This Bitter Treasure: a romantic thriller (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 3)

by S. W. Hubbard

  “Your sons are your only back-up? No grandparents who can cover for you?”

  “My mother’s a drunk. I wouldn’t trust her with a gerbil. My middle son’s good with Kenny. He’s going to stay home with him today.” Darlene sighs. “I just wish JJ didn’t have to miss his classes. He goes to Palmer Community College.”

  I turn my head so Darlene doesn’t see the disapproval that I’m sure is written across my face. I think of all the times my father came home from teaching at Rutgers railing against parents who expected their college student kids to cut classes to run family errands. But clearly Darlene is between a rock and a hard place. What should she sacrifice—her older son’s education or her youngest son’s safety?

  “How many classes is he taking?” I keep making small talk as I catalog the books: Faulkner, O’Connor, Plath.

  “Only three. We can’t afford more. He works forty hours a week as a busboy at the Palmer Heights Country Club too. Pay’s pretty good over there. Helps me keep the electricity on.” She shifts her wide body in the chair. “I wish Rob, my oldest, would take a job there. But he’s got big plans, that one. Just like his dad. All talk.”

  My God, I wish I were done in this room! Between the smell and the effort to find a topic of conversation that’s neither creepy nor tragic, my head is about to split. I climb down and move the ladder. Only one more section of shelves to go.

  Darlene observes me through narrowed eyes. “Guess you’re not planning on hauling all these off to the Goodwill, huh?” She picks up a frayed paperback copy of a Janet Evanovich mystery from the bedside table. “That’s where I got this. They have a pretty good selection over there, four for a dollar.”

  “That’s a good deal,” I agree.

  I feel Darlene’s eyes on me even though I’m facing the shelves. It’s like she’s trying to peer right into my brain. “These books you take somewhere special?”

  “There are dealers…” I trail off noncommittally.

  “Dealers. Yeah. I guess there’s dealers for everything. Everything anybody wants, there’s gotta be someone willing to deal.”

  Chapter 7

  I’m sitting in the parking lot of the Palmyrton train station awaiting the arrival of the 6:03 from Manhattan. Jill is coming home from NYU to attend Amber Pileggi’s visitation. She’s begged me to go with her. I can hear her voice echoing in my head. “Pu-le-e-e-eze, Audrey. It’ll be so awful. Funeral homes scare me. But I have to go.”

  Funeral homes don’t thrill me either. But I miss Jill so much, I’m willing to accompany her on this depressing obligation. Then we can go out to dinner and she’ll spend the night at my place before taking the train back to the city in the morning. It will be the first evening Sean and I have spent apart in weeks.

  There’s a whistle and the NJ Transit Midtown Express barrels into the station. Hordes of business-suited commuters pour out of the double-decker cars. Gray suit after gray suit, men and women both. And then I see a flash of chartreuse and magenta. There she is!

  “Jill!” I wave to flag her over to my car. She picks up speed like a crazed greyhound, scarves and beads and tote bags streaming and jangling as she tears across the parking lot. She smacks into my arms and we clutch each other like reunited war refugees. It’s only been six weeks, but our separation feels like a lifetime.

  Jill’s tears are always close to the surface, but even my eyes well up as we hug. “I miss you SO much,” she sobs.

  “I miss you too, honey.”

  She straightens up. “How’s Adrienne doing?”

  I’ve anticipated this question and I made up my mind that I would be very cautious in complaining about Adrienne to Jill. The last thing I want is for Jill to feel bad about her decision to leave AMT and go to grad school. “She’s okay. Getting the hang of things.”

  Jill’s mascara smeared eyes narrow and she peers at me shrewdly. “You’re not getting along.”

  The girl could get a job with the CIA interrogating terrorists. “Let’s wait until dinner and I’ll tell you all about it. What time does the viewing start?”

  “It’s already started. We’d better go straight there before I lose my nerve.”

  I hand her a tissue. “Fix your makeup. You should have known better than to wear mascara to a funeral.”

