I looked again at the postmark: December 31.
Then I noticed its origin: West Haven, Michigan. And its return address: H. D., care of the Woodton post office.
An envelope mailed from West Haven to New Jersey, forwarded to Florida, to be forwarded, almost full circle, back to Michigan again, to Woodton.
No one would have known to do that, except Carolina herself.
My hands shook as I ripped at the gummed flap. At first, the contents appeared to be the usual batch of reader envelopes. As I pulled them out, though, I saw that they had already been opened.
There were five envelopes, two hand addressed, three typewritten, all mailed to Honestly Dearest in New Jersey. The oldest had been mailed in January of the year before. The most recent had been mailed the past November 22.
There were also about a dozen Honestly Dearest columns in the envelope, cut from newspapers and paper-clipped together. The oldest column, like the oldest envelope, went back to the beginning of the previous year.
There was one additional letter, without an envelope. It had been penned on a wide-ruled sheet of notebook paper, then folded a number of times, until it must have formed a small cube.
I called Aggert. He answered on the second ring.
“This is Elstrom. Did you mail anything to Louise Thomas’s New Jersey address a couple of months ago?”
“That newspaper she worked for?” He sounded tired. “I didn’t know about New Jersey two months ago. You’re the one who told me about that.”
“I just got more of her mail. Most of it is recent, the same kinds of reader letters and column copies sent by her editor. But one envelope is different. It was mailed from West Haven the day after she came to see you. I was wondering if she left something behind that you then sent on to her New Jersey address.”
“What’s in that envelope again?” He spoke quickly, alert now.
“Old letters, all opened, and copies of old newspaper columns. I haven’t read through them yet.”
“I’d like to see them, too.”
“I’ll send you copies,” I said and hung up.
I looked at the hand-addressed large tan envelope again and realized I was looking at Carolina’s own handwriting.
Reader letters and newspaper columns, mailed to get them away from her cottage.
Sent from herself, to herself.
For me to read.
Thirteen
My zip code directory showed the five reader envelopes had been postmarked in Cedar Ridge, Iowa.
The oldest envelope, handwritten with no return address, had been mailed on January 14, almost fourteen months before. Its flap was torn in several places and was finger worn, as though it had been opened a hundred times. The letter inside was written on the kind of three-hole, wide-ruled paper used by grammar school children. “Dear Honestly Dearest,” it read, in a big-looped, careful young hand, “My mom married my stepfather a year ago. We moved into his double-wide. Accidently, I was going through a storage tub. Underneath some fishing junk was a newspaper story. It was about a bank robbery. Over a million dollars got took. A bank person was killed. I think my stepfather did it. I don’t like him. I’m scared my mom knows. Should I tell. Your reader, Troubles.”
The letter hadn’t run in any of the Honestly Dearest columns enclosed in the big envelope, but the column clipped from the Windward Island Gulf Watcher of February 9 did end with a cryptic note: “Confidentially, Dearest, to Troubles. Just because someone keeps a newspaper story about a crime doesn’t mean they’re involved. Do you have a grandmother or grandfather, an aunt, or a teacher you can talk to? It would be good for you to discuss this with someone close to you. If not, you can always talk to me. Write Troubles on your envelope, so the people who get my mail will know to hurry it to me. I’ll keep everything a secret. Your friend, Honestly Dearest.” Carolina had seen something in the letter that made her take the child’s fear seriously.
The second envelope was postmarked February 10, the day after the column-ender appeared, and was marked “Troubles” on the outside. The letter read, “Dear Honestly Dearest, I can just talk to you. It is worse. A lot of money is in a golf bag on the underneath of the double-wide. I didn’t count it. My stepfather is looking at me strange. I am scared I must run away. I am awful young. Your reader, Troubles.”
The column-ender ran on February 26, probably the soonest Carolina could get it into print: “Confidentially, Dearest, to Troubles. Let me find someone in your town for you to talk to. Your friend, Honestly Dearest.”
There were no more envelopes from Troubles, but the loose letter that was with them, the one that had been folded several times to form a cube, was written in the same hand, on the same punched, wide-lined paper. “He won’t hurt me if I don’t tell where this is. You keep it until I say. Your friend, Troubles.”
Carolina answered that one at the end of her column of March 11. “I will do as you say, but this is the wrong way. You may be in danger. The police can help you. Let me get them to protect you. Your friend, Honestly Dearest.”
Carolina ended each of her next four columns in the Gulf Watcher, from late March through the middle of April, with the same note: “Confidentially, Dearest, to Troubles: WRITE TO ME.”
There were no more letters from Troubles.
The first of the three business-sized white envelopes, typewriter-addressed to New Jersey with “TROUBLES” typed in capital letters in the lower left corner, was postmarked April 12, also from Cedar Ridge. The letter inside was typed in caps, too, and read like a telegram: “RETURN WHAT DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU TO POST OFFICE AT ORIGINAL ZIP CODE, CARE OF T. ROUBLES GENERAL DELIVERY.”
Carolina’s column-ender on April 22 responded: “Confidentially to Mr. Roubles: Prove T is in safe hands and will be protected and I will.”
The next typed letter came right away: “RETURN OR T WON’T BE SAFE.”
She responded with “Prove T is safe” at the close of her next two columns, but Roubles didn’t respond until a letter postmarked May 4. As on the others, “TROUBLES” was typed on the outside of the envelope sent to New Jersey.
There were only four words typed on the sheet of paper inside.
“HONESTLY DEAREST, YOU’RE DEAD.”
An hour later, I sat in the overstuffed purple chair in the office Leo had built in the basement of the bungalow where he lived with his mother. I’d been there for fifty minutes, watching him examine the letters I’d brought.
He switched off the Luxo magnifying light, pushed its robotlike spring arms away, and slid the envelopes and columns into the envelope Carolina had mailed to herself. Dropping his cotton gloves on the light table, he went to slump into the wood-slatted chair behind the scarred wood desk. He picked up the stub of a yellow wood pencil and started working it between his fingers, end over end.
“Kid finds bank job money, sends it to Honestly Dearest.” He shrugged. “Evil stepdad finds out, threatens your Carolina.”
“What can you tell me about the handwriting on the first three letters?”
“I go to experts when I need that kind of expertise. For sure I can’t tell you if it was written by a boy or a girl.”
“Damn,” I said.
“At that age, it’s hard to tell.”
“What age?”
“Hard to tell that, too.”
“Damn it, Leo.” I pushed myself up from the depths of the sprung seat. His father had died in that chair, years before. Now it felt like it was grabbing for me, too.
The pencil stub paused between his index and middle fingers. “I’m guessing ten to twelve, but the kid could have been older.”
“At least now we know why Carolina came to Rambling.”
“Running from the stepfather.” Leo aimed the pencil at me. “You don’t need to be told that this is way over your head.”