Page 153 of Fire and Bones
“How did Daughtler get your name and contact information?”
“She works as a secretary in the law office that represents the W-C Commerce holding company. When Ivy called there, doing her journalist on the prowl thing, somehow my name came up.”
More of the buoyant wing-scraping sonata. Another soft clink of china. Then Ryan asked,
“What’s happening with Susan Lipsey?”
“When discharged from the hospital, she’ll face four counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of arson, and a slew of others charges I don’t recall.”
“Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee?”
I shot Ryan a look of faux disapproval. “The Stoll twins may be the most curious aspect of all this. Clearly, Lipsey is not well, but that a pair of forty-something men would carry out their grandmother’s felonious plans seems a stretch. Roy is apparently the badder apple—lucky for me since it was Ronan who showed up when Lipsey was on the verge of putting a bullet in my chest. We’re only just discovering all the ways the Warrings seem to have preyed on Lipsey and her brood over the decades, but there’s quite a history there that’s coming to light.”
“You’d think that eighty years would have been long enough for the feud to burn out,” Ryan said.
“Weirdly, it seemed to burn brighter every year. From the Foggy Bottom Gang, via Amon Clock and his ill-fated girlfriend, Doris Gardner, through Gardner’s daughter, Susan Lipsey, right down to her grandsons, Roy and Ronan.”
Ryan shook his head, let the silence linger for a moment, then asked: “Have you managed to ID the little subcellar gal?”
“Sadly, no. And prospects don’t look good. Lizzie’s lab couldn’t extract usable DNA.”
Ryan reached over and took my hand. “You’ll figure it out.”
Maybe, I thought.
Just maybe.
EPILOGUE
FOUR MONTHS LATER
Call it a character flaw or whatever. I’m obsessed with mysteries that I’m unable to solve. Cannot let them go.
Ivy’s three hundred photocopies went with me to Charlotte. I won’t say I spent all my free time working through them that summer and fall, but I spent many hours with those smeary, smudgy pages.
In mid-October when the days were growing cool, the nights almost crisp, and the hardwoods were considering a split from their leaves, I made my first breakthrough. At the bottom of the second to last stack.
The article had appeared in the Washington Post on February 19, 1943. Nothing lengthy, only six column inches.
POLICE SEEK 7 MISSING PERSONS
Police in Washington are seeking information relating to seven persons who have disappeared. Relatives and friends are inquiring for them.
Anyone knowing of the whereabouts of the following should communicate with Sergeant Arthur Gunders at the Cathedral Heights station on Idaho Avenue.
A list followed that brief bit of text.
The fourth entry caught my attention.
Ruby Berle Dockeray, age twenty-five, had been reported missing by her sister. Ruby was last seen thirteen months earlier outside a home in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.
The address was that of the first fire.
Hot damn!
I had a name.
Ruby Berle Dockeray.