A Veiled Antiquity (Torie O'Shea Mysteries)

by MacPherson, Rett

  There was nobody at Marie’s house when the children and I arrived at quarter till seven. I sat on the front porch of her house, watching the birds pecking at the ground in her front yard. I could see the very top of my roof from Marie’s porch.

  I played with the envelope awhile, wondering why Sylvia insisted upon me returning this to Mr. Reaves. All the envelope contained was Marie’s family tree and a minor history of the Dijon family. Usually, we keep that sort of thing on file or at least make copies. But Sylvia had insisted that I return it.

  So, there I sat, waiting for Mr. Reaves. Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out why he’d be coming to Marie’s house in the first place unless he was meeting an individual about her will. Or maybe a contester? Oooh, now that would be a bit of juicy gossip.

  Directly across, the firehouse was quiet, as it usually was. We had three firemen, plus our chief, and six volunteer firemen. There was usually only one person at the firehouse at a time, other than the fire chief, Elmer Kolbe, who seemed to live there. He happened to be out front at the moment. He washed the red fire truck, taking particular care around the headlights, as if it were a human being. I waved to him, and he waved back.

  I was bored. Which is when bad things usually happen.

  I suddenly realized that the girls were no longer on the front porch. I could hear their giggling voices coming from the backyard. I walked around the back of the house by way of the driveway.

  Both girls were hopping like bunny rabbits in the recently loosened dirt of Marie’s flower bed. Wherever Rachel hopped, Mary hopped, but with much more effort because her legs were a great deal shorter. Their pigtails flopped on top of their heads with every jump they made.

  “Girls, get out of the flower bed,” I said, vaguely even remembering that they were actually in the flower bed. I was too interested in looking at the back of Marie’s house. There was no crime scene tape or anything, because there was no crime scene. The sheriff’s department had collected everything they wanted within the first two days of her accident. Nobody had been here in two or three days at least.

  I’m not sure what it was I was looking for, only that I was looking for something. Anything that seemed out of place.

  Just then, I saw a flash of purple. One of my girls was climbing on the back porch banisters. Which one was it? They were dressed in matching purple short outfits, purple with little orange squiggly things.

  “Rachel! Get down.”

  “It isn’t me, Mom. I’m over here.”

  Rachel was still in the flower bed. I had assumed that it was her climbing on the banisters because she was the oldest. Oldest doesn’t automatically make her the bravest, I suppose. “I told you five minutes ago to get out of that flower bed. Why don’t you listen to me? Your sister listened to me,” I said.

  True. But she was hanging upside down on a banister at the moment, ready to drop on her head from seven feet.

  “Mary! Get down. No, don’t get down. I’ll come and get you,” I said. I realized in midsentence that it would be like her just to jump. “Rachel, come with me. Now. You probably trampled those poor flowers to death. Not to mention what you’ve got all over your new white tennis shoes.” Why are they always new white tennis shoes? They are never old white tennis shoes. I suppose because if they were old they wouldn’t be white anymore. I don’t know why all of the marketing geniuses can’t invent brown tennis shoes and just get it over with.

  When I finally reached the back porch, I grabbed Mary off the banister by her feet. She put her hands on the floor of the porch and then flipped over. I shook my finger at her. “This is not our house. You can’t just destroy other people’s property.”

  Not that she was free to destroy ours either.

  I stood on my tiptoes and peeked in Marie’s back door. I leaned a little too hard on the door, and it swung open with a creak.

  An open door is the worst temptation. It’s worse than chocolate. I tried convincing myself that what I really wanted to do was okay. After all, I’d have to step inside the kitchen in order to reach the door to shut it, right?

  I should have been a lawyer.

  Just then, Mary took off and was inside Marie’s house before I could stop her. All right, somewhere deep down I knew that I shouldn’t do it. But what if the sheriff missed something? They were so intent on it being an accident, I don’t think they wanted to look at it as a possible crime scene.

