Paging the Dead (7 page)

“Or maybe you watch too many cop shows, nimrod. My dad says it was probably a robbery gone bad. He says there's no telling what kind of stuff she had stashed up there in that big old house.”

“My mom is freakin' out, man! She's all like,
Lock the doors! Lock the doors!
Like we got anything anybody'd wanna steal. And anyway, she heard it's got something to do with these two women, like private eyes or something the old lady hired to dig up dirt on somebody.”

“That's kinda hot.”

“You're sick, man.”

“Not the murder, I mean women private eyes. Like Charlie's Angels, right?”

They started making some kind of teenage boy rutting noises. One of them punched the other on the arm and they guffawed some more. I had a fleeting fantasy about borrowing one of the hair dryers from a rack and blowing my hair back as I walked toward them in slow motion.
Here you are, boys, here's your Charlie's Angel.
But first off, with my short legs it would have taken me forever to get to their end of the aisle. And secondly, it was freaking me out that this bizarre rumor about Esme and me was spreading. To top it off, when I checked out I could have sworn I was getting the stink eye from the girl working the register, but it could have been my imagination.

As I pulled out on River Road and headed for Joe's service station I was filled with dread. I did some mental bookkeeping and saw lots of mac 'n' cheese dinners in our immediate future. It didn't seem fair. We'd already put in so much work on this project. I wondered if I could at least negotiate a kill fee.

“Note to self,” I muttered. “Don't call it
that
when you make the pitch.”

I knew Joe Porter, but only remotely. My father, who had
been particular about our vehicles, had always taken them to Porter's place for service. So I knew my dad must have trusted the man. On the other hand, Dorothy hadn't had much good to say about Joe. She'd made it clear she felt she'd married
well
beneath her station. Once she referred to her marriage as “an unfortunate lapse in judgment.” Course, she and Porter had been married for twenty-five years, so it hardly seemed a
momentary
lapse.

I parked on the street alongside a row of crepe myrtle trees, hoping the meager shade would keep the car's interior from reaching broiling temps before I returned. I got out and headed across a parking lot shimmering from heat and gasoline fumes. This was no quickie-mart gas station. No stale snacks, sodas, tacky souvenirs or bad coffee inside. Customers looking to stave off starvation had to depend on the vending machine outside the door. And no self-service nonsense, this was a filling station of the old-fashioned variety. I heard a crisp double-ding as a car ran over the alert hose and pulled to the pump. This brought a young man trotting out to fill the tank. He set the nozzle then proceeded to wash the windshield while a man sat in the car talking on his cell. As I walked by the man grunted and pointed to a spot the young man had missed. You just can't do enough to please some people.

The two big bay doors were up and cars were on the lifts. One of the men looked up from where he was checking parts at a workbench. He wiped his hands on a dirty rag, then picked up a wrench and came in my direction. Something about the way he held that wrench looked menacing. Now I really
hoped
I was being paranoid.

“Excuse me,” I said, trying to make myself heard over the air compressors and the clanging noises of the garage. “Could you tell me where I could find Mr. Porter?”

“Who wants to know?” the man asked, still holding the wrench as if it were a club. “You a reporter?”

“No, I'm Sophreena McClure. I'm not a reporter, I'm—” I stopped. This is a problem with introducing myself by my profession. Half the time people start asking about rock formations and I have to explain that no, I'm not a geologist. Sometimes people ask if I'm
some kinda doctor
and even the ones who know what it is can't understand how it translates into an actual job.

“Mr. Porter asked me to come,” I said.

“Okay. Right back there on the left,” the man said, pointing with the wrench.

Once I was seated in his small office Joe Porter didn't waste time. “Sophreena, thanks for coming. I'll make this quick. I'm sure you have things to do and I know I do.” He was handsome in a rugged sort of way. I knew he was several years younger than Dorothy and he'd aged well. His hair was gray, but he still had plenty of it and he was lean and fit for his age and seemed comfortable in his own skin.

