Dear Daughter (18 page)

Why was someone storing clothes in this nasty old room?

A noise outside caught my attention. I looked out the window and managed to make out the fuzzy shape of the tour group rounding a building at the other end of the block.

I stuffed the dresses back into the bag and jammed it on the far side of the closet. I moved my hands briskly over the closet walls and shelves, feeling for indentations, for soft spots, for the telltale sliver of a panel that hadn’t quite been wedged fully into place. I tugged on the light cord without thinking, but of course the electricity had long since been shut off. When I let go, the chain at the top of the fixture tapped the pointless lightbulb once, twice, three times. The cord swung back and forth in front of my eyes. Back and forth.

I blinked. Maybe it wasn’t a pointless lightbulb after all.

I hurried back into the bedroom and retrieved the chair, climbing up on it so I could reach the light and unscrew the bulb. I slipped the fixture from its casing and shoved a hand up into the ceiling cavity, hoping to god there weren’t any animals up in the joists. My fingers glanced across—something.

The porch boards creaked.

I tugged harder and felt the something give. I grabbed it, barely registering the blue-veined blur of a business envelope as I tossed it into my bag.

Downstairs, the front door opened.

I replaced the chair, squared the mattress on the box spring, and tiptoed out into the hall.

“Hello?” a voice called. “Is someone here?”

I looked left, then right, but the stairs were the only way out.

“I can hear you up there,” the voice said. It was a woman—no, a girl.
Rue
.

I backed down the hall, out of sight of the top of the staircase.

“Whoever you are, you’re not supposed to be in here,” she said.

Rue was climbing the stairs. One, two, three, four—halfway up now. I held my breath and commanded my heart to settle down, because soon she’d be close enough to hear it. And there was nowhere for me to go.

Then, a scratch and a low growl from the other side of the door at my back. Just as I saw the pointed tip of a boot emerge from behind the corner, I pulled the door open, shielding myself behind it as the possums flew out and down the hall. There was a shriek and then a squeal, and one of the possums hit the wall with a thud just before I heard Rue thunder back down the stairs. The other possum checked in briefly with its compatriot, and the two of them ran after her together.

I sent up a prayer of thanks—and also a promise to give twenty thousand dollars to a possum sanctuary the moment I got myself out of this mess.

Once I caught my breath, I reached inside my purse, groping around until I felt the rough edges of the envelope I’d found in my mother’s closet. I withdrew it, opened it—and felt my shoulders slump.

It was nothing special. Just cash. Five twenties.

Well, I guess it’s better than four twenties.

I pulled out the bills and tucked them in my wallet—it was technically my money, after all—and I was just about to crumple up the envelope when I saw the business card inside. On it was an address:

2130 Metzger St., #5

Rapid City, SD

55701

I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall. Finally. A clue.

•   •   •

I crept downstairs, putting as much of my weight as possible on the banister to quiet my steps. I checked to make sure the tour group was still out of sight before stepping out onto the porch and blinking into the sunlight.

A hand came down on my shoulder, and I’m very sorry to say that I was a total damselly cliché about it: I screamed.

A low laugh sounded in my ear, and I caught Renee’s Ivory soapy scent.

“You scared the crap out of me,” I muttered.

“No kidding,” she said. She looked past me into the house. “Place still full of possum?”

I brushed the dust from my pants with rough strokes. “How would you know?”

“We used to come here back in high school—it’s why the place went to shit so fast. Nothing like drunk teenagers to fuck with a building’s structural integrity.”

“Some parts of the house aren’t in bad shape,” I said.

“I find that hard to believe—”

“Like Eli’s sister’s room, for instance.”

Renee’s lips rounded on one word before settling on another. “And which room was that?” she asked.

“Upstairs, first door on the left.”

“How do you know it was hers?”

“Someone’s been using it,” I said, as if I hadn’t heard her question. “And not just to party.”

Renee’s gaze flickered off into the distance, and whatever she saw deepened the lines on either side of her mouth. “They’ll be coming back soon,” she said. “If anyone asks, I took you to the brothel. Cora refuses to include it on her tour.”

She led me around the side of the house and in between two low brick buildings. We caught up with the tour group just as Cora was wrapping up her presentation of a small steepled church. “This, naturally, was the very first building to be abandoned,” Renee whispered as we rejoined the group.

