Without Miss Dixie she hadn’t taken any shots inside the house and now she was kicking herself. She was certain something would’ve popped out at her had she aimed it in a few of those empty rooms.
But she’d have to leave ghost chasing for another day. Right now, there was work to do.
Matt had emailed her a few random “Star Trek” jokes (she didn’t get them, either), several people wanted her to do a “quick sample sketch” of their family house for free, and one lone email stood out with an “urgent” subject line she almost ignored but then thought better of.
She nearly dropped her computer and had to read the message four times before it sunk in.
Dear Miss Magill,
My name is Arron Whitehouse and I am terribly sorry to be tracking you down like this. I simply had no other means of contacting you since the phone number and address your aunt had on file were no longer valid. I am the estate lawyer for Sarah Magill, your aunt, and I regret to inform you of her recent passing. She had been sick for some time, I have been told, but passed away peacefully in her own home with an attending home health nurse eight days ago. She has left provisions for you in her will, if you’ll be so kindly to contact me.
Again, I am so very sorry for this impersonal means of communication. If you’d give me a call I’d be more than happy to discuss any particulars about her passing and her estate.
Thank you,
Arron Whitehouse, Esquire
Taryn was dumbfounded. She hadn’t seen her aunt in years and therefore had no idea she was ill. She did send her Christmas cards when she remembered but Taryn had never been one to take the time to write her return address on them. She assumed Sarah knew how to find her.
Setting her laptop aside, Taryn pulled her legs and feet up into her chair and slowly rocked back and forth. Was it cancer? A heart attack? Sarah was always something of a recluse but she’d been active, fit even. The memories Taryn had were of Sarah gardening, hiking up the mountains behind her New Hampshire home to show Taryn the view from the top, swimming in the ice cold volcanic lake–smiling as she dove off rocks and paddled her kayak at sunset. Gone? It didn’t seem possible. She was the last family member Taryn had. She’d always meant to contact her, visit her, keep in touch better. Now she never would.
And what about her estate? Unless she’d been even stranger than the people of her township thought, Sarah didn’t have money. She didn’t really believe in it. The house was almost falling down around her the last time Taryn saw it and that was twenty years ago. She couldn’t imagine what kind of shape the old farmhouse would be in now. But there would be furniture, personal papers, and other things to contend with. She’d have to call that attorney.
Why am I always surrounded by death, Taryn asked herself as she wandered down the stairs, in a daze. She didn’t feel like working now. Even “Real Housewives” was losing its charm.
She meant to go outside and have a seat on the front porch, but a noise made her hesitate. Trying to walk softly on the old hardwood floors, Taryn crept to the front door and peered outside. There, the usually sunny Delphina sat in one of the white wicker chairs, her bandaged hand shaking. She was wracked with sobs she wasn’t even trying to muffle and the tears ran smoothly down her lined face, one after another.
Not wanting to embarrass her, and recognizing when someone wanted a moment to themselves, Taryn turned around and climbed back up the stairs. It must be a night of grief, she sighed as she slipped into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. The sadness was a second blanket.
Chapter 10
I have no idea what his mental capacity is but Miranda said he likes to talk,” Taryn warned Daniel as they climbed up the nursing home stairs. She’d had a restless night and wasn’t feeling like herself. The shock of Sarah’s death was still fresh and Taryn spent most of the evening trying to make some sense out of the news. She’d failed.
As far as nursing homes went, this didn’t look terrible. At least the flowers and swings in the front made it look like someone was making an effort. Still, when her time came, Taryn hoped she didn’t have to be put in one. She was sure the nurses and staff were qualified and caring but the idea of being cooped up, unable to come and go as she pleased, and incapable of taking care of herself scared her more than dying. At least Sarah’d been able to die in her house, amongst her belongings.
“I talked to the historical society, a lot,” Daniel complained. “Nobody ever told me about this guy.”
“Maybe you didn’t do the secret knock,” Taryn suggested with a laugh. Daniel grinned at her. She noticed he’d cleaned up some for the visit and wore pressed khakis, a Polo shirt, and had trimmed his beard. His toes still peeked out from ratty sandals, though.
“Ha! Maybe,” he shrugged. “You wouldn’t believe some of the walls we’ve hit with this project.”
“I can imagine.”
Low generic music was playing in the lobby and a receptionist sat behind a tall counter. She appeared to be in her early twenties and was pecking at a computer, bobbing her blond head in time to the music and sipping on a Sprite when they reached her. A bulletin board above her was covered in pictures of the residents on outings, having birthday parties, and visiting with their friends and family. Another one was decorated with laminated cutouts of fall leaves.
“Hi,” Taryn started brightly. “We’re here to see LeRoy–“
“He’s ready!” the receptionist sang with a huge coral smile, cutting her off. “Been ready all morning. They’ve already taken him to the inner garden. I’ll show you!”
“Peppy little thing, isn’t she?” Daniel remarked under his breath as she led them down oddly quiet corridors still managing to buzz with activity at the same time.
