Scrapbook of Secrets

by Mollie Cox Bryan

  Here she was, thinking like an old woman, and yet a life grew inside her. She already began a journal for the baby, writing about her thoughts and feelings over the past two weeks since she’d found out that she was expecting. It was such a shock to her that it was taking time to get used to. And she had other things on her mind—like her dance recital next week and all the upcoming rehearsals.

  “I wish Paige were here,” said DeeAnn suddenly. “I think she’d love those cheese biscuits I brought.”

  “Oh, yes, she would. Who wouldn’t?” Sheila said.

  “I guess we take a backseat to her boy,” Vera said.

  “It’s about time,” DeeAnn said. “I mean, Lord, who cares if the boy is gay? It’s been years since they’ve even talked.”

  “Plenty of catching up to do,” Sheila said.

  “You know,” Annie spoke up quietly, “I don’t think it would be easy to be the mother of a gay person.”

  They all looked at her.

  “What I mean is, they have it rough and it would be difficult to see that,” she said.

  “Oh, yes, I agree,” DeeAnn said, biting into a cheese biscuit. “Besides that, nobody wants to think of their kids having sex—at all.”

  Annie raised her eyebrows. Her mother said the same thing to her when Annie became sexually active at sixteen.

  “My daughter started way too early,” DeeAnn said while cutting a picture. The sound of the squeaky scissors was drowned out by her voice. “But it turned out okay. I mean, she went to college, is becoming a nurse, getting married next year. It all comes out in the wash.”

  “If we’re lucky,” Sheila said. “I’m afraid my Donna will make me a grandmother before I’m ready,” she said, and laughed.

  Vera’s heart sank. Sheila was thinking about becoming a grandmother, and she was preparing for her first baby.

  Donna was Sheila’s oldest daughter. At fifteen, she was beautiful and was built like she was twenty-five, turning the heads of older boys—and of men, too. “God, that girl!”

  “Speaking of sex,” Annie said after gluing down a picture of Sam in his Halloween costume—dressed as a bunny. “I’ve been reading ... digging through Maggie Rae’s papers again.”

  “And?” Vera said, wondering if she really wanted to know.

  Annie took a long drink of her wine. “Some of this stuff is painful to read. But riveting. I think after looking at her picture, reading some of her notes and trying to piece it together, I think she was just lonely, basically. Her husband was never around to help. He was working long hours, traveled extensively. Four kids. That’s tough. She couldn’t handle it. The truth is, I’m not sure I could.”

  “So, do you still think she was murdered, rather than killed herself?” Vera wondered.

  “I don’t know. It seems to be complicated. I wonder what the detective is making of this. He made copies and dropped the papers back off with me because he said it didn’t seem like her husband wanted them.”

  “That says it all, as far as I’m concerned,” Sheila said, looking up from her cutting.

  “Calm down,” Vera said. “Not everybody cares about this stuff like you do, for God’s sake.”

  “What do you think, Vera?” DeeAnn asked. “I mean, he came in to talk to you.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve really not thought about it too much. I’ve had a lot on my mind with Mama and the baby. But it was a strange conversation. He seemed genuinely distraught, and I have to say he also seemed like he was trying to do good by his children.”

  The women sat in silence for a few seconds.

  “I think the situation is complex,” Annie volunteered. “Maggie Rae wrote this beautiful erotic stuff—and she had a thing for S and M. Maybe he didn’t like it. Maybe he killed her and doesn’t remember doing it. Maybe she did kill herself. I mean, I’ve thought about so many possibilities.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to me at all that she killed herself,” Sheila said.

  “It also doesn’t make sense that she never placed any of her pictures in her scrapbooks,” Vera said.

  “You know, I wondered about that, too,” Annie said. “Why would somebody buy all that stuff and never do anything with it? I mean, was she waiting for something? Was it too painful for her to mull over her life, to look at it on scrapbook pages?”

