Granny Gets Fancy by Harper Lin

Author:Harper Lin [Lin, Harper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Lin Books

Nine

James Garfield had signed in early one morning exactly a week before. There was a column listing the time when each visitor came in and when they left. He had stayed nearly three hours. I filed the time and date away in my memory. It was the only secure confirmation of his whereabouts for any time before the murder.

Garfield had a distinctive signature, very elaborate and old-fashioned. It looked familiar, and after a moment, I realized he had imitated the president’s signature.

When looking up President Garfield, I had noticed that all the history pages on presidents included their signature, just in case you came across one in a rummage sale or something. The murder victim had taken his hobby one step beyond to outright imitation.

Pity he got assassinated just like his namesake.

The schoolmarm gestured to the bookshelf. “There are some local history books over there. The microfilm machine has all the old issues of the Cheerville Gazette.”

“Aren’t those all on their web page?”

She looked at me like I had just passed wind.

“The Cheerville Gazette was founded in 1827. The online back issues only go back to 1998.”

“I see,” I said, somewhat abashed. Historical research had never been my forte.

It still wasn’t. I went over to the bookshelf and rummaged through the books. The schoolmarm went back to her game.

Bloop. Bleep. Bleepity-bloop. Blarp-bloop.

I found several books on the early colonial days, the little battle that had happened on our village green during the American Revolution, and books on Cheerville’s more recent history. There was even a book on the history of the Cheerville Historical Society. A history of people studying history? I would have to keep that one in mind in case I ever suffered from insomnia.

One slim volume was titled Presidents in Cheerville. I flipped through it. Almost half of the text was taken up by the story of a brief visit George Washington had made to the town. He had been passing through and prayed at our lovely old church. Then he left. He couldn’t have been in Cheerville for more than two hours, but the book managed to draw that out to thirty pages of description. Apparently, not much happened in Cheerville back then either.

A few other presidents had stopped by. Grover Cleveland had even stayed the night. But the most important chapter was the one on James Garfield.

I felt a little prickle in my neck, knowing that the victim had held this very same book almost exactly a week before.

The bleeping and blooping had stopped.

I turned. The schoolmarm was staring at me.

“Find what you need?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She went back to bleeping and blooping.

I read the chapter. In 1868, Garfield, who was not yet president but was already a prominent congressman, had passed through town and stopped at the town square to give a speech in support of the gold standard and against those newfangled greenbacks, which weren’t backed by anything. It was hard for people in the age of debt and credit to understand, the book explained,

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