Agnes

by Jaime Maddox

  His racing heart was pounding in his ears, and he took some deep breaths, all the way into his stomach, like he’d seen on the television yoga program. An inner conflict was now weighing on him, for he truly liked Sandy Parker. They were the same age and had always been in the same class at school. While some kids picked on him for being the son of the gravedigger, Sandy had always shown him kindness. It was nothing special—she was kind to everyone—but he always appreciated that about her.

  As youngsters, before his father had put him to work at the cemetery, he’d enjoyed picnics with Sandy and Jeannie Bennett, and they’d climbed trees and chased each other through the maze of stones adorning the mountainside. His beat-up old bicycle couldn’t compare to the shiny new one she rode, but she always allowed him a ride on hers, without his even having to ask.

  Working beside Sandy at her grandparents’ house, painting and doing home repairs, working in the garden and landscaping, Robbie had felt a sense of companionship he’d never really known before. The meals her grandmother prepared were the only home-cooked ones he could ever remember, and she was generous with the tips she gave him for the work he’d done. Yet, she could afford to be generous, with all the money she had.

  So even though it gave him some pause, in the end, he decided that he owed nothing to Sandy Parker. Someone was going to owe him something, though. Just how big a something, he wasn’t sure, but he was about to find out. He pulled the Bennett card out of his file and flipped it over to the back, the side he hadn’t shown Sandy. He dialed the number he’d scribbled on it years before.

  Leaning back in his desk chair, he staired out through the double garage door into the thick forest behind the office. He paused dramatically for a moment after the phone was answered, just like he’d seen on television, before responding. “This is Rob, from the cemetery.”

  There was another pause, this time from the woman on the other end of the conversation. Rob could sense apprehension coming over the line as he waited. Finally, she spoke.“Yes, Rob, how can I help you?” Jane Bennett’s voice was strained.

  “I thought I should let you know that Sandy Parker visited the cemetery today.”

  He could hear a sigh. Impatience? Annoyance? It was hard to tell. She had always been snobbish, looking down her nose at him because of his father’s job. The Burns family lived in an old house by the cemetery, not a mansion on Canal Street like the Bennetts. And even though he now had as much money as the Bennetts, Jane still thought he was nothing. Her sister Jeannie had been a nice girl, but Jane had never had a kind bone in her body. It would give him great pleasure to torment her.

  Then a calmer voice responded, breaking his thoughts. “Okay, so?”

  “She wants to buy Jeannie Bennett a headstone, and she’s trying to find the next of kin to get permission.”

  The gasp was audible at the other end of the phone, and Rob smiled. That was the effect he’d hoped for when he’d called.

  “What did you tell her?” Now, Jane’s voice was clearly laced with fear.

  “I had to tell her something, we were friends when we were kids, you know, so I gave her the contact information for Helen Bennett.”

  A sigh of relief escaped. “Thank you.”

  He paused again, feeling quite powerful. “I’m not so sure I did the right thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe I should call her back. After all, we used to be friends.”

  A moment of silence followed.

  “Rob, there must be some way I can convince you that you made the right decision.”

  He had no idea what was going on, or how much this information was worth. How much his silence was worth. He took a guess. “Five thousand dollars—that would convince me.”

  “Now, Rob,” Jane said softly, “that’s an awful lot of money.”

  Too calm, he thought. It wasn’t too much money at all. He just wondered how much would be too much?

  Chapter Ten

  Digging Around

  As Sandy expected, the phone number listed for Helen Bennett wasn’t a viable lead. The man with the heavy New York accent answering the phone had offered her an Italian special with free delivery on a twenty-dollar purchase. Having just moved here from Brooklyn and opened his business the year before, he couldn’t offer any information on the woman who had used the same phone number before him. Furthermore, he didn’t know any Bennetts and couldn’t talk because he was in the middle of processing a large order for a lunch meeting.

  It might have been time to prepare lunch, but it was too early to eat it, and Sandy wasn’t sure of her next move, so she just drove. North on Route 11 she wound through West Nanticoke and then Plymouth, the birthplace of the Parker Coal Company. Pulling to the curb, she shifted the car into park and sat and stared for a moment at the building that still served as the company headquarters. Great care had been taken to maintain the exterior, and it was still the most prestigious building on this stretch of Main Street. She’d spent many hours in there as a child, but she had no desire to go inside now. The people she’d known back then were her grandfather’s age and likely dead. At the very least, they were retired. Danny’s father, Daniel number six, was likely in the office overseeing his empire, and Sandy had no desire to see him. They’d never been on good terms, but after locking horns when she took control of the trust fund, there was outright animosity between them.

  Exiting into the northbound traffic, she followed the flow into Edwardsville and finally Kingston. No longer shocked by the changed landscape, she just looked around and took it all in. Old homes and businesses were gone, and the modern franchises that dotted every city’s landscape were here now too: McDonald’s, Subway, Starbucks. There was empty space, too, land reclaimed by the government to prevent a repeat of the destruction of Agnes. Nothing except parks and athletic fields would ever be built on those tracts of land again.

