Death of a Garage Sale Newbie

by Sharon Dunn

  The microwave dinged, and he pulled the steaming lasagna out. The aroma of Italian spices swirled around the kitchen. He and Ginger weren’t even having meals together much anymore. He was eating at weird times. He’d get so wrapped up in his project that he’d forget to come into the house until the growling of his stomach got louder than his power tools.

  He needed to make an effort to come in at mealtimes. Maybe that was what she had been trying to say to him when she brought his meal to the shop the other night. Women were funny. They never came right out and said what they wanted, and yet they expected a guy to know. Early in their marriage, Earl had realized that almost everything Ginger said to him would be in some kind of code. After all these years, he still hadn’t broken the code.

  Earl grabbed a fork and wandered into the family room.

  He still couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that someone had been in the house. Furniture wasn’t overturned. No drawers hung open. No catalogs cluttered the floor. It was more a sense that things seemed slightly askew. Ginger was an extremely organized and tidy person. The bills were spread across the desk, not in her usual neat pile. The couch cushion as well looked like it had been pulled out and pushed back in a hurry.

  Earl shook his head and dismissed the thought. What did they have that would be worth stealing? He sat in his easy chair and clicked on the TV so he could give the FOX News commentators his two cents’ worth.

  He glanced down at the stack of self-help books he’d borrowed from Robert. The one that said women were from another planet he’d grabbed by mistake, thinking it was a science fiction book. The others, though, Robert had handpicked from his shelf. None of them had been much help. He was looking for a chart or a table that explained when a woman does X, it means Y.

  He had spent nearly forty years with Ginger, he loved her more than anything, and yet sometimes he felt like she was speaking Russian. Maybe it was just the loss of Mary Margret, but honestly, the speaking a foreign language thing seemed to be intensifying.

  Like the other night when she had come into his workshop. That made no sense. He had been glad to see her, a little surprised, but glad. And then she started looking around, those two vertical lines between her eyes deepening, and he was sure she was thinking about tidying up the place and alphabetizing his tools. That made him afraid. He had that shop just the way he wanted it. It was his space. She got to keep the house the way she wanted it.

  Earl turned the volume down on the TV and sat forward in his recliner. In the corner of the room, his other stack of books—science fiction and invention reference books—were knocked completely over. He scanned the room again, unable to totally pinpoint why he felt a sense of invasion. His skin prickled; he gripped the lasagna container a little tighter.

  Somebody had been in their house.

  “’Scuse us?” Ginger shaded her eyes and stared up at the tall, slender woman on the roof of 112 Fremont. Kindra stood beside her with her arms crossed over her chest, rubbing her bare arms. With the sun lowering on the horizon, a slight chill hung in the summer air.

  The woman on the roof wore a large brimmed hat with a hot pink sash. Ginger couldn’t see her face. She grabbed another shingle out of a box and lifted her hammer. Judging from the way she moved, she must be quite young.

  Ginger shouted above the hammering. “Excuse me, ma’am.” Oblivious, the woman pounded away.

  Kindra gave Ginger a shrug and bolted up the ladder. She crawled to the top while Ginger held the bottom.

  When she saw Kindra, the woman stopped hammering midswing. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you. Got to get these shingles replaced before fall.” She looked at Kindra and then down at Ginger “And who might you two be?”

  “Can’t you pay someone to do that?” Kindra asked.

  “Fixed income. ’Sides I’ve always done the repairs on the house. My late husband, David, was busy with his work, so I learned how to do the plumbing and change the oil in the car.” She tore off her hat. “How can I help you ladies?”

  Ginger was momentarily speechless as she tilted her head. The woman under the hat had to be at least seventy. Her steel gray hair was pulled into a bun, and intense blue eyes were surrounded by skin that looked like crinkled tissue paper. She wore a man’s wool shirt that Ginger recognized as being from the Pendleton catalog, maybe twenty years ago.

  “We need to talk to you about a garage sale you had two Saturdays ago.”