  “Come on, Rachel,” I said to her. She came in behind me. I grabbed Mary by the hand and set the envelope that I had been holding on the kitchen table.

  “Mary, don’t touch anything. You touch anything and you won’t play on the swing set for a year. Understood?” She nodded.

  I started to turn on the light and then stopped myself. The electricity was probably still on, but I didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that somebody was in her house. I suppose that impulse was sort of a confession that I knew I shouldn’t have been in there in the first place.

  The sun had set, but I could still see. There was at least twenty minutes of twilight before dusk set in and then it would be too dark to see.

  Everything looked as if she’d just went out to the store and would be right back. There were dishes in the drain, along with two glasses on the table and a jug of milk. I opened the refrigerator and was nearly knocked over by the bright light it shone. I shut it quickly, noting that the inside of her refrigerator looked as normal as the inside of mine. It had been five days since she’d died. She had lain at the foot of the steps for nearly two days before Ransford had found her.

  A foul odor crept from the trash bin, and I wondered how bad that milk on the table would smell if I took the lid off. Why hadn’t the sheriff’s department poured it down the drain and taken out the trash? This was gross.

  “Mom,” Rachel said in her usual condescending tone when she was about to bawl me out for something. “What are we doing in here?”

  “Looking.”

  “Looking at what? There aren’t any lights on. Mom, why are we walking around in the dark?”

  “The electricity is off,” I said. I hoped that would be a good enough answer for a while.

  “Nuh uh,” she said. “The ’frigerator is on.”

  You pray that you have really intelligent children all of your life. Then when you do, they end up being too smart for you.

  “Hush up, Rachel. Okay? I’m not going to stand here in the dark and argue as to why I’m doing whatever it is I’m doing. If I want to walk through this house in the dark, I will. And you aren’t old enough to question me as to why. All right? Are we clear on this, girls? Mary, you touch nothing. Rachel, you say nothing. Once we get out of here, you can ask me all the questions you want to.”

  Rachel sighed.

  I walked through the rest of the house, holding Mary’s hand tightly so she couldn’t get away, and I noticed that the house was indeed done in expensive taste, from what I could see. The furniture was all antique. China and fluted crystal were set everywhere. I couldn’t make out specific details, like color schemes, since it was so dark. Her bedroom was neat and orderly, the covers on one side of the bed turned down, looking as though it had been slept in, if only for an hour. The bed did not give the appearance of being messed up enough for an entire night’s sleep.

  Marie got up in the middle of the night, went to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and for some reason decided to go into the basement? That didn’t make sense. I know I only go in my basement at high noon.

  Of course, I’m also a chicken. Maybe Marie was not as frightened of things that go bump in the night as I am.

  But an older woman who lived alone? Why go to the basement?

  There was something dark lying on her bed. I looked closer. It was a hairbrush.

  “Mommy,” Mary said. “I have to go pee.”

  I headed back through the living room for the kitchen, and stopped at the basement door. Opening it, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed by the fact that it was
dark and icky smelling. I hadn’t expected anything else.

  “I am not going down there,” Rachel said. “No way. Forget it.”

  Bending down on one knee, I examined the floor near the first step. There was no raised piece of tile or anything. No nail sticking up to cause her to trip. I stood up.

  “So she just stood here and fell,” I said aloud. She had on a housecoat that came to her knees, so that wasn’t long enough to interfere with her walking. And she had on house slippers.

  I have to admit, those can be difficult to walk in.

  Bright headlights appeared in Marie’s kitchen window. The lights cast sharp angular shadows of the knickknacks sitting around. Rachel gasped and I slammed the basement door shut and prepared to run outside. Only, I heard the car door shut. The lights were still shining inside, on high beam.

  “Shoot.”

  “Mommy, I gotta go pee,” Mary said.

  I slumped to the floor, and instantly felt ridiculous for doing so, especially since both of my children were still standing up looking down at me with superior amusement.

