Chapter Forty-Four Ashley
FORTY-FOUR ASHLEY
All set?” Malcolm asked. He was carrying biscuits and a little jar of Josephine’s raspberry jam.
“Yeah,” Ashley said. “Let’s go see if we can find Willy.”
Josephine had come up to stand in the hall beside Malcolm. “I can’t thank you enough for all your help today,” she said.
“It’s no trouble,” he told her. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning and we’ll see if we can get that sink to stop leaking. And I’ll take a look at the door to the attic too.”
“It sticks something terrible,” she said. “Sometimes I think the whole house is crooked. None of the doors seem to close right.”
“It’s an old house,” he told her. “They settle. Nothing’s square or level. That’s part of their charm.”
Josephine smiled at him, beamed at him really. “And you’ll think about my offer, Malcolm?”
“Of course,” he said. Then he leaned in and hugged her, kissed her on the cheek.
It was the way he used to say good-bye to Gram.
Ashley’s chest felt tight and she had to turn away, to remind herself to breathe. She headed out the door, Malcolm right behind her.
“Don’t forget the tobacco for Willy,” Josephine called after them.
“We won’t,” Ashley reassured her over her shoulder.
“It’ll be a nice treat for him,” Josephine said. “Maybe a cold soda too?”
“You bet,” Ashley said, trying to conceal her exasperation.
“He’s partial to root beer,” Josephine called after them.
They walked a little ways, and Ashley looked back. Josephine had finally closed the front door.
“So, what’s this offer she was talking about?”
“You’re not going to believe it,” he said, laughing a bit.
“So she asked if I could stay with her for a couple of weeks, help her with all these little odd jobs around the house, get to know my ‘ancestral home.’ I told her I’d think about it—it’s not like I’ve got anything going on back home, you know?
So then she says, she’s actually been thinking about turning the house into a bed-and-breakfast! ”
“She brought it up?”
“Yes, I swear! She started going on about how it’s a shame for all these lovely rooms to sit empty, just cooking for herself in the big kitchen, wouldn’t it be nice for visitors to have an alternative to the motel—she called it ‘that grim little motel,’ actually.
” He was smiling broadly. “Did I think you and I would be open to it, wouldn’t it be nice to make a little income off the property? ”
“Tell me you didn’t agree to anything, Mal.”
“Of course not! I didn’t even let on that I’d been thinking the same thing ever since I laid eyes on the house. But it sure seems meant to be, right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Ashley said, thinking, A bit too meant to be, actually.
“There’s a lot to think about, figure out, of course,” Mal went on enthusiastically. “But we can talk about it, right?”
She sighed. “Sure. We can discuss it later, okay?” She was placating him.
He grinned at her.
“I’m still trying to get my head around this whole thing,” Ashley said.
“Gram grew up here with Josephine; she had this whole early life she never talked about. She lied to us, Mal. It’s one thing to leave your little hometown in the boonies behind for the big city, it’s another to go out of your way to lie to your kids and grandkids about ever having even been to that little hometown. ”
Malcolm shrugged. “I mean, it’s strange, for sure. But she must have had her reasons.”
“There’s something else,” Ash said. “Mom was definitely here in Boone’s Ferry two years ago. The little girl, Mini, remembers her—I showed her the picture, she recognized her right away. Willy and Cheryl remember her too.”
“Wow. You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure! Willy’s wife was the town clerk. He told me she and Mom were looking into things they shouldn’t have been. And they both got the mark on their doors. The next day, the town hall burned, his wife was killed. And Mom vanished.”
Malcolm was silent a moment as they walked, processing.
“Did Willy tell you this, Ash? He is the town drunk, right?”
Ash ignored him, and he continued. “I mean, Mom didn’t ‘vanish.’ She left town, headed home. Now I can totally see why she would have been distraught—the fire, Willy’s wife dying—she probably blamed herself.”
Every fiber of Ashley’s being was telling her this was not what had happened to her mother—but she still didn’t have proof.
“After what I heard today, I think it’s more than that, I really do.”
He put his arm around her. “Okay. Let’s go get supplies and find Willy. I want to hear what he has to say about Mom. Maybe we can bribe him to tell us more with all the treats we’re bringing.”
Ash leaned into him.
THE BELLS ON the door of Pops’ General Store jingled when they walked in.
The man behind the counter called out, “Can I help you?” before their eyes had even adjusted to the dim light.
It sounded like they’d just walked into his house uninvited and he was about to reach for a shotgun.
He wore a flannel shirt tucked into blue work pants hiked up high and cinched around his narrow waist with a thick leather belt adorned with a gigantic silver buckle shaped like a horseshoe.
Both hands were resting on the worn counter beside the register.
“Yes, thanks,” Malcolm said. He dug around in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the worn washer from Josephine’s dripping sink. “We need one of these if you’ve got one.”
The man took the washer and shuffled to the back of the store where there were drawers full of fasteners, bits and bobs of all sorts.
Malcolm joined him, watching as he opened one tiny drawer after another, muttering to himself.
Ashley found a root beer and looked around.
The old wooden floor creaked. There was a wooden barrel of pickles, a small deli, a pizza oven, a huge display of hunting and fishing things.
A spinning rack of items made at the Stoddard Factory caught Ashley’s attention: bags of wooden clothespins, red tops wound with string, cup-and-ball toys.
Ash picked up one of the toys and flicked her wrist, trying to get the ball on a string into the cup.
She missed by a mile, and the hard little wood ball bonked her on the back of the hand.
