Happier Days in Time

by Jenna St James

  “So,” Wanda said, “did you girls read the latest Good Housekeeping? I don’t know about you, but I devoured the article on twenty-five smart hats modern women must wear. How about you girls?”

  I vaguely listened to the three women discuss the joys of wearing hats. I figured once they wound down, I’d get their alibis for the night of Sissy’s death. Unfortunately, once they expounded on the perks of hats, they went straight into talking about stain remover.

  “Looks like I’m finished with this one,” Wanda said suddenly, handing her empty glass to Nancy. “Could I have another?”

  Remembering what Maggie said about Wanda being a little bit of a lush, I figured I’d start plying her with questions after she plied herself with a second drink. While Nancy refreshed Wanda’s drink, I strolled over to the window to look outside.

  “I got nothing! Nothing!” Rex said.

  I looked up and saw Rex hanging from the drape. Hiding my smile, I pretended to take a sip from my glass.

  “Jack told me this morning over breakfast that Maggie rang him last night to tell him Sissy’s sister was in town.”

  I turned sideways to face Peggy Sue.

  “I came to pick up some of Sissy’s things,” I said, “and to see how she lived her life.”

  “I don’t remember Sissy ever mentioning a younger sister,” Peggy Sue said.

  “I was just thirteen when our parents died. I went to live with my aunt.”

  Peggy Sue nodded. “I understand that. My mother died when I was just a young girl, too. Luckily my governess stayed on to help see to my upbringing. Daddy wasn’t himself for a long time after my mom’s death.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I ask you a couple questions about the night Sissy died?” I asked.

  Peggy Sue’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, I don’t know what I can tell you. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I know you and Jack went into Roseville to have dinner with Maggie around five, but what about before then? Was Sissy over here that afternoon for cocktails?”

  Peggy Sue frowned in concentration then nodded. “Yes, I believe she was. That wasn’t usual, of course. Usually she was at work. Oh, and I also remember speaking to her on Wednesday evening. She was sitting on the front porch writing in her journal.”

  “She was always writing in that journal.”

  I turned and stared at Wanda.

  “What journal?” I asked.

  Nancy sauntered over to stand by the window with the rest of us. “Why, that ghastly journal she kept with her at all times. She was always jotting things down in it.”

  Wanda pinched her lips together and glared at me. “I saw it once, you know. She had Walter’s name written down on the page she was on. I tried to read it, but she jerked it back.”

  “Is that so?” I asked.

  Wanda tossed back her newly-refreshed drink. “I’m sure she wrote about all of us in that journal.”

  “There’s our motive, Lexi” Rex said. “I’ll go check the bedrooms to see if I can find anything.”

  “If you ask me,” Nancy said, “it was very unbecoming for an adult woman to write in a journal like she did.”

  “Unbecoming…and maybe a little dangerous,” Wanda added.

  I narrowed my eyes. These ladies were sadly mistaken if they thought I was dumb enough not to read between the lines they were drawing.

  “Do either of you two remember the last time you saw Sissy outside of when she was over here that Friday?” I asked Nancy and Wanda.

  Nancy frowned. “Well, now that I think about it, I guess I saw her that Friday night. The night she died.”

  I blinked in surprise. “You did? Where?”

  “Why in Maggie’s house, of course,” Nancy said. “I remember coming into the living room to get an after-dinner cocktail a little before six, and I happened to look outside and saw Sissy drawing the curtains downstairs.”

  So if Maggie returned home by seven, that meant Sissy was killed between six and seven. Right after dinner, when wives were cleaning and men were…what? What did the men do afterward in this decade? I needed to find out.

  “Did you see her any other time that night?” I asked.

  Nancy shook her head. “No. I went back into the kitchen with my drink to clean up. It’s important for a woman to keep her kitchen clean at all times. A clean kitchen makes for a happy husband.”

  “So true, Nancy,” Wanda said.

  “What about you?” I asked Wanda. “Do you remember the last time you saw Sissy alive?”

  “Why?” Wanda asked. “What does it matter?”

  Time to shake things up a little.

  “I may have not known my sister well,” I said, “but I did know her well enough to know that taking her life wasn’t something she’d do.”

  Nancy clucked her tongue and shook her head in disapproval. “Of course she did. The police told us so after they came to talk with us a day or two after she died.”

  “What makes you think she’d take her own life?” I challenged Nancy.

  There was an awkward pause, and the girls just stared at each other.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Nancy finally asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “She finally realized she would end up alone,” Wanda said. “She chose a career over family, and now that her career was about to end, she just couldn’t live knowing she’d be alone for the rest of her life.”

  “What do you mean her career was about to end?” I demanded.

  Nancy sighed. “It’s well known that print is so yesterday. TV is where it’s at.”

  “So true,” Wanda echoed.

  “Why, we just got a new twenty-inch RCA,” Nancy said, pointing to the TV against the wall.

  “We’re getting one next month,” Wanda said. “Walter promised.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Nancy said. “Makes watching I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best so much better!”

  “I love Margaret Anderson’s dresses,” Wanda said. “She dresses how every proper woman should.” With a side eye to me, Wanda thrust her empty glass at Nancy. “Maybe just one more, Nancy?”

