Daughter of Ashes

FOUR

‘Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things – old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.’

Francis Bacon, Apophthegms New and Old, 134

The High Spot’s bread pudding should come with a warning label. Shot through with raisins and smothered in a sauce of hot buttered rum, you can practically feel your arteries clogging. Even though Paul had the metabolism of a wolverine, I matched him bite for bite.

Paul flagged down the waitress and requested the check while I excused myself to visit ‘the Señoras.’

I had just settled myself when a voice from the adjoining stall chirped, ‘Hi, how are you?’

I thought for a moment about ignoring the woman’s question, but my mother had taught me better manners. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

‘So, what are you up to?’ she said.

‘Just doing what comes naturally,’ I replied, reaching for the toilet paper.

‘Can I come over?’

I shot to my feet, re-buttoning my jeans as quickly as I could. ‘No! Sorry. Husband’s waiting. Gotta run.’

‘Listen,’ the woman said as I made quick work of washing my hands. ‘I’ll have to call you back. There’s this weirdo in the next stall that keeps answering all my questions.’

She’s on the phone. Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I made a quick escape before the woman could emerge and get a positive I.D. If I were going to live in this town, it wouldn’t do to get a reputation as a pervert from day one.

‘What’s so funny?’ Paul asked when I returned to the table.

‘Tell you later,’ I promised as the waitress appeared with the check.

We were laughing over the incident, lingering over our coffee when Paul set his mug down on the bare tabletop with a solid clunk. ‘Hannah, look over there. Isn’t that Fran?’ He jerked his head in the direction of the cashier where a woman stood, head bowed over her handbag as she rummaged about inside as if searching for small change.

Fran Lawson, my former boss at Whitworth and Sullivan, had a helmet of hair the color of flat-black patio furniture. This woman was the height and shape of Fran, as I remembered her, but her silver hair was stylishly cut, floating just above the collar of her crisp, white camp shirt like well-behaved cotton candy. ‘I don’t think so,’ I started to say, and then the woman found what she was looking for, handed it to the cashier and turned her head to the left.

I’d seen that chiseled profile thousands of times – talking on the telephone, issuing instructions to the housekeeping staff, presiding over meetings where she was usually cutting funding for one damn fool reason or another. I hadn’t seen Fran for more than a decade, not since she’d laid me off – along with half a dozen of my colleagues – in a firm-wide reduction in force.

I ducked my head and whispered, ‘Maybe she won’t recognize me.’

No such luck.

‘Hannah!’ a familiar voice shrilled, as irritating as I remembered it.

‘Too late,’ Paul chuckled, genuinely amused at my dilemma. ‘She’s heading our way.’

I looked up and forced a smile. ‘Fran! Oh, my gosh! Fancy meeting you here!’

‘I could say the same thing, Hannah.’ She set her mug down on our table, pulled out the chair that Caitlyn had so recently vacated and sat down uninvited. ‘I retired from the rat race last year,’ she explained. ‘Steve and I bought a house on Congress Street, not far from the water.’

‘Paul and I just closed on a cottage on Chiconnesick Creek,’ I told her, secretly relieved that we wouldn’t be close neighbors. If Fran ran her house the way she’d run the office all those years ago, she’d be cutting her lawn a blade at a time with cuticle scissors, measuring the exact distance between tomato seedlings in her garden and bitterly complaining should the pollen from your dogwood tree have the audacity to drift over into her yard.

‘Wonderful!’ Fran exclaimed. Turning to Paul, she said, ‘You’re retired now, too?’

‘I wish,’ he snorted. ‘No, I’ve got a few years left. Hannah and I will be working on the place. Legal Ease – maybe you know it?’ When Fran shook her head, he continued, ‘It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, I’m afraid, but at least it will keep us busy and off the streets.’

‘Well, if you need work done, you can’t do better than Heberling and Son. Dwight converted our garage into a practice studio for Steve, and we couldn’t be more pleased.’

Steve Lawson, as I recalled, was a conservatory trained cellist who played first chair with several community orchestras in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.

‘So, your husband’s still teaching?’ I asked.

Fran nodded. ‘We have a local symphony in Elizabethtown, too. Small, mostly volunteer – a chamber orchestra, really, but not at all bad.’ She paused as a thought occurred to her. ‘Say, there’s a concert at St Timothy’s three weeks from Saturday. They’re performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto Number Four in D major and Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony. You should try to attend.’

‘We will,’ I promised, actually looking forward to the concert. ‘If we’re going to be spending more time here, I’d like to get involved with the community.’

Fran placed her hands flat on the tabletop. ‘I’m so glad to hear you say that, because…’ She paused, looked right and left, then shot a glance over her shoulder as if checking for eavesdroppers. She leaned forward and practically whispered, ‘Let me tell you what was found in the county courthouse.’

‘Not a body, I hope,’ Paul said with a warning glance at me. He’d come close to losing me in a couple of misadventures involving bodies and he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.

Fran chuckled. ‘No, not a body, although Elizabethtown is so old that finding a body tucked away in a building as ancient as our courthouse wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Not a body at all, but something just as interesting to people who love history the way we do.’

