The Peach Keeper (16 page)

The first lull in customers she had, Willa called her friend Fran at the library. Fran was a transplant and a frequent visitor to Willa’s shop. She went hiking in Cataract nearly every weekend.

“Hi, Fran, it’s Willa.”

“Willa! This is a surprise.” Fran was one of those people who always sounded like she was talking with her mouth full. “What can I do for you?”

“How do I find out what went on in this town during 1936? What kind of archives do you have?”

“Police and reporters came in here asking the same thing when the skeleton turned up at the Madam,” Fran said. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t a town newspaper back then. Why do you want to know?”

“I’ve been going through my grandmother’s things, and there’s not as much there about her life as I had
hoped. Nineteen thirty-six was a big year for her. Her family lost the Madam. She gave birth to my father.”

Fran seemed to think about it for a moment. Willa heard the tick of what sounded like computer keys. “Well, we do have several decades’ worth of
The Walls of Water Society Newsletter
. That’s what I showed the police.”

“What is that?”

“A weekly single-page gossip column, basically. It circulated for most of the 1930s and ’40s.” Fran laughed. “You should read these things. They’re priceless. They document the lives of the society ladies during that time.”

“Do you think I could take a look?” Willa asked.

“Of course. I’ll be happy to set you up.”

A couple of tourists walked in, and Willa smiled and waved at them. “How late are you open today?” she asked Fran.

“It’s a half-day today. Budget cuts have meant shorter hours. I’m actually about to lock up and go home.” Fran paused. “I’ll tell you what, call me at home when you get off work, and I’ll meet you here.”

“You’re the best, Fran. Thanks.”

Fran was waiting for her that evening when Willa got to the library, which had recently been moved to a strip mall from its former location in the basement of the courthouse. She was standing by the door, faintly disheveled and smelling oddly of celery.

Once inside, Fran gave Willa all the microfiche film
she needed, then told her to make sure the door was locked when she left. When the heavy door shut behind Fran, Willa stood there for a moment. It was a curious sensation, being in a library alone. It made her feel like she had cotton in her ears. She walked to the microfiche readers in the back of the room, afraid to make too much noise. She sat down, and gradually the click and burr of the machine became a calming rhythm as she went though the film.

It took a while to find the 1936 issues, but when she found them she started in January and worked her way through.

The Walls of Water Society Newsletter
was obviously the labor of love of a rich, childless woman named Jojo McPeat. The single-page newsletter was full of gossip from social events, usually with one or two photos included.

The events read like this:

Mrs. Reginald Carter and her daughter made a splash in their matching pink coats at the Ingram family’s annual January snow ball. Overheard by the ice sculptures were several ladies who thought the pair looked like cotton candy, but most enjoyed their ensembles, complete with matching earmuffs and hand-warmers.

Jojo made long-running commentaries on what women wore, and she loved to quote anonymous naysayers. What Willa found interesting were the small references to the town itself hidden in the text. Several of the parties’ hosts would hold raffles, and the proceeds
would go to local logging families that had been hurt financially when the government bought the forest surrounding Walls of Water. Jojo once quoted Olin Jackson, who was Georgie’s father, at a party, promising that since the Jacksons gave this town an economy once, they would do it again, although he didn’t say exactly how. And Jojo herself questioned this (allegedly drunken) statement by asking how a man who let his daughter dress in last year’s clothes was going to save the town. There were jabs made toward the Jacksons quite often, but they were like pebbles being thrown at kings. The Jacksons were, unquestionably, town royalty, even if it appeared they were suffering financially.

Sitting there, Willa found herself leaning in to get a closer look at the grainy black-and-white photos of her grandmother at these parties, her breath catching in her throat at the unexpected gift of getting to see her grandmother like this. She was a stunning young woman, but her smile made her seem like she either didn’t know or didn’t care that she was beautiful. She looked vivacious and innocent, and she was always surrounded by her girlfriends. Agatha Osgood, herself a handsome young woman in a more reserved and angular way, was regularly at her side.

Through these photos of Georgie, Willa found herself transported. She could hear the laughter, taste the perfume in the air, smell the tobacco. She was so wrapped up, she could almost tell what the girls in the photos were thinking. She could tell when one had just danced with a boy she liked and had run back to the group to tell them, when they were discussing clothes
and exasperating relationships with their families. They were so carefree and happy. Their futures were sparkles in the air, waiting to be caught like fireflies.

And then Tucker Devlin arrived.

Jojo first mentioned him in February 1936 as a salesman of ladies’ cosmetics, from whom Mrs. Margaret Treble had bought a tonic and swore it made her skin feel like silk. Mrs. Treble had invited Tucker Devlin to escort her to a ladies’ lunch to sell his wares, and everyone seemed to fall hopelessly under his spell. Jojo quoted Tucker Devlin as saying: “I come from a long line of peach-tree farmers, born and raised in Upton, Texas, and proud of it. I love making women feel good about themselves, but this is just a job. What I know, what I’m best at, is peaches. Peach juice swims in my veins. When I bleed, it’s sweet. Honeybees fly right to me.”

