Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) (27 page)

Coughlin’s dream of keeping me locked up in the hospital is defeated by my insurance carrier.  They’re not paying for another night, so the morning after Coughlin’s visit, the nurses disconnect my oxygen supply, hand me some antibiotics, and cut me loose.  I was kind of hoping Cal might appear to take me home. Instead, Jill arrives promptly at nine.  I hate having to rely on her to look after me.  Still, the warm rush of her chatter comforts me.

“Ohmygod Audrey I can’t believe you’re in the hospital again and I totally missed the whole thing because I agreed to drive up to Albany with my friend Gabby to help her move into the dorm because she got into graduate school for microbiology did I tell you that? And anyway she needed help with her stuff so when I got up there I realized I didn’t have my cell phone and I was totally out of touch for the whole weekend and it was killing me and then I got back and Ty told me what happened and ohmygod Audrey I just can’t believe it.”

“Yeah, it sucks,” I say as I settle into a wheelchair for the ride down to the lobby.  Apart from the fact that my hair is singed on the side of my head that was closest to the doorway when the fireball erupted, I’m in good shape.  But my lungs were damaged from the smoke and the doctor says I can expect to be short of breath for months.  Eager to conserve oxygen, I let Jill do all the talking.

“And when I got home from Albany I searched everywhere for my cell phone and I couldn’t find it. So now I think I must’ve lost it at your dad’s house so it’s definitely gone for good and I had to buy a new one and re-enter my whole address book and that was such a pain but I like the new phone and I finally feel whole again you know what I mean because you just feel lost when you don’t have your phone.”

Jill’s words wash over me like elevator music.  I’m eager to get to the office.  My mind ticks with things I need to do, calls I need to make.  With Ethel gone, there’s no need to go home first.  My eyes well with tears when I think of the welcome home that I would have received from Ethel. I turn my head, hoping Jill won’t see as she leans over me to press the DOWN button on the elevator.

“So Audrey I’m still so confused about what happened.  The paper said something about the fire starting from a candle.  Why did you light them?  Why was Anne Finneran there?  Audrey?”

“Huh?”  I make an effort to process Jill’s stream of monologue.  “The candles?  No, I didn’t light them.  I thought—”  Wait a minute.  Something’s not adding up here.  “When did you leave for Albany?”

“Four o’clock.  Remember I told you I was going to finish at your dad’s house and then take off?”

I don’t remember, but that’s because I often listen to Jill with only half an ear.  “Did you text me late in the afternoon and ask me to meet you at the house so you could show me some stuff before you got rid of it?”

“No, why would I do that?  You and your Dad already said you didn’t want to keep anything but the books and CDs and the computer.”

The elevator doors open.  We roll out into the hustle bustle of the hospital lobby.  Jill pushes me toward the exit and a tall, lean man holds the door for us.  The next thing I know, he’s loped around us and is blocking our path on the sidewalk.

“Evan Shapiro, New York Times.”  He thrusts his hand out.   “I have a few questions for you, Ms. Nealon.”

I dodge his hand. Coughlin was right about one thing--the press is after me.  I’m not ready for this.  “No comment.  Keep going, Jill.”

Shapiro trots after us.  “Why was Mrs. Finneran in the house?  Did you invite her there?  What were you discussing?”

I practically dive into Jill’s car and slam the door in the reporter’s face.

“How well did you know Anne Finneran?” he shouts as Jill pulls away from the curb.

“Not well enough.” I mutter.

“What did you say?”

I look over at Jill.  “You didn’t lose your phone.  Anne, or more likely, Dylan, stole it and used it to send me a message that would lure me to the house.”

Jill’s mouth forms a perfect “O” of surprise.  “I had all the windows and doors open to air the house out.  I was going in and out all day, tossing stuff in the Dumpster.  Someone could’ve slipped in the front door while I was out in the back.  But why did Anne Finneran want to meet you at your dad’s house?”

“I’ll explain it to you on the way to the office.”

Jill responds to my story with a rising crescendo of “Get out!”s and “No way!”s.  By the time we pull up to the office, she’s finally stopped chattering.  She helps me out of her car, then glances at the AMT van parked behind it.  “Ty must be back from delivering those antique chairs to Gerald,” she says.  “Hey, now that they’ve arrested Dylan, does that mean the big red-haired cop will stop harassing Ty?”

