poetic riddles? And if that crystal bird was one of a kind, how did she just recreate a photo I had sitting in my scrapbook, down to the angle of the back of her head in relation to the bird and the notes?
I stopped at the door. “I’m glad you were home. I was almost worried you’d be on safari someplace,” I said instead of everything else I was thinking.
“I try to go where it’s most important to be.”
I had no idea how to respond to that.
But I knew where I was heading next.
“Directions to Landover Assisted Living,” I said to my phone on my way out to my car. It was already getting dark, and I wondered how long visiting hours lasted.
Just as I headed down Delilah’s quaint, tree-lined street, a black SUV passed me, heading toward Delilah’s house. I thought about turning around to see if it would pull into her driveway. But I stopped myself. I was acting crazy and paranoid.
People could have guests, and I didn’t need to know about them, even when 100-year-old photos were unintentionally recreated and cryptic messages were being tossed around like they were normal conversation.
I did a quick three-point turn and headed back to Delilah’s. Something wasn’t right and I just wanted to check, but it was too late. The SUV was parked in her driveway, the door to her house just closing.
I shook it off and drove straight home to see the photo in that scrapbook again. I was going crazy. There could be no way one of the 100-year-old photos labeled “signs” in a dead guy’s scrapbook was actually something that just happened.
Chapter 24
Photographic evidence
Dust spilled out from the pages of the scrapbook when I plopped it down on the dining room table, and I held in a sneeze. This thing hadn’t been touched in ages.
I almost didn’t want to look. The Dead Forest. The weird signs. I was just hallucinating. I needed a break from channeling. It was the only thing that made sense.
Still, I opened right to the pages on signs. There it was. The exact one-of-a-kind sparrow figurine from Delilah’s, along with the back of the woman’s head. Light, probably gray hair swept neatly into an up-do while the lady in the photo overlooked her notes, wearing what looked like Delilah’s same billowy blouse.
I closed the book so hard more dust popped out.
What in the hell was going on?
I opened it back up again. Same photo. Same angle. Leaning over toward the credenza at the back of the room, I was just able to open the drawer and grab my own notebook.
I needed to write down everything that woman said. Every cryptic riddle.
I bit the end of my pencil.
Damn it. Why hadn’t I paid more attention?
I took a deep breath. I could do this.
She said something about changes. I remembered that, and new beginnings. And taking sides. And something about sparrows, I think.
I pulled one of the other photos out of the scrapbook and turned it over and over in my fingertips, fully expecting to see “Hello Carly” scrawled on the back now, but completely thankful I didn’t. The photo was old and fragile and had that dank smell that old paper sometimes took on. I smoothed it back into its spot, wondering now if this whole thing with Delilah was a fluke or if other cryptic messages were coming my way related to these signs.
Delilah’s sudden weirdness had thrown me off my game, but that wasn’t going to happen again. If anyone else handed me some sort of weird message, I was going to call them out on it. Ask questions. Be prepared. Shelby Winehouse once told me she didn’t think Potter Grove was safe anymore, like things were changing. I felt it too, but I also felt connected to its strangeness.
I spent the rest of the night taking as many photos of Aunt Ethel’s notebook as I could. Jackson appeared by my side as I was reviewing them, and I tried to fill him in on everything new about the investigation, but the ghost was even moodier than usual.
“Looks like you’ve been very busy,” he said, his voice dripping in sarcasm. “But were you able to link Myles Donovan to Gloria’s murder?”
“Not yet, but I have a feeling if I uncover the cover-up, I’ll be able to link everything. And I’m very close.” I began filling Jackson in on the stuff he missed, which was mostly that I had his aunt’s notebook in my possession.
He didn’t even smile.
“That woman took full advantage of the fact she had the power to publish a career-damaging story or sit on one. I think she was taking bribes all over the place. And, I think she was in on the investment. Her notebook is full of lies.”
“So, I can tell you’re dying for me to ask. How did you get her notebook?”
I turned my head to the side. “Oh yeah. You weren’t there.” I shrugged. “I guess Rosalie’s sachets work.”
“I guess so.” He crossed his arms.
I sat up. “So that’s what this is about. You’re upset about the privacy recipe Rosalie gave me.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ve only used the sachets one day. One day. And you can’t even handle that.”
“Need I remind you, we have an investigation to do together, and I feel like I’m on the outside of it now.” His voice had the condescending tone again, the one I hated back when he was my professor in college too.
I egged him on. “You should’ve been there when Lynette brought in this notebook. Thanks for telling me about her phone call, by the way, not that you’re my secretary.” I laughed. “I think my mouth dropped to the floor when I saw the notebook. You would’ve loved it.”
He stared at me, the clock in the living room ticking noisily in the background.
I held up the small black journal. “And this thing proves your aunt was close to a lot of scandals in Potter Grove. I bet you’d love to see it.”
“Perhaps,” he said, with jealous eyes. “But, Ethel is dead. Even if you prove she got away with every pyramid scheme out there, it doesn’t implicate Myles Donovan for the murders of these people. Come on, Carly. Focus on what’s important.”
“Sorry, professor. I no longer care if I get a B.”
With Aunt Ethel’s notebook in hand, I grabbed my phone and stormed up the stairs, but Jackson was right on my heels. People are so much faster when they’re dead.
“I don’t need to explain my research to you, but I’m pretty sure staging the Linders’ deaths was the only way out of that investment for a lot
of people,” I said as I ran up the second flight, hurrying down the hall to my room. “Your aunt included. And staging deaths are much easier when you have the police and the press in on it.”
“Are you implying my father…” Jackson replied, or tried to. He crossed Rosalie’s stinky strands and disappeared mid sentence. I smirked to myself.
I finished my research alone.
I waited until I got a text from Lynette that the Herndons had left for dinner before making my way over to the newspaper the next day.
The office was hotter than most people set their heaters, and cleaner than it was before. I pulled my knit hat off as soon as I got in and fanned myself with its cuteness.
“You were right,” Lynette said when she looked up from her computer and saw me. She waved me over to her desk, which was just a small, cluttered table off in the corner. “There was more than just the notebook.”
She brought up a window on her laptop, peering over her shoulder toward the door. She whispered. “I’m pretty sure they would kill me if they knew I was snooping. These are the pictures the photographer took of the accident in 1957. Only a couple made it into the article.”
I pulled a chair over to her desk and sat down. There were ten grainy, black-and-white images on the screen.
Each image looked strikingly similar to the last. Five images of the stretchers being pulled from the lake, a boat being lifted out of the water, a close-up of the beer bottles floating along the shore.
But I noticed something odd. “Look,” I said, pointing toward the screen where the photos all went in sequential order IMG0167 was right next to IMG0168, and on down the line. “Image 173 and image 174 are missing,” I said.
Lynette nodded.
I quickly grabbed my phone from out of my purse and took pictures of everything on the screen, trying to guess what the missing pictures could have been from the photos that surrounded them. IMG0172, the image before the missing ones, was a picture of Mason Bowman, sheriff at the time, talking to someone. Unfortunately, I could only see the back of that person’s head. Ball cap, about the same height as Mason. IMG0175 was a photo of the boats involved in the accident.