Searching for Cora Sue - 8 - Vital Information Revealed

(Mattie and her mother-in-law have arrived at the Clinton cousins' house, and are being offered drinks. Mattie has said she doesn't drink alcohol.)

“What never?” asked Ruth gauchely.

“Well not for awhile now,” I answered circumspectly.

“And I want to know about when you lived in Los Angeles,” said Kate. “Where did you live?”

“Quite near the middle. It was mother’s idea. Once father had died, she didn’t want to stay
here. She had this romantic notion of living by the sea, and for some reason she thought that Los Angeles had the best sea around. But we never really felt settled there,” said Carrie.

“Did all of you go?”

“No, our brother Charlie stayed here. He was married by then, although he isn’t any more.
Divorced,” said Ruth, as if this was considered quite a failing on his part.

“He lives in a boarding house in Kingman, Colorado now.”

“And I was already married too,” said Minnie. “But Gertrude went out, and she married out there, so that’s where she is now.”

“How many children were there all together?”

“Seven. Myra didn’t go either.”

“And where does she live now?”

“She married Fred Higgin in 1888. They live in Strath, Colorado, and she has three children.”

“I’m sorry that we won’t be able to meet her.”

“And then when our mother died, there was no reason for those of us who didn’t like Los
Angeles to stay any longer. So we decided to move back here. And then when Minnie’s husband died, she joined us. So, that's the story of our lives. Now it's your turn.”

“Mattie is a professional pianist, or at least she was before she married. And then she taught
piano lessons for awhile before Frankie was born.”

“How wonderful. I wish we had a piano. I'd love to hear you play,” said Ruth.

“Yes, I must admit I've missed having a piano for this week since we've been gone. But we'll be back
before long and then I can play all day long if I want to. Kate didn’t tell you, but she and her husband lived in Los Angeles for awhile too.”

“Oh really? No wonder you were interested in us being there. Did you enjoy it?”

“Not a bit. We only stayed a year and then happily went back East. Most of the time we lived in
either New York or Massachusetts.”

“Have you other children?”

“No, only Franklin. We seem to be a family of producing only one offspring, unlike you. Do you have
many children Minnie?”

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Jessie coming in with a red face, “but dinner is on the table, and
it will get cold if you don’t come and eat it right now.”

And what a delicious meal it was - fried chicken, mashed potatoes, steamed squash, boiled peas and apple pie with cream for dessert. I ate far more than I should have done.

After supper, we went back into the living room and I brought up the subject that we had come to find
out about. “Do any of you remember anything about Cora Sue that might help us in our search for her?”

There was an uncomfortable silence and then Ruth blurted out. “You’ve got to tell her, Minnie. It isn’t fair not to.”

“Tell me what? Is she dead? Is that what you have to tell me?”

“No, of course she's not dead. But Minnie thinks she did something that she was ashamed of and
that's why she dropped contact with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Minnie, “I don’t like saying things like this if I don’t know if they're true or not. I might be completely wrong.”

“Come on and just say it. It doesn’t matter what it is.”

“She had a boyfriend, and I suppose there is no easy way to say this - he was a married man - so he couldn’t marry her. And I think she might have left because she was expecting and didn’t know what to do about it. There, I've said it.”

“A married boyfriend? Do you know who he was? Did you meet him? Was he from Denver?”

“No, I never met him. She was very secretive about it all. Remember she didn’t live with us after
the first year or so. We saw her maybe a few times a year is all, Christmas sometimes, and maybe in the summer.”

“But she told you she had a boyfriend who was married.”

“Well, I was the only one around here who was married and she wanted some advice.”

“Advice about what?”

“About not getting in the family way.”

“So that is how you know that she had a boyfriend, but how do you know he was married?”

“When I told her what she wanted to know - as much as I could - I asked her when she was
getting married, and that is when she said she didn’t know - maybe never. So I asked her why and she said he was married and his wife wouldn’t give him a divorce.”

“Did he have children?”

“I think so. That was part of the problem. He had a daughter, I think, who lived with him.”

“I wonder why she lived with him and not her mother.”

“I think his wife lived in New York with another daughter - maybe one that wasn’t his - one from a
previous marriage. But I'm only guessing. I don’t know that for sure. But that might be why he had one daughter with him, if she didn’t want to move to New York to live with her mother and  half-sister.”

“Did you know his name at all? Did she ever call him by any name?”

“Well, once she let it slip, I think, although when I tried to get more out of her she said I'd
heard wrong. I think she called him Eddie.”

“Eddie what?”

“I have no idea.”

“And, you don’t know any more about him? Did he live around here? What sort of work did he
do?”

“I suppose he must have lived around here if she was seeing him when she was here. And as far as
what he did, I think it had something to do with jewelery. Once she came to us for Christmas and she was wearing the most beautiful necklace, and I asked her if it was a present from her boyfriend, and she said, ‘Yes, he made it.’”

“Was it an expensive looking necklace?”

“Oh, I can’t remember. But I do remember it was made of silver filigree - and I thought if he made
it it must have taken him a whole lot of time to punch out all those little holes. Not that I know anything about making silver jewelery.”

