by Rae Davies
A life of my mother’s obedience training made me take it.
Phyllis, it seemed, needed more clothes, some peach tea, Pretty in Pearl nail polish, a new pair of slippers and... since she had obviously missed out on so much news... a small television.
“I’ll have to check to see if they provide cable,” she muttered to herself, jotting down more notes.
I stood there, as I often did while talking to Phyllis, dumbfounded.
“But what about Klein?”
“Who?”
“The detective. He’s looking for you. He’s been asking me where you are.”
“And you haven’t known. So you’re good. Just avoid answering him again.”
“But he’ll expect me to tell him now that I know.”
She stood up, prim. “Expectations often lead to disappointments.”
With that bit of wisdom, I was shoved out the door with my list and a garbage bag filled with Phyllis’s dirty laundry.
I wandered back down the stairs feeling dazed. I made it down the front steps and to my car before the fog lifted and some semblance of reality returned. I opened the rear side door to shove the laundry inside and then turned to look back at the bed and breakfast.
Phyllis was hiding inside. My mother knew Phyllis was hiding out and had sent me to find her. Which must mean that my mother also knew that the police were looking for Phyllis. Why my mother thought I should get involved in that official interest/search, I didn’t know.
Could my mother think Phyllis had killed Missy? Could her network of information have led her to this idea?
I couldn’t see my proper partner doing in the Caffeine Cartel owner, at least not over anything as trivial as pulling a Mardi Gras bead trick for customers.
Phyllis could be a bit of a prude, but honestly, I wasn’t sure how prudish she truly was and how much of her outrage was put on to play to the crowd.
Or maybe my mother just thought I should know where Phyllis was because I had been put in the hot seat a bit by Klein over her disappearance. Maybe my mother felt I should rat her out.
I stared down at my list. Should I? Stupid question. It was a total WWPD (What would Peter do?) situation. And calculating what Peter would do in this instance did not take the brain matter of the dead fly that I’d flushed down the toilet.
But that was Peter, and I was not him.
Which left a bigger question: WWLD?
CHAPTER NINE
I meant to go home after that, or the shop, somewhere that I could sit in peace and consider my choices, but as I was rearranging Phyllis’s laundry so none of it fell out as I drove, movement at the side of the B&B caught my eye and reminded me that I had yet to take a peek into the Deere windows.
I casually rummaged inside my Jeep and waited for whoever was coming down the path, which ran between the B&B and the Deere mansion, to pass.
Rachel, my new friend from the Caffeine Cartel, came bouncing into view. Dressed in a skirt that was definitely schoolgirl chic and with her hair in dog ears, she looked a good ten years younger than what I guessed was her actual age. When she saw me, she checked her steps, making the cloth bag she was holding from one hand swing slowly back and forth until she and it came to a full stop. Her pink lips formed into an O before slowly spreading into a smile.
“Lucy! What are you doing here?” She looked around, taking in the bed and breakfast before scanning the rest of the street. “Are you alone?”
Standing, I glanced around too. Her question had startled me for a second, but I was indeed alone. No mother or Phyllis or Detective Klein hunkered down behind my Jeep.
Relieved on all counts, I shut the door to my Jeep, hiding Phyllis’s laundry, and motioned toward the bed and breakfast. “I was checking out the B&B. My parents are coming to town in a few months and I thought it might be a good place for them to stay.”
“Oh, that’s nice.” She shifted her weight from one hip to the other in a manner that made me wonder if she hadn’t had one too many cups of her coffee this morning.
“What about you?” I asked. It was polite to ask. I was also nosy.
“Oh, me.” She laughed. In her outfit, it presented as more of a giggle.
“I had a delivery.”
My mind for some reason immediately went to babies.
She waved her hand. “Well, not a delivery. Yet. I was at the B&B too. I’m thinking of expanding.”
The Caffeine Cartel? This certainly wasn’t good news for Joe, unless this new expansion would necessitate a move that took the kiosk and its Cuties well out of Cuppa Joe’s market range.
“Home delivery. Well, commercial anyway.” She tilted her head side to side as she talked, sending her dog ears bouncing.
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure if that was good for Joe or not.
“It’s an untapped market,” she finished and then smiled, as if proud of herself for some reason.
And maybe she was. Maybe this commercial sales thing would send the Caffeine Cartel’s profits skyrocketing even more than they had before.
Feeling suddenly glum at my own less than skyrocketing sales, I made a few more polite noises, agreed to stop by the next day with Betty’s initial designs, and got into my Jeep, or pretended to. Actually, I just opened the door and place my foot inside. Then, when she’d bopped out of view, I got back out and hurried as quickly as I could down the same sidewalk that she’d come from.
The concrete path, which ran right between the two houses, was lined with the same tall shrubs that I’d struggled to see past when standing on the bed and breakfast’s porch.
On ground level, they were an even more difficult barrier. I kept moving until I spied an opening in the foliage on my left. Another path, this one dirt, led toward the bed and breakfast’s back entrance, where I guessed the kitchen must be located and from where Rachel must have come. On the right, the shrubs were still dense.
