by Tim Myers
“I’m certain of it, and that’s the bottom line. I’ve heard the rumors too, but sometimes folks in this town need something else to talk about, you know? When the truth runs out, they start making things up as they go along. Can I go now?”
“You did a fine job, Patrick. And don’t worry; your secret is safe with me.”
“Until you need something else,” he grumbled before he hung up.
Lillian smiled at me. “There, that wasn’t all that difficult, was it?”
“Do I even want to know what you’ve got on him?” I asked my aunt.
“Now, Jennifer, you just heard me pledge my silence to him. I’m not going to say another word about it.”
I was ready to pump her for more—I could tell Lillian wanted to share—but suddenly the front door opened and Sara Lynn stormed inside.
“That was cute, Jennifer, calling me and then keeping the telephone off the hook so I’d have to drive over. Now that you’ve got me here, what do you want?”
I’d nearly forgotten about calling my sister. “Sara Lynn, I swear it was just an accident.”
“What, you just happened to hang up after giving me this number?” She looked around at the boxes, then asked, “What are you two doing here, anyway?”
Lillian said, “We’re working. Jennifer’s telling the truth. Someone else called as soon as she got off the line.”
: Sara Lynn sat on the couch. “I don’t see any card-making supplies around. What kind of work are you doing?”
Before Lillian could say anything, I chimed in.
“Maggie’s attorney needed somebody to clean the place up, and we took the job to supplement our income.” Well, most of it was true, though I’d left out parts of the rationales behind our actions.
It didn’t look like Sara Lynn was buying it, though. “Don’t bother to embellish any more. You two are snooping around again. I can’t say I’m shocked, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed.” on Lillian said, “Then perhaps you should leave.”
“You called me, remember? What was so urgent that it couldn’t wait?”
Lillian said, “You know what? Perhaps it’s not important after all. Sorry we bothered you at home.
Why don’t you get back to your dinner? I’m sure it’s getting cold by now.”
Sara Lynn’s voice faltered, then she said, “That’s not all that’s getting cold. I’ve lost my appetite lately for eating alone.”
That softened Lillian immediately. “Child, every marriage has troubled times.”
“Coming from you, I’d say that qualifies as expert testimony,” Sara Lynn snapped.
Before things could escalate, I said, “The reason I called you was for some information. Did Maggie quit scrapbooking cold turkey a few years ago?”
“What? Of course not. She started making cards around then, but she was still buying supplies at For ever Memories right up until she died.”
Lillian asked, “When was the last time she was your shop?”
“Why do you two want to know?” Sara Lynn asked
“Please, just humor us, okay?” I asked. “Do you need to check your receipts before you answer?”
“Would you have to?” Sara Lynn asked me. “Two weeks ago she bought a new scrapbook and some stickers. She said she wanted to make a present for a new friend.”
“It wasn’t for a man, was it?” I asked.
“Do you mean a boyfriend? No, I was fairly sure ii was a woman, given the cover she chose. Honestly, at what age does it cease being ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’? Surely we can come up with a more dignified set of labels for later in life.”
“I prefer ‘paramour’ myself,” Lillian said.
“Okay, maybe I spoke too soon,” Sara Lynn said “‘Boyfriend’ might not be so bad after all.”
“You didn’t happen to get a name, did you?” I asked.
“No, sorry. Let me look at her books a second and I can tell you immediately. There they are.”
It only took my sister two seconds to notice something was wrong. “At least two are missing, do you realize that?”
I was glad to have some independent confirmation. “That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. It’s a lot harder to tell what happened by what’s missing than what’s there, isn’t it?”
“So what do we do now?” Sara Lynn asked.
Lillian wasn’t having any of that. “ ‘We’ aren’t doing, anything. You are going to go home while Jennifer and I stay here and work.”
Sara Lynn shook her head. “I believe I’ll stay here with you, if I’m welcome. Right now the last thing I need to do is rattle around in that house alone, and to be honest with you, I could use something productive to do.”
