The Stubborn Schoolhouse Spirit (The Penelope Pembroke Cozy Mystery Series) (12 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Mary Lynn reported the Town Council voted unanimously not to allocate more money for the school, at least right now. “And I don’t have enough left of what they gave me to begin with to do what needs to be done—leveling the floor, having a good solid platform built for the boiler, all that stuff.”

Penelope tried to look more sympathetic than relieved. “Let’s leave it until the weather starts to warm up in mid-March. We’ve got Cupid Convention and Tulip Turnaround, and in between we can work on cataloguing all of Jessie Ruth’s papers and figuring out what to do with the pictures.”

“I asked Harry about Mr. Ragsdale’s studio. He said it may still be above the abstract office, because he knows for a fact they don’t use the second floor.”

“If nobody claimed his photography equipment, the cameras would make a terrific exhibit in the museum Harry wants to start.”

“I was thinking the same thing. What do you say we go take a look?” The hopeful expression on Mary Lynn’s face
guilted Penelope.

“You know what else I want to do? Take Daddy out to the school and let him show us where the second basement door was. He was going to come the day we found the bones but got sidetracked, which might have been just as well.”

“Why bother with the other basement?” Mary Lynn asked.

“I’m not sure. The more I think about it, the more I want to know where it is and what’s down there.”

“Hopefully not more bones. Let’s go see what’s left of Ragsdale’s Studio and then we’ll sweep Jake out of his high-level conference with the Toney Twins and go out to the school.”

****

They came up empty on both counts. The old photography studio stood bare. Later, Jake ran his hands over the wall at the top of the stairs leading up from the front door to the foyer. “It was right here.”

“It’s not here now, Daddy.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I know that, Nellie. I also know exactly how we got to Miss Jessie Ruth’s library in the basement, and it was through a door right here.” He tapped the smooth wall with one finger. “Right here.”

“So we’d have to tear down the wall to get in there,” Mary Lynn said. “I don’t think so.”

“How about an outside entrance?” Penelope asked. “There’s one from the boiler room basement.”

Jake thought a minute. “I don’t think there was one. I never saw it anyway.”

Penelope sighed. “That’s a blessed shame.”

“I wouldn’t mind looking around while I’m here,” Jake said. “I graduated in the auditorium, you know. Walked right across that stage one night and got my diploma, and the next morning I went down and joined up to fight Hitler and the Japs.”

“That’s politically incorrect these days, Daddy.”

“What? Joining the army?”

“Japs. Don’t say Japs.”

“I know they’re allies now, but they weren’t then. I’m not slighting the country or its citizens, and interning the Japanese folks living here was a big mistake. Said so then, too, as a matter of fact. There were two of
those camps right here in Arkansas.”

“I didn’t know that,” Penelope said.

Jake nodded. “Terrible thing to do to people, especially our fellow citizens.”

“The auditorium is really small,”
Mary Lynn said as she followed Jake through the set of double doors that opened to a single center aisle. “But we could use it for programs. Children’s stuff.”

“The curtain’s rotting,” Jake
observed.

“I can see that,” Penelope said.

“It was a dark maroon velvet before it faded and fell apart. Real pretty. Always thought it was kind of magical when it swooshed open.”

“We’ll put another one up,” Mary Lynn assured him.

He shook his head. “It won’t be the same.” He ran his hands over the back of a wooden folding seat, then looked at the dust with disgust. “These seats got a good polishing on a regular basis back then.”

“The building’s been closed up for fifty years, Daddy.”

“Maybe so, but I remember it like it was.”

“Except for the door to the basement.”

He turned to face her. “Have you found another door?”

“No,” Penelope admitted.

“Okay then. I’m telling you where it was.” He slid past her. “Let’s go home, Nellie. This place is getting me down.”

****

Jake went off to watch
C.H.I.P.S.
, and Penelope listened to the message left on the answering machine. It consisted of five terse words. “This is Shana. Call me.”

Penelope glanced at the clock. The library was still open, so she dialed that number. “Wait a minute,” Shana said. Penelope heard her say, “Enjoy your books, Mrs. Groves, and don’t worry about the one you couldn’t find. It’ll turn up.” Then she came back. “Okay. Where have you been?”

“Mary Lynn and I went up on the second floor of the abstract office where the photography studio used to be. We hoped we’d find the old camera equipment, but it wasn’t there. Then we took Daddy out to the old school to see if he could show us how to get to the other basement, but it seems the door has been walled over. What’s up with you?”

“Not me,” Shana said. “It’s Tabby.”

“Is she all right?”

“Peter called this morning. He said Tabby started talking about coming with him to the school last week and what a good time she had.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing—except then she informed him that she wanted to go back and play with her friend again.”

“You?”

“No, not me. Her new little friend Jessie Ruth.”

****

“Peter is sure that’s what she said?” Penelope asked for the
dozenth time.

Shana, who had come straight from the library for loaded baked potatoes and cherry cobbler, got the placemats out of the drawer and put them on the table. “He’s sure. He called me to ask about her. I told him she’d been dead for ten years and was a little girl eighty years before that.”

“You’re sure you didn’t mention the name to Tabby.”

“No, why would I?”

“What did Peter say when you told him who Jessie Ruth is…was.”

“It freaked him out.”

“I guess it did.”

“Tabby even described her to him. Said she had long braids down her back and wore funny-looking shoes that buttoned up the sides.”

