by Sam Cheever
I wish I could say telling him off made me feel better. But it didn’t. The truth was that Uncle Dev, for all his faults, was my last connection to the two people I’d loved more than anything in the world.
And pushing him away was like ripping another piece of their memory out by the roots.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Fortunately, the rain had stopped by the time we pulled up to Fulle-Proof Auctions. The gates were chained and padlocked, a circumstance I hadn’t considered when we left the house. I stared at the lock for a long moment, silently kicking myself for not remembering about the gate. “Do you know where there’s a key?” Hal asked me.
“No. My parents always kept a key with them but I have no idea where it ended up after they died. I haven’t...” I sighed, suddenly overcome with weariness and guilt. “This is the first time I’ve been here since.”
“Who’s been running the business?” Hal asked gently.
“Nobody. It’s been on hold. For a while after the funeral people continued to contact me. But when I didn’t return any of their calls they eventually stopped calling.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he walked back to the SUV and, for a beat, I thought he was going to climb inside and drive back to the house.
But instead, he opened the hatch in the back and reached inside, extracting something I couldn’t see.
My eyes widened when I saw the bolt cutters in his hands. He shrugged. “They come in handy more often than you’d think.”
I held up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”
It took only a second for Hal to clip the shank of the old padlock. I was suddenly not surprised the Monet had gone missing from the warehouse. My parents’ idea of security was lacking, despite the eight-foot-tall chain link fence surrounding the yard.
We climbed back into the SUV and Hal drove to the office building. It was a small, brick ranch that had once been a farm house. The business owned a hundred acres all around the home and in its heyday, it had used almost every square foot of that space for something.
I used the office key I’d retrieved from my father’s desk at home and opened the door. Hal pulled his gun, motioning for me to wait outside. A moment later he reappeared in the doorway. “It’s clear.”
The outer office smelled musty, unused. I flicked the light switch and was instantly transported back several years, to the happy times I’d spent playing and doing homework in that very room.
My memories took me beyond the thick layer of dust and the feeling of quick abandonment overlaying the space. Betty’s desk was covered in folders, some open and some stacked neatly on one corner. A tea mug sat on her ugly green blotter, the white interior stained by years of use. A thin, pink cardigan still hung on the back of her chair and I suddenly knew there’d be a pair of knit slippers with hard soles beneath the desk. Betty’s family might have been one of the calls I didn’t take in the days after the funeral. They would probably like to get hold of her personal effects.
I added that task to my growing list of to dos.
“Where would the personnel records be?” Hal asked, yanking me from my reverie.
I looked toward my mother’s office door. “My mom kept them in a folder in her desk drawer.”
He waited for me to lead the way. I dug deep for the strength to finally meet my fear head on and opened her door.
I’d expected the sweet scent of violets to assail me when I walked into the tiny office. There might have been a tinge of it beneath the sour scent of being too long closed up, but it was as if she’d been expunged from the room.
There were no personal effects in the office, except for one photo of me as a baby on her desk and one of all three of us in a rowboat on Lake Everett when I was about five. I stood in front of that picture, feeling a smile tugging on my lips as I remembered the day.
It had been sunny and so hot, although it was still very early in the day when the man on the dock snapped our picture.
My gaze caught on two small boxes stacked next to the desk. I figured those contained my mother’s things. Apparently, Betty had started the process of cleaning out the office after they’d died. And before she’d followed them into the ether herself.
“Here it is. Michael Blount. Does that name ring a bell?”
I turned away from my memories and nodded. “Yes. That’s the auctioneer. As I remember he was pretty old the last time I saw him so he’s probably retired by now.”
Hal jotted the information onto a small slip of paper and handed it to me. I shoved it into the pocket of my jeans.
I looked around the room, feeling surprisingly removed from everything there. Hal pulled the file drawer open on her desk and finger-walked through the files.
“What are you looking for?”
“A client list. Maybe that will tell us where the painting came from.”
“I’ll check my dad’s office. I think he kept the inventory sheets there.”
Hal continued to search through my mom’s things as I left the room. My father’s office was next door to mom’s, in what would have been a bedroom before the house was turned into an office. It was slightly smaller than my mother’s but, where she had a view out over the grass at the front, his looked out on the lot. A much less pleasant but more practical view for overseeing the business.
Unlike my mother’s office, my dad’s office still held faint traces of him. It smelled of the cigars he used to love and the bookshelves between the room’s two windows were covered in personal things. There were ratty old baseball caps, soccer trophies from my high school days, and lots of other things that invited me to linger and remember. But it wasn’t the time for memories. I would come back, I decided. It was long past time the ghosts of that past were laid to rest.
I moved over to the metal file cabinet and pulled open the first drawer, going very still with shock as I looked inside. I pulled the other three drawers open and stood back, icy fingers of fear gliding up my spine. “Hal!”
He came into the room a moment later, the personnel file and a couple of others clutched in one hand. “Did you find something?”
I jerked my chin toward the cabinet. “That’s where Dad kept the inventory files.”
He walked over and looked down into the empty drawers, then slowly lifted his gaze to mine.