  Finding a Dunkin’ Donuts in Kingston, she pulled into the lot and walked into the lobby, ordered, and then took a seat in a quiet corner. She nursed a cup of coffee while her brain worked out a plan. Something was bothering her, but she wasn’t sure what. Was it something she’d seen at the lumberyard, in one of the pictures perhaps? Or was it something Danny or Robbie had said? She wasn’t sure, but something was irritating her brain like a grain of sand between her foot and her flip-flop, and she knew it wouldn’t go away. It would churn in the back of her mind and pop to the surface eventually. She let go of the thought and sighed, ponderering how to find the family of a long-dead woman. She decided to list the possible relatives, to see if that would give her some direction. Utilizing a napkin, she made a flow chart of the people she could remember from Jeannie’s family.

  The immediate family was small, and both her parents were now at Riverview, so they couldn’t help. Her sister Jane, if still alive, would be sixty. She had been in nursing school at the time of the flood, and with that degree she would have had the ability to move virtually anywhere in the country. Knowing what she did of her, though, Sandy thought Jane wouldn’t have ventured too far from the umbilical cord, especially after Paul died. She was spoiled and manipulative as a child and hadn’t outgrown those traits as of their last parting, and Sandy wasn’t sure she ever would have. Jane was likely to stay close to her mother and all the monetary benefits that relationship could bring.

  Jeannie’s dad had several siblings, all scattered to the winds, and as a child Sandy could remember their periodic visits to West Nanticoke with their children in tow. After Paul Bennett’s parents died, though, so did the visits. Instead, they would travel in large groups every summer to places like Niagara Falls and Nantucket, allowing the siblings to connect and their children to form friendships. None of them had ever called Northeastern Pennsylvania home, and she wasn’t sure how she could ever hope to contact any of them. She wasn’t even sure what states they had been from. Indeed, no new graves had been dug in the Bennett family plot in the interim between Paul’s and his wife’s.

&nbs
p; Helen’s family was much larger, as Sandy remembered, but she had no idea who those people were. An aunt Elsie had lived at Lake Nuangola forty years ago, and while Sandy was sure the woman had a surname she sure didn’t know it. Evelyn and Lucy sounded like familiar names of aunts, but, again, the first names weren’t very helpful.

  Jane was the one she needed to find, the only relative Sandy could be sure of. She had no last name, no address, and no certainty that Jeannie’s sister was still alive. Yet it was important to her that she try anyway. Swirling her coffee, she stared into its depths as if the answers she sought were hidden there and careful study would bring them forth.

  Charities? They would keep donor records. But probably not records of next of kin. She tried to remember who the Bennetts’ lawyer had been. Even if he was now dead, it was possible a son or daughter had taken over an established firm and was the party who’d handled the Bennett estate when Helen had passed. She knew a handful of lawyers, but she’d need a phone book for that job. It would be too big a task for her old eyes on a smart phone. Mentally she filed that idea for later. Church? Another possibility. The Bennetts had attended services in West Nanticoke, but it was unlikely they were still there all those years later. It was at least a twenty-minute drive from Mountaintop to West Nanticoke. But Mrs. Bennett had been a devout Christian, and she would have found a new church, probably one in Mountaintop. Sandy could scour the phone book for churches on the mountain if the lawyer idea didn’t pan out. As a last resort, she figured a modest contribution to College Miserecordia would gain her access to an alumni directory. Knowing Jane, though, it was possible she never even graduated. If Mr. Right had come along, Sandy was certain Jane would have rushed him to the altar before he could escape her clutches.

  Then another idea came to her—the newspaper! Wilkes-Barre had two dailies, and Helen’s obituary would have been printed in one or the other of them. The obituary would be a gold mine of information about the next of kin. One of her relatives was bound to be listed in a phone book!

  Her phone rang and, reading the caller ID, she sat back in her chair and answered. “Hey.” She greeted J.R., her contact at the monument company.

  “Did you make it to the cemetery yet?” he inquired.

  “I did, and it looks great. Thank you very much. Just send me the bill and I’ll get a check right out to you.”

  He verified her contact information, and as she was saying good-bye, an idea occurred to her. His company was located just across the Susquehanna in Nanticoke. That’s how her grandmother had chosen them years ago for her grandfather’s stone. Was it possible Mrs. Bennett had chosen the local company as well? “Did you by any chance take care of the Bennett stone, just down the hill from my grandmother’s? It was about ten years ago when Helen Bennett passed away.”

  After pausing for a moment, J.R. answered. “I don’t remember offhand. I’m on my cell phone, but I’ll be happy to check when I get back to the office. May I ask why?”

  Again Sandy explained her idea.

  “Hey, if you promise to buy the monument from me, I’ll find you the phone number for her senior-prom date.”

  Sandy chuckled, a real belly laugh, and she was still smiling a minute later when she pulled her car onto Market Street and headed across the Susquehanna to the headquarters of the Citizen’s Voice, one of the Wilkes-Barre newpapers.

  At the traffic light on the Market Street bridge, a thought occurred to her, and while she was so close, she decided to do a little more investigating. While she didn’t have Helen Bennett’s address, she did have her name. An attorney would have handled any transfer of property from her estate, with the paperwork subsequently filed at the courthouse. With any infinitesimally small bit of luck, that attorney would still be breathing and would point Sandy in the direction of Jeannie’s family.

