Clause & Effect Page 13

  The look Ronnie sent my way suggested I’d lost my mind.

  “He is the one who told me the story. He made it sound as if this woman wasn’t making any secret of her suspicions. Since he wasn’t on the board himself, how else would he have heard about her claims?”

  “Obviously, you misunderstood what he told you.”

  “The only thing that’s obvious to me is that you don’t know diddly-squat about Grace’s personal life.” Or aren’t willing to admit it!

  Before she could make another snarky remark and draw me into a pointless sniping match, I turned my back on her and took the direct route to the dining room. Ronnie was always able to rattle me when we were in high school. I was better at dealing with her now that we were both in our late sixties, but she still has the power to upset my equilibrium. A childish squabble was the last thing I needed.

  I paused to glance back over my shoulder when I reached the door. “We should get back to the others. I’d like to finish up at a reasonable hour. Diego is expecting delivery of the final script sometime tomorrow.”

  Ronnie stayed put and glanced at her watch. “It’s later than I realized. How fortunate that I already have all the information I need for the press release.”

  Without so much as a thank-you for my hospitality or a word of farewell to the other women, she spun around and headed down the hallway toward the front door. I winced at the sound of the screen slamming shut behind her.

  After that, it took us less than an hour to finish making the final tweaks to the script and polish off all the food I’d prepared. Grace Yarrow’s name did not come up again until Darlene and I stood on the porch watching Sunny and Stacy get into their respective cars and drive away.

  Balancing on her walker, Darlene heaved a deep sigh. “I guess you’re going through with your plan to talk to Judy.”

  “I think I need to, don’t you? Did Sunny tell you about the claim Gilbert Baxter made?”

  “That Grace was trying to steal someone’s husband? Yes, she did. If the husband in question was Max Kenner, Grace probably succeeded. I’ve already told you what he was like. Judy divorced him because he catted around.”

  “I don’t suppose Judy confided anything else to you?” I’d had the strongest feeling, during our earlier conversations about Judy, that Darlene was holding something back.

  “She was never big on sharing secrets, but I don’t remember her ever mentioning Grace’s name. Then again, when Judy went off on a tangent, complaining about one thing or another, I tended to tune her out. She never wanted advice. She just needed to vent.”

  “So the real rift between you two didn’t come until later, after she took up with her current husband?”

  “We were never close.”

  There was that evasiveness again. Darlene’s response wasn’t really an answer. I would have pressed the point, but she was making her slow, cautious way down the porch steps, heading for the van parked in my driveway.

  I can take a hint. For the moment, I let the subject drop.

  Chapter 21

  I sent the script to Diego as an email attachment as soon as I’d incorporated the final tweaks made at Wednesday evening’s meeting. He emailed back to acknowledge its receipt and invite me to meet him at Harriet’s the next day for lunch. I accepted, but not without some misgivings. Directors have been known to ask for changes.

  The place was busy when I arrived. It isn’t all that big and almost every table was occupied. I gave myself points for recognizing all but one of Ada’s customers. The exception was a young man sitting alone at a table in the center of the restaurant. He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties and was casually dressed in jeans and a Red Sox T-shirt. I approved of the latter. How could I not when I’d spent some fifty years living in New England?

  Diego was waiting for me at a table for two and had chosen the chair with a view of the door so he could keep an eye out for me. “Over here, Ms. Lincoln.”

  “Call me Mikki.”

  I sat down across from him, my back to the rest of the patrons. I was just as well pleased to be spared distractions. I tend to be a people watcher. I could still hear bits and pieces of the conversations going on around us, but I was able to ignore them and focus on what Diego thought of the pageant script.

  “I think it’s great,” he said. “Lively. Lots of interesting characters. Given how little information you had to go on about the early settlers, you did a remarkable job of fleshing them out.”

  “It helped that one of them was an ancestor of mine,” I confided. “I just thought about my grandfather when I was writing dialogue for John Greenleigh.”

  He chuckled. “I imagine Ms. Feldman drew on memories of her relatives as well. Of course, she actually knew the characters she was writing about.”

  We chatted in this vein for a quarter of an hour. Or, to be honest, I babbled on about stories we’d uncovered in our research while he polished off his soup and sandwich. I’d barely touched my BLT when Diego announced he had to leave.

  “I need to get the scripts printed for the casting call tomorrow and handle a few other details. You should come to tryouts.”

  “To try out? I don’t think so.”

  “To advise. Who knows better than you do what to look for in our aspiring actors?”

  He signaled Ada for the check and refused to let me pay for my own food. I didn’t argue. Neither did I commit myself to anything. Although I admired his enthusiasm, I didn’t believe for one minute that Diego was going to coax Oscar-worthy performances out of our local talent. I’d be happy if he ended up with warm bodies who could get their lines out without mumbling.

  Once he left, I concentrated on finishing my sandwich. I had a full afternoon ahead of me. I hadn’t precisely neglected my clients while working on the pageant, but between that and my preoccupation with Grace’s murder, they’d received less of my attention than they deserved.

  I started and gave a little squeak of alarm when a hand touched my shoulder.

