Death in Reel Time (3 page)

I crawled out of bed and pulled on my work-at-home uniform of jeans and T-shirt. Normally I try to dress professionally with clients, but Olivia didn't need convincing that I'm good at what I do. She was my mother's friend and she knows what motivates me to do quality work.

I brushed my teeth and tamed my hair back into a ponytail, the latter no easy task. I'd gotten my unruly auburn hair from my father's mixed Celtic heritage. From my mother's side I'd gotten my amber-brown eyes and slight build, though the jury's still out on where on the globe these traits originated. The circumstances of my mother's adoption and her ethnic identity remain shrouded in mystery despite all her
digging—and all mine. She'd wanted desperately to know where she came from and to find out about her people. Though she searched for her whole adult life, she never found much. I continue her quest, armed with lots more skill and training, and with Esme as my secret weapon. Yet answers elude me as well.

I slipped on my glasses and gazed out my bedroom window at our backyard. A gust of wind picked up a scattering of multicolored leaves. They lifted and swirled before skittering to the fence and joining up with a pile trying to smother the shrubs. I'd need to take some time this weekend to rake. Maybe I could get Jack to help.

Jack Ford is another member of our loosely organized genealogy club. He's also my best male pal. A part of me wishes we were more than that, a realization that has only lately come to me. But I haven't let on to him. I know what romantic complications can do to a friendship.

As if thinking about Jack had summoned him, I heard the distinctive growl of his diesel pickup pulling into the driveway. He's a landscape architect with a growing business, and did I mention he's really good-looking?

I headed down the stairs and reached the kitchen just as he did.

“Hey, you're up,” he said. “I wasn't sure you would be, from the way you sounded on the phone last night.”

“I'm upright and breathing room air, as nurses say, but I'm tired. We organized Olivia's family artifacts last night and I spent an hour or so on the Internet searching public records. Then we watched a movie, which put us to bed late. Whose idea was that movie anyway?” I asked Esme.

“Yours, and it wasn't worth the effort of keeping my eyelids
up. No more subtitles.” She handed me a glass of smoothie and lifted the blender jar in Jack's direction as an offering.

He put up a hand. “Thanks, but I had a man's breakfast, steel-cut oatmeal. Sticks to your ribs.” He patted his midsection. Jack is short, for a guy anyway, though he's still a head taller than me. And in the interest of full reporting I should note he's well muscled.

“I'm on my way to work, but I've got a few mums left over from that job I did at the town hall,” he said. “You want me to put them on your front porch?”

“Sure,” I said. “I never turn down free flowers.”

We heard a “knock, knock” call from the front hall, which was strictly perfunctory since Winston Lovett, the elder in our little tribe of genealogy buffs, was already inside. We have an open-door policy with our close friends, since our private rooms are upstairs and they're not likely to catch us in our skivvies.

Winston was carrying something that looked promising, wrapped in a piece of cheesecloth. “I baked this morning,” he said as he came through the kitchen doorway. “Can y'all use a loaf of sourdough?”

“Sophreena never turns down free flowers and I never turn down free bread. Thank you, Winston,” Esme said, nodding for him to set the loaf on the table. She held up the blender and raised her eyebrows.

Winston put out his hand in exactly the same way Jack had. “I'm good,” he said. “Already had a big slab of the bread with jam.”

Old habits die hard. Winston had gotten up before the roosters every morning for nearly thirty years to bake for Sugar Magnolias, the shop he'd owned in downtown
Morningside. Though he doesn't have to do it at ungodly hours anymore, he still gets the urge to bake, for which we are profoundly grateful—he shares generously.

“Was Olivia surprised when you gave her the present?” he asked.

“Yes, very,” I said. “She's really excited about the whole thing. Which makes me want to do as much as we can to get her started, because you're never really done with your family history; there's always more to learn.”

He held up a hand. “I know, as you've said many times, it's a process, not a project. I'm just happy my kids and grandkids have gotten into it; they'll keep it going long after I'm gone.”

