A Long Time Gone (32 page)

Chloe tried to move in front of me while keeping her eye on the dog. “He's following us. Are you sure he won't attack?”

“If he was going to, he would have done it already. He must just like kids.”

“For lunch?” Chloe asked, only half joking.

The dog followed us up the steps of City Hall, but stopped outside the door as we entered, as if he knew he wasn't allowed. Chloe and I took the lumbering elevator down to the basement, where Mrs. Shipley, in an outfit nearly identical to the one we'd seen her in before—this one a slightly different shade of brown—waited for us at her desk.

“Good morning!” she said in a chipper voice. “I hope you're well rested for another morning of hard work.” The corners of her mouth shifted slightly downward. “I was a little disappointed in the progress you made when you were here last, but I assume that was just because it was your first time and you were getting acclimated.”

I somehow managed to restrain myself from reminding her that we were volunteers. Instead I smiled at her and said, “We actually have a little more direction this morning. We think we have a name to go with the skeletal remains found in our yard—Adelaide Richmond. All I know is that she was supposed to have drowned during the flood of 1927. I remembered finding a few newspapers from that year, so that's a place to start, but I hope that now that I have a name I can look for something specific.”

Her lips had thinned while I was talking. “I was wondering why those newspapers were left out of place on the table, so I put them back in a box until you came back. A good library is a tidy library.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she'd already started speaking again. “I do think I can help you with the name, however. When I retired, I finally started researching my family's genealogy, which is
something I never had time to do while I was employed full-time. Unfortunately, my family isn't that big, and I soon ran out of material, so I decided to turn my attention on other families in Indian Mound who have lived here for over a century.”

“Do you have one for my family? My grandmother always talked about writing it all down—she swore she had the whole thing in her head—but I don't think she ever did.”

“Well, seeing as how your family was one of the first to settle in Indian Mound, I would have been remiss not to include them. Your grandmother actually helped me compile a lot of the information.”

“That's wonderful! Can I see it?” I wasn't exactly sure what I hoped to find other than another potential victim who wasn't my great-grandmother. Or maybe, possibly, the name of a murderer. On all the crime shows I watched, murders were rarely random acts. I didn't imagine that the motives had changed that much over the last eighty years.

“I actually put all of my family trees in a book,
The History of Indian Mound, Mississippi, 1830 to 2011
, and published it myself. I included a lot of local history along with the genealogies.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “I'd love to have a copy.” I looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to open a desk drawer and hand one to me.

Two bright spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “I always keep a carton of books in my trunk. I'll let you have one for thirty dollars. Forty-five if you purchase two.”

It was my turn to blink at her. “Do you take personal checks?”

“I usually don't, but since I know you, I will, as a favor.”

“Great, thanks. I'll make sure to pick up my copy before I leave.”

Chloe and I began walking down the long aisle toward the tables we'd sat at the previous day, Mrs. Shipley following. When we reached the end of the aisle, she pulled a box from the shelf and put it on one of the tables. “This is where I put those papers you left out.” She smiled apologetically, either because she was sorry she'd put them away when I wasn't finished with them, or for charging me an extraordinary amount of money for her book.

“Thanks, Mrs. Shipley. I guess we'll work until lunchtime again. We won't be able to come back until the day after tomorrow, because I'm helping Chloe with a science field trip.” I didn't tell the librarian that meant we were going fishing.

Chloe pulled out a box and set it on the floor, then selected a paper and began to read.

Mrs. Shipley stayed where she was, her hands clasped in front of her. “You know, if you like, I could help you. Until this gets organized and moved, I really don't have much to do.”

“Thank you,” I said gratefully. “Your help would be greatly appreciated.”

She pulled another box off the shelves. “What dates did you say you were interested in?”

“Generally, 1927—but basically anything that has to do with the floods of that year. And any article that might mention Adelaide Richmond. I'm pretty sure that was her last name, because that's Bootsie's last name written on the back of a photo I found in an album.”

