Regarding Anna Read Online Free PDF Page A

Grady.”
    “No, I meant her cousin.”
    “Well, her first name is Charlotte, but I don’t think I ever heard her last name. Nice girl.” I took a sip of coffee, which I never did like. I didn’t much like myself just then either.
    “Don’t know anyone named Charlotte in this neighborhood.”
    “Well, maybe she hasn’t lived here that long. I didn’t ask.”
    “A few blocks in which direction?”
    “Um, let’s see.” I twisted the upper half of my body around to glance out the window and buy some time. “I seem to be a little turned around. I think it’s that direction,” I told her, pointing across the street. “But I’m not sure now.” With my luck, she knew who lived in every house within a two-mile radius.
    “No, it can’t be there, unless of course, they just moved in, and then it could be the old Jefferson house. I heard there are new owners, but they’re older, maybe in their seventies.”
    “I didn’t see anyone else in the house, but maybe they were out. In fact, I’m sure of it. Charlotte was pretty young to own that house all by herself.”
    “Hmmm.”
    Minnie’s facial expression told me she may have been thinking about how she could find out more about who bought the Jefferson house. All I could think of right then was a line from some poem I had to read in school: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave...”
    “Have you lived here long, Minnie?”
    “I bought this house in 1943. May 29. The day Rosie the Riveter was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post .” She beamed. “I know what events happened on important days of my life. Like on the day I was born, right at the beginning of World War I, Germany declared war on France that day.”
    She was quite a character.
    “That winterberry bush,” she said. “It looked like it was about to take its last breath when I bought this place. If I hadn’t come along, it would have died for sure.”
    “You must have a way with plants.”
    She appeared to be silently reminiscing, so I gave her several seconds to come back to the conversation.
    “I bought this house after I lost my daughter and husband.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I couldn’t bear to keep living in the house we had when we got married, so I sold it and bought this one. I was so lonely, and that’s what attracted me to this place. I thought maybe the boarders would be company for me.”
    “Boarders?”
    “When I bought it, there were three boarders upstairs. Four rooms, three boarders. But not for long. One by one, they left, and I didn’t bother replacing them. Turns out they weren’t company at all—just a bunch of weirdoes. One of them even died up there.”
    It was hard to think with my heart racing so fast. “I just assumed this was a single-family home. It looks like—”
    “This house was originally built as a single-family home, but someone who lived here before me must have turned the upstairs into a boardinghouse. That’s why there are outside stairs in the back. They were added so the boarders would have a separate entrance.”
    The story was getting more interesting by the minute.
    “If it was during the war, maybe the owner needed the money,” I added.
    “I suppose. I never met her, the owner that is. I didn’t find out until after I was settled in here that she was actually murdered in this house—right here in this room.”
    So Anna actually owned this house. I hadn’t considered that.
    “No kidding. What happened?”
    “I don’t know for sure.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But I do know there was some hanky-panky going on between her and one of the boarders.”
    “Really? What kind?”
    “Well...there were rumors.”
    It was all I could do to contain the excitement mounting in my chest.
    “Rumors?”
    “They were having an affair,” she whispered.
    “How scandalous. It would make for a good book though. I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
    “Are you a writer then?”
    “Yes. Well, I would like to be one. So far, all