Finders Keepers

by Catherine Palmer

  “Sweetheart, you can’t put just anybody you want on your family tree. You write down the names of people who are related to you. Look at Grace’s old Bible.” She picked up the worn book from the table nearby. She had intended to spend some time reading it, but a shipment of sachets had come in. And then there had been a box of candles to price. And then … there was always something, wasn’t there?

  Opening the book, she turned through the crinkly, gold-edged pages, hoping the family tree could help her explain the concept to Nick. Near the middle, she located the slick paper on which marriage records and family milestones had been recorded. Though the writing on the chart was too small to read easily, a glance told her that most of it had been left blank.

  “You dropped the letter.” Drawing his mother’s attention from the chart, the child hopped down from the swing and scooped up a note that had fallen from the Bible. He handed it to Elizabeth. “What does it say?”

  A ripple ran down her spine as she studied Grace Chalmers’s spidery handwriting. “To the finder of my Bible” the note read on the outside. She unfolded the single sheet and read her friend’s message:

  You are holding my Bible, and by that I know I must have died some time ago, for I never let this precious book out of my sight. I write this late in the night when I cannot sleep. My thoughts are restless as I ponder the future. Please give this Bible to my dear friend Elizabeth Hayes. I want her to have it.

  Elizabeth’s eyes misted over as Nick elbowed her. “What does it say, Mommy? Is it a letter from Grace? I thought she was dead.”

  “She is dead, honey. She wrote this before she died.”

  Elizabeth returned to the letter.

  I think of my home and the many years I have lived within these walls. Oh, it is only an earthly treasure. But I do hope it will live on to bless others as it has blessed me. I pray that Zachary The letter stopped. Elizabeth turned it over, searching for more. Then she flipped through the pages of the Bible again. A pressed rose fell out. A crocheted bookmark. Nothing more.

  “‘I pray that Zachary,’” she whispered. “‘I pray that Zachary’ … what?”

  “Who’s Zachary?” Nick asked, leaning against her shoulder to peer at the letter.

  “He’s the man with the green eyes.”

  “My new daddy.” Nick nodded. “You better take him that letter. Grace wanted to give it to him.”

  “Zachary Chalmers is not your new daddy, Nick.”

  “Not yet, but you better take him that letter because Grace loved him a lot.”

  “Why do you say that, sweetheart?”

  “Because,” Nick said, jumping down from the swing. “She must have loved him, because she was praying for him.”

  THREE

  “Heading over to the Nifty Cafe?” Pearlene asked as Elizabeth passed the ladies’ dress shop next door to Finders Keepers. “They’ve got strawberry pie on the menu today. Phil says Alma makes strawberry pie better than his mama did, and that’s saying something.”

  Elizabeth tucked Grace’s Bible more firmly in her arms and waited for the River Street light to change. For two days she had prayed about the situation with Chalmers House. Grace’s letter had been filled with such longing. Clearly, Elizabeth’s dear friend had loved the home and had hoped to make it a lasting gift to her nephew. What choice was there but to take the matter into her own hands? But the last person she wanted to know her business was Pearlene Fox. One word to her nosy husband, and the news would be all over town. Elizabeth Hayes paid a visit to that new fellow in town, Zachary Chalmers. Now what do you suppose that was all about?

  “I like the Nifty’s chicken salad,” she told Pearlene. “Ez and Alma have the perfect recipe.”

  “But full of fat, let me tell you. I never saw so much mayonnaise, and Alma uses the high cholesterol kind. Phil says he won’t touch the stuff. Says Ez leaves the mayonnaise jar out on the counter three or four hours at a time. You never know what kind of disease you’re going to pick up from warm mayonnaise. You could flat die.”

  The light changed, and Elizabeth breathed a prayer of thanksgiving. Ambleside had only a few restaurants—five or six, depending on the time of year—and she couldn’t bear the thought of striking Nifty Cafe chicken salad from her list of favorite foods. Giving Pearlene a wave, she crossed to the Corner Market. Through the plate-glass windows, she could see Boompah at the cash register, busy with his lunchtime traffic. Ruby McCann the librarian was apparently displeased with a cantaloupe, and a line had formed behind her.

