Micanopy in Shadow (23 page)

He flung back the stringy lock of hair. “We’re doing okay. I just received a delivery of creamware dishes from a contact in Gainesville. The guy was just here.”

“An unbroken set? May I see them?”

He ignored her and said instead, “And the wicker rockers just came in. They’ll sell.”

She nodded, looking more closely at a rocker. “It’s true. Wicker’s back in style, all right, but these aren’t old. Elaborate ones could be as early as 1850. These are plain. They might be 1930s at best.”

Snug swung himself behind the cash register and stood with his jaw set. “You come in just to criticize? You’re getting your fair share, and it’s nothing to sneeze at.”

Hope stepped up to the register, drawing in her breath and tensing her cheeks. “We came here to gave you an ultimatum. I can’t handle the store now, and I want you out of here. We’ve got to sell. Mr. Henderson gave us two weeks. That was a week ago.”

He swiveled around toward Brandy. “This is your doing. You stand to inherit. Don’t think I don’t know.” He smirked. “You think I had something to do with your getting whacked the other day.”

Brandy stepped forward. “Don’t flatter yourself.” Actually, she doubted he had the strength. Of course, anger and fear increases strength.

Hope braced her hand on the counter and leaned toward him. “Nonsense. I’m the one who wants you out. And if you don’t agree to sell, I’ll find a way to make you. I’ll find out how you manage to earn big profits with hardly any sales.”

They left on that high note. Brandy turned to see her cousin’s arrogant face blanch. She felt uneasy about the confrontation with Snug. First, she wanted to see into that last delivery carton. Was it dishes, or something more valuable? Hope’s warning made a discreet investigation more difficult.

But Hope was satisfied. “That ought to make the little devil see reason,” she said as she stepped into her old pick-up.

Brandy didn’t argue. Instead she said, “I’m coming over. Not for long, but I have a few questions. I’d like to know more about the Havens.” She strapped Brad into his car seat, tucked the stroller into her trunk, and followed Hope. Surely, questioning her own grandmother wouldn’t be considered continuing the investigation.

* * *

Hope opened her front door and gave the cat a quick chin scratch, while Brandy struggled in behind her with the stroller. Patches jumped down from her perch and followed them both into the kitchen, while Brandy carried Brad again on one hip. In the kitchen she settled him, at least temporarily, in his stroller.

Hope put on the kettle. “You’re going to strain that shoulder,” Hope said, frowning.

“Kyra will come again tomorrow if I need to go out.”

“Nice kitty,” Brad crooned, reaching for a handful of black cat fur. Patches scampered under the kitchen table, tail twitching.

Hope began slathering a slice of whole wheat bread with peanut butter. “This will keep him busy.” The bird clock emitted a soft cooing. She glanced up. “Mourning doves. It’s noon.”

Brandy checked the cupboard, opened a can of tuna, set out the mayonnaise and relish, and slapped together two sandwiches. She found a toddler cup on a cabinet shelf, and set it on Brad’s tray. “Do you remember anything about your mother the day she left you?”

Brandy lifted a bib out of a drawer and tied it around the little boy’s neck while Hope handed Brad the bread and peanut butter. It was a few minutes before Hope answered. First, she poured steaming water into two cups and laid fragrant sugar cookies on a small plate.

“I remember the feeling of loneliness and worry more than I remember her,” Hope said at last. “To tell the truth, I could never recall what my own mother looked like.”

“How did you come to feel about the Havens?”

“They couldn’t actually adopt me, you know. No one knew who my father was. He’d have parental rights. They were my foster parents, but they had legal status.”

The two seated themselves at the kitchen table.

“What were they like?”

Hope raised her cup and stared across the rim, all hardness now gone from her face. She replied obliquely with another question. “Do you realize what would’ve happened to me if they hadn’t taken me in? I would’ve gone into an orphanage. Can you imagine what my life would’ve been like there?”

Brandy spoke gently, careful about probing a sensitive area. “But tell me how you felt about them as parents.”

