My knowledge of Civil War–era Athena was sketchy at best, and I intended to rectify that. I wanted to know more about what happened here during those dark days, and I figured there might be theses or dissertations that could satisfy my curiosity. I hadn’t run across any books on the subject, but students earning degrees might have written about aspects of the town’s history.
I also debated going through the Long collection to look for letters that Rachel might have written, but decided that she would hardly have confided plans to poison the Singletary children to a correspondent.
A search of the college library’s online catalog yielded several works with the town of Athena as a subject. One of them, Athena, Mississippi, During the Civil War: A Study of Social and Political Life Under Crisis, was a dissertation by Catherine Louisa Brooke. The date of the degree was 1987, and according to the catalog the bound item was on the shelf in the library.
I considered my options and decided to ask Melba to watch Diesel while I went next door to the main library building in search of the dissertation. I knew she would be happy to have my cat to herself for a while. “Come on, boy,” I said to the napping feline on the windowsill. “Let’s go see Melba.”
Diesel perked up the moment he heard Melba’s name and slid down from the window. He scampered to the door ahead of me and was down the stairs by the time I reached the top of them. I hurried down, and as I neared the office, I could hear Melba already cooing over the cat.
“Morning, Charlie,” she said. “I was asking Diesel if he sneaked down to see me on his own.” She rubbed her hand along the cat’s spine, and Diesel chirped happily in response.
“No, we came down because I wanted to ask you to watch him while I go next door. I want to get a book from the library.”
“Of course.” She beamed at me.
“One other thing,” I said. “Someone will be returning the Rachel Long diaries to the archive today. I’m not sure exactly when, but I was told it would be this morning. Give me a shout on my cell phone if they show up before I get back, okay?”
“Sure,” Melba said. “Take your time. Diesel and I’ll be fine.”
The whole errand took me only ten minutes, and it was almost nine thirty when Diesel and I arrived back upstairs in the office. He got comfortable in his favorite spot, and I sat at my desk and opened the dissertation.
I noted that Professor Newkirk was the student’s major advisor and also that Marie Steverton had been a member of her committee. I skimmed the acknowledgments and was not surprised to see that Marie received only a bare mention.
I settled back in my chair and started to read. I was happy to discover that Dr. Brooke had an engaging style and her prose didn’t suffer from the usual academic dryness. The opening chapter related the beginnings of the town of Athena in the early 1820s, and I recognized several names as those of our most prominent families: Ducote, Long, and Pendergrast, among others. Then I had the pleasant shock of seeing the name of my own great-great-grandfather, Henry Harris. He had owned a large dry goods store in Athena and was considered one of the town’s most prominent businessmen.
The narrative absorbed me, and I lost track of time while I read. A knock at the door roused me, and I looked up to see a man in the uniform of the sheriff’s department standing there.
“Please, come in.” I stood and motioned for him to enter. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t remember his name.
“Morning, Mr. Harris,” the deputy said. “Where would you like me to put this?” He nodded to indicate the box he carried.
“Right here on the desk, Deputy Turnbull.” He had come close enough for me to read the name on his badge.
Turnbull set the box down and pulled some papers out of the top. “If you’ll sign this for me, sir, to acknowledge you accepted return of the books, I’d appreciate it.” He put the papers on the desk in front of me.
“Certainly.” I sat and picked up a pen. I followed the direction of the deputy’s pointing finger and signed as asked.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. He gave a sharp nod. “Have a good day.”
I thanked him in return and bade him good day as well. My hands trembled as I reached in a drawer and pulled out a pair of cotton gloves. I was thrilled to have the diaries back in the archive.
I stared down at the contents of the box as I pulled on the gloves. Would the diaries yield the information necessary to shed light on the bizarre events of the past few days? I took a deep breath and began to unload the box.
THIRTY
“Well, boy, I have my work cut out for me now,” I said as I placed the last volume on my desk and set the box on the floor beside it. I figured the cat would want to investigate the box, and better that it should be on the floor than on my desk.
I turned to the windowsill. Diesel wasn’t there.
I had a brief moment of panic, then forced myself to calm down. “Diesel? Where are you, boy? Come here please.”
I waited for at least fifteen seconds before I repeated my summons.
No cat appeared. He was probably downstairs with Melba. I stripped off one glove, picked up the office phone, and punched in her extension. She answered right away.
“I was about to call you,” she said. “I have a furry visitor, and I’ll bet you didn’t know he’d sneaked out of the office and come down here.”
I felt a huge sensation of relief. “No, I didn’t know he’d left the office. I was pretty engrossed in reading, and he got out without my knowledge. Thank goodness he’s safe with you, the little demon.”
“I thought he might follow Art Turnbull, the deputy who was here a few minutes ago. He stopped in to say a quick hello to me before he came upstairs.”
“One of your many admirers, no doubt,” I teased her gently. I figured Turnbull for mid-forties, but that was close enough for Melba.
“No, he’s married,” she said. “But I know his sister Madge real well. You probably don’t remember her. She was a few grades behind us in school.”
“No, can’t say that I remember her. Look, are you okay with Diesel down there? Or do you want me to come get him?”
“He can stay with me for a while,” Melba said. “When I get ready to take a break, we’ll come upstairs.”
“Thanks.” I felt relieved but also a bit aggravated with myself. I shouldn’t have been so wrapped up in my reading that I missed seeing my large cat slink out of the office. I needed to be more alert.
My heart rate returned to normal, I picked up the discarded glove and put it back on. I figured I might as well take a look at the volume with the missing pages. Each of the volumes lay on its side on my desk, with the bottom pages of the book toward me. I bent closer to them and examined each one.
The volume with the missing pages wasn’t hard to spot. There was a slight gap in the pages about two-thirds of the way toward the back of it. I pulled that one forward and opened it with care.
I turned to the place in the book where the pages had been taken out. I examined the area, and it looked to me like Marie had used a razor blade to cut the pages loose. There was no point in feeling anger over Marie’s act of vandalism. She had already paid a higher price than I could have exacted.
The date of the entry preceding the gap was August 10, 1863. I turned to the beginning of the diary and found the initial date there: November 1, 1860.
That was odd. This volume covered at least part of the same period as the volume Mrs. Long found hidden in the false bottom of the trunk.
I checked the final entry for a date: June 3, 1866.
This volume did cover the same time period. Actually it was a bit more extensive, I realized after a moment’s thought. The volume I had read started in March of 1861 and ended in mid-May 1865, a week or two after the end of the war.