  What if it was Mr. Reaves coming to meet whomever it was that he was supposed to meet? I might be able to explain being in the house, but I’d never be able to explain being on the floor.

  “Mom, it’s a car,” Rachel said.

  Just as I was about to get up, the doorknob turned. I could see a vague outline of a man. He had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, smoke distorting the glass. It could not be Mr. Reaves. The man standing on the other side of the door was way too tall.

  So why didn’t he come in? He knew the door was unlocked.

  Unlike me, he probably had respect for private property.

  So, there I sat on Marie Dijon’s kitchen floor, looking up at the underneath side of her kitchen table. Thanks to the bright headlights, it was an enlightening position. Silver duct tape held a fat manila envelope onto the underneath side of the table. Money? Jewelry? Something that Marie Dijon did not want anybody to find.

  “Mom?”

  “Get down,” I said to them. The man walked away from the door, but I did not hear him get back in the car. I crawled to the bathroom.

  “Okay, Mary, you pee. Rachel, you watch her and make sure she pees. Don’t come out of this bathroom unless I say to. And don’t make any noise.”

  “Well, Mom. You know, Mary has to make noise when she goes pee.”

  “Okay. No noise after she’s done going. Okay?”

  I crawled into the living room to try to get a better look at the car. Standing up, I tried to flatten my body against the living-room wall to look out. I barely moved the dotted swiss curtains. It was nearly dusk now, and all I could make out was that the car was not huge, but it wasn’t compact either, and that it was a dark color. Well, that ought to cover at least half of the cars in New Kassel.

  Then I saw the back of the man’s head as he walked underneath the window. Somehow, I got the weirdest feeling that he knew I was in the house.

  It all seemed to fit perfectly then. Marie Dijon had been asleep the night she died. She heard a knock at the door, which would account for why there was no forced entry. She brushed her hair, left the brush on the bed, put on house slippers and a housecoat. Whoever she let in, she knew fairly well. She got out the milk and two glasses, but never got to pour the milk.

  Why would she go to the basement steps? That made no sense.

  Finally, the man outside the window got back in the car and left. I ran full speed into the kitchen, stepped on something in the hallway that threw off my balance, and my stomach and ribs met the floor with a thud.

  “Ugh,” was all I managed.

  I got up slowly and cautiously, and went to the kitchen table. I grabbed the envelope that I had brought with me off of the kitchen table. It only took me a second to talk myself into my next move. I reached down and tore off the envelope that was taped underneath her table, it making a shwishk sound in the process.

  “Girls, let’s go!” I shouted. I met them at the living-room entryway, and then we were out the door with both envelopes in two seconds and home in five minutes.

  NEW KASSEL GAZETTE

  THE NEWS YOU MIGHT MISS

  by Eleanore Murdoch

  It’s apple pickin’ time! Volunteers are needed up at the orchard this year more than ever since Wilma Pershing’s apple butter has become famous. She received a fan letter from a U.S. senator on her wonderful apple butter, stating that it was actually better than his mother’s. This year’s contest is for the best apple dumpling recipe.

  And thank you to everybody who wrote in praise of my new society column that made its debut a few months ago. New Kassel readers say they feel more informed than ever about life in their town. I’m just glad to be able to bring it to you.

  We’re taking up a collection to buy Tobias a new accordion. Donations can be made at Fraulein Krista’s.

  Until next time.

  Eleanore

  Four

  Cautious is not a word I would use to describe myself, unless it deals with my children or germs. Then I’m usually overly cautious to the point of complete paranoia. But in my endeavors that don’t include the girls or communicable bacteria, I tend to jump in with both feet before I’ve thought anything through. I usually end up in hot water up to my neck.

  The envelope that I had so illegally obtained from Marie Dijon’s house contained a key. It also contained some documents that were very old and very French. The next day, I took my French/English dictionary and went down to Fräulein Krista’s restaurant to try to decipher them and stuff my face with raspberry turnovers in the process. Work is the ideal excuse to eat.