I crept along, hoping to find some break in the branches that I could squeeze through. I had just decided to take a stab at a space that would have been challenging for Nostradamus, Rhonda’s plus–sized cat, when I heard the telltale sound of hinges creaking. I waited, frozen, but no one popped out of either yard to confront me.
After my heart stilled a bit, my courage blazed. The sound told me I was close, and sure enough, I was. Five feet further and I found an opening on the right: two concrete posts with a decorative black iron gate swinging open between them.
Open, thus inviting.
I walked through, head high and confident.
o0o
The Deere mansion was huge and brick and red. There was a wrap–around porch held up by limestone pillars, three chimneys that I could count and two turrets.
I could see why the Deere descendants were fighting over it.
I’d have done a bit of scrapping myself if I’d thought I had some claim to the place.
The home was gorgeous, but it was also sad. The shrubs looked unkempt and the flower baskets that hung from the porch were empty. Some were broken.
I picked up the remnants of one and set it on the cut limestone steps.
Then, feeling as if I’d done some good deed, earning me something, I walked lightly up the steps, cupped my hands over my eyes, and peered inside a front window.
Sheers covered the inside of the glass, making it impossible to see anything past them.
Muttering, I stayed on the porch and circled the house. At the back, the sheers changed from full window length to half, the bottom half.
At my shorter–than–average stature, this created a bit of a challenge, but not one that I, with a little creativity, couldn’t overcome.
I grabbed the end of an iron bench that sat a few feet away and dragged it into position under the window. The rusty iron feet made a grating sound over the painted wood, causing me to cringe and circle again, checking for any damage I might have caused in the historic home.
Sure enough, there were two long gouges in the paint.
Sure I was going to
puke, I squatted down and ran my fingers over them. Just in the paint. Not the wood. I could fix this, or Peter could... or I could. There was really no reason to pull Peter into this at all.
Behind me, a door creaked. I stood and spun like a guilty child, already stuttering out excuses before my feet had quit moving.
Darrell Deere peered out the door, looking side to side and smiling, until he saw me. Then he muttered to himself and tried to hop back inside, but I was faster than he was. I leaped forward, stuttering out excuses as quickly as I could. I’d gotten so far as explaining that I was sure Peter could buff out any damage when I noticed Darrell’s outfit.
Boxers, not briefs, a man’s undershirt of the wife–beater variety and a straw cowboy hat.
Darrell, it seemed, had pulled out his summer wear.
“Lucy.”
He dropped my name like a bomb, cutting off what was left of my barrage.
I returned the favor. “Darrell.” Then I remembered that I needed something from him, hopefully more than one something. I smiled and tried not to notice his lack of clothing.
“Sorry to drop in unannounced. I was at the B&B. Checking on it as a place for my parents to stay this summer. They’re coming to visit all the way from Missouri, and while I love my family, I would just as soon not have them staying at my house...” I rambled on some more until I noticed his eyes had started to cross and his expression had dimmed. Realizing I was about to lose him, I rushed my conversation forward. “Anyway, I was getting ready to leave and I saw Rachel. You probably know her. She’s one of the Caffeine Cartel Cuties. She was coming down this path and I realized it must lead between the bed and breakfast and your family’s home. And, well, I just couldn’t resist stopping by to...” I stumbled at this. What was an acceptable reason for “stopping by” aka snooping through locked windows? I decided to go for half–truth. I hadn’t realized Darrell and his siblings had worked out their differences and he was now living in the mansion, which he obviously was, but he didn’t need to know that.
“...to check with you on borrowing something of your grandmother’s for my window display. I told you about that, remember? That night in the parking lot, next to the Caffeine Cartel?”
Darrell who had been creeping backward a quarter inch or so a minute, until he was almost entirely hidden inside the dark house, flung the door open fully. “That! I told you I’d do it. No need to keep—” He glanced around again, this time at the trees and lawn surrounding the house, as if he expected someone to pop out of the bushes and grab us.
I swallowed and tried to keep my expression straight. Darrell was more than a few years older than me, but I hadn’t thought he was that much older. Certainly not in the dementia/people–are–after–me range. But then again, the fighting with his siblings had to have been rough. Maybe the stress had finally gotten to him.
Muttering some more, he stepped back and motioned me inside.
Careful not to show my thoughts, I felt my pocket to make sure my cell was still tucked securely inside and followed him.
o0o
The Deere Mansion was everything I’d dreamed it would be. Well, if my dreams were drafted while watching an episode of Scooby Doo.
All of the furniture was covered with white sheets and drop cloths. The air was thick with dust, and every light either flickered or was so dim I could barely make out Darrell’s pale form as he moved around the living room, muttering and clinking together what turned out to be a lead glass whiskey decanter and a matching glass.
The glass was for him. He didn’t offer me anything, not even a Diet Pepsi, which would have been a nice way to help wash the dust I was inhaling down my throat.
“So,” I asked. “How long have you been living here?”
He glared at me and slammed back his drink. Then he refilled his glass and pointed at me. “Walk around. Tell me what it will take, but don’t be greedy. I have my limits.”
