WINONA AND THE CHUM CHART

by Catherine Dunphy

Tuesday morning was brisk, the kind of weather that telegraphed winter was coming, dammit. But Winona didn’t mind as she nudged aside some of the lingering leaves in the park path behind the Millartown Library. She loved Tuesdays, her day to open the old building situated in the treed dip near Main Street.  She loved its early morning serenity and silence and that’s why she always paused when she came inside the library’s back door before flicking on the series of switches that illuminated her workplace in a sudden magical flash.

She let out a satisfied breath. She twirled on her toes, arms outstretched; this was all hers. She had ninety minutes alone, alone, alone until 8:15 when her boss arrived. She hustled into the staff room, tossing her shaggy cape over her office chair. In the ‘70s someone else who was plus-sized had cherished that alpaca cape. Winona believed its somewhat mangled state made it all the more worthy of her own Size 18 love now.

With a practiced swoop, she gathered her colleagues’ used coffee mugs and lunch dishes, dropped them into the antiquated, extremely noisy dishwasher and turned it on. The racket was, as expected, excruciating.  Wincing, Winona wiped the counter and filled and set the coffee machine to start ten minutes before the others were due in.  They’d be happy to have the stuff freshly brewed for a change. Usually she’d bash the button right away for her own morning hit, but for some reason, she had gone off coffee.

Whatever. It was time for her favourite part of Tuesday. She hurried out to the main area of the library and hauled the book return bin just inside the windowless front doors back to the staff room, kicking shut its door behind her. She emptied the contents onto a long table and sat down. Here be treasures.

Winona almost rubbed her hands in glee.  She still had more than an hour to go through the  bin’s contents and remove all the pressed flowers, bobby pins, twenty dollar bills – yes, it had happened to her — love letters and gas bills with which people marked their place in books. The library never threw anything out. Well, maybe the bobby pins. Winona had seen women weeping over reclaimed mementos they’d thought gone forever and agitated men breathing more easily when that white envelope containing a large cheque was handed back to them. What people leave in library books never ceased to astound – and sometimes disgust – her. Like the time she found a condom. And that desiccated pizza slice.  

Still she eagerly fanned the pages of the book at the top of the pile, then another and another. Just bus transfers today.  She ignored the sounds of the dishwasher’s squeals and shrieks as she worked steadily , flipping open the cases of the CD discs and movie cassettes to ensure they weren’t returned empty and checking the children’s picture books to check for torn pages. She kept cello tape handy for that. 

Hang on. Winona picked up her library’s only copy of The Library Book.  In fact, Susan Orleans’ latest bestseller was the library’s newest acquisition, dropped into circulation just the day before.  People were clamouring for it.  And here it was back already. It was 336 pages; someone read it that fast?  Winona picked up the book and automatically fanned it. Its binding cracked. The book hadn’t been opened. It hadn’t been read. But there was something in it. She turned the book pages down and shook. A piece of yellowed paper fluttered and dropped onto the table.

Winona picked it up gingerly.

It was an odd shape, almost but not quite square.  Chum 30 it said in a weird puffy lower case typeface she recognized from her posters of ‘60s psychedelic concerts. It was a CHUM chart for the week ending September 14, 1974.  Winona swooned.  This was retro gold, the real thing from a time when one of Toronto’s – hell, Canada’s — biggest and brashest Top 40 hit-playing radio stations gave them away every week. She knew that most CHUM charts were small and folded, the kind you stuffed in the big back pocket of your jeans and opened up to read.  This one was different. One page front and back. Interesting, she thought. Likely a short-lived experiment before they reverted to the tried and true pocket sized version. Bet there weren’t many of these around.

There were streaks on it and she had to look closely to see that “I Shot the Sheriff” by Eric Clapton was at the top for a second week in a row beating out songs by Elton John. Paul Anka, Donny and Marie Osmond – Winona shook her head in disgust – but also Guess Who and, yes, ABBA.

 Wow. This was so cool. There was no way she was adding this to their lost and found file. And it really was a mess. The brownish red streaks almost obliterated the top album listings.  She removed her turquoise cat’s eye glasses for a quick clean before holding it up to the light so she could make out the famous names: Endless Summer Beach Boys; Band on the Run, that would be McCartney. She peered closer. Who or what was Golden Earring?

