Starke Naked Dead (Starke Dead Mysteries Book 1)

by Conda V. Douglas

  “Don’t,” I said. I jogged toward her and the kiln. The floor wobbled beneath my feet as I trod over the top of the trap door leading to the tunnels. Aha.

  “Heat. I need heat,” Godiva said.

  “It’s not all that cold. And sure not snowing, blast it,” a high trilling voice came from behind me.

  I spun around and collided with Mrs. McDay. The tiny little old lady must have sneaked in on her itty-bitty birdy feet. I needed to replace that bell, lock the door, get a security system, maybe a few bear traps strategically placed…

  My apron clattered and her cherries bobbed as we untangled.

  “Dearie, my hat.” Mrs. McDay tottered.

  I grabbed her arm. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Mrs. McDay gave my steadying arm a pat. “Mrs. McChin said you seemed a bit upset.”

  That put it in Mrs. McDay’s own tactful terms. Somehow I knew Mrs. McChin had not been nearly so generous in her description of my mental state.

  “What is that nudie lady doing?” Mrs. McDay pointed with the hand not reattaching her hat to her white hair at Godiva. Mrs. McDay gave a start. She stared, her eyes huge behind her old lady glasses. “Oh no, don’t—” she yelped.

  “A kiln is a furnace,” Godiva announced, triumph in every word. She plugged the cord into the wall socket. Sparks sputtered. Godiva yipped and fell.

  “Pull it out, you fool,” Mrs. McDay screeched.

  I sprinted toward the socket and stopped short, not wanting to be shocked.

  Mrs. McDay, moving fast as a bird with a cat after it, snatched one of my leather gloves off the workbench. She yanked the cord from the wall and gulped big chunks of air.

  A tiny curl of smoke wisped from the socket.

  “Fire!” Mrs. McDay cried, a world of terror in one word. The Great Starke Fire had happened when she was five. Her father had died.

  I kicked at the wall around the socket until the brittle plaster, a patch installed seventy years ago by Henry’s grandfather, fell away. The exposed ancient wiring sparked tiny flames.

  “Eep,” Mrs. McDay squeaked.

  I snatched my leather gloves from Mrs. McDay and beat out the nascent fire and tore at the plaster until a huge hole revealed the pieces of old lathe.

  “It’s out,” I cried at last.

  Mrs. McDay and I both turned to give Godiva a lesson in living and not dying in fire country.

  “Listen up,” I started.

  “You idiot, dearie—”

  Godiva had gone.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I managed to reassure Mrs. McDay that everything was peachy keen-o, to use one of her own favorite phrases. I don’t think she believed me.

  As she tottered down the sidewalk, cherries bobbing, I stepped back into the store and into the deep shadows. I tugged the Noira necklace from my pocket. It hung heavy in my hand.

  Yup, no problem with any stolen necklace, no problem with my aunt’s back rent and rage at me, no problem with a murdered man and my father the main suspect. No problems at all and I wasn’t about to pull a Henry-on-the-roof-suicide-by-cop routine.

  First, the necklace needed repair.

  I laid it on a piece of soft, worn black velvet. I fished the pearl out of my pocket and placed it underneath the Noira’s tiny onyx foot, where it belonged.

  Or where I believed it belonged. With the two put together, I sat back on my stool and foraged my favorite loupe from a pocket.

  Underneath the loupe, the pearl came into sharp and bewildering focus.

  Though the pearl added a magnificent finishing touch to the Noira, it had been attached by etching a thin line around the outside of the pearl and then inserting silver wire which looped at the top. The pearl still had its loop, along with a heavy double jump ring to attach it to the necklace.

  Over time the solder of the corresponding loop on the necklace had given way and left a gap just big enough for the pearl to slip loose. Sloppy work.

  Now I knew why, in such a magnificently made necklace, a piece—the pearl—had been able to fall into the ash trap.

  Why silver? Why such shoddy workmanship? It couldn’t be the work of a master jeweler.

  It couldn’t be Pietro. Could it? Was he exhausted by his rage at his ex-lover? Or perhaps he’d wanted one major flaw in the necklace, as she was flawed. Or perhaps, close to suicide, he no longer cared. I imagined him at his workbench in his Paris attic, bent over the Noira, in the last of the winter light, desperate to finish, desperate to be done at last.

