The Key in the Attic (3 page)

3

Annie still stared at the note.
Beloved Angeline
. There was a sweet tenderness in the way he had written the name. Yet somehow he and his beloved had not ended up spending their lives together. Why?

Mary Beth wrinkled her forehead. “I’ve never heard the mention of a Geoffrey in the family—not that I remember.” She paused for a moment. “Wait a second.”

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to make a copy of this clue so we won’t mess up the original,” Annie said, digging in her purse for her notepad as her friend disappeared down the hallway.

“OK,” Mary Beth called back. “Thanks for thinking of it.”

Annie was writing down the last string of numbers and trying to make some sense of them when Mary Beth came back into the room looking a little disheveled. She had a metal file box in her hands.

“Sorry that took so long. I had to move some things around to get to the right box.” She smiled. “Mother had all this just stuffed in a drawer when we cleaned out her house before she moved to Seaside. I’m glad I could rescue all of it. She never was very sentimental; I’m surprised she didn’t throw this out years ago.”

She sat beside Annie on the couch, clicked the latch on the box, and swung its lid back on its hinges.

Annie looked inside, feeling that little quickening of her pulse that came any time she got a chance to see bits of what people had left behind them, things they had found dear enough to keep and then pass to their loved ones.

Mary Beth started removing items, carefully, one by one, mindful of a delicate bit of writing or an already-cracked daguerreotype. There were letters and deeds and a pair of old miniatures—portraits, Annie imagined—of an aunt and uncle many times removed. A small book of prayer was nestled in between a little rag doll and a well-used account book. There was nothing of any monetary value, but everything in this box had some special meaning, Annie was sure. The interesting part was figuring out each item’s significance.

“Here it is.”

Mary Beth pulled out a little booklet, no bigger than her hand, decorated with a pinkish gray tassel that must have once been a vivid red. Inside was a program for a cotillion held on the third day of March in 1861. The lines beside each of the dances had been penciled in with the names of a variety of gentlemen. Most of the writing was smudged and faded now, but only one name was repeated more than once: G. Whyte. At the bottom in flowing script was written “Miss Angeline Morrow.”

“G. Whyte.” Annie breathed a sigh quietly. “It could be Geoffrey, couldn’t it? Does the signature look like the writing in the note?”

She and Mary Beth both leaned over the coffee table, squinting at the precise copperplate letters, comparing them to what was written on the dance card.

“It’s hard to say.” Mary Beth frowned. “That could be the same G, I suppose. Whoever wrote on the dance card looks as if he was in a hurry.”

Annie chuckled. “He’s on there four times. He must have wanted to make sure he got to dance with her.”

Mary Beth laughed too. “I suppose.”

“Look at the ‘h’ and ‘t’ in ‘brought’ in the note. And look at the way they are in ‘Whyte.’ I think they must be written by the same hand. The ‘y’ in both places he wrote ‘you’ look very similar to the ones on the dance card. It must be the same person.”

Mary Beth’s smile turned a little sad. “They must have had a falling out since he’s not the one she married.”

“Yes,” Annie sighed. “Still, we don’t know. The early spring of 1861 was right before the Civil War. Maybe he was killed in battle.”

“Oh, that’s even sadder.”

“We’ll have to see if we can find out something about him. I’ve done a little genealogical research before. You’d be surprised the kind of things they put on the Internet.” Annie finished jotting down the last part on her notepad, adding notes from the dance card. “We can at least solve the puzzle he left behind.”

Mary Beth peered through her reading glasses at the note to Angeline. “I can’t make heads or tails out of it. Do you suppose each line of writing goes with each line of numbers? Maybe each number stands for a letter that spells out a word. Like one equals A, two equals B and so on.”

Annie swiftly counted the lines. “Nope. No such luck. There are eleven lines of word clues and only nine lines of numbers. And each of the number lines only have four numbers in it. Besides, the numbers go way too high to stand for the alphabet.”

Mary Beth frowned. “I don’t seem to be that great with numbers lately anyway.”

Annie kept her eyes on the brittle yellow page. “It’s not easy being in business these days. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about the car dealership anymore.”

“At least you had Wayne to shoulder a lot of the load.”

