If Mashed Potatoes Could Dance (14 page)

“’K. Wait and I’ll join you. I’m on my way.”

I said good-bye to Gram and hurried back to town. It was only when I was almost to Jake’s and parking at a once-again-distant spot that I remembered the odd smell I’d noticed earlier.

I smelled it again just before I entered Jake’s building. It was as if I’d passed through a very small scented cloud because it was gone an instant later. I still couldn’t quite pinpoint the scent, but it was vaguely familiar.

I decided that I must be either imagining things or becoming hypersensitive to smells; maybe the scent had always been there but I’d just never noticed it before.

Besides, as I walked into Jake’s sheriff’s office, I suddenly noticed a much stronger smell. Though it had always been fairly light before, the scent of lavender was now thick and almost overbearing.

Sally was standing next to Jake’s podium and staring intently at him as he read something.

She looked at me as I came in. “I don’t think your friend here is being one hundred percent honest.”

“Uh–oh,” I said.

“I don’t know of any diary, cross my heart,” Jake said.

“It has to be where she got the information. There’s a whole room in her house devoted to me. It’s strange and…and kind of wonderful, but still strange. I think he knows more than he’s saying,” Sally said.

“I doubt it, Sally,” I said to her before turning back to Jake. “There’s a room in Opie’s house devoted to Sally, which I think is creepy but Sally thinks is wonderful and strange. She thinks that the only place Opie could have gotten all that information about her is from her diary. Pardon me for asking again, but are you sure you don’t know anything about it?”

Jake sent me a look that was curious and impatient. We both wanted to get to Stuart’s, but he was intrigued enough by the ghosts to humor this one a little longer. He sighed. “What kind of stuff is in the room?”

“Pictures of me, a couple dresses that she must have had
made to duplicate mine, lots of copies of articles about the trial are taped to the walls. But the thing that makes me think she has the diary is that she has a sketch of my family’s house, including the barn that was in the backyard. I remember describing the house in the diary. I remember
that
almost more than I remember anything, but I don’t know why.”

I relayed the information to Jake.

“Sally,” he said as he looked in her general direction, “all of that could have been obtained without the diary. Opie has a lot of free time and a lot of money. When she takes on a role, I know she researches it thoroughly. Pictures, articles, dress styles, all of those are only a computer search away—I bet you don’t know what computers are, we’ll have to try to show you—but trust me, those things are easy to find. As for the sketch of your house, that might have been pretty easy to get, too. In fact, I wish I’d thought about it myself. There are government agencies that store house plans, blueprints, those sorts of documents. Opie probably found schematic drawings of your house somewhere. I’d like to get my hands on one myself. It’d be great to have for the archives.”

Sally put her hands on her hips as her vehemence seemed to falter. She didn’t have enough knowledge of what Jake was talking about to volley back with anything substantial. Finally, she said, “We’ve got to talk to Opie, Betts.”

“Opie and I aren’t very good at the art of conversation,” I said.

“Try, please.”

“I’ll search for the house plans first.”

“If you won’t go into the Monroe House, the least you can do is talk to one person. For me, please.”

“What’s going on?” Jake asked.

“I won’t go into the Monroe House to search for the diary.
Sally has some idea that after over a hundred years, it might be in there somewhere. If it’s not with Opie, that is.” I cleared my throat to hopefully hide the growing sarcasm. “Oh—however, I have a question, Jake. Do you know anything about someone named Oscar Lowenfeld?”

Jake shook his head slowly. “Doesn’t sound even vaguely familiar.”

“See! She had to get it from my diary!” Sally said.

“Sally befriended him in jail.”

Jake shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t think I know about him, but I’ll think about it and look around for information.”

I did wonder where Opie acquired the information about Sally’s jail cell neighbor, but I wasn’t ready to believe she had the diary, yet. There had to be another answer.

“Betts, Sally, I’ll search the Monroe House,” Jake continued. “This afternoon, after Betts and I run another errand. In fact, maybe I could use this to stall the demolition. This is brilliant. I’d love to search!”

“Jake, it’s doubtful that
anything
is in that old place, let alone a century-old diary,” I said.

“I don’t care. I’ll search, and I’ll use the information to try to keep the place standing. I’ll tell everyone that some old document has led me to think that Sally’s diary could possibly be in there somewhere. No one will even question me; no one else has the patience to go through this stuff. Think about it, Betts; this might keep it from being destroyed.” Jake’s eyes lit.

I nodded as I silently thought to myself,
If only Sally hadn’t appeared until
next
week.

“That’s wonderful! Tell him thank you!” Sally said.

“She’s very appreciative, Jake. Sally, give us some time to run that errand, then we’ll go.”

“I’ll be there waiting,” Sally said before disappearing.

“She’s gone,” I said, not meaning to sound as grateful as I did.

“She
is
much more high maintenance than the last ghost, isn’t she?” Jake said.

“With much worse timing,” I said.

“Right. Come on, let’s go talk to Stuart and Georgina, if they’re still at the shoe shop. I’m very excited about the Monroe House, but I do think we should attend to this first,” Jake said.

There was a lull in the foot traffic on the boardwalk. The distant sound of popguns and cheers told us that a gunfight was being staged behind the corral at the other end of the street. The gunfights were popular attractions that always pulled lots of people off the boardwalk.

We passed the post office and the small stagecoach museum without seeing one tourist, but had to move around a few small groups as we passed the saloon, crossed the street, and walked in front of the Broken Crumbs cookie shop, the pool hall, and the Jasper Theater. The theater was the place I’d said good-bye to Jerome. I hadn’t been able to step foot through the door since. As we passed by today, Gram’s words burned a little more brightly in my mind.
You have to let him go, Betts.

