“Did you notice anything else? You’d be surprised at the amount of controversial material that’s camouflaged. Just last week I had another pair of sisters in the middle of a family quarrel. They were devout Catholics. One of them wanted to delete a line saying there had been a divorce in the family, saying it wasn’t a true marriage to begin with.”
“You’re kidding.” Distracted by the story, she started to relax.
“It was just a simple line saying that Kenneth and Roberta were divorced in 1929, but it unleashed a storm within the family. Then there are the widows who don’t want their husbands first wives mentioned. Or the kids who don’t want their father’s late-in-life wife in the history. The stories read just fine, but there’s something hidden or omitted. A date that’s a red flag. Something.”
“You’re not going to get a Paul Harvey ending from me. You know—‘and now for the rest of the story,’” Judy said. She looked away then dug around in her purse for a Kleenex and blew her nose. “Is this exactly what you showed her?”
“Yes. The very pages your mother turned in.”
Good historians know the importance of actually seeing primary documents. It’s part of our training, but her attention to detail surprised me. It had to be part of her personality. Came from being whacked by life, I decided. She only trusted her own five senses.
She fanned the pages, then turned them over and glanced at the back. “There’s a shadow on all of them. A rose.”
Startled, I moved to her side and studied the faint imprint. How had I missed that? I held the pages up to the light. Perhaps the faint watermark had not been pronounced enough to show up on the working copy.
“Nice, Judy. Very observant. You noticed a detail I overlooked.”
She shrugged, but blushed at the praise. I put Zelda’s story back in the master file, and locked the cabinet. “Where can I get in touch with you? In case I find something.”
“I’m taking a leave of absence from my job, Lottie. Dad needs me. I’m going to stay home with him for the next couple of weeks. And I intend to help you. Thanks for everything.” She gave me a tremulous smile as she walked out the door.
Chapter Eight
I snapped my pencil in half. The last thing I wanted was Judy’s help. The muscles leading from my neck to the tops of my shoulders became as hard as tree trunks, signaling the on-set of a tension headache.
I reached for my notebook containing a sequence of research procedures I follow. I don’t follow the money here in Western Kansas. I start with the land. Follow the land.
I reached for the telephone and called Minerva.
“Would you have time to trace the holdings of the Rubidoux family?”
“Not today, but I can do it tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow is fine. Just the bare facts.” It would do little good to say this. Everything she did was detailed and concise. She even typed sticky notes. “In fact, if I can get William Webster to take over here, I think I’ll take the rest of the afternoon off,”
I groped at the muscles in the base of my neck. Gone to petrified wood. I needed to transplant my mums, and there was nothing like a little physical labor to break up muscle tension.
William said it would be another hour before he could get around and he would like a little more notice next time.
I said if he didn’t want to do it I could find someone else.
He said there was no need to get snippy.
It was the usual pattern of what passed for conversations between us. We all have a cross to bear. William Webster was mine.
Just as I was hanging up the phone, I heard footsteps in the corridor. I rose when Fiona Hadley and Brian walked through the door.
“We came to thank you, Lottie, for everything you’ve done these last three days,” Fiona said.
“I don’t have to tell you how disastrous this would have been if you hadn’t taken charge,” Brian added.
“The vicious little misfit has always been jealous of our Brian. She’s just like her mother. She and Zelda both just hated him.”
Brian’s face was white. I stood stone still, my heart aching, realizing the enormous handicap his mother was going to be to his campaign.
“You know I don’t agree with anything you’re saying, Mother.” Brian forced calmness, but there was a tremor in his hand as he reached to touch Fiona’s arm. “It’s history now anyway. No need to speak ill of the dead. That’s another reason I’m here, Lottie. She was my aunt. She contributed a lot to this town. I’d like to write a tribute to her for the book.”
“I’d love to include it.”
“Good. I’ll turn it in before I leave town. And of course we want the family story she turned in for our family scrap book.”
“I can make you a copy, but the original stays here.” I glared at Fiona. “Your mother and I have already had this discussion.”
She stopped breathing for a full ten seconds. When she started again, her nostrils were pinched and white, and there were twin spots of color on her cheeks.
“You aren’t actually considering printing that silly piece of work, are you?” she asked. “Her dying changes everything. She can’t be reasoned with now. Surely you aren’t going to keep a story that reflects so badly on my poor deceased sister.”
“I’m not considering it. I’m doing it,” I said, wondering when Zelda had suddenly become the poor deceased sister instead of the jealous monster.
“Why?” asked Fiona.
“Because it’s a vivid example of how people used to think. And some obviously still do.” I looked pointedly at Fiona. “But the main reason is that it’s her story. Her view of the world, and she turned it in before she died.”
“Even if it ruins my son’s career?”
“I don’t intend to print it now. But it’s still a historical document. Material for scholars.”
“No big deal, Lottie.” Brian smiled winningly. “Just so my tribute gets in.”
“It will.”
“Excellent,” said Brian. “May I have a copy for my personal records?”
“Sure,” I said. William Webster came into the office just as I was heading toward the master file to copy the original as Josie had my working copy.
