Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) (22 page)

“Oh, God, Audrey—I think I’ve made it worse.”

I come out of my father’s house and move into the center of the yard to assess the effect of Jill’s work. She and Ty are helping me get the house ready for listing, and  following Isabelle’s instructions, Jill has taken the hedge trimmers to the holly bushes. With a vengeance. Now, instead of huge overgrown shrubs threatening to consume anyone who ventures onto the front porch, we have two clumps of bare sticks surrounded by a pile of holly leaves and berries.

“They look like post-modernist sculptures,” I say.

“I’m so sorry, Audrey!  I didn’t mean to strip them naked. But when I pruned them back so they wouldn’t touch the porch, I cut off all their leaves.  Underneath, there’s nothing but bare branches.  Isabelle will have a fit—there’s no curb appeal in stumps!”

The gardening debacle has set Jill’s lower lip trembling, something that seems to happen with increasing frequency these days.  The three of us have been treating one another with elaborate politeness, a symptom, I guess, of our mutual suspicion and hurt feelings.  I’m still not sure if Jill searched the trunk of jewelry or not, still not sure what Ty is up to.  I could draw a line in the sand and demand absolute honesty from both of them, or else.  But what if my ultimatum backfires?  I can’t run the business without them right now, not with Dad being sprung from the nursing home and my mind preoccupied with my attacker, my mother, and the sibling I may or may not have.  It’s easier to muddle along, one day at a time, hoping that one of these problems will resolve itself and provide me with some slack to work on the others.

“Don’t worry about the bushes, Jill.”  I pat her on the back.  “We’ll dig them out and plant something new.  Ty can help.”  I find a shovel in the garage and set Ty to work digging. 

I hear the steady chink, chink, chink of the shovel as I work in the living room.  Through the window I can see that Ty has peeled off his sweatshirt and his tee shirt is stuck to his back with sweat.  This is a bigger job than I realized.  I go outside with a glass of water for him.

“Man, these bushes have some kind of root system, huh?”  I look into the huge hole Ty has created.  “They’ve been here as long as I can remember.”

“Thirty years of roots,” Ty says, slashing at a thick tendon with the sharp edge of the shovel.  He severs it, and yanks it out, tugging with both hands.    Looking down, I see something pink poking up out of the soil.  It’s plastic, the color faded and dirty, but somewhere deep in my mind it triggers a memory.  As I excavate around it a bit with my sneaker, a wheel emerges.  An old toy of mine, buried under the earth. 

I crouch down to examine it more closely.  Brushing the clods of damp earth aside, I see a flat piece of pink plastic, some rusty metal, and the edge of a tattered, decomposing scrap of bunny-printed fabric.  The bunnies do it; suddenly I see two little hands on a handle and a baby doll staring up at me from under that blanket.  The vision is as crisp and detailed as a movie playing in my mind.  This was my doll carriage and I remember pushing it around and around a few feet from here on the flat part of the driveway.  And I hear my mother’s voice calling me, “Let’s go in sweetie—it’s getting late.” Try as I might, I can only hear her, not see her. But the memory is mine, wholly mine, not placed there by my grandparents as all the other memories of my mother have been.

Suddenly, I’ve got to have this doll carriage.  I start clawing at the dirt with my bare hands.

“Audge, what you doin’?  I’ll finish that—just let me drink my water.”

Ignoring Ty’s words, I grab his shovel. The carriage isn’t buried very deep.  A few good thrusts with the shovel untombs it.  Panting slightly from my efforts, I knock off the big chunks of earth clinging to it and stare at what I’ve found.  My little pink baby carriage, one wheel missing, squashed completely flat.  I stare a little longer, waiting. I want so much for this to be my Proust’s Madeleine, the token that unleashes a torrent of memories. 

Nothing.

“Audge?  What’s the big deal?  What is that?”  Ty’s voice comes to me from a million miles away.

I remember pushing the carriage.  I remember endless loops.  I remember my mother’s voice. 

That’s it. Movie over.

Jill has returned to the office and I need Ty’s help to move a large bookcase that’s blocking my access to a crawlspace under the eaves.  God knows what’s in there—probably squirrel shit and dried up hornet’s nests—but even though I know my father’s not a saver, the possibility that something valuable might be waiting behind that blocked door pushes me forward..

“Ty!” I shout.  “Ty, come up here for a minute and help me, will you?”

No answer.  Him and that damn iPod.  I pull out my phone and text him.  Stare at the phone and wait for a reply.  Nothing.

I head for the stairs.  Out in the hall, a big window overlooks the street.  I see a shiny black Hummer parked at the curb.  Ty stands next to it, talking with a man.

I step to the side of the window and look out from behind the drapes. 

