Haunting Melody (15 page)

Finally he nodded. “That makes sense. I’ve
been given a job in Memphis and we’ve traveled down to find
housing.”

“Wait. Traveled down isn’t going to cut it.
Alabama, my supposed hometown, is south, remember.”

“My geography is good, Mel. But I’ve never
been to Alabama and I don’t have your skill for deception. I’ve
lived in New York my whole life.”

“Ah. Well, okay. We met here halfway? Um. I
met you on a trip to New York. How’s that?”

Briley groaned.“It stinks. But with any luck
your relatives will be as spoony as you are and accept it.”

He leaned down and picked up both of our
suitcases. Needless to say, mine was light since I’d borrowed both
the luggage and only two dresses from inside from Bettina’s closet.
But I still shook my head. “I’ll carry my own, Briley. Team effort,
remember?”

His mouth set and I saw years of training to
take care of the little woman, including bearing all parcels and
equipment, battle his desire to catch up to a rapidly changing
modern age. Finally he handed me my bags. “You win. Equal rights
for women, you say? When?”

"Good question," I mused, but grinned and
said, “We get to vote in a couple of years. We get to do just about
everything else starting in the 1960s when the women’s movement got
started. Talk about suffragettes! Wait’ll I tell you the tales of
marching, petitions and picketing.” I quickly added, “Look! There’s
a streetcar? Wanna grab it?”

“Anything to avoid this discussion. Yes.”

We ran, jumped on the trolley, paid a puny
fare then settled back to ride to my ancestors’ residence. I
eagerly stuck my face out the window and tried to get my bearings
in a downtown that had changed dramatically from the last time I’d
been walking through it.

I didn’t recognize a single building. The
faces I saw were primarily black. I remembered that in Memphis
history this area had housed black businesses, churches. It was a
stark and sad contrast to the Memphis I’d grown up in with the
mixture of races and the constant carnival atmosphere of Beale
Street with rock n’ roll clubs, restaurants catering to every
country, plus jazz and blues joints still packing in music lovers
all year around.

I felt a longing for that Memphis so strong
it nearly choked me. I’d been in this city in 1919 for barely an
hour yet I was already saddened by the buildings in disrepair and
the fact that, while Briley and I shared this trolley with about
six African-American riders, they sat in the back. The knowledge
that it would be another forty years before they ventured toward
the front made me sick and angry. I sat back in my seat, depressed.
The thought that this was not my time overwhelmed me. I couldn’t
even focus on why Briley and I had made this mission to
Memphis.

Briley was watching me as though trying to
read my thoughts. He touched my hand. “It’ll change, Mel. You told
me that yourself. And it will change for the better. Don’t let your
own present override someone else’s past.”

I smiled. “Thanks. Thanks for understanding.”
I lowered my voice even though no one seemed to be listening.
Everyone was busy fanning his or herself to try and find a bit of
relief from the stifling heat. “Honestly? I’m scared. I’m scared
I’ll never see my Dad or Savanna again. I’m terrified this will
turn into a wild goose chase and we’ll never find Denise and Nevin.
And, there’s one other thing. I keep getting this creepy feeling
someone is watching us.”

Briley patted my hand. Our positions had
reversed. His tone held the confidence I’d lost somewhere crossing
the border listening to gibberish spoken by the traveling
spinsters.

“Mel. No one beside Flo Ziegfeld and Mrs.
Donovan are even aware we’ve gone. And Flo’s off in the country for
a week and Mrs. Donovan is not going to blab about us to strangers.
Secondly, we’re going to find Denise and Nevin and any others held
against their will. And lastly, we’ll find a way to get you home
again if we have to borrow Mrs. Donovan's magic broomstick to do
it.” His voice caught. His next words were spoken so softly I
wasn’t sure if I’d heard him correctly. “If that’s what you really
want.”

I started to tell him I wanted to be back in
the 21st Century, but I wanted him to be there with me. The
streetcar hit a bump and I nearly fell onto the floor. I regained
my balance in time to look out the window. I squealed.

“It’s Schwab’s! My gosh! It’s A.
Schwab’s!”

“What?”

“The department store. It’s still in Memphis.
And it looks the same. This is so cool!”

