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Wednesday, September 18th (a long afternoon)
They watched Donovan slowly emerge from a rusty Dodge Charger and make his way up the walk. He seemed more tired than angry, and didn’t seem surprised that the front door to his mother’s house was open. Charlotte and Helene, however, were taut with caution as he entered with a querying “Hello?” Simon moved to stand behind Helene’s chair.
“Hello, Donovan,” said Helene, and she introduced Simon, who leaned forward to shake hands. Charlotte thought it looked like he was asserting his greater height and physique as a protective gesture, and suppressed a smile when she then realized that was probably Helene’s intention.
“Aunt Helene, hello,” said Donovan, with quick nods at her and then at Charlotte, “and Charlotte. I owe you both an apology for acting like an ass the other day. Things just kinda caught up with me.”
He looked so contrite and defeated that they relaxed a little.
Helene nodded. “Apology accepted, Donovan. It must all come as a shock. It certainly did to me. First there is your mother’s terrible misfortune, and now this unexpected arrangement with the estate. I had no idea she had set things up this way.”
“I believe it, I really do. You know things have been difficult with Mom for years and years.” Donovan shrugged. “Can’t take it back now, or change anything.”
“Do you know anything more about what happened, have the police said anything?” asked Charlotte.
“Not a word. It’s like there’s nothing happening on it at all.”
“I’m so full of regrets, Donny,” said Helene. “I wish that your mother felt she could have told me about what was really going on when you were growing up and that I could have helped you and her both.”
“It was long ago, Aunt Helene. But everything that happened to me after I graduated from high school and went to work at the mill was my responsibility, the luck of the draw, whatever. Things weren’t too bad until the mills started having trouble back in the nineties. A lot of us got laid off and didn’t get back in, and the unions started losing ground. Had a fair-sized pension built up, but it evaporated, like everyone else’s, so retiring after twenty-five years wasn’t an option anymore. There was a bunch of us in the same boat, and we became contractors, worked on road crews, freelance mechanics, that kind of thing. But now things are even worse, and I’m in my fifties, and, to be frank, I admit I could use some financial security right now.”
“You couldn’t ask your mother for help?”
He shook his head. “No, that wasn’t going to happen, because I never paid her back for the first time she gave me a big loan after I lost my retirement savings and my truck was repo’d. And she was really unforgiving about that. I needed a car to get to jobs, and found a deal, but it had to be cash. She helped me out, but I never got on top of things again, just one deal after another fell through, and there always seemed to be more urgent things to take care of than paying back my mom’s loan. I know it makes me look bad, but it never looked like she was hurting for anything. If you want proof, I’m still driving that car.” He tilted his head toward the Charger, which was just visible through the drapery sheers.
“What about now, though? What are you doing for work now?” Helene was gentle, but persistent. Charlotte realized she had scarcely breathed while Donovan was telling his story. It seemed like the truth to her, and he seemed genuinely contrite.
“Well, my age and the economy aren’t a good mix. I just pick up work as a general laborer or mechanic. I got arthritis real bad, plus some breathing problems. Don’t have a work history of anything like tending bar or sales, and I’m not that good with people, anyway. Got a friend down in Costa Rica, and thought I’d get together some cash and go there. The dollar goes a lot further, and I can get out of these winters here. I admit I’ve hit the wall. I was going to see if I could sell some of this stuff over at Warren Brothers or on eBay, raise a little cash. A lot of these things are antiques now. But it looks like Mom had other ideas.”
Helene looked as if she had come to a decision about something. “I’d like to help you out, Donnie. I don’t need the money and feel it should all be yours, anyway. That being said, I do feel obligated to honor your mother’s wishes about finding her notebooks and having them published. You already know Charlotte’s role in this, and I’ve also brought in my friend Simon, who is a photographer, to help with documenting the contents of the house for valuation as per the terms of the will. Once the notebooks are found and the expenses are at least estimated, I believe it will be possible to turn it all over to you. Or, at the very least, it will be ready for a sale and you will receive everything left after expenses.”
Donovan looked a little more hopeful. “Did you have a time frame in mind for it, any idea?”
“Well, we’re just getting started here today, but I think we could be out of here in a week or so.”
Charlotte felt herself gulp. She hoped Helene wasn’t making promises that couldn’t be kept.