  No. No master, no matter what, would fall so far. I rubbed my face and then glared at the old laptop computer. “If you don’t boot up,” I said to it as I pressed the power button, “I’m tossing you out the front window.”

  It flickered on. Good to know threats worked sometimes.

  Surfing the Internet, I came across the articles Lester and Nance had shown me. In the poor, grainy photos the necklace looked perfect, the pearl a fantastic final touch. Crossing my fingers, I delved further into the necklace’s history and discovered over a hundred years of despair, desolation, and death.

  Desperate Noira arranged herself naked in the same pose as her beautiful, condemning necklace. She wore only the necklace when she slashed her throat. I swallowed back bile at the unbidden image of her heart’s blood flowing over the blood rubies.

  After her death, the necklace disappeared, stolen, and was recovered a decade later. The police discovered it when they searched a burglar’s home, after killing him in a failed burglary. The necklace, claimed by Noira’s relatives, was sold after years of legal wrangling.

  I pulled up a long-winded, gushing article from one of the old gossip magazines entitled “The Black Necklace of Death.” The purchaser, a Greek shipping tycoon named Demeter, found the pearl in a tiny curio shop. In the article Demeter said that his “fortune” to chance upon such a perfect match to the necklace meant that attaching it to the necklace would “destroy Pietro’s bloody curse forever.”

  Huh. I wondered at a man with enough money to buy the Noira, who then commissioned a cheap, bad jeweler to add the pearl. At least, I hoped the job didn’t cost Demeter much. It wasn’t worth much.

  I raised my shoulders to ease the twitch there. Many people believed jewelers were interchangeable. I’d once asked Henry, when he called me a glorified watch repairer, if skill and knowledge didn’t matter in auto mechanics either. He didn’t speak to me for a week.

  The article continued with the tale of Demeter presenting the “cleansed” necklace to his bride, who wore it only once, on her wedding day. As she had walked down the aisle, she coughed up blood that stained her pristine white dress a red as dark as the blood rubies. My hand rested on my own chest, my breaths coming fast and short. When the beloved bride died of tuberculosis mere months later, her lover locked the necklace away with his broken heart.

  After Demeter died, the necklace was sold to Godiva’s uncle. I stared at the article I’d found. It showed the ruins of the mansion, blackened stumps. To one side, police carried a stretcher with a black bag. I read the words, a jeweler suspected and seen fleeing the burning mansion, the naked niece escaping at the last moment, her white form racing across the dark lawn as the old man burned to death…

  “I have to find my father.” My voice echoed high and tight in the empty store.

  At the press of the off button and with a loud groan, I turned off the computer. The store had darkened during my research and I flicked on a lamp. My reflection stared back at me from the black monitor screen, grim and paste-white with all my blood drained.

  I snatched the necklace off the workbench, wanting to crush it beneath my fingers, wanting to destroy all that malignant energy. I couldn’t imagine now that I’d ever desired the evil thing.

  No way could I sell the necklace to Nance. No way could I give the money to my father. No way could I use some of the money to keep my promise to my aunt. No way would the blood of the necklace stain my soul. There had to be another way. Somehow. Some way. />
  Why didn’t I just leave? I could get a job working for a jewelry manufacturer in any big city of my choice.

  I shuddered as I imagined that job. Jewelry fabrication for the big companies meant the same endless repetition of work as in any factory. It would be a just punishment for me if I surrendered.

  With my head in my hands, the necklace rested cold and smooth, a dead thing against my skin. I wanted to bury it back in the ashes forever.

  My head came up. No. Hiding it wasn’t the answer. If I’d done Right Action when Rupert first handed me the necklace, if I’d given it to Lester or Mallard…

  I started toward the door. And stopped.

  No. I had to see my father first.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Rubbing my aching eyes didn’t help. I peered out the front window of Aunt Maddie’s store. If I leaned far enough, I could see the sheriff’s office down at the end of the block. I congratulated myself that my stakeout was a little more subtle than Lester’s had been.

