Micanopy in Shadow (14 page)

“Oh, goodness!” Lily Lou made a deprecating gesture with one dainty hand. “I don’t care about the kitchen! I certainly don’t plan to cook. I wanted to see the color swatches lying on the counter. The mauve is precious.”

“Look who’s come to see us, dear,” Irons said. He tore his gaze from his wife’s lithe figure and turned again to Brandy. “We won-dered—Lily Lou and I—whether you’ve learned anything useful about your great-grandmother. And we want to say how sorry we are that you had such an awful shock yesterday.”

Brandy edged closer to John, hoping to dodge the large hand aimed at her arm. “Captain Hunter’s murder is terrible, of course. I really haven’t gotten very far.”

“Learn anything from this man Hunter?”

“Not much. I’ve talked to Caleb Stark, and I interviewed the son of Zeke Wilson. He’s kept all his father’s records. He hoped to find someone to write the marshall’s memoirs and never did.”

Irons lifted his wife’s arm and slipped it over his own, holding her near him. “Those files should be helpful, I’d think. Were they?”

Brandy favored him with a Cheshire cat smile. Why reveal how little she knew?

While John strolled back into the parlor to inspect the cornices, Lily Lou trilled, “This is all so exciting! You’re bound to learn something interesting—maybe even why the poor woman came to town.” She gave a tiny shudder. “Maybe even why she killed herself.”

“
If
she killed herself,” Brandy said. “I don’t think she did.”

* * *

At 2:00 P.M. Brandy parked behind the Micanopy Historical Society museum and the smaller archives building. A covered porch with wooden benches ran along the entrance wall of the museum, but she didn’t intend to visit it now. She’d seen the displays many times of farm machinery, nineteenth century clothing, household objects from the 1930s, the replica of a general store, Timucuan Indian artifacts, photographs of early graduating classes, nineteenth century maps, and area fauna and flora. Instead, she turned toward the squat, cedar-colored building with a peaked roof that faced the parking lot and knocked on the door.

Brandy wasn’t prepared for the archivist’s white hair and birdlike stature. She’d expected someone younger.

“Didn’t think I’d be in my seventies, did you?” Mrs. Dunn said cheerily. “I assure you, I’m as efficient as I’m prompt.” She ushered Brandy in and swept a hand toward the row of metal filing cabinets on the right hand wall. The cabinets and one desk were spare and tidy. Blue drapes hung at the few windows, and a round table with boxes stood on the left, along with racks of old newspapers. “Tell me about your area of interest, and I’ll help find what we have.”

“Micanopy in the 1920s—1921 specifically.” Brandy glanced about for a computer. There was none. This collection operated as it always had—with file folders, index cards, and paper lists. Brandy did spot a copying machine.

Mrs. Lawrence had already pulled out a file drawer. “You may want to go through these,” she said. “We have lots of clippings and old photographs donated by families. Information about each photo is noted on the back. I arranged the clippings folders by decade.”

Brandy took a padded chair before the table, as the archivist pulled several folders from a second drawer. “If you need copies, I can make them.” She disappeared into a compact kitchen.

Brandy opened the 1920s folder first and prepared to take notes. One story caught her eye. It described a hotel that rivaled the Haven’s and was more profitable. The dim photograph showed a rambling building with long wings, a water tank, and a windmill. It had sixteen rooms for guests and a ballroom for large parties.

Brandy almost forgot the purpose of her research as she read about the weekend dances and barbecues held in good weather at a lodge on nearby Lake Ledwith. The clippings listed the society guests, families who owned large tracts of land. The hosts included a few merchants, a doctor and two attorneys. Brandy recognized the name
Adrian and Sybil Irons
and more surprisingly,
Caleb Stark
. His dry goods store was either quite lucrative or he owned considerable property or one of the elite owed him a big favor. She favored the two latter possibilities. A brief 1921 newspaper account of the revenue agent’s murder appeared in a law enforcement folder. He was identified as Isaiah Sash, a property owner living in Micanopy. She wondered if he broke up his own neighbors’ moonshine stills. In a file folder labeled “Losterman” Brandy found the same newspaper clipping Hope had.

