Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
T rue to his word, Agent Crenshaw showed up at the grove with the old photographs from her grandfather’s camera. Jenny held the door wide to welcome him inside.
“I love old houses like this,” Agent Crenshaw said as he stepped inside the farmhouse, gazing all around to admire the front room. She sent Wyatt a fleeting glance of triumph, as if to say that at least somebody appreciated the grove. Wyatt had arrived ten minutes earlier, still looking a little tired and glum about the debate, but with his sleeves rolled up and ready to help. Hemingway had joined them, too.
“Did you bring the pictures?” Wyatt asked Crenshaw.
“I did, but first I want to see the fallout shelter,” Crenshaw said. “A deal is a deal.”
And she promised to show it to him, even though she hated that place. Jenny’s earliest memories were the mandatory emergency drills her grandfather insisted on to prepare against a great Soviet attack. Whenever the air-raid siren shrieked across the grove, the entire family had five minutes to gather necessities and hightail it to the fallout shelter, where they hunkered down for a full hour. What kind of nutcase subjected little kids to that? Jenny practically wet her pants each time the air-raid siren shattered the calm, never knowing if it was a drill or the real thing. The smell was the worst. Stale air mingled with the stink of damp concrete and musty linens as they huddled by the light of a battery-operated lantern.
Jenny walked with Crenshaw down a sandy aisle of orange saplings toward the shelter. Wyatt and Hemingway trailed behind. The entrance to the shelter was embedded in a concrete pad, requiring a crowbar to lift the heavy metal door. Wyatt and Hemingway worked together to get the lid up, then Jenny led the way down, her boots clanging on the metal steps leading into the shelter.
She carried a lantern, casting shadows from the florescent glow of the bulb. The concrete floor had cracked with age and eerie shadows highlighted the ridges in the barrel-ceiling that always reminded her of a hollowed-out ribcage. Two sets of bunkbeds lined one wall, and a chrome-plated dining table and vinyl chairs were pushed against the other.
Her grandfather warned that if the Russians ever bombed them, they’d be living down here for two weeks while radioactive fallout settled. Metal shelves still held cans of baked beans, condensed milk, and bags of dehydrated food. It was decades-old by now, and surely a health hazard.
Crenshaw looked spellbound as he scanned the interior, as though he’d just stepped into a different time. She could find no joy in imagining the treason her grandfather might have committed down here.
Wyatt’s nose wrinkled as he moved past the rows of canned goods, a first aid kit, and a basket of leaky old batteries to examine a stack of moldering board games. It was embarrassing to come from a family that put such stock into preparing for a great Soviet attack that never came. She turned her attention away, pretending to study a stack of old books.
Most were cheap paperbacks, but one looked different. The thick volume was beautifully embossed with gold lettering against the rich dark leather. It was Tolstoy’s War and Peace . It didn’t belong among the comic books and dime store westerns, and things that didn’t add up should be examined carefully.
“Wyatt, can you bring the lantern over?” There was a handwritten inscription inside the front cover, and Wyatt lifted the lantern while Jenny read the message aloud.
To my friend Gus. I hope you enjoy the great Russian classic. Perhaps someday when we live in a more peaceful world, you and I shall meet again and raise a toast to our colorful lives.
Until then, may God be with you, and please remember me fondly.
Svetlana
January 1952
Her heart thudded. Beside her, Crenshaw gazed at the inscription. “This is the first time I’ve actually heard directly from her,” he said, his own voice awed. “She sounds . . . friendly.”
Friendly was such a pale word for the mystery of a woman carrying a Fabergé egg who came to a bad end in a Florida orange grove. Colorful life, indeed. The inscription had a wistful tone, as though Svetlana knew their friendship was nearing an end.
Oh Svetlana, what happened to you? Jenny could only pray her grandfather didn’t have anything to do with the brave woman’s demise. Everything about this dank and dim fallout shelter reeked of sadness.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” she said to Crenshaw, anxious to escape this underground burrow and see the photos Crenshaw found in her grandfather’s old camera.
And perhaps find answers to the mystery of Svetlana’s relationship to Summerlin Groves.
Wyatt prodded Crenshaw along after a few more minutes exploring Gus Summerlin’s bolt hole and was grateful for the deep lungful of fresh air the moment he emerged back into the sunlight.
Back at the farmhouse, Hemingway took the prime position next to Crenshaw on the sofa. As the ghostwriter for biographies about old Karl Wakefield, Hemingway had plenty of insight into Wakefield family history and could help identify the people in the old photos. Crenshaw set a large manila envelope on the coffee table and opened the flap. All the photographs had been enlarged to an 8-x-11-inch format for easy viewing.