  I didn’t want to chance getting stuck in the fruit cellar underneath the office. It wouldn’t be all that convincing to either Lester or Mallard if they heard me as I insist—encouraged—Rupert to surrender. It wouldn’t do either my father or me any good if we both ended up stuck in jail.

  When Lester and Mallard left then…if they ever did. It was already past midnight. Maybe they waited for Rupert to recognize their amazing persistence and, awestruck, turn himself in.

  I yawned and took another large swallow of cola. I’d bought a six-pack and already drank three. My head buzzed with sugar, caffeine, and exhaustion. Maybe I’d be the first non-alcoholic Buddhist to ever drink herself to death. After I got diabetes.

  At long last, Mallard, who moved tired, got in his car and drive away. Lester, moving old, followed in his Jeep. I waited several long minutes, until I trusted that the police wouldn’t return. As I threw open the trap door to the tunnels, the Noira necklace twinkled at me from where I’d left it on the workbench. I started to stuff the horrid thing into an apron pocket and paused.

  I remembered when I had tumbled off the roof and now didn’t want the necklace to fall out again at the worst possible moment. Where was a good hiding place? Where would it be safe from Aunt Maddie’s cleaning and, Buddha forbid, Nance’s rearranging?

  After dismissing various hiding spots in turn, I almost gave up and settled for stuffing it back into my pocket when I stubbed my toe on the old kiln. Of course. Maddie had no use for the kiln. Nance knew it was broken. And now Mrs. McDay, and therefore most of Starke knew the kiln was dangerous.

  I kept the pearl separate and secreted it in a bit of felt in my apron pocket. I scampered into the tunnel, following the opposite direction of the arrows on the “Hoosegow Excape” signs.

  Once, I caught sight of Fat Freddy’s long scaly tail as it disappeared around a corner. “Food, Freddy, food,” I cried as I followed. Only to turn the corner and come face to whiskers with not a cute-domestic-albino Freddy, but rather an old-ugly-big-yellow-teeth tunnel rat. I don’t know which one of us “eeked!” louder.

  This tunnel appeared almost un-traveled. Maybe the only traveler to and from the fruit cellar cell had been my Great Grandfather. Rubble almost blocked the entrance to the cell, save for a Rupert-sized hole. I squeezed through the narrow opening, regretting my diet of Mama Chin’s cinnamon rolls.

  I tumbled into the tiny fruit cellar and shone my flashlight around the minute space, expecting to see my father’s eyes flash at me like a trapped animal’s.

  Nothing. I’d arrived at long last to find the fruit cellar empty.

  An ancient oil lamp stood on a shelf, a box of modern matches next to it. I lit the lamp and looked around at Rupert’s refuge. My father always picked tiny spaces to exist in, as if he’d already been arrested, tried, and condemned.

  A century ago, someone had whitewashed the packed dirt walls and then had mounted pine shelves. The shelves were stockpiled with someone’s canning. Enough food crowded on those shelves to feed a family for a year.

  Most of the cans bulged around the seams. I winced at the idea of Rupert opening and eating the contents. I sat upon the seat, a battered stool next to a shelf where there sat a couple of opened cans and scraps of tin, glass and twine, a pair of well-used tin shears, plus a glass cutter and a bottle of epoxy. My father had been here.

  The reek of rotten fruit from the opened cans mingling with the stench of old whitewash and dirt made me shudder. I pulled my apron tighter around me and sought what little warmth I could find.

  Where was my father?

  The grave cold cell made me shiver. Best I could do was wait a while and see if my father showed up. He’d return for his tools, if he could. No jeweler ever abandoned his tools.

  Mallard and Lester wouldn’t be back for a few hours. I needed to stay awake to get out before they returned. I sighed and leaned my head against a shelf. I’d rest my eyes, as Aunt Maddie always said…

  Pain shot through my behind. I yelped and fell off the stool.

  I scrambled to my feet. In the light from the antique oil lamp, I ducked my head, as if somebody might have seen my fall from grace. No one saw. No one shared the fruit cellar with me. No one could have squeezed into the minute space without waking me up.

