There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - v4 (19 page)

And if that wasn’t enough, she looked up to see the librarian walking toward her with yet another file in her hands.

Maye took a deep breath and waved her hands. “I have so much here already that I’m not sure if I even want to open that folder,” she said to the librarian, motioning to the one she held in her hands. “All of these queens. There were so many of them!”

“I think you’ll want to see this,” the librarian said with a knowing smile. “Now, I don’t know exactly what it is you’re looking for, but if you’re interested in the queen history, you can’t ignore the Queen of Queens. I remember hearing about her when I was a kid. She was incredibly beautiful, she was very nice, everyone loved her, and then one day, she simply vanished. She was just gone. Ruby Spicer. I guess she was something else.”

The last thing Maye needed was one more queen to track down, but she took and opened the smudged, bent file, which looked like it had been hastily crammed in the back of a deep, dark drawer a decade ago. The minute she opened it, she knew that this queen was different.

Ruby Spicer was not pretty.

Ruby Spicer was not beautiful.

Ruby Spicer was absolutely remarkable.

Maye couldn’t help but stare at the weathered coronation photo from the fifty-year-old
Spaulding Herald
. Wow, she said to herself; I thought faces like that only happened in paintings. Ruby’s head was turned slightly toward the camera as she looked slightly past it, her straight, classic nose centered by high, regal cheekbones, her full, heart-shaped mouth smiling, radiating genuine joy, and her soft, almost deep-set eyes shining brilliantly despite the fact that even many decades later, they were still only thousands of dots on aged paper that together comprised a face. She did not seem like a tall woman, in fact, she looked somewhat petite next to the graying man who placed the tiara upon her head. She held not a bouquet of roses, but more like a bushel, and her wavy hair fell to her shoulders with a slight curl under at the ends. Ruby Spicer was, as the librarian said, the Queen of Queens. Even Cynthia paled in comparison.

And she had vanished. How does a woman like that vanish? Maye wondered. Does a prince from Monaco land his plane in her front yard and offer her a ride to a magic kingdom? Someone like that doesn’t vanish; there are too many people who want to be them. Maye dug deeper into the file and found more pictures of Ruby, one at the opening day of the state fair, another at a barn dance, and one of her on a throne, riding atop a lavishly decorated float. The caption read, “Our Darling and Reigning Queen, Ruby Spicer, welcoming her beloved crowds at the Spaulding Festival Parade. What a gal! We’ll say it again: What a gal!” Ruby waved to the camera, flashing what Maye now recognized as her trademark smile. Oddly, however, Maye noticed that in almost every photo in the file, Ruby held a pencil in her right hand, in between her index and middle fingers. Ah, Maye noted, a girl after my own heart. Always ready to take notes. Could it be that Ruby was an aspiring journalist?

Ruby was it, Maye could feel it. Ruby was the one she needed. If there was anyone who could help her beat Rowena and her protégée, it was Ruby Spicer.

Maye took the file back up to the counter and rang the service bell. As soon as the librarian saw the look on Maye’s face, she smiled. “What did I tell you?” She laughed. “I thought you might want to see that.”

Maye held the file in both hands. “I need to copy this,” she said urgently. “How can I copy this?”

“Well,” the librarian hesitated. “It’s in Special Collections. I don’t think anyone has seen that for years—it was misfiled, in the locked cabinet.”

“What do you know about her?” Maye asked. “Is she alive, is she dead? Do you remember hearing anything else about this woman?”

“Hmm-mmm,” she said. “Just what I mentioned before. Then again, I was a little girl, but I haven’t heard anyone talk about her since.”

“How can I get a copy of this?” Maye asked.

“I’m not supposed to let you take it out of this room, but I will let you take it across the hall to copy, on one condition.”

“What’s that?” Maye asked, curious.

“Whatever you find out about her, I want to know,” she said. “You have to promise to come back and tell me what happened to Ruby Spicer.”

“Let’s shake on it,” Maye said as she extended her hand and smiled.

