Consigned to Death (20 page)

“The first step is for you to watch the tape I made. And read the inventory Mrs. Grant kept. Review them before Monday, okay?”

“Absolutely. This is so exciting! Thank you, Josie.”

“You’re welcome. It’s great, isn’t it? Let’s meet at the Grant house at, what? Nine on Monday morning? Is nine okay for you?”

“Sure, nine is good.”

“Okay. Make sure you have the address.”

She smiled and thanked me again. From her perspective, I was offering a rare treat. She was visibly excited at the prospect of spending her weekend studying the tape I’d made of Mr. Grant’s antiques and poring over the inventory. Lucky me.

 

 

I slept until noon on Sunday. When I awakened, I felt discombobulated, uncertain of the day or, even, momentarily, where I was. No remnant of a dream lingered, so I couldn’t blame my confusion on that. Shaking off the amorphous discomfort proved tough, and it wasn’t until I showered and ate eggs, cooked just the way I like them, scrambled soft with tomatoes and onion mixed in, that I began to feel more like myself.

At three, dressed in jeans and a lightweight sweatshirt, I headed for the Grant house planning to stop at a grocery store on the way back to buy the ingredients I needed to cook Monterey chicken. I took the scenic route, glad for an excuse to drive along the shore.

It was a warm day, the bright sun hinting at summer. I rolled down the windows, relishing the ocean breeze. As I drove, I spotted several sailboats coursing along, running parallel to shore. I’d never sailed, and I decided that once I was clear of the Grant situation, I’d learn. Why not? I asked myself.

Driving through the village, I saw that the Taffy Pull’s door was propped open, and impulsively, I swung right into a vacant parking space. According to Wes, someone from the Taffy Pull had called Mr. Grant shortly before he’d been murdered, and I wanted to know why.

I stepped out and looked around. The street was deserted, but there were several cars scattered along the stretch of Main Street where the shops were nestled.

The Taffy Pull’s front window was decorated with displays of small piles of sand, artistically arranged to suggest the beach. Miniature lawn chairs dotted the sand piles. Brightly colored saltwater taffy pieces somehow connected to fluffy clouds dangled on nylon threads from the ceiling. It didn’t make logical sense, but it was whimsical and cute.

I took a deep breath for courage, and entered the store. I blinked several times, trying to hurry my eyes along as they adjusted to the dim inside light.

A blonde stood with her back to me, stretching to pull down a small white box of candy from a high shelf.

“Hi,” I said, looking around, glancing at the woman’s back.

“Hello,” she answered over her shoulder.

Box in hand, she turned, and I’m certain surprise showed on my face. “Paula!” I exclaimed.

Paula, my part-time tag-sale employee who wore T-shirts emblazoned with her political views and causes, responded, “Josie?”

“I didn’t know you worked here.”

She grimaced, just a little. “Family business. Today’s my turn.”

“Got it.” I smiled. I wanted to say something nice. A family business required a compliment even if she had made a face in telling me about it. “The display window’s cute.”

“Thanks. That’s my mother’s touch. She’s the needlepoint and scrapbooking type, so her window displays are always ‘cute.’”

She spoke the word “cute” as if it were vulgar, or at least embarrassing. I flashed on a memory from when I was about nine or ten, with my mother. My dad was busy with business, and the two of us had driven out to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, about two hours west of Boston.

“It isn’t just his craftsmanship, Josie,” my mother told me later that night, as we sat eating dinner at the Red Lion Inn. “Obviously, Rockwell’s a brilliant technician. But it’s more than that. It’s the emotion. He captured the moments in life exactly. You look at what he painted and you know how the people in his pictures felt about whatever situation he put them in. That’s an amazing talent.”

To this day, I loved Norman Rockwell. But I was willing to wager that Paula, like many of the hip, so-called sophisticates I’d run into during my years living in New York scorned him, viewing his illustrations with disdain. “White bread,” they called his work, dismissing it as banal. Too bad for them. I could just imagine the picture Rockwell would have created showcasing Paula’s mother pridefully putting the final touches on the display window.

