The Peach Keeper

  When Willa’s and Paxton’s arms touched, they jerked apart and put some space between them.

  “Don’t worry, Willa. Your grandmother didn’t kill him,” Agatha said. “And I know that for sure.”

  Willa smiled. “Well, it’s a relief to hear someone say that.”

  “Because I killed him,” Agatha finished.

  EIGHT

  Party Girls

  Paxton took swift and immediate action. “I think you’ve upset her enough,” she said, ushering Willa to the door with the skill of a hostess herding her last guests out. “Now she’s talking nonsense.”

  “I haven’t talked nonsense a day in my life!” Agatha barked.

  Once in the hallway, Paxton said, “She’s delicate, and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Don’t come back here and upset her. I mean it.”

  Paxton went back into the room and closed the door. Willa was tempted to get angry, but she’d seen something in Paxton that tempered the emotion. Paxton wanted to protect her grandmother. Just like Willa did.

  So Willa left the nursing home with even more questions than she’d started with. There had been a surprising vehemence in her voice when Agatha had declared that her friendship to Georgie still existed, as if it was a living, breathing thing, something that came to life the moment it happened and didn’t just go away because they no longer acknowledged it. How far would that friendship go? Far enough to lie? Or far enough to tell the truth?

  She wondered if Paxton was thinking the same thing.

  One thing she knew for sure: Willa was on her own when it came to finding answers now. She’d seen the wall go up. There was no way Paxton would let her talk to Agatha again.

  When she got home, she changed clothes and climbed the stairs to the only other place she knew to look for clues.

  The attic.

  It had been a long time since she’d had any reason to come up here. It was dim and dusty, and spiderwebs wrapped around the entire area, making it look like a large ball of string. She broke through the webs to see boxes piled to the rafters. Her old toys from childhood. Her dad’s teaching awards. Her grandmother’s things were in large white boxes under some quilted packing blankets. Willa had been away at college when her dad had moved her grandmother into the house from her apartment, so Willa had no idea what was in those boxes. Probably a little bit of everything. Her dad never threw anything out. The couch Willa had finally gotten rid of last week had been the same couch her father and mother had bought when they’d first married. Over the years, it had been patched, re-stuffed and re-stitched, then finally covered with a blanket to hide the grape jelly and coffee stains.

  She took a deep breath and began to unearth the boxes that had her grandmother’s name on them. One at a time, she brought them downstairs, until they filled half of the living room.

  She picked a box at random, sat down in front of it, then opened it.

  She almost gave in to tears at the scent that whooshed out at her. Cedar and lavender, with undertones of borax and bleach. Scents she would always associate with her grandmother. Georgie had been obsessively neat, and Willa remembered her father telling her that walking into Georgie’s apartment and finding dishes piled in her sink had been his first clue that something was wrong. Georgie never forgot to do the dishes. Her memory had only gotten worse after that.

  Her father had packed these boxes, and it must have been hard for him. He always, stridently, respected his mother’s privacy. That was probably why it looked like this box had been packed with his eyes closed.

  The box contained items Willa remembered from Grandmother Georgie’s sparse living room. She began to take things out. Everything was individually wrapped in newspaper. A crystal candy dish. Two embroidered pillows. A Bible. A photo album.

  Ah. That had possibilities.

  After she unwrapped it, she set the album on her lap and cracked it open. She remembered looking through it as a child. It contained photos of her father. Only her father. Grandmother Georgie had had some of Willa’s school photos framed and sitting on her television, but her son had had a book of his own. Willa found herself smiling as she flipped through the pages. There was Ham as a baby, swallowed up in a large white christening gown. There he was as a chubby little boy in front of what looked like Hickory Cottage. School pictures. Graduation. Then came a series of photos of him in his twenties, randy and carefree. Willa had always loved these particular photos, watching her father’s charm as it grew around him. If she hadn’t known exactly the path his life had taken, the one where he’d ended up a widowed, sedate chemistry teacher, she would have assumed from these photos that he was destined to become a charismatic public figure. A movie star. A politician.

  But he’d wanted a small life. He’d wanted the life his mother had wanted him to have, because her opinion meant that much to him.

  She turned the page, and her smile faded. There was her father, at about age thirty. He wouldn’t marry for another eight years. Willa wouldn’t be born for more than ten. He was wearing funny, dated pants, and his hair was longer than she’d ever seen it. His hands were in his pockets, and he was looking at the camera in a way that almost made the photo tremble with the force of his personality. He looked like the world was a ripe peach and he was ready to bite it. For some reason, it startled her. It reminded her of something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  She suddenly thought of a conversation she’d had with one of her father’s fellow teachers, Mrs. Peirce, at his funeral. She’d told Willa that Ham had been something of a ladies’ man before he’d married Willa’s mother, which at the time Willa had found hard to believe. But Mrs. Peirce had insisted that when Ham had come back from college, there had been something about him. She’d said Ham’s mother had been very strict with him as a boy, and he’d been quite shy. But he’d been transformed by adulthood. Female teachers had clustered around him in the faculty lounge and would bring him sweets they’d stayed up all night making—divinity and angel food cake, wedding balls and honeymoon pie. Occasionally, he would invite one of them on a date, and it would leave the recipient of his attention unable to leave footprints for days, as if her feet weren’t quite touching the ground. Mrs. Peirce had also said that Ham’s female students were all so in love with him that sometimes they would cry over their Bunsen burners in his classroom and leave locks of their hair in his desk drawers. She’d even mentioned a small scandal involving some mothers of students who had lobbied for an advancement in Ham’s career. Although he’d been perfectly happy as a teacher, they’d wanted him to become dean, principal, superintendent, and they hadn’t been above blackmailing others. He’d been so charismatic in those days, Mrs. Peirce had said wistfully.