  Wriggling around to look at my bottom, I spotted and yanked out a large splinter from the stool lodged in one cheek. “Ouch,” I yelped. My voice sounded loud in the tiny space. I hoped a cop hadn’t returned.

  The trap door flung open.

  I yelled.

  “Shh,” Rupert said, finger to his lips.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I gaped at my father, outlined in the light from the sheriff’s office. In one day he had transformed. He’d trimmed what little of his hair remained. I suspected he’d used his old pair of tin shears, for his hair hung in chopped, uneven lengths.

  “How do I look?” Rupert asked.

  Words failed me. He’d shaved his beard off as well. Large gashes on his cheeks and chin combined with his other injuries for a look of a man who’d been in several accidents.

  “Get down here,” I said.

  My father winced. “I look a lot better, don’t I?”

  I stared at the array of bruises and cuts on Rupert’s face. “Somebody will see you up there.”

  He gave a tentative tight-lipped smile that concealed his rotten teeth and missing teeth. “I did it myself.” Rupert patted the back of his head. “Maybe I should trim off a little more back here?”

  Blood pounded in my ears. “You're worried about your hair?” I wanted to pull mine out by my roots. “Get…” I started to say and then realized I wanted Rupert to remain up in the sheriff’s office.

  I didn’t know when Lester or Mallard would return. When they did, my father would give himself up. I’d find a way to keep Rupert here. He wouldn’t run this time.

  Using the plank ladder press against the dirt wall, I clambered up and crawled out onto the old splintery floor of the office. The brilliant neon light, no longer blocked by my father’s body, raked over my eyeballs. I lay there and inhaled a hundred years of dust from a thousand criminal feet and wondered why the cops left the light on all night, in sleepy little Starke.

  Oh, right, they left it on because Starke no longer remained a dying mountain town. Now Starke was the brand new ski resort Aurora where murderers roamed.

  “Rupert, you need to—”

  “Did you bring the money with you? Did you leave it down there with my tools?” Rupert swung his body onto the ladder.

  “Listen—”

  “When can you get the Noira back?” my father asked.

  “What?” I tilted my head to one side. Maybe fatigue affected my hearing.

  A cotton bag flew out of the tunnel and smacked me in the shin. The tin shears hurt the most. “Ow!”

  “Quiet. Oh, sorry.” Rupert climbed out of the cell with far more grace than I had displayed. My father scooped up his tool bag and went to Lester’s desk. Wi
th a twinge, I noticed that the Widows Brigade’s check sat on the keyboard. Neatly torn in half.

  “When can you meet me with the money and the necklace?” He started opening and rummaging through Lester’s desk drawers.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “All you need to do is give me the money.” Rupert pulled open another drawer.

  Why did nobody ever answer my questions?

  “Get back the Noira,” my father continued, “and all my problems are solved.”

  “You’ll turn the Noira in to Lester. Once you’re safe in custody, you don’t have to worry about blackmail.”

  “Custody?” My father’s voice squeaked. “You mean in jail? Whyever for?”

  I clenched my hands into fists. “Because you stole the Noira.”

  Rupert slammed a drawer shut. It echoed loud as a gunshot. “Don’t believe what Lester, or that piece of lying junk” —he pointed at the computer monitor— “tells you.”

  So he had been in the fruit cellar beneath us all that time.

  “I believe every word.” I realized as I said it that I spoke the truth.

  Rupert stared at me, his mouth half-open, displaying his rotten stumps. “Dora? But you’re my daughter. How could you think—I didn’t steal the necklace. Such beauty didn’t belong with that mean old man.” Rupert’s hand fell to his chest and covered his heart. “It belongs to the great beauty who deserves such a compliment.”

  “Huh?” My hearing was going again.

  “A true work of art, for the ages in her true state, naked before God.” He stroked his chest. “And one I thought lost to me forever, burned to death along with that old man—”

  “Didn’t you read the news—” No, no, my father had been on the run. He might not have known Godiva hadn’t died. No wonder he’d run from her at first. He’d seen a dead woman.

  “And then to think we missed each other by only days that became decades…”

  I remembered Mrs. McGarrity’s words to Henry. “Your father, Henry, didn’t let that crazy woman and her brother settle in, not for no reason, no way, no how.”