“I've talked to Ingrid and it's been decided we'll have a private funeral and burial for Dorothy tomorrow, family only,” he said, staring down at the desk.

“I see,” I said, though I had no idea why he'd summoned me here to tell me that.

“Tell me, what was your arrangement with Dorothy?” he asked, looking up.

“Arrangement?”

“I know she hired you to trace her family. You finished up with that?”

“Mostly,” I said, seeing that final payment circling the drain.

“And you saw her yesterday? You were out at the house?”

“Yes,” I said, slowly. “We saw her in the
early
afternoon. Others saw her after that.” I felt compelled to add that last in case he was accusing me of something.

He stared out the window, though I didn't think he could see much with the glass panes covered in a thin film of oil and grime.

“You see anybody else when you were out there?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.

“Only Dorothy's housekeeper, Linda, and Cassidy,” I said.

“Cassidy,” he said with a sigh. “That poor kid.” He dragged his hand down his face, forehead to chin, as if this could erase the fatigue. “So tell me, what do you mean when you say
mostly
finished? Ingrid said you had some questions.”

“Yes, I do. I hope you'll forgive me, I know it's bad form to be asking about trivial things right now. We gave Mrs. Porter our report yesterday but she also hired us to archive the materials and construct heritage scrapbooks. She'd wanted them done before the Founders' Day open house she was planning to host just before the Honeysuckle Festival. Esme and I wondered if we should go ahead with the project?”

“Yes,” Porter answered straight away. “Yes, she'd want that.”

This cheered me, but I thought it inappropriate to whoop it up given the circumstances. Anyhow, next came the delicate part. “We'd be happy to,” I said, “but we wondered if
we were still looking at the same timeline for delivery and the same payment schedule?” My voice went up on the last words and Porter gave me a weary smile.

“It's okay, Sophreena. Money's not a taboo subject. Tell me specifics.”

I'd brought along our contract and invoices just in case and I pulled them from my bag. He waved them away. “Just tell me how much Dorothy owed you.”

“She didn't owe us anything until the heritage scrapbooks are done. The outstanding balance once we complete those will be thirty-two hundred dollars. It's a lot of work and that includes the supplies and—”

Porter held up a hand to cut me off. He reached into a desk drawer and brought out an oversized checkbook, the business kind with three checks on a page. I noticed his hands as he picked up a ballpoint pen. They'd definitely seen lots of manual labor in his lifetime and they looked strong and capable.
Capable of what?
I wondered.

He wrote out a check for the full amount, tore it from its moorings and handed it over. “There will be a memorial service for Dorothy up at the house on the day she'd planned that party. It would mean a lot to the family to have these things finished by then. Dorothy would've liked that. You can still have them done?”

“Yes, but our understanding with Mrs. Porter was that we weren't to receive payment until the job was finished.”

I caught a brief sardonic smile. “I'm sure that was your arrangement with her,” he said. “
Will
you have the scrapbooks done when you promised?”

“Yes, sir, we definitely will,” I said, sitting up straight in the chair.

“Then we have a new understanding, you and me.”

“Would you like to see them before the memorial?”

“I've got no use for the Pritchett family story,” he said, making no attempt to hide his bitterness. “You can give them to Ingrid, though I don't know if she feels much different than I do about it. Meant something to Dorothy, though, and this is about her.”

He pushed back from his desk and I took this as my dismissal. I quickly gathered my things and he walked me to the door. He grabbed the doorknob then hesitated. “Tell me, when you were at the house yesterday did Dorothy do or say anything out of the ordinary? Did she seem like she was okay? Happy?”

“She seemed very pleased with our report,” I offered. I debated whether to tell him about the ring and how over-the-moon she'd been about that but decided I'd best keep that to myself for now. “She was happy to have Cassidy with her. And, now that you mention it she did seem like she was in an unusually good mood.”

Porter nodded and pursed his lips. “Good. That's good, then.”

He walked me all the way outside to the parking lot where we said our goodbyes. As I headed for my car I glanced back to see him talking with the mechanic who'd directed me to the office. The mechanic scowled in my direction and nodded.

