Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) (24 page)

Anne steps over the huge retriever sprawled across the threshold to the kitchen.  Bix opens one eye, just like Ethel does.  It takes every ounce of self-control to keep from  collapsing on top of the dog and burying my head in his shaggy, honey-colored fur.

“Have you had lunch, Audrey?  I have more food than I know what to do with after Nora and Jim’s anniversary party.” 

There’s always some kind of Finneran family get-together to keep that hulking stainless steel fridge stuffed, but I’m too keyed up to consider eating.  “No thank you.  I really appreciate your seeing me on such short notice.”  As soon as Detective Coughlin left this morning, I called the locksmith.  Then I called Anne. Didn’t even think it through, just dialed, blurted out that I knew my mother had worked directly with Spencer, and said I needed to talk to her.  Any tact that I ever possessed has been driven away by this second attack and the loss of Ethel.  To her credit, Anne didn’t try to bullshit me--she told me to come on over.

Anne smiles and her laugh lines crease, but her eyes have a distant look.  “No trouble at all dear.  I’ve been looking forward to your visit.”  She extends her arm.  “Come on in here where no one will bother us.”

I follow her through a door off the kitchen that I never noticed before.  Behind it is a cozy little office/sitting room with two shabby chintz easy chairs and a desk overflowing with piles of paper.  Framed photos cover the walls—not pictures of Anne and Spencer with presidents and senators and rock stars, but candid snapshots of kids and grandkids at the beach, on skis, in class plays, Spencer at the helm of a sailboat, Anne decorating a Christmas tree. Sun streams through the window, illuminating a big vase of fresh flowers.  They have to be from a florist since nothing’s blooming locally now, but somehow Anne’s arranged them in a loose, tumbling way that makes it seem like she just picked them in her back yard.

“What a great room,” I say.

“Thank you.  It used to be a maid’s room, back in the days when the maid had to wake up early to light the coal stove.”  Anne makes a wry little face.  “Most days I feel like it’s still the maid’s room.”  She waves me into one chair and sits herself in the other.

For a moment there’s an awkward silence as we gaze at each other, uncertain where to begin.  Then Anne plunges in.  All these years as a politician’s wife have taught her how to manage any type of conversation, even one about how she and Spencer lied about knowing my mother.

“So, you want to know about your mother, and the work she did for Spencer’s campaign.  Well, you’ve seen her pictures so you know she was beautiful, but photos really don’t do her justice.  She was—how can I express it?—simply vibrant.”  Anne reaches over and pats my hand.  “I don’t mean this unkindly dear, because in many ways I feel you and I are very much alike, but your mother could command attention in a way that women like us will never be able to fathom.  She didn’t do it with sexy clothing or provocative behavior.  It was something much more subtle—and powerful—than that.”  Anne shakes her head and pauses.

“I guess she was born with it,” I say, “and it skipped a generation in me.”

Anne’s eyes meet mine.  “She was born with it, but just as one cultivates an inherent talent for art or music, your mother worked hard to develop her gift.”

I squirm under her gaze.  “Sounds like you knew my mother pretty well. When did you first meet her?”

“Oh, I only talked to her a few times, but she made quite an impression.” Anne curls up in her chair, her eyes focused on a point over the desk.  I know she’s looking back to a time before I was born. “Spencer and I lived in DC when we first married.  He had a job on Capitol Hill.” The silence stretches on until I can’t bear it any more.

“But then something brought you to New Jersey,” I prompt.

Anne jumps a little, as if she’s forgotten I’m there.  “Yes, Spencer decided he wanted to run for elective office.  We moved back to Palmyrton so he could make a run for Congress.”

“Back to Palmyrton?”

Anne arches her eyebrows ever so slightly. “My family has always lived here.”

Always. I think about the oil portraits in the upstairs hall, the Duncan Phyfe chairs.  The Piersons have been here since the Revolution.  “Your family connections would help him win.”  I say it as a statement, not a question.

Anne offers a shallow smile.  “My father persuaded the Palmer County Democratic party machine that Spencer was their best hope against an entrenched Republican.  He raised a small fortune to finance that campaign.  And it was all lost, because of her…”  Even after thirty-five years the bitterness in her voice is unmistakable.

