by Barbara Ross
“When Lemuel stepped away from running the business, in 1910, your great-great-grandfather, William, moved from Boston to New York City. He became friends with the mayor and the whole gang at Tammany Hall. He cultivated the union leadership and bribed them to unload his ships first and the competitions’ slowly or not at all. He began buying up assets—ships, icehouses, and other ice companies in Maine—as fast as he could.
“His brother, Charles, moved to Maine to manage the ice cutting and shipping operations here. He preferred Maine to New York, but it’s not clear that he understood William had maneuvered him neatly out of the center of the business.”
Mrs. Thayer pulled A History of the Morrow Ice Company toward her. She opened to the plate with the portrait of the two brothers as grown men. William was huge, like his father, practically squeezing Charles out of the frame. Charles looked away from the lens, as if distracted by something happening behind the photographer.
“Then, in the winter of 1914, it happened,” Mrs. Thayer continued. “The Hudson had a bad ice year. The Kennebec froze hard and early. William demanded that ice be cut three times over the winter. By the spring the ice was dangerously soft. Not one, but two teams of horses broke through, pulling the men down with them to a watery death. Charles refused to harvest more. William was furious, but by that time there was more than enough ice stored in the houses along the Kennebec’s banks.
“In late spring, the ships began to arrive at the docks in New York Harbor. William saw to it that what little ice his Hudson River competitors had managed to ship wouldn’t be unloaded. And then, having created a grinding shortage, he jacked the price of ice sky high.
“The city went wild. The press and the public turned against Morrow Ice. The newspapers portrayed the price hike as a war on the poor. Even William’s Tammany Hall associates couldn’t protect him. He was arrested for price-fixing and thrown in jail. The shares of Morrow Ice tumbled until they were practically worthless. The company had no cash, and most of its assets, the ships and the icehouses, had been bought with money borrowed against the worthless stock. There was no way to repay it.
“William was released on bail and spent the summer before his trial at Windsholme. It was there that he and Charles had it out. Charles was angry that the company their illustrious ancestor Frederic had built had been turned to dust, but he was also terrified of the debt Morrow Ice had incurred, worried that he and his young family would lose everything.
“William agreed to buy Charles’s shares in the company for one cent a piece. He also demanded, as a condition of the deal, that Charles sign over his half ownership of Morrow Island and Windsholme. Charles left town for San Francisco with only train fare for his family and a few hundred dollars to start a new life.”
So that was the schism, and the beginning of the New York and San Francisco Morrows. “What happened after that?”
Mrs. Thayer shook her head. “William was convicted of price-fixing and spent seven months at Sing Sing. After he got out, he tried to rebuild the company one last time and nearly succeeded, but then came World War I and right after that modern refrigeration. Once ice could be manufactured in the cities, there was no reason to ship it long distances. William’s life collapsed. Charles, on the other hand, eventually made a fortune in San Francisco. He bought a huge mansion out there. But before that, during the early twenties, he and William made some kind of peace and Charles and his children traveled to Windsholme every summer to spend time with William’s family and Lemuel’s widow, Clementine.”
I drew my head up sharply. “But you said Lemuel’s wife was named Sarah.”
“Clementine was Lemuel’s second wife. She was younger than either of his sons and outlived Lemuel by forty years. She was the hostess at Windsholme, and she kept it as a great house into the roaring twenties. She hosted glamorous parties there during Prohibition. I have a photo of her somewhere.” Mrs. Thayer went through her routine with the card file and retrieved another photo.
“She’s wearing the necklace!” I tamped down my enthusiasm and said more solemnly, “The one Lemuel’s first wife wore.”
Clementine was dark and exotic looking in a way none of the stolid Morrows were. She’d been quite young when the photo was taken. It was hard to judge ages in old photos, but early twenties, I thought. She wore the straight dress of a flapper, so different from the Victorian clothing worn by Lemuel’s first wife, Sarah.