  Fräulein Krista’s Speisehaus is one of my favorite places to eat. It is directly across the street from the Gaheimer House, with the Christmas Shop on one side and the rectory of Santa Lucia on the other. The waiters wear green velvet knickers and the waitresses green velvet dresses, resembling adult Hansels and Gretels. The place reminded me of an inn deep in the Bavarian Alps.

  Two hours later I had a headache the size of Montana, not to mention a guilty conscience, and only a few words here and there that made any sense. I decided that I needed a French translator.

  Camille Lombarde was such a person. She lived up in St. Louis, and I decided that I would go to see her one day this week.

  “You look as though you are halfway around the world,” a voice said to me. I glanced up and Krista Dougherty, the owner of this fine establishment, was smiling down at me from her lofty five-feet-eleven.

  “I am,” I answered her. “I’m in France.”

  She pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. If you were expecting a textbook specimen of the Aryan race to own Fräulein Krista’s, you won’t be disappointed. Krista had ocean blue eyes, dimples, freckles, and natural blond hair, and as I pointed out just before, she is very tall.

  “Well, say hello for me to a wonderful artist I met there four summers ago. His name was Christophe.” She smiled at the memory.

  “I wish I could, because then I wouldn’t need to hunt down a translator. I could ask anybody on the street.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Working on something for Sylvia?”

  “No, this one is just for me,” I said. I couldn’t very well spread the news that these were illegally obtained documents from Marie’s house. I tried to put them back in the envelope as nonchalantly as I could.

  “Just as well, I suppose.”

  “That’s an odd thing to say,” I said. “What do you mean by it?”

  Looking at me peculiarly she said, “Have you read today’s paper?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  She picked at her nails, and genuinely looked as though she didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. “Well, it seems that Eleanore Murdoch—”

  “Say no more,” I said with my hand in the air. “I’ve been having trouble with that woman all summer. What has she written now? That Sylvia is having an affair with the sheriff, for Pete’s
sake?”

  Krista was not smiling.

  “What?” I asked. “Oh, come on. What could Eleanore possibly know that could be that bad? Most everything she prints is an exaggeration anyway.”

  “I’m sure this is an exaggeration,” she said. “But nevertheless, people get things in their head…”

  “What? What? Krista, just tell me what it is right now or … or I’ll dunk your golden locks into a jar of maple syrup!”

  A bubble of contagious laughter spilled from her. “So how many chickens do you and Rudy have now?”

  “About two dozen.”

  “And only one rooster?”

  “Yes, well, he’s a very happy rooster. Quit changing the subject, Krista.”

  “Well, I was thinking that we could strike up a contract. You supply me with eggs every morning for the breakfasts, and I’ll pay you.”

  “Krista!” I said, my patience running out.

  “Well, I guess it won’t hurt, since you can read it anywhere. It seems that Eleanore has accused Sylvia of murder.”

  I laughed. I belly laughed. “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “Sylvia is a lot of things, but no murderer,” I defended her. “Pray tell, who has she murdered?”

  “Sophie Gaheimer.”

  “Hermann Gaheimer’s wife? Well, that woman died more than seventy years ago.”

  “Yes, and Eleanore claims that Sophie committed suicide as a direct result of an illicit love affair between Hermann and Sylvia,” Krista said. “Thus holding Sylvia responsible.”

  The smile left my face. Not long ago, I discovered the will of Hermann Gaheimer that Sylvia had locked up in a cabinet downstairs in the basement of the Gaheimer House. In it, Hermann left everything to his “beloved Sylvia.” At the time, Hermann was ninety-one or so years old, and Sylvia was but thirty. I had found it strange then that he willed only a small cash settlement to the children he had with Sophie, and instead left everything to Sylvia, but I kept it to myself.