Murder Under the Covered Bridge (13 page)

Francine shook her head. “I can't.”

“Is there anything else below the key?” Charlotte asked Toby.

“Maybe.” He reached over and used the cursor to move the key image up to the top of the screen. “There's this carving, but unlike the heart, it's linear, and I think it must be letters.”

The three of them guessed at each individual letter.

“It's so fuzzy I feel like I need to clean my glasses,” Charlotte said.

“You do need to clean them,” Francine replied, “but that's not necessarily the problem here.”

Charlotte pulled off her glasses and squinted at them to check their condition. She put them back on. “It's like we've reached the end of the eye chart, where the letters are
teeny-tiny
and you're making wild stabs at what the letters might be, and the doctor finally decides you're finished.”

“Except in this case we can guess that there are words,” Francine said, “and spaces between the words. I think there are four words altogether and the first has three letters.”

Toby got out a sheet of paper. “I agree. And then this must be a space, and the second word is three letters as well.”

Fifteen minutes later Francine was satisfied they had a reasonable solution to puzzle. “So, do we agree it's probably, ‘you are to mine'?”

Toby yawned. “Except it doesn't make much sense.”

Charlotte stared at the screen. “Can you put the heart graphic and the key graphic and the words altogether, like it would be on the beam?”

Toby seemed exasperated. “I can, but that was exactly the first photo.” He went back to it. “The heart graphic is clear, you can barely make out the key, and the words are so faint that we would have missed them if we hadn't spent time blowing it up and looking at each quadrant of the photo.”

“But let's look at is as a whole,” she insisted. “Heart, key, you are to mine.”

Francine got it right away. “In a sense, ‘You are the key to my heart.'”

The three of them looked at each other. “Does that mean anything?” Toby asked her.

Francine closed her eyes for a moment. She was very tired, but sometimes when her mind was weary it went places and made connections it wouldn't normally have made. “If we extrapolate what we know, that this is the bridge where the coachman and my
great-grandmother
made love the first time, we could guess—since the heart has the same design that's on the diary—that either the coachman or my
great-grandmother
carved it into the wood.”

“Or both,” Toby added.

Charlotte was more circumspect. “It was done more than ninety years ago? Seems hard to believe it could have lasted that long.”

Francine thought about that. “It was protected, obviously. Hard to see, hard to get to, and I bet it was no easy task to carve. It might not have been done all at once. It might have been done over a period of time.”

“What did you say happened to the coachman?” Toby asked.

“He was fired immediately.”

“Then he would have had time to do this in his misery.”

Charlotte pointed to the heart. “A man would never have created this heart. Look at the little doily loops that surround it. I have to believe a man would have just drawn a heart.”

“Maybe not if he'd seen the image before,” Toby said.

“We don't know when it was carved,” Francine said.

The three sat back in their chairs.

Charlotte tapped her fingers together. “We still don't know that it had any significance. The heart figure ties your
great-grandmother
to this carving, but it's just a love note. Lovers carve similar things in trees, spray paint them on ghetto walls …”

“But people don't get shot for standing next to them, though,” Francine said.

Toby snickered. “Depends on the ghetto.”

“Too bad this wasn't taken with a really
high-resolution
camera. Maybe there's something more there we can't see.”

“There are the squiggly lines,” Toby said.

Silence filled the room for a moment while the two women processed what Toby had said.

Charlotte tried to take control of Toby's mouse. “What squiggly lines?”

He wrested the mouse from her. He moved the photo up where they could see something below the printing they'd been examining. Two wavy lines stacked on top of each other came into view.

“Water,” Francine said. “It's the universal sign for water.”

“I thought it was just an end mark,” Toby said. “You know, like ‘end of message.'”

“Under other circumstances I might agree with you,” Charlotte said. “But I think this is a subtle link. Key plus water plus love.”

He turned to her. “Then you know what it means.”

“No,” Francine said. “It's just another clue.”

The two let Toby return to his video game.

“Do you think it has anything to do with the mason jar and the two vials?” Charlotte asked after Toby had closed his door and they were on their way to the stairs.

“I doubt it. That was probably carved a long time ago into the beam. The vials and the mason jar are from today.”

It was a long, steep climb up the basement stairs and then up the second staircase to the room they were sharing.

“I can't believe they didn't build this thing with an elevator,” Charlotte grumbled.

“It was 1899, for heaven's sake.”

“I mean when they renovated it.”