  “Maybe she was just busy. Gosh, all those children, and the writing she did. It makes sense to me now that she couldn’t make it to a crop,” Sheila said. “But still to buy one scrapbook and a few things and never use them is one thing—but boxes of it? I don’t know.”

  “God, I wish I’d known her better,” DeeAnn said.

  “I think we all do,” Vera said, looking around the table, wondering how well she knew any of them. Even as close as she and Sheila were, she would not be surprised to find out about secrets in her past as well. She hadn’t known DeeAnn as long as she knew Sheila. DeeAnn was a transplant from Minnesota, who married a local man, the principal and football coach at the high school. DeeAnn barely mentioned her life growing up in Minnesota. Of course, there was Annie—the most different of all of them. All of them could be into strange sexual practices or witchcraft, for all Vera knew. Some things are better left that way.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a little healthy repression,” she could hear her mother’s voice saying in her mind. Vera wondered if all forty-one-year-old women still heard their mother’s voices in their head as strongly as she did.

  “What are you working on, Annie? That’s beautiful,” Vera said.

  Annie held up the page with one photo of Maggie Rae holding Grace as a baby. She framed it in turquoise vellum paper against a glitter pink page, pasted the note she had found written from Maggie Rae to her daughter, and used buttons as embellishments in the corner of the notes. She pulled out the word “confidence” and used it as a headline for the page. She handwrote it in large letters in purple archival ink. The women read the note. Vera held back tears. Damn, she was just so emotional these days.

  “That’s pretty powerful words coming from your mama,” DeeAnn said.

  “Depressing too,” Sheila mumbled.

  Chapter 28

  Annie dumped the contents of the huge envelope onto the table.

  “Let’s see what we come up with here,” she said.

  Papers, postcards, certificates, cards, notes of all shapes and sizes, were splayed across the table. There were ticket stubs to movies, plays, and ballets. “I’ll take those,” Vera said. “Oh, look, she wrote something on the back of this ballet ticket stub. It was the Richmond Ballet. She wrote ‘first anniversary’ on the back of one.”

  “Sweet,” DeeAnn said. “Look at this. A recipe card with her mom’s recipe for red velvet cake. She wrote, ‘I can’t make it as good as mama, but I try.’ Oh, red velvet!”

  The women quieted as they searched through her papers. Inspiration sparked from these fibers and pieces of Maggie Rae’s life.

  “Oh, my. Look at this. It’s from Zeb, Tina Sue’s husband. A postcard with a quote from the Bible, handwritten on the front of the card. ‘You shall not bring the wages of a harlot, or the price of a dog, to the house of the Lord your God for any vowed offering, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God.’ And then on the back of the card ... um ... let’s just say X-rated material,” Sheila said, and blushed.

  “Let me see.” DeeAnn grabbed it from her and howled in laughter. “Yep. X-rated, indeed.”

  “That’s just creepy—a Bible quote on one side and that on the back,” Vera said.

  “Perhaps that’s why he’s a person of interest,” Annie said. “Her brother-in-law. And it would seem he didn’t like her writing erotica, either. Maybe they were having an affair. Seems like an intimate and strange thing to keep.”

  “Lord, truth is stranger than fiction,” Sheila said. “Can you imagine if it was her brother-in-law who killed her? What if they’d been having an affair and she cut him off? Or his wife found out and he needed to ch
oose? I don’t know. He was so strange at the funeral, dressed in Mennonite garb like that. But I don’t think they were even Mennonite.”

  Annie held a thick letter envelope, with a handwritten address in black ink on it. The return address was Leo Shirley’s and she recognized his name as a “person of interest” also listed in the paper, next to Zeb McClain’s name.

  She opened the envelope to a stack of letters folded neatly into one another. One glance told her they were love letters. No wonder he was a person of interest. This man loved Maggie Rae, or may have been obsessed with her.

  “What do you-all know about Leo Shirley?” Annie said.

  They all stopped and looked at her.

  “Did you say Leo Shirley?” Sheila asked.

