off.
****
Penelope smelled coffee as she came through the dining room the next morning. Jake sat at the table, his hands wrapped around his favorite mug. “Mornin’, Nellie.”
“Morning, Daddy. You’re up early.”
“I made coffee for Sam and me.”
Her hand froze on the coffee pot. “You saw Sam.”
“He said to tell you he had to leave early and was sorry to miss the clown waffles.”
“Oh.”
“He said he’d be back tonight. Maybe.”
“He’s staying in the front room, Daddy.”
“Did I ask you that?”
“No, but I didn’t want you to think anything else.”
“The two of you are consenting adults, darlin’. What you do is your business. ‘Course, I hope you tend to business the way you were taught.”
She turned around so fast that a few drops of hot coffee splashed onto her hand. “I’m not sleeping with him, Daddy!” She soothed the burn under cold water from the faucet.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Sorry I raised my voice.”
“I shouldn’t have provoked you. I was funnin’ you.”
“I don’t even know his last name or if Sam is really his first name.”
“I like him.”
“Well, so do I,” she admitted, picking up her mug again. “How about you? Do you want clown waffles?”
“I’d rather have some scrambled eggs and sausage.”
“Okay.”
“What’s that box sitting on the dining room table?”
“It’s a box of pictures Jessie Ruth Collier’s nephew left at the library ten years ago. Miss Emma never got around to opening it up.”
“Figures.”
“I counted eleven more boxes not even labeled. Mary Lynn and I are going to load them in your pickup and take them to the school if the boiler ever starts working again. I’ll call Fr. Loeffler and see if he’ll loan us some of the long tables from the parish hall so we can sort through everything.”
“Wonder what’s in them?”
“No idea, but I guess we’ll know pretty soon.”
“I saw Marlo Howard in town yesterday,” Jake said.
“Apparently she moved into the Barnes house in the dead of night on Monday.”
“Rent or buy?”
“I don’t know. She’s strange.”
“She looked right at me and didn’t even say hello. Guess I didn’t make much of an impression on her at the Sit-n-Swill on New Year’s Eve.”
Penelope kissed his smooth-shaven cheek. “She’s clueless if she didn’t think you were the handsomest man there.”
****
Mary Lynn and Penelope spent the afternoon going through the pictures in the box. Each was labeled in the same precise script—dates, locations, names, even a few comments on the circumstances surrounding the pictures. Jake wandered in from his daily conference with the Toney Twins and picked up a stack of sepia-toned photos mounted on cardboard. “I remember Ragsdale’s Studio,” he said, pointing to the imprint at the bottom of several pictures.
“Mamma took me down there to have my picture made right before I started to school. Mr. Ragsdale gave me some saltwater taffy for being a good boy and sitting still.”
“Where was the studio?” Penelope asked.
Jake closed his eyes and chewed his bottom lip. “Near as I can remember, it was where the abstract office is now. Upstairs. I wonder what happened to all his equipment when he died.”
“His family probably sold it as part of his estate,” Penelope said.
“No, he didn’t have any family. I remember Mamma saying so.”
“When did he die?” Mary Lynn asked.
“Back in the thirties sometime, I think. Before the war anyway.”
“You don’t suppose somebody just locked up his studio and left it like it was, do you?” Penelope asked.
“Could be. He lived up there, too.”
“We could…wait just a blessed minute!” Penelope turned the picture she was holding in her hands and then flipped it again. “Would you look at this!” She held it out for the others to see. “This is Daisy Bowden and her groom, Vincent Ives in 1888, and the note says it’s taken in front of their home, and that
Richard Vaughan
Elianne Adams
Jill Smith
Paul Kalanithi
Tessa Hadley
Annie Groves
Heidi Perks
Robert G. Barrett
G.G. Vandagriff
N.J. Walters