When the Grits Hit the Fan

by Maddie Day

  “Any idea how it got into the back wall upstairs?”

  “I grew up in that building, you know.” Jo snorted. “I put the shoe there myself. I miss my mother now that she’s gone, but we experienced a great deal of conflict at one point. I was so mad at her when I was a teenager.” She shook her head at the memory. “My parents were replacing all the windows upstairs. One night when they were out and the walls were still open, I shoved her shoe into the cavity. But just one. I knew how much she liked this pair. She took very good care of them, so they lasted. She couldn’t figure out for the life of her where that one shoe went.”

  “That explains it,” I said.

  “You ever do anything like that to your mom?” Jo asked, setting the shoe gently on the sleek coffee table.

  I laughed. “Believe it or not, I didn’t. We were very close when I was in high school. I never needed to act out, at least not with her. It was only the two of us, and . . .” I swallowed down a lump in my throat.

  “Then you’re a lucky young lady. I’ll bet she’s proud of what you’ve done with the store.”

  She didn’t know about Mom. Why would she? Mom had left town almost thirty years ago, and had been neither Jo’s nor Maude’s age. I simply nodded. Talking about one death in a day was enough. I wasn’t going to get into the story of my fabulous, healthy, strong mother abruptly dying of an aneurysm at age fifty-three a short thirteen months ago. I pulled out the tiny pink moccasins and handed them to Jo.

  “I found these, too.” I watched her. If they’d gone into the wall at the same time, they couldn’t be Maude’s. She wouldn’t have been born then.

  Jo’s quick intake of breath was audible. “Good heavens,” she whispered, staring at them. As she’d done with the high heel, she turned them, ran her finger down a seam, stroked the side. She looked up at me with full eyes.

  “Yours, I gather.” I kept my voice soft, too.

  “In a way.” She clasped them to her chest with both hands. “Those were different times, Robbie, the sixties.”

  So that must have been when the windows went in, in the sixties.

  “You must know that things got wild at the end of the decade—free love, flower power, all that—but earlier, when I was a teen, we were very repressed,” she said, shaking her head. “Very.” She fell silent, lowering the moccasins to her lap and gazing at them.

  I sipped my coffee. Was she going to go on or should I leave?

  “There was a boy I adored,” she finally continued, keeping her focus on the baby shoes. “I ended up pregnant. My parents made me give the baby up for adoption.”

  Pink baby shoes. What was that Hemingway’s microstory? For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. “I’m so sorry. That must have been really hard for you.” I reached out and touched her arm.

  “Worst thing I ever did. I was sure it was going to be a daughter, and I’d bought these pink shoes for her.”

  “I can’t even imagine, Jo.”

  “I was right. It was a girl I gave birth to. A perfect tiny girl. I had to give my little Grace away when she was three days old.”

  “There was no way to keep her?”

  “I was seventeen. I hadn’t even finished high school. The boy’s parents sent him away to military school when they found out. My parents made me go live with an aunt I hated, out in Iowa.”

  “Have you tried to find your daughter?” I’d had a college friend who’d located her birth mother.

  “No. I don’t want to disturb her life if she’s happy. And no one has contacted me.” She squared her shoulders. “That’s why I stuffed these mocs down the wall, too. Later, after I was married, we found out after several years of trying that my husband couldn’t have children, as I told you. But we very much wanted to have a family. So the supreme irony was that I had to adopt a baby girl myself. Or maybe it was supreme justice.”

  Chapter 17

  Those moccasins had held a lot more emotion and history than I’d expected. Jo and I sat chatting for several more minutes, but she seemed to want to immerse herself in her memories alone, so I left the three shoes with her and made my way out.

  I pulled my red wool scarf closer around my neck. The wind was damp, already starting to bring the sharp smell of snow. I hurried in the direction of the South Lick Public Library only a few blocks away. I’d read about a book celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the invention of the crossword puzzle. The book had been out for a few years already, since the original “word-cross” was invented in 1913, but I’d never gotten around to reading it.

