Paging the Dead Read online

  “He’s crushin’ on you, Esme,” I teased as I turned to dance along backward in front of her.

  “Yes, I can see that,” Esme said flatly.

  This bummed me out. I’d been pretty proud I’d picked up on it and I’d thought I was the only one so astute. “Well?” I asked.

  “Well, nothin’,” Esme said. “I told you long ago, Sophreena. I am done with men. I walked down that long aisle to one man and I gave him everything I had and he took everything I gave and then some more. After him I took back my name and my life. I’m better off on my own.”

  Esme had married young. She’d fallen for the very kind of man her mother had warned her against, a musician. He’d broken her heart over and over again but she kept struggling to make it work. Six years into the troubled marriage, he’d set out in a van with four other musicians bound for a gig in Chicago. Somewhere in southern Illinois they were t-boned by a semi. No one survived the crash. I’d asked her once if he’s ever tried to contact her from beyond the grave and she’d said, “Roland was never good about calling when he was out on a gig. Said long distance was too expensive. Well, this is way long distance, so no, not word nor sign.”

  “But Esme, every man’s not like that,” I said now. “And anyway, you wouldn’t have to marry Carlson, for heaven’s sake. You could just go out with him. Have some fun.”

  “I have fun already, Sophreena. End of subject.”

  We’d reached Top o’ the Morning, the coffee shop everyone in town frequents to get their caffeine and town news. Esme stopped at one of the outside tables to say hello to a friend from church and I went inside and got in line. I spotted Jack standing near the pick-up counter, clicking away on his BlackBerry as he waited for his coffee. He looked up as if he’d felt my eyes on him and walked over.

  “Hey, I was gonna call. You want to catch a movie tonight or something? I’ve been working too hard, I need a break and I’m bettin’ you’re in the same boat.”

  “Wish I could,” I said, surprised by how big an understatement that was, “but we’re going to have to work overtime to get the Pritchett family scrapbooks done in time.”

  “Okay, then,” Jack said as the young barista called his name and set his order on the counter.

  Two cups. Not good.

  “Well, step over here after you get your coffee,” Jack said. “I want you to meet Julie.”

  He picked up a coffee in each hand and gestured toward one of the bistro tables in the front window. A woman was sitting with her long legs crossed, talking on her cell phone. She was blond and willowy, nicely dressed, beautifully groomed and a perfectly dreadful human being. I was certain of it. Julie was going to be easy to hate.

  But after I got our coffee I trudged over dutifully to be introduced, hyper-aware of my sweaty clothes and droopy hair divided into two messy ponytails.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Julie said, putting out a hand then realizing I didn’t have one free to shake. “Jackie’s told me so much about you.”

  “Really? Has Jackie?” I turned toward Jack.

  “I know Julie from college days,” he said. “That’s what everybody called me then.”

  “When we weren’t calling you Mr. McStudly,” Julie said with a laugh. She reached over to touch his arm.

  “Nice to meet you, but I gotta get this coffee to Esme before it gets cold.”

  “But wait,” Julie called as I turned to go. “I’d like to talk to you about—”

  “No comment,” I said over my shoulder. “Absolutely no comment.”

  Esme had grabbed one of the tables outside. She passed over a water bottle from her waist pack as I set the coffee in front of her. “Water first,” she instructed. “Now, what’s that scowl on your face all about?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “It’s somethin’,” Esme insisted. “But I suppose you’ll tell me when it suits you.”

  I glanced over and saw Vivian Evans writing furiously in a big notebook and when she looked up she held up a wait-a-minute finger as if I’d asked her to come over, which I hadn’t. She looked worse than I did. Vivian was normally very polished, but today her eyes were red-rimmed, her clothing rumpled and her hair was in a bun, skinned back so tight it looked like it hurt.

  She came over and went into a passive-aggressive scolding. “I’m surprised you two have time for lingering over coffee with the scrapbooks due. Now, remember, Dorothy would’ve wanted you to cover absolutely everything concerning the family. Double- or triple-check if need be.”

