“What do you think about the symbol?” I ask. “It’s on the sketch, and this book.”
She casts a look at the book in question, still in my hand. “It is curious, isn’t it?”
“We’d like to open it up,” Jude says. “See what it says.”
“Do you have a key?” she retorts.
“I could break the lock.”
Maggie lets out an indignant huff. “Absolutely not.”
Then, quite decisively, she pushes up the sleeves of her cardigan and tells us to keep up.
Jude and I follow her to the back of the store, me with the locked tome, him with her teacup.
We climb the rickety staircase that leads to the second floor—an unevenly shaped room with Maggie’s small office straight ahead and the rest, a playground for the curious. The space is lined with shelves crowded with obscure ledgers, incidental records, and old newspaper archives. Featured on one of the wood-paneled walls are the same three men who hang in town hall. Not grand portraits, but smaller silhouettes—hand cut blackpaper set against aged parchment—arranged inside elegant oval frames.
Maggie marches to the shelves and Jude strolls past the displays, three exhibits dimly lit beneath hanging bulbs. The first, a model of Foggy Hollow as it was in 1822, set beneath a cracked glass case. The second, artifacts from the fire, including a list of people who perished, a piece of blackened stained glass from St. Fortuna’s Church, a charred jewelry box from the original Bogaard Estate, a warped horseshoe from the blacksmith’s forge, and a half-burned prisoner’s boot from the old jail house.
At the third and final exhibit, Jude stops.
This one features his family and their mysterious disappearance thirty years ago. He studies each item. Maureen Vandenberg’s pocket planner, marked with appointments that would later be cancelled. A sketch of a man with no face, signed by Lily Vandenberg, placed into evidence but later removed under unknown circumstances. And most peculiar of all, a Vandenberg clock that stopped two minutes after Maureen dialed 911. I watch as Jude takes in the newspaper article titled,No Bodies, No Clues - Just Questions, written by our very own Walt Jensen in the spring of 1995.
“Hey Maggie,” I call, my eyes still on Jude. “Have you ever heard of a painting calledEzra’s Obsession?”
He gives me a sharp look.
This wasn’t part of our plan.
But I don’t know why not.
Or why I haven’t thought to ask her sooner.
“Of course I have,” she says, removing a leather-bound album from one of the shelves.
“You’ve seen it?” I ask.
“That would require a time machine now, wouldn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ezra’s Obsessionwas burned in the fire.”
Jude and I exchange a look.
Ezra’s Obsessionwasn’t burned in the fire.
It’s currently in his bedroom.
“I do, however, have a related artifact.” She sets the album on a long, solitary table and hobbles into her office. When she returns, she holds a folio wrapped in linen, tied with faded twine. She places the folio on top of the album and carefully begins unwrapping it.
Jude sets Maggie’s teacup aside.
I do the same with the locked tome.
There are two items inside the folio. On top is a note written in Maggie’s handwriting.
Unproven fragment from Ezra Vandenberg’s personal journal. Acquired in 1973 with donation of salvaged fire artifacts.