I could tell from the set of Lillian’s jaw that she was about to throw Sara Lynn out despite my sister’s plea, but I could tell she needed me, and I didn’t have the heart to say no to her. “Of course you can help us. We’ll even cut you in on our earnings.” My sister nodded. “Thank you, but I’m willing to do this for an old friend.”
That touched me. “I think of you as a friend, too,” I said as I put an arm around my petite sister. She pulled instantly away. “I was referring to Maggie. You will always be my baby sister.”
“I knew that,” I said, trying to hide my frown. It didn’t help matters that Lillian had found the display life amusing and wasn’t trying to hide her delight in any way. “Enough talk,” I said, ready to move on. “Let’s get to work.”
Sara Lynn said, “The first thing we need to do is close the windows. Are you two trying to heat all of Rebel Forge?”
“Talk to your sister. She’s the one with the fresh-air fetish,” Lillian said.
Great. I’d reached out to my sister in her time of need, and I’d ended up being on the wrong end of a majority vote. Sometimes it just didn’t pay to be nice.
“Let’s do this in an organized fashion,” Sara Lynn said, stepping into her usual role of leader director president. “We’ll mark boxes ‘Personal,’ ‘Charity’ and ‘Trash.’ Any objections?”
“No, that sounds fine,” Lillian said, smiling behind Sara Lynn’s back but holding it long enough for me to see. It wasn’t mocking, just an acceptance of how my sister worked.
“What room were you two going to do first?” she asked.
“We’d thought about starting with the bedroom,” I admitted. “Where would you like to begin?”
“The bedroom’s fine,” she said. “Ladies, we all knew Maggie and cared about her, so it’s perfectly fine to shed a tear along the way.”
That was another side of Sara Lynn, an emotional woman to balance the efficiency in her. I didn’t doubt she was a hard person to live with; hadn’t I experienced that myself? I just always thought of her marriage to Bailey as a goal I hoped to achieve someday. Hearing about their problems was not a part of my fantasy, and I was sad to hear that it was a part of her reality.
“Let’s do the clothes first, shall we?” Lillian suggested. “They’re always the hardest for me.”
Sara Lynn nodded her agreement. I didn’t care where we began, just as long as I could look for clues about what had really happened to Maggie.
Sara Lynn asked, “Who is her main beneficiary? Does anyone know?”
“I could always call Patrick back,” Lillian said.
“No, let’s leave him alone tonight unless we really need him,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of Lillian making him squirm again. “We’ll just do the best we can.”
Sara Lynn said, “I’m not just being nosy; it’s an important question. Who knows why one person holds something as sentimental? You’d be amazed at the things I’ve kept over the years.”
“Like what?” Lillian asked, clearly intrigued as she opened the closet door.
Sara Lynn started neatly folding the first dress after she put the hanger in a box she’d already labeled “Hangers.” “I’ve got an entire box this size full of cocktail napkins, matchbook covers, silly fluff like that
that wouldn’t mean a thing to anyone else in the world.”
“If it was important to Maggie, she’ll have it tucked safely away as well,” I said.
“True,” Sara Lynn said as she gently laid the first dress in the bottom of another box. “Tell you what, I’ll start on these. Lillian, why don’t you work on the chest of drawers, and Jennifer, you can pack away the knickknacks and photographs. They’re everywhere, aren’t they?”
I agreed. “It looks like Maggie enjoyed being surrounded by things that gave her joy.” As we worked, each of us on separate tasks but together in the same room, we chatted about dozens of things. It was a sad occasion and a working one in more ways than one, but the Shane women were together, and that part of it was good indeed.
There was a marked absence of real clues there, though. After we’d stripped the room of everything personal in it, Sara Lynn carried the last box of donations out of the room. I jumped on the opportunity and said to Lillian, “I was expecting to find something in here that might help.”
“Jennifer, there may not be anything of use to us in the entire house. After all, we’ve already discovered something.” I nodded. “The missing scrapbooks—I know—but it’s going to be hard to tell if it means something or not if we don’t know why they were stolen.”