“It was during one of those wild parties at Windsholme that the necklace disappeared,” Floradale said. “Clementine reported it to the police and put it around that a housemaid had stolen the necklace, but there was never an arrest and I don’t think anyone in town believed her. All that is known is neither the San Francisco cousins nor Clementine returned after that, not once. Soon the whole party was over. The stock market crashed in twenty-nine and Windsholme was closed up. Its furniture, silver, china, and artwork were loaded onto boats and shipped out of here. No one knows to where.” She looked at me expectantly, like I might be able to fill in the blanks.
I knew where a tiny bit of the treasure was. There was one set of a dozen crystal wineglasses in the corner cabinet in my mother’s dining room. Three minor paintings that had been in my grandfather’s apartment were now on the wall in Mom’s living room. Other than that, I had no idea. I assumed it was all sold during the Depression.
When Mrs. Thayer saw I wasn’t going to say anything, she continued. “Windsholme has been empty ever since. Well, until you burned it down last summer.”
“I didn’t burn it, and it didn’t burn down,” I protested.
She shrugged, as if to signal my tiny corrections didn’t matter. Disposition of historic property was serious business to her. “Your great-grandparents made the boathouse into the little cottage and that’s where your grandmother spent her childhood summers. And then your mother, and then you and Livvie.”
I nodded and thanked her. We were finally back to the part of the story I already knew.
Chapter 10
The sun was rapidly disappearing when Mrs. Thayer pushed back her chair from the conference table and announced, “That’s it for today.” I’d continued reading A History of the Morrow Ice Company, which confirmed pretty much the story she had told me.
When Mrs. Thayer had gone to the powder room, I’d used my phone to sneak photos of the picture of the family at Windsholme and the one of Clementine Morrow wearing the Black Widow.
I felt gleefully optimistic. The necklace had disappeared on a weekend when the San Francisco relations had been at Windsholme. Hugh Morrow had a brother, Arthur. All roads led to San Francisco. I sensed we were close to a breakthrough.
The snow had melted during the day and turned to ice as the sun went down. I crunched along carefully, smiling when I saw the lights blazing from Mom’s kitchen window. She was home. I had so much to tell her.
I burst through the ever-unlocked kitchen to be hit in the face by a smell from my childhood.
“Meat loaf?”
She nodded. “I thought I’d entice you with one of your favorites, so I stopped at Hannaford on the way home from work. You’ll stay?”
“I’m going to sleep over,” I said.
Mom turned from the stove, arching a curious eyebrow at me.
“You had a call on the landline today,” I told her. “The person on the other end didn’t say anything, but someone was there, I’m sure.”
Mom was unimpressed. “Happens all the time.”
“It doesn’t happen all the time when there’s a two-million-dollar necklace in the house.”
“Don’t be silly. No one even knows it’s here.”
“Mr. Gordon does,” I reminded her.
“The most trustworthy man in town. You don’t think it was him?”
No, I didn’t. “The person who sent the necklace knows it’s here.”
“Yes, but if they didn’t want me to have it, they wouldn’t have sent it in the first place. I’m in no danger, Julia.”
&n
bsp; I dug in my heels. “I’m staying tonight, and tomorrow morning we’ll take the necklace to the bank and rent a safety deposit box.”
She sighed. “Okay, but it’s in the safe upstairs. I don’t know why you’re insisting.”
“Mom, you never lock your house and everyone in town knows it. Two strong people could carry that safe down the stairs and right out of the house. I don’t want to argue.”
“Suit yourself. Make a salad, will you?”
I decided not to talk about the day’s discoveries until I had her full attention, so it wasn’t until we sat down at the table that I told her what I’d learned. She listened attentively as I told her the history of the last years of the Morrow Ice Company and the rift between the families after the disappearance of the necklace.
“Does any of this sound familiar?” I took a taste of the meat loaf while she considered her answer. Its oniony, catsupy, mustardy flavors tasted like home and childhood and safety.
