Harvestman Lodge (22 page)

Keith Brecht, whom Eli didn’t know well, provided a much less-sullen reception than had his father. He was welcoming and friendly, and being unmarried and younger, was perhaps smitten with Melinda like the pressmen had been, but with less shyness. Everything Keith said, and how he said it, seemed aimed at impressing his glamorous visitor. Melinda saw it as readily as Eli did. She played along and let Keith think he was bowling her over. A survival tactic of a beautiful woman.

“I have met your father, by the way,” Keith said to her in a tone implying this fact was highly significant and should impress her.

Melinda was tempted to point out that few people in Tylerville had not met her father, or at least had seen him doing his work. He had videotaped scores of weddings, bringing-home-baby moments, holiday church services, community festivals, family reunions, even burials, particularly those of veterans. With the steady rise of video in the culture of mid-1980s America, Ben Buckingham was a hard-to-miss local figure.

Melinda merely smiled at Keith Brecht. “Well! I’m glad you know him. Have you seen his work?”

“Seen it? I’ve hired the man! When the Imperial Hotel project began in the Mountcastle community, we had him come through and tape a walk-through so we would have a good record of the before and the after as regards that project.”

Melinda smiled brightly. “I’ll be sure and tell him I’ve met you.”

The Imperial Hotel project was a restoration done by the Kincheloe Preservation Trust, a local organization devoted to halting and reversing the decline of buildings of historic significance within Kincheloe County. Keith Brecht had been heavily involved as a Trust officer for five years.

“Dad told me about that project,” Melinda said. “An old railroad hotel, I think?”

“That’s right. Very dilapidated when we started, now a showplace. People rent it for weddings and family reunions and company Christmas parties and the like. There’s a good deal of history in that building, going back to the time Mountcastle was looking realistically at the prospect of becoming the biggest and most important town in Kincheloe County. When the railroad diverted the main line to Tylerville, those hopes were dashed. Have you seen the Imperial?”

“Of course, just from growing up in Kincheloe County,” Melinda said. “I’ve never been inside it, though.”

“I can provide a guided tour, if you’d like to see it,” Keith said.

I’ll bet you could
, Eli thought.
And I bet it would be a private tour. Just you and Melinda, you taking your sweet time and gushing charm all the way along. Not going to happen, big boy.

Perhaps Keith Brecht was able to read Eli’s thoughts in his expression, because he immediately added: “It would be a delight to show you and Eli through the place. He needs to see it too. Since both of you are focusing your journalism on our bicentennial celebration and are also on the Bicentennial Planning Committee, the Imperial Hotel restoration might provide you with an inspiration toward and vision of what can be achieved in this community when we set our minds to it and work together.”

Sounds like a thrill a minute
, Eli thought with heartfelt sarcasm, and a glance at Melinda showed him she was thinking much the same thing.

“Does he always sound like he’s speaking from a script?” Melinda asked Eli after they left Keith’s office and headed for the circulation department, the next stop on the newspaper office tour.

“Yeah, most of the times I’ve been around him,” Eli replied. “But he’s a good guy. Tries a little too hard, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“He is your office landlord, you know. The proud landlord of Hodgepodge.”

“I know. I’m glad I got to meet him. No guided hotel tours for me, though. I’m not really looking for … what was it? ‘a vision of what this community can achieve.’”

“I guarantee you he’s got that line written down somewhere,” Eli said. “I suspect he’s a self-scripter, writing down lines for himself that he can practice in private until he can say them in a convincing off-the-cuff way. Like Mr. Collins in
Pride and Predudice
.”

“Oh my, what’s
that
?”

Melinda had just spotted something hanging on a wall of the front hallway: a huge black-and-white photograph of Tylerville’s Center Street, crowded by night with humanity clad and hair-styled in early 1960s fashion. The crowd faced a makeshift stage built on one side of the street, the stage bearing a gaggle of country musicians with guitars, a banjo and fiddle, and a bass fiddle being plucked and slapped by an extraordinarily skinny, lanky fellow in a loose-fitting, oversized suit … clearly the comic figure of the act, as bass fiddle players tended to be in country string bands of those days.

Melinda stopped and looked at the photograph, which was nearly large enough to cover the wall, with intent interest.

“So … what is this?” she asked again.

“What this is, Melinda, is an election party, sponsored by the newspaper for the people of Tylerville and Kincheloe County. They used to do it every time there was an election; the last one, I think, would have been around the time you were born. According to Jake Lundy, they’d close off Center Street, throw up a stage – the parts of which, I’m told, are still stored in town in some warehouse the Brechts own – and they’d hire country music acts to come and keep the crowd entertained while votes were counted. Sometime late in the evening they’d have the unofficial results of all the races to announce from the stage, and then Homer & Jethro or Lonzo & Oscar or Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper or whoever they had hired would play some more music to keep the winners celebrating and the losers distracted. You can see the size of crowd the election parties drew. I’m planning to use this same image in the magazine, assuming there are smaller copies of the photograph, or maybe even the original negative around here somewhere.”

She was still studying the huge image closely, scanning face after face with her brow furrowed, either looking for someone specific or exploring for any random recognizable person. This was, after all, her hometown, and it wouldn’t be surprising if her parents, grandparents, or other relatives or acquaintances were among the many faces in the crowd.

“Melinda … I’m going to run to the restroom a minute and then I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.” She didn’t take her eyes off the old photograph for even a moment.

When he got back, Melinda was not there. Thinking that perhaps she had simply gone to find a restroom herself, he headed around the next hallway corner. There was a customer bench there where he could await her.

She was already there, standing beside the bench, tense as a spring and noticeably pale. When she looked at him her eyes were reddened. She’d either been crying or was trying hard not to.