“Most of it, if you want the truth.” Annie glanced up at her friend. “If I had tried to keep the dealership after he died, I would have had a hard time doing everything on my own. I don’t know how you keep things going at the shop all by yourself.”

“Not very well. Not lately.”

“You have a lot of friends to help you. We’d all be happy to—”

“Don’t be silly. Businesses go through bad patches. That’s just normal. Either they stay afloat or they don’t. That’s normal too.”

“But Mary Beth—”

“I said don’t be silly.” Mary Beth cleared her throat and got that no-nonsense look Annie was very familiar with. “Now we have a puzzle to solve.”

The two of them bandied around ideas for a while over more coffee and some pecan tarts Mary Beth had brought home, left over from the latest church supper. Annie had hoped there would be something else in Mary Beth’s box of family memorabilia that would help them solve the puzzle, but there was nothing.

“It’s probably something obvious,” Mary Beth said, and then an enormous yawn escaped her. “Oh, excuse me. I don’t know where that came from.”

Annie smiled and stood up. “I think that’s my cue to go home and let you get some rest.”

“It’s early. I never go to bed at this hour.”

Annie put her coffee cup and her plate in the sink. “You’ve had a lot on your mind, Mary Beth. Some extra sleep is probably just what you need.”

“But—”

“No buts, now. I’ll take my notes home with me. Maybe something will come to me on the way there. If not, I’ll get Alice to have a look too. She’s bound to have some good ideas.” Annie gave Mary Beth a wink. “Maybe the answer will come to you in a dream.”

Mary Beth laughed. “Then I guess I’d better try to get some sleep.”

****

“Did you find something? Let me see!”

As soon as Annie pulled her classic Malibu into the driveway at Grey Gables, Alice scooted out of the carriage house next door and hurried up the hill to meet her. Alice’s blue eyes were sparkling, obviously eager to know if the little key had actually unlocked some mystery at Mary Beth’s house.

“Let me get the door unlocked.” Annie fumbled with her key and finally turned the lock. “Go on in the kitchen. Start some coffee, please, if you don’t mind. Let me check my messages and feed Boots, and then I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Now you’re torturing me,” Alice complained, but she hurried toward the kitchen. “You did find something, though, didn’t you?”

“Just hang on. I’ll be right there.”

The only message on Annie’s voicemail was a portion of an automated political survey. She promptly pressed the delete key and went into the kitchen. Boots was already pacing by her empty food bowl. Annie put her purse in a chair and opened the cabinet where she kept the dry cat food.

“OK, OK, Miss Boots. I’m coming.”

“She probably just wants to know what happened at Mary Beth’s too,” Alice said as she filled the coffeepot with tap water.

Annie dumped a scoop of crunchy seafood-flavored cat food into Boots’s bowl and then got two large coffee cups out of the cabinet on the other side of the coffeemaker.

“I’ll do that,” Alice said, shooing Annie toward the big table in the middle of the kitchen. “You start talking.”

“OK. The key did open up the pedestal of her antique table, and there was this note inside.” Annie took her copy of the clue out of her purse and spread it out on the table. “We think it’s from sometime around the Civil War.”

Alice lifted one dark brow. “They had bright orange note paper during the Civil War?”

“Very funny. This is what I copied down. Mary Beth has the original.”

Alice scanned the page. “Angeline and Geoffrey?”

“Angeline was Mary Beth’s great-great-grandmother, but Geoffrey wasn’t her great-great-grandfather. We think he was the one who signed her dance card in 1861—the dance card she kept all her life. He had to have meant something to her.”

“And he sent her this clue to something: ‘A letter brought you here and now you must find more.’ What other letters was she supposed to find?”

“I guess that’s what the clue will tell us.”

“Hmmm.” Alice leaned down, her elbows on the table, her forehead wrinkled. “They use the metric system in England, don’t they? How many centimeters is forty-five inches?”

“Don’t forget this is from 1861 or so. I don’t think England used the metric system until about a hundred years later.”

“OK, then what
did
they use for forty-five inches back then, smarty?”

“We’ll come back to that one. What about the next clue? ‘Twice indebted.’”

Alice finally pulled out a chair and sat down. “Double indemnity?”

