Thursday, May 23, 1940
Odd that just yesterday I wrote about my sadness over losing Pauline’s friendship and then today she showed up at the warehouse! Her smile seemed sheepish, and I guess she felt embarrassed about letting our friendship fall to the wayside. She’d brought along a small box of ginger cookies and she set them on the table where I keep the paints. I think the cookies were a peace offering. Then she stood back to look at the mural. She said, “Why, it’s a masterpiece!” which ordinarily would have pleased me, but I didn’t want her to study it too closely. I stood in front of the Tea Party ladies where the motorcycle cut through their dresses, masking it from her eyes. Jesse’d told me I was playing with fire, leaving the motorcycle in the painting, and in that moment, I realized how right he was and how foolish I’d been. I’m not as sane as I thought.
I swept forward, slipping my arm through Pauline’s as though we are still great and intimate pals, and steered her away from the mural. I asked about how she was fixing up her house for the baby, which I know is her favorite topic, and I could hear my nervousness as I spoke and my fake enthusiasm. I wondered if my question sounded as false to her ears as it did to mine.
I sat her down in the chair by Jesse’s easel and moved the other chair—the one I still thought of as Peter’s—close to her, picking up the box of cookies along the way. She said nothing, but simply obeyed me by taking a seat.
I told her how much I missed spending time with her, and my fingers shook as I struggled with the string on the cardboard box. My heart pounded with the lie about missing her. How could I miss a woman who had almost certainly spread a rumor about Jesse and me to her husband?
She claimed to miss me, too, but I thought her smile, too, seemed insincere.
We chatted for a bit, but it was nothing like the early days of our friendship when she shared confidences and her deepest feelings. I thought we both knew we were now playing a game.
After eating a cookie and filling the air with a mundane recitation of the curtains she was now making for her living room windows, Pauline got to her feet and began strolling idly through the area of the warehouse where I work. Her belly protrudes somewhat. She is a couple of months ahead of me, I think. Looking at her, I wonder how long I’ll be able to mask my own pregnancy.
She asked me what it’s been like, painting in the warehouse.
It struck me as an odd question to ask after all these months and I guessed she was just making conversation. My heart pounded every time she neared the mural, but she seemed disinterested in it. Instead, she studied my paints table, peered into the metal bucket where I keep my straight-edge and tape measure and other tools, all the while asking me lackadaisical questions about the trials of working in isolation. I tried to determine what she was getting at. The only thing I could think of was Jesse. She was feeling me out to see if Jesse and I were now—or were still—more than friends. It began to irritate me, her idle chatter, and after a short time I got to my feet and told her I needed to get back to work.
She looked abashed and apologized for keeping me from my painting.
“No bother,” I said. I told her it had been a delight to have her visit. I added that I didn’t think I’d be in Edenton much longer, and she asked if I’d go back to New Jersey. I said I most likely would. How I wish I knew where I was going! I told her I’d have the supplies to install the mural within a couple of weeks, and then could have kicked myself for mentioning the mural, since her gaze darted toward it. I ushered her quickly to the door, thanked her for the cookies, and sent her on her way.
What an odd visit! Now, though, I feel bad about it. Maybe Pauline was lonely and I’d rushed her out, blathering on about inconsequential things, when she may have had a burning need to confide in a true friend. So now I feel guilty for treating her as less than that. Perhaps she was trying to make amends. I am ashamed that I didn’t let her.
Friday, May 24, 1940
I’m terrified as I write this.
No, Pauline was not looking for genuine friendship yesterday. Pauline was a damn spy! I thought she was behaving oddly, but it never occurred to me that she was doing her husband’s dirty work. How foolish of me for not guessing!
Jesse was at his easel this morning and I was working on my signature on the mural, when a knock came on the warehouse door. Jesse and I looked at each other. We hadn’t heard a car and I had no idea who it might be. I stood up from the crate where I’d been sitting to paint my name, walked to the door and pulled it open. There stood Karl Maguire in his police uniform. I peered around the door frame to see his car parked far down the road. He’d wanted to surprise me. Or surprise us, I suppose.
I’d told Jesse I planned to paint over the motorcycle this afternoon, but now I wondered if I was too late. I’d been too eager to paint my name, to see it glowing in the corner against the deep green of the Mill Village lawn. Now I was kicking myself for my narcissism.
Karl greeted both of us, touching the brim of his policeman’s hat. Then he looked past me and I saw that Jesse—my brilliant Jesse—had quickly moved his easel in front of the mural, blocking the motorcycle from Karl’s view. Instead of the motorcycle, all Karl would be able to see was a detailed drawing of one of the Williams family’s mules on the easel. But Karl didn’t so much as glance at the mural. I didn’t want to let him inside the warehouse, but he stepped past me, glanced around my studio space, then stood squarely in front of me.
“Where is your hammer, Anna?” he asked.
I played dumb, desperately trying to buy time. Finally I said, “I don’t have a hammer.”
Karl pointed out that I’d had one back when he was helping us stretch the canvas. He looked past me at Jesse. “Do you remember that, Jesse Williams?” he asked. “And Pauline told me she stopped by yesterday and she didn’t see one, so I was wondering what happened to it?”
I was stunned, torn between my anger at Pauline and my desperate scrambling to find a way around Karl’s question. I could say that the hammer he saw that day hadn’t been mine. That Peter had brought one with him. But then I’d be getting Peter in trouble.
Then Karl told us that a bloody hammer had been found in the woods near Martin Drapple’s motorcycle. “Just wondering if it might have been yours,” he asked.
I was breathing hard and fast. Surely he noticed. I tried to figure out what an innocent person would say at that moment.
I asked him if that’s what he thought killed Martin. The hammer.
“No, a person killed him with the hammer,” Karl said. “And I know you had a hammer you can’t seem to produce.”
I said maybe someone else might have brought a hammer the day we worked on stretching the canvas. Karl had brought tools, himself.
Karl gave me a look I can only describe as disgusted and said he’d just wanted to give me a chance to show him my hammer. “I see you can’t do that,” he said. He touched the brim of his hat and wished Jesse and me a good day. Then he was gone.
Jesse and I turned to stare at one another.
I asked him where the hammer is, and he said he threw it in the woods by the Mill Village. He spoke quietly, one hand clutching the back of his chair. “I throwed it hard,” he said, “way out into a mess o’ cat claw and creeper and poison ivy.” He demonstrated the pitch he used to send the hammer flying into the brush. He didn’t think anyone could possibly have found it. Maybe Karl was lying? he suggested. Maybe he was trying to trick me in some way?