“That’s my grandfather,” Jenny said of the first picture on the top of the stack. The color photo showed a gangly young man in overalls with no shirt underneath. He looked about thirty years old and leaned proudly against a vintage pickup truck in mint condition. Gus Summerlin looked wiry and strong, with a cocksure lopsided smile. The farmhouse in the background needed a fresh coat of paint and the shrubs could use a trim, but everything else looked the same, even the porch swing.
The next photo showed Svetlana next to Gus as they stood in front of the truck. It was probably taken the same day as the first picture because Gus wore the same grubby overalls, but this time he held up a string of freshly caught trout. They were laughing, looking relaxed and happy together.
Another photo showed Gus holding a huge trout, aiming its opened jaws toward Svetlana, who laughed while holding her hands out to protect her face.
“They were clearly friends,” Agent Crenshaw said, which was undeniable, and a bit of tension unknotted from Wyatt’s neck. Whoever killed Svetlana, it probably wasn’t Gus Summerlin, and that would give Jenny peace of mind.
The next batch of pictures was starkly different. A dozen people mingled outdoors, all dressed for horseback riding in preparation for one of the famous Wakefield fox hunts. A middle-aged Karl Wakefield was clearly recognizable, wearing jodhpurs and riding boots like all the other posh riders. A young man who might be Max Wakefield was there too, dressed for riding and grinning ear to ear.
“Could that really be Senator Wakefield?” Jenny marveled. “He looks so young, so different.”
The senator was probably still in high school when this picture was taken. Wyatt only knew Senator Wakefield as an elder statesman. This younger version seemed so drastically different, and it couldn’t be explained just by his youth. In the photo, Max looked happy and exuberant as he gazed at something just beyond the frame.
Wyatt moved to the next picture and blanched. It showed Mrs. Hawkins, his fourth-grade teacher. Only she wasn’t Mrs. Hawkins back then, she was Millicent O’Grady, the teenaged daughter of the Wakefields’ cook. Millicent was dressed in a black-and-white maid’s uniform, holding a silver tray loaded with goblets before one of the horse riders.
“I didn’t realize Mrs. Hawkins worked at the house, too.”
“Oh yes,” Hemingway told him. “Her mother was the cook, and Millicent helped out whenever the Wakefields hosted a big bash. Somewhere along the line Millicent and Max became an item, quite a shock to 1950s society, but they never hid it. They even went to their senior prom together.”
“They certainly did,” Agent Crenshaw said, flipping to the next photographs.
They were prom photos of Max Wakefield and Millicent O’Grady. Millicent wore a pale gown with a modest neckline and full skirt flaring from her trim waist. A corsage of a lavender orchid was pinned on her shoulder. Max wore a white tuxedo jacket with a bow tie and a matching boutonniere on his lapel. They stood on the front steps of the Wakefield mansion, arm in arm, smiling directly at the camera. There were several photos of them taken from different angles, and Karl Wakefield appeared in one of them. Karl’s relaxed expression was proof he knew of his son’s relationship and was at ease with it.
Then there were a batch of photos that looked like a Thanksgiving celebration here at the farmhouse, and Svetlana was in most of them. One photo showed Svetlana in the kitchen dicing apples while Gus Summerlin stuffed a turkey. Gus wore a heavy flannel shirt, and Svetlana sported a chunky sweater with her sleeves pushed up, revealing a delicate wristwatch.
Wyatt leaned in closer. “That looks like the same watch found in the cypress tree.”
Hemingway took the photo for a closer look while Wyatt turned to the next photo. It showed the Thanksgiving table with Gus at the head, the turkey before him and ready for carving. Bowls brimming with mashed potatoes and green beans filled the center of the table, and everyone smiled for the camera.
“Oh look, that’s my dad!” Jenny said, pointing to a boy around six or seven years old. “I can tell by the ears. And the lady who looks like Doris Day is my grandmother. She died of cancer in 1954, so I’ve never seen many pictures of her.”
Svetlana was at the table, sitting next to Max Wakefield. Everyone wore casual clothes except for Max, whose starched shirt and bow tie seemed out of place. There were five people around the table, but place settings for six.
“Who took the picture?” Wyatt asked.
“That’s what I want to know,” Agent Crenshaw said, looking at Jenny. “Do you have any other relatives who were likely to have been there?”
Jenny said there weren’t, but soon came up with a theory. “Could the photographer be Millicent Hawkins?” she asked. Technically her name was Millicent O’Grady when these photos were taken, although he and Jenny always knew her as Mrs. Hawkins.