A door slammed. Winona dropped the paper which fell to the floor; she knew she hadn’t unlocked the front door yet.   

Then the door to the staff room swung open so forcefully it hit the wall.  It was her boss.  Roseann Mills was usually elegant and pulled together but this morning her hair was falling out of a messy ponytail and she’d thrown a ratty black cardigan over workout clothes. And there was a man close behind her.

 “This will disrupt our entire week. People count on the Library being open.” Winona had never heard Ms. Mills sound as upset.  “And I don’t appreciate your people putting that yellow tape all over the place.”

A look of annoyance flashed across the man’s face then vanished.

“Well, it is a crime scene,” he replied.

Winona rocked back in her chair.  “What the –,” she gasped. “What happened?”

“A woman died on your doorstep,” came the laconic reply. “Jogger found her. Beaten to death.”  He sat down opposite Winona and shoved a business card across the table. It said he was a detective and that his name was Hendricks.  His calculating eyes said he meant business.

“What time you get here this morning?”

Winona glanced over at her boss, who was leaning against the wall looking very worried.

“Winona gets in around seven o’clock on Tuesdays,” she said. “By the back door, right?”

Winona nodded, unable to speak.

“You didn’t go round to the front? See anything unusual. I don’t know, maybe like a dead body?” The detective didn’t look like he was joking.

 “I got here before 7 o’clock,” she finally managed to squeak. “But I didn’t open the front door or anything. I’ve been inside, right here working.”

The cop raised an eyebrow.

“Lady, you’ve had two police officers and an ambulance at your front door already this morning. But you didn’t hear anything.” 

“For goodness sakes.”  Ms. Mills strode to the dishwasher and shut it off mid groan. “How could she hear anything over that?”

Winona came to life. “You mean someone was killed when I was here?”  She grabbed the edge of the table

The policeman relented.  “A woman. Late thirties. Maybe early forties. We think the time of death might have been earlier this morning. Much earlier.”

“And I didn’t even know.” Winona felt sick to her stomach.

“I think Winona needs to go home now, Officer,” Ms. Mills said, gesturing to the man to follow her into her office. “She has your card.”

The man nodded at Winona and got up. “I’ll be in touch.”

The door to Ms. Mills’ office closed behind them with a click. Still Winona didn’t move. Couldn’t. Finally managing to get up from the table, she slowly retrieved her cape and bag stumbling over the CHUM chart.  She bent down to retrieve it and shoved it in her bag.

Jason was leaning on the kitchen counter, drinking coffee and deep into his computer when she walked into their kitchen.

“Knew you’d be back,” he exclaimed. “A woman found dead at the library’s front door.  F–king amazing. It’s breaking news all over the ‘net. “His dark goatee was vibrating he was so excited.  “Guess we get the day off.”

Winona threw off her cape for the second time that morning.  Jason was not the library’s most dedicated employee. He didn’t need to be. He was heir to the fortunes of the richest family in town. But he shouldn’t be treating this like something on Netflix.

 “Jason, for God’s sake. The police say she was murdered.” Winona dropped into the chair beside him.

Jason stopped tapping on his laptop, his six foot six lanky frame suddenly taut.

“Murdered. It didn’t say that on the news.” His voice was a whisper.

Then, “You okay?”

Winona took off her Princess Leja hairband and toyed with it before answering. “Yeah, I guess. I didn’t see her. It was outside at the front and I went in by the back, the way I always do. The detective said it probably happened way before I got into work.”

 Jason wrapped an arm around her. “Still, you might have been in danger.”

Winona smiled at him. “I wasn’t. Ever. “

They sat silently until she suddenly had a thought. “I think I might be able to find out who she is – was.”

“How?”  Intrigued, Jason turned back tohis laptop and fired up his search engine. “Did you see something?”

Winona reached into her Peruvian woven shoulder bag and withdrew the yellowed brochure.

“I found this old CHUM chart today in the returns.”

“Gro-o-ovy.” Jason drawled as he picked it up. “Maybe it’s one of the more valuable ones. You can get ten, twenty bucks for some of ‘em.  The ones that had coupons you tore out and mailed in are really rare—“

He stopped. “What’s this stuff on it?”