  On the drive to the O’Malley Funeral Home, Jill fills me in on Amber Pileggi’s short, sad life. “We met on the first day of kindergarten. She was obsessed with horses and books and so was I. We played My Little Pony and Little House on the Prairie, two little weirdoes in our own little world. And we stayed that way, right up until freshman year. Then Amber got a boyfriend and left me behind.” Jill sighs. “I don’t blame her. I would have done the same thing if someone as hot as Anthony Lanza noticed me.”

  “She dumped you for a guy? I hate girls like that.”

  “She didn’t, not really.” Jill stares out the window and falls silent. “By sophomore year, I was hanging out with the drama club geeks. I tried to get her to work on a play, but she wouldn’t. We never had a fight or anything. We would still talk sometimes. But you know how high school is. Everyone in their own clique. But we would still hang out sometimes, just us two, until….”

  “What?”

  “Senior year we went to the mall together. Amber was driving and texting with her boyfriend at the same time. She drifted out of her lane and we got in a pretty bad accident. Amber broke her ankle in a couple places and I got whiplash. She didn’t want to tell the cops she had been texting, so she just said she and I were talking and she got distracted. After that, we really drifted apart.”

  Jill sighs. “Then I went off to college, and she stayed here at went to Palmer Community. Then I came back, but with all my problems I couldn’t, I didn’t….”

  I reach for her hand and give it a squeeze while I drive. Jill’s decision to drop out of the Rhode Island School of Design has always troubled her. The official story is that when her aunt, who had helped to raise her, died unexpectedly, Jill fell apart and came home and finished her degree at Ramapo State. But over the time she worked for me, I’ve figured out some other pieces to the story. Becoming an artist was Jill’s mother’s dream, not Jill’s. Jill has an artistic eye, for sure, but I don’t think she was ever very passionate about art, and she felt out of her element at RISD. But Jill has always been a good student, and dropping out and transferring to a less prestigious school must have felt like a failure to her. That’s why I was so pleased when she chose to go to NYU to study psychiatric social work. This was totally her choice. She’s found her true calling.

  “When I was finishing up at Ramapo, I ran into Amber in town. She had dropped out of Palmer Community, and was working at the Burger King on Route 10. She looked like crap—really skinny and pale. But she was still the same sweet Amber, ya know? We went out just the two of us and it was like middle school all over again. We laughed and got silly. But as the evening went on, she got—like—strange, restless. She kept checking her phone and I got annoyed. Finally I said I’d better go and she just waved with one hand while she was texting with the other. And that was the last time I saw her.”

  Jill sniffs. “I should have known—”

  “No, you shouldn’t have known anything. Rudeness is not a sign that a friend is having a crisis.”

  Jill stops talking. We drive three blocks in silence.

  The funeral home parking lot is packed and we squeeze the car into the last available space. Jill clutches my hand as we walk toward the entrance. There’s a line to get in that stretches out the door. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  I give her a reassuring squeeze. “I got you covered.” But I’m nervous myself. Every funeral I’ve ever been to has been for an old person. Every funeral except one: Cal’s. But my ex-boyfriend’s death seems like it happened in another eon. Life really does go on. That’s what’s so tragic.

  We join the end of the long line. Ahead of us, people are murmuring. When they realize they don’t know us, the woman
in the group nudges her husband and they all fall silent. I have to suspect they’re discussing Amber’s manner of death.

  We shuffle forward, the day’s heat radiating up from the sidewalk. What small talk can we make waiting to pay our respects to a family who’s lost a twenty-four-year-old daughter, a girl who should be just starting off on her life’s adventure?

  The door opens and a group of mourners streams out, one older woman weeping loudly as two men support her. Jill tightens her grip on my arm. I hope this won’t be us in a half-hour.

  Finally, with a frigid blast of chrysanthemum-scented air, we step into the lobby. I’ve never been in this particular funeral home, but it feels horribly familiar nevertheless. Why do they all smell the same? Why do they all sound preternaturally quiet? Why do they all have a dark-suited man with an expression of smarmy concern to direct the mourners?