“Because of my mother? Why?”

“It was a razor thin race.  Spencer was a dark horse.  No one thought he stood a chance, but slowly he started creeping up in the polls. He needed the very best campaign team to keep the momentum going.  Charlotte started out doing brilliant work for the campaign.  Writing speeches, coming up with slogans, managing events.  Whenever I crossed her path, she was at the center of a whirlwind of activity.”

It hits me hard that Anne must have never liked my mother, even before she supposedly cost Spencer the race.  “So what changed?” I ask.

“All those long hours away from her husband and child, in the company of journalists and politicians and PR men…”  Anne arches her eyebrows.  “She fell in love with one of them.  Fell hard.  Suddenly her work went out the window.  She started missing ad deadlines, forgetting important appointments, scheduling Spencer to be in two places at the same time.  The kicker came when she arranged for Spencer to be interviewed on the Today show as part of a profile on up and coming young politicians.  Charlotte got the day wrong and the reporter kept looking at the empty chair on the stage and commenting on Spencer’s absence.  Her antics cost Spencer the election.”

I watch Anne’s mouth harden into a thin line.  Something about this doesn’t seem right.  After all, Spencer went on to have great political success.  Why is Anne still so angry at my mother?  “There’s something more, isn’t there, Anne?  Something personal.”

Anne’s fingers dig into the dainty needlepoint pillow on her chair, and she continues. “You have to understand the times your mother and I were living in.  On TV and in magazines, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan were telling us we could be anything we wanted to be, that we didn’t have to be confined to the roles of wife and mother.  That we could enjoy sex wherever we found it, just as men have always done.”  Anne stretches out her legs and studies the gold buckles on her proper black flats.  “They were the generals in the Pentagon.  As in every war, the reality on the ground was quite different.”  

Anne looks directly into my eyes.  “I had just about convinced my parents and Spencer that it would be a great idea for me to go back to law school.  Then your mother came along—the living embodiment of every anti-feminist stereotype.  Women are a distraction in the workplace.  Women are too emotional to be trusted with important work.  Working women destroy their families.”

I feel an irrational need to defend my mother, the adulteress. “You’re blaming my mother because you didn’t get to become a lawyer?”

“That’s an oversimplification.  Of course I could have dug in my heels and fought for what I wanted.  But what happened to Charlotte made me question whether I really did want that career.”

“What happened between the election and Christmas Eve?”  I ask. “Who was this mystery lover?”

I watch Anne closely.  Of course it’s dawned on me that the other man could’ve been Spencer.  I know she’ll never admit to me that her husband ever had an affair—not now, just days before the election.  But I should be able to tell, shouldn’t I, if I’ve brushed too close to the truth?

Anne shrugs.  When she speaks, he voice is no more anxious than when she’s puzzling over menu choices with her caterer. “No one was sure; so many men were besotted with her, it was rather difficult to tell.  And she must’ve been discreet about the actual…er…assignations. But the rumor was he also was married.”

“Why didn’t Mr. Van Houten tell me any of this?”

  Anne smiles. “Even Reid Van Houten wasn’t immune to her charms.”

“You think Mr. Van Houten was her lover?”

“No, but he probably knew who was. However, Reid was the consummate gentleman, then and now. He protected Charlotte when Spencer and my father wanted her fired.  After the election was lost, my father was so furious he threatened to blackball Reid from the entire Palmyrton business community if he didn’t get rid of Charlotte.”  Anne leans forward and takes my hand.  “So you can understand why Spencer and I felt it was easier to tell a little white lie at dinner and say we barely knew her.  Why rake up all this past unpleasantness when Spencer and I both think of you as such a wonderful match for our dear Cal.”

I try to smile; I’m sure Anne notices it’s a little stiff. Sliding my hand out of her grasp I ask, “So, did Reid fire her?”

“He decided Charlotte had better start looking for a new job. From what Spencer told me, the plan was to break the news to her right after the holidays.”

