They took the last step together, the flashlight holding steady on the boxes ahead.
***
It was in the last box.
They went back upstairs and replaced the counter before they sat down to marvel over their find. “Don’t forget Lisanne,” said Wes as Nadine washed her hands. Basement grime tinted the suds brown.
“Got it.” She shot Lisanne a proof of life photo of her and Wes and got a thumbs-up in reply. “I still don’t know how Erma managed to get into the dumbwaiter,” she said.
“A mystery we might never solve.” Wes spread the piece of paper on the table, and she bent over it, hands feeling shaky.
“It’s a staff newsletter from 1977,” said Nadine. “From John Wilson’s office when he was a member of Parliament.” The faded purple mimeographed sheet was like a time capsule, filled with inside jokes about coffee breaks and an open invitation to the upcoming Christmas party. It was only a page, and in the bottom corner was a small caricature of a young woman smiling with her face covered by a pair of huge glasses and holding a pen and folder to her chest. “The irreplaceable Milly Cross,” read the caption.
“There was no mention of Milly Cross in any of the obits or the files we found,” said Wes.
Nadine knew there was no need to check. Wes’s memory was a steel trap.
“Milly Cross.” She repeated the name thoughtfully. “That looks a bit like Dot, doesn’t?”
“Hold on.” Wes jolted up. “Those photos in the dress room.”
They released the cats as they went to the west wing.
Wes stood in front of the wall, checking the names. “One was named Cross, I’m sure of it. There. Mildred Cross.”
He pointed, and Nadine saw one of the young women in the photos resembled Dot. It was also the image of the woman in the porcelain photo frame taken in an Ottawa studio. “Dot was Milly?” she said aloud as if to test the theory connecting the images of the women. “She could be. We know almost nothing about her early life.”
“Everyone floats over it as if being a teacher in small-town Manitoba isn’t worthy of investigation, and whenever she spoke about her past, it was always vague,” Wes said.
“What if she was hiding her previous life before moving to Manitoba? What if Dot was Milly?” It sounded fantastical as Nadine said it.
“You think Dot Voline was her pen name?” asked Wes. “That was never hinted at in anything I read or by Dot.”
“Not only a pen name but a new identity, like Dellia inPatience. Dot published it in 2000. It was about a woman who changed her name and started a new life to get away from her husband’s affair.”
“You think whatever inspiredThirty Pieceshappened and she changed her name and moved away to start a new life,” mused Wes. “How would people from her old Ottawa life have not recognized her?”
“The glasses, maybe, and also they might simply have not expected Milly Cross to be the world-famous author. Kind of the same way you sometimes don’t recognize people when they’re out of context.”
“That makes sense. We need some proof.”
Quickly they split up research tasks, and Nadine called Irina at theHerald.
“What do you want?” asked Irina when she answered. Would it kill her to say hello?
“I need a birth record,” said Nadine, getting right down to it. Irina had access to the best online database for birth, death, and marriage records. “The name is Dot or Dorothy Voline.”
“Year of birth?” Irina’s voice didn’t change.
“It’s 1951.” That was the number that matched Dot’s bio, which said she was born on an isolated farmstead.
There was the sound of what seemed like an unnecessary number of keystrokes for a thirteen-letter name. “None.”
“How about a couple years on either side?” If Dot had lied about her past, she might have lied about her age.
More tapping. “None.”
“Mildred Cross, same dates?”
