The Book of Eleanor (7 page)

I bolted the door behind me and reset the alarm. My footsteps echoed as I crossed the floor. I realized anew how glad I would be to fill the remaining floor space with furniture and warmth. As I started to go into the apartment, I paused at the door. Something was different.

I turned and studied the huge room, my heart tapping in my chest. I saw nothing unusual. I moved to open the storeroom door, thinking that I should check there when it hit me.

I whirled around and gasped. Every other bookshelf bore a neat stack of books. They weren’t side by side vertically, as I had left them, but stacked horizontally, one atop the other, on the front of the shelf, in front of the other books.

I took a moment to wonder about the oddity of it. Why had someone come in and stacked them on every other shelf? What could be the purpose? Why not each shelf?

I eased my cell phone from my pocket as I walked slowly, carefully, back toward the front door. How had someone bypassed my alarm system? I had even changed the code after moving in so no one, not even Maddy, had that information.

I glanced at the alarm panel, noting that the alarm appeared to be working correctly. I punched in my code and opened the door, glancing back one more time even as my fingers pressed the emergency call button on my phone.

It was just like Frankee to keep me waiting.

I stared grumpily at Amy, who’d been a secretary at the courthouse since we were in high school together. She felt my stare and glanced up apologetically.

“I’m sorry, Ange,” she whispered. “She can be such a bitch.”

“I know,” I mumbled, and sighed. “It’s just I’m supposed to be working this morning and instead, I’m here doing this crap.”

Amy nodded sympathetically just as the chime on her phone sounded. “Cool! You can go in now,” she told me perkily.

I bolted for the door before she had finished her comment. Frankee sat behind her overlarge wooden desk, peering at me from over the top of her small reading glasses.

“In a hurry, are we?” she said sarcastically, removing the glasses and setting them aside.

“Frankee, you have no right to keep me out there for almost a solid hour. I got stuff to do,” I fumed.

“I hope packing up is on your to-do list.”

My mouth dropped open. “Man, you are one heartless—”

“Now, Angie,” She indicated the chair in front of her desk. “I’m not unsympathetic to your plight. I kept you waiting because I was on the phone with several realty companies, trying to find you a new place. No luck yet.”

I sat down and leaned forward. “You know we can’t afford anyplace else. If not for Captain Petey, we wouldn’t have what we have now.”

“Don’t forget the kindness of the council. We’ve given your little home school a venue for a measly hundred a month for many years now. I think that’s pretty generous. But now we have to take that property back. We need it back.”

“But Frankee, why do we even
need
another marina? We’ve got Charlie’s place, the Sea Ranch, the Tarpon, a dozen others!”

Frankee frowned and rolled a pencil back and forth on her desk. “You know as well as I do, Angie, that the Fingers are going to waste. They could be generating all kinds of revenue.”

“Are we that poor that we have to dump a bunch of special needs kids out on the street?” I eyed her, willing her to get it.

“That’s not fair.”

“Neither is what you guys are doing!” I stood and paced across her beautiful red Oriental rug. “I don’t have enough to put down on a place and you know what rents run around here.” I paused and glared at her. “You are effectively closing my school.”

Frankee frowned. “Look, Angie, I may be new to this community, but I understand how close-knit everything is here. But maybe it’s time to let it go. You have, what? A master’s in education now? You could be a principal in a real school somewhere.”

I nodded angrily and dramatically. “True, but that’s not what I want. Mama needs me at the restaurant and these kids need me. They need their school.”

Frankee stood, dismissing me from her busy schedule. I suddenly realized the futility of our conversation.

“It was voted on, Angie. The building will go April first, after spring break. You have until then,” she said calmly. “We’ll help you in any way we can, but I’m afraid our decision is made.”

***

I couldn’t go into The Fat Mother right away so I sat outside in my Jeep. Keen disappointment rested in my stomach like I’d eaten a bag full of rocks. I wasn’t real clear on what I had expected from Frankee, maybe a heart, but I now realized how unrealistic any expectation had been.

