The Unraveling of Violeta Bell mm-3

by C. R. Corwin

  My brother, George Jr., is buried next to my mother and father. He died when I was sixteen. In Korea. When he was nineteen. My parents bought a plot next to his for themselves. They bought one for me, too. One big enough for a future husband and for any future children that might, like George Jr., die before their time.

  I can’t blame my parents for thinking that I’d stay in LaFargeville, or at least settle down nearby in Depauville or Clayton. Even when I went off to Hemphill College to study library science, I’m sure they figured I wouldn’t end up any farther away than Alexandria Bay, or, since I was proving to be a headstrong girl with gumption, Watertown. Little did they know that my sights were set on Syracuse. When I was ten, my Aunt Dorothy took me to the main library in downtown Syracuse. I was staying with her that summer, helping her with her housework while she was recovering from her “women’s problem” surgery. Anyway, I took one look at that big castle full of books and knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in there, bathed in all that respectful silence, sniffing in all that slowly decaying ink and paper, far away from the smell and moo of my father’s cows.

  Instead, I met and married Lawrence Sprowls, who after a few fairly happy years of marriage metamorphosed into a skirtchasing skunk. But that marriage did keep me far away from LaFargeville. And it did land me the best-possible job in the world: head librarian of The Hannawa Herald-Union. I remember what I wrote my aunt a few months after getting the job: It’s better than a castle, auntie. It’s a newsroom.

  I sat on the ground in front of my parent’s stone. I clapped my hands for James. He came running. He plopped next to me. Begged me to scratch his floppy ears. “There’s nothing wrong with spending your life in LaFargeville,” I told him, “being a dairy farmer or a dairy farmer’s wife. But I sure knew it wasn’t for me. I knew from the get-go I’d have to go somewhere else and be somebody else. I would have exploded like an over-baked potato if I’d stayed here. And maybe that’s what Violeta Bell did, James. Maybe she was from some boring little place like this. She knew it was either escape or explode. She gave herself a new name and a new history. More than likely she’s no more Romanian than you are.” I took him by the ears and stared into his eyes. “You’re not, are you?”

  James waited for me to struggle to my feet then followed me to the car. “Maybe she had an aunt who took her to an antique store once,” I said. “Maybe she fell in love with all the fancy old stuff and knew that was just the life for her. Not that we want to paint her too sympathetically, of course. She was very likely a crook. Very likely she changed her identity to stay out of jail. We’re not talking about Mother Teresa here, James. But criminality aside, you’ve got to admire someone who knows what it takes to be happy inside their own skin.”

  We drove into LaFargeville. It was as humble as it was when I was a girl. A hundred modest houses. A bank. A school and three churches. No real downtown.

  LaFargeville is-how should I put it-very white. Everybody is either German or English. Everybody is either a practicing Catholic or a well-practiced Protestant. Everybody is either a Republican who votes Republican all of the time or a Democrat who votes Republican most of the time. Everybody is either married or wishes they were.

  I drove past the house on Maple Street where my niece, Joyce, grew up. After my mother died, Joyce was my only living relative in LaFargeville. Now she was gone, too. For thirty odd years she’d militantly extolled the virtues of remaining single. Then five years ago she met a widower at a stamp collector’s show in St. Louis and married him. She now lives in Wahoo, Nebraska. She keeps begging me to visit.

  I drove by the house on Mill Street where my girlfriend Edna Schwed used to live. It used to be painted white, like most of the houses in LaFargeville. Now it was painted pink. Which made me suspect that Edna still might live there. Pink was always her favorite color. I thought about stopping. But good gravy, what if Edna did still live there? What on earth would we talk about? Other than what her neighbors thought about her pink house?

  I drove down Ford Street to see if the house where Chuck Crouse lived still had that fancy slate roof. It did. All through high school I daydreamed about Chuck Crouse. What it was going to be like being married to him. What the s.e.x. would be like. What the four children we’d have would look like. Would the two girls favor me and the two boys favor him? Or, heaven forbid, would it be visa versa? Don’t get me wrong. Chuck and I never dated. Chuck was too shy to ask any girl out. And I was too below average-looking for him to overcome that shyness. As I drove by, I wondered what had happened to Chuck. I’d Googled his name before leaving Hannawa. There were several Chuck Crouses but none of them were my Chuck Crouse.