This time the pause was longer, almost meditative. Hope rocked the nearly empty teacup back and forth in its saucer, choosing her words. “Child rearing was very different then. Mothers weren’t urged to show feelings of warmth. Discipline was the name of the game. Fathers didn’t pitch in and help with child-rearing or housework, either.”

Brandy spoke quietly. “I’m hearing that they were pretty hard on you.”

“Remember, they’d lost a little girl about my age. Her photograph had been colored by hand and hung in the hall. The fact is, she was the prettiest child I ever saw. All the neighbors said so. She had long blonde corkscrew curls. She’d been dainty. I was a scrawny tomboy with knobby knees who’d rather wear overalls.” She allowed herself a tight smile. “I don’t think I ever measured up, and that’s the truth.”

Brandy felt a surge of sympathy for a childhood sadness she’d never known about. “Mother Haven didn’t want people to locate my mother’s people,” Hope continued in a sharper voice. “She knew they’d get custody. I had an anonymous benefactor in town, and the Women’s Club helped with expenses, too.”

“Then a little brother came along,” Brandy said. “What was that like, sharing what little warmth there was?”

Her grandmother looked up, eyes again lively. “You misunderstand. My little brother became the light of my life. Mother Haven turned his care over to me a lot. I was six years older, and a surprisingly maternal little girl. I loved taking care of him. He turned to me with all his minor hurts; he waited at the window when I walked home from school. After he was a few years old, there was a lot more love for me in that house.”

Brandy tread softly again. “You haven’t said much about your foster father.”

Her grandmother turned and set her empty cup on the counter, again thinking of the right words. At last she said, “He was remote, but he was not abusive, if that’s what you’re wondering. It was as if, well, his wife wanted me and he’d go along. Often he was away. He worked in the truck farms where Paynes Prairie is now. He did help with the hotel some, too. Maintenance, mainly.”

“Was he there when your mother left you?”

“I don’t think so. They’d just bought their first car—the cheapest, a Ford Model T. He was out test-driving it, Mother Haven said. He didn’t know about me until he came home. She’d already called the town marshall.”

Brandy made a few notes on a pad. “I’ve got to get going.” Brad had dropped his cup and was trying to climb out of the stroller.

Brandy helped him out and took his hand while her grandmother opened a lower cabinet door and took out a packet of safflower, sunflower chips, and a measuring spoon full of peanuts. Patches knew where she was going and stole out from under the table to follow Hope onto the back porch. As an indoor cat, birds still held an academic interest.

“Time to feed my favorite little songbird, the tufted titmouse,” Hope called back to Brandy. “It’s the smallest one in Florida, and it’s here all year.”

Brandy remembered the routine from her childhood. She would help her grandmother clean a plaster birdbath beside the bottle-brush trees and sprinkle seed in the feeder. Brandy had also liked watching for the tiny, dove-gray bird with the stiff crest. Not the same individual Hope would feed today, of course, but one of the same species.

“Would you watch for the red-tailed hawk?” Hope called. “One sometimes flies over from Paynes Prairie and preys on small birds.”

Brandy thought of the medium’s warning. She was endangering not only herself, but someone else close to her. She sighed. Hope would never believe that hawks were not the only danger in Micanopy.

FIFTEEN
 

Late that afternoon, Brandy threw a cardigan around her shoulders, stepped out onto the second floor porch, and stared down at the two blocks of aging stores, at the oaks in front of the café and the thin coating of russet and yellow covering the ground below. Gray branches bristled above the buildings and nearby houses. The few shoppers still on the sidewalk bent against a wind from the south. Had October been as blustery and chill eighty-one years ago? The business district was different then, the town much more active, but these blocks would look much the same. Only the names of the stores and their proprietors had changed.

She tried to picture her great-grandmother among those now on the sidewalk, bending against the brisk breeze and pulling her black shawl more tightly about her shoulders. Brandy clothed the slim figure in the white blouse and black skirt described in the newspaper clipping. One hand held down the small black hat with ribbons. Bobbed hair showed under the rim. The small female figure became so clear in Brandy’s mind that she almost searched for her among the shoppers.

