Confessions of a Teen Sleuth Read Online Free PDF Page B

getting out of bed. Today my symptoms might be diagnosed as postpartum depression. At the time, doctors called it "organ neuroses
     related to the uterus."
    It always helped to get out of the house, and by the time I finally sat across from my father it was all I could do to contain
     my delight. "This better be important, Dad!" I scolded, bouncing the shrieking titian-haired tot on my knee. The truth was
     I was thrilled that Dad had called. It had been years since he had asked me to help him out with a mystery! I crossed my fingers
     that it might involve the Amish. I so loved a good Amish mystery!
    My father folded his hands on his large desk. "Nancy," he declared, "I know you've been blue since Ned Junior was born. You've
     taken less interest in household chores and rarely go to Burk's, Taylor's, or even Hidelberg's on shopping sprees.
    You haven't recovered a stolen purse or decoded a message in years. I'm worried about you. Mrs. Gruen and I are both worried
     about you."
    Hannah Gruen, the housekeeper who helped raise me, still worked for my father as a maid and part-time secretary. She made
     my father call her Mrs. Gruen, though to the best of anyone's knowledge she had never been married.
    My father continued. "We think that your, um, difficulties with motherhood may trace back to your own lack of maternal influences."
     He cleared his throat. "I know that I've led to you believe all these years that your mother was dead . . ."
    With the instinct of a detective who dared not miss a clue, I begged him to continue.
    "Your mother did not die of influenza, or in a fire, nor was she attacked by a collie." (I had always been fearful of collies.)
     "Your mother ran off. She was a suffragette."
    "Oh!" I cried.
    I should take the opportunity to clarify another murky point of Carolyn's making. I was not ten when my mother "died," as
     Carolyn first wrote. She later revised my age to three, which was correct, but not before her factual lapse had led to many
     embarrassing encounters when strangers would be surprised to learn that I had no memory of the woman they thought had died
     when I was an adolescent.
    "It was 1913. Your mother had been volunteering with several women's charities. She had worked on behalf of orphans and the
     enslaved peoples of the world and against habit-forming tonics. She had campaigned for Woodrow Wilson and raised money for
     a ladies' auxiliary hall, and she began to get ideas about voting. She never did forgive me for voting for Taft. She wanted
     to join a suffragette march on Washington. It was to take place the day before Woodrow Wilson took office. I forbade her to
     participate. She left me the next morning." His eyes filled with tears as he gazed at his folded hands. "I told everyone that
     she had died. You have to understand that these were different times, and I had a fledgling law practice to protect."
    "She's still alive?" I stammered, still in shock at the surprising news.
    "I don't know," he sighed. He took a faded newspaper clipping out of his pocket and laid it before me on his desk. "As you
     know, being a world-famous attorney requires extensive business travel. I was in Los Angeles several years ago and came across
     this photograph in the Hollywood Daily Citizen.'"
    I glanced down at the photograph. It was a picture of a crowd of mourners lining the street after the famous silent film star
     Rudolph Valentino died. I whipped my magnifying glass out of my purse and leaned forward to scan the faces in the photograph
     under the glass. My heart jumped. There was my mother. She had bobbed her hair and traded in her corset for a black flapper
     dress and opera shoes, but I recognized her immediately from the one small portrait my father still kept in the house. She
     was one of a throng of thousands, her face stricken, her eyes very large and sad.
    "There she is," I whispered.
    My father cleared his throat. "I felt it best to protect you from this. It was so long ago and we have