I DON’T KNOW IF MY PI got any sleep that night. I was relieved when we got home to see that Pru Frect was gone. But later, as I lay in my bed with my mind racing, unable to sleep, I recognized that I was being selfish.
Without her help, Hal was on his own protecting me. He’d positioned himself on the couch downstairs with his gun near at hand. And I was pretty sure he would have loved some backup so he could get at least a couple of hours of sleep.
I’d given him Caphy, so at least he’d have some advance warning if someone tried to get into the house.
At three AM I gave up trying to sleep and crawled out of bed. I crept downstairs and into the living room, finding Hal sitting upright, his eyes closed and his gun clutched in his hand.
Caphy’s head jerked up and her tail slapped against the floor a couple of times when she saw me.
Hal’s eyes snapped open.
“It’s just me,” I told him quietly. “I couldn’t sleep.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Okay.”
Guilt ate at me. “Can I get you anything?”
“No. I’m good.”
I sat down next to him on the couch, curling up in one corner. Caphy jumped up and circled between us, then finally landed with her head on my leg, sighing expansively before dropping back to sleep.
“I’m sorry about before.”
He shrugged. “I get it. This has opened a lot of wounds.”
“Yeah.”
We sat in silence for a minute and then I said. “I haven’t spoken to Uncle Dev for almost two years. I can’t believe he’s been in hiding almost all that time.”
“Clearly somebody thinks he knows something about the painting.”
> “Do you think he does?”
“I think he knows something he’s not telling us. He’s protecting somebody.”
“Or something.” I chewed on my bottom lip.
“Do you think he’s the one who emptied the file cabinet in your dad’s office?”
I thought about that for a moment and then shrugged. “If he’s mixed up in the theft of that painting then he’s the obvious choice. Somebody didn’t want us to find out who arranged for that painting to be here.”
“I agree that seems to be the obvious conclusion.”
I looked up. “But why take all the files?”
“They couldn’t risk that you or somebody, maybe Dev, would figure out which file was missing.”
“That makes sense.” I sighed, my fingers digging through Caphy’s fur in a soothing rhythm.
Hal didn’t speak for a long moment and I glanced his way. His eyes were closed and his body had gone soft.
He was asleep.
I smiled. I’d let him sleep the last couple of hours until morning. Caphy and I would keep watch for a while.
A long, whistling snore filled the space between us and I chuckled as Caphy rolled onto her back, all four sticks poking the air above her thick body, and let loose another snore. Scratch that. I would keep watch. My two fearless watchdogs were currently too busy sawing logs.
But I was determined not to waste the time. I put it to good use considering what we’d learned so far.
We’d found Michael Blount’s contact info in the personnel folder and planned to contact him in the morning. We knew where Uncle Dev was, and I wasn’t done pestering him for answers. We knew who the mysterious body in the chipper was. I blinked, having a face/palm moment when I remembered we hadn’t called Arno to tell him what we’d learned.
Unfortunately, if we did that, I’d have to tell my friend the cop where we’d gotten the information.
I sighed. Did I owe it to Dev to keep his secret? I just wasn’t sure. I decided to pay him another visit in the hanger the next day, after our visit to Heather Masterson in the morning. Frowning at the thought, I briefly considered bowing out of the visit. Hal and I had so much to do. We could contact the artist by phone to ask her if she’d seen or heard anything on the morning of the murder.
But then I remembered how excited Hal had seemed at the prospect of meeting the artist and I decided against cancelling. He’d given up enough for me. He deserved a little fun.
Hal’s Pru-fect FBI friend was hopefully digging around on her end trying to find out if anybody knew who’d sent the painting to Fulle-Proof Auctions.
And we still had Buck Mitzner to consider. We hadn’t made it out to his house because of the attack on Country Road 57. Was it possible, as Hal suspected, that Reverend Smythe was lying to protect Buck? I didn’t believe it. But I recognized that I couldn’t be entirely unbiased with the people I’d known for years, so I was inclined to trust his judgment on that.
But how did I figure out what was true and what wasn’t. I had a sudden inspiration and filed it away to examine later. Maybe there was more than one way to skin a cat.
Gawd! I hated that expression.
Through the Caphy-smudged glass of the big window across the room, the sky was turning a stunning combination of orange and gold. The ball of light rose beyond the distant line of trees, giving it a magical aura. Morning was coming. And with it would come a new set of challenges. All of them seemingly impossible.
The thought made me tired.
And at some point, as the sun crept ever higher in the sky, I closed my eyes and slept.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lis was staying at her mother’s house while she was in town. The tiny brick home was where she’d grown up and it looked almost exactly as I remembered it. Lis’ dad had died a few years earlier of a heart attack, and her mother had been living alone in the small house ever since.
Mrs. Villa had been totally devoted to Lis and her husband when we were growing up and I wasn’t sure how she’d be managing on her own.
She was standing on the tiny porch when we drove up, a newspaper in one hand. Mrs. Villa smiled widely when she saw me, a pink flush staining her sculpted cheeks. “Joey! I’m so glad you and Lis connected. I told her I’d run into you at Mitzner’s and she was anxious to see you again.”
