An Uncollected Death Read online

middle of books by the Beat poets and a couple of Kerouac novels, so it’s likely that’s where the copy of Howl belongs.” He then pointed to a gap two shelves up. “But this one is in the middle of, let’s see, Proust.”

  Charlotte bounced up off the chair and went to see for herself. Simon was right. There was a clean, dust-free gap between the three-volume set of In Search of Lost Time and another set in French. She brought over the notebook Olivia had given her and slid it in: a perfect fit.

  “Well!” said Helene. “Are there any other notebooks there?”

  “I don’t think so, Helene. I’m not sure this will help me locate the rest of them.”

  “Are all the notebooks the same? You know, kind and size and such?” asked Simon.

  “I have no idea,” shrugged Charlotte. “I’ve been scanning the shelves to see if there are any more like this, but so far I haven’t spotted any. I’ll probably have to go over all the books one by one to make sure I’m not overlooking anything. Olivia said, though that they are all over the house”

  Simon pulled the notebook back out and looked it over, then looked over the shelves.

  “Simon,” said Helene, very quietly. “Could I take another look at that, please?”

  He handed her the notebook, and she opened the cover to read the words on the inside cover. “Put the pieces together and bloom. It’s probably nothing, but humor me. What comes in pieces, or is made up of what we call pieces?”

  “Puzzles?” suggested Simon.

  Charlotte nodded, as that was what she thought of first. “Quilts, maybe?” She thought of the titles of some of Ellis’ music books. “Collections of short songs?”

  “Five Easy Pieces?” said Simon, “that sort of thing?”

  “Very good,” Helene said, as if to her students. “Now what about bloom?”

  “Flowers, always flowers, I would think,” said Simon.

  “Flowers, but also blossoming, like coming into one’s own,” added Charlotte.

  “There’s also bloom in the sense of efflorescence, in watercolors and special effects.” Simon splayed his fingers to imitate the occurrence. “A lot of technical and chemical processes describe various forms of bloom, and then of course there are biological processes like algal bloom on ponds.”

  Helene just looked at him patiently. “I think, Simon, that Olivia was highly unlikely to be thinking of scientific processes. My bet would be flowers.” She closed the book and rose from the chair. “And let’s start with puzzle pieces. I’m sure there are puzzles in the place somewhere.”

  “The kitchen!” Charlotte exclaimed. “There are stacks of them under the table.”

  They went into the kitchen, and Charlotte crouched down for a closer look at the boxes of picture puzzles.

  “Now,” said Helene, with a confident tone, “find one with flowers.”

  There were several, but one in particular was all flowers, a field of bright yellow daffodils. Charlotte pulled it out of the stack and opened it. Inside, there was another notebook laying atop the puzzle pieces. The pages were full from front to back with Olivia’s handwriting.”

  “I am amazed!” said Simon. “Well done, Helene!”

  “How did you know?” asked Charlotte, grinning from ear to ear.

  Helene looked thoroughly pleased with herself. “Scavenger hunts. Each clue found led to the next. My mother used to make them up for us, based on what we were reading or learning in school. She would level the playing field a little bit by coming up with unusual or nonsense associations for things or words, because I was so much younger than Olivia and the Lamont children. Olivia has left clues, and I think she left them for herself, so she would remember where she hid the books.”

  Charlotte quickly scanned the tops of the pages and saw, like the first notebook, this new one also spanned many years. “It took her a long time to fill a notebook, so it would be no surprise that she was afraid she would forget where the others were.”

  Simon now looked confused. “What I don’t understand is why she hid them in the first place.”

  “Oh, I do,” said Charlotte. “Even if everything in these notebooks is intended as fiction, it would be very easy to think that she was writing about her own life. There are passages in the other book about a dying husband that sound like first-hand accounts—and maybe they are. She wouldn’t have wanted either her husband or her son to read them.”

  Helene nodded in agreement. “Ronson would not have been supportive of her writing, even if it wasn’t about him.”

  Simon snorted in disgust. “Maybe because writing itself wasn’t about him.”

  As they moved back into the living room, Charlotte checked to see if there was anything on the inside cover of the new notebook. “Where he metamorphosed,” she read aloud.

