Secret Keepers and Skinny Shadows: Lee and Miranda

by Mary A Russell

  Let me hear from you real soon. I’m sorry to be so late about answering, but I’ve been up to my neck in work. My best to you.

  Lilly

  P.S. I was offered half of the rights to the book Where Your Treasure Is for half of the rights to my book, Something for Bert. I’m not taking it. I feel as if I’m being offered a dime for ten dollars, if you know what I mean. Robert Mason would like to get his hands on some of the proceeds. He read a portion of the book. The old goat would also like to marry me. Thank God he’s in Florida and I’m here. I don’t even write to him anymore. I only ever saw him once, and that was enough. He’s nice enough, I guess, but I’m not interested in marriage. I only want to be able to earn a decent living. Husbands are the easiest things in the world to get and the hardest to get rid of.

  LETTER 7

  June 1969

  Dear Miss Grayson,

  Ellen Jacobsen lives across the street from me and two doors up. There’s a divider strip out this way, you know. If you talk to her, please don’t mention that I told you about the circumstances of his birth. After all, he didn’t tell me. I never talked to the man. He was drunk, and he was hunting Ellen.

  Toots Johnson’s daddy was dead and he went in there to see if Ellen was there. That was when he was supposed to have told it.

  I didn’t even know Toots at the time. We didn’t live out there when her parents were alive. I wouldn’t want her, Ellen, to be embarrassed by what I said, though I suppose everyone down there would know it anyway. If she wants him to be her brother, as far as I’m concerned, he can be her brother.

  Toots told me that Ellen went away at the time Art was killed. It was all kept quiet out here. Until you told me what you did, no one even suspected he had been murdered. Ellen did, but I hadn’t mentioned what she told me to anyone.

  My phone number is 944-9208, and I would prefer that you call me. It’s always easier for me to talk if someone else starts the conversation. I can write scads and scads, but I’m not good at talking on the telephone. I would have little difficulty talking to you in person. I like to see people when I talk to them. Not only that, but I’m always free to talk. I have an extension in my room and I can always talk from there in case there’s something I want to say that I don’t want overheard.

  I’m glad you liked the flowers. That florist always sends such nice arrangements, I think. I used to buy from the other one, but when my father died, I sent flowers and they weren’t nearly as nice as some that came from the other one and cost a lot less.

  Flowers are never cheap, but I believe in getting the most I can get for my money.

  There was nothing wrong with the flowers from the other florist, but it was a dull arrangement. It was something you could see anywhere. They are very nice at delivering them for me, too. All I do is call and ask them and send them a check. I wanted so badly to get down and do it myself, but the weather was so miserable and I was working so hard on my book that I just couldn’t. I was glad to know that the grass had been cut, and one of these days I’ll go down and dig out some of the stones and plant some new grass seed. It’s the least I can do for Bert. I don’t care if you tell anyone that I put flowers on the grave. That is entirely up to you, but I don’t blame you for letting them wonder. Maybe it’s just as well that people don’t know.

  Clay said he had this town sewed up and no one was going to make him leave. I have to be awfully careful what I do, so I don’t end up the way so many others did.

  I was in to the hospital on Saturday night. My sister is in semi-private and visiting hours are from seven ‘til eight. I went in a little early and came home on the seven-thirty bus. It was still daylight and some man tried to pick me up. I was scared stiff. When I was younger, I used to be terrified to walk on the streets alone. Men were always trying to pick me up, even in the daytime. I’m nearly fifty-six years old now and it doesn’t make sense to me that anyone would try to do it now. I’m not even pretty anymore. I used to be, but after Bert got killed I cried so hard it ruined my eyes. I have puffs under them all the time. Nothing makes them go away. My hair is gray, and I don’t look quite my age at times, but I’m still past the age limit that men would want to pick me up. I’m not going in anymore in the evenings alone. I had been going in the evenings because my oldest sister wanted to go in the afternoon. She drives, but she doesn’t like to drive at night. I’m not allowed to have anything to do with my oldest sister. That was one restriction the hospital put on me and it was the only one. The doctor said that no real sister would try to do to me what she had. She didn’t only try. Some of the things she accomplished. She slept with my husband when I was sick. She thought she was going to get my house, but I fooled her. I’m in a perfect spot for a party house, and she runs one. Her neighbors all hate her because she started a party house in a residential area and now there’s no place for them to park their cars when she is having a party. I didn’t give a hoot that she slept with George. He has been sleeping with other women for years now. I even gave him my own money so he could take them out. If he ever kissed me, I think I’d vomit all over him.

