Miss Julia Inherits a Mess (19 page)

With that done, I shooed them all out, locked the door myself, then headed for home. Actually, I didn't want to linger and look around too much for fear of discovering that something else was missing. I mean, who would know? There were still boxes in the guest room closet that I'd not even looked into, and who knew what was under the beds.

I had to go home, report the theft to Mr. Sitton, and try to come to terms with the fact that I had failed to safeguard Mattie's possessions.

“After thinking about it,” I said to Etta Mae as we were finishing supper that evening, “which is what I've done all afternoon, I've come to one clear conclusion: it was not a random theft.”

“Uh-huh,” Etta Mae said thoughtfully as she buttered another of Lillian's yeast rolls. “It sure sounds like somebody knew what he wanted, where it was, and where he could sell it. And how to get in, too.”

“That's the thing that gets to me,” I said. “I hate to admit it but I never thought of checking the windows in the sunroom. I mean, we couldn't even get to them. That huge chest-on-chest was right up against the French doors. Why, Etta Mae, the thing is so tall that the pediment almost touches the ceiling. We couldn't move it today until we'd taken the drawers out, and even then it wasn't easy. Whoever came in gouged a huge scratch in Mattie's floor just by pushing on it from behind. It's a wonder it didn't topple over.”

I shivered at the thought of the damage that would've been done if the chest had fallen over—it would've stretched more than halfway across the room, smashing everything in its path. On the other hand, though, the noise would've awakened other tenants, and Mr. Wheeler would have come running.

I sighed. What could've happened didn't happen, so you deal with what did.

Etta Mae bit into the buttered roll, a look of bliss sweeping across her face. “Think he'll come back? The thief, I mean.”

“I don't see how in the world he could get in, if he does. Everything is locked up tight—he'd have to smash in a window if he tried to get in. And all the tenants know about it, so they'll be listening out. No, I'm hoping that if he sells the cellarette for even a fraction of its worth, he'll be satisfied.” I stopped, then got up from the table. “Hold on a minute, Etta Mae. I want you to look at something.”

Returning to the table, I held out the scrap of paper with the puzzling scribble on it. “See what you make of this.”

She studied it for several minutes, then said, “Hm-m, eleven numbers and figures. Could I have something to write with? And a phone book and a phone with a dial.”

When I handed them to her, she began jotting down figures. “Okay, look at this. See, this first one here could be a one. I'll add some dashes, then the next one is a seven, then an
R,
which on the dial is also a seven—you know, where
PQRS
is. And if we take these two little squiggles as ones, too, and this two to the third power as plain old twenty-three, we come up with 1-771-012-3710. Looks like a phone number to me.”

“Etta Mae, you're a genius!”

“Not hardly,” she said, but she grinned, pleased with herself. “Now let's look up that area code code and see where the number goes to.”

But the area code pages in the phone book brought us to a screeching halt—there was no 771 area code, either nationally or internationally.

“I'm trying it anyway,” I said, punching in the numbers on my flip-top cell phone. All I got was a high-pitched screech on the line and a voice telling me that my call couldn't be completed. “No use, Etta Mae. It's not a long-distance number.”

“Sure looks like one,” she said, not at all discouraged. “But let me think about it for a while. It may be in code—you know, where one thing stands for something else. If it is, we'd have to have the key that was used. It could take forever to break the code without it. We could try, though.”

“Goodness, Etta Mae, how do you know so much about codes?”

“Oh,” she said, smiling, “I used to fiddle around with secret codes and messages when I was a little girl. I remember a few we could try, but I'd like to think about it first.”

I wanted her to think about it, as well as think about everything else, so I sat down at the table and opened up. I told her about the problems I was having with Mattie's will, the difficulty of turning furniture into cash, the church expecting a handout, the sudden but questionable appearance of a possible heir to Mattie's estate, who, “didn't want anything,” and the theft of a valuable antique from a supposedly locked room. Then I had to explain what a cellarette was.

“Lord, Etta Mae,” I concluded, “with the proceeds from that one little item I could've started on the bequests in the will. Or, if I were so inclined—which I'm not—I could've made it possible for the church to put a down payment on a new air-conditioning unit. And now here we are with a coded message that's driving me crazy. The whole mess is giving me a headache.”

“You need to stop worrying about it,” Etta Mae said, sounding like Lillian, as she put her napkin on the table. “I bet the sheriff will track that thief down and you'll get that little liquor chest back. And I'll bet that code's a simple one, and we'll figure it out. So put it all on the back burner for now, and let's go watch
Antiques
Roadshow
.”

_______

The show that night didn't capture my full attention—too many Civil War rifles, old violins, Art Deco bracelets, garishly colored posters, and only one piece of furniture, which was an elaborately carved Victorian coatrack that I wouldn't have had on a silver platter.

Etta Mae, however, was entranced, sitting forward in her chair to watch intently. It was, she told me, one of her educational programs through which she learned things she didn't know. “History stuff, you know,” she said.

So I sat back and thought about the phone conversation I'd had with Mr. Sitton as soon as I'd gotten home that afternoon. Deeply dreading to admit I'd failed in my executor's job by allowing a theft, I'd told him what had happened. Surprisingly, he'd taken it in stride, consoling me by saying that he should've been more concerned about obituary readers.

“They keep up with obituaries the same way they keep up with wedding announcements—knowing that houses will be empty during a ceremony. It's a shame, but it is what it is.