“But—”

Anne shrugs.  “Maybe she suspected something. Maybe she called her lover on Christmas Eve.  Maybe things were said.  The holidays are a difficult time to be the other woman.  Or so I’ve been told.”

“You think she—” I can’t bring myself to say “killed herself.”

Anne simply spreads her hands.  Anything is possible, she implies.  Anything is possible when you’ve betrayed your husband and someone else’s husband has betrayed you.  You kill yourself and the baby you no longer want and leave your daughter motherless.

My trembling hands rest in my lap.  I realize I’ve been twisting my mother’s ring around and around as I try to process what Anne is telling me.  Was my saintly mother really a sexually liberated temptress?  My aloof, logical father a wronged husband?  The dignified Mr. VanHouten a lovestruck fool? Who are these people?  I feel like I’m watching a soap opera in which the lead characters are suddenly being played by new actors, with no explanation made to the loyal viewers. 

If my mother killed herself, how did the ring get in Mrs. Szabo’s attic?  And why was my father so surprised to see it?

The cheery melody of my cellphone’s ring breaks the heavy silence.  Normally I’d switch it off with an apology, but I’m grateful for the interruption.  I want to get out of here.  I glance at the caller ID, prepared to tell Anne it’s an important call no matter who’s calling.  Palmyrton PD flashes on the screen.  No need to lie; it
is
an important call.

“It’s the police,” I say.  “I’d better answer.”

Anne nods, watching me as I listen to Detective Farrand.  When I hang up, I feel a smile spreading across my face.  I want to share my good news.  “They’ve caught the guy who broke into my apartment.”

“Thank God!  Who is it?”

“They wouldn’t tell me his name yet, but he’s a drug dealer with a record.  They found him because he went to the emergency room to have his dog bite treated.”

“And do they think he’s the same man who beat and robbed you in the parking garage?”

“I don’t know.” Unexpectedly, I feel tears pricking my eyelids.    “I hope so.  I really need this to be over. Detective Farrand says they’re interrogating him now.”

Anne tugs me out of my chair and wraps her arms around me.  “I’m sure the police will get to the bottom of it. Then you can finally sleep easy.”

Telling Jill about Ethel’s disappearance is the second worst thing I’ve ever had to do.  We spend a good fifteen minutes crying in each other’s arms, then Jill pulls herself together and, mustering her formidable artistic talents, creates the most compelling lost dog flyer I’ve ever seen.

Ethel stares out at the world, her eyebrows arched, her tail held high.  In the photo, her mouth is slightly open and Jill has created a cartoon bubble that says, “Bring me home.  My mom needs me.”  We hang these all over Palmyrton, especially in Ethel’s favorite haunts: the bagel shop, the park, and the neighborhoods around the office and home.  Everywhere we go, we look for her, call for her, but the streets are depressingly devoid of unsupervised dogs.  Finally, with 200 flyers taped to poles and pinned to bulletin boards, we head back to the office.  Jill and Ty head off to our newest job, but I’m too distracted to work.

For the fourth time today, I check in with Animal Control.  No Ethel.  Don’t call us, we’ll call you.  Maybe Detective Farrand will be a little more willing to talk.  I call for an update on the man they arrested.  I want to know where he ran after he left my house; how far Ethel followed him.  But after four rings, I’m sent to voicemail.  Taking a deep breath, I dial Coughlin.  Same deal—leave a message after the beep.  I could call Cal, but my fingers stubbornly refuse to dial.  The break-in at my condo has been reported on the local news, and Anne has certainly told Spencer about my visit.  Surely, Cal should call me.  I put my phone in my pocket.

Cal.  A guy hasn’t done this big a number on my head since my totally unrequited crush on Billy Bednarchuk in tenth grade. As a sophomore, I risked suspension to let Billy copy all my answers during Calculus, just to keep him smiling at me all semester.  And once he got his A, he never even nodded to me in the halls. Seventeen years later, have I wised up any?  I study the ring on my finger.  Cal and I are linked by this ring.  Somewhere along the line, his aunt came into contact with my mother.  He claims he barely knew his great-aunt, but is that true?  He said he’d ask his mother about Agnes’s past, but did he?  He arranged to get Coughlin taken off my case, and Farrand put on, but who’s the better cop? Yet I continue to lie for Cal.  Even as terrified as I was last night, I still didn’t tell Coughlin or Farrand about the trunk of jewelry or who really found the Ecstasy.  The detectives have made me realize there are only a few degrees of separation between my condo keys and just about anyone in the state of New Jersey.  That puts the search of the trunk while it was in my closet in a new light.  Someone had to be looking for the one thing that was missing from the trunk. 

