by Dale Mayer
She checked the time, realizing it was eight o’clock. “It seems like it was just eight o’clock in the morning,” she muttered.
She had an hour before the library closed, according to the internet. Each day of the week seemed to have a different closing time. Why couldn’t it be the same every day? She grabbed her keys and drove away, noticing the news reporters were finally gone from her yard. She laughed out loud. “They don’t even know I’m the one who found Celeste’s body.”
Still chuckling to herself, she went around the few corners to get to the library. She parked and walked inside.
The librarian, Linda Linket, raised her head and frowned. “What are you here for?”
Doreen’s heart sank. “Hey, don’t I even get a smile and hello?” she said with a light sense of humor.
Linda pulled her glasses down on her nose so she could peer over the top of them. “It depends what you’re here for.”
“Books?” she snapped. She walked past Linda and headed to the popular fiction section. Just for show, she picked up two that looked interesting, looked at the back cover blurbs, and put one back, keeping one. Then she headed to the microfiche machine.
She moved back in time to twenty years ago. She should have asked Mack for an exact date, but he hadn’t been happy to give her anything. She flicked through as many of the articles as she could, but it was frustrating because she couldn’t find anything with the Gunderson name. But then maybe the grandson’s last name wasn’t Gunderson.
“What are you looking for?” Linda asked from behind her.
“Information on Fen Gunderson’s missing grandson,” she said.
Linda’s eyebrows slowly rose toward her hairline, and she shrugged.
“Fen’s doing me a favor. I just wondered if I could do something to ease the pain of his loss.”
Linda looked even more surprised, shrugging again.
Still feeling like she had to explain herself, Doreen said, “I’m trying to figure out something I can do. I know that’s a huge loss in his life, and maybe I can do something to memorialize his grandson’s life or to give Fen closure. That might make him happier or give him some peace,” she said lamely.
It was a good idea. She didn’t know if other people had done it or not. She imagined his friends and family had, way back when it originally happened. But, of course, she had not been part of his life then. He wouldn’t even know she had heard about the case.
“You’re not far enough back,” Linda said, motioning at the microfiche. “It was closer to thirty years ago now. You’re also looking for Gunderson’s last name. But his daughter married Martin Shore. His little boy was Paul Shore.”
“Ah.” Doreen wrote it down on her notepad and thanked the woman. She went back to the microfiche, hoping Linda would leave. But she stood here, watching as Doreen searched through twenty-nine-year-old newspapers. Finally she found an article entitled “Missing Boy from Kelowna.” She read it through. “It’s so sad,” she whispered.
“It was devastating for all of us at the time. He was the second or third to go missing that year,” Linda said. “I knew Paul too. I was his piano teacher.”
She turned to face Linda, seeing the person she was inside for once and not just the guardian of the information Doreen was hunting down. “I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “I can’t imagine.”
Linda nodded stiffly. “Whatever you do, be sensitive. It’s a sore spot for many of us.” She turned on her heels and walked away.
Relieved the woman wasn’t looking over her shoulder anymore, Doreen quickly read through the article once more, writing down a few bits of information, but there was almost nothing said.
People reported seeing the boy get into a large beat-up white truck, belonging to the handyman, Henry Huberts, who disappeared at the same time. Foul play was suspected. The little boy never showed up again.
She just couldn’t imagine the heartache the parents and the whole family had gone through. Knowing that your little boy came home at a specific time every day, you looked outside, expecting him to arrive, or you worried.
She researched a little more, getting as much as she could, but there just didn’t appear to be anything more. It was like any normal day, except the little boy headed home from school and never made it. He just dropped off the face of the Earth. The end.
She shook her head. “No way to find closure with that,” she muttered. She stood with her notebook, looked at the piece of popular fiction she’d picked up, walked to the front, and checked it out.
Linda handed it back to Doreen and said, “I don’t know how, with all the stuff you seem to do as your hobbies, you have time to read these mystery books too.”
“They intrigue me,” she said honestly. “I love the puzzle part of them.” With that, she returned to her car.
Back home, she decided it was time to turn in for the night. So much was going on, and her mind was buzzing. She thought maybe the book in her hand might be the answer to getting a good night’s sleep. But, as soon as she got into bed, her mind buzzed harder. She groaned, got out bed, crept downstairs, not sure why she was creeping when it was her own house. Just to make her feel better, she stomped all the way back up.
As she got to the top, she swore she heard a door shut. She froze. Mugs came off the bed and barked like a madman at her feet. He raced downstairs.
Horrified, she followed him. “What’s the matter, Mugs?”
She walked to the fireplace and picked up the poker. She almost chuckled. It was just such a bad-movie response that it was hard to resist.
Mugs barked as he circled the living room, going into the kitchen and the dining room. Then he headed back toward the front door.
“Do you know anything at all?” she asked him. “Or are you seriously just barking for the sake of barking?”