  Now, looking at this photo, Willa could finally understand what Mrs. Peirce had been talking about. Grandmother Georgie had obviously snapped it; it was taken outside her apartment building. She, too, had seemed startled by what she was seeing. The photo was a little blurry, as though the camera had moved just seconds before she’d clicked it.

  Willa looked through the rest of the photos, but she found herself coming back to this one. She was supposed to be looking for clues, anything that proved her grandmother didn’t have anything to do with the skeleton on the hill. Her father’s photos weren’t going to help her. She should just put the album away and go on to the next box.

  But she continued to come back to this one photo. Why did it seem so familiar, as though she’d seen it recently?

  Finally, she took it out of the album and set it on the coffee table.

  She went through the rest of the boxes in a matter of hours. As she’d suspected, there was nothing from her grandmother’s time at the Madam here. She was going to have to figure out some other way to get information.

  Willa got to her feet with a groan and a hop. She’d been sitting on the floor so long her leg had fallen asleep. She went to the front door to make sure it was locked, then turned off the living room lights. She limped to the kitch
en to get something to drink before going to bed. When she opened the refrigerator, light sliced through the dark kitchen, telescoping all the way to the kitchen table at the far end of the room. She stood in front of the open door and drank some juice out of the bottle. When she finished, she put the bottle back and turned.

  That’s when she noticed it.

  Leaving the refrigerator door open for light, she walked to the kitchen table. She had a few soft, overripe peaches in a hand-thrown bowl one of her National Street friends had made for her. The fruit was starting to fill the air with the sweet premonition of decay.

  Her scalp suddenly tightened, and she backed away.

  Propped against the bowl was the photo of her father, the strangely roguish photo she’d taken out of the album and placed on the coffee table in the living room.

  And she hadn’t moved it here.

  Willa never thought she’d ever find herself doing this, never once thought she’d put any stock in those superstitions her grandmother had taken so seriously, but she’d been scared enough after finding her father’s photo in the kitchen last night to put a penny on her windowsill and crack the window, because her grandmother had once said that ghosts often forgot they were ghosts and would go after money, but if they got close enough to an open window, the night air would suck them out.

  Needless to say, she didn’t get a lot of sleep. It didn’t help her nerves when, that morning, a black-and-yellow bird managed to get in through the crack in her bedroom window, and it took an hour and a broom to get it to fly back out.

  It was Rachel’s day off, so when Willa got to the store, she unlocked the door and turned on the lights; then she ground beans and started the coffeemaker. She wasn’t as good a barista as Rachel was, but she got by. Rachel had left the case stocked with mocha-chip cookies and cappuccino doughnuts. She’d also left Willa a special box of coffee-coconut bars, which she knew were her favorite. On the box was a note: Made these especially for you. Call me if you need me. She must have stayed late last night just to do this.

  Willa had walked in feeling moody and distracted, but this made her smile. Rachel’s coffee magic was a cure for all ills, if a little hard on the waistline. It helped Willa focus, to see reason—of course, she must have moved that photo herself; she just didn’t remember—and she decided on another plan of action.

  The first lull in customers she had, Willa called her friend Fran at the library. Fran was a transplant and a frequent visitor to Willa’s shop. She went hiking in Cataract nearly every weekend.

  “Hi, Fran, it’s Willa.”

  “Willa! This is a surprise.” Fran was one of those people who always sounded like she was talking with her mouth full. “What can I do for you?”

  “How do I find out what went on in this town during 1936? What kind of archives do you have?”

  “Police and reporters came in here asking the same thing when the skeleton turned up at the Madam,” Fran said. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t a town newspaper back then. Why do you want to know?”

  “I’ve been going through my grandmother’s things, and there’s not as much there about her life as I had hoped. Nineteen thirty-six was a big year for her. Her family lost the Madam. She gave birth to my father.”

  Fran seemed to think about it for a moment. Willa heard the tick of what sounded like computer keys. “Well, we do have several decades’ worth of The Walls of Water Society Newsletter. That’s what I showed the police.”

  “What is that?”

  “A weekly single-page gossip column, basically. It circulated for most of the 1930s and ’40s.” Fran laughed. “You should read these things. They’re priceless. They document the lives of the society ladies during that time.”

  “Do you think I could take a look?” Willa asked.

  “Of course. I’ll be happy to set you up.”

