Rock Bottom (Imogene Museum Mystery #1) (12 page)

“
Whoa, whoa, honey.” I grabbed her under the arms and lifted her up — pot and all — and set her gently on the bed. “We’ll get you out. It’s okay.”

The little girl
’s lower lip trembled.

“
Paulina!” The graphic designer mom rushed over. She glanced at me, apologetic. “She’s mine.”

Paulina succumbed to deep, hiccupy bawling.

I realized the room behind me was silent and turned. Twenty-three pairs of saucer eyes stared back from frightened little faces. The faster I could diffuse the situation, the less traumatic for everyone. 

“
Everything will be alright,” I announced loudly over Paulina’s wails.

I leaned toward the mother.
“Let’s get her coat off. Too much padding.”

I tugged on the coat
’s hem which was wedged inside the pot’s rim while the mother pulled on the sleeves, raising Paulina’s arms over her head. With a soft phffft, the coat came free. Paulina calmed to jerky sniffing.

“
Okay, now Paulina, I want you to lie on your side and touch your toes. Everyone can do this, right? Like Simon Says.” I looked over my shoulder and caught Sally’s eye. Did kids still play that game?

Sally nodded.
“That’s right, class. Simon says, ‘Touch your toes.’”

A rustle filled the room as twenty-three children moved, most dangling their fingers in the vicinity of their toes. A couple hopped on one foot. One fell over.

Paulina slowly stretched, and I hovered. As the little body lengthened and thinned, I got a firm hold on the pot.

The mother rubbed Paulina
’s back. “Keep stretching, munchkin.”

I felt the pot slip and eased it off.

“Simon says, “Clap your hands three times.’” Sally beamed.

I sat on the bed beside Paulina and wrapped an arm around her.
“Not too bad, was it?”

Red-rimmed eyes, like those of a sad bloodhound, turned up to me. Paulina
’s dark brown hair was frizzed and half pulled out of her two side braids. She looked so woebegone that I almost chuckled. What could I say to comfort her? Instead, I hugged the little girl. Paulina hugged back, wiping her nose on my shoulder.

“
I’m Lauren, by the way,” the mother said. “I didn’t introduce myself properly on Sunday. And, uh, thank you. I’m sorry about this.”

“
No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I want the exhibits to be hands-on, but I didn’t anticipate, well —” I shook my head. “And I should have.”

“
No matter how prepared you are, kids will always do the one thing you didn’t expect.” Lauren smiled. “It’s a good thing they’re flexible.” She took Paulina’s hand, and the girl slid off the bed.

“
Everyone line up,” Sally called. “And what do you say to Ms. Morehouse?”

The kids chimed a syncopated
‘thank you’ chorus as they shuffled out of the room. Sally waved good-bye over their heads.

I turned the Dutch windmill chamber pot in my hands, scowling. This was the pot that coordinated with Betty
’s pitcher and wash basin. I was certain I had placed this pot in the display to complete the grouping, and the chamber pot on the floor had been a basic enamelware model — something a child, or any visitor for that matter, could not break. It was gone.

I walked to the display case where Betty
’s pieces were. Another chamber pot had been moved to take the spot where the Dutch windmill pot had been. I quickly scanned the descriptions and found four pots out of place. It seemed they’d been shuffled to fill in gaps, to cover for the missing Dutch windmill pot. And that pot had replaced the enamelware one on the floor.

Just to make sure, I stepped back and counted
— yes, 71 chamber pots, one pitcher, one wash basin and one plastic potty chair. A chamber pot really was missing.

I knelt and peered under the bed
— nothing but clean floorboards. Who would steal a chamber pot?

Frowning, I removed a child
’s chamber pot from a display case and set it on the floor beside the bed for the afternoon school tours. Then, I returned all the other misplaced pots to their rightful places.

Downstairs, Lindsay was refilling the postcard carousel.

“Did you —” I wrinkled my nose. “I know this is going to sound silly, but did you rearrange the chamber pot display?”

Lindsay frowned.
“No. I never touch the displays. I’m too afraid I’ll mess something up.”

“
Did anything look out of place to you this morning? How about the cash drawer — was the amount right?”

“
Yeah.” Lindsay set a stack of postcards on the counter. “What’s wrong?”

“
I’m trying to figure out how someone got into the building overnight and all the way up to that bedroom, rearranged the chamber pots and took one, then left without setting off the alarm.”

“
I think it would be kind of easy since the motion sensors have been turned off. But who’d want to take a chamber pot?”

“
Why are the motion sensors off?”

“
Oh, didn’t you know? I noticed when I first started working here. The motion sensors don’t have red blinking lights, so I asked Rupert. He said as soon as they were installed spiders started setting them off all the time — like several times a night. So he had the alarm company come back and disable them. He figured their presence would deter burglars, that people wouldn’t know they didn’t actually work.”

I groaned.

I climbed the stairs to my office and phoned Sheriff Marge.