“Brian. Fiona. My deepest sympathy.”
“Thank you, William,” Brian said. “It’s been a blow.”
William Webster, retired railroad engineer, carried a small canvas bag containing carving tools and a block of cedar. On idle days, the women volunteers quilted or sorted or filed when they answered the phones. William carved. He was the only person I knew over eighty years of age who didn’t require glasses for reading. I loved the odor of cedar shavings that permeated the vault after he left.
I had had a hard time passing William’s subtle character tests when I was hired. He asked the toughest questions of any of the board members and had been very reluctant to let an “outsider” be in charge of the books. He had grilled me like F. Lee Bailey over my insistence on editorial control. In fact, it had been a battle royal.
“The buck has to stop somewhere,” I’d insisted. “You can’t have a committee making editorial decisions.”
I won. Not only the battle, but William’s respect. He’d been a tough sell. Even now, he had a habit of stopping in unannounced, as though he expected to find me eating bon-bons and reading novels on the county’s nickel. His blue chambray work shirts were patched over and over. His sharp eyes saw everything, but after a while I could feel him switch to an occasional ally. If you could call a porcupine an ally.
“B’God, boy. You look like you haven’t slept for days,” William said, glancing at Brian. “If I didn’t know you, I’d figure you were coming off a three-day drunk. Your eyes look like a dried-out chamois cloth.”
Brian flushed. Press-jittery like most politicians, he was usually able to mask any signs of irritation. Not this time. His jaw muscle jumped like a shocked rabbit.
“It’s been very trying, and I’ll admit that I haven’t bee
n able to sleep.”
I, too, had noticed his muddied eyes and his sallow complexion today, but a weekend with Edgar and Fiona would be a strain on anyone, even without a death in the family.
Flustered by William’s comments, Fiona and Brian said their goodbyes, and left without a copy of Zelda’s story. Even my empathy for Brian was overshadowed by my annoyance with his mother. She was bringing out what my husband called my Mammy Yokum streak. All I lacked was a corn cob pipe and sawed off shotgun as I defended the Historical Society from foreigners. Guarding the gold in them thar hills.
I reached for my jacket. “I guess I don’t have to tell you not to let anything out of this room, William.”
Chapter Nine
The next morning, when I opened the office, Margaret Atkinson, my favorite volunteer came in right behind me.
“Good morning, Lottie.”
A tiny woman with a tightly permed cap of Hereford red hair and skin like a withered marshmallow, she could have stayed out in the sun for the rest of her life and never tanned a whit. Her family has been in this county since it was formed and she knew everything about everybody.
She was our conscience.
About five persons in a county, any county, are the key to projects being successful. The board would never have hired me without Margaret’s approval.
Her clout came from her integrity and the contribution she and her family had made to the community. She created the first library in the county, manned it herself, and persuaded people to donate books. She wrote the grant for our hospice organization. She started our county museum.
She liked me. What a wonder. Even though her function in the historical society was something between that of a spy and a guardian angel and I was her boss, we both knew she could ruin me anytime she wanted.
Margaret had been out of town for a week and missed out on the worst tragedy our community had faced in years.
“You’ve heard everything?” I headed toward my desk.
“Heard nothing but,” she said tiredly. “From everybody. My phone started ringing the moment I got back.”
“Something’s wrong.” The hair on my neck prickled. “Someone’s been in here.” My paper clip holder was on the wrong side of my desk pad. My family photos were grouped differently.
“Were you the last to leave yesterday?”
I shook my head. “William Webster was. He got here about two.”
“Well then, maybe he moved something.”
“Maybe, but it’s not like him to touch anything of mine. He sits over there.” I waved at a corner. My desk drawer was locked, as it should have been, so I clamped down on my uneasiness. “No big deal, Margaret. If someone came in needing something, William had a perfect right to rummage around.” I had too much to do to be fretting over trivia.
“First off, I want you to read the Rubidoux Family Story. Maybe you can see something I’ve missed. Then I’m going to finish laying out pages.”
If I had been going to tell anyone Judy had accused Fiona of murder, it would have been Margaret. So far, the only ones in the loop were the Hadleys and Keith and Bettina.
“I’ll run off a working copy,” I said, not mentioning the one I’d already made was now in Manhattan Kansas. That wouldn’t set well with Margaret. I unlocked the master file cabinet and fingered through the R folders.
The Rubidoux story wasn’t there.
Thinking I had misfiled the original under St. John, I went to the Ss. My jaw tightened so hard my teeth ached. It wasn’t there. I looked again, willing it to materialize. I opened the last drawer, hoping I had witlessly put it under Z for Zelda. It wasn’t there either.
“Margaret.”
“What?”
“It’s not here.”
“Let me look,” she said. “I’m sure it’s slipped down behind a folder or something.”
From the beginning we’d agreed that neither was to be insulted if the other insisted on double-checking material. There’s something about fresh eyes looking. At least, I think that’s what it is. Sometimes I could swear Margaret made things appear. As though she were a conjurer.
“It has to be here,” she said. Her wrinkles quivered.
