by Mary Daheim
Mike Randall was nodding, a font of understanding. “You’ve prioritized. That’s so important. It’s a sign of real maturity.”
I might have screamed if our salads hadn’t arrived just then. Jackie attacked hers with the verve of a rabbit, but she wasn’t about to give up on me.
“I’ll make you a deal, Emma. If you stay until noon, I won’t bother you ever again. We’ll go to the library first thing, at ten. I’m pretty sure that’s when they open. Or call that Tessie Whoozits and ask her to let us in early.”
I shook my head. “She’s a genealogist, not a librarian.”
“Whatever.” Jackie forked up more lettuce. “I’ll bet she’d be able to dig up something that would help us now that we know more. Why don’t we call her tonight?”
I started to protest, then reconsidered. Tessie Roo had been intrigued by our little mystery. If she could add anything to it, we might be able to wrap things up before morning. Then I could flee Port Angeles with a clear conscience.
I agreed. “I’ll call her after we finish dinner.”
Jackie’s dimples flashed at me. Paul smiled at Jackie. Mike nodded sagely. I drank my Canadian Club to the dregs.
The pay phones were located just off the restaurant’s lounge. Tessie was the only Roo in the local phone book. She answered on the second ring. Her delight in hearing from me warmed my heart.
“I thought you’d forgotten all about me!” she declared in that husky, engaging voice. “I was dying to hear what happened with Claudia Malone Cameron. Can you come by and have a glass of sherry?”
After two stiff CC’s, I didn’t need to add sherry to the list. I also didn’t want to inflict the others on Tessie. I wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed.
“Is there any way I could meet you at your office later on?” I inquired. “Say in about a half hour?” Jackie and Paul had ordered dessert; Mike Randall was sipping cognac. Perhaps the Melchers could drop me off at the museum. I could walk back to their house. The fresh air would do me good.
Tessie, however, volunteered to pick me up. I informed her I wasn’t at the Melcher house but finishing dinner at Downriggers. We agreed to rendezvous on the museum steps at nine o’clock.
I was hanging up the phone when I heard a gust of laughter erupt in the bar. I turned to see what had caused the hilarity. A group of young men in their late twenties were sitting at a big table, apparently indulging themselves in the joys of youth and beer. I would have gone off without another glance if I hadn’t seen a familiar figure hunched over the bar. Even from this murky distance I recognized Leo Walsh. That same aspect had been presented to me earlier aboard The Victoria Express.
I’d like to think it was my innate compassion that propelled me into the lounge. More likely it was the two CC’s that did it. To be fair, I’d devoured a considerable amount of food since having the drinks and I was feeling quite sober. Often I have trouble giving myself the benefit of the doubt.
Boldly, I sidled up to Leo. The bar stool next to him was empty. He was drinking something on the rocks. Judging from the pale color, it was Scotch.
“Hi,” I said. “How come you’re not headed back to Culver City?”
Leo wasn’t really drunk yet, but he was working on it. “Emma Lord, as I live and drink.” He raised his glass to me. “What’ll it be? Hot coffee?”
“Sounds good.” Briefly, I questioned my sanity. Jackie and the men would wonder where I’d gone. But they were engaged in dessert and cognac. If concerned, they’d figure I was still talking to Tessie Roo.
The prompt arrival of my coffee caused Leo to order another Scotch. “You don’t give up easy, do you?” His gaze was sardonic.
“I left the brandy cask in the parking lot,” I said lightly. “Have you been here since you got off the boat?”
Leo sighed. Somehow, it was a painful sound. “I had dinner.” He tapped the bar. “Here. Oysters. Not bad. You find any stray dogs?”
I shook my head. “No. Just a dead body.” I bit my tongue. Why had I said such a thing? Why didn’t I drink my coffee and go back to the dining area? Why was I such an idiot?
“Oh, yeah?” Leo smirked, then lit a cigarette. The ashtray was already overflowing. “Anybody we know?”
“I’m not sure.” I wasn’t sure of anything, especially why I was sitting at the bar with Leo Walsh. His fresh drink arrived; I sipped my coffee. “Leo, where are you staying?”
