Watch for the Dead (Relatively Dead Book 4) (26 page)

“Ned, we don’t have to solve this today. And I don’t have any ideas either—there aren’t that many historical museums around, not that I’ve checked to see if they’re hiring. But you asked. Yes, I’m a bit lonely, because I don’t see a lot of people day to day. And I was kind of surprised that you call Daniel a friend, because I’d never even heard of him until last week. We need to get out more.”

Ned looked down at his plate. “I’ve been working on something . . . no, it’s not ready to talk about yet.” Then he looked back at Abby. “You could join a genealogy group? You’d be a real asset.”

Abby laughed. “Yes, but a little skimpy on the documentation side. I don’t think the DAR would accept ‘my patriot ancestor told me so’ as proof of anything.”

“Probably not,” Ned said, smiling.

“So, having made the case for us seeing more people, will you mind if I spend the day rooting through Edna’s boxes, even though you’re going to be home?”

“Go for it. You want help?”

“Maybe. First I have to find out what’s in there. Of course, you know a lot more about Massachusetts than I do, so I may need to ask you about some connections or odd references.”

“I will keep myself available. Should I strip wallpaper or paint?”

“Does the fireplace work?” Abby countered.

“Uh, I don’t know? I’ve never tried it.”

“Why don’t you find out? If it doesn’t and you can’t fix it, you can find someone who can. Wouldn’t you like to have a cozy fire come winter?”

“With you next to me, yes.”

“So go clean the flues or something. You know where I’ll be.”

Having found a constructive chore in the house for Ned, Abby felt free to tackle the Whitman files. Luckily there was little in the way of furniture in the dining room, apart from the table and a few chairs. One chair she had commandeered to sit on, and she moved another one closer so she could put the box on it and look through it without straining her back. There were no labels on any of the boxes, so she dragged the nearest one over, put it on the chair, and opened it.

An hour later she had covered the entire table with piles of documents. Edna had done a worthy job with what she had to work with. Of course, she had started back in the days when there was no Internet, and Family Tree Maker was no more than a gleam in someone’s eye. In those days you presented yourself at libraries and historical societies and archives and went through what they had, book by book, folder by folder. Of course, there was still some of that to be done now—there were places that would never have the time or money to transfer their holdings to a digital format—but there was so much available online! Edna probably didn’t even have a computer, and much of what she had so carefully collected over the years was in the form of old and fading photocopies. At least her handwriting was clear and legible, and she had taken careful notes.

The first box Abby had opened seemed to contain material on the earliest members of the Whitman family, going back to before 1700. Abby fought the urge to shut the box immediately and go hunting for something closer to 1900, which was what interested her, but she felt that would be cheating. And besides, she needed to be sure that the decades or even centuries hadn’t gotten jumbled together. She didn’t trust Edna’s daughter-in-law not to have meddled with the boxes at some point. Still, once Abby reached the bottom of the box, she had to admit that Edna had been careful and thorough. And for once, Abby couldn’t find any connection among the earlier families on that side to those of her own—that she knew about. But she’d hardly scratched the surface with her own family, so she couldn’t dismiss the information just yet. Something to deal with later.

She labeled each of the piles from Box 1 with sticky notes, then stacked them carefully in their original box to clear the tabletop. The second box turned out to be much more recent, probably starting in the mid-twentieth century up to the time that Edna had moved to the retirement community. There were newspaper clippings of birth, marriage and death announcements. Society columns—there was something that had more or less disappeared, at least as far as Abby knew. School events, with various Whitman youths on sports teams or in honor societies. A few diplomas and certificates of achievement. A couple of paper packages of photographs, first black and white, then later color, now sadly faded. None were early enough to satisfy Abby. Weren’t there places that would scan photographs to digital formats? Even the negatives? Maybe Edna would appreciate that. She should ask at that nice camera store in Newton, Abby thought. They would probably do it in-house, or would know someone trustworthy who could handle it.

She finally struck gold in the third box she looked at, after she’d put away what had come out of Box 2. A few faded postcards on top gave Abby the first clue: sepia or hand-tinted postcards showing beach scenes and some buildings that Abby recognized from Falmouth. She was poised to jump in when there came an insistent rapping at the front screen door. “Abby? Are you home?”