I couldn’t help smiling back as the other woman swept me up into a hug. Like her daughter, Mrs. Villa was very tall for a woman. She towered over me as she scooped me into her long, toned arms and held me tight. “You look gorgeous as always,” she told me as she held me at arm’s length.
“So do you,” I said. “I see where Lis gets her stunning looks.” It was the truth. The slightly overweight, shy and unassuming woman I remembered had transformed into someone I barely recognized.
Mrs. Villa snorted out a laugh. “Stop it. You don’t have to lie. I already love you.”
Her clear blue gaze slid to Hal and widened slightly. “Hello again. I didn’t get a chance to ask you before...are you Jo Jo’s special friend?”
My cheeks heated and warning bells clanged in my brain. Fortunately, poor Hal was saved from responding by Lis’ arrival.
“Mom, you make him sound like an invisible playmate.” Lis pecked her mom on the cheek. “I’ll be back in time for yoga. Don’t start without me.”
Mrs. Villa laughed. “Not a chance. You kids have fun.”
As her mother retreated back into the house, Lis and I slapped a high five. “Just in the nick of time,” Lis said laughing.
“We were heading for the condom question fast,” I agreed.
Hal opened the back door for Lis. “Condom question?”
“Oh yeah,” Lis said, sliding inside the SUV. “You don’t know what you just escaped.”
“Mrs. Villa was like a very sweet flower on the wallpaper when we were growing up.” I told him. “You barely noticed she was there, except for this warm, wonderful essence that kind of infused the space around her.”
Lis nodded. “There was only one thing she never failed to insert herself into...”
We both grimaced. “Poor choice of words,” Lis admitted. “Mom anointed herself the sex destroyer for me and all my friends.”
I laughed. “It’s true. If a boy and a girl even walked within ten feet of each other, Lis’ mom would demand to know what their intentions were as pertains to the physical act.”
Hal’s disbelieving look turned to a chuckle. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“We’re not!” Lis insisted.
“Besides, that would be against the rules,” I joked. “We’d need a condom for that.”
Lis and I dissolved into laughter that lasted until we were on the road heading toward Heather Masterson’s home in the ridges above the park.
It felt good to revisit a happy time with my best friend. I’d missed having Lis around.
When we finally wound down, Hal asked, “So, where am I going?”
“Oh, sorry.” Lis said. “Take the next right turn. Park Road winds around the outside of the state park. She apparently lives deep in the woods.”
Lis wasn’t kidding. As Hal wound his way along the picturesque road, it felt like we’d entered an enchanted wood. “This is gorgeous and slightly terrifying,” I told my friends.
“It is,” Lis agreed. She looked at the business card with directions crafted in tiny, manically neat print on the back. “5408 is the number.”
“There it is.” I pointed to a mailbox that was attached to what looked like a fifteen-foot totem pole with the numbers worked into the animals along its length.
“Wow, that’s really something,” Hal said.
“Very artsy fartsy,” Lis said, giving me a grin.
Heather’s driveway seemed like it was two miles long. It was little more than a narrow gravel ribbon through the dense tree cover, winding and gradually climbing until the house finally came into view.
It was a long, low clapboard house painted pale gray with bright blue shutters and a
deep front porch.
Roughhewn critters scampered around the front “yard”, which was really only a small area with no trees. The ground was covered in rough mulch instead of grass and dotted with whimsical carvings of animals and an assortment of bird baths and feeders.
The whole effect was charming and kind of crowded.
“This is fun,” I told my friends.
“Very woodsy.” Lis’ pretty face was folded into a frown.
I was guessing she was worried about the portrait she was about to sit for so I decided to tweak her a little. “Maybe she’ll paint you as a wood nymph. You could pose naked hugging one of those little wooden bears.”
Lis glared at me. “Har, Jo Jo. I have one word for you...splinters.”
I winced. “Ergh. Scratch the naked part.”
“You could wear a giant condom,” Hal offered.
The front door swung open and a magical sprite stood looking at us, her small face a study in delight. The tiny creature clapped miniature, paint-covered fingers and danced happily on two petite and very bare feet. “You’re here! Oh, I’m so happy.” When she danced, the sparkly concoction she was draped in swung and danced with her, sparkling in the ray of sunshine that somehow found its way through all the trees to beam down on just the spot where she was standing.
“Come in, come in!” She clapped her hands again. “And you brought friends too. How wonderful!”
I shoved Lis forward, murmuring into her ear. “You go first. I think there might be a fashion model sized oven in there.”
“Beware if she tries to fatten you up,” Hal whispered.
Lis snorted out a laugh and followed the artist into the Hansel and Gretel house.
“Do you think she planned that sunlight thing?” I asked Hal.
He turned and looked up at an almost perfectly round open area in the trees, the golden ball of the sun filling it like a yolk in an egg ring. “Nah.” He winked at me. “She’s a forest sprite. It’s magic.”
“Come in, come in!” The sprite called out.
We stepped through the door and into the Twilight Zone.
The wood floor was covered with dozens of cotton rugs in varying sizes, shapes and colors. The wood itself was unfinished and looked to be of all different kinds and widths, with widely varying grain patterns. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the mix, it looked like a mashup of whatever the builder could lay his hands on.