With Ruby Spicer’s file copied and in her hand, Maye did the first thing any reporter would do—she went straight to the city directory and looked her up, but to no avail, which was no surprise. Then she searched all the directories going back fifty years, to when Ruby was crowned, but still nothing was listed. It was entirely possible Ruby had just gotten married and moved away, and if that was the case, she was determined to find that, too. Then she did the first thing any obituary writer would do and headed over to City Hall, where the vital records—including death and marriage certificates, land deeds, house titles—were kept. Just as she was about to cross the street, Maye heard a strange noise coming up from behind her.

WHOOOO! WHOOO! WHOOO
! She turned as a voice suddenly rang out, “ON YOUR RIGHT!,” and a unicyclist ripped by her and knocked the photocopies out of her hand, sending the pages fluttering all over the sidewalk.

“ASSHOLE!” Maye automatically yelled out as the other pedestrians turned to stare at her rather than the rogue one-wheeled biker, as if pointing out his assholian nature was a far bigger crime than accosting someone with a recreational vehicle. And that made her even angrier.

“What? When’s the last time you were hit by a piece of circus equipment?” she bellowed at the gawkers as she started attempting to collect the pages that were fluttering and also skipping down the street.

As she was bent over trying to catch the copies, she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around to see her plumber and cop, John Smith.

“Looks like you dropped this,” he said, handing her several sheets of paper.

“Yeah, I think I was just the victim of a hit-and-pedal,” Maye said as she took the copies from John, who was clearly on law-enforcing duty.

“If I see the one-wheeled bandit again today, I’ll make sure to give him a ticket,” John said, laughing. “So, what’s this you have here? Stuff about Ruby Spicer, I see.”

Maye nodded, hesitant to say too much. “Yeah, it sounds like a fascinating story, I was thinking about checking it out,” she replied.

“It’s a story, all right. She’s a little legendary in these parts, but stories are sometimes just stories,” he told her. “They grow and get bigger when sometimes there wasn’t anything there to begin with. Pretty lady, though. I remember that parade, even though I couldn’t even hold a wrench or a gun back then.”

“Yeah, she was beautiful,” Maye agreed, getting a little bit of a feeling that there was something John wasn’t saying. “Striking. Odd how she just one day vanished. Because I was thinking, she was this lovely girl, it seemed like the town adored her, and one day she’s just gone? It doesn’t really make sense. Not to me. Does it make sense to you?”

“Well, you know,” John started, then looked past Maye. “Sometimes there are people who just don’t want to be found. One day they
are
just gone, for whatever reason. There’s no telling for what—their reasons are their own. Maybe Ruby Spicer went off to a big city and had herself a nice modeling career, maybe she got married to a nice farmer out near Bellingham and had a bunch of kids, or maybe she moved to Paris and became a singer in a nightclub and was kinda famous. Or maybe she’s just a lady named Ruby Spicer and she doesn’t want to be found.”

Maye found that last statement a little more than curious. “What do you know about Ruby Spicer, John Smith? Because I’m thinking you might know something,” she said, trying to read his face.

“I know she was a pretty lady in a crown that I saw when I was a little kid,” he said simply with a sigh. “And that’s about it. What do you want with her, anyway? She must be a million years old by now.”

Maye thought for a moment. “I need her help,” she finally concluded. “I need her to help me drop a house on a wicked witch.”

John smiled. “Good luck with that,” he said. “Houses are heavy.”

Then he blew his whistle at a jaywalker and strolled away.

Maye felt hopeful as she climbed the steps of City Hall; if there was one place where there would be a record of Ruby Spicer, this would be it. She opened the large, creaky, century-old door next to the historic plaque that listed the date the edifice was constructed and finished, more than a hundred years before. She walked into the cavernous entryway, where the floors of white-and-black marble shone in a checkerboard pattern, and a grand carved central staircase led to a rotunda on the second floor. The building was simply exquisite, and Maye marveled over its elaborate architecture and the detail. It must have been quite a point of pride, she thought.

She followed the arrow that pointed to the Records Office. It was smaller than she expected, and resembled an old bank with its carved oak counter and what looked like separate teller windows. She seemed to be the only one there who wasn’t on the payroll.

