In the Midnight Rain (10 page)

Ellie laughed. "You're incorrigible." She stuck out her hand. "Deal. And I would appreciate it in the future if you buttoned your shirt when you came visiting."

His big hand engulfed hers and Ellie found herself noticing his square nails. Such a great hand, lean and well-shaped. Like the rest of him. She let him go.

"I'll try to remember." He angled his head toward the path. "Been down to the river this morning?"

"I was." Now that the rules had been laid out, she felt free to gesture for him to move over so she could sit down. "I met an old woman down there. She was fishing.

"Gwen Laisser. She's great. You'll like her." He straightened, attention caught by something in the fields between the house and the cottage. "Damn."

Ellie saw a scruffy dog racing down the path with full-tilt exuberance, ears blown back, tongue lolling. April got up and barked, protectively, but the dog was undeterred. It raced into the yard, going way too fast to stop, and barreled into Blue's knees.

"Sasha!" Blue said, reaching down to rub her head. "How did you get out?"

It was the same dog Ellie met the first night, the one Marcus called a "rat-dog," and with some justification. She was a medium-sized mutt with coarse fur and hints of terrier in the wisps of hair around her mouth. After greeting Blue, she moved to Ellie with a hopeful expression and sat down, still as she'd been wild, staring at Ellie eagerly. "What a sweet face!" Ellie said, and reached for her. "You're a cutie."

April whined, and Sasha jumped up to be examined. They sniffed and greeted, then apparently finding nothing objectionable, April made a playful bow and they were off, tumbling, wrestling, leaping in the dust.

"That's the most ill-behaved dog on the planet," Blue commented.

"Sasha, right? I think she's cute."

He sighed. "She's an escape artist. I really am beginning to think she knows how to climb fences."

"You know, if someone had asked me what kind of dog you'd own, I wouldn't have picked that one."

"No?" He looked at her lazily. "What would you have picked, Miz Connor?"

"German shepherd," she said. "Definitely. Something macho and beautiful."

"Well, I usually do like big dogs." He lifted a shoulder. "Sasha just showed up at my door one day. And well, let's just say I needed somebody right then."

Ellie decided she didn't want to know what demons had been bothering him when Sasha appeared. "April's happy. She can come visit me anytime."

"You want to leave April with her? They can play in the back, and April won't have to be lonely all day with you gone."

"All right."

"We'd best get a move on. Rosemary'll want us to be on time."

5

R
osemary's house was indeed hard to find, and Ellie was glad Blue had offered to drive her. They had to take the highway out of town, driving past vegetable stands, scattered businesses, and two churches before turning down a narrow road that branched off into the heavy woods every quarter mile or so. Blue chose this turn and that, using no marker she could discern—there were certainly no street signs—until he drove into a wide, cleared stretch of farmland. At one end of the fields, planted with what might have been soybeans, sat a three-story clapboard farmhouse, painted white, with a wide porch circling it on three sides. Ellie stepped out and smiled. "This looks like the house I grew up in."

"Yeah? Well, then you oughta have some idea what the attic will be like."

"Hot."

"That much for sure. We'll want to get done by noon."

A youth came out on the porch. "Hey, Blue."

"Hey, yourself, Brandon. You keeping out of trouble?"

The youth grinned. "More or less." Tall and athletic, he had the kind of fresh-scrubbed wholesomeness of country boys everywhere. "Did you hear I got into the Air Force Academy?"

"No! That's terrific, man. I'm not a bit surprised." He slapped him on the shoulder. "I know your mama is thrilled."

Rosemary appeared at the door. "Boy, don't stand around talking. Get that over to the post office and get to school."

"Yes, ma'am." He gave Blue a quick grin.

"Hang on." Blue put his hand on Ellie's shoulder blade and gestured with the other hand. "Ellie, this is Brandon, Rosemary's son, and one of Gideon's finest. Brandon, this is Ellie Connor. She's here to write a biography of your . . . what is she, your great-aunt?—Mabel Beauvais."

