Predictably, I didn't tell my Mom about what happened last night. Why? Two reasons:
She wouldn't believe me.
And, then, well… I wasn't sure if I believed me.
The Mom thing first: She already knew my sleeping habits were a little bit whack. And with the 'always cold' thing, she probably thought I was imagining things, and then she was going to rush me to the doctor's office (because Cheshire doesn't have a 'hospital') and then everyone was going to find out that I'm crazy. I didn't want to put her through that. And I didn't want to admit if I was crazy.
Now, the me thing: Did it really happen? If it did, telling someone about it wasn't going to help my case. Assuming it was real, then Beatrice had basically asked me to solve a murder, now that I knew she wasn't the one who'd died in my house. Then was it Charlotte? An unmentioned girl? Caroline Connor even?
Great—let me find my best friend Nancy Drew! How about I ask Holmes to help us out?
What would've been very helpful was if she'd told me where the last twelve pages of her diary were. That would've been a great start to a dead-end.
A dead-end… because the murderer was definitely dead and was dead for over fifty-something years. As sad as it was that the murder went unsolved, what could I possibly do over fifty-something years later?
I spent most of Sunday morning contemplating that. I read through the diary one more time, looking for any clues.
The Wyatt family made me suspicious, but that was only because Beatrice was following Ian's thoughts and instincts. Charlotte never said the Wyatts did anything to her, but she never explained why she seemed nervous around them. She denied it entirely.
Beatrice pointed out (in the diary) that Charlotte was probably keeping quiet so that she and her mother could keep their job. Beatrice hoped that this meant it wasn't that serious. Maybe the Wyatt boys were just mean to her while she was there. Caroline Connor was always mean to them. Charlotte even mentioned Caroline visiting the Wyatt boys once.
It was Ian who had a hard time accepting that. He went after the truth and got in trouble, dividing the whole town. Despite all that, Ian seemed to never find the truth.
I bet Beatrice did.
She found something out and wrote it down. Someone found out she found out. Whatever it was, it had to have been horrible enough to kill someone over, meaning that something awful must've happened to Charlotte and she kept it to herself.
And why wouldn't she? It was her word against a founding family. Charlotte was trying to keep her family employed. Maybe she felt that telling even her friends was going to get them in trouble, and (early on in the diary) it had already been established that the Walkers and the Wyatts didn't get along.
So, Beatrice finds out what happened (a theory came to mind, but I didn't want to put it into words just yet), and writes it down. She either told someone, or someone had noticed her when she found out or… something. But since she wasn't the one who died (in her own house) who was? What were they doing here in the first place?
Either Beatrice herself ripped out the pages and gave them to someone, or the murderer ripped them out and got rid of them.
Given that the diary was in the vent for years, it was probably the first one: Beatrice ripped them out. If that were the case, then Beatrice must've given it to either Charlotte or Ian.
I spent most of the afternoon figuring out the few things I could actually do. One was looking for the yearbooks, just to get a visual about who I was dealing with, maybe find other people Beatrice, Charlotte, Ian, and the Walkers and Wyatts had in common.
I thought about searching through old archives about the neighborhoods, maybe find out if someone nearby had witnessed anything (police kept records long ago, right?). However, that was Nancy Drew territory, something that only worked in the movies.
Could I really get away with asking about old housing records from the Cheshire town hall (doesn't have a hospital, but a magnificent town hall) without all of Cheshire hearing about it? Why's the new girl poking around in town business? I myself wouldn't have been bothered if not for Mom. She knew I knew, and maybe she thought I wasn't cool with it.
I was… 80% cool with having roots in Cheshire. 20% just wanted to know what the roots led to.
*
Mom and I drove Todd to Charlie's house (does that sound weird?) later that evening. I'd called Charlie in advance. She had called me earlier to know if we had any allergies (super sweet, right?) since her mom was nervous.
Charlie's mother, Nina, greeted us at the door. Her eyes were wide, and maybe she hoped we couldn't tell she was nervous. Charlie's dad, Rhett, shook our hands and gestured for us to gather in the living room.
Mom is a livewire (that's a thing, right?). She's social and charismatic and usually the life of the party; dealings with publishers and marketers and such might do that to you. Charlie and I huddled together in one corner, letting the adults do all the talking. Ian sat in the middle, near my mom's feet. I noticed something odd about him.
"He wants to ask your mom for an autograph," said Charlie. "He has his book under his shirt. Amateur," she scoffed. "You're supposed to put it in a bookcase where she'll notice." She nodded to the bookcase that faced Mom; I could see a couple of her titles.
"You should've just come over," I said. "She would've signed anything you brought, maybe give you a free copy. She's got hundreds of them."
"Celia would've pitched a fit if she found out I went to that house."
"Pitched a fit?"
Charlie shrugged. "That's what she says whenever someone in the house gets mad. My parents don't believe in that stuff, but since they don't work in Cheshire, me and Ian are always with Celia, so…."
"What do your parents do?"
"My dad's a lawyer and my mom manages a beauty salon. And why do we live here if they work somewhere else?" she said quickly, before I could ask the question myself. "Cheshire is like a hidey-hole to them. My dad's job involves lowly criminals sometimes. He's put a bunch of people away, and so he worries someone might come after him. It gives him peace of mind."
"So the fact that this place is horrible doesn't bother him?"
"I don't tell him that. Celia's helped out by hiding my fights with Cynthia from them."
Someone started banging a spoon against a pot. Celia appeared in the doorway to the kitchen; I hadn't noticed her leave the living room. "Dinner's ready," she called as Nina ran past her. She must've forgotten stuff was cooking.
YOU ARE READING
Cheshire Girl
Paranormal"There were three things about which I was absolutely certain. First, I didn't have my cell phone. Second, my hands hurt from gripping the trunk lid closed. They would probably be useless to put up a fight. ...