“Oh, I just remembered something,” said Ruth, all aflutter. “I had forgotten all about it, but once I remember looking in her purse. I know I shouldn’t have and so that's probably why I forgot all about it. But anyway there was a letter in it and the postmark was Salt Lake City. I never said anything about it, so I don’t know anything more than that she had a letter from somebody who lived in Salt Lake City.”

“Was that just before she left?”

“Yes, I suppose it was. Maybe a month or two before the last time we saw her.”

“You have to remember that this was a very difficult period for all of us,” put in Carrie. “Our father, whom we all loved very much, had just died, and our mother was distraught. She wanted to remove us all from our familiar surroundings to go to Los Angeles. So we weren’t really all that concerned about Cora Sue and her affairs. I don’t mean to sound unfeeling, but it's true. We had enough troubles of our own that we weren’t likely to go out of our way to help anybody else just at that time.”

“So let me get this straight. The best guess of all of you is that she left Denver just before 1900; she was likely to be pregnant; was seeing a married man, probably called Edward, who was married, and not divorced, and had a daughter; but he was probably a jeweler or at least someone who knew
how to make silver jewelery and he might have lived by then in Salt Lake City.”

“Yes, I think that sums it up nicely. I didn’t know about the letter that Ruth mentioned, and it
might have been from anyone, but then again, chances are it was from him,” said Minnie.

“So I suppose our next step,” I said to Kate, “will be to go and try and find her in Salt Lake
City. Have you ever been there?”

“No, none of us has,” answered Jessie.

“I expect we can get a train there. I'll check tomorrow morning.”

“Won’t you stay here a bit longer?”

“Well, we've booked at the hotel until Tuesday - and we paid for a week so we won’t get any money back - but I think that now that we have this lead, we must try to follow it up.”

“One thing I do know about Salt Lake City is that they have a lot of silver mines around there. That might or might not be useful,” said Jessie.

“Well, it's a place to start anyway. I think we might have quite a job finding out anything about
her there, but we must try, and I won’t rest again until we're there, giving it our best shot. Thank you all so much for having us here for supper, and especially for being so candid in telling us about Cora Sue. I know that you might feel that you are just spreading rumors and that none of it might be true, but it is the only lead we have. We have to try to follow up on it.”

“Well, Mattie and you too, Kate, it was lovely to meet you. And you must come and see us again
if you are ever out this way. We knew quite a lot about you from Cora Sue who told us about your adventures in Dakota Territory. You do seem to have had an interesting life.”

“Yes, and I hope this current adventure ends up as well as the one did in Dakota Territory. Again,
thank you very much. May we use your phone to call for a taxi?”

“Oh, let me do that for you,” said Carrie, and she rushed off to the kitchen.

So we said our goodbyes and got into the cab when it arrived a few minutes later to go back to our
hotel and to plan for the next stage of our adventure.

As soon as we got home I said to Kate, “It makes sense. Cora Sue, if she was expecting a baby and couldn’t get married, would have been very upset and embarrassed. That might well be the reason why she gave up contacting us.”

“Do you think she would have raised a baby on her own?”

“Well, perhaps this man stood by her and maybe they pretended they were married. Or maybe his wife gave him a divorce and they were able to get married. We just don’t know. But first thing tomorrow I am going to see how quickly we can get ourselves to Salt Lake City.”

“Our adventure continues,” said Kate. “I hope you can sleep tonight for all this excitement.”

“I don’t want to waste even a moment sleeping, but I suppose I must try. Good night.”

As soon as breakfast was over the next day, we hurried to Denver Station to inquire about trains to Salt Lake City. We found out that we needed to go to another station, three blocks south, for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.

We were amazed at the building when we arrived. It had only recently been completed, and was quite a work of art. (pictured above)  When we asked the ticket agent, she told us that it was designed by architect Henry J. Schlachs of Chicago, Illinois, the building cost a reported $750,000 and is characterized by elements of Beaux Arts Classicism and Renaissance Revival.

She told us that we were very lucky indeed. Tomorrow we would be able to board their luxury coach,
called the Nomad. “It’s very expensive,” she said, but I reassured her that we didn’t mind that.

“How far is it to Salt Lake City from here?”

“750 miles, but it'll take you a couple of days to get there. These lines through the middle of the
mountains are really something special, but you have to go really slow. This isn’t one of those speedy trains that you read about.”

“We traveled on one of those from New York to Chicago,” I told her. “And it was lovely to go
fast, but the scenery was not overly spectacular and we were anxious to get where we were going as quickly as we could.”

“The train leaves at 12 noon tomorrow, and you will get to Salt Lake City, all being well, at 2
p.m. on Tuesday.”

So with our tickets safely tucked into my purse, we walked back to the hotel, anxious to book
ourselves into another hotel so that when we arrived in Salt Lake City we would have a base. We told the desk clerk that we would be leaving in the morning, and asked if she could recommend any similar sort of hotel to stay in when we reached Salt Lake City.

“I have heard the Peery is very good. It has just opened this year and is not far from the train
station there.”

So returning to our little telephone corner in the ladies' lounge, I made a phone call to the Peery Hotel and was able to secure us a room for a week, from Oct 4th -11th. I told her we might want to extend beyond that time, and she thought that would be no problem.