He went to the large hutch and continued to bark.
The hutch had two large doors. She did not want to open either and find an intruder. But she didn’t have a whole lot of choice. With the poker in hand, she opened one side of the hutch. Mugs went up to it and sniffed.
Only shelving was inside. “See? It’s nothing,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”
But, just to be sure, she checked that the front and back doors of the house were locked. Taking Mack’s advice, she grabbed a chair and propped it under the front door, then repeated with another chair at the back door. She didn’t know if it would make any difference, but she felt better.
She marched back upstairs, determined not to let the old house spook her. Of course, now that she knew about the antiques, just leaving her house was hard enough. And to think about somebody getting in and knowing about the antiques terrified her. She wondered if she should contact a security company. But that would be an added expense. Yet, it would be foolhardy not to spend a few bucks a month on a service that protected thousands of dollars’ worth of expensive antiques. She’d look into that more later.
Meanwhile, would Fen Gunderson have told anyone? He might have seemed like a nice old man, but old guys loved to talk. Maybe he said something to somebody who said something to somebody else, and now, all of a sudden, her house had been targeted.
Chapter 13
Saturday morning…
Sleeping in fits and starts, she woke up the next morning at six thirty and groaned because, as far as her body was concerned, it was time to get up, whether she’d gotten enough sleep or not. Who woke at these hours? Especially on a Saturday? Her mind was foggy, and everything was hazy. Still, she got up, dressed, and went downstairs to put on some coffee. She looked out at the backyard. So many plants and bushes were thriving out there, even with the past neglect, that she didn’t know what to do. Because right now everything felt a bit too much.
She didn’t know where her normal love of life and excitement had gone. But she figured it went with the hours of sleep she was supposed to have but didn’t get.
She opened the back door and stepped onto the porch and stopped. She
stepped back inside, picked up her phone, and called Mack.
“Now what?” he asked. “Can’t a guy get any sleep?”
She winced as she realized what time it was. “I’m sorry,” she said hurriedly. “I propped up kitchen chairs at the two doors, like you told me to.” She took a hard gasping sob.
“Hey, easy, easy. What’s going on?” he asked in concern.
“Well, I just opened the back door and stepped out …”
“And …” he snapped when she hesitated.
“The chair I had propped up at the kitchen door was gone. Somebody had moved it. Somebody was inside my house when I put those damn things against the doors, and then they moved one away from the kitchen door to get out.”
“Stay right there. I’ll be there in ten.”
She stood with her hands trembling, holding the phone against her chest. The dog wandered around, completely unfazed by anything, or so it seemed. She wasn’t even sure what the heck she was supposed to do now. The coffee was about twenty feet away, and it seemed too damn far. But she badly needed a cup.
Her head spun. She had touched the doorknob, which was probably a stupid thing to do. Her breaths came hard and fast, and her panic alternated from rising to falling as she waited for Mack. She knew it would be at least ten minutes because he didn’t sound like he was out of bed yet.
But, true to his word, ten minutes later he rolled up the driveway. He hopped out and came through the front door. Or he would have, except she hadn’t unlocked it. He pounded on the door.
She cried out, “I’m here. I’m here. Give me a moment.” She moved the chair from under the handle and let him in.
He sighed. “Come here.” He opened his arms.
She fell into them and burrowed deep as his arms closed around her. She knew he could feel the trembling up and down her spine, but she had no way to hide it. It had been a truly scary moment to realize somebody had been in her house. And she had no idea who or for how long or even what they did while here.
“So let’s start at the beginning.” He led her to the kitchen, where he could see the rear kitchen door on his right and the front door on his left. “So you propped up a chair,” he pointed to the one near the front door, “and you did the same to the back door, correct?”
She pointed to the chair closest to the table. “I put that one under this door. And then I went to bed.”
“What made you do that?”
“I was in bed,” she said, “and I thought about getting my laptop. I came sneaking down, though I didn’t know why I was sneaking. I was really angry because I felt like I had to sneak. So I stomped my way back up the stairs. But, at the top, I thought I heard a noise, like a door shutting down here. And Mugs heard it too. He set up, caterwauling. So I came back down, grabbed the fire poker, and searched the house. We couldn’t find anything, but,” she said, frowning, walking over to the big hutch, “Mugs stood in front of this hutch and barked at it until I opened one of the doors to show him it was empty.”
“This one?” Mack asked. He stepped forward and threw open the double doors. Inside was just shelving on one side and hanging closet space on the other.
“Exactly,” she said. “That’s what I saw last night. Of course, I only opened half of it.” She stared at the other half that was for hangers. “I suppose he could have been hiding in there, but Mugs wasn’t barking then.”
“What did Mugs do then?”
“He watched as I put the chairs under the doors, then I went upstairs again,” she said. “I didn’t sleep well because I kept waking up. And I kept having, you know, horrible nightmares. I finally came down, put on coffee. I opened the back door and stepped out, and that’s when I realized a chair should have been there for me to move first.”
