Talk of the Town (11 page)

Maxwell smiled at her, and she was struck by how pleasant he looked. Usually, he gave the impression of being aloof. He was perfectly friendly and polite—
really
perfectly, she thought wryly—but he often seemed to be more of an observer than one truly engaged in a conversation.

“I started with the historical background,” he said. “There were selected Bible readings to accompany an encapsulated look at how the Bible came to be, and then it went on to the Old Testament. Thank goodness, all those
begats
were summarized.”

Alice laughed. “Thank goodness, indeed.”

“I like the way that study guide is organized, so I intend to keep working through it in the order the chapters are presented.”

“It’s a wonderful book,” she agreed. “It was one of Father’s favorites.” The moment she said it, she immediately thought of Wendell. He’d been one of Father’s favorites too. A lump rose to her throat and she let the topic slide.

They walked in companionable silence for a while. Then Maxwell said, “Hey,” as they walked along Chapel Road. “I know just the thing to make you feel better.”

“Oh?”

“June’s pie,” he said triumphantly.

She had to smile. “If anything can do it, June’s pie probably can. Have you been in yet today? What kinds has she made?”

He nodded. “I had lunch there. She’s got blackberry, blueberry, pumpkin and peach today. I had the blackberry.”

“Yum, peach pie. I haven’t had that in ages.”

“My treat,” he said instantly, stopping and pushing open the door of the Coffee Shop for her. “One piece of peach pie coming right up.”

They barely had taken seats in one of the booths when Florence Simpson came rushing over, her husband Ronald right behind her. “I have a proposition to put to you. And to your sisters. You, too, Maxwell, if you’re interested.”

Alice braced herself. With Florence, you never knew what was coming next. “A proposition?”

Ronald nodded. “Florence has decided that our community must confront this Bigfoot menace.”

“Confront?”

“Menace?”

Alice and Maxwell spoke in quick succession.

“Exactly.” Florence drew herself up importantly. “Ronald is going to lead expeditions into the wild to seek the creature.”

Alice wrinkled her brow, thinking the Simpsons had truly lost it. “What sort of expeditions?”

“Oh, just a few hikes,” Ronald said, “around Fairy Pond and the woods, places where an animal might have left signs of its presence.”

“Not just hikes,” Florence insisted. “These will be significant in that the participants will be evaluating any signs they find.”

“I see.” Alice found it hard to believe that Ronald and Florence had taken the Bigfoot sightings so seriously. “We intend to start tomorrow,” Ronald said. “Are either of you interested?”

“I work tomorrow,” Alice said with relief.

“I’m afraid I must continue working on my paper,” Maxwell said. “But perhaps another time. Thank you for asking me.”

“Anytime,” Ronald said jovially. “You’re starting to seem like one of the locals.”

“Thank you,” Maxwell said, and Alice was surprised to see his cheeks turn pink. “That’s a nice thing to say.”

“I’m not just saying it,” Ronald insisted. “You’re becoming a fixture here at the Coffee Shop.”

“That’s true.” The younger man smiled. “June’s pies are irresistible.”

“That’s what we all say.” Ronald grinned. “I’ll let you know if we do a second expedition.”

“All right.”

Alice gazed after Florence and Ronald as they pounced on another customer who had just stepped through the door. “Goodness!”

“They certainly seem to have swallowed the Bigfoot theory hook, line and sinker,” Maxwell said with a bemused smile.

Alice just nodded.

“I suppose I can understand how unsophisticated people might believe it, but I’m really surprised that both the librarian and the newspaper editor have bought into the Bigfoot theory,” Maxwell said.

“I wouldn’t say they’ve bought into it,” Alice defended Carlene and Nia. “It’s more that they saw an interesting angle to play up.”

“So you don’t think they believe there is such a creature?”

“I sincerely doubt it. However, you should ask each of them if you really want to know what they think.”

“I must do that. Ronald and Florence certainly seem convinced, don’t they?”

“Florence surely does,” Alice confirmed reluctantly.

“Perhaps I will go along on one of Ronald’s expeditions. Nothing like firsthand observation, you know.”

Chapter Ten

A
s soon as breakfast was over on Wednesday morning and the kitchen was restored to its usual spotless state, Jane put on her jean jacket and met Ethel and Clothilda in the hallway.

Ethel was wearing a springy pink jacket with a flowered skirt. Clothilda was wearing a navy skirt but also had on a pink jacket.

“Good morning,” said Jane. “Shall I change? I feel like a third wheel.”

Clothilda’s brow wrinkled. “A third wheel?”

Jane laughed. “I was teasing. It’s an expression that means I feel out of place beside you two.”

“Ah.” Clothilda looked down at herself and then over at Ethel. “Yes. We laugh when first we see each other.”

