"Maybe she went to Girl Scout camp," Dean commented, winning a scowl from Cynthia.
"I used to send my laundry out, before I married a washer woman, but I never put my name on my shorts!" Dean said with a smile.
"You'd better watch what you call me or you'll be sending them out again! This was a hundred years ago. Things were done differently."
"They had these Chinese laundries in town," Fred answered. "That must be why she marked them."
"Why just the first name? Ouray wasn't that small a town." Dean answered. Neither Fred nor Cynthia had a ready answer.
"It's sort of a mystery, isn't it?" Fred said as he resumed his list.
Donnie had paid no attention to their conversation but having tired of his puzzle, picked up the notebook of letters and numbers and began to study it, turning the binder page by page. Dean sat on the floor next to the lad. "What do you make of it Donnie? Do you think Annie was practicing her letters and numbers?" The boy shook his head "no."
Cynthia bounced down to the floor to join the pair. "The letters written from Boston are answering correspondence Annie presumably wrote to her sister." She tickled her husband. "Why would she still be practicing? See how good I am at deduction now that I'm married to an ex-detective? Next suggestion, Mr. Investigator."
Dean studied the book. "There's nothing to prove the practice notebook is even in her writing. Maybe she's teaching someone else to write," he said. "Fred mentioned she was a social minded do-gooder type citizen. Maybe she gave lessons to local kids or was a tutor."
"That's possible. But it doesn't look like a child's writing to me. Granted, it's just a collection of miscellaneous letters and numbers but somehow, it doesn't look like practice work."
Dean reached up on the sofa and pulled down a few articles of the clothing. He compared the letters in the book to those on the hems of the garments.
"I'm no expert, but I'd say the writing is the same hand, wouldn't you?" he said, holding the book next to the lettering. Fred joined the trio and nodded in agreement.
"What else could the notebook be? Maybe she did write it years earlier and it really is her practice work," he offered.
It was Cynthia who answered. "It seems to me when you practice letters, you print uppercase letters first, don't you? These are all lower case. Besides, they're too random. Any practice work I've ever seen was done by rote. You write a whole series of 'A's" and 'B's" and so forth. You don't write a jejune collection of hodgepodge letters and numbers like these."