  Annie nodded.

  “Bad news,” Sheila said, and grimaced.

  “Why? How do you know him?” Vera asked, setting down her glass of wine.

  “I just remembered that he was listed in the paper as a person of interest, and here’s some letters from him. He and Maggie Rae were having an affair.”

  “What? Are you sure? He’s a married man!” Vera said.

  Annie held up the letters. “He was deeply in love with her.”

  “In lust is more like it, and it doesn’t surprise me. He’s always been trouble—him and his brother, Harv, the postman,” Sheila said. “They went to school with us and were just bad news.”

  “What do you mean?”Annie asked.

  “I mean, they were always in trouble. You name it; they did it. Drugs. Vandalism. DUIs. In and out of juvenile detention homes. Rape. Assault and battery. Just as mean as they could be.”

  “Add adultery to the list,” Vera said. “What a slimeball.”

  “He seems very sweet in his letters. Here, read them,” she said, and handed them out to the women.

  Annie read over the next letter. “Oh, so much for sweetness. Listen to this. ‘I love you, Maggie Rae, I always have. If I can’t have you, nobody else will, either.’ Seems like she was breaking it off. Here’s one that’s warning her, again.”

  “Did you say the detective copied all of this?” DeeAnn asked after a few minutes.

  “Yes, so he’s seen this, and they already have him on their list. But as far as I know, they’ve not made any arrests.”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind he’s capable of murder,” Sheila said. “I’ll never forget the time when we were kids and he took Mrs. Laskowski’s cat and set it on fire. Oh, that gave me nightmares for years.”

  “Wow! Look at this,” Annie said, peeling a stuck photo from in between the notes. An almost naked Maggie Rae was cuffed to a chair, a man behind her licking her neck. “Is this him?”

  “Yep,” Sheila said. “Why don’t we just throw that away?”

  “I wonder if his wife knew about him and Maggie Rae,” Vera said, taking the picture from her. “Some men just can’t control themselves. Cheating on their wives!” She flung the picture to the table.

  “I never understood why his wife married him, anyway,” DeeAnn said. “He’s never even held a job, has he?”

  “Love is blind. But it ain’t deaf and dumb, too,” Sheila said.

  “Regardless,” Annie said. “Cheating on your wife is one thing. Murder is another.”

  “I bet he killed Maggie Rae,” Sheila said.

  “Now, hold on, you were convinced that Robert killed her, weren’t you?” Annie laughed.

  Sheila chuckled, too. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a cop. I’d go around arresting men whom I already know way too much about just to get them off the streets.”

  “So, do we tell his wife?” Vera wondered out loud as she sorted papers.

  “I say we stay out of that,” DeeAnn said, taking a sip of wine, then setting her glass down. “Besides, if he’s been called in for questioning, I’m sure she knows by now, if she didn’t before. Can I see that purple pen? I just want to write a little something on this page.”

  “So,” Annie said, “we have three possible suspects. Robert. Leo. And Maggie Rae’s brother-in-law, Zeb. Any of them could have killed her. Plus the newspaper claimed there were more. I wonder who else is on their list.”

  Chapter 29

  “Annie, why all these questions about S and M?” Joshua said to her over the phone.

  “I told you. I’m reading the stories written by this woman who was really into it. I read that it could be an escape.”

  “Yes, that’s one of the theories, and I have to tell you it’s widely practiced and it’s considered within the norm of accepted sexual practices within the psychiatric community.”

  “What’s not accepted?”

  “Rape. Bestiality. Sex with kids. That’s about it,” he said.

  Annie could hear him blowing smoke into the phone. Her brother, the psychiatrist, had smoked since he was seventeen. One of his many habits that she despised. She hated the way he bit his fingernails down to the nubs and the way he could never sit still. But most of all, she hated the way he analyzed everything. She smiled. He could probably say the same about her.

  “I guess I was trying to figure out what kind of person would want to be hurt.”