  The two women strolled back over to the drink cart while Peggy Sue and I stood looking out the window toward Maggie’s house once again. While I had motives for someone to kill Sissy, I still didn’t have solid alibis down. Nancy claimed to have seen Sissy before six, but that didn’t mean Nancy couldn’t have sprinted over, knocked Sissy upside the head, then force-fed her pills and booze. Nancy obviously had enough booze sitting around to do it. And I’d venture to say the way Wanda tossed them back, she’d have enough booze around her house, too.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Peggy Sue said softly. “First off, the newspaper business isn’t going anywhere. Who even knows if this crazy TV phase will last? Newspapers have been around longer than this TV fad. And second, Jack told me your sister was brilliant and smart. She wasn’t like these ladies.”

  I turned back to face her. “Thanks for that. Did Sissy help Jack out a lot?”

  “I think so.” She gave me a tentative smile. “We really don’t discuss his job, but he would mention to me that Sissy could get him information that he never could get on his own. He said she was invaluable, and if she ever decided to go into the private eye business, she’d make a killing.”

  “That’s nice to hear,” I said.

  Peggy Sue took a sip of her drink. “I read Sissy’s journal a couple times.”

  I blinked in surprise. “You did?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I think it was December—no, January. I went upstairs to invite her to Jack’s surprise thirtieth birthday party in February, and it was sitting on her bed.”

  “Did she let you read it?”

  Peggy Sue’s face turned pink. “She was actually in the restroom, and the book was open, so…”

  “Did she know you read the page?” I asked.

  Peggy Sue laughed. “Yeah. I’m not a very good
liar.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Nothing. Honest. She never acted like it was an overly private thing with me. Sometimes she’d leave it out downstairs in Maggie’s family room, and I’d come over for tea or something and see it. She never tried to hide it from me.”

  “Peggy Sue,” Nancy said as she sidled next to me, “your dress today is aces.”

  Peggy Sue ran a hand down the front of her sunny yellow dress. “Thank you, Nancy.”

  “I have a splitting headache,” Wanda announced as she staggered over to where we stood. “Where’s your pill box, Nancy?”

  “Where it always is. On the tray,” she said. “Did you look there?”

  “Yes. I can’t find it.”

  Nancy sighed. “Let me go check.”

  As Nancy wandered over to the push cart, Peggy Sue laid her hand on Wanda’s arm. “I think I have some in my purse. I’ll go see.”

  Alone with Wanda, I decided to press her on her alibi for the night of Sissy’s death. “Where were you on the night Sissy died between six and seven?”

  “You may want to be careful who you ask those questions to,” Wanda said. “You may not like the answers you get.” She paused and swirled her drink. “Do you know why Oakdale Estates was built outside of town?”

  I had a pretty good idea.

  “No.”

  “Because those of us who live here are tired of living in town with the common people.” She looked me up and down. “The trash. To live out here is a status symbol. It’s a way of life. A life that should be preserved. It’s for families who believe in—”

  “Spare me your sanctimonious rhetoric and answer my question. Where were you between six and seven the night Sissy died?”

  Wanda narrowed her eyes. “In the words of my fifteen-year-old son…get bent!”

  Chapter 7

  “So what did you think of your afternoon cocktails with the ladies across the street?” Maggie handed me a martini and gave me a knowing smile. “You can tell me honestly.”

  I swirled the olive around in my glass and thought about all that had happened. “Well, you were right about Nancy. She’s all about tradition and family.”

  “Which is funny, because during the war, before she met Cliff, Nancy worked in a factory that built ships for the military.”

  My mouth dropped. “Really?”

  “Yes. She let that secret drop about nine years ago when I first met her. She and Cliff had just met on a blind date, and we were all attending a social in town. It was the only time she opened up about what she did before she married Cliff.”

  “How long have they been married?” I asked.

  Maggie grinned and took a drink of her martini. “They just celebrated nine years in January.”

  I frowned. “They got married fast.”

  “Well, their boy will be nine at the end of July.”

  I calculated that and gasped. “You mean…”

  Maggie laughed. “That he looks amazingly healthy for a boy who was premature? Nancy swears she got pregnant the night of the wedding and that he came early…but I’m not that naïve.”

  “No wonder she over does the family structure like she does,” I said.

  “But I think there might be more to it. Something Sissy once said that made me wonder if there wasn’t more in Nancy’s background than just a premature baby scandal.”

  “Interesting. And you never found Sissy’s journal?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No. But like I said, I really haven’t been back in the room to look around more thoroughly. But I don’t remember seeing it next to her the night she was killed.”

  “So Wanda.” I rolled my eyes. “She’s definitely a wanna-be.”

  Maggie laughed. “A wanna-be?”

  “Yeah. You know. She wants to be popular, rich, and envied. Only she falls way short. She echoed everything Nancy said. And you’re right, she does drink a lot.”

  “Do you think either one of them could have killed Sissy?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Wanda admitted she once saw Walter’s name in Sissy’s journal. They both were concerned about what was written inside the notebook, so that tells me they might have a motive to want Sissy and her journal gone. But the alibi was harder to pin down. Nancy admitted to me that she saw Sissy drawing the curtains here around six that night. So that tells me Sissy was killed between six and seven.”