Ellie. And since Ellie didn’t drive, Leslie must have brought her. Abby could hear Ned opening the door, and she joined the group in the hallway. “Hello, Leslie. Hi, Ellie. How’s Olivia?”

“That’s why we’re here!” Ellie proclaimed. “I wanted to show you the pictures of her. Come see!”

“Just a minute, sweetie,” Leslie said. “Abby, I don’t know if I ever thanked you for getting Ellie that camera. I’d be happy to reimburse you for it.”

“No need, Leslie—it’s a gift. I hope she’s been handling it well?”

“She’s been very careful with it, I have to say. Also very busy. I don’t know what capacity the storage card in it has, but she may have already filled it up.”

“That’s what it’s for. Having that card makes it a lot easier than film, not to mention cheaper. Would you like something to drink? Are you in a hurry?”

Ellie tugged on her mother’s arm. “Mom, I want to show Abby. And you said maybe we could put the pictures on the computer?”

“You mean upload them?” Abby asked. “I’d be happy to help. You took pictures when we were on the Cape, right?”

“Yup, lots. And Mom hasn’t seen them yet, because the camera screen is too tiny to see much, and I didn’t know how to do it on Daddy’s computer. Can we upload them now?”

Leslie and Abby exchanged a glance; Leslie looked resigned. “Go ahead.”

“Leslie, why don’t we go into the kitchen and get some coffee or iced tea?” Ned suggested.

“Yeah, sure, fine,” Leslie said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Abby was pretty sure that Leslie had hoped to be in and out quickly, but Ellie had different ideas.

When they had disappeared down the hall, Abby led Ellie to the dining room table. Ellie looked at the collection of boxes. “What’s this stuff?”

“It’s records from Olivia’s sister Isabel and her family, almost up to the present. From what I’ve seen, it’s mostly about her children, and about the family of her husband, but I’m not done yet. I was hoping maybe she might have saved some stuff that could tell us more about Olivia, around the time she owned the house we stayed in.”

“Cool,” Ellie said, then turned her attention quickly to her main interest. “You know how to put pictures on your laptop?” Ellie said.

“Sure. Give me the camera and I’ll take out the card. It goes right in this slot here”—Abby pointed at the front of the laptop—“and then we can save them. We’ll need to make a folder for the pictures—what do you want to call it?” She pulled out the card and demonstrated how to insert it.

“You could call it ‘Ellie’s Pictures.’”

Abby laughed. “That would be a whole album, at the rate you’re going! So let’s make that album, and then we can put your first pictures into a folder called Ellie One, and maybe a date.” Or it might make more sense to upload them to the Cloud or whatever it was called, but Abby was less familiar with that process, and she wasn’t sure what kind of computers Leslie had at home. Better to start with a simpler format—one that Ellie could take with her.

“Okay.” Ellie pulled up another chair and sat next to Abby, watching eagerly. Abby followed the steps she had outlined, creating a home for Ellie’s pictures and uploading them. There were, as Leslie had suspected, hundreds of them, but there was still space remaining on the card, so Abby put it back in the camera.

“Okay, we’re all set. How’s your dad doing?” Abby asked.

“He’s better, but he’s still kind of tired. Mom makes me play with Petey. He’s a baby! And a boy!” Ellie didn’t look happy.

“It won’t be for long. How’s school?”

“It’s okay. I like my teacher, but I already know a lot of the stuff she’s telling us.”

“Hey, it’s only the first week! Let the other kids catch up. Want to tell your mom we’re ready now?”

“Okay!” Ellie bounded out of her chair and all but ran to the kitchen. She returned quickly, with Leslie and Ned in tow.

“I didn’t realize it was Daniel’s house you were using,” Leslie said as Ned pulled up another chair for her. Ellie stood behind Abby’s chair, looking over her shoulder. Net stationed himself against the wall, since they’d run out of chairs.

“That’s right—you must have known him,” Abby said. “I didn’t meet him until yesterday, actually. He has an agency that handles the rentals, but he and his family are there now for the long weekend.”

“Nice guy,” Leslie said. “A touch of ADD, but he’s fun to be around. You meet the family?”

“No, they were at the beach. We just chatted for a few minutes. The house was lovely—just right for a beach house. Not too fancy.”

