Sifting Through Secrets, Elizabeth Hawn

Excerpt From SIFTING THROUGH SECRETS

Ida Mae Poindexter opened her front door a crack and peered out at the other brick duplexes on the cul-de-sac. Good, not another living soul in sight! She didn’t want to shock her neighbors, who always wore their daytime clothes, and nice ones at that, whenever they set foot outside their homes. Grasping the front of her pink-flowered housecoat so it wouldn’t gap open, she scurried down the walk, her slippers flapping on the concrete, to pick up her morning paper.

Halfway back to her door, she stopped. In the flowerbed in front of her apartment, a cluster of headless sunflower stalks swayed in the early morning breeze. How had that happened? Had squirrels done it? Those pesky creatures raided the birdfeeder in her backyard daily, aggravating her no end. Looking up at the branches of the oak tree beside her apartment, she spotted one of the little devils scampering along a limb. What she wouldn’t give for a forked stick and a piece of rubber from an old inner tube! When she was a girl, she’d been mighty good with a slingshot and with her daddy’s rifle, too. Fried squirrel with gravy and biscuits had been a real treat back then.

But maybe it wasn’t squirrels. Maybe somebody was trying to enforce the rules of Pleasant Valley Retirement Center, the ones in the booklet she’d been given when she moved in. Flowers may be planted in a space of no more than three feet in front of each duplex and should be no more than three feet in height, it said. Vegetables may be grown in backyards only. Ida Mae grinned as she imagined one of her elderly neighbors sneaking into her yard at night, measuring her sunflowers, and lopping off their heads.

For two cents she’d move back to Wendley Street and plant what she pleased. But the house where she’d lived for fifty years wasn’t hers to go back to. When her nieces Norma and Betty Jo caught her on a ladder cleaning out her gutters, they ganged up on her, saying she had no business trying to take care of a house at her age. Not that she was complaining. Norma and Betty Jo had been generous, chipping in big chunks of their own money so she could move into Pleasant Valley instead of the apartment building for seniors down by the railroad tracks.

Shaking her head over the decapitated sunflowers, Ida Mae went back into her half of the duplex. It was cool inside. Thanks to the fresh air that had come in the windows during the night, she didn’t need to turn on the air conditioning yet. Her nieces would have a fit if they knew she left the windows open, the same kind of fit they had every time they found her front door unlocked. The way they carried on, you’d think Oak Hill was New York City or some other crime-ridden place. She knew better than to mention the open windows. She’d learned a long time ago not to share everything with the younger generation.

Ida Mae gave her living room an approving look. It was neat and clean, the way she liked it, with fresh white walls and a beige carpet that matched the vines in her blue-flowered sofa. A painting of a flower garden, a housewarming gift from her nieces, hung over the sofa. Thanks to Betty Jo and Norma, she had this nice apartment to live in. She wasn’t going to waste any more time fretting over a few sunflowers.

No, siree, she was going to sit right down and read the obituaries. She always read them first—“Just to make sure I’m not dead,” she liked to tell people. Then she’d fix her breakfast, read the rest of the paper, and do the crossword puzzle.

Ida Mae went through the arch that separated her living room from the dining area, put the newspaper on the table, and went into the kitchen. Moments later she was back with a mug of coffee. When she sat down at the table and unrolled the paper, a black-and-white photo halfway down the page caught her eye. She stared at the picture, which showed a necklace in a man’s hand. The caption read, “Necklace with blue glass beads, found with skeleton, is displayed by Oak Hill Police Detective B. Wayne Henley.”

Ida Mae gasped. Then she read the inch-high headline at the top of the page, “Bulldozers Unearth Skeleton,” and the article beneath it. According to the newspaper, heavy equipment working on the new interstate highway near Oak Hill had unearthed bones that appeared to be human. The bulldozer operator called the police, who found the necklace near the bones. “We hope the necklace will help us identify the skeleton,” Detective Henley had told the newspaper. “Anyone with information about it should call the Oak Hill Police Department right away.”