  “Why? Where is that going to lead you?”

  “I don’t know, really. It’s just that it’s all so mysterious. Her death. The circumstances. I’m just trying to piece it all together.”

  “Why don’t you talk to her husband about her?”

  “Oh, God, Josh, I couldn’t do that. He’s the lead suspect in the case. And he creeps me out.”

  “Oh, c’mon. You’ve questioned worse. What’s happening to you in Cumberland Creek? Are you losing your edge?”

  She thought for a moment. “Maybe I am. But this is close to home. I’m a mother now. She lived two doors down. He lives there. I don’t want him showing up here when Mike’s not home—which is a lot these days, you know. What premise would I have in talking to him?”

  “I don’t know. Think of something. I have to go. Be careful, Annie. Love you.”

  “Love you, too, Josh,” she said into the phone, and went back to folding clothes, which is what she was doing before Joshua had called to check on her.

  Mike had been gone for two days. He wasn’t scheduled to be home for another two. Her brother often called to check on her, as did her mom and dad. Now, of course, the scrapbook club members also called. It was hard being a single mom—she couldn’t imagine doing it all by herself, every day. Everything, from taking the trash out, to tucking the boys in at night—it was exhausting. God bless the women and men who were single parents.

  One more load of laundry today and she would be finished—at least for the day. Tomorrow there would be another pile. The piles never stopped.

  The phone rang. “Hello,” Annie said.

  “Ms. Chamovitz?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Jim Carlson from the Washington Tribune.”

  “Oh, yes, Jim. I know your work. How are you?”

  The boys started running through the house. In a panic, she took the phone into the bathroom and shut the door.

  “What can I help you with, Jim?”

  “We’re doing a story on domestic violence that leads to murder. I’ve got reporters all over the country looking into local situations. We sent a reporter to Cumberland Creek a few days ago. He’s not getting anywhere. You know, nobody will really talk to him. We’ve gotten some basic facts from the cops, but that’s all. I’d like to get a story about the possible murder of Maggie Rae Dasher. I’m looking for a series, perhaps. You know, profiles of the people involved. Her husband, maybe. Someone else in the family as well. Maybe even one of the kids. I don’t know. I just need someone to get in there and poke around. Someone the locals trust. Are you up for it?”

  Annie’s heart was pounding—and then leaped. Could she manage to do this story? “I’m not sure how much they trust me, either. But I can give it a go. When is the deadline?”

  “Work like this takes time. The deadline i
s flexible. But I do want the scoop on it, if you can manage.”

  “Well,” she said. “I already kind of have a head start on it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have Maggie Rae’s papers, photos, and scrapbooks,” she told him.

  “How did you get those?”

  “They were left on the curb for the trash, and my friends and I took them. Nobody from the family has even asked after them. The cops know I have them. They already copied them and then gave it back to me.”

  “Well, what do you know? Life in a small town. It looks like I called the right person, after all,” he said.

  She could hear the boys squealing in the background as they raced through the house. Could he hear them? She began to sweat.

  “I’ll e-mail the details on pay and how to reach me, and so on,” he told her. “I have your e-mail.”

  “Great, I’ll look for it, and I’ll get busy on this right away,” she said.

  After they hung up the phone, she opened the door to all of the clothes she had just folded—they were strewn about the house as if a party was going down. And there seemed to be. Sam wandered through the room with a pair of her underwear on his head.

  How would she ever think clearly enough to write these stories? Why didn’t she tell him no, that she had retired several years ago at the ripe old age of thirty-two? Why couldn’t she?

  Chapter 30

  “Thank God, it’s Saturday night and I have only one more week to the recital,” Vera said after taking a drink of wine. She was finishing up a scrapbook for her star dancer, Nancy Mayhew. She’d just gotten the letter in the mail—Nancy would be attending Juilliard in the fall. One more picture to place, and it was a lovely one—when Nancy was dancing the part of Clara in their annual production of The Nutcracker.