  One of the many Carnegie-built libraries across the Midwest, the building was constructed of brick and limestone, and featured wide welcoming steps up to a door with an arched fanlight. It had been modernized with an addition and a ramp in the back, but the front looked like it must have when it was new along with the new century.

  I pulled open the heavy antique door of the two-story building. Georgia LaRue stood behind the long hundred-year-old wooden counter, her fingers on a keyboard, her eyes on a monitor. The library aide had been a fan of Pans ’N Pancakes since I’d opened, and she’d helped bring customers back when business slumped after the first murder.

  She smiled. “Hey, Robbie. It must be Monday.” Her well-padded figure was clad in a red sweater decorated with a sequined design.

  “Everybody needs a day or two off, right?” I liked having mine on days when most people were hard at work. Places like stores and even the library tended to be emptier and easier to navigate than if my downtime had been on a weekend like everybody else’s.

  A balding man sat in an easy chair under the windows reading a newspaper, and I spied a woman at one of the computer stations in the next room, but otherwise the library seemed unoccupied.

  “What all are you looking for today, hon?” Georgia asked.

  “I want to read The Curious History of the Crossword. Came out a few years ago.”

  “Let me check.” She tapped the keyboard, her long turquoise nails clicking as she did. She jotted down the number 793.732, handed me the slip of paper, then pointed. “Should oughta be in the fourth unit down in the East Room.” She set her forearms on the counter and leaned toward me, glancing left and right before speaking in a low voice. “Heared you found Stilton’s body.”

  “I did.” Maybe I should have stayed home today, after all.

  “That’s quite the family. Chuck, rest his soul, was a real . . . um . . . jerk. You should have seen him in here, lording it over everybody because he was a professor.”

  “He seems to have acted that way to everybody.”

  “Maude wasn’t much better,” Georgia went on. “She cheated me last year when we was building an addition for my husband. When his dementia really set in.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. She give me a quote to design the addition and then charged me twice that. Said it was ‘incidentals.’” Georgia surrounded the last word with finger quotes. “I was so dang upset about my hubby losing his mind that I hadn’t gotten the first quote in writing. I had no real recourse.” She tucked a strand of bottle-blond hair behind her ear.

  “I’m surprised Maude can stay in business if she pulls stuff like that.” I loosened my scarf and unbuttoned my coat. The library didn’t stint on heat. “Was her design at least a good one?”

  “In fact, it was. Wide doors and flat thresholds, lever handles instead of doorknobs, everything easy for wheelchair access. Orville had been in a nursing home last fall but the care was terrible, so I moved him back home and hired caregivers.” Her eyes sagged. “We still get royalties from his books and his inventions and such. He was a brilliant professor, but nobody’s home upstairs anymore.”

  “I’m so sorry, Georgia.” I gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m going to go get that book. Be back in a minute.” I found the history book, and picked up another one on the history of the jigsaw puzzle. I stroked the spines of the books in the 793 section, which all seemed to be about games and puzzles. A lot of peop
le my age mostly read on their tablets, but I liked the heft of a real book in my hands, another way I was an anachronism in my generation. The smell of the paper, the crack of the binding, even the cover art—all of it appealed to me. If I traveled a lot, I would load up a bunch of books on an electronic device as I had when I went to Italy. But you couldn’t beat the physical book, and at the library the price was right, too.

  When I approached the counter again, Maude Stilton stood in front of it, dressed in black pants, black wool coat, black scarf. Her hair hung limp on her collar, and neither she nor Georgia looked at all happy.

  What was Maude doing in the library two days after her husband was murdered?

  “Telling me you want to extend your sympathies.” Maude’s words slid out sharp and tense. “I don’t believe it for a minute. Nobody in this entire town is sorry my Charlie is dead. I’m sick to death of hearing it.” She wagged her head back and forth and did a simpering imitation of condolences, the corners of her mouth turned down. “‘I’m sorry for your loss. May he rest in peace.’ Blah, blah, blah. It’s all BS.”