“It probably would have ruined the character of the house to try to fit one in.”

“It has every other modern convenience. Did you get a look at the media room they created in the fifth bedroom? The television screen is so big it covers the wall. And the smell of popcorn was so strong I bet they own stock in Orville Redenbacher's popcorn company. If there had been a bowl of kettle corn in front of me, I would have done a face plant right in the middle of it.”

“You do that anyway whenever we have kettle corn,” Francine remarked. “Doesn't matter where.” She took Charlotte's arm and helped her up the final stair. They made their way down the hall.

“Well, maybe I do like kettle corn a bit more than I should,” Charlotte said.

When they closed the door behind them, Francine decided to stop Charlotte's complaining by asking a question that had been gnawing at her. “What's going on in that devious mind of yours about this calendar?”

Charlotte gave her a forced innocent look. “Whatever do you mean? You act like it wasn't my idea. It has all along been mine.”

“It was on your Sixty List to be a sexy pinup girl. Then you shifted it to where we were all a part of it and pushed us to do the photos, not just you.”

“It's been a freeing experience for everyone to deal with their sexuality, especially as older women. We don't have the same bodies we used to, but that shouldn't keep us from taking care of what we do have and not being afraid to express our needs. Isn't that what you said on
The Doctor Oz Show
?”

“Yes. No. I mean, you're taking the words out of context. I didn't say anything about sexuality.”

“You didn't have to. The camera did.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you were on
Dr. Oz
because you looked good in a wet sundress. It wasn't just a physical thing the public was clamoring for. They thought you looked sexy. And Dr. Oz brought the subject up.”

“You'll recall, I deflected it. A lady does not talk about such subjects.”

“Which made the audience hoot even more. Your face turned red.”

“But I refused to talk about it anymore. It was like they wanted lurid details. Well, they have no business knowing how often Jonathan and I do it or how we do it. Dr. Oz respected that and didn't bring it up again.”

“Only because they went to commercial right after you said that.”

Francine pressed her lips into a line. She regrouped. “Here's what I think. I think you have plans for this calendar.”

Charlotte avoided eye contact. “You're just letting the Hendricks County visitors bureau remark influence your thinking.”

“I'm still wondering if this isn't something sneaky you're doing without our permission. You practically bullied me into getting my photo done in the first few weeks of October. If you'd just let it rest until later, I wouldn't have been forced to do anything in the early morning during the Covered Bridge Festival and Joy wouldn't be tap dancing around it on
Good Morning America
.”

“This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time, that Joy will be pressured to reveal things we're doing on our bucket lists.”

“I'm just saying I suspect this is working to some kind of nefarious advantage you are hiding from us.”

Charlotte huffed. “I love it when you use words like
nefarious
, even when they don't apply to my motive. I am only helping others get through their Sixty Lists, just like you are. What about tonight's séance? Didn't I help Alice check that off her list? I arranged for that whole thing to happen. And boy, did it turn out spooky. It would have been better if Merlina's head had spun around once or twice, but you can't fault that creepy ‘and you're responsible' line she said to you. She practically spat in your face.”

“She also said that you, Charlotte, know why.”

“I'm glad you brought that up. I've been meaning to talk to you about it. Do you think she means I know the motive or that I will figure it out? I am pretty good at figuring out these kinds of things.”

Francine knew she'd inadvertently let the conversion drift in a different direction, but she figured at this point Charlotte had to know she was watching her like a hawk. If she tried to do anything with the calendar like let it slip into the public realm, they'd put a stop to it. “I do not put a whole lot of stock in Merlina's ability to conduct a séance or believe that she really did contact the spirit world.”

“We'll see. At any rate, I depend on you to focus our investigation. You're the logical one; I'm the creative one. Together we make a great sleuthing team.”

Francine yawned. She was physically tired and tired of conversation as well. “Let's just go to bed.” They each made a trip to the bathroom down the hall, changed into nightgowns, and eventually climbed into the
queen-sized
bed that was high up off the floor. She made sure the little wooden stepstool was on Charlotte's side so she could get the height necessary to get in. Francine fluffed a pillow and pulled it behind her head, propping herself up. “I'm wondering if Mary Ruth will let you near the food booth tomorrow.”

Charlotte took off her
white-framed
glasses and set them on the dresser. “She might. Her business promises to be even more popular than it was today. Think of all those customers who didn't get her corn fritter donuts. And after tomorrow's
GMA
report we'll be back in the news
big-time
, which will help drive business the rest of the week.”