“That would be great, Aunt Helene. I can’t begin to thank you enough for that and I’m really sorry I blew up. Is there anything I can do to help you out?”
Helene looked around the room as if assessing an answer. “Anything you could think of to help us figure out your mother’s peculiar filing system for these notebooks would be very useful.” She pointed at the notebook Charlotte held and explained that there were many more, evidently hidden throughout the house.
“I haven’t been here much since I was a kid, and most of this is stuff Mom and Dad accumulated after that time, or even after Dad died. I put those shelves up for her maybe three or four years ago, ‘cause she was buying so many books. And since I didn’t even know she was writing, I have no idea where she’d keep those notebooks. You probably would have a better handle on that than I do.”
“I was wondering,” said Simon, pointing to the patch of newspapers over the bloodstain on the rug, “if you could give me a hand in getting this rug out of here, maybe take it to the back yard and see if it can be cleaned.”
Donovan paled slightly as whatever hopefulness he had seemed to wither away. “Oh god, yeah, of course.”
It took a while, but they maneuvered the rug out from under the furniture and managed to get it out of the house without mishap, which Simon declared, without thinking, a bloody miracle. Helene winced.
Donovan’s cell phone rang, and he looked relieved to have an excuse to go back outside and take the call.
Charlotte, Helene, and Simon moved to the front window and watched him as he tensed during the call, leaning forward with his head down in concentration.
“I get the feeling,” said Helene, “that the call is important and is not going well.”
Charlotte nodded. “You know how a person automatically speaks loudly if they want the other person to speak loudly, as in a poor connection, even though that is not always how it actually works with cell phones? He looks like he’s straining to hear, but he’s not talking loudly.”
“That’s what it is.” Helene sighed and looked up at Simon. “What do you think of all this?”
“He’s definitely hard up. I don’t think he’d hurt anybody, but I don’t think I’d let him have the run of this place, either.”
Then they heard Donovan raise his voice, and rub the back of his head with his free hand. As he turned, they could see his distress, and he was pleading, “It’ll just take time, it’s out of my hands for a little while, but I’m good for it!” The reply, whatever it was, clearly exasperated him, and Charlotte thought for a moment that he was going to throw the phone out into the street the way he threw Helene’s phone at the urn with his mother’s ashes. As Donovan came back toward the house, Simon and Helene quickly left the room, and Charlotte moved to the bookshelves, pretending she had not been trying to eavesdrop.
Donovan entered and grabbed his jacket and car keys. “Look, Charlotte, I’m sorry, but I gotta go deal with some stuff, and I don’t know how long it’ll take, might be a day, might be a couple of days.”
“Everything okay?” asked Charlotte, taking note of his paleness.
“No big deal, just a pain in the neck, some guys I talked to about a job. But tell Aunt Helene I’ll be back as soon as I can.” With that he strode out the door, half-ran to his car, and sped off.
Charlotte was nonplussed. “I’m good for it!” sounded as if Donovan owed money, which would fit with his own admission that he was in need of “financial security,” and with his anger at not being able to dispose of his mother’s household effects immediately. Just how much trouble was he in, though, and with whom? She looked down at the desk, where there was a small framed picture of Donovan as a little boy in a Dracula costume. He looked about eight years old, smiling shyly instead of snarling and showing off his fangs like she’d known other boys around that age would do when they wanted to be in character. There was white makeup on his face, which emphasized the widow’s peak of his hairline. It also emphasized the tired, sad look of his eyes, a look he had to this day, more haunted than haunting.
They gathered in the living room, Simon in the recliner, Helene on the sofa, and Charlotte back in the wingback chair, from where she could study the bookshelves again.
“I really don’t know what to think about Donovan,” said Helene. “Clearly he was counting on a full inheritance, being an only child and all. I would have been happy to have stayed out of this whole situation, but Olivia really wanted this. I think she suspected that Donovan would just go for the money and not care about the writing part of it.”
“Interesting about the rift that started because he didn’t pay his mother back for the loan to buy a car,” said Simon. “I wonder if that transaction appears in the ledgers?”
“So what if it does?” asked Charlotte.
“It’s about where Olivia got that kind of money. I’m thinking that could give us an idea of what was really valuable in this house, but of course that’s just a guess.”
