Clause & Effect Read online

  “I’m surprised she didn’t continue her work with the historical society.”

  “She could have if she’d wanted to, but no matter what Ronnie thinks, she wasn’t all that dedicated, and she’d have had to give up her seat on the board of directors once she no longer lived in the village.”

  “Have you been involved with them long?”

  “I suppose I have, one way or another, but when Judy was active, I was still working at the library and didn’t have much time for volunteering.”

  I nodded encouragingly and took another bite of a coffee cake to die for.

  “Long story short, a couple of years ago there was a vacancy on the board, I agreed to be nominated, and I was voted into office.” She pushed her coffee cup aside and folded her arms, giving me a direct stare that rivaled Calpurnia’s hairy eyeball. “Now let’s talk about what the board wants you to do.”

  Two front paws landed on my thigh, saving me from having to give an immediate answer. I stroked Simon’s soft head, which encouraged him to do a little dance on his hind legs. “What kind of dog is he?”

  “Purebred mutt. Don’t change the subject. Simon— down.” At the hand gesture that went with the command, the puppy obeyed.

  “How can you resist that sad-eyed look?”

  “Practice. Don’t you dare sneak him any food.”

  I held up both hands to prove they were empty. Satisfied, Darlene refilled our cups.

  “Was it your idea to have me edit the pageant script?”

  “No, but I thought it was a good one.” She took a sip of coffee. “It’s a bit complicated. Shall I give you some backstory?”

  “Why not?” Listening didn’t mean I had to accept the job.

  “As Ronnie mentioned in passing, there were actually three boards involved in the decision to resurrect the pageant performed at the bicentennial.”

  She lifted her hand, arthritic index finger extended.

  “The town is governed by a town supervisor and four councilmen. They’d have loved to take charge, but the town of Lenape Hollow wasn’t incorporated until 1807. It’s only the village that’s coming up on its 225th anniversary, so that put the mayor in the driver’s seat.”

  Her middle finger came up.

  “The village is run by his honor and a four-member board of trustees. I don’t think you’ve met Tony Welby, but you do know all the board members. Your next-door neighbor, Tom O’Day, is one of them. So is Frank.”

  “Your Frank?”

  “None other.” Darlene had married Frank Uberman, her high-school boyfriend, while they were still in college. “The other two are Ronnie North and Joe Ramirez.”

  Joe owns the gas station on Main Street and is a real sweetheart. He regularly saves me the trouble of pumping my own gas by coming out and lending a hand. This is not to be sneered at. Full service doesn’t mean the same thing in New York State as it does in Maine.

  “They voted in favor of holding a quasquibicentennial,” Darlene continued, stumbling a little over the word. She glared at me when my lips twitched in amusement. “They tossed around ideas and that was when Frank remembered seeing the pageant when it was performed for the bicentennial. He suggested doing something similar. The mayor wasn’t terribly enthusiastic, but the rest of them thought it was a great idea, especially Ronnie.”

  She lifted finger number three.

  “Since she’s also on the board of directors for the historical society, she assured the mayor and the other trustees that we’d be happy to take charge of that part of the festivities. It was a sensible suggestion. The historical society sponsored the original pageant twenty-five years ago.”

  “Too bad Ronnie didn’t also volunteer to revise the script.”

  Darlene fought a grin. “She prefers to delegate. Now hush. I’m not through giving you the backstory. The original idea was for someone to write a new pageant, but by the time the historical society board got together to discuss the project, the society’s librarian had found a copy of the old script in the archives and shown it to Gilbert Baxter, the director. Since we were already working with a tight time frame, he decided that updating it would be a better plan than starting from scratch.”

  “And Ronnie just happened to know someone who edits manuscripts for a living.”

  “Your name did come up, but it wasn’t Ronnie who mentioned you. It was Greg Onslow.”

  I nearly choked on my coffee. “Onslow? What’s he doing on the board of the historical society?”