The first photo of him was in front of a table where he had displayed his pots and potions. He was obviously giving the ladies his spiel. Willa squinted at the photo. That was definitely the same man wearing the fedora in the photo found buried at the Madam. Her skin prickled with a sense of déjà vu, but she shook it off.

From that point on, not a single newsletter passed without mention of Tucker Devlin. And there was a gradual progression in the photos. They started out with Tucker posing with older ladies, but then he was introduced into society and he started to favor the younger women. There were numerous photos of him with Georgie and Agatha. He was kinetic. A force. People
seemed unconsciously drawn to him. Over time, the women in the photographs began to get desperate, hungry looks on their faces. If it was a group shot, there was always one girl looking at another girl with narrowed, jealous eyes.

Several newsletters later, Jojo mentioned in passing that Tucker Devlin was living at the Blue Ridge Madam, which startled Willa.

He had
lived
there?

It took a while to piece together through the newsletters what had happened. Apparently, Olin Jackson got wind of Tucker Devlin’s former profession, or maybe Tucker Devlin himself approached Olin Jackson. Either way, a plan was hatched to turn Jackson Hill into a peach orchard. Jobs would be generated. The Jacksons would save the town again. Olin had invited Tucker to live with them while they created this new empire.

Willa couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would plan a peach orchard at this elevation. If Tucker Devlin was who he said he was, he would have known that peaches wouldn’t grow here. He would have known it was a venture that was bound to fail.

And yet he had convinced everyone that it was possible.

He was a con man, just like Agatha said.

But why kill him just for that? Who was he really hurting?

Throughout the summer, Tucker, now the town’s golden boy, appeared in the newsletter, and his favorite escorts at parties were always the same young ladies,
with one notable exception. Curiously enough, though Georgie’s friends were his constant companions, Georgie herself seemed to have disappeared from society. There were mentions of her feeling under the weather, but after May of that year, there wasn’t another photo of her to be found.

Then, in August, Tucker Devlin disappeared as well. There was no explanation. There was also no mention of what had happened with plans for the orchard. Later, Willa found a short note that said the Jackson family had left the premises of the Blue Ridge Madam, per a court order. The government had seized the house for failure to pay taxes. That was October 1936, two months after the body had been buried, if the Asheville newspaper buried with the body was anything to go by.

That meant Georgie and her family had indeed still been living in the Madam at the time of his death.

That wasn’t what Willa had been hoping to find. And if the police had looked at these, as Fran had said, then they knew this, too.

Willa printed out all the 1936 newsletters, then gathered the papers, turned off the lights, and locked the door behind her. She felt like she was the last to leave a party that no one really wanted to leave, but she had been hanging on the longest. As she walked across the parking lot to her Jeep, she thought she saw a few silver party streamers float into the night sky.

But she blinked and they were gone.

NINE
Root Systems

I
t was hard to ignore the big black Mercedes parked in front of her house.

Willa pulled up behind it and got out, and found Colin sitting on the creaky swing on her porch. Moonlight was filtering through the trees, which made the air look like milk glass. Her grandmother used to say something about how the air around you will turn white when things are about to change. It gave her pause as she watched Colin glide slowly, one hand over the back of the swing. He was one of those men for whom all their fatigue went to their eyes in a sleepy, sexy kind of way. And he was exhausted, by the looks of him.

So of course he was on her front porch?

Surely he didn’t want to sleep on her couch again.
What was it about her couch and Osgoods?
She
hadn’t even slept on it yet.

“I like this neighborhood,” Colin said, when she reached the front porch. He’d watched her, silent, as she’d walked here. Maybe he’d felt it, too—that curious charge in the air. “It’s old and quiet.”

“But they don’t appreciate Springsteen.”

“Tragic.”

Willa stopped at her door, keys in hand. “What are you doing here?”

He stood. His knee popped. “The police finally cleared the scene at the Madam for the tree planting tomorrow. I wanted to make sure you were coming.”

He’d asked her before, and she still didn’t understand. “What’s the big deal about planting this tree?”

He shook his head as he walked over to her. “I’m going to bring out your inner nature girl if it kills me.”

She unlocked the door. “You certainly have strong opinions about how I should live my life.”

“I can be very persuasive,” he said from behind her, close enough to her ear that she realized he was only inches away.

“Well, cross nature girl off your list. It’s already been tried,” she said, opening the door and walking in instead of turning around and facing him in that odd white air. She flipped on the living room light.

“Tried? By whom?” he asked as he followed her in.

She set her bag and the printouts from the library on the coffee table. “My friend Rachel. She came through here while hiking the Appalachian Trail. She’s tried to get me to understand it. I just don’t.”

“We’ll see,” he said, as if there was some sort of compromise to be had. He looked around at all the boxes in the room. “What’s all this? Are you moving?”

“No. These are my grandmother’s things I brought down from the attic.” She walked toward the kitchen, saying, “I haven’t eaten since lunch. I’m going to fix a sandwich. Do you want one?”

“No, thank you,” he said as he joined her. “I’ve already eaten. Dinner together is still mandatory at Hickory Cottage. I don’t know how Paxton stands it.”

It was clear he thought dinner with his family should have its own level in hell, but she thought it sounded nice. “Dinner together with your family doesn’t sound so bad to me.”