Ida Mae read the article again. Then she slowly rose from the table and went to the kitchen, where she looked in the “Help at Your Fingertips” section at the front of her phone book.

When she punched the number into her phone, a female voice on the other end of the line said, “Oak Hill Police Department. How may I help you?”

Ida Mae’s eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t ready to do this yet.

“Wrong number,” she said in a croaky voice.

In the apartment next door, Claudia McNeill finished her first cup of coffee of the day. Not ready for breakfast yet, she rinsed out the cup and went to her living room, where she pinched a yellow leaf off her philodendron and ran a finger along the edge of the bookshelves, checking for dust.

Claudia smiled at the framed photographs that stood on top of the bookshelves. Here were her children, her grands, and her great-grands, in academic robes, military uniforms, and their Sunday best. Dark eyes shone from faces of varying shades of brown and tan, all with the McNeill look of determination.

The phone rang. Claudia felt sure it was a member of her family, calling before setting off for work or school. Each morning one of her children or grandchildren phoned. “Just thought I’d call and say hello” was the usual message—as if she couldn’t figure out that they’d made a schedule, a secret from her, of course, to insure that someone checked on her every day. She didn’t mind. She loved them for it.

She picked up the phone, wondering which family member it was today.

“Hello, Claudia?”

It took her a second to recognize the voice of the white woman who lived in the other half of the duplex. She’d heard Ida Mae agitated before, but never this upset.

“I was wondering if you’d like to come over for a bite of breakfast,” Ida Mae said. “I have bacon and eggs, and I’ve put on water for grits.”

“Why, that sounds lovely,” Claudia said. Bacon, eggs, and grits would taste good, even though they were the kind of breakfast her doctor told her to avoid. But she would have gone to see her neighbor without the offer of food. Ida Mae’s voice had a note of deep-down distress, the kind that meant she needed to talk something over with a friend.

Before moving into Pleasant Valley, Claudia had never lived next door to a white person. In fact, there’d been only a few of them in her lifetime that she’d classify as friends, as opposed to acquaintances. She hadn’t met Ida Mae before entering the retirement community, but the day Claudia moved in, Ida Mae appeared at her door to invite her over for coffee and cake. It hadn’t taken long to find out that Ida Mae was friendly and good-hearted, the kind of neighbor Claudia had been hoping for. Three months, hours of talk, and many cups of coffee later, Claudia considered her a friend.

“Want me to come right over?” Claudia asked, glancing at her watch.

“Yes—no, give me fifteen minutes. I’d better put some clothes on.” Ida Mae gave a hoot of laughter, sounding more like her usual self. “Law me, Claudia, I’m in such a tizzy I forgot I’m not dressed.”

Kristin Grant sat at her desk at the Oak Hill Sentinel, reading the article about the bones that had been found at the highway construction site. It was a story she’d love to cover. A skeleton was definitely more interesting than last night’s city council meeting. With a sigh, she put the newspaper down and began puzzling over her notes from the meeting. A rezoning vote had been postponed for the third time. Was that routine or did it mean something?

At previous city council meetings, several of Oak Hill’s citizens had spoken about the issue, which involved rezoning an area on the east side of town from residential to commercial use. “A key part of Oak Hill’s economic development,” one of them had called it. “Wanton and tragic destruction of a historic community,” someone on the other side had said. Why was it so important to them? She suspected she was one of the few people in town who didn’t know.

After two years of writing engagement and wedding stories for a big newspaper in Raleigh, Kristin had jumped at the chance for a reporter’s job at a paper in a much smaller town. Her first six months at the Sentinel had been heaven. Bill Caldwell, the newspaper editor, had let her write feature stories. Finding subjects to write about had been easy. Apparently, everybody in Oak Hill and the surrounding county wanted to be in the paper. Kristin was besieged by would-be local celebrities—a farmer who’d grown a giant pumpkin, a woman who’d taught her cat to flush the toilet, a female Elvis impersonator. Before long she thought she knew all there was to know about her new hometown.