  Darlene’s lips quirked into a wry smile. “Our local entrepreneur, although he has his fingers in a lot of pies, is not a member of the board. He was invited to the meeting by the director because Baxter hoped to convince him to provide the venue for the pageant.”

  “Local entrepreneur?” I muttered. “Try local crook.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me, but the fact remains that he’s a mover and shaker in this community, and I expect he’s trying to improve his image, given what happened last fall. Anyway, he agreed to let us use his property on Chestnut Mountain, and then he suggested that you would be the ideal person to take on the challenge of revising the script.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. When I first met Greg Onslow, CEO of Mongaup Valley Ventures, he’d been trying to launch a project called “Wonderful World.” He’d bought the grounds that formerly surrounded a hotel, long since burned to the ground, and the adjacent village-owned recreation area, with the idea of turning the whole area into an amusement park. Even before his company’s involvement in some shady activities came to light, there was plenty of opposition to this idea. The undertaking is currently in limbo. Now that someone’s actually building a huge water park next to the new casino, it’s probably dead.

  Darlene shrugged. “Everyone seemed to take it for granted that you’d agree. We spent the rest of the meeting debating how much money to allocate to sprucing up the historical society building, in particular the area where our larger exhibits are displayed.”

  “Everyone? Who else is on the board besides you, Ronnie, Baxter, and the guy who volunteered to direct the pageant?”

  “There are three others. Two are automatic members—the mayor and the Lenape Hollow town historian. The third is Sunny Feldman.”

  “Feldman? As in the hotel?”

  “The last of the dynasty. Since she picked just the right time to sell out, she has no money worries. She made a bundle before Sullivan County’s tourism industry collapsed.”

  I’d never met Sunny, but Feldman’s had been a major employer in the community when I was growing up. Once a landmark, it had been going downhill for decades. It was sad to see what had become of the place. I drove through the property shortly after I returned to the area. The buildings are condemned, the land overgrown, and no one seems to care. Now that I thought about it, I was surprised Greg Onslow hadn’t decided on that location for his theme park. True, Feldman’s Catskill Resort Hotel, to give it its proper name, didn’t have a lake, but it did boast the remains of a small airport, a golf course, and a ski slope of the bunny variety.

  “So anyway,” Darlene continued, “Ronnie recruited me to help her talk you into volunteering and you know the rest, except that there’s one detail in the script that may pique your interest.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Oh?”

  “According to what Baxter told us, John Greenleigh plays a key role in the pageant.” She grinned at me. “Your ancestor, right?”

  “John Greenleigh was one of the first settlers in what’s now Lenape Hollow.” I helped myself to another sliver of the coffee cake. “He came from Connecticut, as most of them did, bringing his wife and young children with him. When the town was incorporated, he was elected fence viewer.” My grandfather, who’d filled my young head with tales about our family, hadn’t known anything more than that about him. “I can’t imagine what the author of the pageant could have had him doing. To tell you the truth, I’m having a hard time envisioning much action at all. Most of th
ose early settlers spent every minute of their time planting crops and building houses and barns. Important, but boring.”

  “Admit it. You’re curious.”

  I drained the final drop of coffee from my cup and stood, nearly tripping over the puppy sleeping next to my chair. When I’d recovered my balance and given Simon a tummy rub to apologize, I made an attempt, most likely futile, to keep my options open.

  “I’ll take a look at the script,” I said, “but beyond that, I’m not making any commitment.”

  Chapter 4

  That afternoon I walked to the historical society headquarters on Blake Street, a journey of less than twenty minutes door-to-door. The building has been there forever, so much a part of the landscape that I’d never paid much attention to it before. It started life as the Lenape Hollow Normal School, an institution dedicated to training teachers back when an eighth-grade education was considered more than adequate for the average youngster.

  I thought I remembered the building as a private home during my youth, but since that was over fifty years ago, I was a little hazy on the details. Sometime between then and the present, it had been taken over by the historical society, renovated to meet their needs, and opened as a combination museum and research center.