  “Why don’t you ladies come up here? My name is Arleta McQuire, by the way. I’ve got some lemonade in a thermos. I’m not asking you to live dangerously. There’s a little balcony up here where I take my breaks.”

  It seemed an odd invitation to offer a stranger, but Kindra climbed over the ladder and onto the balcony, so Ginger followed.

  The balcony was a six-by-six flat spot with a railing snuggled between dormer windows. There was a small bistro table with two matching chairs. French doors led into the upper floor of the house. Arleta slapped her forehead. “What was I thinking? I only have the one cup.”

  “I’m okay,” said Kindra. “I’m not thirsty”

  “You sure?” Arleta unscrewed the cap. “I could go inside and get us some glasses.” Kindra shook her head. Arleta poured some lemonade into the cup she had on the table, handed it to Ginger, and then poured herself some in the cap of the thermos. She invited Ginger to take one of the chairs.

  “Now which garage sale are you talking about? I had three of them.”

  “Two Saturdays ago, July 15.” Ginger sipped the lemonade, which was homemade. Who had the time to squeeze dozens of lemons? She allowed the sweet-sour liquid to linger on her tongue. What a treat. “Did you sell a vest, a box covered in shells, or a photo album at any of your sales?” This woman seemed so friendly, but she might have something to do with Mary Margret’s death.

  Arleta nodded. “I sold my husband’s vest and his old photo album. I took the pictures out that mattered to me. Don’t recall selling a shell box. But there was a lot of junk I sat out in boxes, and people sorted through and took what they wanted.”

  “Do you remember the woman who bought them?” The woman was sharing the information without hesitation. Not a sign of someone with something to hide. “She had white hair, a real bubbly personality A little taller than me.”

  Arleta perched in the other chair on the balcony. Kindra remained standing. “Oh yes, I remember her. We had a nice visit. She said she sold real estate. She gave me her business card. I don’t remember where I put it.”

  Kindra said, “Mary Margret was like that. She gave everyone her business card.”

  Arleta took a sip of lemonade. “She was going to use the vest to go fishing with her grandson, said something about buying a fishing pole at another sale. My husband wore that vest when he went on his digs. He liked it because of all the pockets.”

  “What about the photo album?” Kindra crossed her arms, visibly shivering.

  “She said she liked it because it had pictures of Three Horses before all the development and subdivisions went in. My husband was an amateur photographer with an interest in architecture. I remember she remarked about the black-and-white photos of the downtown buildings.”

  The older woman smiled. Light glinted in her clear eyes. What a sweet lady. There was nothing sinister or guilty acting about her. Despair inched its way into Ginger’s thoughts. This had all been a wild goose chase.

  “Why do you want to know about the stuff I sold?” The woman held out her hands palms up. “I’m not taking any of it back. It took me three sales to get the clutter out of this house.”

  “We won’t make you take them back.” Kindra kept her arms crossed and added stomping to her dance routine. The temperature hadn’t dropped that much. The kid needed some meat on her bones. “The woman you sold that stuff to was murdered later that day.”

  “Murdered?” Arleta sat her glass on the little table. “Didn’t the paper say it was an accident?”

  “Long story,” Ginger said.

>   “I would be happy to look at the stuff, if you have it with you, and see if I can remember if she said anything else.” Arleta tapped her temple. “The memory is not totally gone yet.” She stood up next to Kindra. “Besides, this poor thing is going to catch her death if we don’t get inside.”

  Ginger was doubtful that Arleta would be able to help them, but she found herself saying okay because the look of hopeful expectation on the older woman’s face tugged at her heart.

  Arleta clapped her hands together. “Well, that’s just peachy.” She gripped Ginger’s hand firmly.

  Five minutes later, Kindra and Ginger were in Arleta’s house sitting at her kitchen table, drinking more lemonade and eating peanut butter cookies. “I used to make cookies for David’s students all the time. It’s just a habit I can’t seem to break. It’s nice to have someone to share them with. I usually just throw them away.” Arleta flipped through the photo album while Kindra zipped and unzipped all the pockets in the vest.