Briley joined me in sticking my head
completely out of the trolley to gaze with rapture on the oldest
building in Memphis. Even the famous shoe was in the window.”

Briley pointed. “Why is only one shoe in the
display?”

I grinned. “Mr. Schwab had a break-in
sometime in the late 1800s. The only item taken was one shoe. So he
kept it there in the window as a reminder of the burglarly. Okay.
I’m calm now. I’ve got a grip again.” I waved as we passed the
store. “Thanks, Abie Schwab, for putting me back in touch with
reality.”

Briley winked. “It’ll take more than a shoe
in a window front to achieve that.”

“Depends on the shoe and the window “ I
chuckled as I grabbed my suitcase. “This is our stop. Wow.
Great-great Aunt Teresa lived here too until she died in 1982. I
inherited a ton of her stuff. This is so weird. I’m going to
actually get to meet her.”

The Flynn residence was a typical big
Southern house, complete with veranda and rocking chairs inviting
visitors to come “set a spell.” The lawn was neatly trimmed and a
stone path led from the street through the lawn up to the
porch.

We were at the front door. I stared at the
large brass chimes. Once either of us let it sound there was no
turning back. A wave of fear hit me again but it was too late.
Briley had taken charge and was jangling bells for all he was
worth.

The door opened immediately. I stood facing
with a near-mirror image of myself. Great-great aunt Teresa Flynn,
age twenty-five, wearing black gaucho pants, a black shirt and
black boots stood in the doorway staring first at me, then at
Briley, then back at me. She flashed a grin then gestured for us to
come inside. “Welcome home, Melody.”

If Briley hadn’t noted the shudder that
overtook my body and caught me as I stepped backwards, I’d’ve
either fainted in the doorway or run screaming from the Flynn
residence shrieking Fiona Belle’s name along with Teresa’s. How the
heck did my aunt know who I was?

Briley’s arm steadied me. I suddenly
remembered I’d been named after another Melody in the family, a
first cousin to Teresa. My Dad used to tell me family stories.
There’d been one about Melody, from the Alabama branch of Flynn’s.
She’d left the South during World War One and just dropped out of
sight and communication.

This was good. This meant Teresa assumed I
was that Melody and would graciously allow her cousin and a strange
man to enter the house without benefit of passport, driver’s
license or a plausible reason for showing up on the doorstep.

I smiled tentatively. “Teresa? Yes? It’s, uh,
been awhile?”

That wicked grin flashed again and I had this
certainty that my aunt knew damn well I was not cousin Melody from
Alabama, but her time-traveling great-great niece, Mel.

“Yes indeed. Well, don’t y’all just stand
there bakin’ in the heat. Come inside and I’ll get Agnes to fix us
all some lemonade.”

“Agnes?” I asked.

She nodded. “She came in with the new crop of
Irish workin’ the lumber mill. She’s only thirteen, but her Mama
and Daddy insisted she work for us and stay here while they’re
travelin’ around Ireland. Can’t let their darling daughter stay
alone.” She exhaled loudly. “I do so long for the time when women
don’t have to have someone hoverin’ every damned day. I’m perfectly
capable of livin’ on my own.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Teresa
Flynn was a card-carrying suffragette. She’d written in her diary
(which I also inherited) stories of storming the courthouse in
Memphis with a group of thirty other card-carrying suffragettes,
then chaining themselves to the pillars and posts until the mayor
himself came out to listen to their pleas and their demands for
voting rights. Memphis, surprising for a Southern town struggling
to get back on its feet after the Civil War and several epidemics,
had produced more than one determined young woman anxious to become
part of American history and the 21st Amendment.

Briley sighed. “Another one.”

Teresa growled at him. “You have a problem
with women bein’ independent, Mr. Um?”

“McShan.” I answered. “I’m so sorry, Aun- uh
- Teresa, I’ve completely neglected my manners. Teresa Flynn, this
is Briley McShan.”

They nodded at each other. Briley smiled his
most charming smile. “I apologize if my comment was offensive, Miss
Flynn. It was more the amazing resemblance to your – cousin. In
manner as well as looks.”

Teresa and I looked at each other for a long
moment. At the exact same time we began to laugh. She graciously
gestured to the chairs set up in the sunroom under a large ceiling
fan.

“Mr. McShan. May I call you Briley?”