I thought about assuring him that I most certainly wouldn’t be greedy and that I really didn’t want to take anything that either wasn’t insured or that I couldn’t afford to buy in case of damage, but he was close enough to me that I could see the crazy gleam in his eye. I decided to let that bit pass.
I wandered around, tentative at first, but soon curiosity and my passion for all things to do with Montana history stomped down any shade of nerves.
The painting that I’d wondered about was in the living room and even better, it wasn’t hanging over the fireplace or anywhere at all. Instead, it was already partially crated, as if ready to be toted off to my shop.
Smiling, I left the living room and wandered around until I found what had to have at one point been Darrell’s mother’s dressing room and, I guessed, before that, Ruby’s. There was a folding silk screen with a red velvet bench in front of it. There was also a dressing table with three mirrors, a red velvet covered chair, and a Moroccan tray table with some perfume bottles. The bottles were mainly from the mid–twentieth century, but one looked like it might date to Ruby’s time. I noted it and turned to leave.
Darrell was standing in the door, still glaring. He had though dug up some pants and a shirt. Grateful for that, I brushed past him.
The door to what turned out to be a bedroom stood ajar. As I started to push it open, Darrell stopped me. “What is it you’re looking for anyway?”
I thought I’d already been pretty clear on what I needed, but in his surly mood perhaps his memory wasn’t all it could be, or maybe senility was setting in. I told him my story again, adding this time that I would love to have the painting.
He frowned. “My family would notice if it went missing. What about cash? That’s cleaner.” He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket.
Confused and a little embarrassed, I pushed his hand away. “You couldn’t just tell them that you loaned it to me? It’s insured, isn’t it? I mean I would take good care of it and do everything in my power to keep anyone from even looking at it except from behind my front window, but you know... just in case. I could even take it for just that day. The day of the judging, I mean.”
He frowned. “You just want to borrow it?”
I nodded. “It and maybe a few other things. Just enough to put together a display.”
Looking as untrusting as malamute in an empty bathtub, he pulled the bedroom door shut and led me into what turned out to be a library, complete with floor to ceiling bookshelves and a plush if dusty Oriental rug. And stacked on those shelves and rug and chairs and every other semi–flat surface I could see? A museum’s worth of Deere memorabilia.
I spun slowly, taking in everything from saddles to dresses to kitchen wares to top hats.
“Oh, my...” I couldn’t say more. I had died and landed in antique dealer heaven. For a moment, I lost all sense of place and time. I moved around the room, brushing my fingers over one thing and then another, murmuring sweet nothings to copper tea kettles and Flow Blue china, assuring a set of silver salt shakers that I would remember them always, and crying a bit as I passed by a box of toys with a teddy bear that had to have been an original Steiff. They were all special and wonderful, but not the personal–to–Ruby–Deere items that I needed for my display.
For that, I went to a box of paper goods, which included letters, pictures and what looked like a diary, two dresses already displayed on dressmaker’s dummies and the top hat which I had to guess had belonged to Ruby’s husband, Garrison Deere, himself.
“Is that enough?” Darrell asked, looking bored.
Unable to speak, I just nodded.
He waved his hand. “Fine. I’ll have this...” He motioned to the things I’d selected. “delivered to your store tomorrow, and the painting. As long as you know you can’t keep it.” He pinned me with a stare.
I nodded again.
After that, he bum rushed me to the door, with his hand on my elbow and his bare feet making slapping sounds against the hard wood floor.
Once there, he pushed me back out onto the porch. “So we
’re clear. We’re good, right? No more requests, and this is just between you and me.”
His gaze was intense and steady. I hated to admit that I really wasn’t clear. That I had no idea what exactly was supposed to be just between us.
I nodded.
Apparently satisfied, he grunted and shut the door in my face.
CHAPTER TEN
The next day I arrived at the shop to find a message from Darrell. He was having the more expensive items delivered to Dusty Deals. He would box up the small and less valuable items and leave them hidden in a shed at the back of the property. He suggested I get them soon before some busybody came by and found them.
I chose not to believe the last was a slam at me. Darrell didn’t know that I’d been at the mansion to snoop. He thought I’d come with the express belief that he would be there.
Still, I took his advice, leaving Kiska at the shop and driving back to the mansion. This time, I pulled into the alley that ran behind the B&B and the mansion. After opening up the back tailgate, I went in search of my goods.
They were easy to find and not too heavy. There were two boxes though. Afraid of dropping something, I took just one and headed back to my Jeep.
As I neared the Jeep, I noticed a woman walking a German shepherd approaching. I immediately shoved the box into the back of my rig and prepared to properly bond with a fellow dog lover.
It wasn’t until the pair were less than six feet away that I realized the woman was Laura, of cheese–loving fame.
Today she was wearing old sweats with holes in the knees and a sweatshirt that looked like it had been victim to the Flashdance craze of the 80’s. Since that was the decade of my birth, I hadn’t lived it firsthand, but my mother’d had a few similar shirts that she’d worn with embarrassing regularity when dropping me off at school.
Laura didn’t strike me as being anywhere near my mother’s age, but then again a ripped up sweatshirt didn’t really depend on limits of time and style, did it? It was ugly when my mother wore it, and it was ugly now.