But when Bill asked her to start covering city council meetings, Kristin realized how much she didn’t know about Oak Hill. With a little help from Steve Jacobs, the reporter who’d handled that assignment previously, she’d managed to write two articles, but she couldn’t keep asking Steve to bail her out. Worse yet, yesterday Bill had told her—with a big smile, as if it were news she’d be glad to hear—that he was thinking of having her cover the county commissioners’ meetings, too. Kristin knew even less about Yarborough County politics than she did about the issues in Oak Hill.

She was about to ask Steve to explain the rezoning vote when her phone rang.

“This is Ida Mae Poindexter,” the caller said. “You wrote a story about me for the newspaper.”

That narrowed it down to what—two hundred people? Kristin jotted down the woman’s name and tried to remember who she was.

“I won the Valentine’s Day contest. Remember, the paper wanted people to send in romantic stories? I sent one about my late husband Odell and me. You and the photographer came to my house. I was living on Wendley Street then. You ate some of my pound cake.”

Oh, yes, the pound cake. Kristin remembered it perfectly. Not the bland, crumbly stuff sold at the grocery store, palatable only if covered with strawberries and whipped cream, but a rich, moist cake with hints of lemon and vanilla, warm from the oven. She and Matt Trexler, the Sentinel photographer, had each eaten two big slices of it.

“Of course I remember you, Mrs. Poindexter,” Kristin said.

“I want to talk to you about that skeleton, the one in this morning’s paper. But I can’t do it on the phone. Can you come to see me?”

The article about the skeleton had been written by Steve Jacobs, who handled all the Sentinel’s stories having to do with the police or crime. Kristin briefly considered referring the caller to Steve. But her reporter’s curiosity—or was it the thought of Mrs. Poindexter’s culinary skills?—made her say “I’ll be right there.”

By the time Ida Mae had explained how to find her apartment, Kristin had her purse and keys in her hand. The city council article could wait. A woman who made such scrumptious cake certainly merited another visit.

Claudia was peering through the blinds in Ida Mae’s living room when a little red car pulled up to the curb in front of the duplex.

“She’s here,” Claudia said. She turned to Ida Mae, who was seated on the sofa, fanning herself with a magazine. Claudia could see that stress had taken a toll on her friend. Several of Ida Mae’s tightly-permed white curls were sticking out at strange angles from her head, and the elasticized waistband of her navy and red top had ridden up, exposing a half-inch of white nylon underwear above her navy blue pants.

“You sit still and compose yourself,” Claudia said, “and I’ll answer the door.”

“I’m composed,” Ida Mae said. “I’m just worn out from washing those dishes like we were going to a house afire. I swan, Claudia, I thought I was the workingest woman I knew, but you beat all.”

Claudia smiled. In the three months they’d known each other, Ida Mae had never let her do so much as carry an empty coffee cup to the kitchen. This morning Ida Mae had called the newspaper reporter while the remains of breakfast were still on the table and then had launched into a frenzy of table-clearing and dishwashing. Claudia had suggested that they put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, but Ida Mae replied that washing them by hand would take only a jiffy. When Claudia pitched in to help, her friend hadn’t objected.

No, Ida Mae clearly wasn’t herself this morning. During breakfast she’d been cheerful one minute and teary the next. Claudia had tried to convince her that finding the necklace near the bones didn’t necessarily mean anything bad. Maybe the bulldozer had dug up part of an old family cemetery everybody had forgotten about. Maybe the necklace hadn’t been on the skeleton at all, but had been dropped there by someone else. But Ida Mae hadn’t been convinced.

As Claudia watched from the window, a young woman left the car and started up the walk. With her long blond hair, sandals, and flowered skirt that almost reached her ankles, she reminded Claudia of one of those hippie girls in the ’60s. She was skinny, and she looked about fourteen. But so did Claudia’s grandson Michael, and he was a neurosurgeon.

“You must be the reporter from the Sentinel,” Claudia said with a welcoming smile as she opened the door.

“Mrs. Poindexter?” The reporter looked puzzled. Claudia realized she must have been expecting a white woman.