Helene raised her hand. “I’ll volunteer to track that down.”
“There are two mysteries to solve here,” said Charlotte. “One, of course, is what happened the other day that led to Olivia’s assault—what, if anything, is missing, and why. You’re right, Simon, that knowing what was worth a lot of money might give us a clue. The other mystery is where are her notebooks? All we’ve got to go on is the contents of the one notebook we have and the contents of this house, and perhaps the ledgers, but it looks like she stopped keeping them for the past few years. The one thing that connects the two mysteries is the fact that an altercation occurred in this room, in front of these books, and a book was knocked down on the floor. There are, however, several empty spots in the bookcase, not just one.”
“Well-spotted, Charlotte,” said Simon. He rose to take a closer look at the gaps where books were missing. “They are very dusty, except for two of them, which suggests they were taken out longer ago than the other day. This one,” he pointed to a spot in the middle shelf, “is in the middle of books by the Beat poets and a couple of Kerouac novels, so it’s likely that’s where the copy of Howl belongs.” He then pointed to a gap two shelves up. “But this one is in the middle of, let’s see, Proust.”
Charlotte bounced up off the chair and went to see for herself. Simon was right. There was a clean, dust-free gap between the three-volume set of In Search of Lost Time and another set in French. She brought over the notebook Olivia had given her and slid it in: a perfect fit.
“Well!” said Helene. “Are there any other notebooks there?”
“I don’t think so, Helene. I’m not sure this will help me locate the rest of them.”
“Are all the notebooks the same? You know, kind and size and such?” asked Simon.
“I have no idea,” shrugged Charlotte. “I’ve been scanning the shelves to see if there are any more like this, but so far I haven’t spotted any. I’ll probably have to go over all the books one by one to make sure I’m not overlooking anything. Olivia said, though that they are all over the house”
Simon pulled the notebook back out and looked it over, then looked over the shelves.
“Simon,” said Helene, very quietly. “Could I take another look at that, please?”
He handed her the notebook, and she opened the cover to read the words on the inside cover. “Put the pieces together and bloom. It’s probably nothing, but humor me. What comes in pieces, or is made up of what we call pieces?”
“Puzzles?” suggested Simon.
Charlotte nodded, as that was what she thought of first. “Quilts, maybe?” She thought of the titles of some of Ellis’ music books. “Collections of short songs?”
“Five Easy Pieces?” said Simon, “that sort of thing?”
“Very good,” Helene said, as if to her students. “Now what about bloom?”
“Flowers, always flowers, I would think,” said Simon.
“Flowers, but also blossoming, like coming into one’s own,” added Charlotte.
“There’s also bloom in the sense of efflorescence, in watercolors and special effects.” Simon splayed his fingers to imitate the occurrence. “A lot of technical and chemical processes describe various forms of bloom, and then of course there are biological processes like algal bloom on ponds.”
Helene just looked at him patiently. “I think, Simon, that Olivia was highly unlikely to be thinking of scientific processes. My bet would be flowers.” She closed the book and rose from the chair. “And let’s start with puzzle pieces. I’m sure there are puzzles in the place somewhere.”
“The kitchen!” Charlotte exclaimed. “There are stacks of them under the table.”
They went into the kitchen, and Charlotte crouched down for a closer look at the boxes of picture puzzles.
“Now,” said Helene, with a confident tone, “find one with flowers.”
There were several, but one in particular was all flowers, a field of bright yellow daffodils. Charlotte pulled it out of the stack and opened it. Inside, there was another notebook laying atop the puzzle pieces. The pages were full from front to back with Olivia’s handwriting.”
“I am amazed!” said Simon. “Well done, Helene!”
“How did you know?” asked Charlotte, grinning from ear to ear.
Helene looked thoroughly pleased with herself. “Scavenger hunts. Each clue found led to the next. My mother used to make them up for us, based on what we were reading or learning in school. She would level the playing field a little bit by coming up with unusual or nonsense associations for things or words, because I was so much younger than Olivia and the Lamont children. Olivia has left clues, and I think she left them for herself, so she would remember where she hid the books.”
Charlotte quickly scanned the tops of the pages and saw, like the first notebook, this new one also spanned many years. “It took her a long time to fill a notebook, so it would be no surprise that she was afraid she would forget where the others were.”
