"Come on! And then wrote it up in code? Listen to the words- 'smoke and whiskey breath of those who visited here' and look at the pronoun. 'Our' window!"
"We can't be sure Annie Quincy wrote this," Cynthia protested.
Dean was quick to reply. "We said the writing in the notebook matched the Annie written in the underclothes. And the woman who wrote this, whoever she is, isn't any dunce. She is very well educated. Read the words!" He began to pace the room. "Wait until Fred gets a load of this! If he's looking for a mystery, he's sure got one now! Our little Annie is a call girl!"
"We don't know for sure," Cynthia demurred. "It doesn't add up. How could the Reverend Martin marry a prostitute without creating a world-class scandal?"
"Who knows? Maybe they managed to cover it up. Maybe she turned tricks in another city and he 'rescued her' and brought her here. I'll leave that research up to Fred. This will keep him busy for weeks! Damned! I can hardly wait to see the look on Claire Quincy's face when I tell her saintly Aunty Annie was turning tricks!"
"Don't be naughty! You'll do nothing of the kind! And remember-innocent until proven guilty," she answered as she readied for bed. "There's a whole notebook left to decipher. I'm sure it will give us some answers."
"All it's given us so far is a peck of questions," he replied.
"The Quincy family will be devastated," Cynthia said. "And what about the book the Quincy brother is writing?"
"It sounded like three-quarters fiction already," Dean answered.
"Fiction is different from an outright lie. He'll have to abandon it, if Annie Quincy really is-one of those girls."
"Let him write the truth. It would be a lot more successful. Maybe a best seller. He can just change the title from Saint among the Sinners to Sinner among the Saints, The Life and Times of a Mine-Town Hooker." She gave him a "you're-incorrigible" look as she switched out the light.
Dean dreamed of white-dressed hookers smiling and calling to a line of seven little miners who looked suspiciously like Snow White's benefactors. Only this time, even Grumpy had a smile on his face.