I tipped back in my chair. “There’s no secret, Mr. Cross.”
“Well, there is one very minor thing. I do intend to research it a bit further.” He paused, studied me. “Molly was a twin, but her sibling died at birth, a girl named Anne. Birth, death, marriage records, they’re all public documents, Herbert, and I have copies of them, for Molly, her parents, her aunt, and her twin. The twin girl died—” He looked through some other papers on the table. “—from injuries suffered at birth.”
I frowned. “Could that...” But we both shook our heads at the same time.
“It’s a disappointment to find so little, but her life—” Martin tipped his head back and raised his voice. “—was a good one. She registered to vote. She went to the library. She worked and paid her taxes. Elmer, she was a happy woman, I think.”
Mr. Hornton just made a noise from the porch, then silence.
“Injuries suffered at birth,” I said. “Such as?”
“Oh, Herbert, the things they can do now that they couldn’t in Molly’s day. Perhaps her twin was undersized, or had a birth defect, even a minor one. She wasn’t stillborn. The cause of death specifically states ‘injuries suffered at birth.’ Maybe the doctor or midwife made an error.” He shook his head sadly.
“Like a cord around the neck or something?”
“Perhaps.”
“I tried, Elmer.” Again Martin raised his voice so Mr. Hornton could hear him. “I will do some more research on this twin.”
But the man on the porch was silent as he turned up the radio. The Red Sox were playing the Yankees.
“How much longer you going to pay me to do this?” I asked the next day. I almost added, “to do nothing.”
“ ’Til you find what I’m looking for!” Mr. Hornton snapped. He walked away, banging the walker deliberately on the kitchen floor with every step.
I was meeting Mr. Cross here rather than have to explain to Mrs. Wenlow who he was, how I knew him, and what we were going to do. I was tired of justifying every move I made to a foster parent. Now here I was, in an argument with Mr. Hornton again.
“I got a question for you,” I said. “Who are you mad at? Is it me? Mr. Cross? Molly?”
This was his answer: “Martin called an hour ago. Seems he’s taking you to the post office, the library, and the cemetery. Seems you got quite an itinerary this morning.”
“Oh yeah, we’re just going to town today. This is going to be the highlight—” I exaggerated the effect, dragging out the words, rolling my eyes. “—of my summer. The Manamesset Post Office? Oh, my God, waiting ail my life to go there.”
“You are one damn disrespectful boy, you know that?”
I threw up my hands. “I’m sorry! But it’s like, well, I’d rather talk to smelly old Buster Holiday than you, Mr. Hornton. We’re doing our best. We really are. You want better, call a P.I.” I turned to go.
“Buster Holiday,” Mr. Hornton said, his voice cool, emotionless, “Why’d you say his name?”
“Your old friend?” By then I was in full sarcasm mode, “Your pal who worked for you, what? Back in the sixties? Because I saw him out at Old Cedar and we talked a little. Oh, he wants us to go deep-sea fishing with him sometime. You up for it? We’ll need gas masks to survive the smell.”
“Buster’s no friend of mine,” he said, but again in a low, cold tone.
“He said you were,” I said. Mr. Horton turned away, waving his hand at me as if in disgust, so I said, “He liked Molly, too, didn’t he? Were you and him rivals?”
There was a honk in the driveway. Mr. Cross was waiting for me, but as I headed for the door, not expecting an answer or comment to what I’d just said, Mr. Hornton muttered: “Like hell he was. She didn’t want either one of us.”
The post office and library were both a bust; the first painting was of a pair of white heron walking through a marsh at high tide (not badly done, by the way), and the second was a scene of the beach at sunset. It was what Martin Cross and I found at the cemetery which was more interesting.
The cemetery was in Sandwich, on a hill overlooking the canal. I pushed Martin Cross up the small hill where the Windsor plot was located. All five Windsors, their names carved in an old-style white marble headstone, were there, only Molly’s date of death had yet to be recorded on the stone. Edgar, devoted husband; Elvira, loving wife; Sarah Elaine, loving sister; Mary, daughter; Anne, daughter.
The problem was Anne’s date of death read six years after her birth.
“This isn’t right,” Martin insisted. “The death certificate clearly stated that she’d died from injuries suffered at birth.”
“You can die from injuries suffered at birth six years later, Mr. Cross,” I said.
“But the date...” he argued, and turning to me, he added. “Can it be? Yes, it must be a mistake.”
“For the first six years of her life, Molly had a twin sister,” I said, “who had something wrong with her.”
But could that be Molly’s secret? Sad and maybe tragic, yes, but something she didn’t want Mr. Hornton to know? It didn’t make sense. I think each of us muttered that phrase four or five times around the table later that evening.
Mr. Cross and I had picked up Chinese take-out on the way back to Elmer Hornton’s house, but when I called the Wenlows to say I was staying for dinner, I knew from the nervous tenor in her voice that Mrs. Wenlow didn’t approve. Even though I had my bike with me, she insisted Mr. Wenlow would come and get me later.
“It’s difficult enough knowing a person when they’re alive, all their intimate, daily struggles, their feelings, their passions — now imagine trying to learn about them after they’re gone,” Martin Cross said, as he finished his fried rice and egg rolls. “What I mean to say, Elmer, is that Molly kept herself very closeted while alive. Her secrets, if there were any, are just as sealed — maybe more — now that she’s gone.”
But Mr. Hornton was firmly entrenched in the facts: “So, mistake on this twin’s death certificate?”
“Oh, most likely, and it does happen,” Martin Cross nodded. “Might be a clerical error. Perhaps someone saw the words ‘from injuries suffered at birth,’ and they just penciled in the birth date. The medical examiner signed his name to it later, never noticing the error in the date.”
Mr. Hornton nodded, fell silent.
“And nothing ever happened up at the big house?” Mr. Hornton interrupted, his voice low, contained.
“Nothing,” Martin confirmed. “No wild parties, no scandals, no bootlegging or rumrunning. No mysterious or unexplained deaths. The house wasn’t part of the Underground Railroad, nor were the Windsors mooncussers, luring ships to land by waving lanterns on the shore.”
“Mr. Hornton,” I spoke up as I finished the last of the crab rangoons, “You said there were three people at the funeraclass="underline" you, someone from the law firm...?”
“Yes, that would be the gentleman I spoke with on the phone, Abner Stribner,” Martin Cross interjected, “Very nice fellow but not a font of information.”
“Who was the third?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. “Mr. Hornton? Elmer?” Still nothing. “Mr. H.!”
“Buster Holiday,” Mr. Hornton muttered.
“Mr. Holiday?” It took a few seconds to register. Now I was confused. Was it possible Buster Holiday had been out at Old Cedar looking for something? One of the paintings?