I hold up my hand.  This ring.

My dad knew I had the ring, but didn’t know the trunk was in my condo.  Cal, Jill and Ty knew I had the trunk, but at the time the trunk was searched, didn’t know I had taken the ring.  My head starts to throb the way it did when I first got out of the hospital.  I feel like I used to feel in AP English Lit, the only class I ever got a C in.  Making sense of the ring, Cal, my mother and father is like spotting the metaphors in poetry, a task in which it seemed to me there was never a definite right answer, only plenty of wrong ones. 

Now what?

Shakily, I stand up and reach for my car keys.  Until either Coughlin or Farrand calls me back, there’s not much I can do.  Not much except something even more awful than telling Jill about Ethel: tell my father.

Dad makes it easy for me.  When I show up in his room, he lurches out of his chair, nearly falling into my arms. “Wha’ happen? You hur’?”

I’m surprised he even knows about the break-in.  He never watches TV, and the incident happened too late last night to make this morning’s
Daily Record.
 

I ease him back into a chair.  “I’m okay…I guess.”  I tell him the good news first.  “The police called this morning.  They caught the guy.”

Dad’s face lights up.  “Goo’!  Who?  How?”

Now the bad news.  I start with Ethel’s heroic defense, and end with the Lost Dog flyers.  As I speak, Dad’s gaze shifts away from my face.  By the time I finish, he’s looking out the window.  Once again, I’ve let him down.  Lost the one thing about me of which he approved.

He sits silently for a moment, then pushes himself out of his chair.  “Less go.”

“Go where?”

“My house.  I show you whatta kee’  Everthin’ else, go.”

I’m about to protest—not today-- but then I figure, why not?  I can’t concentrate on work.  This will keep me occupied.

In silence, we drive to the house. An empty Dumpster occupies the flat area outside the garage waiting for whatever junk we won’t be able to sell, so I have to park behind it, on the incline.  This could make getting Dad out of the car tricky.

“Wait here while I get your walker out of the trunk,” I tell him, then open my door.  Immediately Dad gets flustered, searching for something on the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seat. 

“What’s the matter?  Did you drop something?”

“Bray!  Mersunsee bray!”

“What?”

Dad slaps the dashboard in frustration.  I take a deep breath and try to remember what his therapist told me to do in these situations.  Sound out each syllable of what he’s said to try to make sense of it.  E-mer-sun-see-bray.  Emergency brake.  “You want me to put the emergency brake on?  It’s over here on the floor.”  I set the brake and he relaxes.

“Alway set bray on hill,” he scolds.  I remember now that he was sort of fanatical about that when I was learning to drive.  Not that he ever took me out to practice—that job fell to Pop.

I get the walker out of the trunk, where it nestles next to my crushed doll carriage,  but by the time I arrive at the passenger side of the car, Dad has already opened the door and is struggling to get out. 

“Take it easy, Dad.  Let me help you,” I say as I place the walker in front of him and reach for his elbow.  He shrugs off my guiding hand and pushes himself up.  For a moment he teeters on the uneven ground, then steadies himself and starts purposefully for the back door.  I have to trot to get ahead of him.  When I get into the mudroom, I check the row of hooks with keys.  My condo key isn’t there.

  Inside the house, Dad moves through the rooms, passing judgment like a Roman emperor.  He wants his books and CDs, and a painting done by a fellow professor.  Everything else—dishes, furniture, rugs, lamps—gets the thumbs-down.  “I buy new,” he says blithely every time I hold something up for consideration.   With every item he condemns, his mood brightens.