"Pleased to meet you." Brandon shook her hand with a firm, clean grip, and waved as he ran down the steps.

Blue turned to Rosemary with a grin. "That's a fine-looking young man. Lot to be proud of there."

"He's a good boy." She swung open the door. "Come on in. I'll get you settled, then I've got to git. Have to run by the bank before I open this morning."

She led them up a set of carpeted stairs that opened on to a wide landing, then circled up again and ended at a wooden door. "There's no air-conditioning up here, and it gets hot as Hades, so you need to keep this door closed, if you don't mind. I put a fan in the window, but mornings are the only time you'll be able to stand it."

"Okay."

The room was long and dim, with windows at either end. The accumulations of several lifetimes were tucked under the exposed rafters, old clothing and discarded toys and lines of trunks. Toward one end was one that had been opened, and Rosemary stopped there. "The letters and photos are in here. They're mixed up with everything. I managed to get some sorted out, but I'm afraid you'll have to sift through the rest. If you come across something you aren't sure about, just put it aside, and I'll be glad to talk to you about it later."

The familiar excitement rose in Ellie, and she gave Rosemary a reassuring smile. "I can't even tell you how grateful I am."

Rosemary patted her arm. "I hope you find what you need." She put a key in Blue's hand. "Lock the front door when you're done, please, sir."

"Will do."

"Am I going to see you at the meeting tonight, Ellie?" Rosemary asked.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world." She hesitated, unwilling to push, but dying of curiosity. "Did you find out anything more on the journals, by any chance?"

She snapped her fingers. "I forgot, sugar, but I'll call my sister this morning."

"Thanks."

Ellie and Blue settled beside the trunk and worked out a system. Since Blue knew more of the faces of the town and would more easily be able to weed out the ones that wouldn't mean anything, he volunteered to sort through the hundreds of photos stacked into piles, while Ellie concentrated on sorting out the letters from Mabel. There weren't as many as she'd hoped—a couple dozen—but Ellie was pleased with them anyway. She tried to resist actually reading any of them until later, but one date caught her eye and she carefully slid the old paper from the envelope.

"Listen to this," she said, and began to read aloud:

"St. Louis, February 3, 1944

Dear Harry,

I'm sitting here this morning in my bathrobe, a cup of coffee in a paper cup from the deli around the corner that Mary brought up to me a little while ago and I can hardly tell you what I'm feeling. I sang last night. Now I know there's nothing new about that, I been singing every night, but it was different last night. I sang one of my own songs, and old Diamond Poco played guitar for me, and those folks went crazy! They hollered and danced and clapped so long I almost didn't know what to do. My heart almost exploded. Then a man from a record company came to talk to me after, and bought me supper, and I'm going over this morning to see the boss about maybe making a record!! Can you believe it?' "

Blue bent close to look over Ellie's arm at the letter, and a wisp of his hair brushed her jaw. It seemed curiously intimate, and she was suddenly aware of all her body parts—her shoulder blades and elbows—which immediately felt awkward. He smelled faintly of some exotic fragrance she couldn't quite name.

Briskly she read the postscript, "P.S. If
anybody
can spare stockings, I sure do need them."

"Wow. That kinda gives me shivers." He reached for the letter and Ellie let it go, turning her attention back to the trunk. "I guess that's the appeal, huh? Makes it immediate."

"Exactly."

He handled the letter delicately. "She was so damned young. I always forget that part."

"The war was on," she said. "I never thought about what an impact that would have had on everything. Gas, rubber, tires, stockings. It must have been hard." She tugged a pile of blank note cards from her purse and made a note to check what exactly was rationed, and what problems that would have caused.

"It's a shame," Blue said, lifting his head. "She was so excited." A puzzled expression crossed his brow. "Doesn't make sense, does it? What could go so wrong she'd just walk away after she'd worked so damned hard?"

"I know." Her gawky sense of her own elbows faded, and she was only looking at the man who shared her passion for the blues. "That's the whole thing. Why?"

