Marcia Talley - Daughter of Ashes

Eventually, Paul and I ordered lunch. As the waitress was clearing away our plates, I considered the key ring nestled safely in the handbag hanging by its strap from the back of my chair. The High Spot specialty I’d enjoyed – a Gabby Crabby sandwich – seemed an anti-climax. But that was no reason not to order dessert. We were celebrating, after all.

‘Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things – old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.’

Francis Bacon, Apophthegms New and Old , 134

The High Spot’s bread pudding should come with a warning label. Shot through with raisins and smothered in a sauce of hot buttered rum, you can practically feel your arteries clogging. Even though Paul had the metabolism of a wolverine, I matched him bite for bite.

Paul flagged down the waitress and requested the check while I excused myself to visit ‘the Señoras .’

I had just settled myself when a voice from the adjoining stall chirped, ‘Hi, how are you?’

I thought for a moment about ignoring the woman’s question, but my mother had taught me better manners. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

‘So, what are you up to?’ she said.

‘Just doing what comes naturally,’ I replied, reaching for the toilet paper.

‘Can I come over?’

I shot to my feet, re-buttoning my jeans as quickly as I could. ‘No! Sorry. Husband’s waiting. Gotta run.’

‘Listen,’ the woman said as I made quick work of washing my hands. ‘I’ll have to call you back. There’s this weirdo in the next stall that keeps answering all my questions.’

She’s on the phone . Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I made a quick escape before the woman could emerge and get a positive I.D. If I were going to live in this town, it wouldn’t do to get a reputation as a pervert from day one.

‘What’s so funny?’ Paul asked when I returned to the table.

‘Tell you later,’ I promised as the waitress appeared with the check.

We were laughing over the incident, lingering over our coffee when Paul set his mug down on the bare tabletop with a solid clunk. ‘Hannah, look over there. Isn’t that Fran?’ He jerked his head in the direction of the cashier where a woman stood, head bowed over her handbag as she rummaged about inside as if searching for small change.

Fran Lawson, my former boss at Whitworth and Sullivan, had a helmet of hair the color of flat-black patio furniture. This woman was the height and shape of Fran, as I remembered her, but her silver hair was stylishly cut, floating just above the collar of her crisp, white camp shirt like well-behaved cotton candy. ‘I don’t think so,’ I started to say, and then the woman found what she was looking for, handed it to the cashier and turned her head to the left.

I’d seen that chiseled profile thousands of times – talking on the telephone, issuing instructions to the housekeeping staff, presiding over meetings where she was usually cutting funding for one damn fool reason or another. I hadn’t seen Fran for more than a decade, not since she’d laid me off – along with half a dozen of my colleagues – in a firm-wide reduction in force.

I ducked my head and whispered, ‘Maybe she won’t recognize me.’

No such luck.

‘Hannah!’ a familiar voice shrilled, as irritating as I remembered it.

‘Too late,’ Paul chuckled, genuinely amused at my dilemma. ‘She’s heading our way.’

I looked up and forced a smile. ‘Fran! Oh, my gosh! Fancy meeting you here!’

‘I could say the same thing, Hannah.’ She set her mug down on our table, pulled out the chair that Caitlyn had so recently vacated and sat down uninvited. ‘I retired from the rat race last year,’ she explained. ‘Steve and I bought a house on Congress Street, not far from the water.’

‘Paul and I just closed on a cottage on Chiconnesick Creek,’ I told her, secretly relieved that we wouldn’t be close neighbors. If Fran ran her house the way she’d run the office all those years ago, she’d be cutting her lawn a blade at a time with cuticle scissors, measuring the exact distance between tomato seedlings in her garden and bitterly complaining should the pollen from your dogwood tree have the audacity to drift over into her yard.

‘Wonderful!’ Fran exclaimed. Turning to Paul, she said, ‘You’re retired now, too?’

‘I wish,’ he snorted. ‘No, I’ve got a few years left. Hannah and I will be working on the place. Legal Ease – maybe you know it?’ When Fran shook her head, he continued, ‘It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, I’m afraid, but at least it will keep us busy and off the streets.’

‘Well, if you need work done, you can’t do better than Heberling and Son. Dwight converted our garage into a practice studio for Steve, and we couldn’t be more pleased.’

Steve Lawson, as I recalled, was a conservatory trained cellist who played first chair with several community orchestras in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.

‘So, your husband’s still teaching?’ I asked.

Fran nodded. ‘We have a local symphony in Elizabethtown, too. Small, mostly volunteer – a chamber orchestra, really, but not at all bad.’ She paused as a thought occurred to her. ‘Say, there’s a concert at St Timothy’s three weeks from Saturday. They’re performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto Number Four in D major and Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony . You should try to attend.’

‘We will,’ I promised, actually looking forward to the concert. ‘If we’re going to be spending more time here, I’d like to get involved with the community.’

Fran placed her hands flat on the tabletop. ‘I’m so glad to hear you say that, because…’ She paused, looked right and left, then shot a glance over her shoulder as if checking for eavesdroppers. She leaned forward and practically whispered, ‘Let me tell you what was found in the county courthouse.’

‘Not a body, I hope,’ Paul said with a warning glance at me. He’d come close to losing me in a couple of misadventures involving bodies and he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.

Fran chuckled. ‘No, not a body, although Elizabethtown is so old that finding a body tucked away in a building as ancient as our courthouse wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Not a body at all, but something just as interesting to people who love history the way we do.’

‘Now you’ve aroused my curiosity,’ I said, leaning forward on my elbows, hoping to encourage her.

‘It’s a long story.’ She turned a thousand-watt smile on Paul and shoved her mug in his direction. ‘Would you mind fetching me a refill while I fill Hannah in?’

Paul stood, shoving his chair back with his knees, seemingly unconcerned about Fran’s summary dismissal, perhaps figuring I’d clue him in later. ‘Cream? Sugar?’

‘Both, please.’

After Paul left, Fran continued, ‘Our county clerk retired last December. She’d been in charge at the courthouse for decades. Very old fashioned and not at all computer-savvy, as one might imagine. I was on the search team for her replacement – for my sins.’ She laughed, or rather barked, at her own clever turn of phrase.

‘After a long search, we eventually hired a young gal named Kimberly Marquis. She worked for the National Archives out in their Greenbelt annex. Not my first choice, mind you, but she’s competent enough.’ Fran sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘What can you expect for the salary the county was prepared to pay, I ask you.’

She paused as Paul returned, then reached out for her refill. ‘Thank you, Paul.’