  The sign mounted next to the door told me that the premises were open to the public from twelve-thirty to six on Tuesday through Friday, and from nine to five on Saturday. Apparently, if the only time you had to research your family history was in the evening, you were flat out of luck. Fortunately for me, this was Saturday and it was not yet two o’clock.

  When I stepped into a generously sized vestibule that doubled as a gift shop, the first thing I saw was a rack containing postcards showing old-timey scenes of Lenape Hollow and the surrounding area. Another showcased books and pamphlets, both fiction and nonfiction, with a connection to the village. The majority of them seemed to be self-published. A small table holding a guest book and a donation box was angled into a corner. A small, neatly lettered sign informed me admission was free but a contribution of any size would be greatly appreciated.

  The door to my left was closed, although a light showed from within. GILBERT BAXTER, DIRECTOR had been etched into the glass panel, but I couldn’t tell if he was in there or not. The lettering on the door to my right read: SHIRLEY MARTIN, LIBRARIAN. It stood open to reveal a small office and a middle-aged woman sitting behind a desk overflowing with books and papers. More books were stacked on shelves, sharing the space with assorted framed photographs of two cats, a Siamese and a domestic shorthair.

  She didn’t smile when she caught sight of me, but neither did she regard me with disfavor. She stood and held out her hand. “Shirley Martin.” Her grip was firm and brief. “How can I help you?”

  “Mikki Lincoln. I’ve agreed to take a look at the script for the pageant, although I’ve not yet agreed to work on it.”

  Her nod indicated that she recognized my name. “Fair enough,” she said. “It’s upstairs in Archives.”

  Assuming I’d follow her, she set off at a brisk pace. We were both dressed for the warmth of an afternoon in July. The loose, colorful caftan she wore billowed out behind her. I’d changed from my jeans and long-sleeved tee into casual slacks and a short-sleeved, emerald-green top. These were my go-to-town clothes, as opposed to the two levels below that—visit-with-old-friend-who-has-a-new-puppy, and work-at-home.

  We left the vestibule by a door directly across from the entrance, moving into an open section that appeared to run from one side of the building to the other. Straight ahead, a brass railing separated this level from a lower one that was two stories in height. On an old-fashioned wooden signpost, arrows pointed the way to various displays and resources. Archives were up the stairs to the right. Newspapers on microfiche and the obituary files were down the stairs to the right. Current exhibits and a meeting room were down a short flight of steps to the left.

  Shirley gestured toward the railing. “From here you can get a bird’s-eye view of our larger, semipermanent displays. We’ve recreated rooms from three local businesses in days gone by.”

  I stepped closer and stopped in my tracks. I didn’t need signage to identify the middle scene. A mere glance took me back a good sixty years and still had the power to make me cringe. I stared, feeling shaky, at the inner room of the dentist’s office I’d been taken to as a child. It was all there: the hard leather chair, the spit bowl, and the ominous-looking drill suspended from the ceiling. A small placard gave credit to Dr. Badham’s children for donating the equipment their father had once used to torture his patients.

  I do not use the term lightly. Dr. Badham did not believe in Novocain or laughing gas. He drilled, filled, and extracted without offering his patients any means to alleviate their pain. No matter what their age, he advised them to tough it out. I can’t imagine why my parents bought into that philosophy, or why I tolerated it, even as a child, but an entire generation of patients grew up thinking that dental work had to hurt like hell. I can still remember my astonishment when, at the age of twenty or so, I went to a new dentist to have a tooth filled and the worst pain came from the needle that injected the anesthetic.

  With an effort, I shook off a slew of unpleasant images and forced myself to examine the other exhibits, a drug store and a millinery shop. Both brought back much more pleasant memories. I’d tasted my first root beer float at the counter in the former and shopped at the latter with my mother for a hat to wear to church on Easter Sunday. I miss fancy, frivolous hats. They serve no useful purpose, but they were fun. The last time I wore one was as part of my going-away outfit when I got married. Ball caps, sun visors, and winter woolies don’t count.