  “Sorry,” said a deep male voice. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I turned to find the young man I’d noticed earlier standing behind me. The well-worn athletic shoes he wore explained how he’d been able to approach me unheard. They used to be called sneakers for a reason.

  My gaze returned to his face, although it gave me a crick in the neck to look up at him. He was tall and slender with brown hair, blue eyes, and a friendly smile. I felt my eyes narrow as I noticed his nose. It had a familiar shape, the same one I saw in my mirror every morning.

  “Who are you?” I asked in a sharp voice that came out much louder than I’d intended.

  Every head in Harriet’s turned our way, sending us curious looks.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “It’s just that it’s so great to finally meet you.” He pulled out the chair Diego had vacated and sat down. “My name is Luke Darbee and I’m your second cousin twice removed.”

  Chapter 22

  I studied Luke while, at his urging, I finished my lunch. That certainly did look like the infamous Greenleigh nose. It’s just a little too big for most faces and has a tendency to give some of the less fortunate members of the family a ratlike profile.

  “How did you know who I was?” I asked when I’d consumed the last crumb.

  “Oh, that’s easy. I heard that guy call out your last name and then you told him to use Mikki instead. I already knew Michelle Greenleigh Lincoln was the last of the Greenleighs left in Lenape Hollow. I was planning to stop by your house after lunch. I really wanted to meet you while I was in town.”

  “And just why are you in town?”

  “I’m on an ancestor hunt. I was hoping you’d know where some of our Greenleigh ancestors are buried.” His enthusiasm was unusual for such a young man, but he exuded sincerity.

  “There are quite a few generations in the Lenape Hollow cemetery, all the way back to the first Greenleigh to settle here.”

  “Will you show me?”

  How
could I resist the eager light in his eyes? We left Harriet’s together.

  “It isn’t far, but it is uphill. Do you want to drive us there or shall I?”

  “Depends.” He grinned at me as he pointed to an ancient Vespa parked in front of the police station. “That’s my transportation.”

  “I’ll drive.”

  The trip was short, but long enough for me to learn that Luke had spent the last few months traveling around the country. He’d stayed at campgrounds while he climbed various branches of his family tree. It seemed like an odd hobby, especially for one so young, but the excitement with which he spoke about it convinced me his interest was genuine.

  “Are you thinking of writing a book about your adventures?” I asked when I parked by the side of the road that ran through the cemetery.

  He shrugged and hopped out of the car without answering. “So where’s the final resting place of the original John Greenleigh?”

  I showed him, and gave him a recap of what I knew about Lenape Hollow’s first fence viewer, including the fact that he was to have a significant role in the upcoming pageant. Luke stared at the weathered stone for a few seconds before glancing my way with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Didn’t he have a wife?”

  “Ah, well, there you have a small family mystery. He did, yes. Her name was Sarah Thorndike and they married while they were still living in Connecticut. According to the date that’s come down to us, she died a few years after her husband, but there’s no record of where she died or where she was buried.”

  “Maybe she went back to Connecticut.”

  “That’s one possibility. Another is that she went to live with one of their children in another town. She might even have remarried. After all this time, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know for certain.”

  We moved on to the graves of John’s son, the second John Greenleigh, and his wife, and then crossed the road to where my grandfather’s parents, Nathaniel and Lucy, were buried. Their children had erected a large stone with the name Greenleigh on it in huge letters and their given names and life dates, in much smaller print, below.

  “Nathaniel purchased one of the larger plots from the Lenape Hollow Cemetery Association,” I said, “the entity that provides maintenance in perpetuity for everyone buried here. My grandfather held the deed, but since he had his own plot, he passed it on to my father. My parents moved to Florida when they retired, and originally planned to be buried there, but in the end they came home again. These two small stones mark their graves. They didn’t want anything fancy.”

  Since, until recently, I’d lived so far away, I’d never gotten into the habit of putting flowers on their graves. Fortunately, the Cemetery Association takes care of keeping everything tidy. They planted flowering trees throughout, giving the whole place a peaceful, pretty, well-kept air, and the view is spectacular. The cemetery is located on a hill overlooking the village. From where we stood, I could pick out church steeples, the tree-lined street where I live, and even the historical society building.

  “My mother is the one who started researching my family tree,” Luke said, “and she used to rope me into helping her. It’s kind of addictive.”

  I smiled at that comment. I’d avoided most of the temptations of genealogy myself, but I certainly knew what it was like to become so fascinated by a subject that no detail seemed too small or obscure to pursue.

  “It was my paternal great-grandmother who was a Greenleigh,” he continued. “Her father was Lawrence Greenleigh, Nathaniel and Lucy’s youngest son. That’s how you and I are related. Second cousins twice removed, like I said.”

  “Lawrence Greenleigh,” I repeated, frowning. I’d heard that name before, and there was a story connected with it, something—“Oh, dear.”

  Luke sent a questioning look my way.

  I put a hand on his forearm. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you aren’t who you think you are.”

  My grandfather had been a great one for telling family stories to anyone who would listen, but as far as I knew, he only confided the truth about Lawrence to a few of his closest relatives. I was one of them.