Paula seemed the same as always, cordial but not friendly. Solemn, as if she bore the weight of the world on her shoulders. Today’s T-shirt read Mind Your Own Religion. Appropriate dress, I guessed, for an atheist with an attitude to wear on a Sunday.

Given her reaction to the window I’d just described as cute, I felt the need to clarify my comment. “I meant it as a compliment.”

She paused, apparently unused to hearing positive remarks. “Oh. Sure. I’ll tell my mother. She’ll be pleased.”

I smiled. “So you sell saltwater taffy, do you?”

“Yeah. And other stuff. We sell all sorts of handmade candy.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she said, placing the small white candy box on the counter.

“You know how a man named Mr. Grant was murdered?”

“Yeah, I heard. Terrible.”

“Was he a customer?”

“A customer? I don’t think so. I don’t know. Why?”

“Did you know him?”

Her look of surprise at what must have struck her as an out-of-the-blue question seemed genuine. “No. Why?”

I shrugged, not wanting to explain. “No reason. He’s a local, that’s all.”

A man entered the store holding hands with a girl of about seven or eight. They were laughing.

“Hi,” Paula greeted the newcomers.

“Hi,” the girl answered sweetly. “Oh, look, Daddy....” and she led him to a display of pink-wrapped taffy.

There was no point in asking any more questions, even if I knew what to ask, which I didn’t. I didn’t feel right not buying something, so I pointed to the small box she placed on the counter, asked if I could buy it, and when she said yes, paid in cash. As I was about to leave, I turned back and got her attention. “You did a great job yesterday.”

She seemed taken aback. “Thanks.”

“I’ll see you next Saturday.”

Paula almost smiled. “You bet.”

Getting in my car, I placed the little white box of candy on the seat beside me, noticing the kind-of-hokey, kind-of-sweet tag line under the logo: Made with pride by the Turner family.

The smell of ocean salt and musky seaweed swept over me, and I decided to walk to Mr. Grant’s. I estimated it was less than two miles, and it would feel good to stretch my legs. There were no parking restrictions on Sunday, so I could leave the car where it was.

As I headed south, the ocean on my left, I found myself thinking about Paula. I realized I knew very little about her. In fact, I realized, feeling slightly guilty, I’d never actually thought about her as an individual at all. It was habit more than desire that led me to keep employees at a distance. Idly, I wondered if that professional reserve was wise. I shook my head. No way to know the answer to that one.

I knew more about Paula than before. I knew she had a family, and was involved enough to honor her responsibilities to the family’s business. Still, discovering her there was odd. Maybe it was just a coincidence that one of my employees worked at the Taffy Pull. But if I’d named all the people I might have expected to find there, Paula Turner wouldn’t have been on the list.

 

 

The Grant house, an icon of a gracious age, had been built around 1920 and beautifully maintained ever since. As I approached, I spotted a policeman in uniform sitting on the porch, gently rocking in a weathered Adirondack-style chair. I recognized him. He was the middle-aged black man who’d led the search of my house. His belly hung over his pants. I was sure we’d been introduced, but I didn’t remember his name.

“Hello,” I said as I started up the flagstone walkway.

He stood up, hitching his pants and taking a step forward. He nodded.

“I’m Josie Prescott. We’ve met.”

“I remember.”

“I’m authorized to go inside.”

“You got a letter or something?”

I dug into my purse, pulled out Mrs. Cabot’s note, and handed it to him. He read it slowly, turned it over, I don’t know why, and gave it back to me.

“You going in now?”

“Yes. Is that all right?”

He shrugged. “Sure, why not? I was just checking on things. Nothing much going on.”

My guess was that he was more interested in relaxing on a sunny spring day than he was in checking on things, but all I did was nod. “I’m going to look around back.”

“I’ll be heading out now, but I’ll back in a while. You going to be here for long?”

“I don’t know. Not too long, I don’t think.”

I watched as he headed slowly toward the alley. That’s why I hadn’t seen his car, I realized. He was parked along the side. I looked around. Things looked fine. Someone, probably a landscaping service, had been maintaining the yard, for the lawn was freshly mowed. A stranger walking or driving by wouldn’t know that the house was unlived in.