Ethel smiled. “It’s up to you, Jane. If you have a pink jacket, you may wish to join our pink club. We could start a whole new fashion.”

“Thanks, but I’ll stick with this. Are you ready?”

“Yes. I am excited to find my family tree.” Clothilda’s voice carried a lilt.

Jane found her thick German accent charming. Family was pronounced “fom-ee-lee.”

As she drove the familiar roads, Jane forced herself to stop thinking of Wendell. She passed the gas station from which the businessman had called that day and continued on to the center of the town, and although there was an ache in her heart, she smiled brightly when they arrived.

“Here we go,” she announced as Ethel and Clothilda climbed out of her car. Clothilda carried a large black leather handbag in which she had placed copies of all the family records she had brought along.

The Potterston Historical Society was housed in a beautiful Victorian building that once had been a private home. Like Grace Chapel Inn, it had been painted in period colors. The body of the house was soft, rosy beige. The trim and shutters were done in two complementary shades of green, a soft, blue-green mossy color and a deep forest green. The imposing front door was the same forest-green shade and bore a handsome brass knocker in the classical rope design popular in Victorian times.

Inside, a delightful hostess in period costume greeted them. Her day dress was a beige-and-blue plaid taffeta with a long-waisted, close-fitting bodice. It was long-sleeved and had the high neck that Victorian modesty had demanded. The skirt was split in the front to reveal underskirts of contrasting colors and was bustled up in the back and adorned with black and blue lace trim. A tidy line of brass buttons marched down the front. Her hair was pulled up into a complicated chignon. Looking closely, Jane was almost certain it was all the woman’s own hair. How long had it taken her to learn to create that hairdo? Jane couldn’t imagine successfully styling her own hair that way.

“Welcome to the Potterston Historical Society,” the woman said. “My name is Elizabeth. Would you like a tour?”

“Oh yes,” said Clothilda. “We have the questions about finding family, but first we would enjoy to see your beautiful home.”

“A short tour, perhaps, if you please,” Ethel said decisively.

“Gladly.” Elizabeth smiled. “It is not my home, or anyone’s, anymore. It belongs to everyone in Potterston. If you’ll follow me, I’ll point out a few things as we go. Please feel free to ask questions at any time.” Her long skirts rustled about her as she moved.

“The home is an example of Victorian architecture, built in 1871 by Edward Garling Potter, a member of one of the founding families of the town. It was owned by successive generations of the Potter family until 1979, when Miss Adelaide Potter passed away and bequeathed the home to the town with the stipulation that it house the historical society, which at that time had no permanent headquarters. After careful research, colors very similar to the original were selected…” She went on to explain the home’s exterior before returning to the interior décor.

“All floors throughout the home are the original ones. In the foyer, front hallway, living room and dining room, the flooring is quarter-sawn Siberian oak, quite expensive in the Victorian era. The kitchen floor is composed of unglazed red quarry tiles laid in a staggered brickwork pattern. In Victorian times, the lovely patina on the tiles would have been created by hard-working servants frequently applying linseed oil and rubbing it in. Today,” she said with a wink, “we cheat a little and use modern floor products to produce the same look with far less investment of time.”

“I don’t blame you a bit,” Ethel said.

In the dining room, an ornate six-armed chandelier of brass had been converted to electricity from the original gas but retained its period ambience.

“Many of the furnishings came from the Potter family,” Elizabeth told them. “They are the Rococo Revival, or Louis XV style, which remained very popular in the United States until shortly after the turn of the century. Rococo Revival is a graceful style reminiscent of eighteenth-century France. In general, pieces are extremely ornate and intricate. Natural figures such as flowers, vines and fruits are carved into the wood and the style includes cabriole legs. Most pieces are constructed of rosewood and black walnut…”

The bedrooms were stunning, with pieces like a tiger-oak washstand in one, and in another, a beautiful double highboy chest with the two upper doors left ajar to display several ladies’ bonnets as they originally would have been stored.

The artist in Jane immediately took a flight of fantasy as she imagined what her own home would look like fully restored in a similar manner. She came back to earth, though, when Ethel cleared her throat and said, “We do have several questions for you but they pertain to genealogy rather than period homes. Not that this isn’t lovely,” she added hastily.

Elizabeth smiled graciously. “Let me take you to our office. All our genealogical information was catalogued electronically over the last four years by two college students with a grant from the National Genealogical Society. We also have access to the NGS Project Registry, which is composed of thousands of genealogical projects by researchers all over the country. It’s an extremely powerful tool that truly has transformed the way we conduct genealogical studies today.”

Jane laughed. “So much for Victorian nostalgia. I suppose nothing can compete with modern technology.”

Late Wednesday afternoon, Alice was working on her supplies for the ANGELs’ senior prom in the dining room again when she heard the back door open. Moments later, Jane and Clothilda appeared.

