The Silence Of The Library

THIRTY-TWO

I stared at the photo of Yancy Thigpen. Did she really look like Teresa Farmer, or was I imagining it? The longer I examined the photo, the less sure I was.

I shifted the laptop on the table so Melba could see.

“Take a gander at this image and tell me what you think. Does this person remind you of anyone?”

Melba glanced at the screen and frowned. “Charlie, you’re always thinking somebody strange looks like somebody you know.” She leaned forward and peered more closely at the screen. I pushed the laptop a little nearer.

“Well?” I said after a long moment of silence.

Melba shrugged. “I guess she reminds me a little bit of Teresa Farmer from the public library.”

“You think in dim light you could mistake Teresa for this woman?” I recalled the incident when Teresa and I visited Mrs. Cartwright and her daughter and how Marcella Marter reacted so oddly when she opened the door and saw Teresa standing there. I figured she might have mistaken Teresa for Yancy Thigpen.

“I reckon I might,” Melba said. She didn’t sound convinced. “What does this have to do with anything, though? You think they could be related?”

“I hadn’t really thought about that,” I said. I told her what happened when we first met Marcella Marter.

“That’s weird enough,” Melba said. “But does it really mean anything?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. Melba shrugged and went back to work on her list.

I examined a few more pictures of Yancy Thigpen, and I soon realized that they all had one thing in common. In every single photograph, each apparently taken on different occasions, Ms. Thigpen was wearing a red dress with a scarf. The scarf in each photo was different, but they were all vivid geometric prints. What this had to do with anything, I wasn’t sure, but the information could be useful to the authorities looking for her. I fired off a brief e-mail to Kanesha, just in case.

That was enough about Yancy Thigpen for the moment, I decided. I needed to get on to the main subject of my research, Electra Barnes Cartwright. The solution to the murder, the disappearance, the strange theft—she was the common denominator. I was convinced of that.

I typed in her name, hit Enter, and got back over twenty-five thousand results. I knew many of them would be repetitive, but I still had to comb through them to make sure I didn’t miss anything significant. As I stared at the screen, I realized I still hadn’t formulated a coherent strategy for my research. I needed to have some focus to what I was doing; otherwise I would easily get sidetracked and end up following trails that would yield nothing helpful. That was what made surfing the Internet both frustrating and fun.

“Melba, let me have a couple of pieces of paper. I need to make a few notes.”

She glanced up from her work, her expression one of fierce concentration. “What? Oh, okay.” She tore several pages out of the notebook and handed them to me.

I found a pen in the jumble drawer and resumed my seat. I stared at the blank page. What should I focus on to start with? Basic biographical information was the logical answer. I made a heading for that on the paper before I turned back to the laptop.

The first result on the screen—after the commercial links to used book sites—led me to a bio of Mrs. Cartwright on a popular Internet encyclopedia. There was only one image attached to the article, a rather grainy photo of her when she was about forty years old. That was during the height of her fame as the creator of Veronica Thane. The first book in the series was published when the author was only twenty-six.

I studied the photograph. Because of the mediocre quality, whether from the original itself or a bad scanning job, I couldn’t see the kind of detail I wanted. I could see the resemblance to Marcella Marter and her son, Eugene, however. They both had the same aquiline nose and rather prominent brows, but Mrs. Cartwright’s mouth looked smaller and softer. Marcella had rather heavy jowls—from her father’s side, I supposed—and Eugene was somewhere in between.

Mrs. Cartwright at the century mark favored the woman of sixty years ago, but of course age exacted a toll on everyone. The younger Electra Cartwright was fleshier, probably plumper in all respects, but I could see the resemblance to the older woman.

I skimmed the basic early biographical details and made a few notes as I went. She was born near Calhoun City, her father a farmer and her mother a schoolteacher. She was an only child who excelled at school—except for mathematics, which she apparently loathed, according to an interview early in her career. There was no money for her to go to college, but apparently she was so eager to get away from small-town life in Mississippi that she struck out for New York when she was barely eighteen. A distant relative offered her a place to live in Connecticut, and off she went. She had performed in plays in high school and was stagestruck, determined to make it on Broadway.

Other than a few bit parts in summer stock and off-Broadway productions, though, Electra Barnes found little success on the stage. She married a young actor named Ellsworth Cartwright when she was twenty, and three years later published her first book, The Mystery at Spellwood Mansion. There were few details in the article about her early life as Mrs. Ellsworth Cartwright, other than the fact that her husband was only slightly more successful on the stage than she had been. Mrs. Cartwright quickly became the breadwinner of the family, and Ellsworth faded into the background. The final mention of him in the article was an obituary notice in 1947.

