“Mostly we get women wanting to dress up reenacting the Titanic,” the woman behind the counter said. “They get disappointed when they find out women’s clothing back in the day didn’t have sizes. Everything was custom made.”
“I’m sure that makes it a little harder to sell,” Lois murmured.
“We do all right,’ the woman said. “Most of this is from my great grandmother’s estate.”
“Oh?” Lois asked. “So this was your great grandmother’s dress?”
It would be ironic if she was standing across from Clark Kent’s great granddaughter.
The woman shook her head. “My great grandmother was friends with the owners of the Grand Hotel; she worked there for forty years. When they were clearing out the lost and found there, they gave her some of the clothes. She managed to preserve it in remarkable condition, don’t you think?”
“So you don’t have any way of knowing where this originally came from?” Lois asked, disappointed.
“Actually, this piece is a little special,” the woman said. “My great grandmother collected it herself and always wondered about it.”
Lois was quiet for a moment as she stared at the dress on the wall.
“On the night of the great fire in 1912, only two people went missing. One was a man, and the other a woman. She didn’t leave anything else in her room, no luggage, no toiletries…only this dress.”
“This should be in the hotel museum,” Lois murmured.
“Everybody was always interested in the actor hero, not some unnamed woman.” The woman seemed to realize that she was making the dress seem less attractive. “My great grandmother was always convinced there was some kind of great love story attached to the dress though.”
“So why are you selling it?”
The woman shrugged. “The things I wanted from her were things that reminded me of our time together. The rest of it…I’ve got college loans to pay off. She was a hoarder anyway. I’ve got enough stuff to run a business for years.”
“I don’t suppose you’d know which room the woman was staying in,” Lois asked casually.
“I’m pretty sure my grandmother had it written down somewhere,” the woman admitted. “But I’d have to go through a few things at home…”
“If I bought the dress, would that make it worth your while?”
The woman’s face brightened.
************
Lois had ended up buying the dress for almost two hundred dollars as well as two vintage twenty dollar bills for another hundred dollars. She planned on making a gift of the money to her father, who collected old bills. If it got her out of looking for a real gift it would be worth the money; the man was almost impossible to buy for.
The two hundred dollars would be worth it if it meant a break in the case. The sooner she solved the mystery of who the mysterious woman, the sooner she’d have enough of a story to satisfy Perry and get back to Metropolis where she belonged.
The fact that this was a beautiful place didn’t give her any excuse to treat it like a vacation.
Returning to the hotel, Lois pulled out her laptop and began to do more research. Dr. Erskin had mentioned time slips when she’d been discussing the physics of time travel with him; she wanted to learn a little more about it.
She was surprised at how many cases she found. In 1901 the president and Vice president of Oxford university claimed to have slipped back in time to the French Revolution.
An Englishman in 1953 drank in a pub with people dressed like they were from the previous century. In 1979 two English couples stayed at an old fashioned hotel that wasn’t there when they returned.
In the 1990’s three naval cadets claimed to have visited a medieval plague village. A hundred year old Swiss watch was found in a Ming Dynasty tomb.
Some conspiracy sites even linked disappearances to time slips. The crew of the Mary Celeste vanished without a trace, leaving the ship abandoned.
Famed writer Ambrose Bierce vanished in El Paso in 1913 without a trace. Amelia Earhart, four B-57 bombers over the Mediterranean Sea in 1953…case after case of vanishing people were connected by conspiracy nuts with time slips.
In 1880 David Larch disappeared into thin air in full view of a federal judge, his wife, two children and the judge’s brother in law. The ground was searched for concealed holes but none were ever found. The children later claimed to hear the man’s voice as though it was coming from a great distance.
A quick search showed that 900,000 people went missing every year, but only 2300 cases or so were completely unexplained. Most were eventually solved, more and more with better ways of tracking people.
Lois sighed, closed her laptop and rubbed her eyes.
None of this was anything she could use. She was a respected journalist. The last thing she wanted to do was come off like a tabloid reporter talking about the bat boy and Elvis having tea together. Perry was expecting a puff piece, which she could do, but she’d like to have something with a little more substance. Solving a hundred year old mystery would fit the bill nicely.
Her cell phone rang.
A glance showed that it was the store owner.
“Did you find out who owned the dress?”
The woman’s voice sounded strained. “It was a little harder than I thought to find. I had to dig through..”
The sound of something crashing to the floor in the background made Lois wince.
The woman continued. “I don’t have a name, but I do have a number. The dress was found in room 416.”
“That’s all you have?” Lois asked, trying not to sound too disappointed.
The sound of another box crashing in the background was followed by a muttered curse from the woman. “Sorry.”
“Thank you,” Lois said.
As soon as she disconnected, she dialed the front desk.