  Crossing Walnut Street, Elizabeth passed the hardware store, the Nifty, and the drugstore. The old men who passed each morning smoking pipes and chatting over the local news on a bench outside Redee-Quick Drugs had already gone on their way. Their beloved bench was empty now, but the minute school let out, it would be filled by “the kids,” who never failed to leave their soda cans and gum wrappers on the sidewalk.

  The sign for John Sawyer & Sons, Attorneys swung gently beneath the green-striped awning that shaded the sidewalk. Sawyer-the-lawyer, as he was known, had had his sign painted before his sons informed him they intended to become a doctor and an insurance salesman. Nevertheless, the wording remained, and Elizabeth liked to imagine old Mr. Sawyer pretending one of his sons sat in the office above his.

  Of course, it wasn’t a Sawyer who sat there, she thought as she pushed open the tall glass front door. It was a Chalmers.

  Elizabeth gripped the Bible, as if it might somehow give her strength.

  “May I help you, Liz?” John Sawyer’s secretary had moved to Ambleside from Jefferson City after a divorce. Joanne’s eyes wore a sadness Elizabeth never failed to note. “Mr. Sawyer just left to go to lunch. You can wait, but it might be a while.”

  “No, actually, I, uh, I came to visit with Mr. Chalmers. The, uh, the new architect?” She gestured vaguely at the stairwell. “Isn’t he renting some space upstairs?”

  “Oh, sure, but you can’t get to his office this way. You have to go through that outside door, then down the hall, turn left, up a flight, and then—shall I just take you there?”

  “No, it’s OK. I’ll find my way.”

  “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

  With that fateful pronouncement, she went back to her dictation as Elizabeth left the office and started through the maze-like back of the building. Finders Keepers was a warren of little rooms and narrow hallways, too. In the old days, she supposed, the buildings around Ambleside’s main square had housed not only shops but storage rooms and the homes of the families who owned them … just as her antiques shop did today. It pleased her that she and Nick had found the conveniently located building and had been able to afford the rent.

  Darkness shrouded the interior as she climbed the narrow stairs and worked her way through the honeycomb of hallways. Cobwebs hung from door frames. Dust coated wood-paneled walls. Floorboards creaked under threadbare brown carpet. At the end of a long hall she spotted a thin line of light under a closed door. Her heart in her throat, she approached and knocked.

  Inside she could hear papers shuffling, a chair rolling across the floor, the squeak of metal springs, footsteps. The door swung open.

  “Hello, Mr. Chalmers, I—”

  “Elizabeth Hayes!” A broad smile lit up eyes that were most definitely green. “Hey, welcome to my office. This is a nice surprise.”

  Disarmed, she took in a large room, a tilted drafting table, walls hung with blueprints, and a tall case filled with books. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “Nah, I was just winding up the sketch for a little alcove area in a state government building I’m designing in Jeff City. If you’ll give me a second …”

  “Sure. Don’t hurry.” Feeling out of place and wishing she were anywhere but here, Elizabeth stepped into the office and sat down on a cardboard box near the door. She studied her adversary’s broad shoulders bent over his drafting table. The last time they had spoken, she all but threw him out of her shop. And yet the sig
ht of her had brought a dazzling smile to his face and a sparkle to his eyes.

  Nick had been stuck on the man’s dark hair and green eyes ever since he decided he needed a daddy. The awareness of loss in her son’s short life always twisted Elizabeth’s heartstrings. His birth mother had placed him in an orphanage the day he was born. His birth father was unknown, and no record existed of siblings or other relatives in Romania.

  Elizabeth’s own family was limited. Her parents had been killed in a car accident when she was a child. She had been raised by her widowed grandmother, who had died some years ago. In reality, there was almost no one for Nick to put on his family tree. She had moved mountains to give her son a good life, and she would do anything to ensure that he felt fulfilled. Anything but marry just to give Nick a father.