Penelope scraped the insides of a potato from its skin and dumped it into a deep bowl to mash. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t either.”

“So what about you and Peter? Anything new?”

“If there was, this will finish it. Tabby’s the apple of his eye, which she should be, and he isn’t going to want her consorting with ghosts. What’s worse, her grandparents
called that night, and before Peter could stop her, she told them all about her new friend.”

“They don’t know she was talking about a phantom child.”

“No, but Peter’s been getting bad vibes from them lately. They’ve been hinting that Tabby should live with them when she starts kindergarten next year.”

“Why?”

“Oh, they give a bunch of reasons, but it boils down to the fact they want their daughter back through her daughter.”

“Understandable but not reasonable.”

“Peter’s forting up.”

“Forting up?”

“Not like Travis did with the house and all. Just making sure he’s squeaky clean so if they take him to court to get custody, they won’t have any grounds. All they’d have to do would be investigate me and have all the grounds they needed.”

“Maybe not.”

Shana sat down and covered her face with her hands. “I ruined my life with Travis. It’s my own fault, all my fault. Oh, Penelope, I was such a fool!”

****

Penelope arrived early at The Swan the next morning, hoping to empty the last two boxes before the day slipped away.  Marlo invited her into the kitchen for coffee while the porch warmed up. “How are things going?”

“Slowly,” Penelope said, adding cream from a fragile china pitcher. She set it down so carefully that
Marlo laughed.

“It’s not worth that much,” she said. “But why have things you like if you don’t use them?”

Penelope thought of the wine glasses and carafe in her china cabinet. Sam had been the first to drink from one of those glasses since her mother died. “You’re right, of course.” She hesitated. “Have you ever run across any antique photography equipment?”

“Are you interested in some?”

“Not really. Mary Lynn and I went upstairs in the abstract office yesterday, hoping to find the equipment that belonged to the man who chronicled Amaryllis from its first days, but it wasn’t there.”

“What made you think it would be?”

“According to my father, he didn’t have any family to claim it, and nobody’s used the second floor since Mr. Ragsdale died in the thirties.”

“Vintage equipment like that can bring a top price if it’s in good condition. To answer your original question, no, I’ve never run across any.”

“Harry Hargrove’s hoping to start a museum. The cameras would’ve made a good display.”

“Do any of his pictures survive?”

“Oh, yes. The ones Millie borrowed from the
Bugle
were his, and one of the boxes Mary Lynn and I went through was nothing but pictures. Most of them had the Ragsdale imprint.”

“She mentioned you might want some advice about framing and displaying old pictures.”

“When we’re ready, we’d be glad for your suggestions.”

“The glass photography plates would have been an even better find,”
Marlo went on. “Of course, he might’ve destroyed them, but I doubt it.”

“Things just aren’t going our way these days,” Penelope said. “Be sure to read the next edition of the
Bugle.”

“Oh?”

“It’s no secret now, so I guess I can tell you that the man who came to fix the boiler—again—found a human bone under it, and my son and another officer dug out the entire skeleton.”

Marlo
shuddered. “That’s horrible! Who was it?”

“Probably the husband of the head teacher. He just sort of disappeared around 1895.”

“He’s been down there that long? That’s unbelievable.”

Penelope nodded. “His skeleton was i
n a hole under the platform the boiler sat on. More to the point, he was also the father of Jessie Ruth Collier who gave the money for the library. She started the first one in the second basement of the old school. My Daddy remembers it well and helped move the books to the new place in 1941. But he went out there with Mary Lynn and me yesterday to show us the door, and it was gone.”

Marlo’s
eyes flicked away from Penelope’s face and back again. “Gone?”

“Walled over during all the changes that were made over the years.”

“I see.”

“I don’t suppose there’s anything down there anyway.”

“Hopefully not another body,” Marlo said almost too quickly.

“Don’t even think it. There’s no money to repair the floor and build a new platform, so we can’t use the boiler for heat. That means we can’t work out there until it warms up in the spring.”

“I see.” Marlo rose and took her cup to the sink.

Penelope thought her tone of voice had changed, almost as if she were pleased about something. The delayed work at the old school? But why?

“So we’re going to work on these papers. We really appreciate the use of the service porch.”

“No problem,”
Marlo said. “I hate to be inhospitable, but I have to dash.”

“You’re not opening today?”

“Not until noon. Mornings are slow anyway, and I have to run to an estate sale out on the highway to Little Rock.”

Penelope searched her mind for old houses on that road and couldn’t think of any. “I need to get to work, too,” she said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

****

At noon, when Penelope dashed back to the B&B for a sandwich, she saw
Marlo’s sporty white convertible stop at the corner of Rosewood and Cemetery Road. A man got out of the car and hurried to a blue pickup parked at the curb. It was Chuck Runyon, and he seemed to be in a hurry.

****

“How was your day?” Sam’s voice, weariness hanging from every syllable, stirred the usual excitement in Penelope.

“We finished unpacking all the old school records. Ask me about yesterday.”

“I’m all ears.”

She related the futile trip to the second floor of the abstract office, the missing basement door, and Tabby Taliaferro’s ghostly friend Jessie Ruth. “Shana says Peter’s freaked out
, and his in-laws are making noises again about Tabby living with them, so he’s forting up.”

“Forting up?”

“You know, ridding his life of all questionable influences.”

“Like Shana.”

“Right.”