Winona sighed.  Deep down she’d always known what the reddish brown streaks were. That lingering metallic smell. The aura of violence and despair.

 “Blood,” she said, more to herself than to her live-in. “And it’s got something to do with that woman’s murder.”

Jason raised an eyebrow as Winona went into the living room to retrieve her own computer. As the library’s IT specialist, it was easy for her to find who had taken out The Library Book.  A few swipes and she was looking at the library profile of a Susan Dalgleish who lived at 29 Rummer Road – definitely not the best part of town anymore. Winona scanned the extensive history of the books Susan had borrowed. She certainly read a lot.

 And lately Susan had been reading about Canadian and California pop culture.  

“Jason,” she called out. “I think I might have known her.”

He was by her side in a flash.  “Phone the cops.”

Winona said nothing, remembering the woman she’d recently helped find old touring schedules for bands, current websites for aging rock stars and more.  Although grateful for Winona’s help, she’d been so diffident, always hiding behind her curtain of dull dark blond hair. She could have been 20; she could have been 40.  Winona had noted with approval her clothes were thrift-shop finds, not her own retro punk’d style but from the classic tweed era. And with her lean frame, she rocked the look. Once Winona had tried to tell her that but the woman had immediately retreated, flushed and flustered. Winona had kept it purely professional from then on.

“Phone the cops?” Jason repeated.

Winona shook her head. She thought of Susan and how desperately she had been to receive whatever Winona could locate for her.   She thought of Detective Hendricks and his cool assessing eyes. “Not yet.”

Then, before Jason could stop her or even ask where she was going, she grabbed her cape and bag and ran out of their apartment.

The house at 29 Rummer Road had once been beautiful. No, Winona thought, looking at its curved front window and the ornate iron railing leading up stone stairs to a burnished oak door, it had once been grand.  

Now it was tired and divided into flats. Small flats, Winona thought, looking at the double row of buzzers. She pushed the ones on either side of the button labelled Dalgleish, hoping for a friendly neighbour. No response. Then she pushed the buttons of all the ground-floor flats, hoping for a nosy neighbour.  And got lucky.

“Hello?” The voice was rusty from age and lack of use.

“I’m a friend of Susan Dalgleish.” Winona rationalized that she wasn’t lying; she would have been her friend had the woman allowed it. “May I speak to you about her?”

The woman didn’t reply but the door buzzed and Winona walked in. The musty hall was dim save for a streak of light at the end coming from an open door. The tall white-haired woman standing there was gesturing to Winona.

 “I knew she was in trouble,” the woman proclaimed as Winona found herself in a surprisingly large but empty room.  Winona realized it had not always been so. She could see the outline of ornate settees and large paintings in the faded wallpaper.  “I just knew she would come to a bad end after that awful man kept coming by.”

 Winona’s head swirled.  So she was right. The dead woman was Susan Dalgleish. And the police had already talked to this woman.  But what awful man?

“I told those police officers about him,” the woman said as if reading Winona’s mind – or perhaps the look on her face. This woman was alert and shrewd. “Not that they paid any heed.  You know, the ramblings of another rattled old woman.”

Her clear gaze swept over Winona.

“But you might be different,” she said, turning away. “Although I know you were not her friend.”

Winona flushed.

The woman waved away Winona’s embarrassment.

“She didn’t have any friends.  Didn’t want any, either.”

Winona followed her through bevelled French doors to another grand room centred on a carved alabaster fireplace made golden from the morning sunlight filtering through stained glass windows. A single chair and matching sofa were the only furnishings in a room designed for entertaining.

The woman opened a side door to an office, no, a magnificent library. Book shelves lining three walls were interrupted only by a massive roll top desk, at which the woman sat herself.  She seemed to have regained her composure; in fact, she was positively regal. It was here where she belonged.  

“My name is Alice Hornsby and my family has lived in this house for more than one hundred and fifty years,” she stated as her fingers stroked the desk’s burnished wood. “I live on the main floor. All of it. The other buzzers are there to keep people away.”

Her upraised hand cut off any comment.

