Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 02 - Rekindling Motives (9 page)

She shrugged.
“Doesn’t really matter what I think. You say you’ll bring those albums?”

“Sure.
Tomorrow, if you like.” I glanced around her room. “They aren’t in very good shape, you couldn’t hold them on your lap.”

“I’ll ask the staff to put up a card table in here for a couple of days.
Now, fair’s fair. I’ll tell you a bit about Richard.” She leaned back in her recliner and closed her eyes. If Aunt Madge were with me, she’d say we should let her rest and come back tomorrow. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.

She opened her eyes again and smiled, more to herself than to me.
“I used to sell taffy in the shop on the boardwalk. They made it there, and people would look through the glass at that noisy machine. It was real taffy, not this dry stuff they sell now. Anyway, Richard came in almost every day to buy a couple of pieces.”

“I was so dumb, I thought he really just wanted taffy.”
Her expression brightened. “He finally got up the nerve to ask me if I wanted to go for ice cream with him. He was a bit older than I was, so my parents weren’t too crazy about him at first. But, once they got to know him they liked him a lot.”

I studied her for a few seconds as she paused, a dreamy look on her face.

“We’d go riding in that silly car of his,” she continued. “Every time we went outside of town he got a flat.” She stopped and I sensed she was trying to compose herself.

“There were some old ledgers in the attic too.
It looked as if they had a pretty busy bakery.”

She laughed aloud.
“They had a bakery and tea shop, but that was just the public part of the business. What they really did was sell whiskey.”

“Whiskey?”
I asked, pretending not to know.

Mary Doris laughed.
“Your Aunt Madge’s husband knew them well. What was his name?”

“Uncle Gordon.
Gordon Richards. Aunt Madge told me he helped his uncle bring in bootlegged whiskey and rum from just offshore. My father calls him Rumrunner Gordon.”

“That’s true.
I suppose you could say they were competitors, but your uncle brought in hootch for the speakeasy in the hotel, and Peter and Richard mostly sold to individuals. Folks would come in to buy bread and they’d leave with a pint wrapped in the thick paper with it.”

“And they never got caught?” I asked.

“There were some close calls, but a couple of guys in the police department bought from them, so mostly they were OK. When the revenuers from Treasury came snooping they would let local police know, so Richard and Peter had a bit of warning.”

She laughed.
“They had a large mirror along a side wall, and another on the closet where they hid the whiskey. Of course, customers didn’t know it was a closet, the mirror hid the opening. Richard said a couple of times they saw a Treasury guy in the mirror before he actually got in the bakery.” She chuckled. “Richard was such a kidder. One day when Peter was in the closet Richard shut him in and put a couple of crates of flour in front of the mirror.”

I didn’t say anything to this.
Mary Doris might think it was funny, but if Peter Fisher was as stiff as his photographs, then I doubted he found any humor in the situation.

“Did they make it in the storage area?” I asked.

“Goodness no. People would have smelled it. Some they bought, some they made up in that very attic you fell out of. Audrey and Richard’s mother wasn’t too bright. Richard told her it was his ‘bachelor pad.” Mary Doris thought for a moment. “The hard part was getting glass bottles to sell it in. Mostly they used canning jars. The regulars would bring their own bottles or decanters.”

“Were you at Audrey’s wedding to Peter Fisher?”

“Oh yes.”
“Her look darkened. “Richard most definitely did not step on her dress on purpose. Audrey felt very bad later, that she’d accused him of that. She really missed him too.” There was a catch in her voice. “She and Richard were a good bit older than the younger two children, and their mother had a ‘weak constitution,’ as they called it back then. I guess now we’d say she was depressed. Anyway, Audrey and Richard were very good to the youngest two.”

“Are they still around?” I asked.
When she gave me a puzzled look, I said, “The younger two children.”

“Oh, Sophie and Robert.
He died young. Well, he was 50, I consider that very young. After high school she went to some school for girls in the city and then she married during the war, and they moved away, Chicago.” Her expression brightened. “She rarely came home and I had lost touch with her. But she actually came by the day after…the day after…” She teared up and reached for a tissue, which I pulled from the tissue holder and handed to her.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
I said, in one of my rare moments of feeling guilty.

“I don’t mind.”
She dabbed at her eyes. “That’s been the one nice thing about the publicity about Richard being found. Other than me knowing with absolute certainty, I mean.” She tossed the tissue into a trash can a few feet away and grinned at me. “Should have gone out for the Knicks.”

“You would have been a crowd pleaser.” I said, wanting her to continue, but recognizing that I couldn’t rush her.

“Someone called Sophie to tell her about you and Gracie finding the skeleton, and darned if Sophie didn’t have her grandson drive her to see me the next morning.”

“From
Chicago?” I almost said “at her age” but caught myself.

“She lives in
Cape May now. She’s been a widow for a long time. In her late seventies but looks 15 years younger. Said she walks two miles every day.”

I mentally filed that bit of information.
“Richard was the big love of your life, wasn’t he?”

“Oh yes.”
She sighed. “I never did meet anyone else I cared that much about. But,” she noted my look of sympathy, “I enjoyed teaching, and I was very close to my brother and his family.” Mary Doris glanced at the bird feeder again, and I wondered what fascination it held.

“You said that he would never have left you.
Did you think he’d had an accident or…”

“Nonsense,” she said briskly.
“I firmly believe Peter killed him. They were having some kind of running fight about their business, but Richard never said exactly what.” She shrugged, “Probably over money. Peter put more money into their business than Richard did, but Richard thought he did a lot more of the work. He felt that Peter treated him more like a lowly employee than a partner.”