Sheriff Marge sighed.
“Honestly, Meredith. With everything that’s going on right now, I’m not going to worry about a missing chamber pot.”

“
But someone must have broken in.”

“
Anything else missing? Damage?”

“
Not that I noticed.”

“
Well, until there is —” Papers shuffled in the background. “Get a new alarm system.” Sheriff Marge hung up.

I frowned at Sheriff Marge
’s abruptness. I thought about calling her back but didn’t want to antagonize her. Maybe they’d received more tips about Greg’s potential location. But, Sheriff Marge would have said if that was the case.

I riffled through the stacks of paper on my desk but couldn
’t settle down to any kind of meaningful work. It felt like everything I knew and counted on was crumbling. Greg missing was the big, gaping hole. Then there were other things nibbling around the edges — Clyde’s unwelcome impertinence, the absent pot, having a child get stuck in an exhibit. I clung to my chair for fear it might roll out from under me too.

CHAPTER
11

The afternoon tour for first
- and second-graders was downright dull compared to the morning tour, for which I was grateful. I led the kids through the farming implements room, the Victorian ball gown display and the scanty Native American artifact exhibit while Lindsay plied the patient bus driver with scorched coffee from the hot pot in the staff kitchen.

We watched the kids trundle back to the bus. It pulled away belching clouds of black diesel smoke.

“Do you feel a little creepy, about the chamber pots being rearranged?” Lindsay asked.

“
Yeah. Would you mind taking whatever cash there is in the drawer home with you tonight?”

“
No problem. Is the missing chamber pot valuable?”

“
No. Probably the least valuable one of all. So whoever took it either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. But I’m wondering if it somehow got misplaced, if it’s somewhere else in the museum.”

“
I hope I’m not interrupting anything, ladies. Thought I’d come see the famous Imogene.”

We spun around. Clyde Elroy stood between a bookshelf and the rack of solar system mobiles.

He looked Lindsay up and down. “I haven’t had the pleasure of knowing you, yet,” he said, smiling in a way that looked exactly like a leer.

My blood pressure jumped so fast I thought my eyeballs might pop out.
“When you said Greg couldn’t possibly be dating Angie Marshall, what did you mean?” I blurted before Lindsay could be polite and introduce herself.

He looked startled.
“Uh, well — it’s just that Angie’s a very adventurous girl.”

“
Obviously. She’s on a dig in Turkey.”

“
I mean, uh, adventurous in other ways. Perhaps experimental is a better word. Greg, you know, seems like a traditionalist.”

A series of neurons rapid-fired in my brain, and I balled my hands into fists.
“You mean you had an affair with her.”

Lindsay gaped, wide-eyed.

Clyde shuffled his feet. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We’re adults.”

“
In a teacher-student relationship. That’s predatory.”

He blanched and let out a humorless, nervous laugh.
“If anyone’s predatory, it’s Angie. It’s well known among my peers that she makes the rounds. However, she’s also very good at research.”

“
Get out of my museum,” I said through clenched teeth. “You disgusting pissant.” I lunged.

Clyde
stumbled backwards and retreated a little too fast for dignity. I regretted the front doors were too heavy to hit him on the backside on his way out.

I was breathing like I
’d just won a hundred-meter dash.

“
Wow, your vocabulary really kicks up a notch when you’re mad.” Lindsay was trying not to laugh. “Was that Greg’s adviser?” 

I grunted. I closed my eyes and focused on slowing my heartbeat.
“Did I really just do that?”

Lindsay wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“Yes. I think the mama bear in you came out because you’re worried sick about Greg.” She shivered. “Besides, that guy deserved it. What a creep.” A frown flitted across her face. “What’s a pissant, anyway?”

o0o

I went to my office and googled how long someone could live without food and water. It had rained enough lately that Greg might have a clean water supply, but he was skinny and it had been dipping below freezing at night — two strikes against his survival time. If he’d been injured, that probably counted like three or four or more strikes.

Water was the key. Without it, he had three to five days. With water, but without food, he had up to three weeks, depending on his condition. It was already Day Five.

I needed to tackle something physical, something hard. The residual adrenaline from the encounter with Clyde still buzzed through my veins.

I went to the basement where there is always plenty to do. Starting in the farthest, dimmest corner, I dragged furniture under a forty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. If the item was broken beyond repair, I kept on dragging it
— over to the door leading to the exterior ramp and daylight. If it looked repairable but no longer of museum quality, I put it in another pile for Mac’s review. Maybe he would want to get into the second-hand furniture business. I was pretty sure he didn’t charge me enough for the display cases, so maybe the hand-me-downs could help compensate for that.

I found a rodent cage complete with spinning wheel and empty water bottle, a punching bag that weighed a ton and leaked something that was a cross between sawdust and sand, half of a ping-pong table and a stack of grimy acoustic ceiling tiles. I could have been unearthing a 1960s rec room
— only the wet bar and early RCA color television were missing.

A headache ballooned inside my skull. I propped open the basement door and sucked in the fresh air.