“Maybe you're right, but if you get any flak from her, I'd like you to scoot out and do a little investigation at the Rockville Public Library.”

Charlotte put her hands on the mattress to stabilize herself and took the two steps up that enabled her to get a leg into the bed. She pushed and pulled herself into sleeping position. “What do you have in mind?”

“Find out what you can about Doc Wheat.”

“You keep bringing him up. What for?”

“You heard the story from Zed. Doc Wheat owned the property before Zed bought it. He said Doc was the original herbalist medicine man. Claimed he could cure all kinds of illnesses. He made a fortune some people still believe is buried on his land. Zed intimated that William believed it, and so have others. It's why he's gotten the reputation he has for being unfriendly. He's had to drive fortune hunters off his land.”

“You seem to know all about him. What do you want me to track down?”

“For one thing, find out if Zed is telling the truth, if he's gotten in trouble for chasing people off his land.”

“How am I supposed to track down these rumors?”

Francine frowned in exasperation. “Like you always do, Charlotte. Nose around. Ask questions. You can start at the Rockville Library. It's just down the street.”

“It is?”

“Didn't you see it when we drove by the Methodist Church, the one with the hot pink windows? It was right next to it.”

“The Carnegie building?”

“Yes. What else did you think would be in a Carnegie building?”

“In Brownsburg, it housed the Chamber of Commerce for a while. In Plainfield, it's the headquarters for a fraternity. In Carmel, it's a restaurant,” Charlotte argued.

“But in Danville, it's still the library. And in most little towns it still is. What's happened to your powers of observation?”

“They are tired and are ready for sleep.” Charlotte flopped over on her side. “What time do we have to be out at the site of the Roseville Bridge tomorrow?”

“
O-Dark
Thirty. Not to worry. I've set the alarm.”

Charlotte chuckled. “Good night, Francine.”

Francine lay in the dark and waited for Charlotte to fall asleep. Next to her, she clutched the two diaries she'd taken possession of that day: the one Jonathan had taken from William and forgot to turn into the police, and the second one Zed had given her. Although she hadn't lied about being very tired, her curiosity about her
great-grandmother
and how that history connected her and Zed would keep her from falling asleep.

fourteen

Charlotte drifted off to
sleep quickly, which was fortunate. The storm Francine had thought was building earlier in the evening finally let loose. She could hear the rain beating on the roof and hoped it would not wake Charlotte. When Charlotte's breathing became regular and easy, she slid out of bed, clutching the diaries to her breast with one arm, her robe with the other. She tiptoed out of the room.

The hallway was dark, but a nightlight near the bathroom provided enough light to navigate. Francine didn't want to take the stairs, which had a habit of creaking, so she headed to the opposite end where the media room was located. The door was open and there was light from a piece of electronic equipment. The thought of Jonathan and knowing he would be there in the morning comforted her. She closed the door behind her and turned on the overhead light.

The room was flooded in light. Francine had to squint until her eyes adjusted. The media room was a glorified
in-home
theater. It felt awkward to sit in one of the plush,
rocking-chair
theater seats and read, but that's what she intended to do. She set the two diaries on an arm of the chair and pulled on the robe, which helped her get comfortable. The house had cooled down for the evening. Francine hadn't brought slippers, so she tucked her feet under her and draped the bottom of her robe to cover her calves. Finally settled, she lifted the first book. Below the heart graphic was a square latch that held it closed. The latch could be locked but wasn't. Francine pressed the middle of the square and the latch came free. She opened the book to the first page.

The line in the middle of the first page stated that it was the diary of Ellie Miles. The date below that simply said 1928 and Francine wondered if the diary had been a Christmas present, because the book started on January 1. The pages were delicate after so many years of existence and she found she had to turn them carefully because they tore easily.

The first entry was long. It was like her grandmother had been waiting for a long time to write and it had a
pent-up
urgency to it. Francine wondered if the woman had been going over the words in her mind well before she put pen to paper because they flowed across the page uninterrupted by any scratch outs or additions caretted above the text. The first entry was when Ellie was
twenty-three
. Ellie was not innocent—at least in
knowledge
of the ways of men and women if not in
practice
—because the first entry began with her mother's confession to her that she was not the daughter of the man she believed was her father.