  I pulled into at Waggoner’s Grocery, the only real business in town. There was a single Sunoco pump in front. There was a big blinking New York State Lottery sign in the window. It was getting hot already. I left the windows down a crack so James could get whatever breeze there was. I went inside. The store hadn’t changed much since I was a girl. Pop and candy. Milk and bread. Cigarettes and beer. Lunchmeat and cheese. Tubs of ice cream for making cones. “You a Waggoner?” I asked the girl behind the counter.

  “I think them’s all dead,” she said. “I’m a Gertz.”

  The name didn’t ring a bell. I asked her to make me a double chocolate cone. I bought a Slim Jim for James. We ate our treats in the car and then drove north past Colby’s Dairy. When I was a girl just about everybody who wasn’t a farmer worked at Colby’s. I suspect it’s still that way.

  Before leaving Hannawa I envisioned spending a day or two in LaFargeville, visiting all of our family’s old friends. The Siewertsons. The Griffens. The Wildenheims. I envisioned visiting the old Central School and the Methodist Church where I spent so much of my first eighteen years. I envisioned driving out to my parent’s farm on East Line Road. Getting a tour from the alpaca breeder who owns it now. Getting a peek inside my old bedroom maybe. Seeing if that big crack in the ceiling was still there. If the closet door still stuck. But now that I was in LaFargeville, well, I felt silly and lonely and a total stranger.

  So I kept on driving, all the way to Philadelphia. Not the one in Pennsylvania. The one ten miles down the road. The one that’s about the same size as LaFargeville. The one that’s the home of Martin’s Pretzel Bakery. Their hand-twisted German-style pretzels are sold in fancy-schmancy stores all over the country. I bought a three-pound bag for Ike. For $14.50. I made James promise that he wouldn’t tell the old penny-pinching fool how much I paid.

  I drove back to Watertown and checked out of my room at the Best Western. Then I drove up to Cape Vincent and pulled into line for the noon ferry to Wolfe Island. I was a day early for the cabin I’d reserved over there, but I was prepared to take my chances. James and I could spend a night in the car if we had to.

  The attendant motioned me forward onto the little ferry. I stayed with James in the car. James is an American water spaniel. I was afraid if I took him up to the deck, he’d cannon-ball into the river and paddle back to shore. I didn’t need a scene like that.

  Wolfe Island is the biggest of the famous Thousand Islands that choke the St. Lawrence River. While its southern shoreline tickles the American border, every inch of the island sits in Canada. It is 24 miles long with lots of pretty bays and points. Our family made two, one-day trips to Wolfe Island every summer. In June we’d go to one of those pick-it-yourself farms for strawberries. In August we’d pick wild blackberries. A couple of times in high school I went there with girlfriends to bicycle and picnic. It’s a lot more touristy now.

  The ferry pulled out. I rolled down my window and stretched my neck to see. The water was flat and blue. In just fifteen minutes we were in Port Alexandria, pulling up to the Canadian customs booth.

  I was ready for the girl with the Dudley Dooright hat. I handed her my birth certificate and driver’s license. As she looked them over it occurred to me how many times during her life Violeta Bell must have held her breath while her phony-baloney papers
were given a perfunctory once-over.

  The girl handed my papers back to me. “You aren’t bringing in any perishable vegetables, meats, or dairy products, are you?”

  “Nope. No live minnows, firewood, or automatic weapons either.”

  “Any dog food?”

  “Only what’s already in him.”

  She smiled. “You’ve done your homework.”

  I handed her James’ records from the veterinarian, proving he’d had a rabies shot. “You wouldn’t know Prince Anton, would you?”

  She didn’t. But she did know where I could buy food for James. At the grocery in Marysville. What the Canadians have against American dog food, I do not know.