“I’m right here,” Ida Mae said, getting up from the sofa. “This is my friend, Claudia McNeill, who lives next door.” She gestured toward the table in the dining area. “Why don’t we sit over there? We’ve just finished breakfast, but it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to fix you some bacon and eggs and grits.”

Claudia smiled. Ida Mae, who loved to feed people, was beginning to sound like herself again. She probably thought the reporter needed to gain a few pounds. Claudia and Ida Mae didn’t hold with all the dieting people did these days. They agreed that most of the actresses on TV looked just plain scrawny.

“Oh, no, I’ve eaten,” Kristin said.

“Some coffee? And a slice of pound cake? I made the cake yesterday afternoon, so it’s good and fresh, and I started a pot of coffee right before you drove up.”

The reporter’s face broke into a smile. “Thanks. That sounds good.”

As Ida Mae bustled off toward the kitchen, Claudia took a closer look at the young woman. Her hair color seemed real, but you could never tell these days. She wasn’t from around here, unless Grant was her married name. The Grants in Yarborough County, the white ones anyway, were tall people. There was no wedding band on the girl’s left hand, so she must be single. Even if married women called themselves Ms. and didn’t take their husbands’ names, they still seemed to want rings, Claudia had noticed.

A few minutes later, Kristin was seated at the table with a steaming mug of coffee and a generous slice of pound cake in front of her. She still wasn’t sure why she was here, but if the cake was half as good as it looked, the visit wouldn’t be a total loss.

Ida Mae brought mugs of coffee for herself and Claudia, along with a blue pottery cream pitcher that matched the sugar bowl and salt and pepper shakers already on the table. Then she tried to persuade Claudia to have a piece of cake, too.

“I couldn’t eat another bite,” Claudia said. “That breakfast you fixed will last me all day.”

The cake was even better than Kristin remembered. “This is wonderful,” she told her hostess.

“Ida Mae makes real good pound cake,” Claudia said, nodding in agreement. “Now me, after close to sixty years of feeding my family, I’d almost rather eat store-bought food than cook, but Ida Mae enjoys it.”

“Cooking calms me down,” Ida Mae said. “Like this morning, I was mighty upset. But after I stirred up some breakfast for Claudia and me, I knew what I should do, which was call you.” She pointed to the headline in the newspaper that lay on the table, and her eyes brimmed with tears.

Kristin had rarely encountered tears on her job, so she didn’t know what to do. Before she could decide whether to pat Ida Mae’s hand, offer her a tissue, or wait until she calmed down, Claudia took over.

“She’s scared those bones they found are her sister’s. The one who disappeared.”

Kristin didn’t remember an elderly woman disappearing in the six months she’d been in Oak Hill. Maybe it had happened earlier. “Your sister is missing? How long has she been gone?”

Ida Mae took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed her eyes. “Since 1946.”

Kristin eyes widened. That was—how many years ago? How old would Ida Mae have been then?

“She has proof,” Claudia said. “Show her, Ida Mae.”

Ida Mae went to the china cabinet in a corner of the dining area, took something out, and brought it to Kristin—a necklace of blue beads interspersed with silver links, a duplicate of the one in the newspaper picture.

“My husband gave me this,” she said. “My sister Vonda thought it was so pretty, I bought her one like it for her birthday, right before—” She shook her head.

“Before she disappeared?”

“From the face of the earth.” Ida Mae wiped away a few more tears. “Not a phone call, not a Christmas card. But we never gave up hope.”

“Have you told the police this?”

“Oh, we’re going to do that,” Claudia said, “but we wanted to talk to you first.”

“Me? What can I do?”

The two older women looked dumbfounded.

“Why, you can put it in the paper, of course,” Ida Mae said. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Do you have something to write with?”

Kristin suppressed a grin. She should have known. In Oak Hill, neither triumph nor tragedy would be complete without being written up in the Sentinel. She pulled a pen and notebook from her purse. “I have everything I need. But after I interview you, may I drive you to the police station?”