  “You’re going through a terrible time,” Georgia said. “I meant what I said. You have my sympathies.”

  Maude snorted.

  I eased forward. “You might not want to hear it, Maude, but I’m also sorry for your loss.” I didn’t have a bone to pick with Charles. Unlike the rest of the universe, apparently.

  Maude looked at me out of a ravaged face. Her dark eye makeup was smudged and it looked like her hand had slipped when she’d applied lipstick. “Thank you, Robbie. I appreciate that.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you or your family?” I asked.

  “No. I can’t even remember why I came here.” She narrowed her eyes at Georgia. “But now that I am, I might as well be honest. For all I know, you killed him yourself, to get back at me about that job. The one where you lied and said I cheated you.”

  Georgia sucked in a gasp and backed up a step. “Maude, that’s absurd, and you know it. I would never kill anyone.”

  “Maybe,” Maude said, her eyes blazing into Georgia’s face. “I’m going to let the police decide that. They’ve come up empty-handed so far.” She turned and stalked out the door.

  Chapter 18

  I leaned on my snow shovel and took a breather. I’d been shoveling debris out the window since one-thirty and it had to be almost two-thirty. The sturdy plastic snow shovel was perfect for the job since it was wide and flat, and didn’t add much extra weight to the load. Moving plaster and lath was dusty heavy work, and cold, too, since the window was wide open. I wore several layers of old sweatshirts, a knit cap, and work gloves. My body was warm from the work, but my nose never seemed to warm up. And despite my mask, I needed to keep clearing my throat of filtered plaster dust.

  I’d come home after that scene at the library, puttered in my apartment, and eaten lunch before heading upstairs. Poor Georgia. Not only had she essentially lost her husband, but Maude had accused her of murder. That didn’t make sense. It must have been Maude’s grief speaking. Jo had said Charles was psychologically abusive to Maude and their son. I reflected on how you never knew what really went on inside a relationship. Maybe Charles expressed his love for Maude in a way that those outside the marriage couldn’t see. Still, I hoped Octavia wouldn’t take Maude’s suggestion seriously. Getting hauled in for questioning wasn’t a bit of fun. I knew. I’d been there.

  That made me think of Lou. I’d give her a call again tonight, maybe even head into Bloomington and take her out for a beer. I looked out the open window. It hadn’t started snowing yet. Snowing. Never mind driving my van into the university town. The old girl did not like navigating the hilly route on slippery roads.

  I wandered over to the artifact table and turned the pages of the newspaper, marveling at how big it was, and with such small print. I leaned over to read. The edition was from June 10 and one of the headlines was about Charles Dickens having died. I flipped through a few pages until I spied an article about underground tunnels. I needed to get back to work again before I lost my warmth, but I left it open to that page so I’d remember to come back and read it.

  I set to shoveling again. As usually happened, the repetitive motion of physical work, whether removing rubble or preparing biscuit dough, freed up my mind to work through problems. I was still stunned by Jo’s revelations.

  She’d been pregnant out of wedlock in a time when that was unacceptable. She’d stuffed her mother’s favorite shoe inside the wall out of anger at being forced to live with an unpleasant aunt and give up her baby. She’d lost a daughter, for whom she’d bought tiny pink moccasins. And then, when her husband was found to be infertile, Jo had adopted someone else’s little girl. What a strange continuation of a cycle.

  Jo obviously hadn’t liked Charles at all. How could one man have so many enemies? Having observed Charles in action at several department dinners, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but which of his enemies had chosen Friday night or early Saturday to finally end Charles’s life? I wanted to figure out the identities of others he’d antagonized. Partly because I hated the thought of Lou being under suspicion, but also because the puzzle aspect of an investigation fascinated me, drew me in, even though I knew Detective Octavia didn’t appreciate my help.