  The Luzerne County Courthouse stood just a block away, in the northern section of town, at the end of a beautiful tree-lined commons often used as the setting for wedding photos, wedged between River Street and the Susquehanna. While the courthouse wasn’t spared the wrath of Agnes, the century-old structure had survived and still stood witness to the history of this great valley that had produced so much of the coal that fueled the growth of the nation.

  Parking across the street, she dodged two lanes of traffic in both directions before she could pass through security and enter the building. Once she was there, it was a remarkably simple feat to find the information she sought. Helen Bennett’s property in Mountaintop had indeed been sold upon her death, and an attorney named Glen Franklin had handled the affair. Less than an hour after she’d parked, Sandy was again behind the wheel of her car, this time tapping away on her smart phone. In another minute she had a phone number for Mr. Franklin. Not surprising, just as Helen Bennett’s had been, it was a Mountaintop exchange.

  Electing to just show up at his office and hope for the best, Sandy pointed her car up the mountain and drove. It was still early, and with any luck she’d catch him before lunch. Within twenty minutes she was parked in front of an older ranch home that had been converted into Mr. Franklin’s office. His business, or his clients, was doing well, because the other cars in the lot made hers seem modest by comparison.

  “May I tell him what this is about?” his secretary inquired when Sandy asked if she could speak with him. When Sandy explained, the woman looked snobbishly doubtful that Mr. Franklin would be of help, so Sandy decided to use a trick one of her college teammates had taught her. It was called the talk tactic. Sandy began talking to the woman about everything she could think of, hoping to stumble onto something of common interest. After talking for half an hour, she mentioned her relationship to the Bennetts and how she’d moved after losing her house in the flood.

  Eureka! Marsha, the secretary, had lived in Kingston, and her family was one of thousands to relocate to the mountain in 1972. Her sympathy at the loss of Sandy’s home was genuine, and she suddenly seemed eager to help her reconnect with her childhood friend. “I’ll see if I can hurry him along,” she said with a conspiratorial wink.

  The interior of the office was lavishly furnished in leather and wood, with a few choice pieces of art on the walls and in the corners. There were no plants, no radio, and no television. Fortunately Sandy’s smart phone kept her entertained, for she waited nearly another hour before she was able to see the man. Marsha was busy with other work and couldn’t chat, but she promised he would see her, and just after another client exited Sandy was ushered into the lawyer’s office.

  In his early fifties, Glen Franklin was a ruggedly handsome man with a handshake meant to crush his opponents from the first bell. Sandy countered with one of her own. It was something she had worked to develop to announce to her peers and her clients that she was a force to be reckoned with, not ignored. Glen Franklin looked down to assess his hand for bruising before reclaiming the seat behind a large, carved mahogany desk.

  Quick about her business, Sandy sat opposite him and explained the purpose of her visit.

  “I did handle that estate,” he admitted, telling Sandy nothing she didn’t already know. “But of course, I can’t tell you anything, Ms. Parker. You surely understand that?”

  Sandy gave him a sugary sweet smile that displayed all thirty-two teeth. “Of course. But if you would be so kind as to pass along my contact information to Jane, or whoever was in charge, perhaps they might contact me.”

  He nodded his agreement and rose, offering his hand and signaling the end of their brief minute. Sandy wondered why she’d bothered to sit down.

  Back in the lobby, she was hugged by Marsha before she was allowed to leave.

  As she turned her car back toward home, she felt a great sense of accomplishment. She had met a distant cousin and seen family photos she’d forgotten about, ones that made her smile. She’d met an old friend, Robbie Burns. And she thought she had a decent lead on finding Jeannie’s next of kin through the family lawyer. When she arrived back home, with the cooperation of her
temperamental Internet service, she would try to find Helen’s obituary. The lunch hour had just about arrived, and she’d already had a complete day. Just when she thought it couldn’t have gone much better, her phone rang.

  Glancing at the caller ID, she pulled off Route 309 near the entrance to Interstate 80. For the second time this day, her contact at the monument company was phoning. “Hi, J.R.,” she said in greeting, glancing with horror at the traffic zooming by.

  “Hello, again, Ms. Parker.”

  “That was a quick response.” It had been less than three hours since they’d last spoken.

  “It’s amazing what a good filing system can do. I found your information. We did in fact do the work on the Bennett stone.”

  This day was getting better by the minute! “Do you have contact information for me?”

  “I certainly do. I’m surprised I didn’t remember this, because the guy I dealt with was a King’s student. He’s Mrs. Bennett’s grandson, and he handled all the arrangements. I remember him because I’m a King’s alum and I was very impressed with his maturity.”

  “They had a college kid making these kinds of arrangements?” It shouldn’t have surprised Sandy. Knowing Jane, she would have passed on the menial work to someone like her college-age son. But perhaps she was a bit judgmental—maybe Jane was dead or sick, and there was no one else to do the job. Sandy hadn’t seen her gravestone at Riverview, though. Maybe she was buried somewhere else? Or maybe, like Jeannie, there was no stone at all.