  Using the directions Eric printed out for me from Mapquest, I found my way around Button Bay to Clemens Road. At the end of that bumpy gravel path I found McWiggens’ Cottages. Four tiny white bungalows lined up along the rocky beach like bars of ivory soap.

  On the porch of one cottage I found Alana McWiggens. She was a tall, bony woman with a face full of wrinkles. She had a thick thatch of gray, permanently windblown hair. She had a big ball of sheets and pillowcases in her arms. “I’m afraid I’m a day early,” I said after introducing myself. “My plans down in LaFargeville fell through unfortunately.”

  “No problem,” she said. “I just now finished putting on clean bedding for you.”

  She helped me with my suitcases. She made a fuss over James. She confided in me that she made enough money over the summer renting her cottages to spend her winters in Sarasota. “I’m one of those Canadian snowbirds you hear aboot, ” she said. “Six months here, six months in the U.S.” She asked me if I’d come for the mystery writers’ festival.

  I told her I hadn’t. That I didn’t even know there was a mystery writers’ festival. That I wasn’t a writer.

  “You do look the type,” she said, quickly explaining by that she meant I was clearly well educated, sharp as a tack, and maybe a little on the eccentric side, in the most admirable way of course.

  I was not about to tell her why I was really there-to solve a real murder rather than write about a made-up one. “I’m afraid I’m just a harried old librarian looking for a little peace and quiet.”

  “You should go anyway,” she said. “They’ve been holding it for several years now. A real big deal. Scene of the Crime they call it. It lasts all day Saturday and afterward there’s a jim-dandy supper at the United Church. Barbecued pork and all kinds of pie.”

  I remembered the pies my mother used to make with Wolfe Island berries. “It does sound fun. And speaking of mysteries-what do you know about that man who claims to be the king of Romania?”

  She sat on the bed and let James put his chin on her knee. She scratched his ears. “Alex, you mean?”

  “Alexandur Clopotar, yes.”

  “He stays on the island all year from what I hear. A very nice man. Why do you ask about him?”

  I sat on the other side of James and scratched his back while Alana continued to work on his ears. “I just happened to see something about him on my computer. You think he’s really royalty?”

  “Oh, sure. Like I say, a very nice man. His wife’s gone though. So that’s sad.”

  “He’s lived here a long time, has he?”

  “I guess he retired here aboot twenty years ago. He was in the government up in Ottawa. Not a bigwig or anything.”

  I had a lot more questions. But I also had a lot more days to ask them. “I am going to need some groceries,” I said.

  She gave me directions to Marysville, the only real town on the island. I bought enough food to last James and me the five days we’d be there.

  13

  Wednesday, August 2

  You’d think a pretender to a throne would live in a big old castle, wouldn’t you? At least a pretend castle. There are more than a few of each sprinkled throughout the Thousand Islands. But Prince Anton Alexandur Clopotar lived in a bungalow only slightly less modest than my own shoebox back in Hannawa. It was located on the western end of Wolfe Island, on the southern shoreline of Reed’s Bay. On Easy Lane, if you can believe it.

  It was ten in the morning. A reasonable time, I figured, to show up uninvited at the prince’s door. I’d left James at the cottage. Not everybody likes dogs. Especially dogs that bump into things and shed like a Christmas tree. I parked on the lane, played with my hair in the rearview mirror until my adrenaline was pumping, and then followed the winding brick walk to the front porch. The bricks were slippery with moss.

  Prince Anton came to the door on my fifth knock. I was expecting a Romanian accent-whatever that sounds like-but his voice was as sterile as any other Canadian’s. “Hope you didn’t have to knock too many times,” he said.

  I was also expecting him to be dressed like he was in that picture on his website. That double-breasted blazer with the emblem on the pocket. That polka dot bow tie sticking out on each side of his many-layered chin. That big pipe clenched in his teeth. Instead he was wearing a baggy pair of shorts, old canvas shoes, and a pink oxford shirt with the tails hanging out and the sleeves rolled up above his droopy elbows. I extended my hand. “My name is Maddy Sprowls. I’m renting a cottage from Alana McWiggens. I wanted to meet you.”