  Part of that puzzle had to be the question of Friday night. How could I find out if Maude had reported Charles missing? If she hadn’t, why not? Maybe he had a mistress somewhere or had said he was going to a friend’s house for a party. But no, after the dinner he’d said he was walking home.

  My thoughts were as jumbled as the pile of plaster.

  One last shovelful into the container and I was done with the pile of rubble. I slid the window shut and latched it, then pushed the bits left on the floor into a small pile out of the way. There wasn’t much point sweeping up until I was completely finished with the demolition phase. The thought of heading downstairs to shower, grab a beer, and read my library book was alluring. But so was the prospect of having a nice welcoming guest suite for when Babbo and Maria came to visit in a few months. I slid on a clean face mask, grabbed the pry bar, and started on a new section of wall. Abe and I hadn’t finished the back, so I kept going toward the corner where it joined the east wall. Maybe I’d find more treasures in there.

  I hummed as I worked, but it turned into a string of swear words when one section of lath was particularly stubborn. It refused to come out. I hammered the pry bar, and worked it into the wall until the slats crashed out all at once. The momentum carried me backwards and made me drop the hammer. It hit my shin bone and a speck of dust got into my eye. Trying to blink away the dust, I swore again. This was no business for the weak and dainty. Although neither word had ever been used to describe me.

  An hour later I pried out one of the last sections before the corner join. With it came another really old newspaper, another treasure. I set down the pry bar and gingerly brushed the dust off the paper, then carried it to one of the western-facing windows. The sky was overcast with the impending storm, but enough natural light came through to read by since it was still a couple of hours before sundown.

  It was the Brown County Democrat, the same local paper that was still being published, but the date was 1913. In fact, a picture of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new library graced the front page. Everyone wore hats, men and women, and the women’s skirts hovered right above their ankles. One man in a top hat held a giant pair of scissors and beamed for the camera, about to snip the ribbon held by two young ladies in white.

  This was so cool. I should donate it to the library. Maybe it had gone into the walls when the upstairs was first being finished. I knew my building had been constructed in 1870, but that didn’t mean it was completed on the inside at that time, although I thought the store was in operation earlier than this date. Maybe they’d used the upstairs for storage and hadn’t needed to finish the walls until later.

  I knelt on the floor and spread the pa
per out in front of me. Carefully turning the pages, I examined the ads that lined the edges. Finally on page seventeen I saw an advertisement for the South Lick General Store, with an address of 19 Main Street. My very store. Sweet. I carried the paper to the artifact table.

  After I pried out the last bits of plaster and lath where I’d been working, I spent another half hour shoveling out the newly created rubble. By the time I’d latched the window again, flakes were beginning to float down from the sky and the light was disappearing. I’d put in a decent afternoon’s work and this was a good stopping point. I examined the east wall, next up on my round-the-building plan.

  “That’s funny,” I said aloud. There seemed to be a rectangular shape set into the wallpaper, almost like a cabinet door. I’d never noticed it before. The bottom of the shape sat a couple of feet up from the floor, but the shape, about two feet by three feet, didn’t have a handle to pull it open. I tried to wedge my fingers in with no success. It was likely an old window an owner along the way had closed in and papered over.

  I was itching to find out what was in there but I was tired, and it was my day off. On the other hand, I didn’t have any plans for tonight. I picked up the crowbar. And heard the restaurant phone ring downstairs. I glanced at the stairs, at the crowbar, at the stairs. The stairs won.

  Chapter 19

  I puttered in the restaurant a few hours later. After the call, which had turned out to be a wrong number, I abandoned work for the day. I showered off the plaster dust and spent twenty minutes playing with Birdy. The Monday New York Times puzzle had been way too easy, as it always was. And even though I finally sat down with a glass of wine and the puzzle history book, I didn’t find myself settling into it, and took my wine into the store instead, pausing for a minute before I switched on the lights to get lost in the sight of the snow falling light and fluffy like freshly grated parmigiano