Simon now looked confused. “What I don’t understand is why she hid them in the first place.”
“Oh, I do,” said Charlotte. “Even if everything in these notebooks is intended as fiction, it would be very easy to think that she was writing about her own life. There are passages in the other book about a dying husband that sound like first-hand accounts—and maybe they are. She wouldn’t have wanted either her husband or her son to read them.”
Helene nodded in agreement. “Ronson would not have been supportive of her writing, even if it wasn’t about him.”
Simon snorted in disgust. “Maybe because writing itself wasn’t about him.”
As they moved back into the living room, Charlotte checked to see if there was anything on the inside cover of the new notebook. “Where he metamorphosed,” she read aloud.
“So that’s the next clue?” asked Helene. “Daffodils were on the picture puzzle box, and they are a variety of narcissus, which of course leads to mythological Narcissus.”
“Makes me think of the painting by Dali, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus,” added Simon.
“Oh, I think I remember that one! An egg and a sort of a rock-like figure reflected in water?”
“That leaves us with more than one possibility, then,” said Helene. “Was Olivia referring to the Dali painting, or to any watery surface that caused Narcissus to see himself and die because he couldn’t tear himself away?”
“Well,” said Charlotte, “it’ll be something reflective, because that’s where the change happened. I don’t think there’s anything with standing water in this house, but there are mirrors and other shiny things.”
They looked around the house and checked the mirrors. Simon found the parts of an aquarium in what was once Donovan’s room, but there was nothing in or around it that held a notebook. But after a few minutes, Charlotte heard Helene shout, “I’ve got it!”
Helene was in Olivia’s bedroom, holding a mirror; the frame was decorated with sea shells. She held it up to show them the back, where a notebook was attached to the frame with duct tape. Simon used his pocket knife to cut the tape and Charlotte lifted the book out as carefully as she could. The clue inside the cover was, What Alice found there.
Helene pointed to the mirror. “Through the looking-glass?”
Charlotte smiled. “Think chess pieces—or a chess board.”
They hurried to the living room to take a closer look at the round side table, with its inlaid chess board. There was a drawer with pulls on the front, but it was stuck.
“Some of those old knockoff tables had fake drawer fronts just for looks,” said Helene. “Maybe it’s taped underneath?”
Simon turned the table upside down, but there was nothing. “It feels a little top-heavy. I think there’s something in here.” Once again he got out his pocket knife, this time to try to pry off the drawer front.
“Pocket-knives and duct tape,” muttered Helene. “Aren’t we all clever?”
Simon glanced at her with one eyebrow raised. “We are.” He stopped when the drawer front didn’t budge. “It’s glued in tight. Let me have a go at the top.”
The chess board turned out to be a self-contained board set flush into the table top, and came loose with just a couple of tries, revealing the drawer beneath. And in there (almost too good to be true, thought Charlotte), lay the fourth notebook.
She retrieved it, and turned to the others. “I think this just might be doable.”
On the way back to Lake Parkerton, Charlotte decided to make a quick stop at The Coffee Grove. Now on its third location, at the corner of Ramble and Harvey Streets, its current incarnation was in a former old-fashioned corner hardware store across from the courthouse square. Jimmy had moved from a much narrower building in the next block down, which in turn came after his first location, a tiny walkup shop in a cluster of galleria-type spaces, which Charlotte fondly remembered enjoying on afternoons out with baby Ellis. With each move, Jimmy added more offerings, going from coffee, tea, and pastries, to those plus light lunch fare of soups and sandwiches, to the current full-on deli with imported and traditionally-made cheeses, salamis, olive oils, and other fine foods. He also sold fresh breads and simple staples for downtown residents who didn’t want to drive to the big supermarkets on the edge of town.
Rumors abounded of Jimmy’s mysterious past and how he kept his business growing, outlasting seven other downtown coffee shops in the course of fifteen years. Some said he was a front for a meth lab, some said he was a closet Internet billionaire. He claimed, in a newspaper article a few years ago, that he just had a good nose for what Elm Grove wanted and needed.
