Mrs. Clutter was now over eighty years old. She was weathering it well, but Chance was disturbed by how much she had aged in the last few years.

“It’s so good to see you again. I wish Mark was here to talk with you, he’ll regret missing you.”

Mrs. Clutter had a peculiar way of speaking. She sounded like a lisping child, with an unnaturally high, squeaky voice. She spoke without opening her mouth at all, only through her lips. The effect was hard on the listener, and hard to understand.

“Thank you Mrs. Clutter,” Chance began.

“I’m so sorry to hear about Beth. So sorry. I hope you boys will be OK.”

“Um, OK. Thank you.”

“She was so young. So young.”

“Yes. Mrs. Clutter, do you remember a while back when you were helping me clean out Mom’s house?” He began again.

“So sorry. So sorry. What?” She peered toward Chance, as if just hearing him for the first time.

“You helped me clean out Mom’s house. You remember that, don’t you?”

She appeared to be puzzled for a moment, then brightened. Her eyes looked at him, but were blank. Chance realized that she was blind.

“Oh yes, yes. I brought you brownies.”

Chance frowned, “Oh yes, quite good.” He rushed to get his query out before Mrs. Clutter could take a breath. “I gave you a piece of furniture; a large speaker cabinet in the living room. Do you remember that, Mrs. Clutter?”

She moved slowly, leaning heavily on her walker, and sat in a large chair by the window. The green recliner, with its riot of flowers clashed with her red housecoat. She scrunched her lined face deep in thought. “Oh yes, I think so. I put it under my TV. In the living room.”

Chance looked around. They were sitting in the cramped living room, and there was no sign of a TV – much less the cabinet. “I don’t see a TV in here, Mrs. Clutter. Did you move it somewhere?”

A wistful look came to her face, “My eyes are not what they used to be, Mark. You remember? You helped me move my TV into the bedroom?”

Rather than contradict her, Chance ventured, “Oh yes, can I look in your room for a minute? I need to find something in that cabinet.”

A broad smile creased her face, showing yellowed dentures. “Of course, Mark. By all means.” Her voice lapsed into a whiny, pleading cadence. “When you’re done, can you get me something from Hardee’s?”

Chance felt distinctly uncomfortable. Mrs. Clutter was clearly becoming senile.

“Mrs. Clutter, does anybody visit you or live with you?”

She didn’t seem to have heard. “You know what I like, Mark.” She smiled and turned her head toward the window.

Chance stood looking at the matronly smile, barely curving her lips. Her white hair had a few stray wisps of copper colored strands that stubbornly refused to yield. She fumbled in a bag next to the chair, and picked out a knitting project. Her gnarled, wrinkled fingers carefully stroked the pattern of the cloth.

Without looking down, she expertly unwound the skein of yarn, and started another row. Occasionally, she paused, seemed to caress the cloth, and then resumed.

He went across the street and bought Mrs. Clutter something at the fast food restaurant. While she ate it carefully, Chance did a quick look in the house, looking for the TV she mentioned. All he found was an old set with bad color, and very loud sound. This was propped up on the wall near her hospital bed.

Another TV was in another bedroom, but was sitting on a dresser. In growing concern, Chance looked in the garage. He peered into the overgrown backyard; he saw no sheds or buildings – and no speaker, either.

Mrs. Clutter had finished about half her meal, and sat dozing in the mid afternoon sunlight that streamed in from the open window. She had spilled something on her housecoat, but had a contented look. A giant calico cat was in her lap, helping itself to the remains. It was missing most of one ear, and bore the marks of innumerable battles with rivals. It growled as Chance approached, and froze in mid-bite.

Not having any idea what to do, Chance sat on the flowery couch, and tried to think.

Five minutes later, a male voice sounded through the door, and Mark Clutter walked through. He saw Chance as he stood up, and blinked dumbly for a second totally without recognition. “May I help you?”

Chance extended his hand, “Hello Mark, been a long time. High school? I’m Mrs. Palmer’s grandson, Chance Martin.”

Looking wary, with no sign of recognition, Mark gave a perfunctory handshake. A second later, his eyes blinked. “Oh, right. You quit school early and joined the Army, right?”

“Navy,” Chance corrected.

“Right, Army – Navy, whatever, same thing,” a wolfish smile crossed Mark’s face.

Chance smiled back, “Oh yes – you joined the Marines, didn’t you?”

“Semper Fi!”

Mark’s flaming red hair had slid from his head to his face in the intervening years. The beard was thick and long, completely covering his mouth and extending to his shirt. It puffed out on the sides, and made his bald head look tiny in comparison.

He had followed his older brother into brick laying. The resulting heavy work had built up his upper body dramatically. Chance noticed the huge hands, cords rippling in his forearms. He was thankful the handshake had been limp and damp.

His speaking manner emulated his mother’s in every detail. It was strange to hear a squeaky, lisping voice from such a large man.

They both looked at Mrs.Clutter. Mark carefully picked up the still growling cat, and tossed it into the kitchen. The debris from his mother’s lap followed.

“I appreciate you buying Mom dinner. We don’t have much money for eating out these days.” He looked at Chance speculatively, “You just visiting TR?”

“Actually, I came back to inter my mother’s ashes in Marietta.”

Chance paused, trying to figure out how to get some information, without making it sound too important. “My brother and I were talking about some stuff, and one of my mother’s favorite pieces of furniture came up. You might remember a couple of years ago I was here cleaning out her house – your mother helped.”

“Wanna beer?” Mark walked into the kitchen. Chance followed him.

“Sure, thanks.”