  We step in a room so filled with massive floral arrangements that at first I can’t even spot the coffin. When I do see it, my worst fears are realized—it’s open. There’s a kneeler in front of it, and the line is pushing us forward making it awkward to avoid the coffin-side prayer.

  “I can’t do this,” Jill stage-whispers. “I can’t look at her dead bod-e-e-e.”

  “If you want to talk to her parents on the other side, I don’t think we have a choice.”

  As the line inches forward, I see people repeating the same ritual: sink to their knees, bow their heads, make the sign of the cross, and rise with a sad shake of their heads. Then they hug a middle-aged couple and a teenage boy, obviously Amber’s parents and brother. The room is packed with clusters of mourners who linger even after paying their respects. There are two priests and many elderly and middle-aged people. But oddly, there is no one Amber’s age. Jill is the youngest person in the room.

  Now there is just one couple ahead of us. Jill can see Amber’s body, her dark hair spread across the white satin pillow, her slender hands artfully arranged around a rosary.

  “Oh my God, Audrey, she looks so, so—”

  Dead. Amber looks horribly dead. Her dry lips are caked with an awful shade of lipstick no young woman would ever wear. Her face is sunken and waxy, devoid even of the relaxed expression of sleep. “Don’t look,” I whisper. “You don’t want to remember her like this.”

  Now it’s our turn and I nudge Jill forward and lower myself next to her on the kneeler. “Shut your eyes and count to ten,” I murmur under my breath. But when I glance sideways, Jill’s eyes are wide open and two big tears slip silently down her cheeks as she gazes at her friend. She sways slightly and I haul her up, worried she might collapse on me.

  But Jill finds some inner reserve of strength as we approach Mr. and Mrs. Pileggi. “I’m so sorry,” Jill says as she hugs the father. He nods woodenly, numb from being embraced for perhaps the two hundredth time. He doesn’t seem to know who Jill is.

  As I shake the father’s hand, Jill moves on to Amber’s mother.

  “Oh my God, Mrs. P—I can’t believe this!” Jill extends her arms, waiting for the hug.

  What she gets instead is a sharp slap across the cheek.

  Chapter 8

  Jill reels backward, too stunned even to cry out.

  Amber’s mother advances and I pull Jill into a protective embrace. What the hell is going on?

  “You! How dare you come here?” Mrs. Pileggi shrieks.

  Her husband looks as perplexed as I feel. Several other relatives step forward to hold Mrs. P. back. She writhes in their grasp.

  “You did this! If it weren’t for you, this would never have happened to my baby.”

  “Me? Mrs. P, It’s Jill. Jill, Amber’s high school friend. Don’t you remember?”

  That explains it—the mother must have Jill confused with one of Amber’s druggie friends. That’s why there are no young people here. All her fellow addicts stayed away.

  But Mrs. Pileggi doesn’t back down. “I know who you are. Before you caused Amber to crash her car, she was fine. After the accident, she was in so much pain she had to take the pain pills. And then, and then, the needle—” Mrs. Pileggi’s wailing becomes incoherent, but in between gasping sobs, we all hear one word clearly.

  Heroin.

  “Heroin?” Jill begins to tremble in my arms. Her cheek still bears the bright red handprint of her friend’s mother. “No…no, I loved Amber. I would have helped her.”

  “You started this,” Mrs. Pileggi screams. “You helped kill her.”

  “That’s enough.” I make eye contact with one of the relatives holding Mrs. Pileggi’s arm. “She’s hysterical. Jill was Amber’s childhood friend. She hasn’t even seen her for over a year. We’re going to leave now.”

  The crowd parts, and I pull a weeping Jill out of the room.

  Dinner in a restaurant is clearly out of the question. I drive straight to my condo, order Thai to be delivered, and pour us each a big glass of Pinot.

  Jill has stopped crying and is gazing blankly into space. “I had no idea she was using heroin. I thought it was just pills. Shooting up! Oh my Ga-a-wd, Audrey—how could she? How could she stick a needle in her arm? She was afraid to get a flu shot!”

  “They start out snorting, then move up to the needle.”