  “What do you mean?” Luke asked.

  “Lawrence wasn’t really Nathaniel and Lucy’s son.”

  “Do you mean he was adopted?”

  “Not exactly.” I guided him toward a solitary gravestone at the edge of my great-grandparents’ plot.

  “Joan Greenleigh,” Luke read. “1871 to 1910.”

  “Joan was Nathaniel and Lucy’s oldest daughter. She never married, but she did have a child. That’s according to my grandfather, who was Joan’s younger brother and a witness to her son’s birth. Lawrence was that son. Joan’s parents passed him off as their own to preserve their daughter’s reputation. You aren’t my second cousin twice removed, Luke. You’re my second cousin thrice removed.”

  From the stunned look on his face, he was having trouble taking in what I’d just told him. I sympathized. It isn’t easy to give up preconceived notions about who we are.

  “Well, at least I’m still a Greenleigh,” he said after a moment.

  I patted his arm. “Why don’t you come back to the house with me? Stay for supper?”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, Mikki, but I’ve got some thinking to do. That’s quite a bombshell you just dropped on me.”

  “Where are you staying?” I asked when I’d driven him back to where he’d parked the Vespa.

  “I’m set up at a campground on the other side of Monticello. I’ve been tracking down some relatives over that way, too.”

  He thanked me for my help, and we exchanged cell phone numbers, but he didn’t say anything about returning to Lenape Hollow. As he put-putted out of sight, I wondered if I’d ever see my newfound cousin again.

  Chapter 23

  Right up until the moment I got into my car and started the engine, I was of two minds about attending tryouts. Despite my resolution to let the chips fall where they may, I felt a need to know early on if Diego would be able to find actors capable of portraying the characters I’d envisioned. If he couldn’t, it would probably take me the entire two weeks until the performance to brace myself for disappointment. No matter how the pageant turned out, I’d have to present a brave face, smile, give compliments, and generally behave as if I was pleased with the result.

  Civic duty, right?

  Diego had spoken of recruiting students, so I wasn’t surprised to see a great many young faces as I entered the auditorium at the high school. It hadn’t changed much in fifty-plus years, except for looking shabbier than I remembered. It also had a faintly sour smell.

  The “new” school had opened when I was a junior. It was showing its age. To tell the truth, the “old” school, still used for grades one to six, had withstood the effects of time much better than this building. I wasn’t sure when that structure had gone up, but it was obviously back when construction was meant to last several lifetimes.

  I took a seat near the back, trying to remain unobtrusive. My location gave me a good view of new arrivals. I was some startled, as folks say in Maine, when I saw my newfound cousin, Luke Darbee, saunter in. For a moment, I thought he might have come looking for me, but instead of glancing around, he headed straight for the front row, where a couple of dozen wannabe actors were waiting for the director to begin his spiel.

  I’m not sure why I was so surprised. I didn’t know Luke well. We’d only just met and most of our conversation had been about our mutual ancestors. I remembered mentioning the pageant to him, but not that he’d shown any particular interest in it. It puzzled me that he was here, obviously planning to try out for a part. How had he even heard about the tryouts?

  I didn’t have to look far for an answer to that question. He must have seen the write-up Ronnie sent to the local newspapers. The press release had gone out not only to our little bi-weekly rag, but also to the daily published in Middletown.

  There was no reason Luke shouldn’t involve hi
mself in the project. John Greenleigh was his ancestor, too. Still, it struck me as odd. If he won a part in the pageant, he’d be obliged to stick around for another two weeks.

  Diego handed out pages and had everyone pair up and read the same bit of dialogue, a funny scene Sunny had written based on a real encounter between a local woman with an attitude and a comic who’d made frequent appearances onstage at the Feldman.

  Originally, I didn’t plan to stay until the bitter end, but the casting process proved more interesting than I’d anticipated. There were, thank goodness, some talented youngsters in Lenape Hollow.

  Although we hadn’t written in any singing parts—the music was to be background only—Diego also had everyone vocalize. I assumed he wanted to get an idea of their range. Luke had a pleasant baritone. He was also one of the better performers, so I wasn’t surprised when he was cast as both John Greenleigh and the Feldman comic. Almost everyone would be playing more than one role, with quick changes between scenes as the centuries rolled by onstage.

  Luke was being offered congratulations all around when I stood up to leave. Spotting me, he called out my name and bounded toward me like an oversize puppy. “Hey, I didn’t know you were here. You should have said something.”

  Caught up in an enthusiastic hug, I didn’t have enough breath left to reply. That was probably just as well, since I wasn’t sure how to react to this sudden familiarity.

  “Did you know I was coming?” he asked when he finally released me.

  “How could I? I wasn’t even aware that you knew about the casting call.”

  “You’re the one who told me about the pageant.”

  We stood in semi-darkness halfway near the exit. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I had a feeling I knew what was coming. I tried making a preemptive strike.

  “How are you going to manage to get to all the rehearsals? It’s a bit of a commute to the other side of Monticello.” I tried to keep the suspicion out of my voice when I asked the question, but I was certain the next words out of his mouth would be an attempt to cage an invitation to stay at my house.