Chapter 12
Bert beckons us through the threshold of the Duskboro Historical Society, clearly delighted to have visitors. Englebert had caught what he’d said about the folder of Wardwell documents and has been insisting ever since that we go visit. Today, I’ve finally given in.
Englebert hops atop a box. I take a seat at the table.
“He organized it chronologically,” Bert says, handing me Rupert’s folder.
The folder holds photocopies, mostly. There are a lot of land records that don’t really pique my interest, or presumably anyone but Bert’s.
There’s a page of an old town census with Wardwell Manor inventoried down to the number of stoves and a clipping from a county paper about my great-great-grandmother winning a weaving competition for four years running until she was asked, in what the paper calls ‘the interest of broader participation’ to judge instead.
The photo Bert mentioned from the 1962 Harvest Festival is near the back. My grandmother stands at the left edge of the frame, unmistakable. She’s much younger than I ever knew her, in a coat with a rounded collar, caught mid-sentence with one finger raised toward something outside the picture.
“You did say she was complaining,” I say.
“She often was,” Bert concurs.
“What do you think she was complaining about?”
“The pie placement, if I had to guess. There was a controversy that year. The fruit pies got the shade and the cream pies got the sun, which is backwards. Everyone knows that’s backwards.
The committee chair was a cream-pie woman herself, so...
” He spreads his hands, indicating the vastness of what followed.
Englebert, who has been touring the room at floor level, arrives on the chair beside me, then the table, then the edge of the folder. He leans in closely, examining the photo.
At my grandmother’s feet, half-hidden by the tablecloth and a stranger’s skirt, sits a cat, facing the camera dead-on while every human in the frame faces the pies.
“That’s you!” I say.
“Of course it’s me.” His voice has gone strange. He leans closer. “The Harvest Festival. She wanted company for the judging. She said…” He stops himself, recalibrates, and starts again at his usual altitude. “I was frequently in attendance at civic functions. It was expected.”
“Englebert! You’re in the town archive.”
“I am documented,” he says, and decades of grievance about family portraiture dissolve with the words. He sits back and composes himself. “Mr. Fisk. I should like a copy. Framed, if the Society’s budget permits. I will accept unframed.”
“The Society’s budget can be contained within a coffee can,” Bert says.
“But I’ve got a frame that’ll fit. Martha kept spares.
She framed everything. I’ve still got it all.
Ticket stubs, the grandchildren’s report cards, a parking citation she considered unjust, you name it.
” He shuffles toward a cabinet, continuing to talk with his back to us.
He finds the frame he’s looking for. It’s plain wood, a little scuffed, but it fits exactly right.
“There’s one more thing in there,” he says. “Last page.”
The last page is a photocopy of a theatre program, from the Duskboro High School Drama Society’s presentation of The Crucible. The cast list runs down the right side, with Pru playing Abigail Williams at top billing.
“Rupert found it in the school’s donation boxes,” Bert says. “I thought, with the play coming. Well. The Society keeps the original. But I thought the lady in question might like to see.”
“She’ll say she doesn’t care.”
“They always say that,” Bert says. “She was very good in it, you know. I remember.”
“I’ll let her know you thought so.”
* * *
Pru orders an heirloom tomato salad and a glass of the house white without even looking at the menu, which means she’s been here recently.
The menu at Black Eyed Susan’s changes almost daily, when the local farms change what they’re sending, and right now, in mid-August, everything is tomatoes. Our table has a little sign that says:
Today:
Brandywine, Cherokee Purple,
Green Zebra, Sun Gold
Yes, they’re all tomatoes.
Yes, they’re all different.
Ask your server.
I get some gazpacho and an elderberry pour over, and when the food comes out, I understand why Pru didn’t need the menu. The tomatoes are sliced thick over burrata and torn basil with a garlicky vinaigrette, and the bread on the side is still warm.
I pull the folder from Bert out of my bag and set it on the table between us.
“What’s this?”
“I stopped by the Historical Society this morning. Rupert left a folder of everything he found on the Wardwells.”
“I’m sure it’s riveting.”
“Check out the last page.”
Pru wipes her hands and flips to the last page, where Bert had put the photocopy of the Drama Society program.
“They spelled Danforth wrong,” she says after scanning the page. “They added a ‘u’. Ricky Danforth’s mother was the assistant director and she couldn’t spell her own son’s part.”
She turns the page over, sees nothing on the back, and flips it back over. “Where’d Rupert find this?”
“The school donated a bunch of boxes. This is just a photocopy, though. Bert kept the original.”
“Of course Bert kept the original.”
“Bert said you were good in it,” I say. “Everyone says you were good in it.”
“I was sixteen and furious about everything. It’s the perfect part for that. It’s a part you can play furious.” She reaches for the bread. “My mother came every night. She told me I was a very convincing liar, which I think she meant as a compliment.”
I laugh.
“And of course your mother refused to attend on principle. She invited us over for dinner the night before opening and spent the whole time trying to convince my mother that staging that particular play in Duskboro was blasphemous.”
“I remember that dinner. I was there,” I say. “Harriet would still say all that that, if it got brought up.”
“Of course she would.” Pru takes a bite. “So,” she says, “I ran into Annabel.”
“Where?”
“Her shop this morning.”
“Why were you at Annabel’s shop this morning?”
“She made some progress on figuring things out and wanted to tell me in person before she told anyone else.”
“That’s thoughtful.”
“That’s Annabel.”
“So she figured out what was in your cup?”
