“Might be a job in it for you. Pay for some of those repairs on my cottage.”
Janya watched them glare at each other. A change of subject seemed in order, although she had no idea why. “Has either of you discovered anything yet?”
“About what?” Tracy demanded. She seemed to realize she’d raised her voice to the wrong person. “Oh, you mean about Herb. Not so far. I think he clipped every article on fishing that the Sun County Sentinel ever published. Either of you need information on bait or tides?”
“He used to go out to the point and fish on the beach near every morning,” Wanda said. “I never saw him come back with anything.”
“I guess we can toss these. They aren’t exactly family mementoes.” Tracy stood and nudged the box to the side. “I’ll get the next one.”
“Well, here’s something,” Wanda said, before Tracy could go. “Herb’s birth certificate.”
“Really? Let me see.” Wanda held it out, and Tracy took it. “Herbert Lowe Krause. Montgomery, Alabama. June 22, 1920. That made him—” Tracy wiggled her fingers as if she were counting on them “—almost eighty-eight. That’s a good long life.”
“Too bad they don’t update those things with recent information. Marriages. Children, that kind of thing. It would have made this easier.”
“Which folder was it in?” Janya asked.
Wanda squinted at the folder label. “It’s all faded.” She leaned closer. “I think it says ‘Legal.’”
“Anything else interesting in there?” Tracy leaned over as Wanda skimmed through the remaining contents.
Wanda held up another document. “Look here. Another birth certificate.” She leaned over it. “Clyde James Franklin. September 14, 1922. Augusta, Maine.”
“Not a brother or a son.”
“So why’d Herb have this? Lord, it’s so old it looks like the one right from the hospital. A friend who died, maybe? Some kind of memento? You never know what people will keep.” Wanda replaced it and kept searching. “Here’s something else official.” She lifted out another document and scanned it. “Interesting. Discharge papers from the army, looks like.”
“I bet Herb served in World War II.” Tracy paused. “Is my math right? Two, not One?”
“Math’s right, but not the name. Clyde again. Released from duty on November 17, 1945.”
“Really? I bet you’re right. He must have been somebody Herb was close to, maybe an army buddy.”
“And here’s a high school diploma. Cony High School in Augusta. For Clyde, not Herb.”
“Is there anything about Herb in that folder besides his birth certificate?”
“I’m working on it.” Wanda held up another paper and scanned it. “More Clyde. Certificate for some sort of welding course.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Tracy said. “So some guy named Clyde Franklin could weld.”
Wanda put that one back, too. “Okay, here’s something with Herb’s name on it.”
“At last.”
“It’s some kind of Social Security form. What he can count on getting. When. You get these a lot when you get to be my age.”
“Anybody else’s name on it?”
“No, just his.” She went through the rest of the papers, shaking her head after each one. “More of that kind of stuff. Recent stuff. A car title from the eighties. An old driver’s license.”
“Nothing with a wife’s name? A daughter’s?”
“Bills, receipts.” Wanda kept skimming. “He had a boat, but he sold it. Bought a fair amount of fishing tackle from some place over in Dunedin. Had some expensive dentures, I’ll tell you. More than one receipt from some florist in Georgia.”
“That could be significant,” Janya said.
Wanda looked up. “And the reason?”
“Are the other receipts from Georgia?”
Wanda paged through. “Not any of these.”
“We know he lived in Kentucky for a short time,” Tracy said. “The preacher said Herb was there about a year, but he decided to come back to Florida.”
“Come back,” Janya said. “So perhaps he was living here before he went there.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Why was he paying a florist in Georgia?” Janya asked.
“If you ask me, we’re barking up the wrong tree,” Wanda said, closing the folder. “Nothing about a daughter or any other family member.”
“How many receipts were there from the florist?” Janya asked.
“I don’t know. Six, seven?”
“Maybe he was sending flowers to this missing daughter.”
“You know, that could be true,” Tracy said. “I’ll call the shop and ask if they have anything in their records.”
Wanda smiled. “Maybe I ought to do it. People respond to my prompting a little better.”
“Well, you’d be a natural. You do have all that phone experience,” Tracy said.