Mother says Father was not her first love in every sense of the word. At first I wasn't sure what she meant, and we sat looking at each other. But then I realized she had no intention of going further, but only to let the gravity of the words sink in. My hand flew to my mouth when I comprehended why she had stopped there. In truth, I had wondered about this at times. I look a little like Mum, but nothing like Father. I had not fully anticipated that there was a truth behind this until that moment. I asked her what happened to my real father, but instead she told me this story, that she'd had a forbidden lover. The man was her carriage driver. He was handsome, she said, and only a few years older than she. He'd made it clear he fancied her, and that had led to some cautions from her father, who did not want to see her marry beneath her station. She believed her driver had been threatened by her father, likely in physical terms. He never spoke of it, though, and the secret passion they had for each other continued unabated. She said it was painful to only look at him, to not be able to surrender to his embrace.

When she told me this, I could feel the fire she had inside her for him. She said they never acted on their feelings because they were never left alone. She regretted that she never had the chance to be reckless. And then she smiled.

I asked how it happened.

One time at dusk, she replied, he'd had to drive her from her father's office in Rockville to their home outside Rosedale. It had been an emergency. Her father had been training her to be his secretary in the law office, but one of his clients had had a severe accident and wanted to see Father alone. He'd not wanted to leave her in the office, but neither was it
well-mannered
to bring her with him. He sent them home but demanded the driver return immediately for him.

So they'd come home via the Roseville Bridge. It was near dark and there was intermittent rain. The driver had held up in the bridge for a heavy downpour to pass. Mother said the beating of her heart pounded in her ears and she didn't hear him get off the buckboard and drop onto the floor of the bridge. But then he was outside the carriage door and asking if she minded if they stayed out of the rain for a short while, and she opened the door and pulled his lips to hers. It took no time at all before she learned how feverish love could be. She said she thought she might lose her mind when he touched her in certain places and brought her more pleasure than she'd ever known. She learned how it felt to have a man inside her and how it could be painful and yet deliciously so.

Did you get away with it? I asked her.

The rain was strong during the time they spent in the bridge, and they hoped it might excuse the time they were late in getting home. But she said her face betrayed her. Her mother suspected what had happened the instant they reached the house and he let her out of the carriage. She'd tried to straighten up her clothes and her hair, and he'd done his best to maintain a detached air, but the driver was discharged that night after he'd brought my father home. By sunrise he was gone, and within days there was a new driver, older and with a family.

Did you ever see him again? I asked Mother.

We'll save that for another time, she told me.

The entry ended. Francine quickly flipped the page. The diary had begun with a life-altering event and Francine couldn't imagine what would come next. But the next entry was about the anger her great-grandmother faced from her family, and not too many entries later there was the disgrace the family felt when she was found to be with child. A marriage was hastily arranged with a suitable widower whose wife had died at an early age. They'd had no children, and so the widower was apparently pleased to have one child who could be born with his last name and, most importantly, a fertile wife.

Francine continued to scan through the diary. Her quick scan didn't bring to light any additional information about the handsome driver, only details leading up to the birth of her grandmother, at which point the diary ended. Francine felt sad as she closed it for now.

What she had learned was that her own grandmother had been a love child whose birth had been resolved by a forced marriage. She considered what that meant. For one, it might mean that she and William were more distantly related that she thought. Her grandmother Ellie and William's grandfather Earnest were siblings, but only half. At least, she presumed that. The diary's end hadn't covered a large part of her
great-grandmother
's life. Did she ever find her lover again? Did she remain tightly bound in the arranged marriage, or did her tendencies toward being the black sheep of the family continue?
There must be more to the story
, she thought, looking at the second diary.

It was the last thought Francine had before she awakened suddenly hours later. She looked at the time. Three thirty in the morning! Mary Ruth would be up in a half hour, and she needed to get up an hour or so after that. She hurried back to the room.

Moving stealthily along the corridor, she wondered how these two diaries had suddenly appeared. How was William in possession of one, and Zed the other? What had happened to the rest of the diaries, and who had them?

Zed had indicated that there was a connection between him and Francine. There were lots of possibilities there. As she thought about it, what made the most sense was that Zed was probably a descendent of the carriage driver and wanted to learn more about relatives that were connected to him by blood but not by name. If so, she wondered how he'd uncovered the truth. Perhaps his
great-grandfather
had been more forthcoming than her
great-grandmother
.