“I hope so,” I answer aloud, but in my head I’m thinking, but he’ll still be pursuing him about his relationship with Mondel Johnson. 

We walk into the office and find Ty packing boxes for a UPS shipment.  He drops his tape gun and opens his arms wide.

“Hey, Audge!  How you doin’?” 

“I’m great!” I lie, then sway and crash dizzily into my desk chair.

“What you bring her here for?” Ty scolds Jill.  “Shouldn’t she be home in bed or something?”

“No really, I’d rather be here with you guys than home alone anyway.”  I see a quick glance pass between them.

“Think I’ll go to the bank,” Jill says, snatching a pile of checks from her desk.

I know she’s just as distraught over Ethel’s disappearance as I am.  The only way we can hold ourselves together is to studiously avoid mentioning the dog in each other’s presence.  “Good idea,” I tell her.  I’d like a few minutes alone with Ty anyway.

When she’s gone, Ty goes back to wrapping boxes, and for several minutes the only sound is the zipping of tape. 

I gather up my courage.  “Ty—”

“Look, Audge—”

“You first,” I say.

Ty drops into a chair.  “Look, Audge, I know I been actin’ kinda crazy.  But now that you know that shit in old lady Szabo’s house wasn’t mine, that I didn’t have no part in what happened to you—”

“I never thought you did, Ty,”  I interrupt.  “It’s just…that Mondel Johnson person—I mean, something’s going on, right?”

“Was going on.  Now it’s all settled.”

I straighten up and start talking.  My brush with death has given me courage.  I’m surprised at how authoritative I sound.  “Look, Ty, I
have
to know what was going on.  I can’t accept ‘it’s all settled.’  You need to tell me the truth right now if you want to keep working for me.”

Ty gives me that awful prison stare he’s got down cold.  I stare back. I’m pretty sure he’s going to stalk out and I’ll never see him again.  It’s not what I want, but it may be what I have to accept. 

Then suddenly he drops his gaze.  His shoulders slump and his big foot jiggles.  “I had to help my cousin Marcus,” he says.

“Marcus?  Isn’t he the one who graduated from Rutgers and got a job at Citibank?”

Ty rolls his eyes.  “That’s him.  Our family’s big success story.  My whole life that’s all I hear from our Grams, ‘Why can’t you be more like Marcus?  He’s so good in school.  He’s never hangin’ on the street.”

“Little bitter?”

“Listen, Marcus is book smart, but he got no street smarts, know what I’m sayin’?  He had a full academic scholarship, but what they don’t tell you is it don’t cover books, and computer, and food and shit.  So he had this job in the library workin’ twenty-five hours a week and he still can’t pay for everything.  Thought he was going to hafta drop out.  That starts our Grandma cryin’ her eyes out, ’cause all she wants is for one of us kids to turn out right.  So Marcus gets the idea he could sell a little weed on campus to pay his bills.  Our other cousin Jimmy sets him up with Nichols.  Now Marcus himself don’t ever mess with drugs, not even weed.  But he figures he could sell to a few friends.  Before long, he got a real nice business goin’.  And because Marcus is good with numbers and not messed up on usin’ the product, Nichols likes workin’ with him.  Keeps pressuring him to expand.”

Ty takes a deep breath.  “Then in the spring, Marcus graduates.  Gets a job offer from Citibank.  Goin’ to have a fancy office in a skyscraper and wear a suit every day.  Grams about to explode, she’s so happy.  Tellin’ everybody she knows about Marcus.  This is where Marcus is so damn dumb.  He thinks he can quit workin’ for Nichols, the way you quit a job at Wal-Mart.  No way Nichols goin’ to walk away from the bizness Marcus built up. And Nichols knows Marcus can’t snitch without gettin’ himself busted. So now Marcus got two jobs—working for the bank all day and sellin’ on campus at night.”

“And that’s where you came in—helping Marcus with his night job?”

Ty jumps up.  “No way!  I did not sell no drugs, Audge.  I told Marcus I ain’t touchin’ nothing that gets me sent back to jail.  But Nichols was threatening him, and he couldn’t go to the police without getting in trouble himself and losing his job and that would kill my Grams.  So I helped him for her sake, know what I’m sayin’?”