My mind lit on possibilities like butterflies searching from flower to flower for nectar. My three-room cottage was way too small and not on any main routes. There was a hall that the Elks had used for a while, but it had huge plumbing and sewage problems. The rest of The Point was mostly made up of tourist businesses.

I let my mind roam further out. Los Fresnos had recently abandoned a youth center due to its age and built a brand-new one. It was an old community. Most of the buildings there had issues and were priced high regardless. Bayview had nothing suitable. Brownsville did, but they were way expensive and the kids would have to be transported pretty far. Ditto Harlingen. The island was way out of our reach financially and property was severely limited anyway.

I felt as though my head was going to explode. Even though I tried hard not to, I was getting a bit miffed with the universe. I’m one of those people who believe that all things happen for a reason, a reason generally made evident at some point. I was usually willing to wait. This, though, was ridiculous. What purpose could there be for closing the school? Yep, I was definitely getting attitude.

I looked up at the sky and made a face at whatever powers were up there. “Thanks!” I muttered. “Thanks a lot.”

I left the Jeep reluctantly, wondering how I would manage to smile and act like everything was okay. Pausing outside the battered wooden door at the back of the restaurant, I tried on a smile and cleared my mind. The kids had to come first. I would focus on them and not what the future held. They deserved that.

I guess I wasn’t fooling Father Sephria that afternoon. He stayed for the entire spelling class, even taking over the signing for Emilio and Carter so I didn’t have to sign as I taught—a good thing as Sally was acting up and wouldn’t take her turn defining the words from Tuesday. I didn’t give her the usual time-out because I felt certain all of them were picking up on the tension filtering through all the teachers in the school. I set them on the task of reading over their next unit while Father Sephria and I retreated to the back of the room.

“So what did she say?” he asked in his heavily accented English. His deep brown eyes searched my face intently.

“Nothing changed,” I replied. “She said it was a done deal. We have till the first of April.”

“
Dios mío
,” he said, crossing himself. “What will we do?”

“Close the school. We have no choice.”

“There has to be a church that will allow us to use it,” he said with conviction.

“Every weekday? I don’t know about that. And what about access for the wheelchairs and Freddy’s hospital bed? You know how old the churches are around here.”

He shook a finger at me. “No bad allowed!” he scolded.

I had to smile at him. “You’re right, Padre, no pessimism allowed. Something good will happen.”

“Yes, I will pray. God will see us through.”

I glanced back at the class, at the kids with their heads bent over their textbooks. “We’ll all pray…while we pack.”

His disapproving
tsk
followed me when I returned to my students.

A quick glance at the green glowing face on my alarm clock told me it was three in the morning. I lay very still, trying to discern what sound had awakened me. There it was again, a low growl. I rose slowly and peered along the hall that led into the living room. In the dim light coming from the condominium streetlights, I saw Oscar Marie crouched low, her ears back, facing the doorway that led into the Bookmark.

I started to call to her, then experienced a sudden, clutching fear. Suppose someone had succeeded in breaking in again? I had reset the alarm system with another new code, but suppose it had been circumvented somehow?

I picked up a flannel shirt from next to the bed and shrugged into it while I unplugged my cell phone so I could carry it with me. I stepped carefully across the bedroom and into the carpeted hallway. I would not call the Port Isabel Police Department again until I knew something definite. I’d felt so foolish yesterday when they’d found no evidence of a break-in. I could tell by their actions that they thought me a loopy, hysterical female, overreacting and not even remembering what I had done or not done.

Yet I knew without a doubt that I had not stacked the books that way. They had been neatly placed in vertical alignment. The policeman who responded first had caused me to briefly doubt myself, but after he and the second officer left, I retraced my steps in my mind and knew what I had done. But no door locks had been breached, and the windows were all still securely locked from the inside.

Approaching the kitchen, I silently slid a butcher knife from the knife block and approached the door into the front room. Oscar Marie meowed her concern to me, but I ignored her and quietly turned the knob with my left hand, taking care that my cell phone didn’t knock against it.

