“Here, let us clear the table,” Susan offered.
“Don’t you dare.” Trudy needed things to do. “Oh, one thing I didn’t mention which surprised me. The sheriff and deputy wanted to see Ginger’s office. They couldn’t believe the books on the shelves, the piles of books on the floor, and his brand-new desktop computer.”
“When did he buy a new computer?” Harry asked.
“Come on. I’ll show you. Cost as much as a used Toyota.” She led them down the cross hall, off the main hall, to Ginger’s bright office. Lots of windows here too. Trudy, with trepidation, had let him decorate it himself. Apart from the flintlock rifle over the fireplace and the flintlock pistols used as paperweights, he did okay.
“I’ve never been in Ginger’s office.” From the doorway, Harry took in the hand-tinted old maps, the famous reproduction of Washington on horseback in a gold frame.
“Wait until you see this.” Trudy walked behind his desk. Everyone followed, dogs too, to stand behind Trudy. She turned on a super-expensive Mac with an enormous screen. “His baby.”
Always interested in anything mechanical or technical, Harry let out a gasp. “This did cost as much as a used Toyota! Maybe even a new one!”
Trudy sat down, punched in a password, and a crude drawing of The Albemarle Barracks popped up. “Drove him wild that everything at this site was destroyed or built over. He swore if we could dig there, we would find so much useful information. Funny, he was coming full circle. When he graduated from Yale, he became fascinated with two things: slavery in the North, and prisoners of war during the Revolutionary War. Then he moved away from that, focused on what we called ‘the common man.’ But Ginger’s curiosity, relentless, pulled him down many a byway. Can you believe one time he had to learn everything about marriage customs in seventeenth-century Poland?” She threw up her hands. “I have no idea why, and I don’t think he did either.”
They laughed. She clicked on an icon and opened another file.
Harry exclaimed, “This screen is fabulous. The detail.” She leaned over to peer at the text.
Susan did too, and read aloud, “A Memoir of the Exploits of Captain Alexander Fraser and His Company of British Marksmen, 1776 to 1777.”
Trudy said, “Ginger would still drive to read diaries and letters in private collections, or in small college and university libraries. But was he thrilled with how much information he could get using his monster machine.” Trudy turned the computer off, looked around the office. “I miss him. I miss his conversation. I knew when I married him that he was a remarkable man. The years only confirmed that.”
Harry smiled. “You could learn more from Ginger in a half hour than an entire semester’s course with someone else.”
They walked out of the office. Harry paused for a moment to study the Fry-Jefferson map framed on the wall. Trudy noticed. “I think half the old places in Virginia have that map on the wall. Can you imagine travel back then?”
“Sometimes,” Harry replied.
“I can’t,” Susan quipped. “Nor can I imagine what you endured if you had a toothache. And bleeding people. Probably hastened Washington’s death, all the bleeding.”
“We’ve come so far in some ways, and yet remain primitive in others,” Trudy thoughtfully said, then added, “I think the sheriff and the deputy were amazed at the little they saw of Ginger’s research. Sheriff Shaw asked if Brinsley Sims could read through what Ginger was working on because he would be able to put it into some kind of perspective. I said of course, as long as he does it in the house. I quite like Brinsley. Lord! He’s got to be close to retirement. Where does the time go?”
“I don’t know, but if you find out, let’s go bring some back,” said Harry.
After laughing at Harry’s idea, Trudy said, “I asked the sheriff, ‘Was Ginger’s research important to the case?’ They were very honest and said they didn’t know. They had to explore many avenues. Which I understand.” She took a breath as they walked to the front door. “Ginger’s refrain was ‘The past is always with us.’ Much as I believe that, it can’t have anything to do with his murder.”
—
Driving back to Harry’s in her truck, the dogs, satisfied, slept.
Susan turned to Harry, who hadn’t spoken a word since they left Trudy’s. “All right. What’s whirring through your overheated pea brain?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Thinking about the past.”
“Go on.” Sometimes Susan had to wheedle.
“What if Ginger’s murder has to do with a buried treasure? You know, maybe a robbed pay wagon.”
“Harry!” Susan’s voice registered disbelief.
“Well, you never know.” Harry shrugged. She was headed in the right direction, but on the wrong track.
April 20, 2015
Snoop was perched on a large planter of colored concrete, on the Downtown Mall. Half in the bag this morning, he was nevertheless alert and observant, watching the world go by.
Harry never could tell what those enormous planters were made of, although the plants filling them reflected the season. In this one were daffodils, unfurling ferns for a background, along with small white teardrops. The gardeners serving the city could do only so much in the changing season. Had they filled these big pots with tulips, or many early colorful blooms, one hard frost would kill them off.
As it was on her mind, killing propelled her to the mall, not a place Harry normally patronized. If Harry were going shopping, a dreaded chore, it would be at Southern States Feed or AutoZone. If money were to leave her hands, it would be for something useful. This is why her friends, twice a year, would throw her in a car, drive her to Short Pump, and force her to buy new clothes at Nordstrom. They thought of it as a benevolent fashion intervention. She thought of it as kidnapping.
Snoop smiled when he saw the corgi and the attractive woman wearing jeans and cowboy boots approaching him. At his feet was a small bucket filled with hardwood letter openers he carved. Tucker, at her heels, added to the vision. Few women approached Snoop, once a successful and good-looking cabinetmaker. He had lost his battle with the bottle. It seemed doubtful he could ever fight his way back.
Harry didn’t understand addictions, nor did she evidence much sympathy for them. But, raised to respect people, she tried not to sit in judgment. Mostly she sidestepped the whole issue, but she didn’t want to sidestep Snoop. She had noticed him standing nearby the day Frank blew up at Olivia.
Holding out her hand, she said, “Hello, Sir. I’m Harriet Haristeen. Harry, for short.”
Fortunately for Snoop, he still had all his teeth, so when he smiled he looked fine. “I saw you before, you and the dog.”
The handshake was firm, and Harry then disengaged. “May I ask you a few questions?”
“You’re not from the Salvation Army, are you?”
“No, Sir.”
“Snoop, my name is Snoop.” He placed his hands on the edge of the planter, slightly tilting forward. “There’s room to sit if you like.”
Harry smiled, pleased somehow that he hadn’t forgotten his manners to a lady. “No, thank you. I won’t take much of your time.”
“Miss Harry, time is all I got.” He said this without rancor, just a fact.
“I see. Well, let me get to the point. So you saw me the other day, when Frank Cresey screamed at my friend, the lady with the blonde hair?”
“I remember.”
“Did you ever see Frank act that way before?”
“No.”
“Actually, I should back up. Do you know him well?”
Snoop drawled, “Well enough. We all live down here on the mall. Sometimes we sleep under the railroad bridge in bad weather. Winter, sometimes at the Salvation Army. Sometimes we tough it out. Best I can remember, Frank’s been here off and on for ten years, maybe more.”