  “There,” Zachary announced, straightening. “Now they can take their coffee breaks away from the bustle of the office area.” He swung around on his rolling metal chair and gave her another of those heart-stopping smiles. “So, what can I do for you today?”

  “You can listen to me. I have some things I need to tell you.”

  “Great.” He stood. “But I listen a lot better on a full stomach. How about lunch? I hear the Nifty Cafe is the place to eat.”

  “Well …” She glanced out the single window in the office. Its view was a brick wall. “Really, I won’t keep you long.”

  “But I’d like to take you to lunch. Come on.”

  Before she could think up another reason to turn him down, he was heading out the door. Mortified, Elizabeth tucked the Bible under her arm and followed. She didn’t want the whole town of Ambleside to see her eating with this man. What would they think? The last thing she needed was to put the local gossips in high gear.

  “Mr. Chalmers …”

  “Zachary,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Please listen to me. I really just need to tell you about a note I found in your aunt’s Bible. Actually, it’s a letter, and she mentions you and me and the mansion.”

  “You and me?” He paused at the top of the stairs. Elizabeth barely stopped in time to keep from bumping into him. In the dim light, she could just make out his profile and the silhouette of his shoulders. “Why would my aunt write about us?”

  “Not us together,” she clarified. “She wrote that she wanted me to have the Bible, and she said she hoped Chalmers House would be your legacy. She mentioned you by name …”

  “Let me see that.” He took the Bible and flipped through the pages until he found the folded note. “Is this it?”

  “Yes, but you’ll need better light to read it.”

  “I’ll read it at lunch.”

  “I’m not going to lunch with you, Mr. Chalmers.” She lifted her chin. “I came here to tell you again how important it is that Chalmers House remain standing. You can’t tear it down. It’s not just this town that needs the mansion. It’s you. Grace wanted you to have her house, not an empty lot.”

  “Does the letter say that?”

  “Sort of. It talks about how much she loves the house.”

  “Is it a will?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just a note she wrote one night when she couldn’t sleep. But it expresses her feelings.”

  “If it’s not a legal will, it won’t stand up in court.”

  “I’m not taking it to court. Give me that!” She grabbed the note, but he refused to turn it loose. “Give me Grace’s letter. I found it.”

  “You’re going to use it against me.”

  “I just hoped to make you understand what Grace really wanted.”

  “What she wanted was for me to have the property and for everybody else to keep their nose out of my business.”

  “You? Why you? You never came to see her. You never knew her or loved her. Why would she leave you her house?” She tugged on the note, but he wouldn’t let go. “I’ll tell you why. Because she thought you would save it. She knew you were an architect, and she trusted you to see the value in the building for its architectural merits.”

  “She wrote that in the note?”

  “No, but …”

  “Elizabeth, what happens to the mansion is not your affair. It’s not your responsibility, either. You rent a store next door to Chalmers House, that’s all. If I want to put my offices on that lot—”

  “It’s not a lot. It’s a house. A home!”

  “A pile of bricks.” He jerked the note from her fingers and stuffed it into his pocket. “Look, I made a decision to move to this town for reasons you don’t need to know. Now that I’m here, I’m going to follow through on my goals. I can’t entertain clients in this maze of dusty old hallways and force them to look out on my view of a brick wall. Whether you like it or not, I’m going to take down Chalmers House and build my office complex.”

  “Take down? Tear down, you mean.”

  “And I’ll do my best not to interfere with your customers in the process.”

  “This isn’t about my customers. This is about Ambleside!”

  “I think this is about you and my aunt. I’m touched that you loved her. And I’m trying to understand your obsession with her house …”

  “Obsession?”

  “Fascination. Whatever.”