“I take in one or two paying guests who live on the second floor. Quite comfortably I might say. They are all carefully vetted. I insist they be quiet and cultured. Susan has – had – been with me for the past two years.”

Ms. Hornsby commanded her to a chair by the desk. “And now, you will tell me how you really know Susan.”

And so Winona told her about helping Susan in the library. But not about what she held in her purse.  The woman listened impatiently as if waiting for something specific but also something Winona wasn’t saying.  Two spots of colour appeared on the woman’s patrician cheeks.

“There’s something I think you should see,” she announced.

She unlocked the roll top and unveiled thick piles of plastic files. CHUM charts. Hundreds of them.

 Winona gawked.

 “It’s a complete set.  Worth something.  A good something.”  Alice Hornsby had noted Winona’s reaction and seemed satisfied by it.  Her eyes bore down on her. “He wanted these. I know he did. He wanted them from Susan.”

***

 “Yeah, like I would kill for another CHUM chart? She’s batty.”  Morty was as miserable and  grimy as his namesake  hole- in- the- wall music memorabilia shop in the far end of Old Town.  “I can’t give away the ones I have.”

Jason had easily tracked down Susan Dalgleish’s mystery man.  Millartown wasn’t home to that many guys with a salt-and- pepper waist-length beard still dressing as if it were the tie- dye ‘60s, a fashion decade Winona loathed.  After Jason had let her know how he felt about her running off, he had calmed down enough to insist he go to see Morty with her. As the library was still closed and they both had the day off, Winona couldn’t see a way out of it.

“You’re not the only one who gets to play detective,” Jason had said as they hoofed it across town. Winona had pulled a face but now she was glad Jason was here because Morty wasn’t looking her in the eye.

Winona knew he was lying. She just didn’t know what he was lying about.

She decided to find out.

“Look,” she said, laying aside an armload of old newspapers so she could sit. She almost regretted it when the chair swayed and tilted under her weight. She fought a wave of vertigo by   keeping both feet on the floor for balance. Then she took out the stained CHUM chart from her purse.

Morty recoiled.

“It’s ruined! How could you – Let me see.” He reached towards her.

“Not so fast,” Jason put an arm between Winona and the grasping dealer. “I happen to know that some of Canada’s most famous people collect these charts. Mike Myers. Martin Short.”

Morty snorted.  “Been reading up online, have you?”

“So what if I have?” Jason parried. “It’s a goldmine of information. Speaking of gold –” he gently took the chart from Winona. 

Morty exhaled. “Give it to me and maybe I can tell you what you want to know.”

After a moment Jason relented and handed it over. Winona noted Morty’s sudden grace and care as he turned the CHUM chart from front to back, frowning in concentration.

Then a start. A double take.  Wonder crossed his face.

“What is it? What’s there?” Winona wanted to know. She could feel Jason grow tense next to her.

Morty removed his cold coffee mug from the vicinity before lovingly placing the chart in its place. His shrug was forced.

“Nothing,” he said. “For a minute I thought – but no, it’s just one more CHUM chart that’s been disrespected. Where did you get it?”

His rheumy eyes followed the chart as Winona very carefully put it back in her bag and got up to leave.

“The library,” she said. “Where I work.”

A phone message from Roseann Mills was waiting for her when they got home.  It was back to work tomorrow.  The library was re-opening. The yellow tape was gone. So were the police. The police. Oh God. Winona sank onto a chair, stomach roiling. The CHUM chart somehow held the key to whoever killed Susan Dalgleish.  She should never have kept it; she should have handed it over then and there to that cop, but it was too late now.  She could be charged with obstruction of justice.  Maybe Jason too. And that mustn’t happen. Not to him. He was the good guy in this.  It was up to her – not him — to find out why Susan had hidden the CHUM chart in the book. Then she’d tell police everything. But first —

Alice Hornsby.   She would know.

***

The library was busy all day – crowded with gawkers checking out the scene of the crime and those who made sure to lodge their complaints at being inconvenienced by the closure.  Winona was exhausted at the end of it but needed a word with her boss before heading home.

 Ms. Mills looked equally worn out. Winona glimpsed Hendricks’ card on her desk.

“Any word from the police?’ Winona asked.