“With different technologies at their fingertips. In fact, we're stepping it up a little on this one.” I told him about Beth's former student's plan to video our findings. “This'll be a good opportunity. We've had some requests for video scrapbooks in the past, but I haven't taken the time to learn the craft. Maybe Tony can teach us some stuff.”

Esme harrumphed. “And maybe we can teach him a thing or two.”

“What has he done to get you in such a snit?” I asked. “I like him.”

“Nothing—yet,” Esme said, puckering her lips, “but soon enough he'll do something that'll irritate me, I have no doubt.”

“I remember that kid,” Jack said. “He used to work at the one-hour photo lab at the drugstore when he was in high school. He was trouble looking for a place to happen back then.”

“Beth has him staying with her mother, so she must think
he's okay,” I said. “He's interviewing people all around town. Yesterday he and Beth were going out to talk to a World War Two vet named Charlie Martin.”

“How is old Charlie?” Winston asked. “I haven't seen him in a while.”

“You know him?” I asked.

“Sure I do,” Winston said. “Everybody knows Charlie.”

“I don't,” I said. “And I thought I knew nearly everyone in Morningside, or at least knew of them.”

Winston chuffed a laugh. “He's a bit of an eccentric. Ask our good friend Detective Denny about Charlie. He's had to roust him several times about carrying an old rusty pistol around with him. For protection, he says, like Morningside's Gotham City or something.”

“I know him, too,” Jack said. “He's a character. He's gotta be pushing ninety, though you'd never know it to watch him work a shovel or wield a hoe. He's self-taught, but the old dude knows more than I do about horticulture and he's a good handyman. He can fix about anything. He rides a bicycle around town that he's rigged up to pull a lawn cart behind. I'm not too surprised the name doesn't register. He keeps pretty much to himself.”

“Well, apparently he's willing to talk with Tony and Beth,” Esme said.

“Oh, Charlie would do 'bout anything for Beth Branch,” Winston said. “She's sort of adopted him, I think. When she found out he was a World War Two vet she talked him into visiting some of the history classes to speak to the kids. Yep, he's a strange old bird, but he's interesting once you can get him talking.”

“I like that,” Esme said. “Some people are too quick to dismiss old folks. Like Beth's husband. He didn't seem to have any respect at all for Charlie Martin.”

“Or anything, really,” I said. “He was dismissive about the whole idea of the film. And he was pretty condescending about our project with Olivia, too. Maybe he's just an equal-opportunity thundercloud ready to rain on everybody's parade.”

“Blaine can be that,” Winston said with a sigh. “He's a little full of himself sometimes. But he comes from a good family and gives lots to the community. Donates uniforms to the Little Leaguers and all such as that.”

“I'm not so sure that's his doing,” Jack said. “His business partner, Bonnie Foster, lives in the condo next to mine. From what she's told me I think the community involvement is more her idea than his.”

I knew Bonnie Foster, but only casually. We'd had a yoga class together, but since social chatting during meditation was frowned upon we hadn't interacted much. I did know that she was a lanky, athletic blonde with a deep, sultry voice, and I didn't especially like that she lived right next door to Jack.

“Blaine Branch may be citizen of the year for all I know,” Esme said. “I'm just saying he's just not keen on Tony's project. Or ours. Probably because both take up Beth's time.”

“He seemed distracted,” I said. “Maybe that's all it was. A serious illness can put a lot of strain on a family.”

“Ah, you're right,” Esme said with a sigh. “How Beth and her husband get on is their business. As my mama used to say, you shouldn't go poking your nose into other people's
family matters unless you're willing to get it punched. And what do I do? I go work with a genealogist who makes her living poking her nose in!”

*  *  *

As Beth had promised, the dining room at Olivia's house was set up for work when we arrived. The scrapbooking supplies Marydale had brought as part of the gift were stacked at the end of the table, the remaining boxes of memorabilia neatly corralled in the corner.

“Is this okay?” Beth asked.