The cat had migrated to the kitchen table, and was sniffing something suspiciously in a bowl, amidst trash and dirty dishes. Mark pushed the cat off the table, and sat down, motioning Chance into the other chair.

The beer was unremarkable, and Chance didn’t like beer anyway. “Paul – my brother – was wondering what happened to a piece of furniture. I remembered that I gave it to your mother back then.”

“What are you talking about?” It was impossible to see where the beer went in the riot of red. After every sip, Mark wiped his beard with a couple of swipes from the back of his hand, in a combing motion.

“Oh, just that Paul mentioned it yesterday. It was an old cabinet made by Reader’s Digest. A speaker cabinet.”

Recognition entered Mark’s eyes. He wiped his mouth again with his hand, “Oh sure, I remember that thing. Weird. Didn’t know Reader’s Digest made stereo stuff. My mother had her old TV sitting on top of that.” His eyes looked faraway. “It’s gone now.”

Chance shifted in his seat, leaning back in the chair. He set the beer down on the table. His stomach felt hollow, the disappointment was palpable. “You have any idea what happened to it?”

“Seems like a lot of fuss for an old speaker.”

“Well, it’s a little nostalgic for us, I guess. Especially my brother. I promised him I’d ask your mother about it before I left. He had to fly out today, in a rush.” Chance tried to make his voice sound a trifle irritated.

“Yeah sure, whatever. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to it. I only moved back in about a year ago or so. After my mom’s accident. She ain’t been right since. I think the doctors screwed her up. She doesn’t think too well these days.” Mark’s face betrayed anxiety and sadness at this revelation.

“I remember when Mom died – about four years ago. Your mom was very helpful. Very alert.”

Mark tilted the beer bottle to vertical, and drained the bottle. “Yeah. Well…” He shrugged.

Chance looked at the cat on the floor. It was sniffing around a paper bag that lay on its side. Its head was bouncing back and forth as if each touch of its nose caused a tiny shock. The feeling in his stomach felt the same way.

Chance ventured once more, “You have no idea what became of it, then?”

Looking a bit irritated himself, Mark replied, “I said I didn’t. I imagine it got ditched at the same time as her old TV crapped out. I wasn’t here, but that would’ve been between two-three years ago.”

Chance sighed. That was certainly a short scavenger hunt. Stopped before it started. I haven’t even left town, and the trail was gone. Twenty-five years gone.

He stood up and reached into his pocket, fishing out a bent business card. He straightened the corner absently. “Thanks, I appreciate it. If you happen to find anything out, can you call or email me?” He reached over the table.

Mark took the card.

“Wow, a photographer.” He looked up, “You can actually make money taking pictures?”

Chance smiled, “Well, not much, but it’s fun work – when I can get it. I’ve added my wife’s cell on the back – it’s what I’m using while I’m traveling.”

They exchanged a few more pleasantries, and filed passed the sleeping matriarch. She was snoring softly. The cat had relocated back to her lap, and was washing itself. It stopped and glared at Chance, paw stopped in mid stroke.

He got into the rental and drove around aimlessly, letting the car decide where to go. Though he’d only found the note that very morning, Chance felt like he had been stewing over this his entire life.

During his career in software, the work had been all consuming. Entire years had been spent working on huge projects of almost unimaginable complexity. He had enjoyed the challenge immensely.

As the years passed, the childhood memories had been locked into far away rooms in the dungeons of his memory. There they stayed. Quiet and forgotten. The odd events of youth at best just some fodder for the occasional joke or story.

He thought he’d come to terms with the questions about Pop’s life. It irritated him that at forty five, he was still bothered by it.

But the fog of time had been burned away by the words on a sheet of yellow. Words that had been written to him when the feelings of betrayal and confusion were still fresh in his mind. When the thoughts of his father still followed him around, unseen, until late at night, when the daily distractions of life became silent. Then the questions would come, but the answers would not.

The letter had brought it all back. But it had done little more than tease him once again. An explanation for everything was within his grasp at last. Just look in that stupid speaker cabinet and he’d be golden.

Chance started, and noticed he was nearly in North Carolina, slowly going up the pass behind a big truck carrying logs with spray painted numbers, and little red flags darting and flapping in the wind.

Damnit Mom! Why did you do that? Didn’t you know that maybe this should have all been buried with you?

“I don’t appreciate it!” He said aloud, to no one.

He smiled involuntarily. That expression of exasperation was one of Mom’s trademarks.

At the last rest stop before the border, he pulled off the road and stood leaning against the car. A steady breeze felt unnaturally cool in the shade of the mountains. On the strip of green between the rest stop and the highway, a thousand small brown birds were picking through the grass. A single mass, they moved in ripples and waves, like an ocean with a burbling volcano underneath. The occasional fluttering of one of their numbers eerily similar to a fish splash.

The yellow note had opened the door to that dungeon, and all the questions had escaped into the front rooms of his mind. They went through his brain in an apparently random order. All the devices he had created to ignore them seem to be ineffective. The questions acted like sentient beings, demanding to be heard and seen.

It was the Martin family legend, with all its facets and foibles. And Chance felt himself become ensnared, again.

But how could he pursue it? He didn’t have any more information than he did a week ago. At least, nothing concrete. The yellow letter was too vague to be useful, and the stereo cabinet was gone. The only piece of new information…

Chance stood up straight. His quick motion scared the sea of birds, causing them to flutter into the sky with shrill peeps of alarm and anger. The sound of a thousand little wings taking flight momentarily louder than the trucks slowly crawling up the pass.

He did have a lead to go on: Paul’s revelation about that police detective.

One Lt. J. T. Holland, of the New Orleans Police Department.