Death on the Family Tree by Patricia Sprinkle Read Free Book Online Page A

speak to our genealogy librarian.” Her British accent hinted that her own genealogy wasn’t catalogued in a Georgia library. “But he’ll be in a meeting all morning. Perhaps—”
    “I’ll help her,” rasped a gravelly voice at Katharine’s elbow.
    She turned to see a man not much taller than she, with a tanned face, a nose like a hawk’s beak, and a gray ponytail pulled back at his neck. He wore black jeans, black boots, and a black T-shirt with G IVE M E LIBERTY OR E LSE on the front. When he smiled, his crooked teeth were stained and brown. “Lamar Franklin, ma’am, at your ser vice. I do genealogy all the time.” His accent was pure mountain Georgia. “What you wanna know? How your aunt’s husband was related to this other guy?”
    It took all her willpower not to step back from a gust of old cigarettes and coffee. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I can come back another day.”
    “It’s no trouble.” He waved a tanned arm bearing an anchor tattooed over ropy muscles. “Do you know when your aunt’s husband was born? Roughly, at least?”
    “Nineteen fifteen.” She had filled out enough forms for Aunt Sara Claire to be able to figure that out.
    “Two years older than my old man. He grow up around here?”
    “Oh, yes. But I don’t know where his—ah—relative grew up.”
    “Let’s hope he came from Atlanta. What’s his name?”
    “Carter Everanes.”
    “Could you spell the last name?”
    When she complied, he took her elbow and steered her away from the desk. “Let’s start with your aunt’s husband, then, and members of his family. We’ll begin with the 1930 census. First, we’ll need the Soundex code.”
    He went to a shelf near the microfilm room and pulled out a thick book. “This here’s The Soundex Daitch-Mokotoff Reference Guide. Soundex is one of the finest systems ever invented.” He led Katharine toward a table, still talking. “It’s a method of indexing names phonetically rather than the way they’re spelled, which makes it easier to find names which sound alike but are spelled entirely differently. This is very important in genealogical research, since a name may be spelled several ways by different generations. Even members of the same family may change the spelling of their name.” The lecture went oddly with his appearance, for he reeled the long words off his tongue like he used them often. “Soundex groups consonants under six categories of key letters and equivalents and ignores vowels, so several names have the same code.” He opened the guide. “What’s the surname we’re wantin’ again?” He opened the book.
    “Everanes. My uncle was Walter Everanes, and I’m looking for somebody named Carter Everanes.” Katharine bent over the pages, fascinated. How could anybody make sense out of those consonant combinations?
    He seemed to have no trouble at all. “Unusual name. I don’t recall that I ever heard it.” He ran his finger down the page. “Here it is. The code for Everanes is EVRN, E165. Now we need to look at the codes for the 1930 census, to find out where to look for them.”
    He took her back to the microfilm room, where the older woman was still poring over something on her screen. Katharine paid the woman little attention, for her new companion was again explaining what he was doing. “The 1930 census is the most recent one that’s been put on microfilm, and these drawers hold that census for Georgia.” He gestured to the first row of a bank of small black file drawers. “And the Soundex Codes for Georgia are here. Three steps—see?”
    He paused as if waiting for her to reply, so she nodded and remembered obediently, “First you find the code number for the name in the book out there, then you look up that number in one of these green boxes to see if that name appears in Georgia, and then—?” She stopped, for she didn’t know what happened next.
    “I’ll show you.” He opened a drawer from the second bank of drawers and