  “So you’ve said,” I replied, trying to give the woman the benefit of the doubt. “Look, Vivian, I know Dorothy was your friend. This must be a very hard time for you. But you have to believe me, we’ll deliver what we promised her.”

  Vivian’s eyes filled with tears and she bit her bottom lip. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Nobody seems to understand how close Dorothy and I were. No offense to Ingrid, but I was more a sister to Dorothy than she was. Surely you, of all people,” she said, looking from Esme to me, “can understand that.”

  The most I expected of Esme was that she’d hold her tongue after Vivian had questioned our professionalism, but she surprised me by offering Vivian words of comfort. “It’s hard to lose a friend. It’s good you want her memory to live on.”

  “I do,” Vivian said, wiping at her eyes. “I want that.”

  Just then three women walked by. The younger one I recognized from my yoga class, Sherry something. But the others I couldn’t place. They were blatantly staring at us and I felt the color go to my face. Would this never end?

  “Here we are,” I said to Esme in a low voice, “the Thelma and Louise of Morningside.”

  “Don’t mind them,” Vivian said when the women were out of earshot. “The tall one’s Leticia Morgan. She’s overly suspicious, probably because she was once married to a cop—that Detective Carlson. She’s married to a banker now. She takes a couple of the bank employees out to coffee or lunch occasionally. Makes her feel good about herself.”

  So the rumor mill was still grinding. Esme was right, we were just going to have to hold our heads high, which is exactly what she was did when the women came back out of the coffee shop. She stared right back.

  I had to hand it to Carlson, he had good taste in women. Leticia Morgan was a beauty, though she didn’t hold a candle to Esme.

  Vivian started to tear up again as she watched them walk away. “Poor Dorothy, she would’ve hated being the subject of this horrible spectacle. This is not the way a Pritchett should be remembered.”

  “Vivian,” Esme said, her voice gentle, “can I ask you a question?”

  “I guess,” Vivian said, wiping her red nose with a hanky.

  “I’m sorry to be so blunt,” Esme said, “but how is it you could become friends with the woman who helped put your husband out of business? I don’t understand that.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t Dorothy’s doing,” Vivian said. “It was just circumstances. And anyway, in the end it was the best thing that could have happened to him—to us. When Frank was running the diner he put in such long hours and I was working for the phone company over in Chapel Hill. We never saw each other. After Frank sold out we had time together, for a little while anyway. It was a blessing really. And Dorothy helped me get started in my own business after Frank died. Something I could throw all my energies into. She made sure all the right people hired me for their events and coached me on what discriminating clients expect. She said I was a natural, that I had exquisite taste.” Her face contorted and the tears came again.

  Esme patted her hand. “I’m sure Dorothy will be smiling down on you on her memorial day. And you needn’t worry, we won’t let you down.”

  Vivian nodded, fighting to keep her emotions in check, and went back to her table to scribble some more in her notebook.

  “That was very kind of you,” I said.

  “I’m a very kind person, Sophreena,” Esme said. “Just because I don’t enjoy putting up with people’s
nonsense doesn’t mean I can’t see when they’re in pain. And she is racked with it.”

  • • •

  I called Ingrid when we got home to let her know we were about to begin work on the scrapbooks. Less than an hour later she arrived looking like she’d had another hard night, but smiling gamely. “Sophreena, thanks for letting us do this. Cassidy’ll be here soon. Her daddy’s spending some time with her this morning then taking her out to an early lunch.”

  “How’re you doing?” I asked, as I guided her toward the workroom.

  “I think I’m still in shock. Dorothy was always healthy as a horse, so I guess I got the idea that we’d have plenty of time to fix what was broken between us. I didn’t count on anything like this.”

  When we stepped through the doorway Ingrid looked around. “Wow, how much of this is from the Pritchett family?”

  “All of it,” I said.

  She gave me a jaw drop, then walked over to the scrapbooking table where we had the first few pages in progress. “Is it okay to touch?” she asked, eyeing the cotton gloves Esme was wearing.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “She’s been filing originals, but the scrapbooks are meant to get handled.”