I sank into a chair and watched anxiously. She finished checking all the obvious files, walked to the supply cabinet and put on rubber fingertips. Beginning with the As she carefully opened each individual folder and stroked through the pages, making sure Zelda’s story hadn’t slipped inside another. She laid each file in neat staggered rows on the desk, so she could tell if there were papers at the bottom of the drawer. Finally she removed the entire drawer, making sure papers had not become flattened against the back wall of the cabinet. She went through all the other drawers, using the same method.
It took her hours to go through every scrap of paper in that file cabinet. My heart beat like a trip hammer as I watched.
“It’s not here, Lottie,” she said finally. “It’s not in this cabinet.”
“Okay,” I said. I blinked back tears and tried to look professional. It was no use. Margaret knew me too well. I had never lost a story. Now an original hand-written story by a dead woman had vanished.
I splayed my hands across my face and tried to think while Margaret sorted through miscellaneous piles of paper on desks.
“It’s not here, either, Lottie. I’ve looked everywhere.” Her face was a shade whiter, her gaze reproachful, dull red circles burned on her cheeks.
“Are there others missing? We need to check.”
“I don’t know. Please, no. Oh please, please don’t let it be true.” I jumped up and hurried to the master file cabinet and riffled a special folder containing old letters. There were five missing.
One had been signed by George Armstrong Custer.
Kansas was rich with original documentation. The Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka housed one of the largest collections of newspapers in the world and the state’s county courthouses were full of hidden treasures.
Documents signed by Wyatt Earp and Matt Dillion had disappeared from Dodge City and been sold for a small fortune to unscrupulous collectors. Fossils disappeared from museums. In Carlton County, we were just beginning to identify and catalogue everything that came into the vault. I was the guardian of these documents.
Someone had just trashed my reputation for reliability. Anger throbbed so deeply, my whole body was suffused with heat. I had forgotten what it felt like to be this furious. Beneath the heat was the beginning of a cold rage. Cold and calculating.
“We have to call the sheriff, Lottie. The Custer letter was very valuable. It will be in all the papers,” Margaret said sadly. “And people were just starting to trust us with their old photos.”
Chapter Ten
I drove home that evening oblivious to the onset of autumn. Although I still missed the glorious Eastern Kansas panorama of fall leaves, out here air quickened. Geese flew overhead and shadows sharpened. I’d come to appreciate the year-round dark green of sheltering cedar windbreaks.
On a farm, winter is a time of rest and deep healing. Years ago work animals needed slack time. Now families whacked by the zaniness of farm programs and the perversity of Mother Nature needed the lull. In winter we pull ourselves together, organize our so-called finances, and plan spring crops.
At home, still seething, I sipped chamomile tea while I talked to Josie. I told her about the theft and asked her to keep her mouth shut about the copy of Zelda’s story she had taken with her for handwriting analysis. It didn’t eliminate my despair over the Custer letter, however.
Relaxing a little, I lighted the fire, collapsed into my overstuffed tan leather chair, put my feet up on the matching hassock, and huddled under an afghan Bettina had made for me. Surrounded by creature comforts, I began to unwind and tried to make sense of what was going on. Finally I reached for the pad lying on the table next to my chair and turned on the lamp.
I listed the sequence of events: Zelda had turned in a story. Fiona had tried to
get it back. Zelda died. Judy had accused Fiona of murder and later asked me to investigate. I had agreed for Brian’s sake, then the story disappeared along with old letters. One of which was very valuable.
I listed what everyone knew and what only certain people knew. A number of people now knew Zelda had turned in a story accusing Brian of bigotry.
Judy and I were the only ones who knew Fiona had been at the St. John’s house the night Zelda died.
Outside of the Hadleys and my own family, I was the only one who knew Judy had accused Fiona of murder.
Only Margaret and I had keys to the office and master file. No one else had access to our room. In theory. But what about the janitor? Were his always in a safe place? For that matter, when I was there, Margaret usually left her keys in her desk when she went to the bathroom or during short breaks. Did she leave her keys when I wasn’t there? And the office had been unlocked for about ten minutes last Friday while I watched the storm.
Keith came through the back door in a gust of fresh air.
“You aren’t going to believe this,” I began.
He hung his jean jacket on the peg, turned, and listened.
“Any idea who it could have been?”
“None. Until this happened I would have thought it impossible.” Dizzy with gratitude for his easy acceptance of my account, I walked over and hugged him. He hadn’t said, “Are you sure you didn’t put it someplace?”
“Thanks,” I whispered against his chest.
“For what?” Then he pressed for more details.
Responding to his loyal matter-of-fact questions, knowing he respected my judgment, helped assuage the guilt I had felt under Margaret’s disapproving looks.
The phone rang. Keith answered.
“Hi, Elizabeth.”
I walked to the pantry, grabbed a box of Hamburger Helper, flashed the label in front of him and mouthed, “okay?” He nodded and as I browned the beef, I listened absently until his tone changed. Then I was all ears. He had been telling her about the theft.
“No, I’m sure she didn’t, Elizabeth. She doesn’t do that kind of thing.”
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