“A fun fact about Ardelle,” Cora was saying, “is that once St. Barb’s closed, most Catholics began attending First Lutheran in Ardelle, because it was too difficult in winter to make it to the next closest church, which is—is it in Custer? Rue, honey, is that right?”

“Sure,” Rue said.

“But no one goes there anymore,” Cora said.

“Actually,” Rue said, “Joey Macarelli’s mom used to make him go Tuesdays and Sundays.”

Renee grinned at me, then shouted out, “Tell them why she stopped, Rue!”

Rue snorted. “’Cause Joey knocked up Colleen Obermeyer. And if church twice a week couldn’t keep him from sleeping around, she figured she might as well save on gas.”

Cora pinched the bridge of her nose. The stiff-faced mom and dad gave each other a smug
that’ll-never-happen-to-us
look.

“What?” Rue said, hands on her hips. “You should be
happy
that I know. You can’t keep from getting knocked up if you don’t know what knocking-up is. Jesus.” She stalked away, her magnificent hair tossing in her wake.

For a moment Cora looked genuinely thrown, but then she firmed up her enthusiasm and clapped her hands. “Well, enough of that!” she said, “We’ll all be seeing the other church tonight—that’s First Lutheran—as they’ll be hosting our potluck dinner! But now it’s time for our picnic lunch over at the campground. I hope you’ll join us all there—it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet the town’s residents, and I hear that Suzy MacLean will be bringing her famous
fleischkuekle
—that’s a meat pie, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure.”

“Try it with ketchup!” Kelley said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Didn’t everyone just eat a huge breakfast?” I whispered to Kelley.

Kelley swallowed a bite of fleischkuekle. “Five years ago, at the first Gold Rush Days, only a quarter of the town showed up to only a quarter of the events. Then Cora started bringing in pies from some fancy place in Rapid City. It kind of grew from there.” We were standing on the edge of the Adeline campground picnic area, holding paper plates that were limp with fry oil, shivering along with most of the rest of the town—with the notable exceptions of Renee and Stanton, who were playing horseshoes and were already flushed with competitive spirit. From the sharp-tongued profanities that cut through the general din of mastication, I gathered Renee was losing.

I couldn’t find Eli anywhere. I bit into my own fleischkuekle, hoping a bit of food would settle my stomach. All this stress eating would make me Middle American–sized in no time.

Cora came over, mouth pinched with disapproval. “Rebecca, I didn’t see you on the tour—I hope you weren’t—”

“I was with Renee,” I said.

Kelley shot me a look, but Cora didn’t notice. “She took you to the brothel, didn’t she?” she said on a sigh. “Well, I guess that’s better than Eli’s old house. At least its roof isn’t about to fall in.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Was it off limits too?

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I just hate for people to get the wrong idea. It wasn’t really such a rough-and-tumble place, you know—the Percys made sure of that.” Cora looked at her watch. “Oh crumbs, I’ve got to get going. Eli’s already setting up over at the church, and if I’m not there to oversee things, we’ll all end up sitting on the floor. I’ll see you there?”

Unfortunately.

“Absolutely!”

Kelley and I wandered over to watch the horseshoe match. Renee was getting absolutely destroyed.

I waited a minute before speaking up. It’s never good to seem too eager.

“What did Cora mean?” I asked. “About the Percys ‘making sure of that’?”

“Well, this was a company town, you know? And Tesmond wanted it to be a reflection of his own character—all moral and upright and whatever. So he tried to boot out the prostitutes by zoning against residences that housed single women.” She smiled. “The prostitutes figured out a way around that pretty quickly, though.”

“What did they do?”

“They married the employees. The men were more than happy to oblige, as I understand.”

I took another bite of my pie. Stanton had just thrown a horseshoe within an inch of the stake. Renee threw hers to the ground in frustration. “How long is this match going to take?” I asked.

Kelley waved a hand. “They’ll play for hours. Renee never likes to end on a loss—but she also never wins. She won’t stop until she can’t see the stakes. Stanton’s the same way. This is sort of a perfect storm.”

“What time is the potluck again?”

“Starts at five.”

