A Misty Mourning (13 page)

“Excuse me,” I said.

Craig jumped, throwing a handful of my elephant-sized underwear into the air. He turned around and before I could say another word, one of my bras came down and landed on his head. If it
weren't for the fact that I was fuming angry and a wee bit scared, I would have laughed. He tried desperately to speak.

“I—I—I can explain,” he said, as he removed the maternity bra from his head and clutched it to his chest.

“Your suitcases are probably in your room,” I said. “This is my suitcase. My room.”

“Of course,” he said. “It's just that. . . I. . . “

“I assure you that the ten-dollar nursing bra that you now have clutched ever so lovingly to your breast can be bought right here in West Virginia. It's from Wal-Mart. You have Wal-Mart, I'm sure,” I said. “There's no need to steal mine.”

He looked down at his hand and realized that he was indeed clutching my nursing bra for all it was worth. His pale face now turned a flushed red. “But I—”

“I won't tell a soul what your real preferences are, Mr. Lewis. As long as you get out of my room and stay out,” I said. I'd made my way fully into the room now. He looked far too scared to actually inflict any harm on me, and what would he have done? Beat me with my own maternity bra? Wearing them was indeed torture, but I didn't think a person could be tortured with one.

Slowly, he began backing out of the room, taking my bra with him. “I was, I was looking for—”

“If you want my opinion, Mr. Lewis, you'd be better off to just let me think that you like women's underwear. Any other explanation you might come up with will most likely be far more damaging than you having a lingerie fetish,” I said.

I really did want to know what he was doing in my room. But was he going to tell me the truth? Whatever excuse or explanation he came up with at this moment was almost certainly going to be a lie. So why bother? I just wanted him out of my room.

“The door was unlocked,” he said.

Okay, I couldn't really preach at him too much over entering a room that had an unlocked door, because. . . well, I've done that
myself a time or two. But this was
my
room, dammit. “An unlocked door is the greatest temptation. But, still. Try and refrain. Or I'll tell the sheriff, and your mother, and then I'll tell that very young wife of yours.”

“I thought that. . .” he said, creeping closer and closer to the door until he finally reached it.

“Mr. Lewis,” I said. I held my hand out. “May I please have my bra?”

With that he literally leaped out of my room into the hall, where he disappeared nearly instantly. It was as if he just melted into the walls or something. Which was fine, except he melted into the walls with my bra.

This was definitely one of the more peculiar things that had happened to me since I'd arrived in West Virginia.

I didn't check to see if anything was missing. I think I'd interrupted him in the act, and the only thing I saw him leave with was my bra. God, that really irked me.

I turned the lock on the knob and shut the door, making my way back down the stairs to the kitchen. About ten minutes later, I sat down to the table with a turkey sandwich, sliced tomatoes, cottage cheese, and a Dr. Pepper. I know, I know. I'm not supposed to be doing the caffeine thing, but a man just stole the only extra maternity bra that I had with me. I was traumatized. I needed Dr. Pepper and his soothing ways. It was medicinal. I think I'd convinced myself enough to actually be able to drink it without feeling too much guilt.

My grandmother came in and sat next to me with a plate full of cottage cheese and tomatoes. She did not have a turkey sandwich, however.

“Did you lock the door this morning, Gert?” I asked.

“What door?”

“To our room. Upstairs.”

“I don't remember,” she said. “Why?”

“Because I just caught Craig Lewis with his hands in my. . . suitcase.” I was thinking
underwear,
but realized how bizarre that would have sounded. “He was looking for something.”

“Did he take anything?” she asked, her eyes all big and instantly worried.

“Relax,” I said. “I think he's harmless. But he did make off with one of my bras.” I said it as deadpan as I possibly could. Gert stared at me, a positively horrified look on her face.

“I know,” I said. “It's not like his wife doesn't have underwear when the urge hits him. I'm not happy about it.”

“He didn't touch any of
my
underwear, did he?” she asked. I could see her mind running through all of the perverted things that could have happened to her underwear. She was too old to be having thoughts like that.