Taryn was able to peek into a few rooms along the way and was met with a mixture of smiles, waves, and blank stares. Some residents watched television while others dozed in their chairs or on their beds. A few moaned in pain. If she were perfectly honest with herself, she was a little afraid of nursing homes and what they entailed. They were a reminder of her mortality even more than the old structures she worked with and ghosts she was starting to encounter.
The “inner garden” was a lovely area, though, and filled with stone statues, garden gnomes, little fountains pouring over fake rocks, and fragrant flowers. Several picnic tables were set up throughout the space enclosed by the home’s walls. Only one man was enjoying it today, however, and he rested in a wheelchair pushed up next to a bubbling fountain. A book of Poe’s short stories was on his lap.
“LeRoy, your guests are here!”
Without turning around, he raised his hand in a wave. “Well, bring them here then. It might look like I’ve got all day but who knows…I could die in a minute.”
“He’s healthy as a horse,” the receptionist whispered. “Just grouchy. You’ll like him, though.”
LeRoy was a small man and probably appeared even slighter than he was, thanks to the wheelchair. His arms, which showed through his rolled up chambray shirt, were stained a dark brown by the sun and he still maintained a full head of wiry silver hair. While his voice might have been gruff, his bright smile betrayed him and his dentures gleamed in the sun when Taryn and Daniel sat across from him on a stone bench.
“Well, they told me I had visitors but didn’t tell me one was going to be a movie star,” he bellowed, casting an appraising glance at Taryn. “Ain’t seen a prettier thing in years!”
Taryn blushed and Daniel laughed. “Oh, you’re being nice,” she scoffed.
“Too old to be nice,” he muttered, running his gnarled fingers across the cover of his book. “Did that in my younger days. Now it’s bad for the constitution. This here your husband?” He jerked his finger in Daniel’s direction as his gaze traveled disapprovingly down to his bare toes.
“No sir, we’re just working together,” Daniel explained. “She let me tag along.”
“Get used to it, boy,” he cracked. “It don’t get any better. You’ll be followin
g women around for the rest of your life.”
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” Taryn interjected. “We appreciate it.”
“Nurse says you want to talk to me about history. About the town and what-all I know.”
“Well,” Daniel began, “we actually want to know about a specific place. Griffith Tavern. We’re working there, see, and trying to get the money to renovate it. Maybe reopen it as an events center and museum.”
“Uh huh,” LeRoy said, wisps of his hair fluttering with the movement. “Lot of people into that these days, the historical preservation. I seen it on all the TV programs. My roommate keeps it on the HGTV channel. A bunch of people trying to fix up houses and spending God knows how much on kitchens and bathrooms.”
“Well, we think preserving this piece of history is important. And it’s a wonderful building. A shame it’s just falling apart,” Taryn added. She liked this man. He was a little ornery, but so her grandmother had been as well. At least he was honest.
“A’course it wasn’t in its prime in my lifetime, I’m not that old, but I heard lots of tales about it from my Pap and Grandpap. Uh huh.” He pronounced “heard” as though he’d just tacked a “d” on the end of “hear.” “So what-all you wanting to know about it?”
“We basically want to know what the history books don’t tell us,” Taryn explained. “What was it like? What were the owners like? Did people love it? Were they sad when it closed? What was its personality?”
“You’re asking the right questions,” he smiled. “You musta felt something from it to make you want to know. Those aren’t the kind of questions they teach you to ask in school.”
Taryn started to protest but he interrupted her. “Naw, it’s okay. Some buildings call to you. I understand. I always thought a building was like a person myself. Had a brain and even a heart. The good ones anyway. And maybe some of the not-so-good ones.”
Taryn smiled, relieved. “That’s exactly what I think.” A look passed between the two of them, however, that was not lost on Daniel. He knows something about me, Taryn thought self-consciously. He knows there’s more to it than that.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I know…” Reaching over to a small table he took a good long drink of what appeared to be lemonade and then smacked his lips. Settling back into his chair, he closed his eyes and began to speak.
“Her husband bought it and had it running, of course, but it was Permelia Burke that done gave it the life it needed. A woman can do that, you know. Women give life to things in different ways, not just by making babies. That’s one of life’s great mysteries. Before she come, it was wood and stone. She brought its heart.”
Taryn cocked her head to one side, considering. She didn’t think she’d ever heard women described in that manner before. It was…right.
“In the early days, it was the post office. Mail man would come riding in and stay a night. Get the mail delivered. That was the most important thing back then.”
“Mail?” Daniel asked. “That was the most important thing? I would’ve thought food, supplies, even ammo.”
“Well, you might take communication for granted nowadays with your interwebs and emailnet but there was a time when you couldn’t just punch in a few numbers and talk to someone across town, much less across country. Truth be told, it was the mail service that made this country what it is today,” LeRoy divulged, looking at both Taryn and Daniel with steely eyes.
“How do you reckon?” Daniel asked again, amused.
“Sharing of ideas, boy! Passing the news. Keeping connected with one another. Without a connection in this world, you don’t have nothing! Just a bunch of little hamlets spread from here to Kingdom Come without any way of communicating with one another. But with the mail, you weren’t so alone anymore. You were part of a bigger whole.”
Daniel was silent for a minute and then nodded his agreement. “You’re right. I guess I never thought of it like that. So the mail carrier, he made sure the people coming out west were connected with the folks back home? Learned things?”