A shake of the head.

“I know who she was.” Winona plunged ahead. “Susan Dalgleish. She was in here a lot recently looking things up.”

Winona was not going to say that she’d done some looking up herself to find that out.  And that inside her Peruvian shoulder bag she had stashed some of the heavy library books Susan had been using for references. Maybe tonight at home she could figure out what the dead woman might have found in them.

Ms. Mills reached for the card and picked up the phone. “Thanks.”

Winona felt better as she left the library, much better.  Of course the police had already identified Susan even if they hadn’t made it public, otherwise why would they be talking to Alice Hornsby? But Winona wanted the cops to think she was helpful.

  And Ms. Mills hadn’t asked her how she knew it was Susan.  Finally, some luck. She straightened her shoulders and shifted her heavy bag as she crossed into the park. Tomorrow she didn’t start work until noon so there‘d be time to drop in on Alice Hornsby again. Winona had a gut feeling that the woman could help her shake the truth out of Morty.

“Hey. You. Stop.”  A hand gripped Winona’s shoulder from behind.

“Let go of me,” she yelled, whirling to face her attacker, ready to swing her purse strategically.

It was Morty, holding up both hands in surrender.

“I just wanted to talk with you,” he whinged, as if she were the aggressor.

Winona willed her heart to stop racing.

“You said you worked at the library. I waited for you to come out.”  

Winona gazed at him with disgust. To think she’d been frightened of this weasel – but steady there, she told herself. Proceed carefully now. Susan Dalgleish probably thought the same thing about this weird guy with his strange eyes and crumb-filled beard. And he may be carrying a weapon in his canvas army bag.

“What do you want to talk about?”

He looked around him.  Office workers were filling the street at the end of their work day.

“Not here.”

 Winona thought fast. “The CHUM chart. “

“You have it with you?”  Decades dropped from his voice in his eagerness.

Winona drew her bag closer to her. “Come with me.”

They walked in silence until they turned onto Rummer Road. Morty jerked to a stop as Winona had known he would. She was ready with a lie.

“Just moved in here. You know the place?”

“Nope.”

You lying scumbag, Winona thought.

 She stepped between him and the door and used her Peruvian bag to cover up the fact she was pushing Alice Hornsby’s buzzer, not unlocking the door to her phantom flat. The door clicked open. Morty reluctantly followed Winona down the hall to where Alice Hornsby stood.

The woman’s cool eyes went past Winona to Morty. A tilt of her head indicated they were to follow her and Winona grabbed Monty by the arm, practically dragging him through the empty room into the room with the fireplace and the only places to sit. Alice Hornsby strode to the arm chair beside the darkened hearth leaving Winona and Morty no choice but the sofa.

Something didn’t feel right, Winona thought as she tried to make as much space as possible between her and Morty. I am supposed to be on her side, not his.

She tried to catch Alice Hornsby’s eye. Failed.

“So, you’ve come to your senses?” Alice Hornsby said to Morty. Her voice sneered. Her face twisted into cruelty. Winona tightened, confused. Thoughts spun out of control.

“Hand it to me.” Alice Hornsby snapped her fingers.

“She has it.” A shaking Morty indicated Winona beside him.

The already dim room seemed to darken more as Alice Hornsby turned to Winona. Her long arm reached out and strong fingers wrapped themselves around the fire poker.

“How long –” Alice Hornsby knocked the poker against the fire stand and glared at Winona. “I suppose you are going to tell me that Susan – your very good friend — gave it to you?”  Her voice oozed scorn.

She rose from her chair. “You stole it. “

She crossed the floor to the sofa in two swift steps. “I would like it back.”

Winona shrank into the couch, instinctively holding her bag against her.  Alice Hornsby understood.

“It’s there,” she cried. “You have it in your bag.”

Winona saw the madness in those furious eyes before she felt the first blow of the poker.  She felt waves of pain. She heard her own screams. Her arm covered her head, trying to block the trajectory of the iron weapon.  Morty was screaming.  Stop, stop. Again, stop. I’m calling the police.  But the blows kept coming to her shoulders.  Hard metal.  Somebody pulled at her bag. Now there was nothing to protect her.  A voice urged her to turn fast, turn her back to the blows. Protect. She must protect.