  I attempted an abridged version of what we’d done as Ingrid looked at the pages. “Dorothy was our proband, to use a word borrowed from the medical field. That’s the family member first studied in a genetic investigation that traces back from him or her. Since Dorothy was our client she was our proband—our generation one. We worked our way back through six generations in the Pritchett line before we hit a wall with Edmund Thomas Pritchett, your ancestor who emigrated from England to the United States in the mid-1700s. To go further would have required more time, travel and some heavy expenses so Dorothy had us stop there.”

  I’d been working on the family tree in the hour before Ingrid arrived, filling in a decorative chart in my best calligraphy. It looked great if I did say so myself.

  “Interesting,” Ingrid said as she studied it. “It’s beautifully done, but I don’t think I ever heard any of these names. Course, I was young so maybe I did and I just don’t remember. In case you haven’t figured it out already, I’m the official black sheep of the Pritchett family. And now the Pritchett name has ended.” Her voice caught, then came out as a growl. “Pity it didn’t end sooner.”

  Shock must have showed on my face, because when Ingrid looked up she blanched.

  “Oh God, I didn’t mean Dorothy. My father was the only window I had into the character of the Pritchetts and let’s just say it was a dark and frightful view.”

  “We know you left home when you were young,” Esme said, “but in some of these old pictures it looks like you and Dorothy were very close at one time.”

  Ingrid smiled, a real smile this time. “We were,” she said as she turned to a new page. I wasn’t sure she was taking in anything in front of her; she seemed lost in her own memories. “Dorothy was like a mother to me when I was little, or at least what I imagine a mother to be. At the very least she was a protective big sister.” She laughed, but tears welled in her eyes. “As long as she could be, anyway.”

  “You can see it in the pictures, how much you loved each other,” Esme said softly.

  Ingrid shook her head “Yes, we did then and we still did, despite everything. Things just got all scrambled up somewhere along the way. Our father was a tyrant, there’s no other way to put it. He wanted to control every aspect of our lives. Dorothy was the good, obedient daughter, but I couldn’t take it.”

  “Ingrid, forgive me for prying, but was there abuse?” I asked.

  “He didn’t hit and he wasn’t a pervert, if that’s what you’re asking. But he was controlling and cruel—psychologically abusive. I ran away when I was not quite fifteen and he disowned me on the spot. Never looked for me and never spoke to me again. Dorothy tried to be the peacemaker a few times over the years, but I got angry because I thought she was taking his side. It drove a wedge between us. And, of course, since I was already dead to him he didn’t leave me a penny in his will. The entire estate passed to Dorothy. That fact has the cops all a-twitter and tongues wagging all over town. They assume I’ll inherit everything now, which I seriously doubt. And it doesn’t help that Dorothy and I quarreled so much.”

  “The police questioned you?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I’m fine with that. They’re doing their job and if I were in their position I’d be looking hard at me, too. Thankfully, I have an airtight alibi. One of the doctor’s patients, the youngest Cahill boy, fell off his bike doing one of those fancy tricks and cut his arm on a metal railing. He needed sixteen stitches. I stayed with his mother while the doc fixed him up. She gets queasy at the sight of blood, and there was plenty of it. She was holding on to my hand the whole time, I mean really holding on to my hand.” Ingrid flexed her fingers as if she could still feel the woman’s grip.

  “Still, I’m sorry you had to endure the questioning,” I said. “We got a little taste of it ourselves and it wasn’t pleasant.”

  “It’s the gossip that bothers me. People think they’ve got the story, but they don’t know what Dorothy and I were going through. We were trying to work things out. I know you two had the unfortunate opportunity of seeing what that looked like. I’m embarrassed at how I acted with her sometimes, but we are—were—both so stubborn.” She sighed. “If we hadn’t run out of time we’d have sorted out everything. We both agreed we owed it to one another and to Cassidy.”

  “Cassidy really loved Dorothy, didn’t she?” Esme asked.