Her fork, piled high with cottage cheese, just sort of hung in midair. She'd forgotten she was holding it.

“No, no. I think your virtue is safe,” I said. I began to shake slightly as the realization set in that there had been somebody looking for something in my room. “Granny, what was he looking for?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“You're old. You're supposed to know everything,” I said. I took a deep cleansing breath. “What is going on here?”

“What makes you think I would know?” she asked.

“We arrive Friday night. Clarissa is dead by sunrise, whether by accident or natural causes we don't know. By that evening, the quiet and dark stranger, Norville Gross, is dead. Again, we're not sure if it was an accident or not,” I said, and finished off my sandwich. I chewed for a few minutes and then took a drink of my soda and hoped my grandmother didn't notice that my soda was a soda. “Prescott is freaked out over my presence and angry because I inherited this tumbledown piece of garbage. Albeit a very meaningful, historic tumbledown piece of garbage. Somebody burned Clarissa's will, we can't leave town until the sheriff knows if it was murder or not, and
now Craig is looking for something in my room. As if I have something that belongs to him. What the heck is going on?”

She gave me a blank look and blinked. “Is that a Dr. Pepper you're drinking?”

“
H
ere's some more articles on the boardinghouse,” cousin Elliott said to me. He stood in the great room next to the fireplace, looking at the far wall, which was the stairwell wall to the second floor. The one with all the framed photographs hanging on it. He gave a big sigh and shoved his hands in the pockets to his brown khakis. “All this time. . . I never knew it ever belonged in our family.”

“You did know that Bridie worked here. And Gert and her sister. I don't think your grandfather ever worked here, though. You did know that, didn't you?” I couldn't imagine how he couldn't have known it. Stories about working for the company and the boardinghouse were the staple of my childhood.

“Grandpa mentioned it a few times that I can remember,” he said. “He died before I really got into the family tree. By that time my father had forgotten most of the stories. There were a few, though.”

“Come on, this way to the attic,” I said and led him across the great room and up the picture stairwell. We reached the end of the hall where Clarissa's room was. I'd noticed earlier today that there
was no crime-scene tape. “I'm assuming the authorities are leaning more toward natural causes than foul play, judging by the fact that there is no crime-scene tape,” I said as I opened the door to her room. “Either that or they managed to gather all the evidence already.”

The first door in the bedroom was her closet. I walked over to the second door on the far wall, by the windows that looked out upon the river. I opened the large, hand-carved oak door and was amazed that it didn't squeak. I was expecting it to squeak. “Dexter set the boxes in the middle of the room with my name on them. Technically, everything in the attic is mine, but apparently these things in particular she wanted me to see and take home.”

The steps were steep and narrow. My foot barely fit on one of them and I wear a size six shoe. Something tapped me in the face and I swatted at it, thinking it a killer spiderweb or something. It was a chain for the light switch. Immediately I pulled it and tried to pretend in the new light that it hadn't just scared the bejesus out of me.

When we reached the top of the steps, I was more than a little startled to see Sherise Tyler standing over the boxes with a photo album in hand. What the heck was going on? First Craig went through my suitcase, and now Sherise was helping herself to my boxes.

She didn't act all nervous and startled like Craig had, though. She casually turned around and set the photo album, page open, on top of the open box. “You caught me,” she said. “I am a reporter, though. I will not apologize for doing my job.”

“Doing your job?” I asked. “I thought you already had your story. Isn't that what you said?”

Cautious eyes suddenly flicked toward Elliott. “Who's this?”

“My cousin Elliott Seaborne. Elliott, Ms. Sherise Tyler.”

“Hello,” he said quietly.

“You can't blame a girl for trying to make sure that she has every
tiny bit of information possible,” she said. I agreed with her on that, but her being here unnerved me, nonetheless. Why, I don't know. I was doing exactly what she was doing.

“What did you find?” I asked.

“Nothing. I've only been up here a few minutes,” she said.

