I rub a hand over my face, not sure how to even broach this. “I met an elderly couple who has a theory. The Hathaways. They’re in their nineties, and they’ve lived in the building since it first opened as apartments.”
“Wow. That’s old. Did they know who Smitten Kitten might be?”
I shake my head. “They said that first year was all brand-new faces, and it took a while to get to know everyone. They couldn’t remember who specifically was in this unit.”
“But they have a theory about who’s delivering the letters?”
I force myself not to grimace. “They think it’s the building.”
He looks at me like he’s waiting for more. When he realizes that’s it, he blinks. “Sorry, what does that mean?”
I sigh. “They say the building is, uh, doing this? Sending the letters. Because it’s …”
“Magic?” he finishes. It still sounds absurd.
“Basically. They say that it’s because the building is fed by Serendipity Spring. And that when it was a women’s dorm, lots of gentlemen callers came, and the parlors overflowedwith romance and proposals. And when it became an apartment building, it started matchmaking the residents because it missed all the falling in love.”
Jay looks amused, but he’s not looking at me like I’m crazy. “Lots of places around here have legends like that. You’re not legit if you can’t claim something serendipitous that happened to your house or to an ancestor.”
“They had some pretty specific examples,” I say. “Apparently, the building trapped them in an elevator to make them meet and fall in love, and it’s pulled that trick a few times.”
“Sounds more like a sixty-year-old elevator being sixty years old.”
“Except that happened sixty years ago.”
“That’s fair.”
“But …”
“But what?”
“But Dear Heart writes these letters like they’re having a back-and-forth conversation. Does it sound like Smitten Kitten has had any letters go missing?”
His forehead furrows. “No mention of lost letters.”
“Which means she got all the ones we’ve read. But they always come to me sealed.”
He taps the table, staring at the letter. “You said the first couple of times the original one showed up in your mailbox, it was stamped and postmarked?”
“Yes. I wrote ‘return to sender,’ then added ‘no such resident’ when I got it again. But when it came back after that, the stamp and postmark had disappeared.”
“So whoever is doing this put it in a fresh envelope.”
“No, the pencil smudge at the flap, remember? It was there every time. And all of them have signs of age, with the yellowing and the spreading ink.”
He picks up the envelope, turning it over and over,smelling it, pulling it wide enough to study inside, holding it up to the light. He sets it down and frowns.
“You think we’re getting the original letter in the original envelope, no sign of being opened and reglued. But you also think Smitten Kitten read each of these letters?”
“Yes.” It doesn’t make any sense, but there are no other explanations that don’t sound like equally wild conspiracy theories.
He slumps against his chair, his eyes fixed on the empty envelope. “This makes no sense, but I don’t have any better ideas.”
I get out my phone and find my picture of the Miss Serendipity article. “Let’s go through the new clues, like that she placed fifth in the pageant. You know what that means?”
“We can eliminate all the names on your list, and that leaves us with three.”
“Katherine Dailey, Cathy McCormick, and Judy Everett. Fifth place would mean fourth runner up, but it doesn’t list how they placed.”
