“It’s hinged. The roof opens like a box top,” she explained.
The house was mounted too high up for me to peer inside, so I carefully lifted the lid and reached my hand into the interior. My fingertips brushed what felt like a piece of paper. Standing on my tiptoes, I managed to retrieve the sheaf and bring it down to eye level.
A dried flower, one that I didn’t recognize, had been glued to a square of thick cardstock. There was a sketch of a girl in the background, and Marlette had drawn her so that her hand reached up to cup the dried flower in her palm. Below the pen-and-ink drawing, in Marlette’s unique scrawl, were the words, Looks can be deceiving. Beauty is only skin-deep. Sue Ann. Sue Ann. Sue Ann.
Her name repeated right up to the paper’s edge, the “n” tilted, appearing as though it would fall from the page into space.
I’d seen the girl’s face before in Marlette’s journal. Those challenging eyes and sly smile were unmistakable. Who was this Sue Ann, and why had he hidden this image of her in the forest? I had to discover her identity and her connection to Marlette.
“Do you know her?” Iris asked, watching me closely.
I shook my head. “No, but I’d like to take this to the Secret Garden if that’s okay. Maybe the flower is a clue. I’ll see if they can identify it.”
Iris nodded. “I don’t think Marlette would mind. So many times, when I’d come across him in the woods, I felt like he wanted to tell me something. Something im-portant.” Her eyes held regret. “But he was afraid to. Or he didn’t trust me. I don’t know what held him back. Now I’ll never know.”
I held up the drawing. “Don’t give up hope. If there are more of these to be found, I’ll find them. And I won’t allow him to be forgotten. I promise.”
TREY KEPT HIS word and joined us for Sunday dinner. I made one of his favorite meals: barbecued baby back ribs, homemade mashed potatoes, and green beans cooked in bacon grease. While I worked some magic in the kitchen, Trey did his first load of laundry and tidied his room. My mother was delighted by his new show of cleanliness, but to me, his orderly room served as a reminder that he wasn’t living with us anymore. It took all of my willpower not to beg him to come back home. The truth was I missed him. We’d shared a house for so many years that being in my mother’s place without him felt lonesome.
Still, we had a lovely supper together. Trey regaled us with stories about the goats and boasted a bit about how Jasper was seriously considering Trey’s ideas on rebranding the goat products to make them more marketable. We ate and talked until after nine o’clock, and then Trey pulled a battery-powered lantern out of his backpack and said he had to get going. I hugged him hard and then watched him give my mother a kiss.
“See ya Tuesday!” he shouted as he made his way up the hill.
I stared at his wide shoulders, my heart aching. Would he make the same journey at the end of the summer? Would he forgo a higher education in favor of a bohemian lifestyle? For once, I wished that Althea could peer into the future and put me at ease, but she had already told me that Trey needed to work things out up on the mountain and she didn’t know how long that would take.
I waited until the glow from his lantern faded from view and then crawled into my bed with Marlette’s journal. As I’d done many times that day, I compared the drawings of the girl with the scheming gaze.
Tomorrow would mean the start of another busy week, and I had lofty goals for the next five days. Not only did I plan to fulfill my quota of queries, but I was going to try to find all of Marlette’s hidden niches and figure out once and for all which of my coworkers had a secret that could have led to murder.
And the first name on my list was Franklin Stafford.