The other man is also African American, a little shorter than Ty, but broader.  He seems to be doing all the talking, while Ty stands silently with his hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie.  Then the man pulls something from his pocket and shows it to Ty.  Ty nods. 

I don’t like the looks of this.  Who is this guy?  If he’s just a friend from the neighborhood, why did Ty ignore my text?  God knows, he answers texts constantly when I’m talking to him.

The man turns away and steps off the curb.  I see Ty’s mouth move.  The guy pivots in a flash, pushes his face right up to Ty’s, says something else, and pushes Ty out of his way.

What happens next makes my stomach lurch. 

The man heads for his car.  Ty lets him go.  No challenge, no fighting back.  Ty was disrespected and he did nothing. 

This can’t be good.

I’m standing in the foyer when Ty re-enters the house.

“What was that all about?” I ask.

“What?  Nothin’—jus’ hadda give my friend something.”

“He didn’t look like a friend to me.”

Ty brushes past me and heads to the kitchen.  “Don’t worry about it, Audge.  I got it under control.”

I trot after him, addressing his strong, sinewy back.  “Ty, if you’re in some kind of trouble, I want you to know you can tell me about it.  I’ll help you.  If you need a lawyer—“

Ty spins around.  “This ain’t work for no damn
lawyer
.” 

There’s anger in his eyes, but bigger than anger, there’s fear.  My heart sinks.

“Ty, what does Mondel Johnson want with you?”  I dredged the name out of my memory of the conversation with Coughlin.  It sails through the air and hits Ty like an arrow through the heart.  Anger disappears; fear consumes him.

“How d’you know that name?” His voice is a hoarse whisper, as if Johnson were in the next room.

“That cop, Coughlin, told me.  He thinks you’re selling drugs for the guy Johnson works for.”

“Me!”  Ty’s voice comes out like a cartoon character’s squeak.  “I ain’t sellin’ drugs. Audge, c’mon—you know I don’t mess with that shit.”

“Well then, what’s going on?  Why were you talking to him?  Why have you been so jumpy and secretive?”

Ty backs away from me, shaking his head. “This ain’t nothin’ that concerns you.”

“Nothing that concerns me?  It concerns me if the guy I saw pushing you around is the same guy who cracked my head like an egg.”  The words fly out of my mouth before I think about their effect.

Ty seems to get bigger before my eyes.  He pounds his chest with his thumb. “You think I’m responsible for you gettin’ hurt?  You think I let them mess with you insteada me?”

“Coughlin thinks you owe them money.  That they took it from me when they couldn’t get it from you.”

“This don’t have nuthin’ to do with money.  This is bigger than money.” 

“What could be bigger than money to a drug dealer?”

Ty’s face becomes a block of stone. “Audge, what you don’t know won’t hurt you.  Or me.”

“But it is hurting me, Ty.  The police aren’t looking for the man who really attacked me because they think you did it.  Coughlin is following you.  He sees you talking to that Mondel guy.”

A crease of worry appears on Ty’s forehead.  I’m getting through to him at last.

“I thought that big cop was off your case.  What happened to the skinny guy with the brown hair?”

“Detective Farrand is still investigating my assault. I don’t know if he’s getting anywhere or not.”  I look down.  It’s hard for me to say this.  I’m supposed to be the boss, the grown-up.  “I’m scared Ty.  Creepy things keep happening to me.  I feel like someone’s watching me, like whoever attacked me isn’t quite done.”

“What you mean?”  Ty’s shoulders go back and his chin juts forward.  This is the Ty I know, always ready to protect his turf.

So I tell Ty that someone was in my condo going through the trunk of jewelry, about the person I thought followed me from Dad’s house, and the missing yearbook.

Ty looks at me quizzically.  “I don’t know, Audge. If Mondel’s crew found that jewelry at your place, they woulda took it, know what I’m sayin’?”

I do know what he’s saying, which is why all of this continues to make no sense.  “What about those pills we found in the kitchen, Ty?  Did Mondel take them back?  Does he think we kept some of them or something?”

“Them pills don’t belong to Mondel.  Guy he works for deals strictly in weed and blow. Stuff that gets smuggled in through Mexico.”

“So who did they belong to?”

Ty shrugs.  “Some white dude, probably. That’s who mostly sells pills.”

Ty says this so matter-of-factly that I assume it’s true, but really, how can I be sure?  Coughlin would know.  I’m right back where I started, wondering if I should confide in Coughlin or not.

“Ty, I never told the police that it was you who found the Ecstasy in Mrs. Szabo’s house, and that you immediately turned it over to me.  If I told that to Coughlin now, I think it would take some of the suspicion off you.  After all, if you needed money to pay off Mondel, you could’ve kept that Ecstasy, but you didn’t.  So I think I should tell him, OK?”