A clang and a cheer from the crowd. Renee had finally scored a point. I applauded distractedly as I contemplated my next move.

I knew without a doubt that Tessa Kanty and Marion Elsinger were the same woman. The photographic resemblance was one thing—the behavioral resemblance, though, was even more striking. Mom and her secrets. “A lady never lets on,” that’s what she always said.

And now, I had an address. But I hadn’t exactly learned anything that might lead me to the identity of the man I’d heard in her room that night—other than the fact that she seemed to treat her brother like . . . her brother. All siblings tried to read each other’s diaries, right?

“Hey, Kelley?” I asked.

She looked away from the game. “Yeah?”

“What does Eli do?”

“Oh, he’s retired.”

“Already?”

“He used to be in the air force, but—once he married Cora . . .”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she said, “he still has plenty to do around here. I think he was talking about getting a geology degree or something—he’s always been a little bit crazy about that stuff. When he was a kid he’d do things like save up his allowance so he could buy a metal detector. He used to spend hours out on the mountain.”

“That sounds like—fun.”

“Not if you never find anything.”

I thought back to my years in the prison library. “I know the feeling.”

But I don’t intend on feeling it again.

I finished off my pie and licked my fingers. “When is the shuttle heading back to Ardelle?”

“Three-thirty,” she said. “Why?”

“I just wanted to make sure I had time to change before dinner.”

And also to break into my second Kanty house in a single day.

•   •   •

God, déjà vu sure is a shitty feeling.

I looked up at the Kanty house in Ardelle and shuddered. It really was identical to the house in Adeline, in every way but its upkeep. In the light of day it was as pretty as ever—even the scarecrow on the porch somehow seemed welcoming—but I didn’t trust any of it, not anymore. The Kantys were related to me, which meant lying was in their blood.

I scanned the front of the house for a way in. The doors looked solid, and the windows were closed against the cold. Maybe I could climb up to the second-floor balcony—that door looked jimmy-able. But then,
no, wait
, a better idea: I remembered what Kelley had said about the spare key Cora kept at the inn. I checked to make sure the road was clear, then I crept through the garden, pushing aside branches and needles until I found a bronze statue of an angel hidden under a hedge. I lifted it up and retrieved the key from under it.

If foolish consistency was the hobgoblin of little minds—well, thank god for hobgoblins.

I let myself in and moved briskly through the foyer, ignoring the vintage radiator grate and the salvaged wallpaper and the stained-glass doors. The family rooms, I knew, would be on the second floor. At the top of the stairs, I stopped. The door to my left—
Tessa’s room
, I thought—was cracked open. I peeked inside, losing interest as soon as I saw the purple bedspread and a well-loved stuffed dog. Rue’s room. Whatever.

The next room was a guest room: Venetian blue walls, a sturdy mahogany bedroom set—was that a George Bullock side table? Nice. I searched the room quickly, checking under the bed and in the dresser drawers, but all I found were fresh sheets and towels and an unopened two-pack of extra-soft toothbrushes. Apart from a terry-cloth robe in a protective plastic bag, the closet was empty. Cora really did take hospitality seriously.

Then there was the master bedroom. It was comparatively modern, with bare floors and simple furniture. Cora’s nightstand—at least, I assumed it was Cora’s—held a small pot of flowers and a book about some world’s fair. Eli’s was empty. Apart from the neatly creased bedclothes and perfectly polished dress shoes peeking out from under the dust ruffle, there was no other sign of his presence in the room.

The last room, though—the last room was his study. I stepped inside. The walls to either side were lined with bookshelves; in front of me was a metal drafting table covered in large, thick sheets of paper that curled up at the corners. I swung the task lamp so I could examine them.

It took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at—it had been a long time since I’d seen a topographical map outside of a geology book. I flipped through them and found a survey that dated back to 1885. Everyone’s land was outlined: the Percys, the Kantys, the La Plantes, the Fullers, the Freemans. The Kantys and Percys had ten times as much land as the other three families combined. I traced the property lines of the Kanty claim, then turned to the next map: 1897. Their claim was smaller now. 1908: smaller again. The most recent map was from 1992, and it showed the now
very
small Kanty claim divided into two sections: one marked E, the other marked T.