  Jill looks at me like I’ve suddenly acquired a knowledge of nuclear fusion.

  “Hey, I’m engaged to a cop. I’ve picked up a few tidbits.”

  Jill wraps her fingers around her wine glass. “I can’t believe Amber was a junkie, like the sad people I see on the subway late at night. I know the news is full of stories about suburban heroin addicts, but it didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem like it could be happening in my hometown.”

  I put my arm around her shoulder. “I think it happens everywhere, Jill.”

  “And her mother blames me.” Jill’s eyes well up again and her lip trembles.

  “Don’t go there, Jill. Amber’s mother is irrational because of her grief. She needs to blame someone so she doesn’t blame herself.”

  “No, Audrey—she’s right. I helped Amber along this path.”

  I put my hand under Jill’s chin and force her to look at me. “If you’re going to be a social worker, you can’t keep taking everyone’s burdens onto your shoulders. You didn’t cause her to crash the car.”

  Jill slumps beside me and keeps talking. It’s as if she didn’t hear a word I said.

  “No, I didn’t cause the accident. But afterwards, we each saw a different doctor. My doctor gave me muscle relaxers and Percocet for my whiplash. I took the pills for two days, but I hated the way they made me feel…like a jellyfish floating in the ocean. So I went to my mom’s acupuncturist and to the physical therapist and every day I felt better and better. Then I told Amber I wasn’t taking my pills anymore.“

  Jill takes a deep shuddering breath. She burrows her head into my shoulder and her voice comes out muffled and choked. “She asked me to give her my leftover pills. She said her ankle still hurt really bad and her doctor wouldn’t take her seriously, wouldn’t renew her prescription. I believed her. I gave her my pills, Audrey. I knew it was wrong, but I felt sorry for her. And I didn’t want to come off like Miss Upright Citizen. I gave them to her. I helped her get hooked.”

  Jill peeks up to see how I’m reacting. Honestly, if she’d done this recently, I’d be horrified. But it happened when she was seventeen years old, an insecure teenager who couldn’t stand up to a demanding friend. “Oh, Jill! Of course, you shouldn’t have done that, but you were just a kid. And a few leftover pain pills didn’t instantly turn Amber into an addict.”

  Jill curls into a ball. “Mrs. Pileggi accused me in front of all those people at the funeral home. Now they all think I must be some kind of drug dealer. And in a way, they’re right.”

  I pull her into a hug. Now is not the time to break the news that life sucks and then you die. “You don’t even know those people. You don’t owe them an explanation.”

  Jill struggles up off the couch and wanders into the kitchen in se
arch of a paper towel to mop up her tears. “I still can’t get my head around her shooting up heroin. The accident was nearly five years ago. I wonder how long she was using pills before she moved up?”

  “What Amber did is very common. Sean says that’s why we have a heroin epidemic in New Jersey. Doctors write prescriptions for pain meds at the drop of a hat. By the time the doctor refuses to renew the prescription anymore, the person is hooked and starts buying pills from dealers. Eventually, the addict turns to heroin—buying black market pills gets too expensive. Apparently, heroin is really cheap right now.”

  Jill looks like Ethel when she spots a squirrel. “Is Sean investigating Amber’s death? Do you know for sure that’s what happened to her?”

  Uh-oh. I shouldn’t have talked so glibly about Sean. Now Jill will expect me to get her inside information. “I know the cops are investigating her death. But Sean will never talk about specific cases he’s working on. What I said before about the heroin epidemic—that’s general stuff that’s come up when we’re talking or out with his friends.”

  Jill’s eyes open wide. “How far into her past will they look? Maybe she told someone she got those pills from me. Am I going to get in trouble?” She grabs my phone from the coffee table and holds it out to me. “Call Sean and ask him what the cops have found out.”

  I don’t take the phone. Sean is at a Yankee game with his buddies tonight. They’ve been riding him about how much time he spends with me, and I’m not eager to horn in. He deserves to have a night off from thinking about work and worrying about my problems. “He’s out with his friends, Jill. There’s nothing he can do tonight.”