“Yeah. She identified it, sort of. It’s what they call a ‘croak tonic’. It gives you a sore throat, essentially. A voice suppressant. You can buy it in a catalog for about twelve dollars. Off-the-shelf garbage. Any witch with an internet connection could source one.”
“A voice suppressant?”
“Yeah. So whoever it was didn’t want to kill me. Or really even hurt me. If I’d drunk it, I’d have woken up the next morning sounding like I gargled gravel, but that’s about it.”
“Well,” I say. “That’s clearly extremely targeted. It’s petty and theatrical and probably has nothing to do with Damien.”
“Yeah. She’s positive there’s no trace of it on Damien. She still can’t pull the individual signatures apart because they’ve had so long to cook together, but there was definitely no croak tonic.”
“So, they’re definitely separate crimes, then,” I say. “So, who tried to dose you?”
“Well, we have our suspects. We’ve got Skye, and we’ve got Tiffany.”
“Hm,” I say. “The croak tonic is petty. Skye isn’t petty. Skye is young and scared and out of her depth.”
“Tiffany is petty.”
“Tiffany is professionally petty,” I concur. “If you lose your voice, the understudy goes on. The understudy has been telling everyone who will listen about how she’s ready to go on.”
“Exactly.”
“But she’s also been planting seeds in Skye’s ear. Feeding her doubts about Damien and Vivian, and she told her she looked tired.”
“Tiffany tells everyone they look tired. It’s how she sells facials.”
“She told Skye to come by the salon. On the house. She was cultivating her.”
Pru considers this. “Tiffany could have dosed the cup herself. Or she could have wound Skye up and let Skye do it for her. Either way, the croak tonic points at someone who wanted Lady Macbeth to fail, and we have exactly two candidates.”
“Unless it was someone we haven’t considered.”
“In a production of a couple dozen people in a town where half of them have known me since I was born? Sure. I’m open to suggestions.”
I don’t have one.
“How are you doing with this?” I ask.
“With what?”
“With the fact that someone tried to sabotage you?”
“I spent most of my adult life as a corporate lawyer. Someone’s always trying to sabotage me.
” She shrugs. “It’s a croak tonic. It would’ve made me hoarse for a couple days.
It’s the magical equivalent of putting sugar in someone’s gas tank.
I’m not going to give whoever did it the satisfaction of being upset. ”
“We should tell Englebert,” I say.
“Obviously we’ll tell Englebert. He’ll want a briefing. He’ll want a diagram. He’ll want to cross-reference Emma’s log.”
“Emma’s log might actually help, now that you mention it. The croak tonic didn’t brew itself on the props table. Someone brought it in, in a bottle or a vial, and used it during the run.”
Her phone buzzes on the table. She glances down and makes a face. It’s not the face she makes for work calls. It’s also not the face she makes for her mother, which is a particular blend of love and, well, bracing, is the best way I can come up with to describe it.
The face she makes is almost a smile. It lasts about a second and a half as she picks the phone up, reads whatever’s on the screen, and puts it back down.
“Everything okay?” I say.
“Fine. Where were we?”
“Croak tonic.”
“Right,” she says. “So we have two crimes. Crime one is petty and aimed at me, and points at Tiffany or Skye or both. Crime two is layered, ongoing, aimed at Damien, and we still have no idea who’s behind it, or if it’s even a crime at all, because he could have easily accidentally done it himself. ”
Her phone buzzes again. She types something quickly in response and sets the phone screen-down beside her plate.
Pru doesn’t set her phone screen-down. Her phone is face-up at all times because she bills in six-minute increments and she needs to see the clock.
“I have a two o’clock,” she says, standing up. “Go brief Englebert.”
She collects her tablet, her blazer from the back of the chair, and her phone, which she checks one more time before it goes into her pocket.
“I’m getting a drink with Hannah and Gabe at the Hearth after rehearsal tonight. The kids are having a sleepover at Hannah’s mom’s,” I say. “You in?”
“Can’t tonight. I’m meeting someone.”
“Who?”
“A person.”
“You’re meeting a person?”
“People meet people, Mari.”
“Not you. You have a calendar that accounts for every fifteen minutes of your day, and you’ve never once described an appointment as ‘meeting a person.’ You’ve never been vague about anything in your life.”
“I’m being vague right now. Clearly I’m capable.”
“Is it a date?”
“Goodbye, Mari.”
“It’s a date.”
“It’s a meeting, over food, with someone whose company I find tolerable. If you want to call that a date, that’s your business.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere that isn’t the Hearth & Stone, where the entire town can narrate my evening to Dorcas by morning.”
Pru doesn’t turn down an invitation to get drinks.
I’ve never once seen Pru turn down an invitation to get drinks, and I’ve known her my entire life.
She’s turning down the invitation tonight, though, because she has somewhere better to be, and she won’t say where, and she won’t say with whom, and on top of that, she’s smiling about something she’s refusing to explain.
She’s definitely got a date.
“Have fun on your not-date,” I say.
“I’ll see you later,” she says, and leaves.
My walk home takes less than twenty minutes. I spend them thinking about who in this town would spend money on a mail-order voice suppressant, but also about who Pru would be meeting at a location specifically chosen to be outside the Duskboro gossip radius.
I don’t know what’s going on, but I know it isn’t nothing, and I know she’ll tell me when she’s ready. I know that if I push, she’ll retreat back into her professional voice and not tell me anything at all.
So I don’t push. I go home, and I brief the cat.