The Trouble with Tulip (22 page)

“Jo, I—”

“I'm not an idiot. I know what I'm seeing. There are things about this woman's death that don't add up. Yes, part of it is just my own gut instincts. But instincts are a good place to begin. You can either be my friend and go with me on this, or you can get out of here and leave me alone.”

Danny swallowed hard, surprised at the rage in her voice. He knew she'd had a tough few days—a tough year, really. Maybe he had been wrong to try and nip this in the bud. At least she was showing some enthusiasm for something—and in the wake of her failed wedding, wasn't that a good thing?

Besides, he admitted, no way was he going to walk out of here now.

“Okay, Jo,” he said finally. “I will suspend my disbelief for the moment and listen to your reasoning.”

“Thank you.”

“As long as you understand that I'm not on board with what you're saying about the woman's death. Not at all.”

“Fair enough. Come look again at the pictures. I promise you, they'll change your mind.”

Jo led Danny back to the dining room and waited as he sat in front of the photos. She moved behind him and watched over his shoulder as, one by one, he picked up each shot and studied it extensively. Jo had tried to place them in what seemed like chronological order based on the clothing and the nature of the pictures, but she wasn't sure if she had gotten it right or not.

The first picture was old and faded, the edges frayed, a posed portrait of a man sitting stiffly in a chair. He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, with silver hair and mustache, his stern expression typical of the photos of that era.

“This is a daguerreotype,” Danny said softly. “One of the earliest forms of photography.”

“How early?” Jo asked.

“Probably the late eighteen hundreds. Maybe eighteen-fifty at the earliest. It's in pretty good condition, except for the edges.”

He set it down and picked up the next one. It was a picture of about ten soldiers, probably Civil War era, resting beside some cannons. The soldiers seemed to be wearing the torn and dusty uniforms of the Union army. There was nothing very remarkable about the photo other than historical interest in the subjects.

“This one looks vaguely familiar,” Danny said, putting down the Civil War shot and picking up the next one. It was a shot of a woman in a street car, looking directly down at the photographer. “Do you recognize her?”

“No,” Jo said. “Should I?”

“She was a minor celebrity of some sort,” Danny said, “though I can't place who she was right now. Something about her face, though, is recognizable. I'd swear I've seen this picture before.”

Sturdy and middle-aged, the woman in the photo wasn't attractive but there was something quite arresting about her piercing, exhausted gaze. Her image stood out much more vividly than those of the men who were sitting on the streetcar beside and behind her.

The fourth photo was obviously from a sporting event, probably the Olympics. It featured a man about to thrust a javelin, with several rows of spectators clearly visible behind him. Though also black-and-white, the contrast was greater, the image sharper, than the others. Danny said that judging by the quality of the print, it probably dated to the 1930s.

The next photo was in color, though the colors were muted and dull.

“I'd say this was an early version of Kodachrome,” Danny told her, turning the picture toward the light. “Probably from the nineteen-forties.”

In the shot, a group of men, all wearing overalls, were standing near a field of some crop.

“What are they growing there?” Danny asked.

“Looks like sugarcane to me,” Jo replied.

All of the men sported mustaches and straw hats, their skin worn and tanned like farmers.

Finally, he picked up the last photo, a shot of a family sitting on a front stoop. There were several adults and two children, a girl of about nine or ten and a boy a year or so older. They were all dressed in the clothing of the 1950s or early '60s. The picture was nothing special, a black-and-white image probably taken after church one Sunday as they sported their pillbox hats and spiffy suits.

“Okay,” Danny said, setting down the photos. “What do you want to know?”

“We've got pictures here,” Jo said, taking the seat across from him again, “that cover a range of about a hundred years, right?”

“Sure,” Danny said, looking back and forth at the six enlargements in front of him. “Give or take a few years.”

“Then look at them again,” Jo said, a gleam in her eye. “Tell me what they all have in common.”

Danny frowned at her but seemed to accept the challenge as he once again turned his attention to the photos. It took him a little while, but finally it was like a lightbulb went off over his head. His eyes widened and he gasped.

“The man!” he said, picking up the oldest photograph, the one he had called a daguerreotype. “This man. He's in every one of these pictures!”

Jo nodded, grateful he had finally caught on.