“There’s more to do yet,” Lillian said as Sara Lynn rejoined us.
With a little more delight in her voice than I’d expected, she said, “We’ll be at this half the night. Let’s do the kitchen next. I’ll make coffee.”
“Make it strong,” I said, fighting a yawn. It had been a long day, and it looked to be an even longer night.
I found something while I was working in the kitchen at the desk where Maggie did her bills. Sara Lynn was disposing of the food, keeping a few things to the side for a late-night snack while Lillian cleaned out the cabinets full of pots and pans. In a letter holder on the desk behind a few bills, I found a distinctive envelope I recognized from the shop with Jeffrey Wallace’s name and address printed on the front.
“Does this look familiar?” I said as I held it up to Lillian.
“It’s from one of those ghastly new papers you’ve been making recently,” she said.
I nodded, though I didn’t agree with the “ghastly” designation. “That means Maggie made this card within the last week.”
Sara Lynn said, “It’s got a stamp on it, so go ahead and mail it.”
“But it’s not sealed, is it?” I said as I started to lift the back flap. Many of my card makers enjoyed cutting out their own envelopes so they’d have matching stationery, and Maggie was no exception.
Sara Lynn snatched it out of my hand. “You can’t read that. It’s private.”
Lillian said, “More private than what we’re doing now? Let me see it.”
Sara Lynn hesitated, but the tone of Lillian’s voice was no doubt hard to refute. My sister handed her the card, saying, “I still think you should mail it.”
“Perhaps after we’ve seen what it says,” Lillian said. As she pulled the card from the envelope, I moved beside her so I could read it along with her. Sara Lynn kept working, her silence showing all the disapproval she needed it to express.
On the front of the card, there was an anatomically correct stamp of a heart split in two, shaded the ghastliest red hue I’d ever seen. The heart had been cut right down the middle, and as I studied the card closer, I could see that she’d glued the pieces in place. The front said, “My Heart Is Broken.” I wasn’t sure I had the heart to read the rest of it, but Lillian didn’t hesitate. Inside, Maggie had written,
Jeffrey, we’re finished. Leave me alone, I mean it. Don’t take the last thing I have left between us, my memories, Maggie.
So she’d broken up with him recently, and he wasn’t taking the hint, from the look of the card. Funny that Jeffrey hadn’t mentioned the fact that he’d just been dumped to me when we’d talked about Maggie that afternoon. It appeared that he’d taken it pretty hard, too. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d been angry enough to kill her. I took the card from Lillian and tucked it into my purse.
Sara Lynn saw what I was doing. “What on earth are you going to do with that?”
“You said I should mail it. I’m going to do one better. I’m going to hand deliver it myself.”
“Is that wise?” Lillian asked.
“Probably not, but I want to see what he has to say for himself.”
We were still clearing out the kitchen when the telephone rang. I reached to pick it up without thinking.
“Hello?”
In a muffled voice, I heard someone say, “Get out of there or I’ll kill you all.”
Chapter 14
“Excuse me,” I said. “What did you say? I couldn’t understand you. Your voice is too muffled.” I motioned Lillian and Sara Lynn to me, holding the phone out so they could hear, too. I had no idea whether it was a man or a woman. Maybe they’d be able to tell if I got the caller to repeat the threat.
“You only get one warning. Stop this second or you’re all going to die.”
Lillian grabbed the telephone out of my hands before I could stop her and said, “Grow up, would you? If you’ve got a problem with what we’re doing, the front door’s open.”
And then she slammed the phone down.
“Do you think that was wise?” Sara Lynn asked. “Whoever was calling was obviously deranged.”
“So think of it as a random crank call,” Lillian said. “Some fool with too much time on her hands, a bad case of insomnia and a twisted sense of humor.”
I looked at my aunt. “I don’t believe that for a second, do you?”