“Melinda? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” Her voice was tight, strained.

“You look like somebody just walked on your grave, as my grandfather used to say.”

“Please … it’s nothing. I’m ready to go now.”

“We haven’t stopped at the circulation office yet … “

“Another time, okay? I really want to leave.”

“Please, tell me what’s wrong. Was it something in that photograph? Because there’s no denying that you are upset about something.”

She gave him a look that made him feel like a fool, jolting him silent. She asked, “Why would you think I’d get upset by a photograph probably going back to before I was even born?”

“I have no idea. Forget the picture, then. It had to be something. Did somebody say something to you they shouldn’t have? Did one of the press guys come up and bother you?”

“I’m just ready to go, that’s all.”

“Then let’s go. There’s some work I need to do at Hodgepodge, anyway.”

She hardly had a word to say to him during the drive back to the office. It was inexplicable and unnerving. By the time they reached the office building, she seemed as distracted and upset as ever, and rushed to her office without so much as a thank-you to Eli for having been her chauffeur and newspaper tour guide for the afternoon. Not even a glance back or parting wave.

It annoyed him, because he’d done nothing to deserve the cold-shoulder treatment.

More than that it made him worry.

Chapter Thirteen

ELI WAS SURPRISED when Melinda came to his office door the next morning, open and warm and full of apologies for the icy way she had treated him. “You were right … I was upset by that picture on the wall. I saw someone in the crowd I was related to, an aunt of mine, Aunt Kathy Dobson, my mother’s older sister, who was killed in a car crash in 1978. A horrible, horrible wreck, with fire, out on the Sadler Highway. I’ve seen a yellowed old copy of the front page of the paper from the next day. A huge photo of the burnt car. The coroner said it appeared to him she was still alive after the crash, and probably died from burns. I loved Aunt Kathy so much. No children of her own, and I think I felt to her like I was her own. The thought of how she must have suffered at the end has always distressed me.”

“I can see how seeing that picture could have been upsetting. Thanks for telling me, Melinda. I wondered if I’d done something and made you angry.”

“Forgive me, Eli. I just wasn’t ready yesterday to be reminded of her and what happened.”

“Nothing to forgive. I understand. And I’m truly sorry about your aunt.”

She smiled sadly and advanced to give him a quick kiss. The world was bright again. Eli was vastly relieved. His standing with Melinda mattered.

TWO DAYS LATER, ELI WAS IMMERSED in an increasingly common task: scrolling through the newspaper’s microfilmed old editions in its archives room, with an eye toward bicentennial magazine content. Such work was tiring to his eyes, so he paused frequently to look away from the screen, especially while scrolling rapidly through the pages. As he rested his eyes an old green filing cabinet in a corner, he noticed one of the drawers was labeled TRAFFIC FATALITIES BY DECADE.

He thought at once of Melinda’s aunt, and struggled to remember her name. Kathy … of that he was sure. Dodd, Dodson, Dobbins … no, Dobson. Kathy Dobson.

He was digging through the cabinet within ten seconds. Clippings of the coverage of individual accidents were filed by the month, year by year. He grabbed the folder for ‘78 and tried to remember if Melinda had stated the month her aunt had died. She had not.

Folder by folder, he checked clippings, looking for the name of Kathy Dobson.

Nothing. No big front page story with a lurid photograph. Yet Melinda had talked of front-page coverage.

Was the file for a month missing? No, they all were there, January through December.

But no story. No Kathy Dobson.

For years, Mary Helen Truxton had been building a careful, cross-referenced file of obituaries from 1940 onward. Not only did she have a filing cabinet nearly filled with the actual clippings, but huge and growing index volumes as well, in loose-leaf binders she added to weekly. The home of the obit index volumes was a shelf in the back of the room beside the filing cabinet that held the actual clippings. Eli went to the binder for 1978 and plunged in.

Again no Kathy Dobson. He checked the volume that indexed obituaries by name rather than year. A few Dobsons. No Kathy.

Puzzling. Had he misheard what Melinda had said regarding the year or the name? Had Kathy been a family nickname unconnected to the aunt’s actual name? He could think of no reason Melinda would have lied to him.

Unless … unless the Kathy Dobson story was a misdirection to divert him from knowing what had been the real cause of her reaction to that huge election party photograph hanging on the wall. Melinda’s distress over that picture had been authentic; of that he was sure. If the distress had not been because of seeing the face of an ill-fated late aunt, then what? Or whom? And why would Melinda need to be cagey about it?

The newspaper office was empty, even David Brecht for once having gone home at a reasonable hour. Eli left the archive room and went back up to the hall where the huge photograph hung. After turning on the hallway light, he studied the photograph closely, looking for he knew not what.

He studied the faces of a past decade’s strangers, perplexed. He gave it up after a few minutes as wasted effort.

He’d go by his office on the way home on the chance she might still be in the building. If she was, he’d ask her directly why she’d been compelled to tell him a story about an aunt who never existed.

But he drove on by Hodgepodge without a stop. Her car was not in the lot. He went on home and forced himself to make plot notes on his upcoming
Farlow’s Trail
sequel. It bored him terribly after only fifteen minutes, but he compelled himself to keep at it. The phone rang, giving him an excuse to quit. He reached for the receiver in hope he’d find Melinda on the other end of the line.

Just somebody selling magazines. Eli didn’t want any, said so, and hung up. He thought about calling Melinda, but remembered it was Wednesday and she usually tended the nursery at her church for its Wednesday night Bible studies.

“That family spends more time in church than anybody I’ve ever known,” Eli muttered to himself as he foresaw the dull and lonely evening ahead of him.