“What do you think is going on here?” I asked. “Why was Craig Lewis ransacking my belongings earlier today?”

A look of contempt crossed her pretty face. “What makes you think I can answer that?”

“No reason. Just thought you might have overheard something,” I answered.

“No. I've heard nothing.” She walked effortlessly past us to the stairway. She really held herself with great poise. If I had met her on the street, I would have sworn she was a ballet dancer.

She made a dramatic pause at the top of the stairs. “What do you think you're going to find up here, Mrs. O'Shea? A killer?”

“No,” I said honestly. “I don't know that anybody has been killed. I'm just going through the things that Clarissa told Dexter to make sure I got. I'm anxious to see if there is anything up here that was my great-grandmother's. The woman died so young that there are very few mementos of her life.”

She gave a smug smile and flipped her hair over one shoulder. “Right,” she said and took one step down the stairs.

“I'm serious, Ms. Tyler. My interest in all of this is my great-grandmother. Not the Harts. Not Clarissa,” I said.

“What about the vanished miners you keep asking about?”

How did she know that I'd inquired about them on more than one occasion? That sort of bothered me but I let it go. “I'll admit, I'm just curious.”

“What is it you do for a living?” she asked me from the top stair.

“I'm a genealogist. Historian. I also work for the historical society of my hometown and give tours and such of the old buildings,” I said. “Why?”

“Maybe you should consider being a reporter,” she said and walked down the stairs. “You've got the nose for it.”

When I heard the door downstairs open and shut, I turned to Elliott. “Sorry about that,” I said. “She's been oddly confrontational.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well. . . I can't explain it. It's like she's angry or suspicious of me, and I haven't done anything to her,” I said.

“So, you gonna take her advice?” he asked. “Become a reporter?”

“No. My best friend Collette is a reporter. I hear all the juicy stuff from her. I don't do well in severe competitive situations like that,” I said. “I believe things should stand on merit alone, not on how much I shove it down your throat.”

“Yeah, me, too,” he said and smiled. “So . . . what's in the boxes?”

Aside from the boxes in the middle of the room, there was a chiffonier, a chest, some sheet-covered furniture, and one of those dummies without a head that you hang old dresses on. I'm sure there's a word for that, but I'll be darned if I know what it is. The headless dummy wore a blue gown that, judging from the style of it, was most likely an 1890s evening gown. I know this because it was very similar in style to one of the gowns Sylvia'd had made for me to give tours in.

“Let's find out,” I said. I handed him the photo album that Sherise had set on top. “You look through that and see if you recognize anybody.”

In the very first box was an old wicker sewing basket with multicolored glass beads strung along a thick thread and connected to the lid. Two tassels that were dingy from the decades were attached in the middle where the beads came together. I opened the lid and inside were a wooden darner, paper patterns, a cloth measuring tape that looked like it was ready to disintegrate, and oodles of old buttons, thimbles, and thread.

“Oh,” I said absently. “This is so cool. This must be Bridie's
sewing basket. All of this stuff was actually touched and used by her.” I felt goose bumps cascade down my arms as I thought about the fact that this was one of the few ways I could reach across time and touch an ancestor who had died nearly forty years before I was born.

“Look,” Elliott said. “That's Bridie's dad. And that, if I'm not mistaken, is
his
father.”

I looked over his shoulder to get a better look. And so it went for an hour or so, each of us oohing and aahing over our newfound treasures and photographs. Clarissa had attached little pieces of paper to most of the items with a brief explanation of what they were, who they were used by, or what they were used for.

Indeed, I found a cracked cake plate, many many doilies, a shoe hook, a book of days, and a few things that had belonged to Gert and her siblings, like baby booties and bonnets. There was even Bridie's old box camera that she'd taken so many pictures with. And the main subjects of her photographs were the boardinghouse, the miners, and later her children. There were also plenty of pictures of Bridie and her friends, namely Clarissa Hart. But the boardinghouse and the miners seemed to be her main fascination. Some of the photographs were very artistic, nearly
National Geographic–like
in subject, lighting, and mood.