I carried a broken chair out to the container-sized garbage dumpster. Plastic rustling sounds came from inside. Raccoons. Big ones. During the day?

I put a foot on the knee-high ledge that ran around the dumpster and pulled myself up. Peering over the rim, I recognized the pocketed posterior of the olive green coveralls.

“Ford? What are you doing?”

He straightened and grinned at me. From the smell of things, he
’d broken open a few bags in his rummaging. The dumpster was so large it only got exchanged for an empty one every other month, so the contents of the bags at the bottom were ripe.

“
Did you lose something?”

“
Lookin’ for Greg. Figured this was a place you could fall into and not get back out of. Specially if you got knocked on the head or somethin’.”

I wanted to cry.
“Did you find him?”

“
Nope.”

“
Do you need a hand getting out of there?”

“
Nope.” Ford grabbed the edge and launched himself up and over, landing on his feet beside me in a surprisingly agile move.

“
You do that a lot?”

“
Nope.”

“
I’m cleaning junk out of the basement. Will you help me?”

“
Yep.”

After a few loads had been removed from the basement and deposited in the dumpster, I asked,
“How are you doing, Ford?”

“
Not breakin’ a sweat.”

“
I mean overall, in life. Are you happy?”

“
Got nothin’ to complain about.”

“
How long have you lived here?”

“
My whole life.”

“
What’s the earliest thing you remember?”

“
A little orange kitten. Used to dangle string for it.”

“
Awww. Cute.”

“
Then a coyote ate it.”

“
Oh. Are you sure?”

“
Yep.”

I tried again, but Ford was talked out.

“I gotta git back to work,” he said and walked off, leaving me with a formerly-turquoise Naugahyde recliner that wouldn’t hold an upright position.

Fortunately, the chair was on casters. I worked the angles with sheer muscle power until I got it through the door and wheeled up the ramp. I left it beside the dumpster hoping next time the driver came to pick up the dumpster he
’d also figure out a way to take the recumbent eyesore.

I heaved the punching bag onto the recliner. It looked like a giant sausage taking a nap and could easily be mistaken for a modern art installation. If its proximity to the dumpster had symbolic meaning, that was best left up to the viewer. I returned to the museum without looking back.

o0o

I checked the chamber pot exhibit first thing Friday morning. The basic enamelware model was back, on the floor by the bed. The child-sized pot that had been on the floor was in a display case, but in the wrong spot. Again,
other pots were rearranged, but in a different order from yesterday.

I counted
— 71 pots. After matching cards with pots, I discovered the stoneware model with lid was missing. This prank was getting out of hand. How many times would it have to happen before Sheriff Marge would take it seriously? Still, I didn’t want to bother her.

I left a note in the gift shop asking Lindsay to call me when she arrived. I hoped we could pin the prank on a mischievous visitor. Perhaps the same person had visited both Wednesday and yesterday
— Lindsay would remember. But if it wasn’t a repeat visitor, then someone was breaking in.

It was a distraction I didn
’t need. Day Six. I chafed in frustration. Why couldn’t I find a clue, even a tiny one — something to get me started on Greg’s trail?

The hours passed in mind-numbing monotony. Lindsay confirmed there had been no repeat visitors in the past few days, not even people whom she was aware of knowing each other who might pass on the prank responsibility, relay baton-style.

By closing time, I’d formulated a plan to catch the perpetrator. Not as good as finding Greg, but it was something. And I could do it without bothering Sheriff Marge. The high school football team was at an away game, so it wasn’t like I had anything else to do except sit in my recliner and talk to a dog.

I went home for a quick grilled cheese sandwich, which paled in comparison to Dennis
’s masterpiece, and changed into my darkest warm clothes. The museum’s thermostat was set to a chilly fifty-eight degrees during off hours. I filled a thermos with coffee, apologized to Tuppence for leaving her behind and drove back to the museum.

Anyone familiar with the museum would know I was inside if they saw my truck parked nearby, so I nosed into a spot along the riverbank next to the marina
’s boardwalk.

The Burger Basket and Bait Shoppe floated empty and forlorn. Rusty padlocked chains looped through the handles on the outdoor bait coolers. A few covered sailboats and cruisers bobbed in their slips, but most recreational boaters had towed their craft to winter storage.

A tug droned on the water, pushing four loaded barges. In the last yellow sunset glow that channeled up the gorge between cobalt hills, I squinted and made out the word ‘Tidewater’ — a luxury model, as tugboats went, bristling with antennas. Perfect white with dark green stripes that looked black in the dusk. Nary a spot of rust. Definitely not Pete’s clunker.

I admired Pete for having the guts to work as an independent contractor and make the powerful transport companies share the lanes. Slow and steady. Steady and slow. He sure was taking his time about asking me out.

Or maybe he had absolutely no interest, and here I was hyperventilating at the faintest hint of attention. At my age, my hormones ought to be dormant if not flat-out deceased. Phooey.