He stared at me, then puffed on his cigarette. Deliberately, he blew smoke in my face. “You want to join me for a night of passion?”
“Drop dead, Leo.” My voice was sharp, then I shook my head. “You bother me. I don’t know what to say.”
He rubbed at his crooked nose. “I’ve got a room at a motel out on 101. It’s clean. It’s cheap. It’s lonely.” A brief, poignant silence grew between us. “Hey,” he barked, “go away, honey. You’re a doll, and I could get to like you. You might get to like me, and then we’d both be miserable. Drink your coffee and go feed that stray dog.”
The perverse streak in my nature dictated that I stay put. “Who are you, Leo? Why are you here? What makes you such a jerk?”
He stood up, drank his Scotch down in one gulp, stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette, and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. “Whatever it is, you’re too nice to know. So long, Emma Lord. Enjoy your dead body. It’s probably got more life in it than I have.” Leo lurched out of the lounge.
Tessie Roo was waiting for me in the shadow of the old courthouse dome. Jackie had wanted to come with me, but Paul had insisted that she go home and rest. Mike also expressed a desire to meet with Tessie. I fibbed a bit, saying that the genealogist would be upset to find anyone other than me on hand.
Tessie was raring to go. She had come prepared with a thermos of hot tea. But when we got up to her office, I had to confess that I might have brought her out on a fool’s errand.
“It’s the early newspapers I need more than the genealogy records,” I told Tessie after recapping the day’s investigation. “I don’t suppose you have access to the library’s periodical room?”
Tessie tossed her head. “I don’t need it. Not for that era.” She scooted over to an oak filing cabinet and began hauling out faded binders. “I don’t have all the papers from that period, but I’ve got the principal publications. That’s how I do my research. I can’t be running back and forth to the library all the time, eh?”
The binders contained yellowed copies of The Olympic-Leader and The Tribune-Times. I suggested that Tessie take the former and I go through the latter. We settled on August 1908 as our starting point.
I expected that our first item of interest would be the Bullard house fire. However, I was determined to go over every inch of local news copy. Both papers were weeklies, which minimized the task.
The first reference I found was in the August fifth edition. Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Rowley were going to San Francisco for a visit. Mrs. Rowley wished to see firsthand how the city had rebuilt since the earthquake of two years earlier. Briefly, I pictured Eddie, leaning on his cane, while Lena surveyed the recovering city from Nob Hill.
“Ah!” Tessie tapped a page of The Olympic-Leader. “Here’s a burglary at the Rowley house, reported on August fourteenth. The house apparently was broken into after dark. Jewelry, cash, and liquor were stolen. The actual robbery was thought to have taken place on August eleventh.”
“Eddie and Lena were probably out of town then,” I mused. “Who would have been home? Simone? Jimmy and Carrie? Sanford? Minnie Burke and the rest of the servants?”
“That’s a lot of people on hand,” Tessie noted. “The burglars must have been bold as brass.” She bent over the binder again and we grew silent. “It seems there was a series of robberies about that time. On August twenty-fìrst three more were reported, fairly close by.”
I found a brief story about the Rowley mill in the August 26 issue of The Tribune-Times. It was of little interest, merely stating the number of board feet that had been shipped duri
ng the first six months of the year.
With a sense of satisfaction Tessie noted that the burglar had been caught on August twenty-seventh while attempting to enter a house on Pine Hill. He was a twenty-two-year-old unemployed logger from Pysht. The crime wave appeared to be over.
The Bullard fire made both papers. By publishing two days earlier in the week, The Tribune-Times scooped The Olympic-Leader. Both reports made much of the blaze, describing flames “one hundred feet into the night sky” and “sparks flying like comets in every direction.”
I read part of my account to Tessie.
Neighboring houses, including the stone and stucco mansion built by the late Cornelius Rowley, were in constant danger. Residents huddled in the street, anguished over the Bullards’ loss and fearful for their own homes. Horses were evacuated from the nearby livery stable, after the terrified animals had first been blindfolded.
According to The Tribune-Times, it had taken over three hours to extinguish the flames. The fire had been started by an overturned oil lamp. The loss was estimated at almost three thousand dollars.