  Miss Grayson, I wouldn’t worry about the buildings other than the house. Your house roof isn’t leaking, is it? Why should you spend money for someone else to get advantage of, after you’re gone? Why don’t your brothers fix up the buildings? Isn’t as if you needed them, or do you?

  I got a card of acknowledgement about my book from Carper and Stow. They said it would be several weeks before there would be anything definite on it. I hope they accept it for publication. I’ll have it made if they do. If they don’t, I’ll give it to an agent to sell for me. I have a list of names of agents, and they are begging for books to sell. They get ten percent of the gross when they sell one.

  Sara Dowell said I should just ignore Robert Mason’s last letter. She said he was only trying to horn in on my work and take credit for something he didn’t do, also money. The world is full of people like that. George and Kate (my oldest sister) said that if I made any money on my books they would put me back in the hospital and take it from me. I told them about it out at the hospital and it’s written in my dossier that I can do whatever I like with the proceeds of the book. The work is mine. The proceeds should be mine, too. It’s strange, but it’s always the people with the most to hide who didn’t want me to write the book, but who wanted to grab all the money they could get. I wouldn’t give them a nickel if they were starving to death. I can hate as intensely as I love. I really don’t hate anyone though, except Clay and Lieutenant. Zale. The rest of them aren’t important enough to hate. The hospital gave Kate specific instructions to stay away from me.

  She used to park her car in my driveway when she went to get her hair done. She can’t even do that anymore.

  Call me anytime at your convenience. I’m here practically all the time. My sister is going to be discharged from the hospital and I will go down with her in the ambulance and my brother-in-law will bring me home, but other than that I have no plans to be away from the house. Take good care of yourself and write.

  Best wishes,

  Lilly

  LETTER 8

  July 1970

  Dear Miss Grayson,

  If it were safe for me to come down, I would help you fix up your house. I’m good at it. I’ve been doing it for years. Not because I particularly enjoyed the work, but for lack of funds. I never outgrew the depression. I know how you feel about the way Bert died. Try not to dwell on it. Bert wouldn’t want you to.

  The worst part of it all is that I could have prevented it, if I had done the right thing at the right time. I think now that Cain wanted me to tell him what was going on. He liked Cain, but Bert didn’t know that I didn’t like Cain. After he tried to get my fingerprints on a gun that time I didn’t trust him. I was afraid to see Bert after that for fear Cain would find out about it and tell Clay. Clay would have murdered us both. He had already threatened to murder Bert, and he would have killed me because I knew too much. I tried to
warn Bert. Next to the last time I talked to him, he had Cain call me on the phone. I wouldn’t meet him because he had Cain place the call, and I told him not to trust Cain. I would have told him why, except that my conversation would have been overheard.

  Didn’t Bert tell you that Clay had murdered Mr. McCune? Cain told him that their mother had lied to get Clay out of it. Clay was bragging that he had murdered a man and gotten away with it. Bert had Clay tell me that he (Bert) was in love with me. I have always been afraid of Clay. The only other man I’ve been afraid of was Hap, after I married him, and George, and I’m not afraid of George anymore. When he’s drinking, he’s a beast, but he isn’t drinking now. I use George’s last name for my name because that’s my legal name. George and I lived under the same roof, but that’s as far as it goes.