“What exactly did you do, Ty?  Why was that Mondel person following you around?”

“I had to get someone else to take over Marcus’s business. The first guy Marcus found didn’t work out so good.    Couldn’t keep his accounts straight.  That’s when Nichols sent Mondel around, to collect the money he was owed.  Marcus don’t know nothin’ about dealin’ with people like that.  I had to step in and work it out. Set up Nichols with a guy I knew from inside.”

“So you’re telling me you’re an executive recruiter for a drug dealer.”

“Look, there’s always going to be weed on a college campus, right?  If my man don’t sell it for Nichols, someone else will.”

“What kind of crazy rationale is that?”  I feel a real rant building. “There’s always going to be kiddie porn, too. And car-jackers, and slave traffickers, and, and…  Should we just turn our--”

Ty looks me straight in the eye.   “I couldn’t let Nichols kill my cousin.” 

There it is: the blood is thicker than water bottom line. I put my head down on my desk and speak without looking up.  “Fine.  Just tell me it’s over.  Promise me you and Marcus are both completely out of Nichols’s business.”

“It’s over.  New guy I found is doin’ great.  Marcus doin’ great.  Everybody happy.”

I keep my head down until I hear the reassuring zip of Ty’s tape gun.  I’ll never be able to explain this to Coughlin, but I imagine he’ll give up on Ty when he realizes Mondel Johnson isn’t hanging around anymore.  And curtailing the flow of weed onto the Rutgers campus is some other cop’s problem.

Finally I lift my head up and start going through the messages that have piled up.  Five from Evan Shapiro.  Two from Walt Anthony of the Newark
Star Ledger
.  Two from News 12 New Jersey.  One from some dope at the
Daily Wretched
. I’ve got to talk to someone about how to handle all this. Cal would be the logical choice, but he’s been completely out of touch.  I hate when he makes me feel like a teenager, reluctant to make the first call.

“I’ll deliver this stuff over to UPS, and when I get back I’ll drive you home, okay.”  Ty says this as a statement, not a question. 

“No, no,” I object.  “I can drive myself in the van.”

“You still dizzy.  You gonna crash.  I’ll drive.”

“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind. I’ll pay you overtime.”

Ty pauses with his hand on the doorknob and looks back at me through narrowed eyes.  “I don’t want no overtime. Why would I
mind
to drive a friend home?  Sometimes I think there’s somethin’ wrong with your head, Audge.”

I shuffle papers on my desk until he’s safely out the door.  Why did I insult him like that?  Why can’t I accept a simple gesture of kindness?  I feel the tears pricking my eyes again.  How I long for Ethel.  The sweet furrow between her brows.  The forgiving wag of her tail.  I rein myself in.  If I give in to this now, I’ll never stop crying.

Purposefully, I sort the mail: junk, bills, payments, info for Jill to file.  At the bottom of the pile lies a rectangular, flat cardboard mailer.  I glance at the return address: Yearbooks.com.  This is the replacement I ordered for Dad’s lost Princeton yearbook.  Now that I know Dylan or his supplier were behind all the break-ins, the theft of the yearbook seems even more puzzling.  I leaf through the pages until I find Dad’s senior picture.  He stares off the page: lean, dark-haired, serious.  Not quite handsome, but definitely attractive.

Intense.

Where else would his picture be?  Not in football or basketball—I skim through Sports until I reach cross-country.  There he is, thin but muscular.  What else?  Certainly I won’t find him in these candid party shots, but maybe in something geeky like Chess Club or Latin Forum.  I page through, reading the captions, smiling at the shaggy hair and wide sideburns of the late Sixties.  I laugh at the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats, pictured on facing pages.  The Republicans are dressed in sports coats or polo shirts; the Democrats in torn jeans and tie-dyed tee-shirts.  I bet Cal must’ve been in the Young Democrats at Brown.  I glance at the candids taken at some rally for George McGovern.  A beautiful face leaps out at me.  I pull the book closer. Sure enough, it’s my mother.  I’d heard from Nana how my parents met.  Mom was an English major who’d put off taking her math requirement.  Dad met her weeping over her calculus book in the library and tutored her through her final. A knight with a shining calculator.