She gave me a thumbs-up, something so incongruous coming from the librarian that I had to choke back a laugh. I bent my head and began to flip through the papers, focusing on just the dates and not the headlines anymore.

Two hours later, I'd found only two more papers from 1927 than I'd discovered the last time I'd been there. My neck and shoulders ached almost as much as my eyes. “You know, this would be a whole lot easier if all these newspapers were stored on a computer so at least I knew what I was looking for. This might be all of the papers from that year, but I could spend another month combing through these looking for more.”

Her eyes blinked at me from behind her glasses. “Well, they were computerized at one time. But the fire and water from the hoses destroyed the computers, and even all of the floppy disks they were stored on. For some reason, the disks were kept in the same building as the actual records.” She smiled. “No worries, though. We're getting a donation of ten new computers for the library from International Rubberized Products as part of their ‘good neighbor' campaign. I suspect they're trying to smooth over all those ruffled feathers created from the protests by the preservationists and environmental people before IRP moved their headquarters here. Anyway, one of the computers has been earmarked for records. We'll just need someone to research the best software and learn how to use it, and then supervise all of the data input.”

She was looking in my direction so intently that I turned to glance behind me to make sure there wasn't somebody else she was talking to.

“What's a floppy disk?” Chloe asked, raising her head from one of her newspapers for a moment. Before I could come up with a concise answer that wouldn't invite ridicule or create more questions, she returned to her newspaper. “Here's another good headline you should check out, Vivien. It's from April sixteenth, 1927—isn't that the year you're looking for?”

I nodded. “Yes, it is. Does it have anything to do with the flood?”

She shook her head, then read out loud, “‘Man found drowned in pond at old Ellis plantation. Suspected foul play.'”

“Sounds tragic,” I said, flipping through more newspapers, my neck stiff from holding it at an odd angle for so long. “But I don't know if that would be monumental enough to make it into this column I haven't yet agreed to write.”

“You didn't let me finish,” she said. “The first line of the article says that the man was suspected of having ties to the New Orleans mob.”

I didn't look up, reluctant to move my neck, because then I was afraid I'd never be able to move it back. “A mobster in Indian Mound. That does kind of sound interesting. Yeah, pull that one aside to be photocopied.”

“What's Ellis plantation?”

I paused. “It's an old cotton plantation—it's still called the Ellis plantation even though nobody named Ellis has lived or planted anything there since before the Civil War. The house burned down sometime during the twenties and it's all overgrown now.” I didn't mention how as teenagers my friends and I would go there to drink beer and make out with our boyfriends and tell ghost stories about the restless dead who still wandered the halls of the long-gone house. I'd heard stories of a supposed murder that had happened there long before I was born, but like all old legends I figured it was about ninety-nine percent myth and one percent truth. At that age I had more things to be afraid of. Like Bootsie finding out where I was, or my mother finally returning and deciding she wanted to be part of my life long after I'd decided I didn't want her back.

I finished going through the box I'd been working on, then stuck it on a bottom shelf where I'd put all the other boxes I'd gone through. I'd told Mrs. Shipley that my priority was helping Sheriff Adams in finding anything I could that might help with his investigation, and that the
other papers would just have to wait. This had seemed to mollify her, at least, even though it hadn't gotten us any further in our sorting.

I turned to Chloe to see if she was ready for lunch, but she seemed absorbed in an article under the headline, “Neil Armstrong Walks on the Moon.” Not wanting to disturb her, I decided to sit down at the table and thumb through the papers I'd pulled to see if there were any articles I'd need Mrs. Shipley to photocopy.