  The only good thing I can say for George is that he was good to my animals. He was never good to me. It was the law that straightened him out. His mother had taught him that wives were nothing but unpaid housekeepers. I’ve been afraid of older people all my life. My parents started that when I was a child. She made it worse.

  Miss Grayson, Bert never talked much about his family at all. I was trying to give Bert an argument about marrying him. I always felt that he was too good for me. This was right before he went into the army. I never had a conversation with him except in the bar room. I thought it was you who I met at the park that day, but it may have been your sister. Mrs. Work had told me Bert wanted to see me so he could ask me to marry him.

  Right before I married George the first time (I married him twice), Bert came to my sister’s and asked her to have me call him. I’d forgotten that he’d wanted to marry me so I didn’t do it. By that time I knew that most men only wanted to take me out to put me in a bad spot. I didn’t like wrestling matches. I didn’t trust anyone. The reason I liked George was because he hadn’t acted like that. I found out why, later on. He was visiting a brothel all the time he dated me. The first time I was married. He made me come back by threatening to have people arrested. I had nowhere to go but to my sisters, and I was afraid he could get her in trouble. I left him three times before I finally got away, then I went to Sis’s and told her to hide me. I didn’t know anything about the law, and I thought he really could make her trouble. She knew better. I had been married only three months and I was covered with bruises. The next week I discovered I was pregnant, and the doctor who examined me asked what had caused the big bruise on my hip, if I’d been in an accident. I was almost ashamed to tell him. The baby was abdominal and I lost it two months later, so I didn’t have to go back to live with George.

  My sister died the following February, and I stayed on and looked after her children until her husband decided he wanted to remarry. During that time I met Detective Elway. He was a friend of Bud Kay’s, my brother-in-law, and he took me and the Kelly kids swimming in the mornings. He worked at night. I rather liked him, but I wasn’t considering marrying anyone. Elway didn’t ask me, I’d had enough men to last me a lifetime.

  It was during the depression, and Bert got me a job in Ebensburg. I’d already forgotten him. I’d made up my mind to forget what had happened when I was married to George. And I did, but the forgetting took a lot of my former life with it. Anyway, Bert had me go to the house of one of your relatives to talk to my future employer. She lived up in Fairview somewhere, and I think she said she was your aunt, but she looked terribly young to be anyone’s aunt. While we were waiting for the man from Ebensburg she told me that Bert was in love with me and what a wonderful man he was. I didn’t know who she meant. I went to Ebensburg and Bert came to see me, and I’d gone to Bridgetown to see friends.

  Three weeks later back in Ebensburg I married the town druggist. He was the only man I ever married who was kind to me. He died of a strep throat five months later. I came back to Bridgetown practically broke and got a job in a Jewish restaurant. Bert tried to see me then, but I didn’t remember him.

  My sister had married and was living in Syracuse. She was homesick and coaxed me to come up there. I went, and while I was there, Bert had a detective find out where I was. My brother wouldn’t tell him.

  Bert said he came up to see me twice and after he got there he hadn’t nerve enough to knock on my door. He said he didn’t want to be drinking because he wanted me to like him the way he was. The second time he came up I went to the movies with Culp. He said he went, too, but there were so many people he didn’t get to sit near us. He came out when we did and stopped the car right beside us. We were walking.

  He said he slept in his car that night because he wanted to be as near to me as he could get. The next morning Culp came in his cab, he was a cab driver, and took me to work. When I got out of the cab I leaned over and kissed Culp. Bert said he didn’t come up after that because he knew I was safe with Culp. I adored Culp, but he was nothing in comparison to Bert. Culp and I had a misunderstanding and I came back to Bridgetown to work for a former boss while her regular help was on vacation. When I went back, I met a man who turned out to be a bigamist. He hadn’t even used his proper name when we were married. He was a blond Italian. He was killed at the beginning of the war.

  I had seen Bert from time to time before I went to work in the bar room. I was with my brother one night and he came and sat at our table. It was obvious that Harry didn’t like Bert and, when we got outside, he told me that Bert had roughed up a girl and nearly put her in the hospital. I didn’t believe it, but I promised Harry I wouldn’t go out with Bert as long as he was in the service. Harry went the next week.