“Now, Mrs. Murdoch,” he went on, “I've spoken with the sheriff in the county where this Andrew F. Cobb grew up—in Kentucky, as you'll recall—and he put me in touch with his own father, who'd been the sheriff for many years before him. The old man remembered Andrew well, apparently a troubled boy—nothing truly egregious, but he spent a few years in and out of jail for breaking and entering and joyriding when he was a young man. And, I'm sorry to say, a short prison term when a judge had had enough of him.”

Aha!
I thought, then murmured, “Breaking and entering means he knows how it's done.”

“Well, I wouldn't jump to any conclusions. As far as both sheriffs know, Cobb's been on the up-and-up ever since. Learned his lesson, so to speak. And I've been unable to find him having had any other run-ins with the law, and, believe me, I've looked.

“Now, Mrs. Murdoch, the following consists of pure gossip from an old man, but it does throw some light on Mrs. Freeman's relationship with her family, and may, therefore, help us evaluate Mr. Cobb.” Mr. Sitton took a deep breath and proceeded to give me a summary of the old sheriff's memories. “It seems that there was a wealthy family of Cobbs years ago—came from Virginia after the Civil War and bought up a lot of land. Did real well for a good while, but by the time we're talking about, the Cobbs were down to one son and one daughter who inherited the family estate. It was divided between them. But there were problems because each of them felt that the other had gotten the best and the
most of what had been left. So there was a fairly deep rift between brother and sister early on, and, consequently, between their families. The sister, along the way, married a Freeman, who was, from all accounts, a decent enough sort who tried to heal the rift, or at least calm the waters. He didn't succeed.

“Bear with me now, because it gets complicated. The sister, now Mrs. Freeman, had a son, Thomas Freeman. And over the years, the brother, name of Cobb, who was a hard, implacable man, had a couple of sons and, late in life, one daughter. That, as it seems, would've been our Mattie. Well, when she was still a young girl, she ran off with Thomas Freeman, her aunt's son, and married him.”

“Oh, my,” I said, as I recalled the photograph of a soldier named Tommy that I had seen among Mattie's papers. “She married her cousin?”

“Her
first
cousin, which in Kentucky is a criminal offense. Well, the Cobbs were outraged. They went after their daughter and brought her home, started annulment proceedings, and pressed charges against the Freeman boy, which sent him to prison.”

“That's horrible,” I said, although I didn't know how I would've handled such a misalliance.

“Others thought so, too. The Freeman boy was given early release on the condition that he join the army. He was killed in either Korea or Vietnam—the sheriff wasn't sure which, and I've not had time to pin it down. After that, the rift was even deeper, and to make matters worse, both families were in financial difficulties—land sold off to pay taxes, crop failures, some fatal accidents, long illnesses, and a lot of bad decisions had taken their toll. The Freeman house burned down, and the Cobbs died out. The sheriff said it was like both families were snakebit. They went from the top of the heap down to next to nothing—all in a couple of generations or so. And now here we have Andrew F. Cobb, who it seems would be the son or maybe the grandson of one of Mattie's brothers.”

“And therefore,” I concluded, “Mattie's legitimate heir. I will gladly turn everything over to him. When do you want to do it?”

“Not so fast, Mrs. Murdoch. Andrew F. Cobb will have to
formally challenge the will, and he continues to tell me that he does not intend to do that. He says he likes the freedom of the road and doesn't want to be tied down with material goods.” From Mr. Sitton's tone, I could tell that he had little understanding of such a disinterested attitude toward material goods.

Neither had I. Material goods had eased my life considerably, and, like Mr. Sitton, I had no desire to live without them. Especially on the road in a trailer while wearing a hippie headband.

_______

“Man, that's hard to believe.” Etta Mae broke into my reverie as she peered closely at the television set. “I can't believe that a
poster,
of all things, with an airplane on it would be worth that much. I mean, who would want it?”

“Well, some people collect them, I suppose. But I agree, I wouldn't want it. It wouldn't go with my decor.”

“Mine, either,” Etta Mae said. “It would be too big to hang in my single-wide, for one thing. I'd sell it and buy something prettier than that thing. Or pay some bills.”

We laughed together, then I said, “Etta Mae, you must do as you please while you're here—go to bed and get up when you want and whatever. I want you to make yourself at home. I'm just so happy to have you here. And so is Sam. When I talked to him earlier, he said again that he was glad you were here to keep me out of trouble.”

Etta Mae cut her dark eyes at me, an impish look on her face. “I have a feeling . . .” The ringing of the phone interrupted her and I got up to answer it.

“Mrs. Murdoch?” an unfamiliar feminine voice asked. “It's Isabelle Wickham, and I'm calling for the church. Reverend Ledbetter has given several of us lists of members to call, and you're on mine.”

“Oh?” I said, vaguely placing the woman as a new member—one of those who'd hit the ground running. She volunteered for everything.

“Yes, the pastor wants to spread the word that Sunday services are being changed from the regular eleven o'clock hour to eight o'clock.”

“In the
morning
?”

“Well, it's cooler then,” she informed me. “And as you may know, the church is without air-conditioning. It's been suggested that we put folding chairs on the basketball court in the Family Life Center because it has its own unit. But, of course, we'd have to refinish that floor when we move back to the sanctuary, and the pastor looks on that as a needless expenditure.”

“Thank you for calling,” I said, slightly amused, “although I've been in church at eleven o'clock every Sunday for so long that I may show up then anyway.”

She was not amused. “That would be too bad. I don't know much about it, but it seems that for some strange reason, one of our members is preventing us from buying a new unit.”

I gasped. It was all I could do because I was rendered speechless. Stammering my thanks for the information, I hung up and stood by the phone until I was able to return to my chair.