There were stories about the heavy rains that had begun to fall in the delta as early as the summer of 1926, and how at Christmas of that same year the Cumberland River in Nashville had reached historic heights. There were ads for men's hats and ladies' fur coats, and for products like the Bulova Lindbergh Lone Eagle watch and Feen-A-Mint laxatives. There were more articles about the difficult planting season in the spring of 1927 because of the rain, and one about a barn fire that killed a farmer's twenty-five mules. And on April twenty-ninth of 1927, a story about dynamiting the levee in Caernarvon, Louisiana, to save the city of New Orleans.

My stomach growled as I closed one newspaper and opened another, my eyes growing heavy. I was just thinking I should head out to the archives at night, when I wanted to go to sleep, when I stopped, my fingers still clutching the corner of the page I'd just turned. I must have made a sound, because Mrs. Shipley stopped what she was doing and came to stand behind me, looking over my shoulder. I looked down at the large, bold letters in all caps.

INDIAN MOUND WIFE AND MOTHER DISAPPPEARS, ASSUMED LOST IN RAGING FLOODWATERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Flush-mounted against the right side of the page were two photographs. The first was the photo of Bootsie, the one Carol Lynne had found in the box of photos from the newspaper archives. The caption read “Elizabeth ‘Bootsie' Walker Richmond, infant daughter of missing Indian Mound woman.”

Right beneath it was another studio photograph of a woman with the same baby on her lap, with matching eyes and smiles, their hair the same light color, although it was impossible to tell if it was red in the
black-and-white photograph. The baby's hands were reaching for something, her fingers splayed wide so the viewer could see the back of a ring on one of her fingers but not the front. But around the woman's neck was a heavy chain, like that used with pocket watches, and hanging from it was a small ring with a tiny half heart on top of it. The caption read “Adelaide Walker Bodine Richmond, missing Indian Mound wife and mother.”

I was breathing too rapidly, and I knew if I didn't calm down I'd faint. I slid the paper away from me and began taking deep breaths. “Can you read it out loud, please? I don't think I can right now.”

Mrs. Shipley sat down in the chair next to me and began to read. “‘At three fifteen in the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of April, Mrs. Adelaide Richmond, wife of John Richmond, also of Indian Mound, left in her car on an errand. The last person to have seen Mrs. Richmond, Miss S. B. Heathman, says that the unknown errand was of some urgency, and might have been to New Orleans. Miss Heathman tried to dissuade her friend, saying that the levees had been breached in several places already and that there was heavy flooding.

“‘Mrs. Richmond said her errand couldn't wait, and then she handed her daughter, Bootsie, over to the care of Miss Heathman.

“‘Mrs. Richmond's car was found submerged in the swollen waters on the west side of the crevasse in the levee at Greenville, where it was assumed it had been swept by the raging currents of the flooded river. Mrs. Richmond's body has not been recovered but is assumed lost, with the possibility of it making it all the way to the mouth of the Mississippi and out into the Gulf of Mexico.

“‘John Richmond could not be reached for comment, although he passed on a message through Miss Heathman stating that his beloved wife could be identified by an unusual watch she would have been wearing. He described it as blue enamel with an engraving on the back, the jeweler's name, Cartier, on the face.

“‘All information regarding this case should be directed to the office of the Indian Mound police.'”

Chloe had moved to the chair opposite me and was looking at me with serious eyes, her two fists propping up her chin, the blue watch she'd found in Emmett's spare-parts box peeking out from between her leather wrist straps.

She saw where I was looking and sat back. With her left hand, she moved aside the other straps and pushed open the hinges on the watch before taking it off. “I've never looked at the back,” she said. “I just thought it was a pretty bracelet and stuck it on.” She didn't make a move to flip it over.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Go ahead and look.”

Instead, she handed it to me. After only a brief hesitation I flipped it over, then brought it closer to my eyes to read the small lettering on the rectangular backing—and then I stopped breathing.

“What does it say?” Chloe and Mrs. Shipley asked in unison.

I cleared my throat. “‘I love you forever.'”

Chloe was shaking her head. “But it can't be her watch,” she said. “Because wouldn't it have been found on the body, just like the ring and the necklace?”