But it was not the imaginary figure that she saw but a bulky female in jeans that did nothing to minimize her broad hips. She emerged from the drug store wearing a plaid flannel shirt and a white ball cap pulled down over graying hair. Beside her tottered the fragile figure of old Savage Wilson. He leaned on a heavy cane with one hand; the other clutched his daughter’s arm. Brandy watched the woman half lift the old man into a pickup’s passenger seat. She was certainly strong enough to strangle a smaller woman.

Her mind turned to Caleb, then to his father and the murdered revenue agent. The town marshall would have discovered the man’s body. As shadows crept across the boulevard and store lights blinked on, Brandy remained on the porch. The telephone startled her. When she picked up, she recognized the deep southern drawl of her Atlanta hospital contact. Her grip on the phone tightened.

“Brandy O’Bannon? Are you the lady looking for someone who worked at Grady Memorial during the Great War?” The designation was current during World War I, although this woman would be much too young to remember the era.

“Yes, I certainly am. I know only one name—Ada Losterman. Losterman could be the last name of the woman’s mother I’m trying to locate.” After all Ada had worn no wedding band. “One of them might have been a nurse at Grady Memorial.”

“I called a ninety-year old friend who trained at the hospital. The generation of nurses before hers, they served during the war. Some of the wounded stayed in the hospital long after 1918.” For a second the woman began to speak slowly and deliberately, as if reading. “Some nurses were sent to Fort Hancock near Atlanta on October 5, 1918.” She paused. Then went on, surprised. “Lord a’ mercy, there were three-thousand cases of Spanish influenza at the fort! Some of this is on the internet.”

“I’m grateful for your checking,” Brandy said. “Did your friend mention a Losterman?”

“She thinks she remembers hearing the name. It was unusual. She believes her mother knew a nurse by that name—a Mary Losterman. She would be in her mid to late forties then. I hope she isn’t the woman you’re looking for, what happened was so sad. She says that nurse died of the flu the same year, she and her husband both. The whole family caught it.”

A few minutes later John came through the door and found Brandy sunk in gloom. Even Brad’s delighted cries as he threw down his blocks and pull toys and ran to his dad didn’t brighten her mood. He tucked his newspaper beside the lamp on the end table, dropped onto the couch beside her, and took her hand. “Got a new problem?” he asked. “You haven’t kept on keeping on, have you?”

A frustrated smile went along with her hug. “It’s just that my one good Atlanta lead reached a dead end. Grady Memorial Hospital was the one place I could ask questions and not arouse suspicions in Micanopy. I have a possible name for Ada’s mother, but both parents died before Ada ever came here.”

John patted her hand. “Let’s see. When Ada stopped at the hotel, she made no reference to her family or a local contact. It’s possible she came to see someone
because
her parents had both died. She was wearing a lot of black for a young woman.”

Brandy looked up. “People wore mourning then a long time, I remember. Maybe I could still find out if Mary Losterman had a daughter name Ada.”

John shrugged out of his suede jacket and stepped to the bedroom closet to hang it beside another, careful to face the hangers the same way. “If I were you, I’d check the Atlanta 1910 and 1920 census. If there’s a Mary Losterman, you can get her husband’s first name and see if Ada was their daughter.”

Brandy felt hopeful again as she went into the kitchen to heat a pot of lentil soup. She cut chunks of frankfurters into the soup and grilled two cheese sandwiches, and they sat at the table while Brad ate in his high chair. After supper she would settle herself at the laptop, and ask John to tuck Brad in for the night.

When she Googled
United States Census
, she found the website
www.census-online.com
. Although Atlanta is now in Fulton County, she was routed to DeKalb County for the 1910 census where a window gave her a choice of surnames.

Losterman
came between
Lord
and
Lour
. She clicked on the name, and a chart appeared on the screen listing three individuals:
Mary, 37, wife, Frank, 38, head
, and
Ada, 11, daughter
. When Brandy read the name that had occupied most of her time for two weeks—and probably caused Hunter’s death as well as the attack on her—she called to John, “She’s here! Ada is here!” He glanced up from his newspaper and smiled.