  “And Dorothy loved her right back,” Ingrid said. “I admit I didn’t like that at first. I’m Cassidy’s grandmother. I thought Dorothy was trying to horn in on that and I was jealous. But gradually I realized it was good for Cassidy to have Dorothy in her life, too.”

  I wanted very badly to ask about Dorothy’s estate. But first off, it was totally insensitive and second, it was none of our business anymore, we’d been paid. I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity. If Dorothy had rewritten her will recently my bet was on Cassidy as heir. But she was a minor, so who would really have control of Dorothy’s fortune?

  Just then the doorbell rang and Esme went to get it, returning a few seconds later with Cassidy and her father. I noticed Jeremy sneaking a peek at his watch. He nodded a greeting at Esme and me. “Thanks a lot for letting her come do this,” he said, looking around the room with a decided lack of interest. He didn’t wait for a reply but slapped his hands together. “Hey, Tadpole, I gotta get to work. See you tonight.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” Cassidy said, giving him a big grin. “I liked going to lunch and thank you for the—” She glanced over at Ingrid then put her finger to her lips.

  “Let me guess, the chocolate sundae?” Ingrid said in a mock scold.

  “Just a little one,” Jeremy said, holding out a cupped hand and grinning as he backed out of the room. “A little baby sundae.”

  Cassidy giggled and ran to him. He scooped her up and they gave each other a fierce hug. I’d never had the warm fuzzies for Jeremy Garrison, but he was obviously a devoted father and that earned him points.

  Cassidy was still carrying around the little cloth bag with her assortment of busy work inside and she began to unload it on the table. She set out a small stuffed dog, a sketchbook and crayons and the puzzle box. She looked them over carefully then picked up the puzzle box.

  “Have you solved it yet?” Esme asked.

  “No,” she said, rubbing her fingers across the wooden surface studded with opalescent inlays. “It’s hard.”

  “I’m betting you’ll get it,” I said. “But it’s okay if you don’t. It’s just a game.”

  “Auntie Dot said I’m stubborn as the day is long,” Cassidy said, “but she said sometimes that’s a good thing.”

  “My mom used to say the same thing about me,” I told her. “But I say we’re determined, not stubborn.”

  Cassidy smiled. It was a weak one, but it was a smile.
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br />   “I see you brought your art supplies,” I said, nodding to the crayons and sketchbook. Would you like to draw a picture for the scrapbooks? Maybe you could draw your Aunt Dot’s house.”

  This got a grin and she set the box aside and began to draw, her tongue curled around her lip as she concentrated.

  I told Ingrid I was just about to start working on the pages for her grandparents, Harrison James Pritchett and Sarah Malone Pritchett. I did not mention that Esme had been having a very long-distance tête-à-tête with Sarah.

  “I don’t remember them all that well,” Ingrid said. “They’re more of a feeling for me than a true memory. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Oh, do I ever,” Esme said, low enough so that only I heard her.

  “But it’s a good feeling,” Ingrid went on. “Dorothy adored Grandpa Harry and Grandma Sarah and she told me lots of stories about them.”

  “Great,” I said. “If you know any information about any of these photos speak up and I’ll make sure it gets noted in the scrapbooks.”

  “Me, too?” Cassidy asked.

  “Definitely,” Esme said. “I’m sure your Aunt Dot told you lots of family stories.”

  “Uh-huh. She said knowing where you came from is what keeps people rooted.” Cassidy frowned. “I thought that was silly. People don’t have roots, trees have roots, oh, and plants and stuff. Can I look at the pictures?”

  “You can do more than that,” Esme said. “You can help put them in the scrapbooks. How about you come around here and work with me.”

  Ingrid watched as I worked on the two-page spread for Harrison James Pritchett and Sarah Malone from 1893 to 1894, the year before they were married. There were three photographs of Harrison Pritchett, taken at different times, by different photographers during that time period.

  “He was quite a dandy, wasn’t he?” I said.

  Ingrid laughed. “Dorothy preferred the term bon vivant. I remember he was a sharp dresser even when he was old. He was quite handsome back then,” she said, studying one of the photos, “and rich to boot. No wonder everybody thought he was such a great catch for my grandmother.”