  “And Wanda?” Maggie asked.

  “Wanda was way more evasive.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, Nancy said after she saw Sissy draw the curtains, she carried her drink into the kitchen to clean up. Because as every woman knows a clean kitchen makes for a happy husband.”

  Maggie threw back her head and laughed. “That sounds like Nancy!”

  “And then, of course, Wanda had to agree with her. But here’s the interesting thing…Wanda, after knocking back like three drinks in a matter of thirty minutes, started to get a headache. She asked for pills from a pill box. So while Peggy Sue and Nancy went to fetch some for her, I asked her where she was that night. She proceeded to tell me that the reason she and her husband live in this subdivision is because it excludes my kind—trashy and unmarried.”

  Maggie gasped. “I swear, that woman needs to be taught a lesson.”

  “She does,” I agreed. “But when I told her I didn’t care to hear her hatred, I just wanted to know where she was that night between six and seven, she told me to get bent.”

  Maggie’s hand flew to her chest as she barked out a laugh. “She didn’t!”

  “She did.”

  “I can’t imagine her even using language like that. You must have really riled her.”

  I nodded. “That’s my hope. So now I’m going to try and find the journal. I feel once that’s found a lot of these questions will be answered.”

  “Did Nancy mention Saturday evening?” Maggie asked.

  “No.”

  Maggie walked over to the bar and refilled her glass. “I’m not surprised. You simply must attend as my guest…I insist!”

  “What’s going on Saturday night?”

  “Every Saturday night we travel to either the Belmont house, the Smith house, Jack & Peggy Sue’s place, or my house for a Saturday evening meal. It’s a pretty big deal, fancy dresses, elaborate foods, all the trimmings.”

  “Where is it tomorrow night?”

  “It’s Nancy and Cliff’s turn to host,” Maggie said. “So cocktails start at four-thirty, dinner at five, and then afterward sometimes the men go outside to smoke, or sometimes we dance, just depends on how everyone is feeling.”

  “Can’t wait,” I lied.

  Maggie laughed. “Liar. Now, how about some dinner? I’m thinking tonight we have a Swanson. Is that okay?”

  “A Swanson?”

  “Yes, you know, a Swanson TV dinner. They came out last year. Have you not had one before?”

  I followed her into the bright, spacious kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and withdrew two huge boxes from the freezer. “It’s turkey, gravy, cornbread stuffing, sweet potatoes, and buttered peas. It’s absolutely wonderful.”

  “Um, sure. I’d love one. Thanks!”

  “And then maybe afterward we can watch a little TV? I miss not having someone to laugh with watching the shows.”

  I really wanted to get a jump start on finding the journal, but I also hated to shove Maggie’s hospitality back in her face. “Sure, Maggie. Sounds fun.”

  ***

  “Any idea how to find the journal?” Rex asked.

  I shut the door to Sissy’s bedroom and plopped down onto the bed. We’d watched TV for a couple hours after dinner, and now I was exhausted. “Yes. I’ve been giving it some thought. Vee and Nuala have both been working with me on perfecting my spells, so I think it’s time I tried the conjuring spell.”

  Vee and Nuala were two of my best friends who also happened to be time-traveling witches with the Agency. There were two other witches I enjoyed spending tim
e with, Mariana and Flick, but Vee and Nuala were the two witches I connected with the most.

  “Oh, boy,” Rex said. “This isn’t gonna be as bad as the light orb spell is it?”

  “Hush up! I can’t help I never get the light spell to work right.”

  Rex bowed and lifted both hands out to the side. “By all means, your majesty, show me what you got.”

  “Okay, smarty.” I sat back on the bed in a crisscross applesauce position and closed my eyes. I thought about what I wanted to find, kept the image in my mind, and proceeded to say the words I hoped brought forth the journal:

  “Be it high in the air,

  or low to the ground,

  may what I am seeking for

  now be found.

  Bring it to sight

  to me tonight.

  As I will so mote it be.”

  I waited a few seconds, but nothing happened. Just when I was certain the spell hadn’t worked, an image of a notebook in a dark place popped into my mind. I got the impression it was close…within the bedroom.

  “Well?” Rex asked. “Whacha got?”

  “It’s in a dark place. Small and cramped. I think it’s in this room.”

  “Can’t be! Nope! I looked everywhere.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes so I wouldn’t lose the image. I tried to draw back from the journal to get a more aerial view, but I was still relatively new at conjuring up lost items. When the writing desk popped into my head, my eyes flew open in surprise.

  “It’s in the writing desk.”

  “Nope! Impossible! We both looked.”

  Suppressing a groan, I uncurled my feet and slid off the bed. “How about instead of poo-pooing me we actually look again.”

  I dropped down on my hands and knees in front of the small, white secretary and proceeded to run my fingers underneath. Nothing. Opening the only drawer to the desk, I took everything out. When it was completely empty, I ran my hands inside and along the edges. Still nothing. Frustrated, I slapped my palm down on the bottom of the drawer and let out a startled cry when the bottom lifted a couple inches in the air.