  A couple of tourists walked in, and Willa smiled and waved at them. “How late are you open today?” she asked Fran.

  “It’s a half-day today. Budget cuts have meant shorter hours. I’m actually about to lock up and go home.” Fran paused. “I’ll tell you what, call me at home when you get off work, and I’ll meet you here.”

  “You’re the best, Fran. Thanks.”

  Fran was waiting for her that evening when Willa got to the library, which had recently been moved to a strip mall from its former location in the basement of the courthouse. She was standing by the door, faintly disheveled and smelling oddly of celery.

  Once inside, Fran gave Willa all the microfiche film she needed, then told her to make sure the door was locked when she left. When the heavy door shut behind Fran, Willa stood there for a moment. It was a curious sensation, being in a library alone. It made her feel like she had cotton in her ears. She walked to the microfiche readers in the back of the room, afraid to make too much noise. She sat down, and gradually the click and burr of the machine became a calming rhythm as she went though the film.

  It took a while to find the 1936 issues, but when she found them she started in January and worked her way through.

  The Walls of Water Society Newsletter was obviously the labor of love of a rich, childless woman named Jojo McPeat. The single-page newsletter was full of gossip from social events, usually with one or two photos included.

  The events read like this:

  Mrs. Reginald Carter and her daughter made a splash in their matching pink coats at the Ingram family’s annual January snow ball. Overheard by the ice sculptures were several ladies who thought the pair looked like cotton candy, but most enjoyed their ensembles, complete with matching earmuffs and hand-warmers.

  Jojo made long-running commentaries on what women wore, and she loved to quote anonymous naysayers. What Willa found interesting were the small references to the town itself hidden in the text. Several of the parties’ hosts would hold raffles, and the proceeds would go to local logging families that had been hurt financially when the government bought the forest surrounding Walls of Water. Jojo once quoted Olin Jackson, who was Georgie’s father, at a party, promising that since the Jacksons gave this town an economy once, they would do it again, although he didn’t say exactly how. And Jojo herself questioned this (allegedly drunken) statement by asking how a man who let his daughter dress in last year’s clothes was going to save the town. There were jabs made toward the Jacksons quite often, but they were like pebbles being thrown at kings. The Jacksons were, unquestionably, town royalty, even if it appeared they were suffering financially.

  Sitting there, Willa found herself leaning in to get a closer look at the grainy black-and-white photos of her grandmother at these parties, her breath catching in her throat at the unexpected gift of getting to see her grandmother like this. She was a stunning young woman, but her smile made her seem like she either didn’t know or didn’t care that she was beautiful. She looked vivacious and innocent, and she was always surrounded by her girlfriends. Agatha Osgood, herself a handsome young woman in a more reserved and angular way, was regularly at her side.

  Through these photos of Georgie, Willa found herself transported. She could hear the laughter, taste the perfume in the air, smell the tobacco. She was so wrapped up, she could almost tell what the girls in the photos were thinking. She could tell when one had just danced with a boy she liked and had run back to the group to tell them, when they were discussing clothes and exasperating relationships with their families. They were so carefree and happy. Their futures were sparkles in the air, waiting to be caught like fireflies.

  And then Tucker Devlin arrived.

  Jojo first mentioned him in February 1936 as a salesman of ladies’ cosmetics, from whom Mrs. Margaret Treble had bought a tonic and swore it made her skin feel like silk. Mrs. Treble had invited Tucker Devlin to escort her to a ladies’ lunch to sell his wares, and everyone seemed to fall hopelessly under his spell. Jojo quoted Tucker Devlin as saying: “I come from a long line of peach-tree farmers, born and raised in Upton, Texas, and proud of it. I love making women feel good a
bout themselves, but this is just a job. What I know, what I’m best at, is peaches. Peach juice swims in my veins. When I bleed, it’s sweet. Honeybees fly right to me.”

  The first photo of him was in front of a table where he had displayed his pots and potions. He was obviously giving the ladies his spiel. Willa squinted at the photo. That was definitely the same man wearing the fedora in the photo found buried at the Madam. Her skin prickled with a sense of déjà vu, but she shook it off.

  From that point on, not a single newsletter passed without mention of Tucker Devlin. And there was a gradual progression in the photos. They started out with Tucker posing with older ladies, but then he was introduced into society and he started to favor the younger women. There were numerous photos of him with Georgie and Agatha. He was kinetic. A force. People seemed unconsciously drawn to him. Over time, the women in the photographs began to get desperate, hungry looks on their faces. If it was a group shot, there was always one girl looking at another girl with narrowed, jealous eyes.

  Several newsletters later, Jojo mentioned in passing that Tucker Devlin was living at the Blue Ridge Madam, which startled Willa.

  He had lived there?

  It took a while to piece together through the newsletters what had happened. Apparently, Olin Jackson got wind of Tucker Devlin’s former profession, or maybe Tucker Devlin himself approached Olin Jackson. Either way, a plan was hatched to turn Jackson Hill into a peach orchard. Jobs would be generated. The Jacksons would save the town again. Olin had invited Tucker to live with them while they created this new empire.