“Always about the same age, the same guy,” she said, grinning. “Silver hair and a mustache.”

She pointed to each of the pictures in turn, from the daguerreotype where he was posing for a portrait, to the one where he lounged as a Civil War soldier, to the one where he sat on a streetcar behind a woman, to the one where he was in the stands at a javelin throw, to the one where he stood among the farmers beside the sugarcane, to the one where he clustered on the front stoop with the family.

“Wanna take it one step further?” Jo asked.

“What?” Danny replied.

She reached to the chair beside her, where she had rested the painting she also found in the hidden compartment under the tub. It was a small framed print of an oil painting that depicted the Nativity. The print was quite lovely, with Mary and Jesus at the center of the picture, both bathed in white light. Looking on were several animals along with a small group of men, including Joseph. In the upper left corner, one of the men partially hidden in shadow had silver hair and a mustache.

Not knowing what else to do, Danny laughed.

“This guy's been around a good while,” he said, not knowing what to make of it. “Either that, or somebody's been pretty clever with a camera and a paint brush.”

“So you agree that something weird is going on?”

He sat back and blew out a slow breath.

“Fine,” he said. “You win. I'm convinced there are some things here that deserve a closer look.”

The maroon velvet notebook was just as confusing as the photos and the painting. It held about fifty pages, each written on by hand. Danny sat beside Jo as they perused the pages, trying to make sense of the odd scribblings and notations that covered each page.

The writings looked like scientific formulas combined with mathematical equations, but Jo kept insisting the formulas made no sense. Danny had to defer to her in the matter, since neither math nor science had been his best subjects in school.

“This is the symbol for sulfur,” she said. “And this is gold, and this is mercury. But I don't understand the equations here.”

“How about the drawings?” He flipped through several more pages. “Such strange doodles. A lizard on fire? Half men, half women? It's bizarre.”

“Hey, Danny, maybe we should run it past one of my old science professors at the college. I bet Dr. Langley would look at it for us and tell us what it means.”

“Good idea.”

“But we'll make copies first—and of the pictures too. I think the originals need to be locked up somewhere safe.”

“I agree,” Danny said, surprised to realize that he was already almost fully on board with Jo's theory of murder. Certainly, there was
something
odd going on here—something that needed to be explored in the context of a woman's death. “Do you have a safety deposit box?”

“I can use my grandparents'. If we make all the copies tonight, we can lock the stuff away first thing in the morning.”

“Sounds good,” Danny said, looking at his watch, surprised to see that it was nearly ten
P.M.
“But where can we go to make copies at this hour?”

“How about the campus library?” she said. “They'll be open, and there's something else I want to do there anyway.”

The library parking lot was rather empty for a Monday night. Once inside, the place was quiet. So they wouldn't have to struggle with loose change, they used the copier nearest the reference desk, which worked with a counter instead.

Danny made copies of the six photos, put those aside, and then started copying each of the pages of the handwritten book. He looked as though he was on a roll, so Jo excused herself.

Carrying the Nativity painting, she went to the reference desk, held up the print, and asked the librarian if by any wild chance she recognized it.

“No. I'm sorry, but I don't,” the woman said softly, studying it. “It's very interesting, though.”

“I wonder if there's someway to find out who the artist is,” Jo said, knowing if this didn't work, she could always contact the college's art department.

The librarian directed Jo to a group of art-related books, suggesting that she flip through the pages and see if she could spot that particular painting—or something similar. Jo thought it would be worth a try, so she carried the books to a table near the machine where Danny was working, settled down, and got to work. Briefly, her mind went back to college days, when she would study for hours on end, embracing the quiet and the knowledge contained in this place.

A little while later, Jo offered to switch tasks with Danny, knowing her job was certainly the more interesting of the two. As he went through the art books, Jo completed the tedious job of photocopying the notebook, paid for the copies, and then joined him at the table. Neither of them found the painting, though they wrote down the names of several artists who seemed to do similar work.

Feeling frustrated, they decided to call it a night.

Danny was quiet in the car, and Jo was glad. She had plenty of things on her mind to keep her occupied. First order of business was planning out the next day because she didn't want to waste a minute in hunting down the truth about the odd things they'd found in the hidden compartment.