“This is Lois Lane in room 215. Is there any way I could get a look at the desk registers from 1912?”
She’d tripped up enough cheating politicians and businessmen with evidence from hotel documentation to be an old hand. Her only fear was that they might have gotten rid of the books.
There was silence from her phone. Lois waited patiently, knowing the other person would feel they had to fill the silence.
“They might have something like that in storage,” the concierge finally said. “They rotate things in and out of the museum. The only person who might know is Arthur, the bellhop.”
“The old guy?”
“He’d been here since he was five years old. He helps move the exhibits too.”
“I’d make it worth his while,’ Lois said, mentally crossing her fingers. “I don’t need all of them, just the registers for the latter half of June 1912.”
“I’m sure I’ve seen those circulated in and out,” the concierge said. “People are interested in the great fire.”
“How soon could I get to see them,” Lois said. Although she realized she sounded pushy, she found herself suddenly impatient.
She heard the sounds of a murmured conversation.
“Arthur’s about to go off shift, but he says he’d be happy to bring the register by your room. It might take an hour or so.”
“Thank you,” Lois said.
The waiting after she closed her cellphone seemed almost interminable. She paced the room, sometimes looking out the window at the strange colors in the sky.
She hadn’t thought you’d be able to see the aurora borealis this far south.
Eventually she found herself examining the dress, looking for clues to the identity of the other woman, but nothing presented itself.
As she fingered the fabric, she wondered how it would fit.
With a glance at the clock, she slipped into the dress. She was surprised to realize that it fit her perfectly, even though at 5’6 120 pounds she was three inches taller than most women had been back then. It was hard enough to find clothes that fit perfectly in all dimensions, but this dress fit like it had been made for her.
It was comfortable as well. She’d always thought that clothes back in those days had been itchy and uncomfortable. Of course, on a hot day with no air conditioning it might be a great deal less comfortable.
At least it didn’t have a corset.
There was something about how she looked in the dressed that bothered her; while the dress looked old fashioned, her hair and makeup were more modern. It was a little jarring.
There was a knock on the door. As there wasn’t time to change clothes, Lois stepped out of the bathroom and looked through the peephole. Just because she was a thousand miles away from Metropolis didn’t mean that problems couldn’t have followed her from there.
She’d had assassination attempts in the past.
Thankfully, all she saw was the ancient face of Arthur. She slid the chain from the door and opened it.
He stared at her and his face went slack. The heavy ledger he was holding slid out of his hands and Lois had to lunge forward to grab it.
“I’m sorry…” he said. “You just look…”
“It’s for a story,” Lois said irritably.
Now that someone else was in the room she regretted the impulse that had led her to slip the dress on. She felt a little embarrassed, like a little girl who was playing dress up in her mother’s clothes and makeup.
“That dress…” he said. His hand trembled as he pointed .
“It belonged to the mystery woman,” Lois said. “I suppose you’ve seen pictures when you were moving things for the museum.”
Arthur shook his head. “I’ve been here since I was five years old. My father worked here and I’d play with a ball in the lobby.”
“You’re a hundred and five?” Lois asked. “How much can you possibly remember from a hundred years ago?”
“I remember her,” Arthur said stubbornly. “I remember thinking how pretty she was.”
“Well,” Lois said. “With any luck I’m about to find out who she was.”
She carried the ledger into the room and set it down on the table. She switched the lamp on and sat down, careful not to tear the dress.
Knowing the room number, it should be easy to find out who the woman was. Lois began flipping through the pages quickly, the familiar feeling of anticipation rushing through her. She loved the excitement of the chasing down answers, of solving mysteries.
Even though this wasn’t a gun running operation, evidence of political corruption or her usual brand of story, it was a mystery that had baffled people for one hundred years.
The earlier entries were all men’s names, or men with families. She didn’t see any single women’s names at all, which didn’t surprise her.
That would make her search much easier.
As she got closer and closer to the end of the month her stomach tightened. June 25th….26th…27th.
She turned the page, holding her breath. Guests were signing in at six in the morning, seven…there it was….room 416, 9:18 AM.
For a long moment she sat, staring at the signature. Everything seemed to go white, and her mind simply stopped for a while.
She couldn’t understand what she was seeing, and all she could feel was her heart racing in her chest. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. It felt as though the world was freezing around her, motionless.
“Are you all right, Miss?”
Arthur’s quavering voice seemed like a lifeline, and she looked up at him gratefully.
Rational thought finally returned, although she still couldn’t help but feel chills running up and down her spine.
She looked back down at the familiar signature on the page. This was obviously a hoax, and she’d get to the bottom of it.
Someone had erased whatever signature might have once been on the page and replaced it with her own.
Last edited by ShayneT; 08/02/14 12:02 AM.