Hemingway chimed in. “Millicent’s mother would have cooked the Thanksgiving meal at the Wakefield estate, so there probably wasn’t a holiday dinner at Millicent’s home. And the fact that Max was here at the grove? He looks awfully spiffy compared to everyone else . . . like he left one party to be at another he’d rather attend.”
Wyatt stared hard at that empty place setting. It surely belonged to whoever took the photograph. “It couldn’t have been Millicent Hawkins,” he concluded.
“Why not?” Agent Crenshaw asked.
“Right after the medical examiner’s report came out, I asked Mrs. Hawkins if she could think of a middle-aged woman from Russia who socialized with either the Summerlins or the Wakefields. She said she couldn’t, and I believe her.”
Wyatt spread the photos across the table, scanning them quickly. “There isn’t a single picture here of Mrs. Hawkins in the same frame as Svetlana. They didn’t know each other.”
Hemingway didn’t seem convinced. He picked up the photo of the Thanksgiving feast with one empty chair. “Max is looking straight at the photographer with a rapt expression on his face. Kind of like he was in love with the photographer.”
“It couldn’t have been Millicent because she never knew Svetlana,” Wyatt insisted. The only photos with Millicent in them were the prom pictures and the riding party at the Wakefield estate where she served the drinks. Svetlana didn’t appear in either batch. The two women were never in the frame at the same time.
Agent Crenshaw picked up a photo of Max holding Millicent snug against him right before setting off for the prom and pointed to Millicent’s wrist. “She’s wearing Svetlana’s watch.”
Wyatt’s mouth went dry. Yes, the delicate watch on Millicent’s wrist looked like the one Svetlana wore, but it was not necessarily the same. That was the style for ladies’ watches in the early fifties.
Agent Crenshaw laid out all the prom photos, five in all. “The only jewelry Millicent is wearing in most of these pictures are a pair of pearl earrings, except in this final photo. Suddenly the watch appears on her wrist. My hunch is that Svetlana was the photographer, and she loaned Millicent the watch right before they set off for the prom.”
“So what?” he demanded. “Maybe Svetlana loaned Millicent the watch. It was obviously returned before Svetlana ended up dead in the tree, so it doesn’t prove anything.”
Except that Mrs. Hawkins lied when she said she didn’t know anyone matching the description of the lady in the tree .
He locked eyes with Crenshaw, who didn’t look away, but his expression saddened. Did Crenshaw know something he wasn’t sharing? Wyatt’s heart sped up and his mouth went dry.
“This doesn’t prove anything,” he stressed again.
“Not yet,” Agent Crenshaw said. “But now that you know the name of the woman in the tree, it’s time to ask Mrs. Hawkins if she remembers Svetlana Markova. I can’t do it because she doesn’t know or trust me. Svetlana was well-known to both Gus Summerlin and the Wakefields. We have proof right here. If Mrs. Hawkins claims not to remember Svetlana, she’s lying, and that means she’s hiding something.”
Wyatt’s worry turned into anger. “Are you suggesting Mrs. Hawkins could have had something to do with whatever happened to Svetlana? Because of a watch? ”
Agent Crenshaw merely shrugged. “I think that woman knows a lot more than she’s ever told anyone.” He began gathering the photographs into a stack and replaced them in the envelope. He met Jenny’s gaze.
“You have access to Senator Wakefield. You can get onto his estate and ask him questions about what we’re seeing in these photos. I’d like to be there when you meet with him. I want to see his expression when you ask if he remembers Svetlana Markova.”
Jenny nodded. “The Wakefield fox hunt happens four times a year, and there’s one coming up next weekend. The senator is always in town for that. That would be a good opportunity.”
“It would,” Agent Crenshaw said, then turned his attention to Wyatt. “You have a good relationship with Mrs. Hawkins. I’ll leave it to you to ask her if she ever knew Svetlana Markova. If you don’t want to ask her, the FBI can do it.”
“I’ll do it,” Wyatt replied grimly. “Let me have one of the photographs to see if it jogs her memory.”
Crenshaw gave him the one of Svetlana smiling in the porch swing at the grove. “I suggest we coordinate our questioning of Mrs. Hawkins and the senator to occur at the same time so they can’t tip each other off to get their stories straight.”
Wyatt nodded hesitantly. It was hard to imagine that everyone’s favorite small-town, fourth-grade teacher could have had any role in Svetlana’s death, but it was almost a certainty that she had known Svetlana.
The question was, would she still lie when confronted with these photographs?