“You won’t have to do that. They’ll come here. Claudia’s going to call them while I talk to you.”

“In that case,” Kristin said, spearing the last bit of cake with her fork, “let’s get on with the interview.”

Twenty minutes later Kristin was on Ida Mae’s sofa, talking to Bill Caldwell on her cell phone. Ida Mae and Claudia were in the kitchen, where they’d retreated when Kristin said she needed to call the newspaper editor. Kristin explained to Bill that Ida Mae’s sister Vonda had disappeared in 1946. The family thought she’d eloped with a man named Harvey Dawkins, but they hadn’t seen her since then. Ida Mae was afraid the bones unearthed at the site of the new highway were her sister’s.

“She showed me an entry in the family Bible and some old photos, so I know the sister existed,” Kristin murmured into the phone. “Ida Mae has a necklace that looks like the one in the paper, and she says her sister had one that was identical. The sister took a suitcase when she left, and the story in the Sentinel said that hardware, probably from a suitcase, was found near the skeleton.”

“Sounds like a front-page story for the paper,” Bill said.

Kristin held her breath. This was the point where he’d say he wanted Steve to write the article. Instead he asked, “Can you handle it, Kristin?”

“Sure,” she said, beaming. “I’ll need Matt to take photos. Ida Mae and her necklace will make a great picture.”

“You’ll need to include the law enforcement angle, too. Do the police think the bones are the remains of Mrs. Poindexter’s sister? Are they treating it as a suspicious death? That sort of thing.”

“The police are on their way here now. I’ll try to find out all I can.”

As she hung up, Kristin heard voices outside. She looked out the front window and saw two men in dark suits, white shirts, and dark ties. Unless they were Mormon missionaries, they had to be cops.

When Ida Mae invited them in, one of the men, a stocky blond with a buzz cut, gave Kristin a suspicious look.

“I’m Detective Henley,” he said.

Apparently he expected her to identify herself, too. “Kristin Grant,” she said. She extended her hand, not planning to tell him she was a reporter.

“I’m Detective Ray Shelton,” his companion said with a smile, shaking the hand Henley had ignored. Detective Shelton was tall and broad-shouldered, with deep brown skin and close-cropped hair. His suit looked more expensive than Detective Henley’s and was far less rumpled.

“Kristin works for the Sentinel,” Ida Mae said, dashing Kristin’s hopes of keeping her profession a secret. “She’s going to write this up for the paper.”

Detective Henley frowned. “This is a police investigation, Ms. Grant. We can’t have a reporter here.”

“We’ll be glad to talk with you after we’ve interviewed Mrs. Poindexter,” Detective Shelton put in smoothly. “I imagine she’d prefer to speak with us in private.”

Kristin felt sure she’d learn more if she listened to the detectives’ conversation with Ida Mae. She turned to her hostess for help.

“I want Kristin to be here. Claudia, too.” Ida Mae’s shoulders slumped, and she wiped her eyes with a tissue. “This is rough on me. I need them here for support.”

“Ida Mae’s having a hard time, Ray,” Claudia said to Detective Shelton. “If she wants Kristin here, let her stay.”

Detective Shelton gave Claudia an affectionate smile. “All right, Grandma, you win.” He turned to his partner with a sheepish grin. “I’ve never disobeyed my grandmother in my entire thirty-two years, and I’m not about to start now.”

Kristin bit her lip to keep from smiling. Grandma? No wonder Claudia and Ida Mae were so sure they wouldn’t need to go to the police station. Claudia had clout.

Detective Henley’s frown deepened, and his face took on a reddish tinge. Kristin could see the man was upset. Did he hate the press, she wondered, or was he ticked off at being outranked by a grandmother?Ida Mae gave her eyes one last swipe. Then her face brightened. “Why don’t we all sit down? And Wayne and Ray, wouldn’t you like a slice of pound cake and a cup of coffee while we talk?”

Sifting Through Secrets

SIFTING THROUGH SECRETS

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Excerpt From SIFTING THROUGH SECRETS

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