She turned to old photographs. She needed a better sense of these people, who they were really, what they looked like. Most were of families she had never heard of, although she recognized
Montgomery
as a prominent surname.

She paused for a moment to study a photograph of the Irons couple who had befriended Hope as a child. A notation on the back identified the occasion as their son’s christening. As Adrian Irons looked down at the elaborate baby basket, his long, morose face had an almost benign expression. He wore a dark, closely fitted suit and a tie with a geometric design and a jeweled stickpin. The proud mother leaned toward the basket, facing the photographer. Sybil wore white chiffon with a wide neckline, pearls, and wrist-length sleeves. A few delicate fabric roses decorated the waistline. Her strong, square face and firm jaw seemed out of keeping with the dainty dress.

Caleb Stark’s name appeared in a fulsome article praising his remodeled dry goods store. He had recently acquired the building, according to the article. It included a paragraph about merchandise he planned to stock: clothing, kitchen utensils, dishes, linens, and canned goods. He appeared as a stout, blurry figure, posing hat in hand at the front door and grinning.

Brandy wrote a summary in her notebook, but she didn’t see that she’d advanced her knowledge. She did have a clearer picture of life in Micanopy when Ada and Hope arrived. She expected to learn more at the University of Florida library.

* * *

Early Thursday morning Brandy called her grandmother to report that Snug still refused to sell, that she’d checked the local archives, and would next drive to Gainesville to search the ones at the University of Florida library. Her first chore would be researching World War 1 veterans.

Again she entrusted Brad to Kyra’s capable care and drove down four-lane U.S. 441, passing Paynes Prairie State Preserve, Lake Wauberg, and the Ecopass observation platform that looked out on the watery prairie. A concrete tunnel under the highway gave animals from alligators to bobcats a safe passageway from one section of the prairie to the other.

A few minutes later she left her car in a visitor’s slot near the maroon brick Smathers Library on the university campus.

The Florida special collections departments awed Brandy: row on row of cataloged clipping files, periodicals, and ponderous volumes that dated from the earliest days of the Spanish conquest. An efficient-looking gentleman with wire-rimmed glasses at the front desk explained where she could find the names and records of Alachua County World War I veterans. In a few minutes she sat at a table under the high, gothic windows and basked in the odor of old books. Before her lay three heavy Florida Department of Military Affairs volumes from Special Archives.

A total of 42,030 Floridian men served in the United States Army during the Great War. Although 1,046 were killed in overseas action, far more died of diseases like lobar pneumonia. The men fought at places like Chateau-Thierry, the Marne, Verdun, and the Argonne, and won eighteen Distinguished Service Crosses for gallantry. Because they often replaced earlier troops, they frequently were transferred.

By diligent inspection of long lists, she finally zeroed in on three men whose place of residence was given as Micanopy. She expected the first two. Caleb Stark Sr. had enlisted in Georgia and served in infantry Company M 324 at Chateau-Thierry. He’d been slightly wounded and discharged in 1919. Ezekiel Wilson, the esteemed town marshall, also enlisted in Georgia and served in infantry Company H 38 at Champagne-Marne, St. Mihiel, Meure-Argonne, Aisne, and Chateau-Thierry until his discharge in 1919. A veteran of many battles, he was awarded one of the rare Distinguished Service Crosses for gallantry at the Marne. No wonder he had a hero’s reputation.

The surprise came with the third and last: Adrian Adcock Irons enlisted in Gainesville in 1917 and served as a captain in the infantry. He was severely wounded serving with the 2
nd
Artillery Brigade at the French town of Cantigny on May 27, 1918. More than a year later, he was discharged from a hospital, as still recuperating.

All three veterans trained near Macon, Georgia, at Camp Wheeler. A photograph in another volume showed non-commissioned officers from Company H, 124
th
Infantry at Camp Wheeler in 1917. As Brandy looked at the infantrymen, standing ramrod straight in their high-necked, long-sleeved khaki uniforms and broad leather belts, the tragic deaths of so many young men struck her like a blow.

