Paging the Dead (11 page)

“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.

“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.”

“Actually, he wasn't rich back then,” I said. “In fact, he grew up in somewhat diminished circumstances.”

“You're kidding,” Ingrid said. “I thought the Pritchetts
came from old line money. Like really old line, back to England or wherever.”

“As near as we can tell, your immigrant ancestor, Edmund, arrived in this country with the proverbial shirt on his back just before the American Revolution,” I said. “He settled in the tidewater area of Virginia and through the next couple of generations the Pritchetts became small plantation owners and acquired some degree of comfort. But Harrison's father, Lawton, was killed in the Civil War, leaving his wife with a baby to raise and a plantation to run on her own. In those reconstruction times it would have been a challenge even for the most experienced overseer and she couldn't keep it afloat. She managed to keep the house, but had to take in boarders to make ends meet.”

“I never knew,” Ingrid said. “So how did Grandpa Harry get his money?”

“By his own ingenuity and hard work,” I said, making sure Cassidy was listening. “He had a dream and he worked hard. He came to this area and saw all it had to offer and brought his bride here to start a new life, though it surely wasn't a life of luxury back then. He bought land on the highest point for the house he wanted to build for his wife one day. He also purchased a plot down by the river and built a sawmill and a modest little house for them to live in while he got his business going. That was the beginning of what grew into Pritchett International.”

“Where did he get the money for the land?” Ingrid asked.

“Good question,” Esme said. “Things were a whole lot different back then as far as reporting income so there doesn't
seem to be a paper trail. He bought the land for cash on the barrelhead.”

“Wow, there's a blank I'd like to have filled in,” Ingrid said, then whispered, “Maybe the Pritchett men weren't stuffy old bores after all. Maybe he robbed a bank or something and there's an outlaw in the clan.”

“Well, however he got his start,” I said, “he really did build his fortune on his own and I can tell you in all our research we never found anything that assailed his character. He seems to have been a very principled and generous man.”

“Guess things really do skip a generation,” Ingrid said, giving me a rueful smile. “My father looked nothing like him. I guess he got all Grandmother Sarah's genes from the Malone side, though he surely didn't get her temperament if what I remember about her is really how she was. I think of her as a gentle, kind person. My father was neither of those things.”

I let that comment lie, since from everything we'd discovered it was true in spades. Ingrid and Dorothy's father, William, did not leave shiny testimonials in his wake. By all accounts he'd been a disagreeable man and not one to be trusted in business dealings. We'd interviewed an older gentleman who'd known him who'd said, “Will Pritchett was so crooked when he died they didn't need a coffin, they just corkscrewed him into the grave.”

I showed Ingrid the pages we'd made for Sarah Malone from that time period. “Your grandmother was a beautiful woman. I think you look like her.”

“Do you? Well, that's a compliment. And I did know that she grew up in—how did you put it?—diminished
circumstances. Actually, I think her family had always been poor so I guess there was nothing diminished about it. That's sort of the family fairy tale, that Grandpa Harry took the poor little matchstick girl and made her queen of his castle.”

“Well, now, hold on,” Esme said, holding a photo down while Cassidy concentrated on painting the back with a glue stick, “the Malones weren't well-to-do, but I think that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Her parents owned a small mercantile store that did tolerably well, so your grandmother had all her needs met, though there probably wasn't much left over for luxuries.”

“And her family wanted her to have some advantages. Her parents sent her to live with relatives in Richmond for a while so she could experience the cultural activities the city offered.”

Ingrid chuffed. “Did Dorothy tell you that?

“Yes,” I said, puzzled by her reaction. “But we verified it through other records. She lived with the Spencer family for almost two years.”

“But not as a guest,” Ingrid said. “She was a live-in babysitter. Practically an indentured servant.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Everything we've found describes her as a guest in the Spencer household.”

Ingrid shook her head. “I remember distinctly hearing that Grandmother looked after the two Spencer boys. I even remember their names, Lyle and Lawrence. She used to tell Dorothy stories about what horrid little boys they were and how mean Mrs. Spencer was to her. All very Jane Eyre, but without the Mr. Rochester romance.”