A thud, gasp and it stopped. The beating stopped.  

“You okay? You okay? Tell me you’re okay.” Morty’s rasping voice sounded far away. Winona shuddered, then turned.

 A panting Morty was holding her bulging Peruvian bag over the figure on the floor. Alice Hornsby had been felled by a blow of her Peruvian bag containing Susan’s reference books.  The fire poker lay on the floor near her outstretched hand.

Then the door burst open.

“Hands up where we can see them.”  The police. They were here. Winona was safe.  But they were arresting Morty.

Winona recognized Detective Hendricks.  “Not him. She –“

Hendricks held up a hand.  “We need an ambulance,” he said into a phone.

***

“Ready to tell me now?”

Winona squinted at the police officer standing at the end of her bed. Then remembered. Hendricks.  His name was Hendricks.

She sighed, then winced.  She’d been in hospital for two days. Her broken left arm was in a cast and her fractured ribs made it hurt to breath let alone talk. Other than that everything was fine.

 “Tell you what?”

The cop echoed Winona’s sigh as he pulled up a chair by her bedside.

“Let me catch you up on things,” he said, leaning forward. “Alice Hornsby has decided to talk. Now that she no longer has a complete set of these CHUM charts — It had been desecrated is how she put it – she doesn’t care.  She won’t get the money and she can’t hang onto her house so she’s lost the fight. As well as her grandniece, but she doesn’t seem as upset about that.”

He was watching Winona carefully as he spoke.

“Susan Dalgleish was her grandniece.  Her only relative.”

Winona’s eyes widened.

“Seems she didn’t bother to tell you that.”

Winona shook her head.

“Susan was the only other person who knew about the collection.” Hancock became very still. “Besides Taubman.”

Winona  frowned. Taubman?

Hendricks tilted the chair back onto two legs. “I believe you know him as Morty. He says that a complete set of CHUM charts – like that one – was worth a lot of money. Quarter, half a million maybe. ”

That was a crazy amount of money for something they used to give away, Winona thought.  But in a way it made sense.Otherwise none of this would have happened and Susan Dalgleish might still be coming to the library.

“The girl — well she wasn’t a girl, she was 41 – knew it too. She used to drop by Taubman’s   shop. Pick his brain.” Hendricks cleared his throat. “Even took him to her place once to show him what she had.  Seems Susan figured the collection was hers because it used to belong to her mother, not Alice Hornsby.”

Hendricks’s upended chair legs hit the floor.

“Susan’s mother died when she was a kid.  Just 12. Seems that Ms. Hornsby swooped in and took everything – except Susan. She had to go into care.”

Winona let out a sigh.  What a cruel thing to do to a child.

Hendricks cleared his throat.  “She moved into Rummer Road with Hornsby last year.  She told Taubman her aunt needed her rent money because she was too proud to rent rooms to just anybody. “

That jibed, Winona thought. But Susan also may have been plotting the whole time to get back at the aunt who didn’t want to raise her. Wrecking a complete set of charts would do that, nicely.

“So here’s where you might fit in,” Hendricks said. “Hornsby has said she saw Susan filch one of the charts and stick it in a library book. Who knows why?  Maybe revenge is sweeter if just one thing is missing from an otherwise perfect set.  Maybe she wants the soon-to-be- missing chart to be somewhere safe like a library. Maybe she thinks it’s easy to get it back.  Or maybe she thinks it’s gone forever when she pushes it through the Returns slot.

“We’ll never know because Hornsby picked up that poker from her fireplace set – I think you’ve had a nodding acquaintance with it – and followed her. Tried to stop her when she figured out Susan was dumping the chart off and, well, we know what happened next.” Hendricks stood by the bed.  “We think Susan got the book into the library somehow – even while she was being bludgeoned to death. “

He stopped.  Let the silence unsettle her. “We think you may have found the missing CHUM chart that morning at work. Do you have it?”

For a moment, just one moment, Winona was tempted to tell the truth. 

But the cops had their confession. They didn’t need the CHUM chart and they didn’t need to know she had it.  Or that she had had it from the beginning.  

“No,” she said.