Stuart’s shoe repair shop was next to the Jasper. There weren’t enough shoes or boots to repair to keep the business fruitful, so he’d recently started making and selling hand-tooled leather belts adorned with Broken Rope–appropriate images like nooses and guns and bullets and bottles of whiskey. He did a great business both in town and through his Internet site.

Stuart spent a lot of time in his shop. Even late evenings,
he’d be in the back working, his face eerily lit and magnified by his lamp and jeweler’s visor. I’d always thought of him as a sweet loner. I’d never considered that he had other family. He lived alone, and I couldn’t ever remember meeting anyone who claimed to be related to him. The fact that the dead man’s wife was his cousin probably didn’t mean anything at all, but the connection was curious.

I had no recollection of Georgina (Rim) Carlisle, but if she’d been significantly older than Damon, she might have grown up and left Broken Rope before I’d started paying attention to things like older siblings and extended family members. I didn’t remember their parents either.

The front of the shoe shop was one large glass window. We saw Stuart, Georgina, and the bus driver, Leroy, sitting on chairs in the small lobby of the store. All three had a cup of coffee either in their hands or close by. Georgina was visibly upset as she dotted the corner of her eye with a tissue.

“Oh. Should we go in?” Jake said, taking a step back and out of view of the window.

I hesitated, too. It suddenly seemed like we might be intruding on a private gathering. But I quickly pushed the concern aside. “Yes, this was our plan. We should stick to it. I’m just curious enough to ask some questions, though I’m not exactly sure what they are. If you have a better idea, mention it now. If not, let’s go talk to them.”

Jake nodded. “Let’s go.”

I pulled open the heavy wood-framed, single-paned door and led the way inside. The long, narrow shop was done in browns and dark yellows, the colors having faded over the years into background blandness. But the overriding scents of leather and shoe polish made the shop one of my favorite
places; usually I found the smells comforting. Today, the people had my full attention. Stuart, Leroy, and Georgina looked at us in unison, their initial silence interrupted only by a quiet sniff from Georgina.

“Betts, Jake,” Stuart said after a moment.

“We’re sorry to intrude,” I said, facing Georgina. “So very sorry for your loss.”

She sniffed again, courageously. “Thank you. It’s been difficult.” Her long gray hair was pulled back into a thick ponytail, which made her look much older than when it fell freely over her shoulders.

“Ms. Winston,” Leroy said as he nodded his own greeting. “Your grandmother okay?”

“She’s fine, thank you.”

“Good. I was hoping the stress wouldn’t get to her.”

“It’s stressful for everyone,” I said, but I didn’t point out that Gram’s constitution was probably stronger than the rest of ours combined. People who didn’t know Gram well sometimes made the mistake of thinking her age made her more susceptible to factors like tiredness and stress. “We’re all just so sorry about what’s happened.”

“We know it’s not your fault,” Leroy said.

Awkward though it might have been, I took the conversation directly to the next step. “Who do you think might be responsible?”

The three of them looked at each other. I thought they might be wondering if they’d heard me correctly.

Finally, Stuart spoke. “We don’t think the police have any good leads. Have you heard differently?” He pushed up his thick-lensed glasses.

“No, I haven’t.”

Under normal circumstances, this would have been a good
time to make an apologetic exit, excusing ourselves and telling them to let us know if we could help in any way, but I still hadn’t learned anything new.

“Look,” I said, “this is awkward, but do you mind if I ask you some questions?” I scooted the only empty chair closer to Georgina. She sat up and looked at me, her eyebrows close together. She seemed less teary, but that was probably because she wasn’t sure what to make of my boldness. Jake hesitated only a second before moving to the front counter and leaning against it, flanking Georgina’s other side.

Georgina turned toward Stuart. It took him a moment, but in a way, and probably without meaning to, he came to my rescue. “Betts studied to be a lawyer. Maybe she can help find the killer,” he said doubtfully.

I didn’t bother to add that I’d dropped out of that particular form of training, or that I was not there in any official capacity but because my best friend Jake had been thrust into whatever awfulness was going on. I just sat still and tried to give the impression I knew what the hell I was doing.

Georgina looked back at me and after the longest pause possible, nodded.

“You’re from here, from Broken Rope, right? You and Stuart are cousins?” I said.

“It’s been a long, long time since I lived here, but, yes, I was born in Broken Rope.”

“I didn’t know that,” Leroy said. “When you introduced Stuart as your cousin, I didn’t realize you’d lived here, too.”

“Yes, a long time ago,” Georgina repeated, a bit begrudgingly, I thought. “Do you think that matters?”

“It probably doesn’t matter at all,” I said. “But some information has come to light that might—I stress
might
—be useful. Your younger brother, Damon, where is he?”

“Oh, I see.” Georgina’s eyes opened wide for a brief instant before she nodded knowingly. “I haven’t talked to Damon in over ten years.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Georgina glanced from Leroy to Stuart. I tried to read Stuart’s expression, but it seemed blank.

“Last I heard, he was in jail.”

Leroy shifted uncomfortably, and Stuart pinched his mouth as though the news wasn’t any big surprise.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you know where?” Cliff had mentioned that, until his escape, Damon had been incarcerated in Kansas, but nothing more specific. I watched her closely. Did she not know her brother had escaped jail? It didn’t seem possible. Had the police not told her yet? I just assumed that she would have heard by now, either from Broken Rope or Kansas authorities.

“Leavenworth in Kansas.”

“What is he in jail for?”

Georgina shrugged. “I’m not sure I know.”

Maybe her lack of desire to talk about her thug brother meant nothing more than she just didn’t like to talk about him. She was a good twenty years older than Damon. She wasn’t an old woman, but she was of a generation that typically kept these sorts of family secrets, well, secret.