Paging the Dead (23 page)

“It was very generous,” Esme said.

“Yes it was, but anyhow, that wasn't what I came to talk with you about,” Joe said, sitting forward and resting his elbows on the table. “I'm sure you've heard we met with the lawyers about Dorothy's estate today.”

“Jeremy told us a little,” I said.

“I think Jeremy got a little shock,” Joe said, smiling. “I think everybody did. The Pritchett fortune was, let's say, watered down. William Pritchett's world travels didn't come cheap. Dorothy didn't have much left in the way of assets and a good chunk of what she did have she left to the town for the upkeep on that big old house for the next couple of years.”

“It'll be great for the town,” Esme said.

“I believe it will,” Joe said. “I hope they open it up for people to use for celebrations, weddings, maybe some classes of some kind. That'll be nice. But I'm getting off track again. What I wanted to say is that while Ingrid got the house she and Dorothy grew up in and the gatehouse at High Ground, she didn't get much in the way of ready cash—as I say, there wasn't much left to get. I don't want Dorothy's memorial or any expenses to do with this”—he nodded toward
the table—“to be a hardship on Ingrid. If you need anything else for it you send me the bill.”

“We're paid in full,” I said. “I told you that when you gave me that check.”

“I know,” he said, “but as Vivian reminds me, things come up. I've told her the same thing about the memorial.”

Esme made a sound I understood well. Apparently Joe did, too.

“I know,” he said, laughing. “She's a dangerous woman to offer a blank check to, but it's for Dorothy and there's nobody who'd know better what Dorothy would have wanted. Vivian was her best friend. She'll do it up right and proper and I think it'll help her, too. Poor Vivian is taking this hard.”

He got up from the table and slapped his hat against his thigh. “That's all I wanted to say. I know Dorothy would really be pleased with the job you're doing here.”

“I like to think so,” I said, “especially because Ingrid and Jeremy and Cassidy are interested in it now, too.”

Joe nodded. “Maybe I'll even find something to admire about the Pritchetts. Though I wouldn't bank on it.”

•   •   •

The other club members had agreed to forgo our usual Tuesday night meeting at Keepsake Corner to help Esme and me save this job and our sanity. Winston was first to arrive with a bagful of deliciousness in the form of fresh-baked rosemary olive oil bread. Marydale came after she closed the shop and I stole a few minutes to play with Gadget and Sprocket. Coco showed up an hour later and it was all hands on deck. Except for Jack, who was conspicuously absent.

This time our potluck was more for sustenance than socializing. We ate and cleared quickly and were soon hard at work again.

“I've got news and I can't wait to tell y'all about it,” Winston said. “Can I tell you while we work? It's a good story.”

“Let's hear it,” Esme said.

“I told you about the guy who had the diaries,” he said. “Well, he emailed them as promised and I've been reading nearly non-stop since yesterday. In case you've forgotten, the ancestor I was looking at was my twelve. And my question was whether he'd had children with one of his slaves. The answer appears to be yes and that slave woman, her name was Delsie, is actually my thirteen, not the woman whose name was put down in the old family Bible.”

“Okay,” I said, “now you've got to know what my next question's going to be.”

“Yes, I do,” Winston said with a laugh. “What is the weight of my evidence?”

“And is it—” I prompted.

“Consistent, connected and conclusive,” the rest all recited in unison.

“I can tell you this is original material,” Winston said. “A diary written by a woman who personally experienced and witnessed the situation she describes and who had no ax to grind. In fact, just the opposite, and you'll soon see what I mean.”

“Enough with the lesson, Sophreena,” Coco said. “Let him get on with the story.”