  Two men were moving around among the displays of pillboxes, cloches, and wide-brimmed hats decorated with feathers and fruits. The fellow carrying a clipboard looked familiar, but at first I couldn’t place him. He was in his thirties, short and stocky but not fat. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, and what I could see of his skin on arms and face was darkly tanned. Then he turned slightly and I got a better look at his face—thin brown hair with a receding hairline, a large, slightly flattened nose, and a perpetual squint. The name that had been eluding me abruptly popped into my head—Charlie Katz, a local carpenter. The previous autumn, he and his crew had spent several days working on renovation projects at my house.

  I did not recognize his companion, but based on his three-piece suit, I could make an educated guess at his identity. “Is that Gilbert Baxter?”

  Shirley agreed that it was, but did not suggest we interrupt them in order to introduce me to him.

  Baxter appeared to be in his mid-fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a little goatee of the same shade. He was taller and thinner than Charlie and considerably more animated, using elegant, long-fingered hands to emphasize some point he was trying to make.

  Following Shirley, I continued on up to the second floor. As I was climbing the stairs, it suddenly struck me that the building was not air-conditioned. The higher we went, the more obvious that lack became.

  “Isn’t heat and humidity bad for documents?” I asked.

  “You’ve got that right. We have a window unit in Archives. The board keeps promising to allocate funds to make the whole place climate controlled, but there always seems to be something else that takes priority. The work that’s being done now couldn’t be put off—structural issues, or so they tell me.”

  It seemed to me that protecting documents ought to be the first priority of any historical society, and clearly Shirley agreed with me, but I could also understand how being strapped for cash might delay all but the most essential building improvements. I assumed the historical society was a nonprofit, dependent on donations. To lure in new patrons, the board of directors had to give the display area precedence over places a casual visitor wouldn’t see.

  Shirley wasn’t the least bit winded by the climb. While I paused on the landing to catch my breath, she continued on down a hallway lined with
memorabilia. She moved at such a fast clip that I didn’t catch up with her until she’d unlocked a wooden door with the word ARCHIVES painted on it.

  I stepped into a long, narrow room that ran from the front of the building to the back. It was noticeably cooler inside than in the hallway. The ancient air conditioner in one window hummed loudly, its steady rumble occasionally broken by an ominous rattling sound.

  “Sit,” Shirley said.

  I wasn’t sure if that was an invitation or an order, but I pulled out one of the plain wooden chairs drawn up to a mission-style table and plunked myself down. She went straight to the row of metal file cabinets that lined one side of the room. They were a match for gunmetal gray shelves, map cases, and another storage unit I couldn’t give a name to. It took only a few seconds for her to find what she was looking for.

  The pages were held together by a cardboard binder. I hadn’t seen one like it in decades. Metal strips were threaded through holes punched in the sheets, folded over, and secured by little metal bands that slid over the strips. Paper cuts are painful, but slice a finger on one of those babies and you’re in a world of hurt.

  “Is this the only copy?” Even though I already knew the answer, I clung to a sliver of hope.

  “Sorry,” Shirley said. “I’m sure there must have been more once—the pageant had a large cast—but I was only able to locate the one.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Once the script is updated, new copies will have to be made anyway.”

  I flipped open the cover and looked at the title page. The pageant had been written by someone named Grace Yarrow. The name didn’t ring any bells, and since the board had decided to tap me to do an update, I assumed she was no longer available to do it herself.

  The first thing I noticed was that the script had been typed on a typewriter with a wonky key. Every uppercase A was slightly elevated above the other letters. The binder contained ninety-eight slightly yellowed pages. I had no idea if that was long or short for a pageant. I had a vague recollection from somewhere that it took three to four minutes to read a page aloud, but these seemed to be heavier on stage directions than dialogue.