So then, what was William's fascination with Zed? Did he understand there was some familial connection to Zed, or was he simply interested in the treasures that may have been buried on Doc Wheat's property? That was certainly Zed's position.

Yet Zed wanted to reveal more to her. He was risking a lot to meet her at Bridgeton. Though she knew Mary Ruth needed her at the food booth, she desperately wanted to fulfill her promise to Zed to meet him. If he was to keep hidden “in plain sight,” afternoon was the best since it would be very busy then. Depending on how crazy business was at Mary Ruth's—and it held the promise to be much worse than it had been today—she might be able to get away if they ran out of food again. She didn't particularly wish that on Mary Ruth, but on the other hand it would solve her problem. It might even bring Mary Ruth more notoriety, which could only help her in the long run.

If
they survived the mob scene a second day. They had been lucky the way everything turned out, although she suspected this time there would be more attention from the police.

Francine tiptoed back to the bedroom and opened the door, which creaked slightly. Charlotte was snoring loudly, covering the sound. Francine snickered a bit, slipped off her robe, and laid it aside the chair where she'd originally dropped it last night before going to bed. She slid back the covers and carefully climbed into bed, the diaries tucked under her pillow. In the morning she would put them back in her purse.

Charlotte's snoring stopped in
mid-snort
as Francine settled in. Charlotte had been facing away from Francine's side of the bed, but now she stirred a bit. “Francine, is that you?” she asked, the sleepiness heavy in her voice.

“Yes. I had to go to the bathroom. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay.” In a moment or two she was snoring again.

Francine knew she needed sleep, but she couldn't stop thinking about the mysteries that had been presented her. Finally, when her mind was settled and she thought she'd be able to drift off, Charlotte got up and went to the bathroom. By the time her cell phone rang at five thirty, Francine wasn't sure she'd even gotten three hours of sleep.

“Is it that time already?” Charlotte grumbled.

“I'm afraid it is,” Francine said, “and I'm betting Mary Ruth truly got up at four o'clock as she said she would and has a lot of stuff for us to do.”

“I have no idea why someone would want to be in a profession that requires being up with the hoot owls.”

“She's good at it, and she makes people happy. Lots of people wish they had jobs like that. Besides, I'm sure you get used to it.” Francine, resolved to get out of bed, scooted her legs toward the side. Without thinking, she simultaneously dragged her hand out from under her pillow. One of the diaries flew out of the bed and hit the floor with a clunk.

Charlotte sat up with a jolt. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” Francine scooted out of the high bed, scooped up the diary, and tried to hide it back under the pillow. As she did, she looked over at Charlotte. Her friend had already seized her white framed glasses off the nightstand and was watching her intently. Which only proved Charlotte could move quickly when she wanted to.

“If it's nothing, then what did you just shove under the pillow?”

“Personal. It's personal.”

Charlotte reached her hand over to Francine's side of the bed and placed it on the pillow. “Really, Francine. There is nothing that is going to make me want to see what's under there more than telling me it's personal. How personal?”

Francine knew that denying it at this point would only make it worse. On the other hand, Charlotte only knew of the first diary. She could keep the second a secret by admitting to the first. “It's my grandmother's diary, the one William had.”

“When did you have time to read it? What does it say?”

Francine sat on the edge of bed. “It details the reason my
great-grandmother
was considered the black sheep.”

“Hot dog!” Charlotte exclaimed. “Are the details lurid?”

“It's a steamy confession, given the time period. It's when my grandmother learned the truth that the father she knew was not her biological father.”

Charlotte took off her glasses and looked Francine in the eyes. “I'm surprised they didn't make your
great-grandmother
wear a scarlet letter.”

“The diary recounts the story from her infatuation with the carriage driver—the feeling was mutual—through the incident at Roseville Bridge and to the birth of the baby. That's the last interesting story.”

“I wonder if your grandmother had other diaries that covered more of her life.”

“I wonder that too.” She especially wondered what other knowledge Zed wanted to share with her in Bridgeton. But she had no time to focus on that now. “Why don't you get into the shower first? I'll go down and see how Mary Ruth is coming along and if she needs anything before we have to leave for the bridge. Or what used to be the bridge.”

Charlotte brightened. “That's right. We need to look our best for
Good Morning America.
”

Francine checked herself out in a mirror that hung over an antique dresser by the door. “I'm not sure I have a ‘best' in me this morning. It's going to take a lot of makeup to cover the bags under these eyes.”