Yeager Alexander’s motto for retirement living was, “Ain’t dead, yet,” but when he heard a siren and saw an ambulance, lights flashing, heading for one of the residential buildings at the Independence Retirement
Community, he said aloud, “Waking up dead is rarely a good thing.” The red and white swirling lights came into view as he finished his pre-dawn walk. This was not the first time he’d seen this vehicle at the Indie. He was sure it wouldn’t be the last.
Yeager stood on the crushed gravel path that fronted his cottage and bordered Lost Cove Lake, the smaller of the two Indie lakes. He liked to get up early and walk the land. Around the community center. Past the
five-story residence buildings. Between the cottages that fronted Freedom Lake. And across the property line to admire the Hezekiah Alexander Rock House, the jewel of the Queen City History Museum. The house was built in 1774 and had stone siding with strange carvings (if you knew where to look, and Yeager did). It had been home to one of the signers of Mecklenburg County’s controversial and long-vanished declaration of independence from Britain, signed on May 20, 1775.
Yeager’s best friend, Matthew Collins, was taking him on a road trip in a few hours that had something to do with the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The ninety-six-year-old Collins was known to everyone as the
professor because of his love of history. The professor did not believe the Meck Dec had ever existed, but he’d promised Yeager a surprise on their outing, one he said Yeager would like.
What Yeager didn’t like was the ambulance being parked in front of the professor’s building. He walked the fifty yards up the hill and stopped in the shadows, not twenty feet away from a woman dressed in a medic uniform
who was talking on a radio. The early morning air was cool and smelled of pine and rain. Clouds gathered. The quiet before the coming storm allowed the seriousness in her voice to carry on the freshening breeze.
“He’s dead. Collecting the body now.”
Yeager followed the paramedic into the building and onto the elevator for a ride to the third floor. He let her step out first, held the door until she was out of sight, and slid into the elevator lobby. He peeked around
the corner of the narrow hallway and saw her enter room 312, the residence of his best friend. Yeager felt unsteady, like the floor had pitched. He squeezed his eyes shut and reached out to the wall for balance. He bit his lip to suppress the tears he felt coming, but it didn’t do much good. He thought of Lori, the professor’s granddaughter. She would be heartbroken too.
Minutes later, the paramedic and her partner came out the door of 312, rolling a stretcher that held a covered body.
A woman in a pink silk nightgown and robe walked beside the stretcher. She had her right hand resting on the body’s chest. Yeager knew who the woman was, and it was a shock to see her there. He leaned back against the
faded green wall. He had nowhere to hide.
The woman’s eyes widened when she saw him. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw the ambulance.”
Sue Ellen Parker turned away and watched the paramedics load the professor on the elevator.
“Anything I can do?” Yeager said.
She stepped past Yeager onto the elevator and turned around. “People will talk. You should keep your mouth shut.” And then for emphasis, as the doors closed, she said, “For once.”
Yeager was alone in the quiet of the dim hallway. He wiped his eyes and ran the fingers on his right hand through his thick, tangled beard like a comb. What would people talk about, and what did she want him to keep
quiet about?
The professor hadn’t mentioned any spend-the-night parties with Sue Ellen, and Yeager hadn’t heard any rumors about them. But rumors grew faster than weeds at the Indie and were harder to kill. Still, Yeager didn’t
believe cohabitation was the issue. He owed it to the professor to find out what secret Sue Ellen really wanted to keep. Yeager took out his key, the one the professor had given him, and let himself in the professor’s place.
Yeager wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but since the motivation for his unauthorized inspection was the sight of Sue Ellen Parker coming from the professor’s unit in the early morning and in her night clothes at
that, he started in the master bedroom. The double bed was not the answer. Covers and sheets were pulled back on one side only. The bedside table held a clock, a lamp, and a pill bottle turned on its side, with the cap on the floor and pills spilled on the table and the floor. Yeager inspected the bottle. It was the professor’s prescription medication for insomnia.
