The Blue Bottle Club (5 page)

Something in Brendan wanted to forget about time and the necessity of research and just let this dear old woman ramble about her past and the people she loved. But the reporter in her couldn't wait for Dorothy Foster to get around to telling her what she needed to know "Do you remember the Cameron family?"

"Nice folks," Dorothy murmured. "Mr. Cameron, he was some kind of financial wizard—worked in stocks, I think. Owned a big, beautiful Victorian mansion over on Montford Avenue. Real well off. Gave his share to the church too."

"And Pastor Archer, the one who conducted Mr. Cameron's funeral?"

"Archer," Dorothy repeated. "Yes, that's right. Had a daughter name of Dora, or something like that."

"Adora?"

Dorothy's eyes lit up. "That's it. Adora. Odd name, don't you think?"

"And she would have been a teenager in the early thirties."

"Yes." Dorothy frowned and looked into Brendan's eyes. "Why do you want to know about these folks who lived so long ago? They're all dead."

"All dead?" Brendan's heart sank. So much for answered prayer.

"Well, yes, child. Folks don't live forever, you know." She smiled wistfully. "Except for me. I guess the Lord doesn't want a dried-up old woman like me."

"I'd think the Lord would want you most of all," Brendan said. The sentiment felt foreign on her tongue, especially the words,
the Lord,
but she couldn't help herself. Dorothy Foster was an absolute delight, and if God didn't want her, then it was God's loss.

"You're very sweet, child," Dorothy murmured.

"Could you tell me more about them—the Camerons and the Archers?"

"Rumor was that Mr. Cameron killed himself after the stock market crash—you know about Black Friday and everything that followed it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I thought so. You seem like a smart girl." Dorothy resumed patting Brendan's hand. "You should see the kids who come in here visiting their grandparents and great-grandparents. Those children know nothing about their history. What do they teach them in school nowadays, anyway? Computer games?"

Brendan laughed and shook her head. "I have no idea, Dorothy. Now, about Randolph Cameron?"

"A couple of months after the crash, Mr. Cameron turned up dead. No explanations, just a quiet funeral. Mrs. Cameron lost everything—the big house, the money, everything. It was a real shame, although, let me tell you, they weren't the only folks hit hard by the Crash. She moved somewhere else—I don't recollect just where. Quit coming to church."

"And what about the Archers?"

"The pastor stayed on for a while. His girl—what was her name again?"

"Adora."

"Yes, Adora." Dorothy frowned as if trying to imprint the name upon her memory. "Adora left town a few months after graduation—went away to college, they said. But there was something funny about it."

"Funny? What do you mean, funny?"

"Well, for one thing nobody had money during the Depression, hardly even enough for food and a roof over their heads. The Archers lived in the church parsonage, of course, so they weren't out on the street. And even without much salary, the parishioners saw to it that they didn't go hungry. But money for college? No one had money for college." She paused and wiped a trembling hand over her eyes. "And then there was that other thing."

Brendan could see that the old woman was getting tired, but she pressed on. She had to. "What other thing?"

"The girl died. They announced it in church one Sunday and had a real quick memorial service. Died of the influenza, they said, and was buried up east, wherever it was she had gone for college."

"Is that so unusual?"

Dorothy smiled and nodded. "To lose a child? No, I'm afraid not. I out-lived two of them. But the uncommon thing was this: That man, that Pastor Archer, never shed a single tear that anyone could see. The wife grieved, grieved herself right into her own grave. But not him. And to my knowledge, no one ever talked about that child again. Never spoke her name. Maybe that's why I had such a hard time remembering it."

Brendan sat back in the vinyl chair and considered Dorothy Fosters words. The old woman was, as Ralph Stinson had indicated, sharp as a tack. She could remember the thirties like it was last night's news.

And Dorothy's memory had just brought Brendan's research to a brick wall.

The Camerons were gone. The Archers were gone. Most of Brendan's hope was gone. She had prayed one genuine prayer, and it had not been answered. Maybe some things never changed. Maybe this story was never intended to see the light of day.

Brendan glanced at her notebook and saw the four names listed there—four young girls whose dreams had probably died long before they had breathed their last breath. It was an exercise in futility, this story she had taken on so obsessively.

She retrieved her pen and drew a line firmly through the first two names on the list: Letitia Cameron and Adora Archer.

"What are you doing, dear?"

Brendan stood up and held the notebook where Dorothy could see it. "These are just my notes on the four girls I was trying to track down. I've crossed off Letitia and Adora. If they're dead, I can't very well interview them, now can I?"

"Letitia?"

"Letitia Cameron, the daughter."

"Tish Cameron is dead? When?"

"Well, I'm not sure." Was the old woman losing touch with reality? Brendan eyed her cautiously. "You told me she was dead."

"I told you no such thing. For a reporter, Miss Brendan Delaney, you don't listen very well. You never
asked
me about Tish Cameron—just about her daddy and about the Archers. Get your facts straight, dear."

Dorothy lifted a gnarled finger and pointed toward the east door. "Unless somethings happened since dinner last night, Letitia Cameron is alive and well and living in Apartment 1-D of the East Mansion."

Brendan sank back into the vinyl chair, reeling as if she had been struck by a left hook to the jaw. "She's alive? Here?"

"Of course. Some of us old Presbyterians don't die, honey. We just go on forever at Many Mansions."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Dorothy smiled broadly and adjusted her upper plate with an unsteady hand. "If I had told you right off, would you have spent all this time talking to me?"

Brendan narrowed her eyes at the old lady. "You're a sneak."

"Maybe so. But now that we know each other so well, you'll come back and visit me, won't you?"

"I wouldn't miss it for the world." Brendan stood, gathered her notebook and bag, and gave Dorothy Foster a gentle kiss on her weathered cheek. "Thank you."