  After I met Bert in the hotel I wrote and asked Harry to release me from my promise and he wouldn’t do it. Harry had indirectly asked me to marry his sergeant. I’d partly promised, even though I never seen the man. I met him when I went to California to see Harry and he was a big puke. After the war I found out that Tack was a miserable person, and Harry had used me to protect himself.

  I started the flower shop because I was sick, but I still had to earn a living. I had some teeth drawn and nearly died, and Bert sent Hap Mills up to see if I needed anything. I thought he sent Hap because he didn’t want to come himself. Bert got Dr. Busser to check me over, and Dr. Busser gave me three months to live.

  Sis had started divorce proceedings, and Hap started putting pressure on me to marry him. Hap was a pathological liar, but I was stupid enough to believe the lies he told me. The day after we were married he burned all of my mail and sent an insurance man to sell me some insurance. I was well by that time, but I was thin. Hap wanted me to take out a policy for ten thousand dollars, but the insurance man said he couldn’t issue me one without a thorough physical. Hap knew I couldn’t pass it. We settled for one thousand. Hap had been with me when I went to Dr. Busser’s, and he made me do everything the doctor said I shouldn’t. He wouldn’t even let me sit on the porch.

  I got sick again, and Hap told me that if I were going to die he wished I’d do it and get it over with.

  The last time I saw Bert he was in the Hot Dog Hut with Cain. Bert saluted me and I cried because you’re only supposed to salute a superior officer, and he was so far above me that I wasn’t even fit to touch him.

  I told Dr. Denny that Bert was the most God-like man I’d ever known and I meant it. Dr. Denny knew Bert and said he had just gotten into bad company. What Bert didn’t know was that he had been in bad company for years. I should have told him what I knew. Bert told me that he was afraid he was going to get murdered. He said he knew it sounded crazy and he didn’t know how or where or when. It was just a feeling he had and that I could prevent it if I married him. It had to do with his drinking. I thought such a thing was impossible.

  After we moved out here, Bert didn’t have anyone to tell me he loved me anymore and that’s why he became friends with the colored man who works at the cleaners next door. The man’s name is Smith.

  Bert said he was always afraid some man was going to hurt me and that he intended to see that it didn’t happen as long as h
e lived. The black man was carrying messages about me. I wish you could come up and I could show you a lot of things, and you could understand better how I know a lot of this information. Bert had known all along that George had beaten me when we were married the first time. I told him, and he didn’t trust

  George. Bear in mind that anything I told Bert was told while I was working in the hotel. I never talked to him after that. I didn’t know that Bert was a diabetic until after he was dead. Someone told me, but I had no way of making sure. I do know that he was in a terrible accident, and it hurt too much to read about it. I looked at the picture and started to cry. Most of my life I’ve been an Agnostic, but I prayed then. I didn’t want Bert to suffer. I guess God didn’t hear my prayers. After Bert was killed, a minister told me not worry about Bert’s soul. Bert was in heaven and his death had helped me find God. Isn’t it too bad that it couldn’t have happened sooner?

  Bert didn’t only recite poetry. He wrote it. I’m sorry I don’t have it all, but some of it must have been among my letters that Hap burned. I only have the one I sent you and two more, but I liked the one I sent you the best. They all said practically the same things, but the words were different.

  When Bert said his brothers didn’t like him, he said his mother and sister were all right. I may have misunderstood; he may have said sisters.

  He mentioned you by name when he wanted to buy me nylons down in Harrisburg. He said he’d bought you some and mentioned your name. To the best of my knowledge it’s the only time I ever heard it until I read it in the paper.

  There’s something else that you probably don’t know. Hap Mills told me that if I had anything to do with Bert that he would shoot Bert and make it look like a hunting accident. I was afraid he would. I’d tried all my life not to do anything to hurt Bert. Everything I did was wrong.