Yeager opened the closet and found it full of men’s slacks, shirts, and sport coats. No woman’s clothes in sight. The bathroom was next. Just one toothbrush and cup next to the sink. No blow dryer. Nothing under the sink
but a man’s Dopp kit and extra shaving lotion.
After his brief search, Yeager surmised the professor bedded down without Sue Ellen Parker at his side. It didn’t mean she’d never slept with him. Anything was possible when it came to old-people sex at the Indie, but
other than a few pillows and a blanket strewn on the sofa in the great room—the only clue she or somebody else might have spent the night there—Yeager found no other evidence to explain her presence.
Raindrops streaked the large window in the great room. Normally, Yeager liked early morning rain, but this was no mist. Droplets pelted against the pane as limbs on trees swayed. He saw lightning streak and heard thunder
boom. It sounded like God was angry. As she should be.
Yeager reached over to the side table and picked up Trout magazine. The professor had dog-eared the page with the latest in rod and reel technology. The pictures reminded Yeager of the conversation he’d had with
the professor by Freedom Lake three weeks ago, the last time they fished together.
“My fly rod,” the professor said, “may not be as efficient as your .22, but it gives the fish a fighting chance.” Yeager smiled at the memory.
The professor was a man who never threw away books, even when they were torn and worn. Where there wasn’t enough space on the professor’s shelves, books spilled onto the floor or were stacked in corners. The one
concession he’d made to what seemed at first glance like disorder was how he grouped his books by topic.
The section Yeager liked the best held the Revolutionary War books. Out of habit, he glanced toward his favorite section and was surprised to see empty shelves. Those books were missing, even the books about the
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.
Yeager was one of the few people who could ask the professor questions about the Meck Dec without the professor getting riled up. Yeager’s mother told him there were no stupid questions, so he kept asking them, stupid
question after stupid question after stupid question. It made the professor laugh. “Chuck Yeager Alexander, you think you’re related to Hezekiah,” the professor would say. “You want the story to be true.”
The professor was right. Yeager did want to believe that local patriots had declared independence from Britain over one year before they got around to it in Philadelphia. He loved the idea, thanks to his mother who had
been a high school social studies teacher. Yeager was an only child, because, she’d said, “After you, I didn’t have the energy to raise another devil.” She was the reason he fell in love with history and the reason he came to the Indie when he was fifty-five years old, to look after her. When she died of cancer, he stayed on and became the youngest resident, despite the hiccup with the business office when they checked his credit. Once they confirmed his mother left him the cottage, the rest of
her teacher’s pension, and a nice life insurance pay-out, they reluctantly accepted the likes of a man who never would have lived at the Indie were it not for his mother. That was twenty years ago, the same time he struck up his friendship with the professor and the same time he learned about the Meck Dec.
The professor had been adamant the Meck Dec never existed. “It’s a fairy tale, nothing more.”
But a week ago, in a strange twist, things changed. “Yeager, you can’t tell anyone what I am about to tell you. I’m working on a sequel to An American Hoax.”
An American Hoax was the professor’s bestselling book that debunked the Meck Dec story once and for all. Why did the professor need to write
a sequel? What more could he say? It seemed like overkill to say it twice. But Yeager had kept his thoughts to himself when the professor told him about the sequel. Something was different and serious about the professor’s behavior that day.
Over the next five days, the professor ordered his meals sent to his room. Every time Yeager checked on him, he was hard at work on his laptop. He said he needed to finish the book before it was too late. He didn’t
explain the urgency.
Yesterday, Yeager stopped by at lunchtime and the professor was wearing the same clothes from the day before. He hadn’t slept, and he’d acted nervous, like he’d had too much coffee. Yeager encouraged him to take a break.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
The professor’s nervous energy must have provided a spark. His face lit up. “I found something. Something that changes everything.”
Yeager wondered what that meant. Would the professor’s sequel reveal the Meck Dec was not a hoax after all? And if so, what had the professor found?
He asked the professor to explain, but the only answer he got was, “Wait until tomorrow. Meet me at eight in the morning. Pack an overnight bag.”
Now the professor was dead.