Mom shook her head, and then said, “Hugh may have told me some of this. He’d heard only vague stories about why the two branches of the family didn’t get along. And Hugh was the one who told me about the Black Widow, I’m certain. But he never said his family actually had it. Or that he’d seen it. Maybe he knew more than he said, but I doubt it. Our relationship was about telling the truth and cutting through all that had gone on between our families in the past. It was an act of rebellion for Hugh to befriend me, one his parents didn’t like. And then we became real friends. We were both alone. He was like a brother to me.”
“But Hugh wasn’t alone,” I pointed out. “He had a brother. Why didn’t you tell me about Arthur? Don’t you think Arthur must have sent the necklace?”
Mom was quiet for a moment. “Julia, Arthur couldn’t have sent the necklace. He died before Hugh and I even met.”
Darn. I’d been so sure I was onto something, creeping toward an answer. “What happened?” It was an unimaginable tragedy. The loss of two sons.
“He was much older than Hugh, thirteen years older. He drowned in a sailing accident in San Francisco Bay. Hugh’s mother never got over it. I had the impression Arthur was the favored son, the apple of the parental eye. Hugh always felt like the unwanted afterthought, particularly after Arthur died. He left for prep school the next year.”
Mom looked down at her long, beautiful fingers. Her simple wedding ring was still on her left hand. “I spent a long time being furious at Hugh’s parents, two people I’d never met. Can you imagine having a son who is so reluctant to go home for school vacations that he adopts the family of a classmate, a distant relative, on the other side of the country? How awful people are. When Hugh was lost and his parents didn’t come out to Maine, I was even angrier. I realize now I was really mad at Hugh, that he’d been careless and gotten himself killed. I was angry at the world, which had given me the gift of Hugh’s company, and then stolen him from me. My anger had to land somewhere, so it landed on Hugh’s parents. But when you were born a few years later, I understood the enormity of their loss, why they couldn’t bear to come here.”
We sat for a moment while I absorbed what she’d said. The breadth and depth of the tragedy that had befallen Hugh’s parents, losing both their sons, was staggering.
The phone rang, startling us both.
I reached it first. “Julia? Sonny. It’s on. We’re headed to the hospital. We’ve got Page with us. Can you meet us there?”
* * *
We flew up the peninsula in Mom’s car to Busman’s Harbor Hospital, then made tracks to Labor and Delivery. Page was in the waiting room, brow furrowed with anxiety. Normally she was too old for hugs in public places, but she threw herself into my mother’s arms. “Grandma!”
“I’m sure everything’s fine, dear,” my mother reassured her. “What’s going on?”
“Dad’s in the back getting Mom settled.” Page pointed past a pair of swinging doors. “He said you’d be here.”
“And so we are.”
I asked the young man at the reception desk to let Livvie and Sonny know we were there. At least I could relieve any worry they felt about Page by sending word that Mom and I had arrived.
Mom and Page were seated on hard plastic chairs in the farthest corner of the waiting area when I returned to them. “What happened?” I asked.
Page shrugged her broad swimmer’s shoulders. “Nothing much. Mom had some pains. Dad yelled, ‘This is it! Let’s go.’ We all got in his truck and here we are.”
I sat down next to them. None of us had thought to bring anything to pass the time. Then I remembered the photos on my phone. “When I was at the Busman’s Harbor Historical Society today, I saw a picture of Windsholme just a year after it was built. Do you want to see it?” Mom and Page nodded eagerly. Any distraction in a storm. I pulled up the image and passed them the cell phone.
“Oooh,” Page said. Even a child couldn’t miss the power and grandeur that had been Windsholme. “Who are the people?”
I walked them through the cast of characters on the tiny screen, giving the same commentary Floradale Thayer had, though I left out her remark about Cain and Abel.
Mom had put on her reading glasses, and she reached for the phone, studying the faces. “My gracious, it was a beautiful house. Julia, can you print this and make me a copy? I would so love to have it.”
I nodded yes and took back the phone.
Time dragged and my bottom hurt from the hard chair. Mom and Page were engaged in a cutthroat game of hangman. “Anybody want anything from the machines? Page, did you get dinner?”
The words were no sooner out of my mouth when Sonny came through the swinging doors. He was dressed in his regular jeans, plaid shirt, and down coat, no scrubs. Livvie appeared behind him, also fully dressed.