I’m stunned.  He’s barely bought one new thing in thirty years, and now suddenly he’s up for a total overhaul.  Even things I considered heirlooms—the Oriental rug my grandparents gave him and my mother as a wedding gift, the wedding china and crystal—all go on the sell list.  I notice he doesn’t offer them to me.  Of course I manage to be wounded, but really, what would I do with a Royal Doulton service for twelve?  The same thing he’s done with it for the past thirty years—let it sit and collect dust. 

He pauses in front of his easy chair—saggy, overstuffed, shiny with wear.  He’s spent almost every night of his adult life there, reading and listening to music.  Surely that will go with him to the new apartment.  But he shakes his head and grins.  “Sit in tha’ now, I never ge’ ow. New chair!” 

I hope he realizes the implication of all this discarding—acquiring replacements.  Dad’s never been one to embrace the retail experience.  “You’re going to have a lot of shopping to do,” I warn.

“Okay.  You come with me.” 

Suddenly, I’m entering into the spirit of this purge.  Maybe by getting rid of every vestige of our life in this house, we’ll get rid of the silence and chill between us.  “I need some new furniture for my place.  This will get me motivated.”

“Together, make decisions fas’.” Dad snaps his fingers.

“What about upstairs?” I ask.  “Do you want your bedroom furniture?”

“Ge’ rid of it.  Keep desk and c’puter.”

“Do you want to go up there?” I ask.

He looks at the steep stairs and shakes his head.  “No.  You tay care.”  He turns toward the front door and makes his way over to it.  Maybe he wants to look at the front yard one last time.  I open the heavy oak door to reveal the small front porch and winding flagstone walk.  Dad lurches to a stop, leaning heavily on the walker.

“Wha’ happen to holly?”

Two miniature spruces don’t begin to fill the cavernous space occupied by the hollies.  “The real estate agent said they were too overgrown.  We had to put in something with more curb appeal.”

He backs away from the door, his upbeat mood vaporized.

Why would he care so much about those shrubs?  He’s never shown the slightest interest in gardening.  “I’m sorry about the hollies, Dad.  I guess I should have asked you first.”

He shakes his head, whether at my intransigence or to dismiss the need for an apology, I’m not sure.  The possibility of that father-daughter shopping trip seems to have dissolved in an instant.  Desperate to recapture our earlier mood, I say, “Guess what I found out there when Ty dug out the old bushes?  A little baby carriage of mine.”

His hands turn white gripping the walker.  I feel compelled to go on, although I’m sinking deeper in quicksand with every word I utter.

“Mrs. Olsen says I went through a phase of burying things.  I don’t even remember that, do you?”

He shakes his head, more in the manner of someone trying to rid himself of a pesky fly than someone saying no.  Without glancing at me, he starts shuffling toward the kitchen.

“Dad, wait.”  I position myself in front of him.  Things start clicking together in my mind and I feel like I do when I’ve suddenly seen my way clear to solve a really hard quintic equation.  I don’t know what the answer is.  I can’t explain exactly how I’m going to do it.  I just know I’ll get the solution.  I answer my own questions almost as fast as I ask them.  “The carriage—it was flattened.  Did I leave it in the driveway?  Did someone run over it?  That’s why you’re so paranoid about the emergency brake, isn’t it?  Did I almost get run over?”

Deer in the headlights doesn’t begin to describe my father’s look of panic.  He knows he can’t outrun me.  Can’t ring for an aide who will chase me away.  For the first time in our lives, he’s entirely at my mercy.  I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

More facts swarm my brain.  I can’t process the information fast enough. “I didn’t bury that carriage—it was down too deep. You buried it. Right?”

He stares at me, a cobra mesmerized by the snake charmer’s flute. “Yeh.”

The word is so soft, I see it more than I hear it.  Why is he so terrified?  If he’d nearly run over me when I was a toddler, he would’ve been scared when it happened, but not scared thirty years later.  After all, I’m alive and well.

But my mother isn’t.  The numbers realign.  The formulas shift. Clarity approaches.

“You killed her,” I say.  “You ran over her with the car.”  This is the truth he thinks I don’t want to know.

“Not me—”  His lips are positioned to form another word but no sound emerges. 

I see what that next word was going to be.  You. 

Not me, you.