Free Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 02 - Rekindling Motives by Elaine Orr

announced Scoobie as he came down the ladder. “Look at this! This might be a first edition of All Quiet on the Western Front , and there’s a 1932 edition of Tom Sawyer .”
    I closed the ledger, placed a hand on each side of the sewing machine stool and stood, slowly. This was how I had figured to get up with the least pain, and it was hardly elegant. Undoubtedly Scoobie was only refraining from making cracks because I looked so sore.
    “Did the doctor say when it would hurt less?” Ramona looked sympathetic as she held my coat for me.
    “He said I’d start to feel a lot better after a week.” I stretched, something that was already less painful than it had been a couple of days ago.
    Scoobie carried the ledgers and his books out to the car, and I drove the three of us toward the Purple Cow, where Ramona wanted to be dropped off. Scoobie was absorbed in a book, and Ramona appeared lost in thought until she said, “You know, I keep thinking about that skeleton. When do we find out if it’s Gracie’s great uncle, or whatever he was to her?”
    “Sergeant Morehouse more or less told me not to bug him about it because it would take some time. Something about not paying for a rush DNA analysis.” I said.
    Scoobie snorted. “The skeleton’s not in any rush.”
    “Hand me one of those ledgers, would you?” Ramona asked Scoobie.
    “There aren’t any empty pages for you to draw on,” he said as he passed one to the front seat.
    We had arrived at the Purple Cow, and Ramona stuffed the ledger into her oversized handbag. “Sometimes numbers tell you a lot,” she said as she got out of the car.
    SCOOBIE JOINED AUNT MADGE and me for grilled cheese and clam chowder. Aunt Madge had moved a small table out of a corner near the sliding glass doors that lead to her narrow back yard. She ordered the dogs to stay a certain distance from the box of trains. Amazingly, to me, they sat about five feet away, occasionally looking at Aunt Madge and giving a short wag of a tail, as if they wanted to see if she had changed her mind.
    Aunt Madge, who is always looking for ways to use her carpentry skills, was far more interested in the trains than the ledgers or albums and was soon on the floor with Scoobie going through the box to see which pieces of track went together to create the picture that was on the outside of the box.
    When I pulled the third album from the coffee table to my perch on the couch I was pleased to see that it had pictures of the Tillotson house “the day we moved in.” A photo taken inside the house also noted the date, which was in 1917. A young Audrey and Richard posed in front of a tea set and their parents in dressy attire as if they were going to a party. You can bet they weren’t unpacking the boxes . The real estate appraiser in me took over and I marveled at the full wrap-around porch and shutters at every window. They were stout looking storm shutters and the lattice work around the base of the porch was intricate. The album ended with Richard holding a new baby and Audrey at about age 10 standing next to him looking as if she were worried he would drop the little darling.
    It wasn’t until I looked at that photo that I realized that the fourth Tillotson child apparently wasn’t born yet, and the two youngest children were enough younger than Richard and Audrey that they might still be alive. More people to talk to. I glanced toward the corner and was surprised to see Aunt Madge on her hands and knees, apparently trying to peer under a piece of track. Scoobie caught my eye and gave me an almost imperceptible shrug.
    “I saw that,” she said, straightening up.
    “What are you looking for?” I asked.
    “That piece of track is a little bent, and I want to see where I need to straighten it,” she said, as she dislodged the piece from its connecting piece of track. She stood and walked toward her pantry, where she keeps her indoor tool box, as she calls it.
    “Having fun?” I asked