He nodded. “Please.”

“Yes, well, the Flynn women all have an
independent spirit to go along with what some have called a
stubborn streak. Perhaps it can make us a bit abrasive in our
dealings with others.” She turned her head and yelled, “Agnes!
Lemonade, please!” and Briley took the opportunity to wink at me. I
whispered, “It’s the red hair. Not our fault.”

Within minutes a tiny dark-haired girl
bearing a tray appeared and deposited our drinks on the table.
Teresa told her to get one for herself and join us, but the girl
giggled and said she had work to do if she was to meet her young
gentleman friend this evening, but she was charmed to see another
family member in the house. She ran off toward the kitchen.

Teresa rolled her eyes heavenward, then
simply stated, “Gentleman friend is not how I would describe
Agnes’s ardent admirer, a tough young scalawag from the Pinch slums
who works the docks. At least he appears sober at all times. He
seems to adore Agnes, so I’m letting her continue to keep
company.”

I started to say even a true suffragette
wouldn’t allow a thirteen-year-old girl to go traipsing about with
a dockworker, but then, maybe in 1919 - they would? Before I had a
chance to stick my foot in my mouth Teresa began the interrogation.
Her questions, thankfully, and perhaps with shrewd intuition on her
part, stayed focused on why we were in Memphis instead of what
“cousin Melody” had been up to for the last ten years or so.

“Mel, happy though I am to see you, why the
visit now?”

What the heck. I dove in.

“We’re lookin’ for some friends of ours who
disappeared back in Manhattan.”

Teresa didn’t miss a beat. “Who are they? Why
are they missin’?”

Briley took over. He told Teresa about Denise
and Nevin, then explained about the other missing Follies girls,
and that I’d decided to try Memphis to look for them. Then he
stopped.

Teresa was no fool. “Why do you think they’re
here?”

Briley looked at me. I looked at him. I could
not tell my Great-great-aunt that I’d time-traveled, that sheet
music that hadn’t been written yet kept cropping up, and that the
only clues I thought we had were back-handedly supplied by a short
witch. She probably already knew but just in case my instincts were
wrong it was best not to let Teresa think her relative was one
ivory short of a piano keyboard.

I smiled. “Um. My landlady back in New York”
(I declined to elaborate on why I was in New York) “is rather
shrewd at detecting things. She put some pieces of this puzzle
together and determined that these missin’ girls were in Memphis -
perhaps in some sort of white slavery prostitution kind of thing.
Possibly being held in a hotel that fronts a brothel.”

It was a lousy explanation but Teresa simply
nodded, took a sip of her lemonade, made a face, and then added
four teaspoons of sugar from the bowl in front of her.

“Well, then. The pair of you have some work
to do, don’t you? I’ll be happy to tell you anything I can about
some of these infamous bordellos and perhaps Agnes’s young man
Dougal can fill in the blanks. Not that I assume he has first hand
knowledge, mind you, or at least I hope he doesn’t, but many of the
ruffians who work the docks do indeed frequent some of these
establishments. Dougal could point you in the right direction.”

She stood. “I have to attend a meetin’ in an
hour.” She smiled. “I called it, so it wouldn’t do for me to be
late. Let me show you your rooms so you can rest. You are both free
to come and go as you please. I’ve always felt close to Mel,” she
paused and the smile grew wider, “to Melody, so use this as you
would your own home.”

Mel. She’d slipped and called me Mel. I’d
read Teresa’s diary. She mentioned her young cousin Melody all the
time. As Melody. Never Mel. Teresa had divined the truth about me.
Was she another durned pyshic witch? Or perhaps Fiona Belle Donovan
Winthorp herself in the guise of my relative? Nothing would
surprise me at this stage of my journey through time.

Teresa led us through a parlor that housed
the antique desk that would end up in my home office in about
ninety years. The Baby Grand that now resided in New York sat
proudly in the corner.

I gasped. “It’s my piano! I mean, it’s a Baby
Grand.”

Teresa smiled. “It is indeed. Brand new. I
love it even though I’m not the best musician in the world. I
bought with my own earnin’s though, not Papa’s, so I’m very proud
to say it’s mine. Someday I’ll will it to family.”

I glanced sharply at her but her face was as
serene as a nun’s in prayer.