“Hello,” Alice said. “Did you have a productive day? Where’s Aunt Ethel? I thought she went with you.”

“She did. But she said she needs a nap after the day we had.” Jane grinned. “I don’t blame her.”

“I, too, am very tired,” Clothilda announced. “But I am happy also.”

“So you were able to find some information about your family?”

“We make a start. We find in the hist-hist-”

“Historical Society,” Jane supplied.

“Yes. We find in the records name of Moeller families.”

“More than one family?”

“Three,” Jane told her. “But the earliest ones we could find were from about 1850, which is much later than Clothilda’s Moellers emigrated.

“We went to several cemeteries to look for the graves of others,” Jane continued. “But like the census records at the historical society, we didn’t find any really old ones.”

“Perhaps the earlier ancestors are buried somewhere else,” Alice said. “There are an awful lot of tiny family cemetery plots around the countryside, you know. A lot of them are still in the middle of fields. And perhaps they are not in this county but a neighboring one.”

“That’s possible,” Jane admitted. “We may have to broaden our search.”

Clothilda pulled several pieces of paper from her large handbag and held them out for Alice’s perusal. “We make pencil rubbings of some of these Moellers.”

Alice took one of the sheets of paper. The side of a soft pencil had been lightly rubbed repeatedly across the paper while it was lying against a smooth, hard gravestone with words carved into the surface. Alice realized she was looking at the name Klaus Moeller, with dates of birth and death years from the late 1800s. “Wow! That’s interesting. How many did you find?”

Clothilda waved her sheaf of papers. “Many. Seventeen, maybe.”

“It sounds as if you got a good start.” Alice handed the pencil rubbings back to Clothilda. “So what next?”

“We’re going to try a two-pronged approach,” Jane told her. “First, we are going to begin calling all the Moellers in the area to see if any of them have done any genealogical research. It’s possible they already may have what Clothilda is looking for.”

“That would be most easy answer,” Clothilda said, her eyes twinkling. “Less work for us.”

“I’m not counting on that,” Jane said. “If we don’t get lucky with any of the Moellers we speak to, then we’ll have to go back to the historical society and get the names of descendants of these people as far as we can go. All of them, which will be a daunting task, since a lot of folks had large families until the past half-century. Then… I don’t know. The census office? County registrar? I’m going to have to make some calls and find out.”

“And still we look for the older ones,” Clothilda put in.

Just then, someone came into the front hallway of the inn.

“I’ll go see who that is,” Jane said.

“I, too, will go—only to lie down,” Clothilda told her. “Thank you and we will talk later. Yes?”

“Yes.” Jane smiled as she rose from her chair. “Have a good rest.”

“Hello? Alice? Anyone home?” Alice recognized the voice of Ronald Simpson.

Jane called to him from the doorway of the dining room and said, “Hi, Ronald. We’re in here.”

“I’m looking for Alice,” he told her.

Alice got to her feet and walked into the hallway. “Hello, Ronald.”

“Hi, Alice.” Now that he had found her, Ronald appeared oddly hesitant.

“The thing is… remember yesterday when Florence told you about the expeditions?”

“Yes…?”

“Well, I led one this morning. You know, to find the Bigfoot.”

Alice resisted the strong impulse to roll her eyes. “And did you? Find one, I mean.”

“Not a trace,” Ronald said with disgust. “I’m starting to think I imagined that footprint.”

“Well, that hair Florence found isn’t imaginary.” Alice’s instinct was to soothe.

“No, but that hair could be human.” Ronald looked thoroughly miserable. “Florence is sure we’re going to make the discovery of the century. But I think somebody is playing a joke on us. If a person had looked at the weather forecast and knew storms were predicted for last Thursday, he or she would know the tracks would be damaged, if not completely washed away, by a hard rain.”

“Whose idea was it to go down to the pond?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure it was anybody’s. The boys were the ones who found the tracks first, remember? But anyone who knew anything about Fairy Pond would know the kids play around there all the time.”

“True.”

“Well,” he said awkwardly, “I mostly just stopped to make sure I hadn’t been seeing things.” He laughed feebly.

“You weren’t seeing things,” Alice said gently. “Although I am inclined to think the footprints we found were not from an unknown species.”

“Me too,” he said glumly. “But Florence—you know how she can be—she wants to believe it and she’s bound and determined to prove there’s a Bigfoot out there.” He sighed. “She’s not going to be happy if it turns out someone is playing a joke.”

He didn’t have to say anything else. Alice knew well how stubborn Florence could be.

“I’m sorry,” Alice said gently. “Is there anything I can do?” Her caring nature would not let her dismiss poor Ronald’s distress.

But the man shook his head. “No, I don’t think there is. This will just have to play out like it’s going to play out. Even Florence can’t create a critter out of thin air.”

He turned to leave, and Alice bid him good-bye.