“Can we look at the pictures now, Abby?” Ellie demanded impatiently.

“Of course.” Abby called up a media program and accessed the folder. “You want to start at the beginning?”

“Okay.”

Abby clicked on the first picture file, and kept going. The first few pictures were predictably awful, but it was clear that Ellie had learned quickly, and she had a good eye for a subject and how to frame an image. The pictures of the West Falmouth house began about a quarter of the way through the list. There were some perfunctory pictures of the house itself, and then Ellie had started taking pictures of water and shells and beach glass, and even the crabs underwater. Abby and Ned appeared in a few of them, but usually as part of the background, not the main subject of the picture.

It was a time-consuming process, as Ellie wanted to explain each picture, and then waited for the adults to comment. They were maybe halfway through when Abby stopped. “Ellie, I didn’t know you were taking pictures during the storm.”

“Yeah, I wanted to see if I needed a flash or not. It was real dark outside, Mommy.”

“I can see that, sweetie. That’s when you found Olivia, right?”

“Uh-huh. It was windy and noisy, but then I thought I heard something else, and it turned out to be Olivia. She was outside. I didn’t take the camera outside because I didn’t want it to get wet. So Abby and me, we went out and saved her, and then we had to make her dry, and find something for her to eat. There’s a picture of her and Abby, when she was wrapped up in a towel.”

Abby clicked forward to find the picture, until she found Olivia’s tiny face, peering out of the folds of a large fluffy towel that Abby was clutching to her chest.

“And then we put her on the floor, to see what she would do,” Ellie chatted on. “She ate a bunch, and then she drank some water, and then she started exploring. Go forward, Abby.”

Abby followed orders, clicking through pictures of Olivia eating off a small plate, and Olivia cleaning her whiskers after eating, and then Olivia venturing into the dining room, where Ellie followed, still taking pictures. Olivia crossing the hall; Olivia in the doorway to the living room. Olivia looking out the window . . .

Abby went still. Ellie had been standing at an angle to the window, so there was no reflection from the glass. Olivia seemed fixated on a window, and Abby wondered . . . no, it couldn’t be. She could see the skeletal framework of the white wicker chair in the corner of the porch, and it looked like there was someone seated in it, a hazy human figure, in profile.

Olivia?

Chapter 27

Startled, Abby darted a quick glance at Ellie. Ellie looked at her, eyes wide, and Abby guessed that Ellie had seen the same thing she had. Luckily Ellie didn’t say anything, because Abby didn’t want to try to explain to Leslie how they’d just happened to end up staying in a house that had a ghost who, by the way, was also a relative and apparently showed up in digital images. She didn’t dare look at Ned, to see if he had noticed anything. “Let’s see what else is in your folder, Ellie,” Abby said brightly, sounding false even to herself, and clicking ahead rapidly.

“Okay,” Ellie said. “The next day the sun came out and Ned came and we went to the beach. And the day after that Abby’s mom and dad came to visit and spent the night. Keep going, Abby—I took some pictures of them too.”

Numbly Abby clicked along through the pictures, making random comments where they seemed to fit. “Ellie, you mind if I make some prints of the ones with my parents? I don’t have a lot of recent pictures of them.”

“Yeah, that’s okay. Keep going.”

Then the pictures shifted over to Ellie’s house in Littleton, and were mostly of the feline Olivia doing cute things. Cat pictures were by definition cute, Abby mused. “How are you and Olivia getting along, Leslie?”

“Better than I expected,” Leslie said grudgingly. “So far Ellie’s been good about picking up after her, and she’s very quiet and doesn’t destroy things. At least not yet. Ellie, honey, we should go—we’ve got to go food shopping.”

Ellie didn’t put up a fight. “Okay. Abby, thank you for looking at the pictures with us,” she said politely.

“Hey, I enjoyed it. You want me to make you a thumb drive with all of them on it, so you can keep a set at home? And I bet you’ll be taking even more.”

Ellie nodded vigorously. “I’d like that. Please.”

“Come on, Ellie—out to the car. We can get the thumb drive later,” Leslie ordered. At the door, Leslie stopped and turned to Abby. “She had a good time with you, on the Cape.”

“We wanted to help, since you had George to worry about. How is he?”