She leaned her head back and her expression was drained.
I realized I had probably stayed too long, and decided to try to talk more tomorrow. Maybe I could work in a discussion of the building she had for sale. Or, the photo albums might bring more memories to light. I stood to leave, and as I did so she grasped my hand very tightly with both of hers. “Do you believe me?”

“Of course.”
I paused. “The photos of the two of you show a couple very much in love.”

“Yes, yes.
We really were.” She dabbed at her eyes again.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” I said.

She dismissed my apology with a wave of the hand.
“It’s been a long time.” She smiled up at me. “I’m really looking forward to seeing those pictures.”

I WALKED TOWARD the lobby so deep in thought that I did not pay attention to the person coming toward me in the hallway.
When she called my name I came to a quick stop and looked into Annie Milner’s eyes.

“Jolie, you look…” she paused, “Is your aunt here?”

“No, in fact, I was visiting your Aunt Mary Doris.” Was it my imagination or did she look shocked?

“I didn’t realize you knew her.”
She shifted a shopping bag from one arm to another.

I thought fast.
I didn’t want her to think I was bothering her aunt. “I don’t, but I saw her photo in the albums, the albums from the Tillotson’s attic,” I explained, at her puzzled expression. “I thought she might like to know of them. I told her I would bring them back tomorrow.” I nodded at her bags. “Looks as if you’re getting ready to move in.”

She smiled, tightly.
“Aunt Mary Doris is allergic to fragrances, so I take her nightgowns home to launder.”

“That’s really good of you.”
I made a mental note to see if Aunt Madge was allergic to anything. I couldn’t remember her talking about any allergies.

“She and I have been close all my life.
It’s no trouble.” We looked at each other awkwardly. “I’ll see you,” she said as she continued down the hall.

I looked at her back for a few seconds.
She’s quite a bit taller than my five feet two inches and has very erect posture, almost like a model. I watched her neck-length dark brown hair bounce up and down with a couple of steps and then turned toward the automatic door.

What is she up tight about?
It seemed to me that Annie Milner doing her aunt’s laundry was the kind of thing that would give her a few points with voters, at least the ones Aunt Madge’s age.

SCOOBIE WAS READY TO BE DONE with inventorying the attic.
“You aren’t up there sneezing your brains out,” were his exact words when I met him for coffee at Java Jolt the next day.

I nodded slowly as I sipped my coffee.
“That’s true. What if…”

“You’re going to say what if you did some of the work upstairs, and the answer is still no.”

I pointed at the book he had sitting in front of him, the first edition of
All Quiet on the Western Front
. “You sure you don’t want to find any more treasures like that one?”

“I should probably find something less depressing to read.”
He nodded at two younger men as they came in the door, apparently fresh from a stroll on the cold beach, and turned his attention back to me. “I know what you’re doing. You want to guilt me into it.”

Scoobie knows me too well.
“Guilt, no. I guess the whole thing has my…”

“Dander up?” he asked, not concealing his smile.
“Hard-headed nature in full gear?”

I ignored his jibe.
“I was going to say it has my interest. It isn’t every day you find so many old things so well preserved.”

He almost snorted.
“You don’t give a flying fig. You want to know how that skeleton got in there.”

“And you don’t?”

He shrugged.
“When we didn’t know he was there we didn’t care. I still don’t.” He reached in a pocket of his well worn pea jacket and extracted a folded piece of paper. “Read this.” He shoved it across the small table.

homesick dreams

fly with angels

where they were born

they’ll never die

sometimes lonesome

souls forget

future memory

truth becomes lie

not quite a dream

not near awake

reality of illusion

surreal and sublime

wonderful mystery

eyesight to blind

transcend your karma

in this life time

I sat staring at the paper for a moment. Sometimes I could understand Scoobie’s poetry, sometimes not. This seemed to be the latter. I looked at him. “Did you just write this?”

“Yep, can’t you see why?”

He had the intent look he often wore when he talked about his poetry.
I never failed to feel like an uneducated buffoon, sensing there was so much I didn’t understand. “You talk about…” I looked at the paper again, “Truth becoming lies. Are you talking about me wanting to find out how Richard got there?”

“So,” he took the paper back and refolded it.
“You’re on a first name basis with a skeleton?”

Sensing his strong disappointment, I talked fast.
“I’m sorry if I don’t understand it. You know I’m not, not literary like you are.”

At this, he grinned widely.
“What you aren’t,” he said, “is very introspective. But that’s OK.” He opened the paper. “Seeing that attic, what they thought of as junk, I figure they had a lot of stuff, and they seemed to like their lives. I mean, they took all those pictures.” He paused for several seconds and folded the poem again, “But all that’s left is beat-up belongings, ledger books, and of course the dead guy. What difference does it make?”

I didn’t like his thought process, and tried to think of a positive spin to put on his poetry.
I was also trying to remember the poem. “You talked about homesick, and, uh, souls and flying with angels. They, um, they’re all dead, I guess.”

At this he laughed so loudly that the few other people in Java Jolt glanced at us.
“You’re ok, kiddo.” He swallowed the last of his decaf coffee. “I’ll help you finish the attic, but I’ve got some stuff to write just now.” He stood and bent to kiss me on the cheek, an unusual gesture for him. “I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning and we’ll head over to Richard’s former home.” He slung his knapsack over his shoulder and was gone.