  Ginger leaned over Arleta’s shoulder. Most of the photos were of brick buildings or grain silos or of David and Arleta on digs.

  “What is that one?” Ginger pointed to the photo of David in his vest surrounded by pine trees. One side of the photo revealed houses and a radio tower, indicating that the dig was not far from a town. The photo stood out from the others because no digging or excavation was taking place, and it wasn’t architecture.

  Arleta bent closer to the album. “I don’t remember taking that one. Not at all. One of David’s students must have snapped it.” She tore the photo off and gazed at the back. “David wrote the year. 1986.”

  “Hey, look what I found in one the pockets.” Kindra placed a piece of paper with six numbers written on it on the table. “It’s not Mary Margret’s writing.”

  Arleta picked up the paper. “No, no, that is my David’s writing.” She rubbed the paper with her thumb, a faint smile crossing her face. “This was probably written somewhere around the time of his last dig. I don’t know what it means. Maybe the call number for a library book.”

  “License plates can have six numbers after the county designation,” Kindra offered.

  Arleta ran her hands over the vest. “He wore this old thing all the time.”

  “You must have loved your husband very much.” Ginger touched the older woman’s fingers.

  Arleta nodded and sighed. “That I did. It was a good marriage. We were soul mates.”

  Soul mates? Ginger gazed around the room filled with pictures of Arleta and David. Standing with Stonehenge in the background. Digging into the side of a mountain. Working together painting their house. Arleta had found a way to be a part of David’s world.

  The photos Ginger had in her house were of the whole family at Disneyland and camping, Earl standing with their two sons and the buck they had shot, Ginger with Krissy and Heidi and the quilt they made together. She couldn’t think of a single photo that had just her and Earl in it doing something together. They had been busy bees buzzing around in separate worlds, coming together to do stuff with the kids.

  “Soul mates,” Ginger whispered. She flipped through the photo album. There was nothing here, nothing suspicious. Arleta certainly wasn’t a criminal. That only left the shell box and Keaton Lustrum.

  Kindra took her last gulp of lemonade, then checked her watch. “We should go.”

  Arleta rose to her feet. “So soon? At least let me box up some cookies for you. I’ll just throw them away otherwise.”

  “I have to get back to the dorm and shower and do some homework before midnight shopping.” Kindra hopped to her feet.

  “Midnight shopping?” Arleta pulled a container out of the cupboard where rubber storage bowls were neatly stacked. The spices as well stood in tidy rows. Ginger pictured Arleta alone in the house arranging and organizing and reorganizing, hour after hour.

  All of the photos were of Arleta and her husband. No children, no girlfriends. “Arleta, do you have any relatives?”

  She placed the cookies carefully in the container. “I have a sister in England. I see her twice a year.” Arleta put several more cookies in, then pressed the lid on.

  This sure was a lot of kindness to show a stranger. “Would you like to go shopping with us? They open the doors of the mall at midnight, and the discounts are incredible.”

  “Oh, I—” Arleta leaned across the table and handed the container to Ginger. “I hadn’t thought about it.” She touched the back of her head and released a nervous cough.

  Mild tension slipped into the room. Moments passed as Arleta ran a dishrag under the faucet and wiped the crumbs off the counter.

  Kindra sidled over to Ginger and tapped her finger on the rubber container. “Thanks for the cookies.”

  “Oh, you are welcome, dear. You are the kind of student David would have loved.”

  Mentally, Ginger kicked herself. She hadn’t meant to make Arleta uncomfortable or call attention to her loneliness. “If you change your mind, we’ll be at the south entrance when the doors open at midnight.” Ginger’s voice sounded forced, too singsongy.

  “Thank you. I’ve still got a lot of home repair to get done.”

  After Kindra gathered up the vest and photo album, she followed Ginger out the door.

  Ginger drove her Pontiac through the older neighborhood unable to shake the picture of Arleta alone in her house. Such a nice lady. Maybe God would allow their paths to cross again.

