Part 9 (2/2)

”Either is possible, I suppose.” Augusta unleashed hair that would put the harvest moon to shame and let it fan out to dry behind her. ”Arminda, where did you put that pin?”

”In the box where I keep all my other junk-I mean jewelry. It's in my sweater drawer along with those old minutes from the meeting.”

”Then I suggest you put it somewhere safe and promise you won't tell anyone you have it. It might have caused one death already. We don't want it bringing about another.”

Chapter Twelve.

Peggy O'Connor must have been waiting by the window, because she opened the door before I could ring the bell. Her home on Garden Avenue was a comfortable-looking Georgian set back from the road. A new beige Honda Accord sat in the driveway. Blue pansies nodded from a large urn by the front steps, and a baby's plastic swing hung from the limb of an oak in the yard.

”Ca.s.sandra's still sleeping,” she whispered. ”I was afraid the doorbell might wake her.”

If, as her cousin Gordon had said, Peggy Briggs O'Connor was born at about the time her father was killed during World War II, she would have to be in her late fifties. She didn't look it. The woman who invited me in was trim, blond, and smooth-skinned in a green tweed skirt and matching sweater set. The latter appeared to be cashmere, and I wondered if she had changed after getting the baby down for her nap. It seemed much too expensive to chance being anointed with spit-up.

The room I was ushered into was formal but lived in. A child's playthings were scattered about the room, and a gas fire burned on the hearth. My hostess hesitated before sitting. ”Can I get you something? Coffee or hot tea? The weather's taken a nasty turn.”

I'm sure I must have looked as if I could use some, and I could. I accepted, grateful for the offer. The tea, when it came, was orange spice, accompanied by a couple of homemade gingersnaps, and I was pleased when Peggy joined me. I wondered if she ever made nondescripts.

”There was a recipe in one of my great-grandmother's old cookbooks for a pastry called nondescripts,” I said, jumping in with both feet. ”It was contributed, I think, by your great-grandmother.”

When Peggy smiled, I noticed for the first time the tiny lines around her mouth and eyes. ”Goodness, I'd almost forgotten about those! Gram used to make them for her circle meetings once in a while, and I remember how those ladies gobbled them up. I rarely got more than a taste, but I've never had anything like them.” She took a dainty sip of tea and broke off a bite of the fairy-size cookie. ”All that sugar and cholesterol-it's a wonder they didn't kill us! And Gram said they were a horror to make.”

I told her I had heard the same. ”Mrs. O'Connor, I think I mentioned an organization my great-grandmother belonged to, and your grandmother, too, I believe. Did she ever say anything about a group called the Mystic Six?”

”Not that I recall.” She looked down to smooth an invisible wrinkle in her skirt. I couldn't see her face. ”Would you like more tea?”

”No, thank you. I was hoping you might help me learn who the other members were,” I said.

”But this was long before you were even born. My grandmother's been gone almost twenty years now. Why, surely none of them could still be alive!” She lifted her cup as if to drink, but there was nothing left in it.

”I thought she might have mentioned it, or even saved some letters. These women made a quilt together-pa.s.sed it around for years. Vesta, my grandmother, says she never knew what became of it.”

”I'm afraid I wouldn't know, either. Gram never spoke of belonging to a group like that. I don't remember her ever going back to Angel Heights. She had no brothers or sisters, and her parents both died in that terrible flu epidemic.”

”I just a.s.sumed she kept in touch,” I said. ”Your cousin Gordon told me he and your dad were close friends, that he visited there often.”

Peggy O'Connor straightened a brocaded sofa pillow. ”My father was killed right after I was born. I never saw him.”

”I'm sorry.” I could tell she was getting impatient for me to leave, so I gathered my purse and coat to give her the notion my parting was imminent. But I wasn't out the door yet.

”There was a pin, you know. The girls in the Mystic Six wore a small gold pin: a flower with a star in the center.”

She started toward the door, then turned to face me, and I had the distinct feeling she had just thrown down a gauntlet. Peggy O'Connor spoke in that calm, controlled voice some teachers use five minutes before the last bell. ”That's interesting, but it has nothing to do with my grandmother or with me.”

”Then why would that same emblem be engraved on her stone? I just came from the cemetery, Mrs. O'Connor. I saw it there.”

She reared back and bristled like a skinny green porcupine. ”I can't imagine what you mean by that. That engraving on my grandmother's stone is merely a design, nothing more. It has nothing to do with that group of academy girls you speak of or with Angel Heights.”

I felt her hand on my shoulder and knew she was about a sniff away from shoving me out the door.

”Now, if you'll excuse me,” she said, ”I must go and see to my granddaughter. I hear her waking from her nap.”

”Boy, did she ever have her drawers in a wad!” I said to Augusta as we backed out of the driveway. ”I'm beginning to have a sneaky little suspicion she was trying to get rid of me.”

”Don't be vulgar, Arminda, but you're right. The woman was rude. And clearly not telling the truth.”

It was cold in the car, and Augusta bundled herself into her downy wrap and turned up the heat. ”I could use a cup of that tea,” she added with a hint of a s.h.i.+ver.

”You were there?”

She nodded. ”Oh, yes, but of course you didn't see me. I didn't want to intrude.”

”Then I suppose you noticed how upset she became when I mentioned the pin?”

”Indeed, I did. And that's not all I noticed,” Augusta said. ”Peggy O'Connor made a point of saying the engraving on her grandmother's stone had nothing to do with a group of girls from the academy.”

”Right,” I said. ”She made that clear.”

”Arminda, you never mentioned the academy.... I believe there's a place up on the left where we can get some tea,” my angel pointed out.

”Pluma,” my grandmother said.

”Pluma what?” Augusta and I had just walked in after our unrewarding drive to Georgia and back when the phone started to ring, and I could tell from the demanding way it jangled that Vesta was on the other end.

”Pluma Griffin.”

The name meant nothing to me, but she sounded as though she meant for me to respond in some way, and so I did. ”Who's that?” I asked.

Deep sigh here. ”You were asking about the other members of that group my mother belonged to, weren't you? Well, Pluma Griffin was one of them.”

”I thought you said you couldn't remember.”

”I'm eighty years old,” Vesta said, sounding more like forty. ”I'm supposed to forget things, Minda. And I probably wouldn't think of it now except that when I was helping Gatlin sort through some of Otto's mess this morning, I ran across an old book she'd given Mama. It was a volume of poetry-one of those maudlin, flowery things people used to weep over, and she'd written an inscription in the front.”

”Do you know what happened to her?” I was so excited to hear the news, I almost forgot to be tired.

”Well, she died.” Vesta paused, baiting me, I guess, and when I didn't answer, she continued. ”Moved away from Angel Heights probably before I was born-worked in a library somewhere in Charlotte, I think. Anyway, when Pluma retired, she came back here to live with a niece.”

”The niece-she still here? Do I know her?”

”Don't know how you could forget her,” Vesta said. ”Martha Kate Hawkins was Hank Smith's receptionist for as long as he practiced. Lives in one of those a.s.sisted living places out on Chatham's Pond Road.”

”Do you think it's too late-?”

”Don't you dare go there before you come by here and get this book!” Vesta said. ”I don't want the old thing, and yet I'd feel guilty throwing it away. Let's shove it off on Martha Kate.”

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