“Perfect,” I said. “How'd your shrimp and grits come out last night?”

“Delicious. And that's not bragging because it was all Daniel's doing. He loves to cook and he's so much better at it than I am. Speaking of which, he wants to have you all over for supper tomorrow as thanks for everything you've all done for Mom. He's already gotten yeses from Marydale, Coco, Winston, and Jack.” She ticked them off on her fingers as she spoke. “I know it's last minute, but can you two make it?”

“Count us in,” Esme said, without consulting me.

Olivia came down just then, eager to get straight to business. Tony had set a camera up in the corner of the room and given Beth instructions about where we were to all sit and how to start the recording. She clicked it on and we began.

“First off, credit where credit is due,” I said. “The other members of the club are helping with the research and they'll each be taking a family line. But to get us started I did some preliminary research last night. And here's what I know so far from the public records available online: Your mother,
Irene Damaris Lockwood, married your father, John Lamont Hargett, in October of 1941. Your mother was seventeen and your father was nineteen.”

“I wonder if her parents approved of the marriage. They would have had to sign for her with her being so young, wouldn't they?” Olivia asked.

“Well, you can't assume that,” I said. “In some cases when a couple ran off and somehow managed to get someone to marry them without consent, the parents didn't want to cause a scandal by moving for an annulment or anything, since the woman would already be compromised.” I chose the last word carefully.

“I see what you mean,” Olivia mused. “I think Mama's parents must have been pretty starchy folks. They probably wouldn't have wanted to haul a ruined daughter back home to their congregation. Mama never talked a whole lot about them. I think she loved them, but she just didn't like to talk about them. I had the feeling there was some hurt between them some way or other. I know she was born in China and spent her early years there and I think those were happy times. She shared lots of stories about that time. But even then it was more about the places and other people she'd known than about her Ba-Ba and Ma-Ma, as she called them.”

“We'll likely learn more about things as we go along,” I said. “There were lots of letters in the boxes Esme and I went through last night. And your aunt Celestine kept a diary for years, did you know that?”

“Oh, yes. Her
book,
she called it. Every night after supper she'd do up the dishes and tidy the kitchen, then off she'd
go to write in her book. I hate to admit this, even now, but I used to sneak around and try to find it, hoping to read her secrets. But apparently she had a very good hiding place. I never did find the darn thing.”

“The
things,
” I corrected. “We've found thirty-six notebooks so far. She started keeping a diary when she got married and kept at it pretty steadily, until shortly before she died. Lots to read through. Now, as for your father, he disappears from the public records in 1943. No account of him on census records, never held a driver's license or bought property. Nothing. It may be safe to assume he died shortly after he left your mother, though I wasn't able to find a death certificate, not yet anyway.”

“I suspected as much,” Olivia said. “Still, I'd like to know where and how he died.”

“I'll keep digging,” I said. “But if he was on the run he may not have had identification. He may have been a John Doe case. You need to prepare for the possibility that we'll never know what happened to him, but we'll certainly find out everything we can. Now, back a generation. Your grandparents on the Hargett side were John Corley Hargett and Gertrude Conner Hargett. They were farmers and apparently led a simple life. I have names, birth, marriage, and death dates.”

“I remember Uncle Riley talking about them some,” Olivia said, studying the names on the rudimentary family tree I'd created for her last night with my genealogy program. So far it was more like a family sapling.

“As for your uncle Riley, his full name was Riley Garson Hargett. He was born in 1915, so he was about seven years
older than your father. He tried to enlist in the army in World War Two, but was rejected due to a heart murmur. He went to work at the post office in Crawford, filling the position of a mail carrier who'd been drafted. Riley worked at the PO for the next thirty years, until he retired.”

I glanced up to see Tony passing by in the front hall. He stopped short and put his head around the archway. “Did I hear Crawford?” he asked.

“Yes,” Olivia said. “That's where I was born and raised.”

“I heard you say that yesterday,” Tony said, stepping into the room. “I've got a film that was made in Crawford that you might be interested in.”