Patricia Rockwell - Essie Cobb 03 - Valentined (5 page)

“You mean,” said Essie, trying to understand, “the person
who sent me the valentine is the same person who made my valentine.”

“I don’t know for sure,” said Mindy with a shrug, “but I
would say probably yes.”

“But why?” Essie asked, mystified.  “Who would do that?  Why
would someone make such a beautiful card, making it look like it was bought,
and then send it to me?  Especially someone who doesn’t even sign their name?”

“It seems the card designer and sender doesn’t want you to
know who he is,” offered Mindy.

“But why?” asked Essie, more to herself than her
granddaughter.  “Why go to all that effort for… nothing?”

“Maybe it wasn’t for nothing,” suggested Mindy.

“I don’t see what the person who sent me this card gets by
sending it,” mused Essie.

“He knows you know he cares for you,” said Mindy.

“But I don’t know!  I don’t know who he is!  Oh, I’m so
confused!” cried Essie, throwing her hands up.

“Don’t be upset, Grandma,” said Mindy, reaching over and
giving her grandmother a warm hug.  “You have a secret admirer.  Even if you
don’t know who he is, you know someone out there really likes you.  Actually,
Grandma, I’m jealous!  I wish some guy felt so strongly about me that he’d send
me something as beautiful as this!  And so would Mom!”

“What?” asked Essie, turning back to her granddaughter, her
thoughts now totally on Mindy.  “What’s this about your mother?”

“Oh, you know,” said Mindy, looking down as if ashamed. 
“She’s always hounding me about finding a guy and I’m just not very good at
doing that.”

“Your mother!” exclaimed Essie.  “I should whip her little
behind!  She has no right to tell you how to run your love life.  Oh, Mindy, I
could tell you stories of Prudence and some of the boys she brought home when
she was your age!  Yikes and bikes!  There was this one horrible fellow who always
smelled like onions and looked like he slept in a garbage bin.  Prudence was
enamored of him for months before she discovered that he had lice.  Then she
dropped him like a hot potato.  Hopefully, lice were all he had!”

“This was Mom’s boyfriend?” asked a skeptical Mindy.

“Oh, yes, dear,” said Essie, shaking her head.  “I could
tell you many stories about your mother’s romantic escapades.  Would you like
some additional stories to use in your future defense?”

“Oh, thanks, Grandma,” replied Mindy, laughing, “but I think
I can handle her.  We just have two different viewpoints about the importance
of men in my life right now.”

“I hear you, dear,” said Essie.  “At the moment, given this
mystifying secret admirer, I’m about ready to give up on the whole sex!”

“You go, Grandma!” said Mindy with an encouraging fist pump.

“Girl power!” added Essie with a matching hand gesture.  The
two women, generations apart, smiled and hugged again.

After offering her professional opinion in regards to all
elements of the card, Mindy eventually gathered her belongings and headed off
to work.  Essie remained in her recliner, staring at her card, a bit wiser than
she had been before her granddaughter’s arrival—both about the card and about
Mindy.

Chapter Six

“Love sought is good, but given
unsought is better.”

—Shakespeare

Later at dinner, Essie and her pals were continuing their
analysis of the strange case of Essie’s valentine and secret admirer while they
savored their after dinner coffee. 

“My granddaughter Mindy came over today and looked at the
card,” Essie explained to her tablemates.  “She’s a graphic designer.”

“Have I met your granddaughter?” asked Opal.

“I don’t know, Opal,” said Essie. “If you did, she probably
didn’t say much; she’s typically very shy.”

“She’s the one with the lovely, long, blonde hair, isn’t
she?” asked Marjorie.  “I believe your daughter brought her over to our table
on one of her visits.”

“Maybe,” replied Essie.  “Anyway, she dropped by at my
request and examined the card.  She tells me she believes that my secret
admirer is actually the one who made the card.”

“What does that mean?” asked Opal sternly.  “This card looks
like it was purchased.  And what about the logo of the card company on the
back?”

“Mindy says any good graphic designer could devise a logo
like that,” replied Essie.  She explained the significance of the lack of a bar
code on the card.  The women were impressed.