 The door squealed when it opened, so I reached in right away and flipped on all three toggles for the house lights. Sudden, blinding brightness from the ceiling lights made me squint my eyes into tight slits, but I still searched the room for an intruder.

I saw no one. Oscar Marie raced past me and paused just past the first coffee counter to arch her back and hiss. Her fur had bristled up all over her body. My first thought was that one of Maddy’s dogs had somehow found its way back here, and then I thought of a raccoon, or a rat. There simply had to be something there.

I renewed my grip on the knife handle and leaned across the coffee bar to see if there was anything behind it. There wasn’t anyone or anything large back there, but my view was limited by my angle. I slowly moved forward, prepared to dart away if I saw anything threatening. Nothing. As I stood there, perplexed, glancing at Oscar Marie, a blanket of coldness washed over me, a coldness like I’d never felt before. It wasn’t like weather, like a draft, but rather something that clung to my skin like rubber and instantly chilled me to the core.

I gasped at the sudden onslaught. The knife tumbled from my abruptly numb fingers. Immediately, the coldness disappeared and I took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Mary,” I whispered, seeing an image of her in my mind. Clearing my throat, I spoke louder. “Mary, is that you?”

My Swedish mother had always sworn her belief in ghosts, in the restless spirits that walk our realm, but until that moment I had never experienced anything that even smacked of the supernatural. I doubted the experience, but knew there would be no cold breeze naturally. The South Texas nights were balmy.

I let my gaze roam the room. Had Mary left me some sort of sign? What did the stacks of books mean? Was she trying to get them back? Enjoy them from the other side just as she had while alive?

Seeing nothing, I hung my head in frustration. “Mary,” I whispered once more, sadness rebounding within me.

After some time, I turned helplessly to return to my apartment. Lifting my gaze again, I noticed a book spread open on the bookshelf behind the coffee bar. I hurried over to see if there was some possible message from Mary.

Goddess Annalise

The gift of you

Clenches

Draws the soul of me into you.

Light dawns in your smile and night

With you makes each day fresh;

lust chases itself

As need for you simmers

And cooks me into

A new stew

Eat of me and

we grow as one

I studied the poem until my brow grew tired from being curved into a bow. It made no sense. I understood the passion of it, but the name Annalise meant absolutely nothing to me.

I closed the book and had a moment of déjà vu. This was the same book that had been moved my first day at the Bookmark. Titled
Abandoned
, it was by an author, a poet, named Eleanor Copeland. I thumbed through the small hardbound volume, trying to jog my memory.

I’d never heard of this author nor recognized any of her work. I was not surprised. The copyright date was 1952, way before my time. Why would Mary choose to talk to me with this volume out of the many thousands here? Why not a poet we both enjoyed, like Emily Dickinson or Elizabeth Browning?

Oscar Marie purred below me and rubbed my bare legs with her silky fur. She seemed to have returned to normal, no longer afraid.

“I don’t know, baby girl.” I sighed. I looked around the room again, suddenly feeling very alone. Obviously, my Mary had gone somewhere else.

“Back to bed for us.” I noted the page the poem was on, closed the book, and replaced it on the shelf. I shepherded Oscar Marie back into the apartment and switched off the Bookmark lights. It was a long time before I fell back asleep.

Mary’s haunting seemed like a strange, meandering dream the next morning as I dressed and made my way into Brownsville to run errands. I tried to push the night’s strangeness from my mind while I focused on furniture needs and coffeemakers.

Brownsville, the southernmost city in the state of Texas, is only about twenty miles from the Gulf waters. Big and sprawling, it has a definite easygoing, Hispanic influence, even though it offers a large, busy, international port. According to the brochure I cribbed off the counter at one of the furniture stores I visited, the city was actually carved from Matamoros, a city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. All I noted while driving around the business district was that even the modernized area had a prominent sense of history about it.