"You know," Dorothy murmured as Brendan started to leave, "maybe the Lord didn't forget about me, after all."

Brendan turned and leaned down over the wheelchair. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe he left me here just for you. So you could find Letitia—and whatever else you're looking for."

"Maybe." Brendan sighed.

"You have doubts about the purposes of God?" The old woman cocked her head to one side.

"You might say that, Dorothy. You might even say I don't believe in God anymore."

"That's all right, child," she murmured. "God still believes in you." She reached up and patted Brendan's cheek with a hand as soft as old flannel. "Go on now and find Letitia. Find your destiny."

The words—an odd parting, to be sure—dogged Brendan's steps as she made her way through the maze of sidewalks and finally stood at East Mansion, Apartment 1-D. She tried to push them out of her mind, but they echoed inside her like a haunting refrain:

Find Letitia. Find your destiny.

"It's only a story," she muttered under her breath as she stood on the tiny square stoop in front of Letitia Cameron's door. "Only a story, like a thousand other stories."

Why, then, could she not still the hammering of her heart?

4

TIME IN A BOTTLE

Y
es? What is it?"

Brendan's head snapped up as the door to Apartment 1-D jerked open. A broad, square woman in white towered over her, completely blocking the doorway. Her florid face pinched in an expression just shy of a snarl.

"If you're selling something, we're not buying."

"No, no, I'm not selling anything—" Brendan fumbled in her bag and handed over a business card. The woman took it gingerly between a thumb and forefinger and held it away from her as if it might be contaminated. "I'm Brendan Delaney, of television station WLOS," she stammered, pointing at the card.

The woman gave no ground. "So I see."

"This is Letitia Cameron's apartment?"

"What if it is?"

Brendan took a deep breath and met the narrowed gaze of the solid woman who stood before her. "Miss—" Her eyes focused on the small brass name tag pinned above the left pocket.
Gertrude Klein, LPN.
"Miss . . . Klein, is it?"

The woman nodded and said nothing.

"Miss Klein, as I said, I'm Brendan Delaney, and I'm here to talk with Letitia Cameron, if you don't mind."

The nurse raised one eyebrow "Miss Cameron is not available."

"This is very important to me," Brendan insisted.

"Miss Cameron's health is very important to me," the nurse countered. "And she will see no visitors."

Brendan took a step back. When Dorothy had told her—finally!—that Letitia Cameron was alive and within reach, Brendan had assumed that at least this first step of the journey would be a relatively easy one. But Dorothy hadn't mentioned the rather formidable presence of Frau Klein. Now Brendan felt as if she were facing down a snarling Doberman, trained to kill and eager to take a chunk out of anyone who took a step in its master's direction.

But she wasn't about to give up without a fight. If you couldn't out-maneuver a Doberman, at least you could outwit it. And Brendan had developed plenty of tricks, over the years, to get unwilling subjects to talk.

They stood there toe-to-toe, waiting to see who would make the first move. And suddenly it occurred to Brendan that the prayer she had uttered out of sheer desperation had, in its fashion, been answered. Letitia Cameron
was
alive. She wasn't willing to accept the idea that God necessarily had anything to do with it—she, after all, had been the one to find the obituary, follow the lead to Downtown Presbyterian and then to Many Mansions. But
something
had led her here—if not divine Providence, then instinct, or as Dorothy Foster had implied, destiny. Whatever the source, it was a good sign, and it bolstered her hope and courage. Now if she could just get her foot in the door.

She kept her eyes firmly fixed to Frau Klein's impenetrable gaze and sent up another experimental prayer for help and inspiration. "Miss Cameron
will
want to talk to me," she said with more confidence than she felt. "Please tell her I'm here."

At that moment a voice drifted out from the next room. "Gert? Who's at the door?"

Brendan's heart leaped, and she leaned forward to peer around the nurse's bulk. "Miss Cameron?" she called out.

Frau Klein shifted her weight to block Brendan's view and answered over her shoulder, "No one, ma'am. Just a reporter. I'll get rid of her."

Then, just as the nurse began to close the door, the inspiration came. Brendan reached into her bag, came up with the cobalt blue bottle, and held it up with a triumphant flourish. "Show her this," she demanded. "If she still dÒesn't want to talk to me, I'll leave."

"You must forgive Gert's lack of manners," Letitia Cameron said with a wan little smile. "She can be rather overprotective."

Brendan nodded and took a sip of coffee. "So I noticed."

She watched in silence as Letitia Cameron sat on the sofa, turning the blue bottle over and over in her trembling hands. The old woman wore a pale pink housedress and soft slippers, and her hair, an odd shade of bluish white, cascaded over her shoulders like foam from a waterfall. Her eyes, a faded gray-green, bore a lost, faraway expression, and between the eyebrows, a deep frown line made a permanent furrow in her brow

"Oh, dear. I must look a fright," she muttered. One spotted hand went to her neck, pushing the hair into place. "I just got up from my nap, and Gert hasn't had a chance to put my hair up."

"You look just fine," Brendan assured her.

The pale eyes fixed on Brendan's face. "What was your name again?"

"Brendan Delaney. I've come to talk with you about the bottle."

The faraway expression returned. "I remember this," she said, stroking the glass. "I remember it all so well. It must have been fifty years ago."

"Sixty-five."

"Ah. Time does pass, doesn't it? While you're not paying attention, while you're busy with other things, it just slips away. And then it's gone, and you can never get it back." She paused. "And who are you?"

Brendan cut a glance at Gert, who hovered at the bar in the kitchen. "Arteries," the nurse said curtly "Short-term memory loss. Some days she's pretty lucid, and other days—" She shrugged.

"But I've had a good day today, haven't I, Gert? Haven't I?" Letitia's voice went soft, like a child pleading for affirmation.