She walked up to one of the windows and smiled at the woman sitting behind it, her large, round glasses resting on the tops of her full, ruddy cheeks. She looked back at Maye and asked in a dry, deep, lifeless voice if she could help her.

“Yes,” Maye said, trying to smile even harder. “I’m looking for the records of an individual, anything you might have on this person—birth, death, marriage, titles, anything at all, really.”

“Fill out this form, please,” the woman said as she slid a piece of blue paper under her window toward Maye, then watched as Maye tried to find a pencil in her purse and then as she filled out the form. Maye slid the blue paper back under the window toward the woman, who then stamped it “Received.”

“Relative?” she asked without expression.

“I’m sorry?” Maye asked, not really understanding what she meant.

“Are you a relative?” she asked louder. “Are you related to this person? You didn’t check the ‘relations’ box.”

“That’s because I’m not related,” Maye replied.

“Then what do you want with this Spicer woman?” the clerk asked, boring her eyes into Maye’s as if it was an interrogation.

“It’s personal,” Maye finally said, and left it at that.

The clerk studied the form, then looked back up at Maye from behind her oversized lenses. “What personal year are we looking at here, then?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” Maye said. “I guess a death certificate could be at any time, but everything else—I don’t know, maybe fifty, sixty years ago?”

The woman pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Nope, sorry,” she said without remorse. “Can’t do it.”

“Excuse me?” Maye replied. “Why? Did I do something wrong? Did I fill something out incorrectly? Those documents aren’t sealed; they’re public records.”

“That may be, but I can’t show you what I haven’t got,” the woman answered. “Everything over fifty years ago is gone. We don’t have them. A fire destroyed City Hall and everything in it. If you need anything more recent than that, we can help, but anything back there just doesn’t exist anymore.”

Maye was sure she looked as confused as she felt.

“City Hall burned down?” she repeated. “Fifty years ago? But what about the plaque by the door and the historic marker? This is an old building. It’s a Victorian building. It was built one hundred years ago.”

The clerk shrugged as she turned on her revolving stool, got up, and began to waddle away. “They built it back,” the clerk said simply. “Just the way it was. Don’t ask me.”

Maye stood there for a moment, not sure what to do or say.

“There weren’t any copies?” she asked the clerk, who returned her query with a deadpan expression.

Maye sighed. “Okay,” she continued. “How about anything, then? Any record you’ve got from the time of lost records until now?”

“You want me to do a search of all public records until now?” the woman repeated. Maye nodded. The waddler waddled back to her stool.

“For Spicer?” she asked. “Ruby?”

She typed in the name and looked truly bothered and put out as she waited for the results, which took several long, imposing seconds.

“Nope,” she informed Maye quickly. “Got nothing. Not a thing. That’s odd, usually something pops up. But no birth, no death, no marriage records. And you wanted a search in this county?”

“Yep,” Maye nodded again, feeling defeated.

“Maybe you got the spelling wrong,” she suggested as she hoisted herself off the stool and began to walk away. “It’s almost like this person was never here at all.”

“I know for a fact she was,” Maye replied stoutly as she called out to the woman, who had disappeared into a back room where Maye saw the hulking shadow of a soda machine, but there was no response.

Maye shook her head, furrowed her brow, and retraced her steps through the marble-floored entry hall with the grand staircase that did not hold any possibility of being only fifty years old.

That is ridiculous, she said to herself. That woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Idiot! What a jackass to even say something like that, just because she’s too lazy to look up some records. Making up a lie like that! That woman was as useless as a room full of Styrofoam!

And just like that, Maye had a brilliant idea.

As Maye climbed up the steps to the cream-colored tongue-and-groove porch, she wondered if this was something she really needed to be doing. Mr. McMahon had just lost his wife. Did she really need to be bothering him with such a matter as trying to find what apparently was the ghost of Ruby Spicer?

If I had any other choice, Maye told herself, I would take it. If I knew of anyone else around here who has lived in Spaulding as long as Cynthia’s husband, I’d knock on that front door instead. I need to get this story and there is no other way, she said to herself again, and maybe Mr. McMahon would be happy to have some company. If it looks like I’m bothering him, I’ll just give him the gift and leave.