“I don’t think that’s the same thing. There are two other ‘twice’ clues in here besides this one. Indebted, beholden, obliged, they all mean kind of the same thing, but they’re somewhat different.”

“Didn’t you and Mary Beth work any of this out at her place?”

“Not really. We looked at it, but as excited as she was about this, Mary Beth seemed like she was really tired. I told her she should sleep on it and that I’d let you have a look too. Between the three of us, I’m sure we can figure it out.” Annie tapped her pencil on the page. “How about this one. ‘Katherine at home.’”

“Do you suppose Katherine was a friend of Mary Beth’s great-great grandmother?”

“Could have been. She’s in here twice. ‘At home’ and ‘to her friends.’”

Alice frowned, thinking. “Maybe she had a nickname. I mean, that’s what you’d use at home or with friends, right?”

“That seems logical. A Katherine would be called what? Kate? Katie?”

“Kit, maybe. Or Kay.”

“Slow down.” Annie started jotting down names next to the clue. “Kate, Katie, Kit, Kay. Maybe Kitty? Any others?”

“I’ll keep thinking, but at least we have a start.” Alice went over to the coffeemaker and filled both cups. “Where’s your sugar?”

“Oh—I left it by the stove.”

Alice added sugar and cream to both cups and brought them back to the table. “Did you and Mary Beth talk about anything?”

“You mean did we talk about her business problems? Not really. She pretty much cut me off when I tried to get the conversation turned that way.”

“That means there
is
something going on with her. I wish she’d just tell us.”

Annie took a sip of her coffee. “It’s really not our business, you know, but I do want to help. I just wish I knew what else to do.”

“You know, Annie, maybe we should put the puzzle up and do some brainstorming on how to help Mary Beth. Whatever these letters are that we’re supposed to find, if they’re even still around somewhere, they’re not very likely to be a practical help to her.”

“I suppose you’re right.” With a wistful sigh, Annie folded up her copy of the clue and put it in her purse. Then she pulled out a second notepad. “OK, let’s brainstorm.”

Alice and Annie spent the rest of the evening dreaming up and then discarding ideas until Alice finally gave up and went home to bed.

****

The next morning, Annie sat on the porch drinking coffee, watching the world wake up, and watching the sea. There was something mesmerizing about the waves that rushed to the shore, hurrying one after another only to immediately retreat. Annie listened to the hypnotic sound of the water as it crashed over and over against the rocks and sand, until the sound seemed to be a part of her, like the beating of her heart. Her gaze took in the gulls that circled endlessly above the water, which was gilded with the light of the dawn. The electronic ring of the telephone broke the spell.

“Hi Grammy!” called a chipper little voice as soon as she said hello. Her grandson—her little chip off the block—had always been an early riser, much to his mother’s dismay.

“Hi there! How’s my John?”

“We went swimming and rode a pony.”

Annie smiled, picturing John’s little face, big eyes shining, wiggling all over with excitement. “And when was this?”

“Yesterday. It was Mikey Morgan’s birthday. He had a bounce house too. And I won some gummy worms for pinning the tail on the donkey.”

“Oh, how fun. And did you have cake?”

“Uh-huh. It looked like a fire truck, but Jenny stuck her hand in it. Right where the ladder was.”

Annie held back a giggle. “Oh, that’s too bad. And who’s Jenny?”

“Mikey’s baby sister. He has two, but she’s the little one. His other one is Kendra. Jenny just turned one year old.”

“And did your sister go to the party too?”

“For a little while, but then she went home.”

“That’s not much like Joanna. Wasn’t she having fun?”

“Until the clown came.”

“Oh, dear. I know she doesn’t like those. Was she OK?”

“She ran into the house and told Mommy she wanted to go home right then. But she didn’t cry this time. Mommy said she was doing better.”

“What did you think of the clown?”

“He smelled funny. Mommy said it probably was the kind of makeup he used. He made balloon animals, and those were cool, but besides that he was pretty lame.”

Annie turned a laugh into a slight cough, wondering which of the “big kids” her grandson picked up his newest slang words from. “That’s too bad. But I’m glad the party wasn’t lame.”

“Mom said when you come back home, and we have my birthday, we can have a pony again too.”

“Well, that’ll be fun.”

“When are you coming home, Grammy? I mean
really
coming home and not just visiting?”