Ty snorts.  “Tell him.  Don’t tell him.  Won’t make no difference.  That cop got it in for me.  Even after I get clear of Mondel, Coughlin still be watchin’ me.”

I look into Ty’s big brown eyes.  “Are you going to get clear of Mondel?”

“This weekend, Audge.  Everything be straight then.”

I’d love to believe him, but something tells me Ty is playing with fire, a fire he can’t control.  “Look, Ty, let’s tell Coughlin everything.  About the Ecstasy, about your problem with Mondel.  Let the police figure it out.  That would be the safest option.”

Ty looks weary, like he’s lived as long as the folks at Manor View.  “You know the problem with you, Audge?  You too nice.  An’ then you think everybody else as nice as you.  World don’t work that way.”

I’ve been driving around for two days with the crushed baby doll carriage in the trunk of my car.  Why was it flattened?  Why was it buried?  If it was broken or I lost interest in it, why didn’t Dad or my grandparents just throw it away?  Every time I open the trunk, I ask those questions. I’m not sure why this toy has such a powerful hold on me.  I can’t bring myself to throw it out.  And I’m certainly not going to bring the filthy, broken thing into my condo.  So it stays in the trunk, going everywhere I go.  Finally, after about the tenth time I’m startled by it lying there, I realize where I need to take it.

Mrs. Olsen puts a plate of cookies and a pot of tea on the table between us. “You went through a phase,” she says, “when you were obsessed with burials.”

“I did?  Why?”

“When you got old enough to understand about funerals and cemeteries, you started asking to visit your mother’s grave.  Your grandparents had insisted on having a marker for Charlotte at St. Paul’s cemetery, but of course, there’re was no one buried there because your mother’s body was never recovered.  Your father never believed in sugar-coating things for you, and he told you the truth when you asked if your mom was in there.  This was when you were about six or seven, I guess, and you had seen some elaborate burial on a TV show.  So, you started wanting to give everything a funeral.  You buried your goldfish when it died, and Melanie’s gerbil got a state funeral.  You buried Barbie dolls with missing limbs and ripped stuffed animals.  So it doesn’t surprise me that you’d want to bury a broken doll carriage.”

Why is this all a blank to me? I can recall things that happened in first grade; why can’t I find a memory of digging little graves and interring dolls and pets?

“You don’t remember this?” Mrs. Olsen asks.

I shake my head as I focus on the crinkle of smile lines radiating from my friend’s brown eyes and the soft, pillowy expanse of her bosom.  I want to lay my head there, but I hold myself back somehow.  “It’s kind of morbid, Mrs. O. Didn’t anyone try to stop me?”

“I think it upset your grandmother a bit.  But I felt we should let you do what you needed to do.  You were obviously working through some issues.   Eventually you stopped.  The funerals weren’t necessary anymore. You moved on.”

Yeah, right.

“Thanks for telling me this.  There was something about that carriage, some memory floating around the edge of my brain, that I couldn’t quite grab hold of.” 

“Maybe now you can throw the silly thing away.” 

“Yeah.”  I pick up another cookie.  I’m not hungry, but I’m not ready to leave.  There’s more I need to ask.  “Mrs. Olsen, did my mother ever talk to you about her work?  Mention who her clients were, what projects she was working on?”

She shrugs.  “Not so much.  I was a little touchy about having given up my career for the kids, so Charlotte avoided the subject of her work.  Why?”

When I don’t answer, Mrs. Olsen takes my hand in hers and simply holds it.  The gentle reassurance of her gesture melts something deep inside me.  Soon, the words are tumbling out.  I tell her all my suspicions: that my mother ran off with another man, gave birth to a child who’s my half-sibling, is out there still. 

When I’ve talked myself dry, she continues to sit there, never letting go of my hand.  “What are you thinking?” I finally ask.

“She wouldn’t have abandoned you, Audrey.  I’m sure of that.”

I slip my hand out of her grasp and stand to go.  Does Mrs. Olsen really know what my mother would have done?  Maybe all my old friend knows is that
she
would never have abandoned
her
child, and she can’t imagine a mother who would.

“Thanks for the cookies,” I say.

“Visit me any time.” Mrs. Olsen walks with me to the front door, bending to pick up a pile of mail the mailman stuffed through the slot while we talked.  “Nothing but junk to recycle,” she complains.

“Once the election’s over, there will be less,” I say, as I watch her sorting through all the political flyers.

“Thank goodness.”  She laughs and holds up a blue pamphlet plastered with Spencer’s smiling face.  “Hey, here’s someone your mother used to work for.  I do remember that she came up with the slogan for his campaign, and he was crazy about it.   ‘Spencer Finneran for Congress.
Honestly
.’  Kind of a play on words, because he was the long-shot underdog and his opponent was a real crook.  Get it?”

Too stunned to answer, I just nod.

I get it.