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“I don’t think that counts as a prank,” Isay.
“It is if they never do the big reveal. There is no bigger prank in the greater known universe than a story with noending.”
Itell Detective Garrison I’ll look into the newspaper clipping and try to make some sense of it before we leave the camp.
“Did it seem to you like something was really bothering him?” I ask as I buckle my seatbelt and turn the key in theignition.
“Mike?” Samasks.
I shake my head. “Detective Garrison. He suddenly seemed really lost in his ownthoughts.”
“This isn‘t exactly an easy case, Emma,” he points out. “And like he said, he didn’t get a lot of sleep. I’m sure it’s starting to wear on him. Cherry Hill isn’t used to being the backdrop of high-profile murder cases. Garrison’s a good detective, but this isn’t what he usuallyhandles.”
“He got a twenty-year break,” Xavier points out from the backseat.
“Yes, he did,” Sam says.
“What about this?” I ask, putting the newspaper clipping on his thigh and patting it for emphasis. “What do youthink?”
“It’s weird,” Sam admits. “It definitely doesn’t seem like a normal camp prank. The whole point of those is to be loud and rambunctious and usually to embarrass somebody in front of other people. Slipping a note and a newspaper clipping into a desk drawer doesn’t exactly accomplish that. And if it was just a prank, Mike wouldn’t have any reason to say he didn’t know what it was. Unless he hadn’t found it yet, but I think that’s pretty unlikely. He was working when the counselors came in to tell him what was going on. And he mentioned that he had been writing receipts. Unless somebody snuck in there during the massacre, he knew that was in there. We just have to figure out what it means. And he’s not going to give us any help with that. He was very obviously done chatting with us by the endthere.”
“I think he was done chatting with us when he was handcuffed and steaming like rice in the back of that car,” I nod. “He just didn’t really have much of a choice. But I agree that he’s not going to give us anything in the way of direction when it comes to this. He was adamant that he didn’t know anything about it. I don’t believe him for a second. But he’s going to stick with that. Until he can’tanymore.”
I turn out of the camp parking lot and head towardtown.
“Where are we going?” Samasks.
“The library. I want to see what I can find out about this article. Maude might be able to look at the date and bring up the right paper,” I say. “Have you ever heard of thisplace?”
“The home for unwed mothers?” Sam asks. “No. But I’m not from Cherry Hill. It might be one of those places that people around here know about but don’t exactly list it on the tourism pamphlets. I’m sure it’s not exactly a place parents are thrilled to tell people their children have endedup.”
“Daughters,” Isay.
“What?”
“Their daughters. It’s not a place where parents are thrilled to tell people theirdaughtershave ended up. Sons don’t end up in places like that. It’s the daughters that get sent away and shrouded in shame. The sons get a stern talking to and go about their lives. If their parents even ever find out about the pregnancy,” I point out.
The double standard frustrates me in that way that is even further frustrating because there’s literally nothing that can be done about it.
“That’s true,” he admits. “Another reason people probably wouldn’t talk about Cornelia’s very much. A lot of people, especially the older generation, goes by the belief that if you don’t talk about it, you don’t know about it. And conversely, if you do talk about it, you’re telling people you are aligning yourselves with it. That applies to just about anything. My grandmother had a neighbor when I was just a kid who was still reeling over flapper girls. If she thought she was just talking with my grandmother, she would rail against the fringe and the short skirts and the girls with flat chests. That was the distinction that my grandmother always liked the most. As if those girls had something to do with their bust size or that it meantsomething.”
“Well, as you know, breasts that are too small indicate a moral failing. As do breasts that are too big,” Isay.
“Clearly,” Sam says. “But as soon as that woman knew someone else was listening, especially if it was a man, she would button right up and stop talking about it. If someone asked what they were talking about or mentioned what they had literally just heard her saying, she would act like she had no idea what they were talking about, like she hadn’t even heard of such things. She would pretend she didn’t know how to say flapper correctly and would ask if they were talking about dolphins.” He laughs. “Then if they tried to explain it to her, she would literally clutch her pearls and gasp like she was far too delicate to hear something like that and they should be ashamed to even mention it in hercompany.”
“She actually had pearls to clutch?” Iask.
“Oh, yes. I honestly think she wore them just so they would be available for clutching if the situation arose,” he says.
“I have to give it to her, she was committed. Props andall.”
We get to the library, which is contained in a massive Victorian house complete with wraparound porch. I would love to go inside and pick a book, then spend the rest of the afternoon in one of the swings or gliders. Possibly find a glass of lemonade somewhere.
But that is not meant to be. I need to dig deep into the time capsule that is newspaper records and find out what, if anything, this torn piece of newspaper has to do with Mike Kirkland. That, however, is far easier said than done.
The woman behind the desk isn’t Maude, but looks so much like her that they could besisters.
“That isn’t a local paper,” she says without even a second of hesitation when I show her theclipping.