“False alarm,” Sonny announced.
“Braxton Hicks contractions,” Livvie confirmed.
“You’re not going to have a baby that way,” a nurse said from the reception desk, “at least not tonight.”
Livvie sagged against Sonny. “I’m exhausted. I want to go home to bed.”
My mother stood and touched Livvie’s arm. “Maybe Page could stay over with me?”
“Please,” Page pleaded.
Livvie wearily nodded her assent. She looked like she’d agree to anything to get out of there.
Page turned to me. “Can you stay over at Grandma’s too, Aunt Julia?”
“Don’t bother Julia,” Sonny answered for me. “She’s got too many things to do. Two million things, in fact.”
“I was already staying at Grandma’s,” I assured Page. She rewarded me with an enormous smile.
Chapter 11
I awoke in the morning with the sun shining through the windows. Le Roi raised a lazy head out of the quilt and narrowed his eyes. Why was I stirring on such a cozy morning? he seemed to ask. The twin bed in my childhood room was uncomfortable for the two of us, but it had one advantage as far as Le Roi was concerned—no Chris. He and Chris operated in a world of détente, neither too sure about the other. I’d adopted Le Roi at the end of the summer. His former family was no longer able to care for him, and no one else had stepped forward. Things were still tentative between Chris and me at the time, so as far as Le Roi was concerned, he’d staked his claim first. His relationship to me was primary and Chris was the interloper.
In the quiet kitchen, I fixed a pot of coffee and made a couple of slices of toast with blueberry jam. The house was silent. Neither Mom nor Page stirred.
The first task of the morning, even before getting dressed, was to head back to the computer. I signed on to the genealogy site. Thanks to Floradale Thayer, I had a whole lot more names than I’d had the day before. I built branches of the family tree from me to Mom all the way back to the brothers William and Charles, and then to their father, Lemuel.
When I added Lemuel’s name, my heart beat a little faster. Someone else had put him in his or her family tree. That meant someone else had trod this path, looking f
or ancestors. The long line of only children was over. There was a relative somewhere, who had done what I was doing. A relative I needed to find.
I tracked back down Charles’s line to Hugh and Arthur, all living in San Francisco and apparently a dead end. But then I realized Mom had also given me a clue. Arthur was dead, and I knew approximately when he’d died. The genealogy site didn’t offer up an obituary, but did give me a death certificate with an exact date, July 11, 1969. I jumped over to a search engine and kept looking.
It came up right away. There were newspaper articles about the tragedy. He’d been swept overboard during a sailing race. Unlike Hugh’s death, there were several witnesses including the rest of the crew. A rescue was attempted, though it failed. Arthur had been knocked unconscious before he went over, and sank like stone.
I followed a link to the first obituary I spotted. Arthur was given his due as the oldest son of a Gold Coast family, a man who had graduated from Harvard undergrad and then Stanford Law. He had worked with his father at Morrow and Wakefield, the family law firm. Arthur had been an active sailor and racer. The final paragraph of the obituary noted those left behind, listing his parents, brother Hugh—and Arthur’s wife and infant daughter! His wife was named Louise, his daughter was Rose. She was less than a year old when her father died.
I yelped when I saw it, and Le Roi periscoped his head up from his spot in the sun on the rug, protesting the interruption to his slumbers.
“Wake up, you lazy bones,” I called to him. “Exciting things are happening.”
I stretched, went to the bathroom, and then threw a sweater over my T-shirt and pajama pants. Now that I knew their names, finding Louise Morrow and then Rose Morrow in San Francisco city directories was easy. It looked like they’d resided with Arthur’s parents for a couple of years after the accident and then struck out on their own. But they didn’t go far. They moved to an address just a few blocks away.
I worried Louise would remarry and I’d lose the trail. Arthur was only twenty-six when he died and Louise likely was quite young as well. But she continued to show up, as did Rose. In fact, though Louise’s trail drifted off in the mid-nineties, Rose Morrow continued on.