He nodded. “Okay, so you had a midnight visitor. You don’t know when they arrived. Were you home all last evening?”
She gave him a shamefaced look and shook her head. “You know? I was thinking, as soon as I left, that I shouldn’t have left, because what if Fen Gunderson had said something about the antiques in the house? What if this guy was coming in to check it out himself?”
“Considering the size of this furniture,” he said, looking around the living room, “there’s a good chance he was doing exactly that. Which means your house is now a major issue.”
“But he couldn’t have taken anything with him without some help and without waking me up,” she said. “I really didn’t sleep well.”
“Unless it was small,” he said.
She gasped and ran into the living room. She stopped in the middle with her hand against her chest. “Oh, thank God.”
“What?”
She pointed at the antique table in the corner. “That thing is supposed to be extremely valuable,” she said. “I don’t remember how much. So many figures are rolling around in my head, but I think Fen said it was like seven or eight thousand dollars.”
“What?”
She nodded. “I’m scared to even touch it. For all I know, a fingerprint decreases the value by two thousand dollars.”
At that, he chuckled. “Hardly. Nan has abused that little table for years. Plus fingerprints can be buffed away.”
“I know,” she said, “but now I’m really scared.”
“You took pictures yesterday, didn’t you?”
Relieved, she nodded and pulled up her phone. “I photographed a lot of stuff, some of the smaller things and all the bigger pieces too.”
“So let’s walk around and make sure the pictures still match everything.”
It took them an hour to check that everything was still here.
When Mack was satisfied, she put away her phone. “I should have thought to do that myself.”
“Two heads are better than one on something like this,” he said. “Besides, at least now you know he didn’t leave with anything. Probably because you heard him. So what that means is, we now must ensure everything is secured.”
“I need to get the appraisals done.”
“You won’t get that done quickly,” Mack said. “It’ll probably be a couple days. I don’t know that anybody is local.”
“Fen mentioned an auction house, a big one. But I don’t remember now. It sounded like a woman’s name.” She frowned. “But that can’t be right.”
“It’s Christie’s,” he said. “That’s a big one. And, if they’re interested in all this, you should do well by them.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” she said. “But I don’t know how much commission they take.”
“What you take away is still more than you had with all this just sitting here. At least they’ll bring in the right buyers.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” she said. “But what do we do to get them in now?” Just then her phone rang. “It’s Fen Gunderson,” she whispered. She answered it. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” he said. “I contacted the appraiser. He wants to call you this morning.”
“Okay, thank you,” she said. “By the way, did you mention to anybody that I had these antiques?”
“No,” he said. “You don’t stay in my business for long when you open your mouth. I didn’t mention it to anyone but the appraiser.”
“Not even in passing that you were coming to look at Nan’s antiques?”
“No, why?” His voice was loud.
“I had an intruder last night,” she said. “And I wondered if it was related to the antiques.”
He gasped. “Oh, my dear. Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. But now I’m really worried about the antiques. If word gets around a lot of money is tied up in these pieces, then I’m in trouble.”
“Yes. Yes, you are. You should contact a security company,” he said.
“I did think about that earlier. Okay. I can check that out while I wait for the appraiser to contact me. What was the name of the auction house you were talking about?”
“Christie’s. The appraiser will help put you in conta
ct with them. They’ll need to have photographs. Then they’ll probably send somebody out to verify the pictures. Also to see if any provenance can be found on any of these pieces.”
“Right, provenance,” she said. “That’s what you told me about yesterday. How, if I can prove the history of any of the furniture, then it’s worth a lot more.”
“Exactly, my dear. So talk to Nan.”
After he hung up, she turned to look at Mack. “He says he didn’t speak to anyone. The appraiser is supposed to call me this morning.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m not sure what to do about keeping you safe though. If Fen’s correct, and that much money is tied up in here …” He shook his head as he looked around the room. “This room is absolutely stuffed.”
“I know,” she said, “but the thing is, we didn’t really take note of this stuff when Nan lived here, like any little old lady’s house. But now that I’m here, and I’m looking at it all, and it doesn’t suit me, so it seems like it’s just old stuff.”
“And you’re cleaning out already,” he said. “You’ve already done one bedroom, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “And I’m working on the second one now.”
“I might know a couple guys who would be willing to do drive-bys past the place,” he said. “I don’t think I can get any budget money to have the cops do it.”
“The trouble is, the more people you mention it to, the quicker the news gets around. According to Nan, everybody already knows everything before the media does.”
He nodded. “That’s very true. We’ll see what we can do though. In the meantime, I have a murder to solve.”
“Yes, you do,” she said. “Did you ever find the boyfriend, Josh Huberts?”
He shot her a sideways look.
She nodded. “Of course you did.”