  “Do one thing for me, would you? Get a plat of this town, study the layout, and try to imagine the square without the mansion. Then take a walk through the old house and try to see it for what it is. It’s a gem of nineteenth-century architecture. It’s a tribute to an age gone by. Then walk through the grounds …”

  “You asked me to do one thing, and you listed at least three. Look, Elizabeth, I’m taking a vacation in a couple of weeks, and I’ll use some of that time to think over what you’ve been saying. In the meantime, you’d better start getting used to the idea of a sign next door that reads Zachary Chalmers: American Institute of Architects, because that’s who’s going to be your neighbor.”

  “Let me buy the mansion then. I can make a large enough down payment that you could buy a lot on the edge of town and build whatever you want.”

  “Have you always been this persistent?”

  She leaned against the wall and let out a breath. “Yes.”

  “Good. I like that. Now, let’s go to lunch.”

  “You’re the one who’s stubborn,” she said as he headed down the stairs. “And I’m not having lunch with you. I’m going back to my shop and open up for the afternoon.”

  “Fine, be that way.” He gave her yet another of those grins as he pushed open the door and stepped out into the sunlight. “You’ll regret it.”

  “I regret everything about you. And I want Grace’s letter back!”

  “See ya around, Elizabeth,” he called as the door banged shut behind him.

  Too bad about Elizabeth Hayes, Zachary thought as he detailed the brickwork on the front view of his design for the state office complex. She was a pretty woman, obviously intelligent, and certainly passionate. But she was about to drive him straight up the wall. Her visit to his office the other day had thrown him for a loop.

  In moving to Ambleside, he had expected all kinds of obstacles—zoning laws, client confusion, and all the inconveniences of small-town living. But he hadn’t anticipated a blue-eyed spitfire who was bound and determined to keep him from his objectives.

  He couldn’t leave that mansion standing. It would cost a small fortune to rehab it. And then what? He’d have an expensive old house that nobody would want. Who’d buy the thing from him? Maybe someone could use it for a bed-and-breakfast. But Ambleside wasn’t exactly a tourist resort. The building itself was too cumbersome for a modern family’s home. No doubt anyone who could afford the place would prefer a large wooded lot and a top-of-the-line executive home to a downtown Victorian mansion.

  As for Elizabeth’s request to purchase the property herself, he questioned whether she could even come close to the price he would need to ask for the place. Even if she could buy it, she could hardly rehab it on the income she ma
de from Finders Keepers. The image of a single woman running an antiques shop didn’t exactly shout extravagant wealth. Unless she had a trust fund or something.

  “Knock, knock, knock!” someone called outside his door. “Is anybody inside there?”

  Zachary wheeled around, listening to the sounds of furtive conversation and muffled giggling. “Uh … I’m in here. Would you like to come in?”

  “Yes,” the voice called. “Is it OK?”

  “Just go in!” someone else said. “Go in, go in!”

  The door flew open to reveal two small children—a girl with bright red hair done up in two pigtails, and a boy Zachary recognized as Elizabeth Hayes’s adopted son. As one, they stepped into his office, glanced shyly at each other, and began to giggle again.

  “Well, this is an unexpected pleasure,” he said, coming to his feet. “May I help you, sir and madam?”

  As the girl dissolved into uncontrolled laughter, the boy squared his little shoulders and marched forward.

  “Magunnery and I, Nick Hayes, have come to visit you,” he announced.

  “I can see that. Is Magunnery going to be all right?”

  Nick looked over his shoulder and then rolled his eyes. “Her mommy doesn’t know where she is. We’re not supposed to leave the backyard, and we might get into trouble. When Magunnery does something naughty, she always laughs.”

  “I see.” He fought a grin. “I’d hate for the two of you to get into trouble, so maybe you’d better tell me why you came, and then you can head back home.”

  “I came because I want you to be my daddy.”

  Zachary blinked. “Your daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aha. Well.”

  “Would that be OK?”

  “Umm, what does your mom think about the idea?”

  “She says you’re a stranger. But I met you already once, and besides, you have green eyes and black hair.”

  Zachary tried to make sense of the trend of the conversation, but he wasn’t having a lot of luck. “Look, maybe you should start by telling me why you want me to be your daddy.”