“The woman who kept the diary was the legal wife of my twelve, Horace Lovett. Her name was Theodora Haskins
Lovett. But that marriage was a sham and she is not my biological ancestor. Theodora was a Quaker woman from a family of ardent abolitionists. It's not clear how she and Horace got acquainted or how they came to their strange arrangement, but she became his beard wife while he had a secret common-law marriage with Delsie. And I am happy to report that this was an arrangement that both Horace and Delsie entered into willingly, which isn't to say there's not plenty about it that makes me wish things had been different. But at least according to Theodora's diary the secret marriage between Delsie and Horace was a true love story. They had six children together. Three were light complexioned and those were raised, publicly and legally, as the children of Horace and Theodora. Three were dark skinned and were raised by Delsie. None of the children knew their true parentage until all three—Horace, Delsie and Theodora—were dead. Theodora entrusted her diary to her family with the stipulation that the story not be told until twenty-five years after the last of the three had died.”

“How in the world did that work?” Coco asked. “And why, if he loved this Delsie so much, didn't he just marry her?”

“First off,” Winston said, “it was a crime. There were anti-miscegenation laws, as they were called back then. It was illegal to marry outside your race in South Carolina and some other states.”

“Are you joking?” Coco asked.

“Not joking,” Winston said. “People were prosecuted, fined and jailed. But you asked how they managed to make it work. Delsie had always worked in the house, not the fields, and she had quarters attached to the house on the first floor
behind the kitchen. Theodora lived on the top floor and as far as everyone else knew so did Horace. The children weren't told for fear they wouldn't keep the secret. The consequences would have been dangerous for everyone.”

“So does that mean one of the children raised by Theodora is your ancestor?” Marydale asked.

“Yes, Josiah Austin Lovett was the firstborn child of Horace and Delsie. He's my number eight, my great-grandfather. He was raised as the child of Horace and Theodora and died never knowing Delsie, the woman who'd looked after him as his nursemaid, was his natural mother.”

“That is quite a story, Winston,” Esme said. “And now that you know, how do you feel about it all?”

“Conflicted,” Winston said. “It makes me sad that it had to be that way. But I feel relieved, too. I was afraid I'd find an ancestor who'd taken unfair advantage, or worse. I had a terrible dread of that. So this has put my mind at ease. Nobody wants to think they owe their existence to a situation like that.”

The doorbell rang and Esme went to answer it.

“Do you know what became of the children who stayed with Delsie?” I asked.

“Yes, I'm happy to say all the children were well provided for. They all went to school and grew to adulthood and had families of their own and lived full lives, save one daughter who died in the 1918 flu epidemic.

“That's amazing,” Coco said. “So, all along this man was hiding his children in plain sight.”

Just at that moment Vivian came through the door. She was white as a sheet and I wondered if the sight of so much work still undone had scared her.

“What did you say?” she asked, staring at Coco with her mouth half open.

“Nothing,” Coco said, frowning.

“No, you did,” Vivian insisted. “Something about hiding something.”

“This is our regular meeting night, so we're talking about our own family histories while we work,” I said. “Is there something we can do for you, Vivian?”

“Actually, it was Winston I was looking for,” she said, turning in his direction, a deep frown cutting lines across her forehead. “I thought I might find you here since Esme and Sophreena seem to have drafted everyone for miles around to help with their work. I was wondering if you'd mind delivering the baked goods for Dorothy's memorial yourself. It was nice of you to agree to make all those pastries, but I'm going to be spread very thin that day and I don't know when I'd pick them up.”

“Don't worry, I'll bring them up, Vivian,” Winston said. “Is there anything else I could help out with?”

“Well, since you asked,” Vivian said, the words coming out fast, “could you come up to High Ground tomorrow to help with some of the outdoor preparations? One of the men I hired has a family emergency and he's left me in a lurch.”

“I'll be there,” Winston said.

“Good, then,” Vivian said, glancing nervously up and down the tables.

“Everything will be ready,” I said, pre-empting her question.

“Good, then,” she said again. “I'll let myself out.” She moved toward the door as if her legs were made of wood.

There was dead silence until we heard the door close.

“I'm worried about her,” Marydale said.

“I think she's still in the denial stage of grief where everything seems unreal,” Esme said. “Planning this memorial's the only thing holding her together right now.”