She thought of her grandmother’s theory—that somewhere in the loaf of time, all of them exist, even now. She hoped that it was so. After all, Einstein said time is an illusion. Rock weathers and flesh withers, but energy cannot be created—or destroyed.

She pulled herself back to the here and now. Was one of those Micanopy veterans Ada’s correspondent? Had she come to Micanopy to see him?

Brandy made her customary careful notes. She needed to follow up on Georgia hospitals, see if she could discover where Ada’s mother worked during the influenza epidemic when it reached Georgia in 1918. The carnage in Europe had finally ceased. If she could identify Ada’s mother, she could identify Ada herself.

A helpful librarian guided her search of Georgia hospitals in the World War I time period. Thirty minutes at a computer terminal yielded a hospital name that matched “Grady M” on the doll’s label. It operated during World War I—Grady Memorial Hospital of Nursing Training in Atlanta. It was established in 1892 and expanded shortly before the war. This location could explain the Martha Chase cloth doll used to train nurses. Before Brandy gathered up her notebook, she took down a phone number, hoping records of World War I hospital trainees and nurses still existed. A map of Georgia showed the hospital was near Camp Wheeler. Brandy suspected these young men would make their way to Atlanta to meet girls.

Early that afternoon she again drove down Cholokka Boulevard. Micanopy seemed eerily quiet after the university’s chattering students and the whir of traffic on 441. She had passed the town library when she remembered that Montgomery and Lily Irons were leasing a house on a nearby street. She needed to ask a few questions about Adrian Irons.

White pillars flanked the front door of the couple’s temporary home, a one-story white frame cottage with a broad screen porch. Brandy rang the bell and listened until the babble of a television talk show ceased, and she heard the telltale click of high heels on wooden floors. Lily Lou swung open the door, wearing a filmy emerald pants suit with low neck. Her round blue eyes widened in surprise, but her smile seemed genuine.

“How precious of you to drop by, Mrs. Able!” She stepped aside and enveloped Brandy in the sweet scent of her cologne. “Do come in. Monty’s gone. Some business in Ocala. I’m simply bored to death.” A note of restrained petulance crept into her voice. “If we were still in Naples, I’d be at the Club.”

“Call me Brandy, please.” Brandy edged onto the thick Oriental rug while Lily Lou gently closed the door. “I had some quick questions about your husband’s family,” she said. “Maybe you could answer them.” Lily Lou had flung a
Cosmopolitan
aside on the chaise lounge and set a glass on the end table beside it. Brandy added, “Am I interrupting anything?”

Her hostess perched on the edge of the lounge. “Goodness, no. Can I get you something cool to drink?” She giggled. “I’m having a gin and tonic myself. Do sit down.” She reclined again.

Brandy shook her head—she had to drive home—and sat opposite Lily on a sofa with a carved Victorian frame. “Do go ahead with yours.”

Lily Lou took a small sip. A delicate gold bracelet set with tiny diamonds slid down one wrist. She leaned back. “And your investigation of Ada Losterman? Going well?”

Brandy was pleased Lily Lou still was interested. It made questioning her easier. “I just discovered your husband’s grandfather was a World War I veteran—Adrian Adcock Irons. He lived in Micanopy at the time of Ada’s visit.”

Lily Lou glanced at Brandy’s small notepad and pencil, but seemed to accept them and nodded her perfectly coiffed head. “Oh, yes. Monty’s father said he’d been badly wounded in the war and spent a long time in the hospital. We all talked about how he and his wife took up a collection to bury the poor woman. He even headed the Chamber of Commerce fund drive.”

Brandy tapped her pencil thoughtfully on the pad. “I’m trying to learn as much as I can about life here soon after the war. Does your husband have any family photographs? Mr. Irons showed my husband pictures of their family homestead taken about the same time.”

As Lily set her glass down again, Brandy admired her perfect manicure. The coral nails might, of course, be artificial. Brandy tended to forget the endless possibilities a woman of such leisure had to indulge herself. Lily looked like the sort who took frequent spa vacations. Even at home alone, her hair was stylishly bouffant. Now she rose, went into an adjoining room, disappeared into a closet, and emerged carrying two large, leather-bound volumes, dates stamped in gold on the binding.