I circled the grounds slowly, looking for I don’t know what, anything, I guess, that struck me as unexpected or out of whack. I saw nothing unusual, no recently excavated plot of land, no outside structure like a shed or tree house that might conceal two canvases laid flat or rolled. Entering with the key Mrs. Cabot had given me, I stood for a moment in the vast hallway and listened to the sounds of nothing.

Not even the ticking of the grandfather clock disturbed the quiet. No one, I supposed, had wound it. I walked toward it, shaking my head in admiration.

It soared more than seven feet tall, a beautiful example of a Pennsylvania Queen Anne grandfather clock, circa 1785, with a walnut casing burnished to a glossy sheen. The flat-top bonnet featured an arched door with free-standing turned columns enclosing the hand-painted faces. The illustration showed the phases of the moon, and at the bottom, an inscription read Jacob Spangler York Town. I stroked the side, relishing the feel of the satiny wood.

I turned toward the kitchen, visible through the open hall door. It was creepy. I considered leaving, but I wanted to remind myself of the layout, so when Sasha and I met tomorrow, I could direct her efficiently. I walked through every room. Shadows stretched through old-fashioned slanted metal Venetian blinds. A musty odor of disuse permeated the air, my footsteps echoed, a lonely sound, on the hardwood floors, and a thin layer of dust lay undisturbed on every flat surface. I felt my normal Sunday melancholy descending on me like a shroud.

An oversized leather trunk in the basement caught my eye. Sitting on wooden planks about six inches off the concrete floor, it had probably been made in the 1920s. The cordovan-colored leather was butter soft and only slightly scuffed. I’d opened it when I’d surveyed the house for Mr. Grant, so I knew it was designed in two parts. On top was a tray, about eighteen inches deep, sized to rest perfectly on a small ridge. When I’d removed it, a larger section, maybe four by six feet, was revealed. Mr. Grant had used it to store stacks of old clothing. What had just occurred to me was that there might be a third section below the other two. Some old traveling trunks were built with a narrow but deep drawer at the bottom. Under the dim light cast by the single overhead bulb, I couldn’t see well enough to tell, so I stooped down and used my flashlight to examine it carefully, and there it was. Two slots had been fabricated on the front side of the trunk, about 4 inches from the bottom, and in each slot, a metal handle lay flush with the leather surface.

My heart began to race. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a perfect hiding spot. I reached down and wedged my fingers under the handles, and pulled. It resisted my efforts, and I tugged harder. The drawer slid out smoothly, and it was empty.

I felt deflated, but less so than when I’d sat on the floor in front of the partners desk and cried. Then not finding the missing paintings had left me disconsolate. Now the hunt got my dander up.

I stood and stretched, turned off my flashlight, and stowed it on my belt. I looked around. The basement was a labyrinth of small rooms, and most were empty of items that would go to auction. One room housed the oil burner, another the washer and dryer, and a third was lined with wooden shelves filled with Mason jars of homemade preserves and pickles.

In a small workshop, presumably awaiting Mr. Grant’s attention as a handyman, stood a nonworking lamp, a chair that needed caning, and two pieces of a broken china platter. I doubted they were worth our time, but decided to examine them more closely tomorrow. Next to the platter, on the chipped surface of the worktable, was a three-sided wooden frame painted black with a plywood backing, waiting, I guessed, for the final piece to be attached. Sitting nearby were plastic containers of screws, nails, and bolts.

I switched off the light and was ready to head upstairs when I heard a creak, the sound of a floorboard bearing weight. I felt my heart suddenly stop, then thud so hard I almost felt sick. I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I stood and listened. Nothing.

I shook off the concern, telling myself I was still skittish.
Don’t be a silly-billy
, I chided myself,
you know very well that floorboards frequently make settling noises long after they’re trodden upon, so what you’re hearing is the aftereffect of your own presence
. I smiled, wondering if I’d gained a pound or two.

At the top of the stairs, halfway in the kitchen, I heard a soft scroop as the front door latch clicked home. Shocked, I recoiled and almost tumbled down the steps. Then I froze again. Someone was in the house.