  Kindra’s cell rang. She took the call. Her “Hi, Suzanne” was followed by a series of “un-huhs” and “okays.”

  Ginger glanced in the rearview mirror. Phoebe sat in the backseat perched in her booster.

  Kindra tucked her cell back in her purse. “As if you can’t figure it out, that was Suzanne. She said there was so much going on at city commission meetings twenty years ago, she has no idea what Mary Margret might have been looking for. She did talk to the records clerk, who said that Mary Margret left a message on Saturday. She called saying she wanted to look at the records first thing Monday when the office opened. Suzanne is headed home to get her kids dinner and take a nap. She’ll meet us at the mall at ten to midnight.”

  “We are no further ahead than we were earlier today. Arleta is not a criminal.”

  “Sure we are. We know Mary Margret went to the library and that something about the city commission twenty years ago interested her.”

  Ginger gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “We’re missing something here. Someone killed Mary Margret. Somehow she ended up in that forest outside of town with an arrow through her.”

  “So if her death is not connected to the garage sale stuff, what could ‘something terrible, something from the past’ be?” Kindra traced the seams on David’s old vest with her fingers.

  “It has to be something she found or saw between the first and second phone call, between eight o’clock and a little before noon, when we were supposed to get together at her house.”

  “We can assume that someone made her drive her car out to the place where she died, and we can assume that same person brought the car back.”

  Ginger yanked on one of her curls. “Was Keaton Lustrum even around twenty years ago?”

  Kindra shrugged. “He looks forty or fifty in that picture.”

  Anybody over twenty-five looked forty or fifty to Kindra. “Mary said something on her message about popping over to see another agent about some property. Maybe we can swing by her old office and find out which agent it was and if Mary was upset when she saw that person.”

  “Maybe. And we need to talk to Keaton Lustrum.” Kindra made clicking sounds with her tongue as she tapped the glass of the car window. “All of this detective work is exhausting. Forward one step and back two.” She slumped down in her seat. “Sometimes when you’re not thinking about something directly, that’s when the answers come to you. I’m looking forward to midnight shopping to get my mind off of all this.”

  Ginger turned onto the street that led to Kindra’s co
llege dorm. “Me, too, kiddo. Me, too.”

  Tammy had just bent her arm, bringing the barbell up to her shoulder, when she saw her mother’s reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Hannah Krinkland’s lime green capris and summer sweater with flamingos on it looked out of place in the athletic club weight room. But it was her expression, a combination of fear and weariness, that made Tammy grip the metal weight even tighter. Mom’s eyes were dull and her mouth hung slightly open. Her finger rubbed up and down her purse strap.

  Tammy’s bicep tensed. She closed her eyes. Mom was not in the habit of hunting her down while she worked out to ask what she wanted for dinner. “Mom?” her voice came out in almost a croak.

  “Trevor left. I went to the church to help fold the bulletins. When I got home, he was gone. No note.”

  Tammy held on to the barbell, but her arm went limp. She stared at the ceiling. Why did this have to be so hard? Couldn’t Trevor see that she was trying to protect him?

  “You had to know this was going to happen.” Mom stepped toward her and touched her arm lightly. “You can’t keep a fifteen-year-old under house arrest.”

  “Mom, he shoplifted.” The last thing she needed was a sermon from her mother. “Today it’s shoplifting, and tomorrow it could be selling and doing drugs. I know the pattern. It’s never an improvement in behavior.”

  Though her impulse was to throw the weight across the room, Tammy placed it carefully in the stand. She took several deep breaths filled with wordless prayer before standing up straight. Losing control wouldn’t help anything. But it sure would be nice to scream into a pillow right now. “I just don’t want him to get into something that could—”

  Mom pursed her lips.

  Tammy appreciated her mother’s restraint. She shook her head and grabbed her workout towel. While she patted the sweat off her neck, she pulled herself together and strategized. Back into the parenting fray. “Okay, list the most likely places you think he might have gone.”