A Lasting Impression

I grant you. But it’s in the tiny details that people make mistakes. A name written in a guest register, a cross word spoken to a concierge who has a very good memory.” Holbrook tapped his temple. “Something will turn up. And very soon. I can feel it!”
    Sutton wished he shared Holbrook’s enthusiasm. The whole case was moving too slowly for him. What they needed were names. Mainly that of the man pulling the strings at the top. The rest would follow. If they could only learn his identity . . .
    After their meeting, Sutton retrieved the files he needed and checked the mail on his desk. Nothing from the colleague in New Orleans. What was taking the man so long? But there was a letter from his mother. Her shaky handwriting told him much.
    Checking the time, he tore open the envelope.
    He smiled at her descriptions of what it was like living with her older sister, Lorena, and at how she accused his aunt of limiting the number of cookies she ate after dinner to two, though his mother had made them herself. She described how the wind blew louder in North Carolina than in Nashville, and contained a funny odor. And how the women at church were ignorant of appropriate hat attire and how ostrich feathers would never go out of fashion, no matter what the preacher’s wife said.
    He shook his head. Oh, Mother . . .
    He knew to take her descriptions and divide their seriousness by half, if not more. His mother had always been given to exaggeration and moments of eccentricity, but following his father’s death, those tendencies had greatly worsened. He read on . . .
    Then suddenly came to his feet. “No,” he whispered, reading the last sentences to himself aloud. “ ‘So I have told Lorena that if she dares look at me again in that insolent fashion, I shall move back to Nashville straightaway. If you have not yet finished rebuilding our new house, then I shall beg shelter from Mrs. Acklen. As you know, she and I were once the dearest and best of friends, and I am certain she would welcome me to her bosom with great sisterly affection and kindness. With all my love, dearest Willister, Mother.’ ”
    He groaned and dropped back into his chair.
    His mother—God love her, and so did he—had almost driven Mrs. Acklen to drink the short time she had visited before. And Mrs. Acklen customarily abstained from alcohol. The two women never had been close. They’d hardly known one another. It was his father who had known the Acklens and who had spoken of them at dinner so often, which is where he guessed his mother was somehow forming the opinion that she and Adelicia were friends.
    But that, too, was a figment of his mother’s innocent, but overwrought, imagination.
    Sutton checked the date on the letter written almost a week ago. He reached for pen and paper and authored a kind but hurried reply.
    An hour later, hoping his mother wasn’t already on her way to Nashville, Sutton stood in line at the post office. He handed the clerk his letter and she handed him an envelope.
    “This just arrived for you, Mr. Monroe.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. Prescott.” He checked the return address—New Orleans. Finally . . . But he didn’t want to read the contents in a crowded lobby. He slipped the envelope inside the pocket of his suit coat.
    He started down the street toward the law office, where he’d left the carriage, then paused for a moment, contemplating what he’d been thinking about doing for some time now. Everything he owned, or had once owned, rested on the review board’s decision, and he was weary of waiting. Of lying awake at night and wondering, worrying.
    Jaw clenched tight, he turned and strode toward Colonel Wilmington’s office.
    The New Orleans hand stamp on the envelope in his suit pocket, along with the name included in the return address, left no question about the contents. The only question . . . Was he prepared to learn his colleague’s findings about Claire?
    When he reached the end of the street, he turned right and kept walking. He and Adelicia had done the right thing in requesting the report. Still, he felt as if he’d gone behind Claire’s back to do it. Especially after their time together on the ridge.
    To say he was taken with her was putting it lightly. Earlier that morning, when the LeVerts were leaving, and she’d raised that haughty little eyebrow at him. . . .
    He smiled to himself, certain the woman had no idea what effect she had on him. Which was a good thing. Especially considering