“Wow,” breathed Jordan.  We stood, staring down at the long black album.  It’s bold white lettering jumped out at us like illuminated snow at midday. 

Brooke reached out an index finger and gently tapped the dark glossy surface.  “I asked Gramps about this.  He remembered it all right.  In his words it was ‘quite the scandal.’  After the second murder, when Benny was killed, Benny being a lady, his mother put a nasty curfew on him.  ‘Really cramped my style,’ Gramps told me.  They had lived only a few houses away, on the same road.”

“What else?” I asked.

Brooke shrugged and shook her head.  “That was about it.  He didn’t care to talk to me about it.  But he did say that the most horrible thing about all the murders was that the killer was never caught.”

Jordan rubbed her arms.  “You mean the killer is still out there?”

“If he’s not dead,” I answered.  “Remember this all started in 1950.”

Jordan stopped her arm rubbing.  “Oh, yeah, that’s right.  What was I thinking?”

Brooke pulled a chair from beneath the table.  “Let’s look at it then.”

“let’s order pizza first,” suggested Jordan.  “I’m getting pretty hungry.  We can save the cookies and cheese straws for later tonight.  How does that sound?”

Brooke and I thought it sounded grand and I reached for my phone.  While we waited for our veggie pizza to arrive, we gathered around the small kitchen table and I opened the Chapman Murder scrapbook to the first page.  Jordan and Brooke leaned in to get a closer look.  I reread the headline: “Sheriff’s Office Probes Suspicious Death.” 

“Blooming heck,” Brooke whispered.  “Somebody killed him with his shovel.  Right there in his machinery shed, in the middle of the day.”

“And with his wife right in the house,” added Jordan. 

Brooke glanced up at us.  “He was my grandfather’s age.”

Jordan suddenly pointed to the small square of notebook paper containing my great-grandmother’s comments.  “My gosh, will you read this?” 

Brooke switched her gaze to the paper.  “‘How exciting?’  Who wrote that?”

“That’s Vera’s handwriting,” I replied.  “This scrapbook belonged to her, she wrote the scuttlebutts.”

Jordan nodded thoughtfully.  “Hmm…, nice lady.” 

“Didn’t I tell you?” 

Moving down the page we came to the next clipping: “Resident’s Death Ruled as Homicide.”  The date was Tuesday, March 21, 1950.  We quietly read the short article:

             Sheriff Monty Taylor announced yesterday, in a small press conference held outside his office, that the death of Mr. Forrester O’Shea, found at his home Sunday afternoon, is now being ruled as a homicide.  Mr. O’Shea was discovered by his wife, Mrs. Nora O’Shea, lying unconscious in the family’s machinery building.  He had been beaten about the head with the blade of a shovel.

               It appears nothing was taken from the scene.  County officers are left baffled as to the reason for this horrible crime.

On the following page was the neatly cut section of notebook paper containing Vera’s crude remarks concerning her murdered neighbor.  I didn’t need to reread them to remind myself of how detached those words had seemed as she criticized the clothing Mr. O’Shea wore the day of his death. 

Out beside of Vera’s thoughtless comments, an old black-and-white photograph had been pasted.  In it stood an older man, wearing a shirt, pants, suspenders, and a wide brim hat, which looked much like the ones I often saw in those old movies I liked.  The man was smoking a cigar and standing in front of a store.  I recognized it as Fitzgerald’s General. 

Jordan lightly tapped the picture.  “That must be him.  Do you supposed that’s the yellow shirt he’s wearing?”

“Wonder how she knew that,” said Brooke, “about the shirt he wore being yellow, if it wasn’t in the papers.”

My best friends eyed me suspiciously. 

“Maybe she was psychic,” I told them pleasantly.  My attempt at humor went unnoticed.