I had the words of the kid from the drugstore echoing in
my head as I pulled back out onto River Road. “It's always the husband.”

Something seemed off. I couldn't put my finger on it, but just
something
. Joe and Dorothy were in the midst of a split and from what I'd heard it hadn't been that most miraculous of wonders, an amicable divorce. But I was getting mixed signals.

The man had written me a very nice check, and he'd wanted Dorothy's wishes carried out. That was a caring gesture, wasn't it? But then again, maybe money was no object if he was set to inherit Dorothy's estate.

Dorothy's complaints about Joe had always been more about his shortcomings than his actions. He wasn't sophisticated enough. Not well traveled. Not cultured. But she'd never claimed he was unfaithful or abusive in any way. He simply hadn't been enough for her. I wasn't sure about all the legalities, but I knew in North Carolina couples have to live apart for a year before a no-fault divorce can be granted. And Joe Porter had vacated Dorothy's big house on the hill nearly a year ago, right about the time she hired us. I wondered if the two events were related in some way. Maybe after rejecting Joe, Dorothy was trying to renew her allegiance to her family of birth. She hadn't yet taken back her family name, but she'd intended to once the divorce became final.

I wondered what they'd put on her tombstone.

“S
WEET
L
ORD
. W
E'RE GONNA NEED A WHOLE LOTTA COFFEE
,”
Esme said as we surveyed the workroom later that afternoon, “and a big ol' vat of midnight oil.”

“The good news is I am fastidiously organized, as you well know,” I said.

Esme gave me a look.

“Well, okay, in my work anyway. And yeah, there's tons of stuff in here, but it is all sorted and divided into job areas.” I pointed to the table running along the far wall. “Since this is such a big job I moved the scanning station over to the long table. We've got huge stacks of photos and documents and other ephemera yet to scan and print.”

“Bless your little cotton socks, Sophreena, you've been a busy gal. But oh, how I wish we could move that table over by the window so we could look out onto the backyard while we're working and remind ourselves there's a world out there? Watch the birds at the feeder? Maybe catch a cloud floating by.”

“Me, too, but you know we can't,” I said. “That flood of
sunlight may be good for our psyches, but those are death rays for old photographs. I'm afraid we're in for some long hours in that dark corner.”

Esme let out a big sigh. “Yes, so here we go, to the batcave. Where do I start?”

“We need to prepare the boxes we'll store the archives in. They're still out in the garage. You get those and I'll warm up the scanners.”

I turned on both flatbeds and placed a pair of thin white cotton gloves at Esme's place before pulling on my own pair. The natural oils on human fingers are another enemy of old photos so when we handle originals we take every precaution.

Esme brought the boxes in and kicked the door shut behind her. We keep this room closed up and a dehumidifier going twenty-four-seven to maintain climate control. In the rest of the house we're casual housekeepers, and a peek into my closet would let anyone know I'm not so organized in all areas of my life, but when it comes to this room I'm a card-carrying control freak.

As Esme settled in her chair she put her hand across her forehead and winced, a move she often makes when she's getting something from beyond—wherever that is.

“What is it?” I asked. “Something from Dorothy?”

Esme shook her head. “No, I told you, Dorothy Porter barely deigned to talk to me while she was alive, why would she get chatty with me now? But I am getting something from somebody. I don't know who and I don't know what it's supposed to mean. Just this awful heavy sense of shame and guilt.”

“That's pretty vague,” I said.

“That's the way it is sometimes,
too many
times,” Esme said. “It's like they're timid or something. They sidle up on me, drop a cryptic hint—no pun intended—then scurry back behind the veil. I wish they'd just come on out with it.” She sighed as she pulled on her gloves, then took a photo from the top of a tall stack sandwiched with rag paper. “Okay, what do we have here? Note says Dorothy and Ingrid, circa 1954. Ingrid was a cute little thing, and look at Dorothy. Winston's right; she was a pretty girl. You know, Cassidy favors Dorothy even more than she does Ingrid.”