  “So that’s the next clue?” asked Helene. “Daffodils were on the picture puzzle box, and they are a variety of narcissus, which of course leads to mythological Narcissus.”

  “Makes me think of the painting by Dali, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus,” added Simon.

  “Oh, I think I remember that one! An egg and a sort of a rock-like figure reflected in water?”

  “That leaves us with more than one possibility, then,” said Helene. “Was Olivia referring to the Dali painting, or to any watery surface that caused Narcissus to see himself and die because he couldn’t tear himself away?”

  “Well,” said Charlotte, “it’ll be something reflective, because that’s where the change happened. I don’t think there’s anything with standing water in this house, but there are mirrors and other shiny things.”

  They looked around the house and checked the mirrors. Simon found the parts of an aquarium in what was once Donovan’s room, but there was nothing in or around it that held a notebook. But after a few minutes, Charlotte heard Helene shout, “I’ve got it!”

  Helene was in Olivia’s bedroom, holding a mirror; the frame was decorated with sea shells. She held it up to show them the back, where a notebook was attached to the frame with duct tape. Simon used his pocket knife to cut the tape and Charlotte lifted the book out as carefully as she could. The clue inside the cover was, What Alice found there.

  Helene pointed to the mirror. “Through the looking-glass?”

  Charlotte smiled. “Think chess pieces—or a chess board.”

  They hurried to the living room to take a closer look at the round side table, with its inlaid chess board. There was a drawer with pulls on the front, but it was stuck.

  “Some of those old knockoff tables had fake drawer fronts just for looks,” said Helene. “Maybe it’s taped underneath?”

  Simon turned the table upside down, but there was nothing. “It feels a little top-heavy. I think there’s something in here.” Once again he got out his pocket knife, this time to try to pry off the drawer front.

  “Pocket-knives and duct tape,” muttered Helene. “Aren’t we all clever?”

  Simon glanced at her with one eyebrow raised. “We are.” He stopped when the drawer front didn’t budge. “It’s glued in tight. Let me have a go at the top.”

  The chess board turned out to be a self-contained board set flush into the table top, and came loose with just a couple of tries, revealing the drawer beneath. And in there (almost too good to be true, thought Charlotte), lay the fourth notebook.

  She retrieved it, and turned to the others. “I think this just might be doable.”

   

  On the way back to Lake Parkerton, Charlotte decided to make a quick stop at The Coffee Grove. Now on its third location, at the corner of Ramble and Harvey Streets, its current incarnation was in a former old-fashioned corner hardware store across from the courthouse square. Jimmy had moved from a much narrower building in the next block down, which in turn came after his first location, a tiny walkup shop in a cluster of galleria-type spaces, which Charlotte fondly remembered enjoying on afternoons out with baby Ellis. With each move, Jimmy added more offerings, going from coffee, tea, and pastries, to those pl
us light lunch fare of soups and sandwiches, to the current full-on deli with imported and traditionally-made cheeses, salamis, olive oils, and other fine foods. He also sold fresh breads and simple staples for downtown residents who didn’t want to drive to the big supermarkets on the edge of town.

  Rumors abounded of Jimmy’s mysterious past and how he kept his business growing, outlasting seven other downtown coffee shops in the course of fifteen years. Some said he was a front for a meth lab, some said he was a closet Internet billionaire. He claimed, in a newspaper article a few years ago, that he just had a good nose for what Elm Grove wanted and needed.

  Like most coffee shops, it had a decent Wi-Fi connection and now that her Internet service at home was shut off, it was the only way to check emails and send one to Ellis. It was a quiet evening, with students working at several tables, and a couple of lonely-looking middle-aged people like herself. She waved to Jimmy as she set her bag down to secure a small table, then went to the counter to give her order for a cup of tea to a young barista named Kelsey, who bore a striking resemblance to Ellis’ roommate Camille in clothing and hairdo. She wondered if Ellis would end up looking like that before the year was out, but couldn’t imagine her daughter’s fluffy, curly hair quite that sleek.

  The email inbox was sparse compared to a few weeks ago, when her account at the magazines was still active. The highlight at the moment was, as always, the new one from Ellis. She confirmed selling the piano, and reported