No Nest for the Wicket (19 page)

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Authors: Donna Andrews

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She sat back and waited for my reaction.
“You made it up,” I repeated. I probably sounded skeptical. After all, I’d seen the documents.
“Me and a couple of my friends—all gone now, bless them; it was more than fifty years ago. We were at the annual town Fourth of July celebration—July 4, 1953—waiting through all the speechifying till the fireworks began, and Mayor Pruitt—that would be Henrietta’s husband’s grandfather, not the Civil War-era one—was carrying on about the town’s long and distinguished history, and the Pruitt’s long and distinguished service to the town, and I just got fed up. I cooked up a plot to get back at all those stuffy old town fathers, and when I told my friends about it, they all jumped at the chance to help.”
“So you made up the story of a fictitious battle.”
“We didn’t just make up a story,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “We documented it. My friend Grant immersed himself in Civil War history for weeks, finding a way to weave our fake battle plausibly into the real fabric of events. My brother Blair
took the photographs—we wanted some authentic-looking photos to document the event, because everyone knows the camera doesn’t lie, right?”
“Of course not,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether to feel embarrassed or angry as I remembered the emotion I’d felt while handling the fake photos.
“He did a superb job,” Ms. Ellie said, almost as if reading my mind. “He studied Civil War-era photographic techniques, learned to re-create them—you can’t imagine how many hours of research and experimentation went into making those two dozen photos. Edwina did the costumes—we needed clothes that looked as if people had gone to war in them. Normal wear and tear, gunpowder stains, things like that. And the makeup—we didn’t want anyone to recognize the people in the photos. I did the documents. Writing all the letters in different period handwritings, creating the phony newspaper accounts and the official documents—and artificially aging them and the photos, so they really looked old. If we’d done it as a living-history project, we’d have gotten straight
A
’s—you can’t imagine how much we learned. Then we had Grant write up a paper about the battle for one of his classes—he was a history major at the college. Had a class with a professor who was one of Mayor Pruitt’s buddies. We knew if we could fool him, he’d show it to the mayor.”
I realized my mouth was hanging open. All Ms. Ellie’d ever said about her life before retirement was that she’d spent four decades in a boring government desk job. I’d heard wild rumors that she had
been a CIA field operative in Latin America, a DIA expert on the Middle East, or an FBI agent who had infiltrated the Mafia, but I’d always assumed these rumors were false, and that like so many other librarians, she’d developed her fierce will and combative manner from a lifetime of defending the written word against neglect, censorship, and dwindling acquisition budgets. Now …
“So the prank worked?” I asked aloud.
“Too well,” she said. “Grant was waiting to hear back from his professor, and the next thing we knew, there was an article on the front page of the
Clarion,
all about a fabulous new discovery in local history. From the article, you’d think the professor had done all the discovering, with a little minor legwork from Grant. They’d already invited some distinguished Civil War historian to examine the new artifacts, and contacted the Park Service about an archaeological dig to pinpoint the site of the battle. I suspect it was one of the historians who blew the whistle.”
“Well, the point was to embarrass Mayor Pruitt publicly,” I said.
“This got too public. We didn’t realize how much the mayor would do to get back at us. Now I wonder how much he really could have done and how much was just bluster—though when you think about it, in a small town in the 1950s … water under the bridge anyway. We agreed to help hush it up and they dropped all the various charges and disciplinary actions. They didn’t kick any of us out of college—Grant went on to become a historian, and Paul a lawyer, so I suppose they’re just as happy it never
came out. Edwina married a stodgy botany professor and turned respectable on me. I suspect, if they ever told anyone else about it when they were older, they were happy to pin the blame on me. Ellie the troublemaker.”
“If it was all hushed up, how come Mrs. Pruitt is going around bragging about it?”
“Mayor Pruitt hushed it up a good deal too well. Never told any of his family the whole story, I suspect. So after he died, there was no one to warn Henrietta Pruitt off when she set her troops digging around in the
Clarion
’s archives and they found the original article.”
“The
Clarion
never printed a disclaimer or correction?”
“They just pretended it never happened,” she said with a chuckle. “I think a few people at the college remembered something. Not the whole story, just that there was some unpleasantness. Made it hard for Henrietta to get anyone in the department interested in studying it.”
“So she did it herself. And blew it.”
“Did it herself?” Ms. Ellie said, laughing. “Henrietta Pruitt? Of course not. She and Claire Wentworth never actually do anything. They just delegate to their underlings at the historical society—none of whom have any actual training at historical research. There was some talk five or six years ago about getting a historian to do a new, expanded edition, but I imagine she had a hard time finding anyone.”
Five or six years ago—about the time Lindsay Tyler had come to town.
“I assume none of Mrs. Pruitt’s underlings would have had enough training to recognize all your photos and documents as forgeries?”
“I doubt if they even saw them,” Ms. Ellie said. “I certainly didn’t have them, not that I’d have shared them if I had.”
“Do you know what did happen to them?” I already knew, but I wondered if she did.
She shrugged.
“Smoke and ashes, if the mayor got his hands on them,” she said.
“How many other people know this story?” I asked.
“Two or three people I’ve told over the years,” she said. “Not sure why I’m telling you now—maybe because I’m getting along. Want someone to know about it. Or maybe because I’m getting tired of hearing Henrietta Pruitt bragging about her husband’s fictitious heroic ancestors. They had a photo of her in her Southern belle’s ball gown on the front page of the