Having been scooped by its rival, The Olympic-Leader relied on the human aspects of the tragedy. “ ‘Mr. and Mrs. Fred Bullard and their children were stunned by the disaster,’ ” Tessie read to me. “ ‘Their daughter, Marguerite, and their son, Cosmo, were seen clinging to their mother’s skirts and weeping.’ ”
Grinning, I interrupted Tessie. “Flint’s real name is Cosmo?”
Tessie nodded. “Flint is for Flintlock. Or so I remember.” She continued with the article.
A great fear erupted at one point during the evening when members of the neighboring household realized that two-year-old Walter Malone was missing. The child’s father, James Malone, went in frantic search of the youngster. Little Walter was found a few minutes later, safe and sound, in the basement of the Rowley house. The reunion with his parents brought great sighs of relief from bystanders.
Tessie raised her eyebrows. “Interesting, eh?”
“Interesting—or a coincidence?” I remarked. “Is there anything else in that piece about the Rowleys and the Melchers?”
Tessie read down the column. It was a lengthy story. “Yes, there’s a quote here about Eddie.”
Edmund Rowley was walking from his garage to his house when he first noticed the flames. He was going to report the blaze when he heard the clang of the first fire wagon in the distance. Rushing to the Bullard property, he discovered that the family was already out of the house. He then returned to his own dwelling, where he alerted the household.
I could see Eddie Rowley, limping through the garden, checking on the Bullards, and then going back home to inform Lena and the others of what was happening. It was early September, late summer, and the weather was probably mild. The Rowleys and the Melchers and their staff would have trooped outside. Or so I speculated with Tessie.
“But they didn’t,” Tessie said. “Not all of them. There’s one more note: ‘Mrs. Cornelius Rowley, whose late husband built the handsome home next to the Bullards’, refused to leave her boudoir. She had been feeling unwell earlier in the day and expressed no alarm over her personal safety.’ ”
Now I saw the picture of Simone, attired in a flowing negligee, looking not unlike Mme. Recamier reclining on her Grecian-style sofa. The widow had no compassion for the Bullards; she had no fear for herself. “Ego,” I noted. “I see her as self-centered, vain, and unable to acknowledge that she, too, was mortal.”
“Well …” Tessie sounded dubious. “I give you all that, but she might really have been sick.”
It was true that I hadn’t given Simone credit for any human emotions other than greed, vanity, and possibly infidelity. Yet I was seeing her through the eyes of her contemporaries. As Clara Haines had pointed out, Simone Dupre Rowley would not have had an easy time of it in the Port Angeles of 1908. In any small town, in any era, a newcomer is regarded with suspicion. After almost four years the residents of Alpine still considered me an outsider. I felt a pang of sympathy for Simone.
We returned to our task. There was a follow-up in both papers on the Bullard fire, but the stories were brief, mainly dealing with the family’s vow to rebuild and their temporary stay at Ennis Creek.
We didn’t find anything of interest until I got to the September twenty-third edition of The Tribune-Times. A stop-press box on the front page was headlined LOCAL MAN SHOOTS AT INTRUDER.
Edmund Rowley of 820 West Sixth frightened off an intruder at his home early this morning. Mr. Rowley, who is assistant superintendent of the Rowley Lumber Mill, was awakened by strange sounds around two A.M. He discovered a man lurking about the garden. Since the Rowley home was burglarized last month, Mr. Rowley’s sense of danger was alerted. Taking his gun outside, he asked the intruder to identify himself. A stream of unintelligible curses ensued, and Mr. Rowley fired twice into the air. The man rushed off in the direction of A Street, presumably heading for sanctuary in the gully. Mr. Rowley described the intruder as fairly young, above average height, and weighing about a hundred and seventy pounds. He was dressed in work clothes and high boots.
Tessie chortled in her rich manner. “The Rowleys certainly made the news! Of course, they were prominent, and with so many papers being published in those days, every little thing probably got reported.”
I agreed with Tessie’s assessment. I also wondered why these items hadn’t turned up in the periodical file.
Tessie had an explanation. “Those files contain only major stories on individuals and events. It would be too hard to cross-reference everything and everybody. You might have found the Bullard story under Fires. Or possibly under Bullard. The Rowleys’ presence at the scene wasn’t important enough to catalogue. Neither,” she went on, pointing to my binder, “is that bulletin. It would be different if Eddie had shot the fellow.”