‘Now you’ve aroused my curiosity,’ I said, leaning forward on my elbows, hoping to encourage her.

‘It’s a long story.’ She turned a thousand-watt smile on Paul and shoved her mug in his direction. ‘Would you mind fetching me a refill while I fill Hannah in?’

Paul stood, shoving his chair back with his knees, seemingly unconcerned about Fran’s summary dismissal, perhaps figuring I’d clue him in later. ‘Cream? Sugar?’

‘Both, please.’

After Paul left, Fran continued, ‘Our county clerk retired last December. She’d been in charge at the courthouse for decades. Very old fashioned and not at all computer-savvy, as one might imagine. I was on the search team for her replacement – for my sins.’ She laughed, or rather barked, at her own clever turn of phrase.

‘After a long search, we eventually hired a young gal named Kimberly Marquis. She worked for the National Archives out in their Greenbelt annex. Not my first choice, mind you, but she’s competent enough.’ Fran sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘What can you expect for the salary the county was prepared to pay, I ask you.’

She paused as Paul returned, then reached out for her refill. ‘Thank you, Paul.’

After taking a sip, Fran said, ‘Anyway, new broom sweeping clean and all that, Kim was down in the basement clearing things out when she discovered a door marked Storage. It obviously hadn’t been opened in years, Hannah. Rusted lock had to be pried off with a screwdriver. Cobweb city and acres of dust everywhere.’ She took another sip of her coffee and considered me over the rim of the mug. Was the woman ever going to get to the point?

‘And…?’ I prompted.

Fran set her mug down on the table. ‘When she finally got the door open, Kim found a room full of old records. Leather-bound ledgers, boxes stuffed with file folders, card files, old newspapers and magazines, you name it. Naturally, she called me in. Just a cursory glance, of course, but from what I could tell, some of the papers date back to the early days of the nineteenth century.’

I sat back. ‘Wow.’

‘Exactly. The present courthouse was built in 1845, and there was an earlier one before that, so who knows what we’ll discover down there. The records could have been there since Maryland was a colony still kowtowing to King George the Third.’

‘How come nobody knew about them?’ Paul asked.

‘Oh, Kimberly’s predecessor knew, all right. Had to. That storage room is directly under the courthouse bathroom. At some point there was a leak in one of the toilets and many of the records got soaked.’

From long experience as a records manager at Whitworth and Sullivan, I knew where this was going. ‘Uh oh. Mold?’

Fran nodded. ‘You got it. After the plumbing was repaired, the stupid woman obviously closed the door and put the storage room out of her mind.’

‘Are the records valuable?’ Paul wanted to know.

Fran shrugged. ‘Hard to say until they’ve been examined. That’s where I come in, Hannah. You, too, if you’re interested.’

‘Examined? What does that entail?’ Paul asked.

‘Sort, evaluate,’ I said, cutting to the chase. ‘Make recommendations on what to retain and what to discard. Send some on to the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, I imagine. Keep or discard the rest.’

‘Anything deemed to be of historical value will eventually need to be cataloged,’ Fran added, ‘so that it can be made available to researchers. And the minute word leaks out about this discovery, genealogists are going to be clambering all over us like untrained puppies, trust me. We’ll need to be prepared.’

When I didn’t say anything for a moment, Fran gave me a nudge. ‘It’s right up your alley, Hannah.’

That was certainly true, but I’d worked for Fran before and I wasn’t sure I wanted to repeat the experience.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, risking a sideways glance at my husband, who sat as still as a garden gnome, a half smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He was enjoying my dilemma, the rat.

‘I have another volunteer,’ she said, sweetening the pot. ‘You’ll like him. He’s a local guy named Thomas Hazlett, but everybody calls him “Cap.”’

‘Is Cap a waterman?’ Paul wanted to know.

Fran shook her head. ‘No, an army vet. No archival training, per se, but he’s got local roots that go deep. Also, strong arms and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy.’

‘I can’t give you an answer right now, Fran. With the renovation going forward and all…’ I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure how much free time I’ll have.’

Did her lower lip quiver ever so slightly?

I reached for a napkin. Using the company pen Caitlyn had left behind on the table I scrawled down my cell phone number. ‘Here’s my cell. Give me a call when you have a better idea of how I might be able to help.’

‘Thanks.’ Fran folded the napkin into carefully creased halves, quarters then eights before tucking it into the coin section of her wallet. ‘Have you moved in yet?’ she asked as I pushed my chair back, indicating we were ready to go.

‘Not yet – we just took possession today, but Paul and I plan to return next week to meet with some local contractors, although we don’t have anyone lined up just yet.’

‘I’ll check my calendar and get back to you, then.’ As the three of us stood around the table, Fran reached out and touched my hand. ‘It will be just like old times, Hannah.’

Gawd, I hope not, I thought. In spite of my misgivings, I said, ‘I’ll look forward to hearing from you,’ wondering as I heard myself semi-volunteering if working for the woman once again would drive me as crazy the second time around as it had the first.

Fran walked with us to the door of the restaurant. ‘Remember to call Dwight Heberling. And tell him I gave you his name. You won’t be sorry.’