“That’s what I’m saying. And made sure the people back home knew what it was like out here. Talked politics, weather, babies…Even the simple things were important. But then Permelia come. She was a little bitty thing, not hardly taller than a child. He sent off for her from Boston or thereabouts in one of those publications where men of that time sometimes sought their mates. Like a personal ad as you’d call it now. A mail order bride. She came by stagecoach a couple hours from here and he went to pick her up. They got married there and he brought him back a wife nobody here’d seen the likes of.
“Now, you must remember that back in those times this was a rough place. Only a few houses, one store, and the post office. Not too many women. This was a stopover point for people heading up east and further west. This used to be the Wild West, you know, before too many folks got brave and went further. They’d started putting in the railroad, of course, but it stalled. And then the war come. Bet you didn’t know the inn was a hospital for a time, did you?”
Both Taryn and Daniel shook their heads and looked at each other.
LeRoy, enjoying his importance now, nodded. “Oh yes. And that would even be after the mister passed on. She would’ve run it during then, too. Of course, I’m getting off track. Not too many people staying here for long to make it their home. Some families come through but it was mostly men, maybe staying a night or two.”
Taryn imagined the transient nature of the tavern and inn must have been both exciting and sad. It would’ve been difficult for Permelia to have made friends. She wondered how she’d adjusted to this lifestyle, especially after having lived in Boston all her life.
“With Permelia here in her fancy dresses and fixed hair and pretty shoes the menfolk finally had something to look at. She was more than just a pretty face, though. She could cook up a storm and that’s partly why people started staying longer than a night. She had a kitchen manager, I guess you’d call ‘em that nowadays, but it was Permelia’s cooking that everyone wanted.
“I always heard they never turned anyone away. Fix ‘em up a pallet in the parlor or out in the barn if they needed to. Didn’t want anyone staying out in the cold. Nobody had nothing bad to say about either one of them. They was good folks. Decent. That’s what I always heard.”
“It’s funny how a person’s reputation continues to live on, even after they’ve been dead for over one hundred years,” Taryn mused aloud.
“Yep. Both good and bad,” LeRoy agreed. “So you have to watch how you behave, what you say, if you want that reputation to be a good one after you’re gone.”
“The parties came later,” he continued, “‘balls’ Permelia called ‘em, even though they wasn’t much more than some fiddlers, banjo pickers, and whiskey flowing. She’d put on one of them pretty dresses and float around, making sure everyone was happy and didn’t need anything.
“Later, more inns were built, we got a proper post office, and some stores popped up in town. More people building their houses and staying. Farmers mostly. A paper mill came later, but that was much later–in my lifetime. After the war the railroads took off. Put an end to the stagecoach stop part of it.”
“And when her husband died?” Taryn prodded.
“Just an accident. Probably broke her heart. From all accounts they was truly in love with each other. Might have been a cold marriage from the start, but my Grandpap said they was always stealing kisses with each other, he was hugging her up in front of others, and she smiled at him when she thought he weren’t looking. At the balls they’d dance a waltz or a polka and make everyone smile.
“The inn traffic had slowed down a little before he died and the tavern wasn’t getting as much business with other ones sprouting up. Then, with a less person to help out, it looked like it might close. People wondered what would happen to Permelia. Some thought she’d go back east to her family. She didn’t, though. Just rolled up her sleeves and kept it going. Kept
it up until she died,” he shrugged. “She had some tragedy in her life, I can tell you that.”
“Losing her husband at a young age,” Taryn agreed.
“Yep, that,” he said. “Hard having a baby in those times, too.”
Taryn and Daniel looked up sharply. “Baby?” they echoed.
“Oh yes, a baby. Not real sure what happened to it. Pretty little thing, though. My Grandpap said my Granny knitted it booties.”
“So there’s a descendent roaming around somewhere?”
LeRoy’s eyes twinkled. “T’would appear that way, wouldn’t it? But I just don’t know.”
LeRoy stopped talking then and closed his eyes. His head was starting to droop a little and his hands were shaking. Taryn, sensing the end of the story, exhaled. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. “When she died, did she leave a lot of money?”
“Not that I know of,” he replied softly. “She wasn’t in debt or anything but there wasn’t nothing screaming riches either. Some other folks took over, tried to keep it up, but it was never the same. When I was a young’in I remember it being an inn for awhile and a tavern but it was just another place to go. Nothing special about it. Nothing like it would’ve been a century before.”
“I wonder how she was able to keep it going like she did, with business so slow,” Daniel mused.
“Lots of people wondered the same thing,” LeRoy clucked his tongue. “Running a business back then wasn’t a whole lot different than it is now. Always been hard work.”
“I hear that,” Taryn agreed.
“And what do you do, missy?” he asked.
Taryn did her best to give him an abbreviated version of her career and what some of her duties consisted of.
“And you got no man to help out with any of it?” he asked carefully when she was finished.
“No sir. My husband passed away several years ago. We were a team while he was alive, though.”
LeRoy shook his head. “No wonder the house calls to you.”
Griffith Tavern (Taryn's Camera Book 2) Page 9