Like most coffee shops, it had a decent Wi-Fi connection and now that her Internet service at home was shut off, it was the only way to check emails and send one to Ellis. It was a quiet evening, with students working at several tables, and a couple of lonely-looking middle-aged people like herself. She waved to Jimmy as she set her bag down to secure a small table, then went to the counter to give her order for a cup of tea to a young barista named Kelsey, who bore a striking resemblance to Ellis’ roommate Camille in clothing and hairdo. She wondered if Ellis would end up looking like that before the year was out, but couldn’t imagine her daughter’s fluffy, curly hair quite that sleek.
The email inbox was sparse compared to a few weeks ago, when her account at the magazines was still active. The highlight at the moment was, as always, the new one from Ellis. She confirmed selling the piano, and reported having a crush-from-afar on one of the younger teachers. Then there was the missive from Jack, also basically giving the okay to sell Ellis’ baby grand, but worded in such a way as to imply Charlotte was a worm for not being able to keep it. She shrugged it off, and wrote a quick email to Stanton to list the piano.
Sitting alone in a coffee shop just before sunset made her feel more alone than ever. Best get that email to Ellis written and get out of here, she thought, and opened a “compose” window, in which she quickly wrote an update, including the news about Olivia, the transcription and editing project, and the apartment. Charlotte paused a moment just before she finished writing, thinking that in a week’s time she would be living here in Elm Grove again.
“Hello, Charlotte.” Jimmy broke her reverie, and sat down in the chair across from her with his own cup of tea.
“Hi, Jimmy.” She smiled at his smile, and the world seemed a little less of a deserted island.
“Surprised to see you here this time of day. Back in school or something?”
“Oh, no. My Internet’s been shut off at home. I don’t know if it’s their fault or mine, but I’ll be moving back here next week, anyway, and....”
It was a pleasant conversation, as Jimmy had a way of conversing about things that mattered, and even personal things, with a kind and understanding touch. Charlotte found herself telling him about the recent events in her own life, and her enthusiasm for regaining freedom by simplifying her life as much as possible.
Jimmy smiled. “Got a couple of minutes? I want to show you something.” He waved to the barista. “Kelsey, keep an eye on Charlotte’s stuff, we’ll be right back.” Kelsey nodded, and Charlotte followed Jimmy into his office, then through a door to stairs that led up to a loft-style apartment.
The apartment seemed to take up the entire second floor of the building. So this was where Jimmy lived, thought Charlotte. The Harvey Street side had windows similar to her future studio apartment, only they were larger and more numerous, and continued around across the west-facing Ramble Street side, which let in the last of the reddish light of the setting sun. Wall panels suspended from the ceiling beams separated the various sections into rooms. The furnishings were simple and few, and, Charlotte could see, expensive.
“Wow. It’s beautiful. And peaceful.”
“Thank you. My first apartment was small, a studio like the one you’re moving to, and my coffee shop was small, as well—I know you’ll remember it—and both places were furnished with second-hand things and castoffs that I’d fixed up. Then the next place was a little bigger and a little nicer, and so on, until now I have this. But it’s still simple, still peaceful, and still within my means.”
“I’m glad you showed me this. Gives me more confidence to see how it worked for someone else.”
They went back downstairs to the shop. Jimmy went to help Kelsey with sandwich orders, and Charlotte added a couple lines about his apartment to the email to Ellis, and sent it. Then she checked the online version of the local paper to see if there was anything about Bosley Warren’s brother. It said more or less the same thing that was on the television report, and there was no update or any indication that the police knew what happened, other than Wesley Warren drove his car into the pond. The embedded video showed the car being pulled out of the water. There was a side story about Warren Brothers’ Pawn and Payday, how Bosley and Wesley started out as a hobby shop, and then expanded to include a pawn shop and related services. There was, of course, reference to Bosley Warren’s jackpot rare book sale. Wesley was survived by his brother and a former wife, but no children.
As Charlotte was packing up to leave, Jimmy came back over with a paper bag that he held out to her.
“For you. A submarine sandwich. You can run it under the broiler at home, really brings out the flavors, I think.” He handed her a card, as well. “And here’s the guest password for my own Internet account. Even if we’re closed, you can park outside and log on. Might come in handy until you get settled in.”
“Oh, gee, thanks Jimmy!” Charlotte was overcome by his generosity. “I really appreciate this.”
Jimmy opened his arms and Charlotte found herself embraced in a big hug. “Hang in there, girl. Everything’ll turn out just fine.”