To my surprise and Sara Lynn’s shock, Lillian said, “Actually, I’m delighted by that telephone call.”
“What? Why on earth would a death threat make you happy?” Sara Lynn was watching Lillian as if she were on fire.
“It means we’re on the right track looking into Maggie’s death,” she said. “Why else would someone threaten to kill us?”
“And you call that progress,” Sara Lynn said, shaking her head. “Do you two have a death wish?”
“No,” I said. “We want to see justice for our friend, though.”
“Bradford ruled it an accident,” Sara Lynn protested, obviously uncomfortable with the direction our conversation had taken.
I shrugged. “Sara Lynn, nobody on earth is a bigger fan of our brother than I am, but he can’t be right a hundred percent of the time.”
“Then we should call him right now,” Sara Lynn said, reaching for the telephone.
Lillian wasn’t about to let go of it, though. “Let’s think about this. If we get Bradford over here this late, he’s going to make us leave, and we haven’t finished the job yet, have we?”
“What about that threat?” she asked.
“Nobody’s going to attack us while we’re here together. It was meant to scare us off. I say we stay. Jennifer?”
I nodded my agreement. “I want to finish this tonight more than ever. If there is something here that the killer missed, what are the odds it will still be here tomorrow if we have to come back?”
Lillian nodded. “I hadn’t considered that possibility.” She turned to my sister and said, “Sara Lynn, we certainly won’t hold it against you if you want to go home now. This isn’t your fight, and there’s no reason you should stay if you feel you’re in danger.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sara Lynn said, the Shane stubborn streak out in full force. “I just thought it might be prudent to call Bradford, but you’re probably right. So let’s see what else we can uncover.”
I wasn’t about to comment on that declaration. If Sara Lynn wanted to join us in our search, it was her right and she’d be most welcome. I had to wonder, though, if a part of her would rather be at home instead of sorting through a dead woman’s things.
We had the kitchen cleaned in record time, and after a short break for coffee and cookies, it wasn’t long before we were in th
e living room, the last place we hadn’t fully searched yet. Outside on the front porch there were three distinct piles of boxes, but if there was anything all that incriminating still inside, either we’d missed its significance or we hadn’t gotten to it yet.
As we worked, Sara Lynn stood in the middle of the room, a large frown on her face. “What’s wrong?” I asked her. “You look like you just ate a bad turnip.”
Lillian said, “Is there such a thing as a good turnip?”
“Shh,” Sara Lynn said. “Something’s not right.”
I stopped packing books in a box and listened intently. “I don’t hear anything.”
“It’s not a noise, you nit. Something’s missing, though.”
“It’s the most recent scrapbooks,” Lillian said. “We’ve already been over that.”
Sara Lynn’s expression suddenly changed. “Where is all of Maggie’s equipment?”
I had to hand it to my big sister. Lillian and I had been all over the house, but not once did either one of us notice that everything Maggie used to make scrapbooks and greeting cards was gone.
“How did we miss that?” I asked Lillian.
“I could claim old age, but I won’t,” my aunt said. “I simply overlooked it.”
Sara Lynn looked pleased by the admission. “It’s a lot harder to spot what isn’t here than what is.”
“So where did it go?” I asked. “I don’t know how much equipment and supplies she bought from you, but I know I’ve sold her a ton of stuff myself.”
Sara Lynn nodded. “Yes, Maggie always was one to buy a better tool whenever it came along. I can’t imagine anyone stealing her things, though.”
A sudden chill went through me. “Unless it was another card maker,” I said.
“It could have been a scrapbooker,” Sara Lynn said, obviously trying to make me feel better.
I shook my head. “No, you said it yourself before. Maggie still enjoyed scrapbooking, but she’d been focusing mostly on cards for the last few years.” Lillian said, “I’m afraid you’re right, Jennifer. It appears that whoever killed her was most likely a card maker as well. Why else steal the most valuable items in the apartment? Who else would even realize it? I suppose the real question is, who would be desperate enough to kill her for her tools?”