I understood. Our own file system at The Advocate was hit-and-miss. The founder and previous owner, Marius Vandeventer, had kept everything in his head. Our bound volumes were sorted only by year, with an index to major events. Someday I hoped to organize the back issues by subject, but there was never enough time or manpower. Now I had come up short on staff. I couldn’t worry about past publications; there were enough problems with the present edition.
The Tribune-Times that came out two days later had a small story about horse thieves. A chestnut mare and a bay gelding had been stolen from the Lincoln Hill livery stable on the night of September twenty-fourth.
“That’s the old wreck in back of the Rowley house, isn’t it?” I asked Tessie.
She nodded. “That’s interesting, too. I wonder if it ties in with the intruder.”
It seemed that we had no way of knowing. In subsequent editions there was no reference to the intruder’s apprehension or the recovery of the horses. The Rowleys and the Melchers weren’t mentioned again until October ninth, when the D.A.R. gratefully accepted a donation of “fashionable ladies’ apparel and fripperies” from Lena Stillman Melcher Rowley.
The bells in the courthouse tower had just chimed eleven o’clock when we got to December. For almost two months the Rowley-Melcher family slipped out of the news. Then, in both papers, the engagement of Rose Felder to Sanford Melcher was announced. The Tribune-Times ran a picture of the bride-to-be. Rose Felder’s fair hair was piled high atop her head in an attempt to compensate for the overly long chin. The effect was sabotaged by the big pearl dog collar around her neck, which served to emphasize the length of her face. The pose was graceful, however, and the dress had a modest chiffon fichu decorated with more pearls. Rose looked nubile, almost coy. Recalling the later photos of her, I sympathized for what lay ahead.
Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Felder of this city have announced the engagement of their daughter, Rose Anne Felder, to Mr. Sanford Stillman Melcher, the son of Mrs. Edmund Rowley and the late Mr. Ferris Melcher. The couple will be honored at a private fete December nineteenth hosted by the groom’s mother and his stepfather, Mr. Edmund Rowley. The we
dding is planned for St. Valentine’s Day.
The stories in both newspapers were virtually identical. I suspected that they had been submitted not by Mrs. Conrad Felder but Mrs. Edmund Rowley. It should have been up to the bride’s family to issue the formal announcement, of course, but Lena would have dashed etiquette aside.
In the final issue of December 1908, we found the item about the Bullards’ return to Sixth Street. There was no account of the engagement party. I surmised that Lena had meant what she said about keeping it private.
The hot tea had long since been consumed. Traffic out on Lincoln Street had dwindled to an occasional passing vehicle. There were circles under Tessie Roo’s eyes and my back was killing me.
“We needn’t go into 1909.” I said. “Let’s call it quits.”
Tessie, however, wanted to see the wedding picture of Rose and Sanford Melcher. It appeared in both newspapers, though the poses were different. Sanford looked faintly terrified; Rose wore a smug expression. The wedding sounded appropriately lavish, with five bridesmaids, banks of flowers, and a harpist imported from Port Townsend. As with Carrie and Jimmy Malone, the Melcher reception was held at the Rowley house. The bridal couple planned to honeymoon at the brand-new Empress Hotel in Victoria.
“That’s it,” I declared, leaning back and stretching. “Tessie, you’ve been wonderful. Thanks a million.”
Tessie didn’t look at all pleased. “I haven’t been wonderful at all.” She spread a hand across the stillopen binder of Olympic-Leaders. “What did you learn? That there was crime in Port Angeles eighty-some years ago just as there is today? That carelessness starts house fires? That Lena Melcher was involved with the D.A.R.? Where does that get us?”
I stood up and grinned at Tessie. “It gets me off the hook.” Seeing Tessie’s expression of chagrin, I patted her shoulder. “Look, it may be one of those situations where what we didn’t learn is as important as what we did. That is, there were no obvious incidents that could lead us to airtight conclusions. When I’ve had time to sift through this information, trivial as it may be, I might think of something. But first I have to sleep on it.”