“My goodness, Essie,” said Marjorie.  “This sheds a whole
new light on this valentine mystery.  If your secret admirer made this
beautiful card himself in addition to sending it, he must really be smitten
with you!”

“Humph,” snorted Essie.

“And he must be a graphic designer,” added Opal.

“That’s the more important piece of information,” agreed
Marjorie.  “You really need to find out who this man is, Essie.”

“I know,” replied Essie.  “It’s driving me crazy to keep
looking at it and not be able to figure out who sent it.  I keep thinking I
must know this man from somewhere and he’s just teasing me, trying to get me to
figure out who he is—to remember him from somewhere.”

“What about his return address on the envelope?” asked
Marjorie.  “Is there any way you can locate him from that?”

“I don’t know,” said Essie.  “There’s just an address, no
name.  Obviously he wants to maintain his secret identity on the envelope as
well as the card.”

“Surely there’s a way to find out who he is from his
address,” repeated Opal as she held up the envelope and peered at it.  As
Marjorie and Essie followed Opal’s eyes to the tiny, scratchy handwritten lines
on the envelope, Fay, who had been apparently sleeping in her wheelchair on the
far side of the table, reached across and grabbed the envelope from Opal’s
hands.

“Fay!” cried Opal, “I was studying that!  Maybe I can figure
out the sender from the address.”

Fay peered at the address on the envelope.  Then, placing it
in her lap, she set her coffee cup on its saucer, turned the switch on her
chair, and rolled around and down the center aisle of the dining hall.

“Where’s she going?” exclaimed Marjorie.

“How should I know?” replied Opal as the three women stared
at Fay’s retreating form in the distance, now nearing the entrance to the hall.

“Well, wherever she’s headed,” declared Essie, “I’m
following her!  She’s got my envelope!”  Essie shoved her valentine into her
walker basket under the seat, rose as quickly as she was able, and rolled her
vehicle purposefully out of the dining hall.  Opal and Marjorie, not to be left
out, grabbed their walkers and joined in the chase.  The foursome appeared to be
an elderly railroad train with Fay the engine leading a line of cars behind
her.

Fay zoomed into the lobby, through the family room, and
headed towards the far end of the family room where Happy Haven kept their one
computer.  This computer was provided for residents’ use, but few Happy
Haveners were computer literate or even interested in computing, so the little
machine stood vacant most of the time.  Fay was one of the few residents who
knew anything about computers, as Essie and her friends had discovered from
previous exploits.  They knew that Fay had worked as a research librarian and
could track down all sorts of information on the Internet.  Essie didn’t really
understand the Internet, but Fay had assisted her before in her efforts.  Essie
often wished that she could ask Fay about the Internet and how she knew what
she did, but Fay was silent about herself so Essie had learned to accept Fay
the way she was.

The women followed Fay and when she arrived at the computer,
they gathered around her expecting her to perform some of her computing magic
as she had in the past.  Fay tucked herself in front of the computer.  Essie
grabbed the computer chair and sat down beside her.  Marjorie pulled over a
nearby chair and sat to Fay’s right.  Opal took a position directly behind
Fay.  All four women had a good view of the computer screen as Fay booted up
and logged onto the Internet. 

“What’s she doing?” asked Marjorie.

“I believe she’s going on the Internet,” replied Opal,
probably the second most computer savvy of the group.  Opal appeared to be able
to follow Fay’s doings, but she certainly would never be able to conduct such a
search herself.

Fay picked up the envelope.  She quickly clicked a word at
the top of the screen that said “maps.”  Essie watched as the screen filled
with a large map of the United States.  Glancing from the envelope to the
screen, Fay typed in what appeared to be the return address on the envelope. 
The women observed what she wrote.

“715 Tingleberry Lane, Boston, Massachusetts, 02106,” said
Essie.  “Is that what it looks like to you, Fay?”

Fay nodded and then glanced from one woman to another.  She
hit one of the keys on the keyboard and the screen filled with a message that
read “no such address listed.”  Fay frowned and stared harder at the
handwritten address.

“I don’t think it’s Tingleberry,” said Marjorie, grabbing
the envelope from Fay’s hands.  “I think that’s a ‘j’ not a ‘t’!”

“No, it’s an ‘l’ I think,” offered Opal, pulling the
envelope from Marjorie’s hands and squinting at the lettering.