All this was interesting, but I wasn’t sure it was helpful. Ellsworth Cartwright certainly could have little to do with the present situation since he’d died more than sixty years ago. I moved on to the section that covered her writing career and the brief flirtation with Hollywood. I didn’t find anything particularly exciting or helpful, but the article did name the hopeful starlet who was supposed to portray Veronica Thane in the film.

Her name was Marietta Dubois, and I had never heard of her. Curious, I put her name in the search engine and found a few pages of results. Her career in Hollywood was short-lived, according to one resource. She had minor roles in minor films, and her one chance at a starring role was the proposed Veronica Thane film. Shortly after that fizzled, Marietta married a businessman from her hometown in Iowa and went back there to be a housewife and mother. There were three images of her, and she did fit my mental image of Veronica. Dark hair and eyes, lovely face, enigmatic smile—too bad she hadn’t been able to bring Veronica to life.

Funding for the production never materialized, and news of Warner Brothers’s plans to bring Nancy Drew to the screen killed the idea completely.

That trail really didn’t lead anywhere useful, I realized, but it was interesting. A good example, though, of how easy it was to get distracted and go haring off in one direction when you really needed to be going in another. Back to Electra Barnes Cartwright.

After her disappointment in California, Mrs. Cartwright returned to Connecticut and kept on writing. She gave birth to her only child, Marcella Ann Cartwright, two months after the death of her husband from a heart attack. She never remarried.

In addition to the Veronica Thane books, she wrote thirty-one other titles for children and young adults. Her sales were consistently good, but Veronica was her best-seller. Sales began to drop off in the mid-1960s, and the series ended in 1970 with the thirty-sixth book in the series, Peril for Veronica Thane.

Other than information about her books, there was no further mention of details about Mrs. Cartwright’s life. She faded into near-obscurity, except among children’s mystery series enthusiasts. Even they didn’t realize, however, she was still living, much less that she had left Connecticut twenty years ago to share a home with her daughter and grandson.

Now I knew the basic outline of Electra Barnes Cartwright’s life. Had I learned anything that shed light on the murder of Carrie Taylor? I couldn’t see even a hint of a connection from these basics to the woman who had been killed.

I pondered the next step in my research strategy. Perhaps the best tack for now would be to dig into the history of Carrie Taylor’s newsletter. As I recalled, Carrie had never met Mrs. Cartwright face-to-face until this past week, nor had she talked to her directly. She had had contact, however, with Marcella and with the agent, Yancy Thigpen. If issues of the newsletter were available online, scouring through them might yield something useful.

“Melba, I have a question for you.”

She looked up from her notes and yawned. “I think I’m pretty much done. I’ve been racking my poor old brain for every little thing, and I can’t think of a blessed thing more.” She laid the pen and paper aside. “Whatcha want to know?”

“I’m going to check to see whether Carrie put the issues of her newsletter online. If they are, great, but if they’re not, I may need to get hold of paper copies. Did she give you any of them? Or do you think she had spare copies in her files?”

“She gave me a couple now and again.” Melba frowned. “I didn’t keep them, though, because I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for all that girl detective stuff.” She paused. “I know she did keep copies, and of course some of them are probably on her computer. When she started, they were all typed on her electric typewriter. She finally broke down about six years ago and got a computer. I helped her learn to use it.”

Her voice choked up on those last two sentences, and I reached over and patted her hand. She sighed deeply. “I still can’t believe it. But that’s not helping anything right now. I got off the track a little. You wanted to know if there were copies in her files. She had print copies of the ones she did on the typewriter, I believe, but maybe not of the ones she did on the computer. I think any paper ones were part of the files that were taken, though.”

While she talked, I did a search on the laptop and pulled up a website for the newsletter. “Thanks, honey. I found her website.” I skimmed the page. “Looks like it’s basically a one-screen site. There are no links, just information about subscribing, and an e-mail address for inquiries.”

That was frustrating. The newsletter might lead me down a completely blind alley, but I had to get a look at the issues. The question was how quickly could I find someone who had copies?

When the answer hit me, I felt like banging my head on the table. I probably had at least several years of them in the house, because I was sure Aunt Dottie would have subscribed.

I hadn’t gone through everything in the house after she died, and I definitely would have noticed them. They were probably still here.

Where had she kept them?