Clarion
the other day. Humbug!”
“Did anyone ever come around asking questions, sounding as if they were onto the story?”
“Couple of people from the college, but they gave up when they found out all we had was the microfiche of the old newspapers.”
“Was one of them an instructor named Lindsay Tyler? A tall blond woman with—”
“I remember Lindsay,” Ms. Ellie said. Not fondly, I gathered. “She spent more time with the microfilm than most. Ruder than most, too.”
“Do you think she figured out the prank?”
“No idea,” Ellie said. “Never said anything to me if she did.”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” I said. “If she guessed that the documents were faked—possibly from the same details I finally noticed—”
“What details?” Ms. Ellie asked.
I reached for the folder—the one with my photocopies, not the originals. For whatever reason, I wasn’t ready for anyone—not even Ms. Ellie, their creator—to know we’d found the originals. I pulled out a couple of sheets.
“I noticed a tree with an odd-shaped branch,” I said. “Here it is. The one taken in 1953 by the
Clarion
’s photographer. Looks as if the tree’s crooking its finger to tell someone to come closer.”
“Yes, it does,” she said.
“And a hundred years earlier, it was crooking its finger the same way,” I said, picking up the supposed battle site photo. “I don’t know what species of tree it is, but you’d think it would have grown slightly in a hundred years, wouldn’t you?”
“Not that anyone noticed that at the time,” she said with a chuckle.
“I should have realized immediately what was wrong with this one,” I said, holding up the photo of the tattered uniform sleeve on the barbed-wire fence.
Ms. Ellie studied it for long seconds, then shook her head.
“You’ve got me,” she said. “Still looks fine to me. Maybe a bit melodramatic, but so were many photographs from that era.”
“The mood was right,” I said. “Not the details. Took me till just now to realize what bothered me about it—the rusted barbed-wire fence.”
Ms. Ellie shook her head slightly.
“Barbed wire wasn’t invented until after the Civil War,” I explained.
“Are you sure?” Ms. Ellie asked.
“I have an uncle who collects the stuff,” I said. “The first patent on barbed wire was filed just after the Civil War—1868, I think. Even if a few people were experimenting with early varieties six years earlier, you wouldn’t find standard commercially produced barbed wire then, especially not in a badly rusted condition.”
“I had no idea,” she said. “A couple of people spotted the tree before, but in fifty years, you’re the first to notice the barbed wire. Impressive!”
I made a mental note to thank Uncle Chauncy.
“So I guessed something fishy was going on,” I said aloud. “Of course, I jumped to the same conclusion anyone would.”
Ms. Ellie frowned.
“What conclusion?”
“About who did it,” I said. “If you didn’t know the whole story and suspected that Mrs. Pruitt’s famous battle was all a lie, and the documents were faked, who would be the logical suspects?”
Ms. Ellie blinked.
“The Pruitts,” she said, nodding. “That never occurred to me.”
“Blinded by guilt,” I said, shaking my head.
Ms. Ellie smiled.
“The other people who were involved—who were they?” I asked.
“All dead,” she said.
“I know, but what were their full names?”
“Paul was Paul Drayer, my brother,” she said. “Grant Boyd—a historian, as I said; specialized in medieval studies. Guess he wanted to stay pretty far from the Civil War. And Edwina Ballantine.”
“Who married the stodgy professor,” I said. “Was that her married name?”
“No, her maiden name. Her married name—”
“Was Sprocket, right?”
She nodded.
Edwina Sprocket, the queen of packrats, from whom we’d bought our house. Former owner of the twenty-three boxes of old papers. Perhaps she hadn’t completely turned her back on their youthful prank. Or, more likely, she’d had no idea the original documents from the hoax were still lurking in her attic.
I glanced down at my copies and flipped through them until I found one of the photos.
“That’s why Colonel Pruitt’s wife looked so familiar,” I said. “It’s you.”
She chuckled.
“And the baby?”
“My little sister’s Betsy Wetsy doll,” she said. “Look, why the sudden interest in the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge?”
“Mrs. Pruitt was bragging about it to my father this weekend,” I said. “I suspect she’s planning to use it to fight the outlet mall Evan Briggs wants to build next door.”
“Oh dear,” Ms. Ellie said. “That would be a tactical mistake—it would discredit the whole effort against the mall. And now you can guess which side I’ll take if it comes to a fight over the mall.”
“Me, too, for obvious reasons,” I said. “I’m also not sure whether it has anything to do with Lindsay’s murder, but if there’s any—”
“She was murdered?” Ms. Ellie said with a gasp. “Was that the woman they found in Mr. Shiffley’s pasture? Oh dear.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m wondering if maybe I’m not the first person to have spotted the distinctive tree branch and the barbed wire after all.”
“You think Lindsay might have?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she didn’t, and it’s only a coincidence that she was found at the site of the phony battle, with the leaders of the pro- and antimall forces playing croquet all around her … .”
I fell silent. Ms. Ellie was staring down at my desk.
“I hope you’re wrong,” she said. “About Lindsay figuring out the hoax, I mean. Because if you’re right, I’m going to feel responsible.”
“If I’m right, maybe you and I are the only people still alive who know something that got Lindsay killed,” I said.
“True. I should tell Chief Burke the whole story.”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” I said.
“Mind if I use your phone?”
I shook my head. She squared her shoulders, picked up the phone, and dialed a number. I made a motion to leave, but she waved me back into my seat.
“Debbie Anne? Ellie Drayer. Could you tell
Chief Burke that I have some information that might be related to his murder case? … No, it’s pretty complicated, and might just be ancient history, but I figure better safe than sorry … . No, just have him call me when he gets a chance. Thanks … . Fine, thanks. Give my love to your parents.”

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