Fay typed furiously and soon she had changed the address on
the screen to read ‘Jingleberry” and entered that with a punch of a key.  The
screen provided the same message.  There was no Jingleberry Lane in Boston
either.  Fay repeated the routine using an ‘l’ instead of a ‘j’ for the first
letter and the results were the same.  The three women tried to help Fay by
offering different spellings of different words in the return address.  Fay
diligently checked each and every possible spelling of each and every
permutation.  After numerous tries, it soon became evident that the return
address on the valentine simply did not exist.

“What does this mean?” asked Essie.

Fay sighed, and turning to her friends, gave a shrug.

“I think Fay is saying that this return address doesn’t
exist.  It’s fictional,” said Opal.

“But why?” asked Essie.  “Why would my secret admirer put a
non-existent return address on the envelope?”

“Because he doesn’t want you to know who he is, obviously,”
replied Marjorie.  “I don’t know if that’s more romantic or less romantic.  Why
would your admirer not want you to ever figure out who he is?  If he really
likes you, you’d think he’d want you to know—ultimately.”

“Yes,” agreed Essie.

“Maybe there’s another reason,” suggested Opal.  The three
seated women turned around and looked up at their tall, serene friend.  “Maybe
he intentionally put a fake address on the card so that no one would know who
he is.  Not just Essie.”

“That’s ridiculous, Opal,” declared Marjorie.  “Essie is the
recipient.  Who else would her secret admirer be trying to hide his identity
from?”

“I don’t know,” mused Opal. “The Post Office?”

“What?” said Essie, scowling.  “Why would anyone want to
keep their identity secret from the Post Office.  The Post Office doesn’t care
who sends me a valentine.”

“I can’t answer that, Essie,” said Opal with a sigh. 
“However, if you think about it, you’re not the only person who won’t be able
to track your secret admirer now.  The purpose of a return address is so that
if the Post Office can’t deliver a letter, they have a way to return it to the
sender.  Obviously, if the sender puts a fictitious return address on the
envelope, the Post Office will not be able to return the card to the sender.”

“I see that, Opal,” said Essie.  “But, Haley’s Comet!  What
person would NOT want this card back if the Post Office couldn’t deliver it to
me?”

The women shook their heads and looked forlornly at the
computer screen which provided absolutely no information.

“Before we give up totally on this computer thing, Fay,”
said Essie, “can you try one more thing?”

Fay nodded.  Essie picked up the envelope and turned it
over.

“Mindy says this card was made for me personally and that
the logo on the back is made up.  I mean, it’s a logo for a company that
doesn’t really exist.  Can we check the company logo, Fay?  On the computer?”

Fay took the card from Essie and glanced at the logo on the
back.  Then she typed the name of the company—Boston Bell Greeting Cards—into a
box in the middle of the screen and hit a key.  A list of items appeared.  Fay
ran her finger down each one, shaking her head as she went.  Opal followed
along.  Fay clicked on several of the items, but when the screen filled with
text and the women read the various articles, it became clear that none of them
were about or even mentioned a “Boston Bell Greeting Card Company.”

“Don’t worry, Fay,” said Essie.  “This is not a bad thing. 
This just shows that there is no Boston Bell Greeting Card Company.  It
confirms my granddaughter’s conjecture that the card was created by one person,
not manufactured and then purchased in a store.  Now the question is, why?  Why
did my secret admirer not only send me this card, but why did he go to all the
trouble of making it himself in the first place, and creating the impression
that it was manufactured by this fictitious company?”

“It’s a mystery, Essie,” said Opal forlornly.  Fay nodded. 
Marjorie was staring off into space.

“Marjorie,” said Essie, giving her typically peppy friend a
jab, “where are you?”

“I just remembered,” said Marjorie, turning back to the
group.  “I played cards this morning with Betsy Rollingford.”

“That’s lovely, Marjorie,” noted Opal.  “But how does that
pertain to Essie’s secret admirer valentine?”

“Actually,” said Marjorie, “it might pertain a lot.  I’m not
sure.  I happened to mention to the group about your valentine, Essie.  Betsy
said that she had received a valentine from a secret admirer last year.  The
way she described it, it sounded a lot like your card.”