  He didn’t exactly kiss the back of my hand. He just shook it once and let go. “I hope you’re not one of those mystery writers.”

  “Heaven’s to Betsy, no. I’m a librarian.”

  He was not the least bit relieved. “It’s a busy morning for me.”

  He wasn’t going to close the door in my face that easily. “I wanted to meet you for a purpose. Regarding your claim to the Romanian throne.”

  You would have thought I’d showed up with a bundle of balloons and a huge check from Publishers Clearing House. “I am boiling water for tea-if you’ve got time to join me.”

  “All the time in the world.”

  He stood aside. In I went.

  I’d already been surprised by his small house, casual dress, and accent-free voice. Now it was time to be surprised by his interior decorating skills. There were no dingy tapestries on the walls, no suits of armor, no stag’s head over a be-gargoyled fireplace. Instead his living room was decorated, if that’s the word for it, with the same lifetime of good buys you’d find in anybody’s house. The only sign of his purported royalty was a big blue, yellow, and red flag dangled from the ceiling on a pair of cheap plant hangers. “Is that the Romanian flag?” I asked, already knowing the answer. More than likely it was the same one he’s posed with on his website.

  He hurried to the flag. He smoothed out the furls, like a sales girl in the drapery department. “This is the old royal flag,” he said. “The new one is a little simpler. No eagle, no tongue-wagging lions, no crown. Just the three stripes.” Then he rolled his eyes. “It is a little big for the room, isn’t it?”

  I smiled graciously. “It’s a very cozy cottage. Right out of a magazine.”

  “It’s been in the family forever,” he said. “Well, since we came to Canada. We had a more substantial house in Toronto, of course. But most summer weekends we were here.”

  “I heard you live here year round now.”

  “Oh, yes. Agnes and I retired here after my stint with the government. She just loved it. And so do I, of course.” His eyes danced about the room. No doubt he was savoring some special memory. “Anyway, I’m happy that you like it.”

  I nodded that I did. “And the mansion in Toronto-your family still owns that?”

  He laughed. “Mansion? I only said it was more substantial than this little box. My mother sold it and bought a condo on the lakefront after my father died.” He motioned me toward the kitchen. “We can have our tea by the water if you like.”

  He poured a boiling saucepan of water into a beautiful bone china teapot. He placed it on a silver tray, along with a pair of matching cups and saucers, a sugar bowl and creamer. He emptied a canister of teabags on the counter. “I’m a Darjeeling man myself,” he said, picking
through the bags. “But I’ve got at least one of everything.”

  “I’m a Darjeeling man, too,” I said.

  He lowered two teabags into the china pot. He picked up the tray and headed for the back door. “Too good a day to hide inside, wouldn’t you agree?”

  He held the door open for me with his rump. We headed down his backyard toward the bay. There were plots of vegetables everywhere, surrounded with low chicken wire fences to keep out the rabbits or raccoons or whatever other short-legged beasts lived on the island. On a knoll just above his boat landing he had a small garden table and chairs. He poured my tea for me. It was so European. So aristocratic. No way was I going to tell him I grew up just over the border in LaFargeville. No way in the world.

  “So Miss Sprowls-it is miss isn’t it?”

  “Miss and Mrs. I’ve been widowed for some time.” Just as I wasn’t going to tell him that I was from LaFargeville, I wasn’t going to tell him that my husband had died long after I’d divorced his womanizing behind. I wanted him to relate to me. So he might just tell me things he’d never told anyone before.

  He stirred a small mountain of sugar into his tea and then licked the spoon. “I’m a widower, too.”

  “I saw your website.”

  He brightened. “Did you, really? I don’t get anywhere the hits I thought I would.” He laughed. “Nobody gives a damn about grouchy old men who think they should be king these days.”

  I took a sip of my tea. The sailboats and gulls made it taste that much better. “It’s a cruel world, isn’t it?”

  “Actually, it’s a beautiful world.” He toasted me. Took a sip of his own. “If you read my website, then you know I’m quite content if the people of my homeland don’t want to restore the monarchy. But if they ever do vote to restore it, they ought to do it right.”