***

It was later afternoon, hours after the detective had left and Jason was slumped by her bedside. His go-to grin had been replaced with all the signs of worry and exhaustion. Winona reached for him.Yesterday, after they had run tests, taken X-rays, assessed all the damage Alice Hornsby had inflicted, long after she’d been cleaned and bandaged and attached to intravenous tubing, a beaming nurse had appeared by her side.

“Your baby is fine,” she’d said.

Winona had cried happy tears and reached for the phone to call Jason and tell him she now knew why the floor sometimes tilted and coffee tasted strange —when the nurse removed the receiver from her hand, reminding her it was 3 a.m.

Now she took his hand.

Jason was insisting on Spock for a name, be it boy or girl, when Winona spotted a droopy figure at her doorway. Morty Taubman looked so hangdog his beard was close to brushing his knees. He thrust a bouquet of grocery-store daisies at her, which Jason deftly intercepted as he stood to escort him out of the hospital room.

“No, let him stay,” Winona said. “I think Morty saved my life.”

Morty looked sheepish. “Whacked her with your bag.  Sorry for grabbing it. Got her right on the head.  Good thing you had those books in it. Thought she was really going to kill you. “

 “Touchdown,” Jason pumped the man’s hand and gave him the seat by the bed. Morty lowered himself carefully onto it.

“Sorry,” he said again, waving a floppy hand at cast, the tubing and the rest of the medical paraphernalia.

“Yeah,” Winona grimaced. “All this. For a CHUM chart?”

Morty looked away.

“What’s the deal with it anyway?” she asked.  “Was it worth dying for? “

A weak smile. “That’s the $64,000 question,” he said. “Actually I guess it’s now more like a quarter of a million dollar question.”

Winona got the reference to one of television’s first game shows, all right – except she still didn’t get it.

“But why?”

“First of all it was a complete set. That’s big. And that chart – the one with the streaks, the one that’s missing – turns out it was pretty special too.”

Jason and Winona exchanged a look.

“Why?” they both said.

Morty looked at his rapt audience. “Because of Golden Earring.  A Dutch band. Had a big single called “Radar Love” and the No. 6 album that week.”

“And?”

He sighed elaborately. “There are a lot of people out there who dig this stuff, ya know. “ A look of cunning crossed his face. “People with money.”

Winona signalled Jason to hand over her Peruvian bag hanging on the back of the door. 

“Look, Morty,” she said, fishing out and holding up the CHUM chart with her good arm. “Why this chart? You better tell me right now.”

Morty went pale. “I thought it was gone.”

 Winona waved it impatiently. “It’s not.”

“Here.” Morty reached towards the chart and pointed at the bottom of the page, where Winona now saw there was a scrawled signature, numbers that looked like a date and the letters S.M. “That proves it.”

“What?” Jason and Winona asked at the same time.

“That Golden Earring really did play Santa Monica on September 19 in ’74. Santa Monica. S.M.  See?   And that signature.  Band founder. And look. Nine. Nineteen, Seventy –four.  Month, day, year. The way Europeans write dates. Americans do it the other way — day, month. People have been arguing about whether this concert actually happened for a long time.  Check the ‘net.”

“So that’s what Susan found out in the library,” Winona said. “That this CHUM chart was valuable on its own.”

“Filching it would ruin her aunt’s collection but it would also make her some money? A CHUM chart?” Jason sounded as if he couldn’t believe it.

 Morty nodded. “Okay, not nearly as much as a complete set of CHUM charts. But I know some people who’d pay just to see this, let alone own it.”

He eyes lost focus as he looked past them out the hospital room window.

Like you, Winona thought to herself.

She held out the chart to Morty.

“Take it. “

“You don’t want it?” Morty was gobsmacked.

She could never look herself in the mirror if she cashed in on Susan’s death but there was more.

“Morty,” she said. “You saved our life. I’m here because of you.”

He looked embarrassed.

“Now go,” Winona said.

He sped out the door.

“Maybe he thought you were going to change your mind,” Jason said with a smirk.

For yet one more time today, Winona rested her hand on her stomach. Slowed her breathing.

 “I think I can feel something.”

Jason loped to her bedside and put his hand over hers.

“Me too,” he said.

THE  END