Chapter 5 - The Shaky Ink
The quiet in the lobby returned, but it was no longer the soft, familiar quiet of a rainy morning. It was sharp, dense, and cold.
"What do you mean it wasn't here before?" I asked, kneeling on the wet floor beside her.
Clara’s thumb hovered an inch above the lavender ink on the back of the photograph. "I pulled this picture out of my mother's old photo album in Memphis at six o'clock this morning before I got in the car," she said, her voice barely audible over the roar of the rain on the roof. "I’ve owned this photograph for twelve years. The back was blank, Hannah. It was completely blank."
I looked closely at the handwriting.
The letters were thin, irregular, and dragged across the paper as if the person holding the pen didn't have the strength in their wrist to press down properly:
LOOK BENEATH THE FLOOR NEAR ROSIE
"Is that Margaret’s handwriting?" I asked.
Clara swallowed hard, her eyes wide with a sudden, overwhelming shock. "Margaret had severe Parkinson's for the last three years of her life. Her hands shook constantly. She couldn't write a check without her neighbor signing it for her. This... this is her hand. But how could this be on the back of my photograph?"
"Did you stop anywhere between Memphis and Nashville?"
"No," Clara said, shaking her head frantically. "I drove straight through. I kept the photograph on the passenger seat of my car the entire time. I only picked it up when I got out in your parking lot."
She stared down at Elliot, who was watching her with a strange, solemn intensity. His tail had stopped wagging. He sat completely still, his dark brown eyes locked onto her face, as if he were monitoring her realization.
"When Jim Miller brought Margaret's belongings in," I recalled, my mind racing through the events of February 9, "he brought a plastic bin with their leashes, two old fleece blankets, and this bowl. But he said the house on Lillian Street was locked up by the landlord two days after Margaret died."
"The landlord," Clara said, her tone suddenly hardening. "Arthur Vance?"
"No," I said, checking my computer screen. "The owner listed on the intake report was a corporate holding company out of Knox County—Lillian Street Properties LLC."
Clara stood up slowly, her knees cracking in the quiet room. Elliot stood up beside her, his shoulder immediately pressing against her thigh, exactly as he used to stand beside Rosie.
"Margaret didn't rent that house," Clara said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, dark register. "That house belonged to our parents. When our mother died seven years ago, Margaret was supposed to hold the deed in trust for both of us. After we had our fight, Margaret told me she sold it because she couldn't afford the taxes. She told me she was renting it back from some investment firm."
"If she didn't sell it..." I began.
"If she didn't sell it, someone stole it from her," Clara finished.
She reached down, grabbed the handle of the dented stainless-steel bowl, and looked at me. "Where is the house on Lillian Street?"
"It’s in East Nashville," I said, standing up behind the counter and pulling my coat off the hook behind my chair. "About four miles from here. Near the old lumber yard."
"Hannah, what are you doing?" Sarah asked, walking out from the back clinical room with a tray of vaccination syringes in her hands. She stopped, looking at Clara, Elliot, and me standing in a circle near the door.
"I'm taking my break," I said, grabbing my car keys from the drawer.
"David will write you up if you leave during intake hours!" Sarah warned.
"Let him write me up," I said.
May you like
I looked down at Elliot. He wasn't looking at the front doors with the stubborn, immovable stance he had shown sixty-two times before.
He walked past Clara, pushed his snout against the heavy glass door, and waited for me to turn the handle.