It took a long time for the shopkeeper to find the right washer, but once he did, he ambled back to the counter, Malcolm following.
“We also need tobacco,” Mal said.
“What sort of tobacco?”
“I’m not sure,” Mal said, which proved to be the exactly wrong thing to say, because what followed was the man pulling each and every sort of loose tobacco, both cigarette and pipe, from behind the counter and showing it to Malcolm.
He clearly planned to give an in-depth analysis of each, talking to Malcolm like he was a dense child.
“Any will do, really,” Mal said.
“You’ve got to choose,” the shopkeeper said, his irritation building. “I can’t choose for you.”
“I’m buying it for someone in town, a man named Willy?”
The man frowned. “Well, Sad Willy used to smoke Camels back in the day, but now he isn’t too fussy. He’d be happy smoking butts picked up around town, but we all look out for him. Help him out. That’s the way it is around here.”
Malcolm nodded. The shopkeeper leaned over, resting his elbows on the counter, and said, a little too loud, spittle flying, “I don’t know how it is where you people come from.”
Mal quickly selected a bright-yellow pouch of Top tobacco and a pack of Zig-Zag rolling papers. Ash added in the Hires root beer.
The shopkeeper couldn’t seem to work the credit card machine, and when Mal tried to help, explaining that he was putting the card in upside down, the man fumbled and dropped Mal’s card on the floor behind the register.
He took a long time recovering it, bending in slow motion, grabbing at his back as if it pained him.
“We’ll just pay cash,” Ashley said, putting a twenty on the counter. The shopkeeper picked it up and studied it a long time, as if it might be counterfeit, before opening the register and counting back their change.
When all was said and done, their little pit stop at the store had taken nearly half an hour.
They left the store and headed straight for the bridge.
“Pops was something, huh?” Mal said.
“If you call being a total asshole ‘something,’ then yeah,” Ash said, laughing.
They made their way down to Willy’s camp below the bridge.
At the factory across the river, a few workers were on break outside, sitting at picnic tables.
Some were playing cards, some were smoking.
They cast their eyes at Ashley and Mal, then looked away.
No one approached, no one called out to see who they were or what they were doing at Sad Willy’s.
Malcolm raised a hand to wave, but no one waved back.
Willy was not home.
“Guess our man is on walkabout,” Malcolm said as he eyed the empty bedroll.
“When I saw him earlier, he did say he had something to do.” She looked across the river at the factory workers. “Let’s just leave the stuff and get out of here. These guys are giving me the creeps. It feels like they’re trying too hard not to look at us.”
“Maybe it’s like what Josephine said. Outsiders make them nervous,” Malcolm said.
“Let’s get back to the motel, sort through the trunk a bit more.
Then maybe we can bring it over to Josephine’s later.
You see how excited she got about Frankie’s diaries?
It would mean a lot to her, plus she’ll recognize some of the people in the photos, some of the names in the documents. ”
They got to the Deer Run Motel to see that there was a sign in a clear plastic protective envelope hanging in the office window: a watercolor of a man in waders standing in the middle of a turquoise stream, holding a fishing pole.
On the end of his line, a strange silver-and-blue-scaled fish with bulbous eyes and a mouth more like a bird’s beak was leaping from the water, a hook in its lip. GONE FISHIN said the sign.
“You’re kidding,” Ashley said, stepping closer to study the sign. “A Lorelei Prentice original as an out-of-office sign.”
Malcolm laughed. “Looks more like a baby dragon than a trout.”
“I’ll meet you in your room in five minutes or so,” Ashley said. “I just want to change.”
“Deal,” he said.
She unlocked her door, stepped into the room, dropped her purse on the bed.
She brushed her hair, looking in the mirror, which captured the image of a Lorelei painting behind her: a doe and fawn.
But the fawn was misshapen, deformed. And the doe was looking at her with what seemed like pity in her big brown eyes.
Ash set down her brush, went to her suitcase, drew out a short-sleeved shirt. She was just pulling it on when there was a rapid, hard knock at the door.
“Ashley?” Mal called.
She jogged over, opened the door. “What’s up?”
“It’s all gone,” he said. He looked pale. Shaken. “The trunk, the papers, the letters, everything in it. All of it.”
“What?” It wasn’t possible. “How could it be gone? Are you sure?”
He chuffed out a frustrated breath, ran a hand through his unruly dark curls. “Of course I’m sure, Ash.”
“Was the door open? The window broken?”
“No. And I made damn sure I locked the door before we left this morning.”
Ashley thought of the GONE FISHIN sign. Then she thought of Jack sitting at the bar, spinning the gold watch.
You’re running out of time.
“We should call the police,” Ashley said.
Mal bit his lip. “Yeah, I think you’re right.
First the mark on the door, now the break-in.
I can’t believe someone took the trunk!” He pulled out his phone, looked at it as if hoping that it might suddenly have service.
“But how are we gonna call? Our cell phones don’t work, there are no phones in the rooms, and the office is locked up tight—I just checked. ”
“Okay,” Ash said, taking in a deep breath, trying to quell the rising panic. “We go into town and find a phone. We can ask at the general store or the pub. If they won’t let us use their phone, we head back to Josephine’s and use hers.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Malcolm said, pulling the truck keys out of his pocket. “Let’s go.”
Ashley grabbed her purse and followed him out the door, her eye catching the painting; the doe’s gaze seemed to follow her: Poor thing, her too-big, cartoonish brown eyes said.