I'
M ALLERGIC TO MORNING.
M
Y EYES ARE ALWAYS ALL PUFFY
and I'm generally opposed to everything the world has to offer for the first fifteen minutes after I'm forced to start the day. Today I was especially tired, and cranky to boot. Jack had finally shown up the night before, but not until after nine when the others were getting ready to leave. He'd been dressed up so he hadn't been working late. He didn't volunteer where he'd been and I couldn't ask since I didn't want to know the answer. He seemed happy and said he was just dropping by to say hello and that he needed to get home to bed since he had a big project today.

Fine. By. Me.

And now Esme was insisting on our morning power walk, which I would just as soon have skipped. As always I was practically trotting alongside her as we hit the sidewalk. She had a head of steam up about something this morning.

“You wanna talk about it?” I asked, trying to keep from puffing.

“I can't understand why this has to come this hard,” she
said. “I've been open. I've been willing. Why can't she just tell me flat out whatever it is she wants me to know like she did with the ring being in the puzzle box?”

“Sarah Malone?”

“Of course, Sarah Malone, who else are we talking about?” Esme said. “I've about had it with the woman. At first everything was clear, then it was like you said, bad poetry and now it's only images. And I don't have a clue what they mean. We didn't find any special quilts in the Pritchett family heirlooms, did we?”

“No, no family ones. Which is sort of unusual, especially for a southern family. But no quilts. Not that Dorothy knew of, anyway, and there weren't any in the attic. Why?”

“I keep getting this image of a quilt,” Esme said. “A really pretty hand-pieced quilt in pastels, like a baby quilt. But as I'm admiring the pattern it gets turned onto the backside, which is plain old hopsacking.”

“Are you sure this is coming from Sarah Malone?”

“Positive.”

I knew better than to ask Esme how she could be so certain. She's tried a thousand times to explain to me how these things come to her, but I don't pretend to get it.

“Well,” I said. “All I can tell you is I haven't run across any quilt that was significant to the family, not to Dorothy anyway.”

When we got to Top o' the Morning I scanned the parking lot for Jack's Jeep, but it wasn't there. I was disappointed, then relieved, then disappointed again.

Esme was still agitated and when she yanked the coffee shop door open Denton Carlson was standing there, coffee
cup in one hand, the other extended as if about to push. His partner, Detective Jeffers, was right behind him and when she caught sight of Esme and me she got a sullen look on her face.

“I'll be in the car, make it quick,” she said to Denton, giving us a curt nod before she hurried across the street to a blue sedan.

“Who peed in her Wheaties?” Esme said, scowling after her.

“Never mind her,” Denny said, motioning for us to follow him a few feet down the sidewalk for privacy. “This case is a career maker, or breaker. It's that last that's worrying her. And with that in mind I'm gonna trust you two with something we just learned. But this can't go any further right now, not even to your friends. The DNA results from those coffee cups came back this morning.”

“What happened to the massive backlog?” I asked.

Denny shrugged. “Prominent family. Money. You know how that goes, things jump to the front of the line.”

“What did it show?” Esme asked.

“Nothing in the system,” Denny said. “But here's the thing. One sample is Dorothy's and the other is from a male—a
related
male.”

“Jeremy?” I breathed.

“As far as I know he's her only living male relative, right?” Denny said. “You'd know. That's the reason I'm telling you about this.”

I mentally ran through the family chart. “Yeah, I think so, but let me go back to the house and double-check. Maybe there are distant cousins or something.”

I was almost positive that wasn't the case, but I desperately wanted there to be another explanation. Now that we'd gotten to know Jeremy Garrison better and had seen the way he was with Cassidy I realized I'd made the same mistake with him as with Dorothy. I'd operated on assumptions. He wasn't the brooding guy I'd pegged him for at first. He'd had good reasons for resenting the Pritchett family, but enough to kill Dorothy to exact revenge? I didn't think so.