"Maybe somebody killed her."

"Most people think so. But where? How? There's no sign of it."

"It's a good mystery. Think you'll solve it?"

"I hope so."

"Maybe you need Nero Wolfe to help you."

Ellie chuckled. "The guy with the orchids?"

"Right." He gave her the letter back and turned back to sorting the pictures. Ellie finished going through her stacks of letters, then went through them again to set aside those from relatives during the same frame of years as secondary material. It was quite possible one relative had gossiped to another about Mabel.

While they worked, they talked sporadically. Once Blue nudged her and passed over a picture. "Look at this."

It was a photograph of a young black woman garbed in the heavy polyester style of the early seventies, standing with a man a bit older who had an Afro the size of a globe. Ellie chuckled. "Is that Marcus?"

"Sure is."

"Who is that with him?"

"Rosemary. They had quite the thing for a long time, evidently."

Ellie thought about the two, and realized they probably were close in age. "What happened?"

Blue took the picture back. "I don't know. Marcus didn't handle his war experiences real well. I've heard him talk about the wild times and I guess he raised some hell for a few years before Alisha, his wife, got hold of him. Rosemary was a good girl. Maybe she didn't like him acting crazy and cut him loose."

"Is Rosemary married?"

"She's a widow. Her and Connie—you met her yesterday at the beauty parlor—both lost their husbands within a few months. Both pretty young men, actually—neither one past forty-five. It was pretty sad." He lifted his head, tucked the picture into his shirt pocket. "That's when they got that book group going." He looked at the next picture. "You'll have a good time there. Bunch of wild women in that group. No guys allowed."

She riffled through a stack of letters from the fifties—too late for her purposes. "Sounds like fun."

He laughed softly and passed another picture over. "Oh, I'm gonna get him good. Look at this."

It was a group shot this time. Ellie could pick out Marcus—who was sticking out his tongue—and Rosemary. It was summer, in a park or someone's yard. Ellie smiled, only vaguely interested, and glanced it over.

And there, on the side, was a face she
knew.
Sudden heat burned the tips of her ears. On the sidelines, laughing and looking out of place in a flowing India cotton skirt, was a young woman. Not much more than a girl, really. She had tied her blouse beneath her breasts, and her long, long red hair trailed over her arms.

Ellie cast about for something to comment on. "When is this? Sixty-eight or sixty-nine? Seems like a very mixed group for the times." The words sounded calm and cool, expressing interest in a cultural curiosity, nothing more. She reached for the picture and he gave it to her. "The schools couldn't have been desegregated for more than a few years then."

"Hmm." Blue's mouth turned down at the corners. "Good point. I know when I was in school, we stuck to our own crowd. White with white, brown with brown, black with black."

"Yeah, me, too. And I'm way younger than you." She grinned. "I wonder why these guys aren't all divided up."

He inclined his head. "Maybe it
was
because it was just past segregation. Maybe they were idealistic. Wanted the dream to be real."

Ellie looked at him, thinking of her own high school. A small, rural Southern school, much like the one here, she was sure. There had been one or two very brave kids who moved between groups at that age, and there was never any particular hostility between them, but nobody even went to the same places after school. She'd lay money they still didn't, at least in her home town. Gideon was likely not much different.

Then she looked again at her mother's laughing face. "Who are all these people?"

"I don't know them all." He pointed. "Marcus, of course. And Rosemary. That's her sister, Florence, and Connie. This"—he pointed to a light-skinned black youth with his arm looped around Marcus's neck—"is James Gordon. He and Marcus were best friends from the time they were babies. He got killed in Vietnam. These guys, too. Bobby Makepeace"—he pointed to a boy with slightly rebellious hair the color of walnuts, who sported a small goatee—"was Connie Ewing's beau. And ... I can't think of this guy's name. Big 4-H star—when he got killed, the newspaper put a big picture of him with this bull he sold for some kind of record when he was sixteen." His voice softened. "My mama cried."