Treasure in Exile (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series, #5)

by Hubbard, S. W.

  “The Armentrout family tree. Birdie traced the family back to 1720.”

  Ty studies the paper with a furrowed brow. “My family tree would have branches that twist right off the page. I bet nobody could figure it out.”

  He sets the open folder in front of me and points to an asterisk on a diagram that looks more like a scientific experiment than an oak tree. “What does this mean?”

  The paper is covered with carefully drawn lines and boxes, and the boxes are filled with names and dates inscribed in precise printing. All of it is done in faded pencil, which has been erased and rewritten in many places. “I think it means this guy had a first wife who died, and then a second wife, and he had kids with each one.” I squint at the neat but faint writing. “George said that Birdie discovered that they were distantly related to Loretta Bostwick, This shows that Loretta’s maiden name was Crawford. Back in the early 1800s, a Crawford man married an Armentrout woman.”

  “So I guess Loretta named her son with her maiden name. That’s so WASP-y,” Donna says.

  “What about these dotted lines?” Ty points to a box dated 1916, which is connected to a Julius Crawford with a dotted line. There’s no name inside the box, only a question mark.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Birdie ran into a dead end.”

  I text George and ask him if he wants me to mail the folder or if he will pick it up from my office.

  He quickly answers.

  That must be a very old folder when Birdie first got started with the research. Later she switched to a genealogy software program to track all the information. I have all her electronic records and her latest print out. You can throw that folder away.

  “Huh. He says it’s a duplicate and he doesn’t need it.” I close the folder and slide it to the corner of my desk.

  Donna pounces. “So throw it away. You told me you wanted to declutter your desk.”

  Protectively, I slide it back toward me. “Let’s just wait until after the sale to toss it. You have no idea how many times people change their minds.”

  “Hoo! That’s fer sure,” Ty agrees. “ ‘member that time I hadda drive clear to Newark at midnight to get back a dirty old stuffed rabbit that we sent to Sister Alice?”

  “Who could forget Baxter the Bunny?” I turn to explain the Baxter saga to Donna. “Guy was a Marine lieutenant and flipped out when his sister said we could toss the toy he left behind in his childhood bedroom.” I put a paperweight on top of the folder. “I’ll just keep this until we close out the Armentrout sale.”

  Although I can tell Donna’s fingers are still itching to purge, she heads out with Ty to Birdie’s house in the van while I follow in my car. On my way, I stop at the post office to pick up a registered letter, a check from an overly scrupulous customer who refuses to trust standard first class delivery.

  I groan as I see the line snaking through the dingy lobby, twenty people all waiting for the one clerk who works with maddening thoroughness. “Does this contain anything fragile, flammable, poisonous, or explosive?” she asks the woman at the head of the line who’s placed a shoebox with a large Zappos logo on the counter.

  I consider leaving, but the line is never any shorter, so I may as well gut it out. I shuffle forward, reading the New York Times on my phone. As I reach a turn in the maze, I see a familiar face at the end of the line: Henry Bell.

  As if this trip to the post office weren’t painful enough.

  I hunch over my phone. Maybe he won’t notice me.

  “Hey, Audrey!”

  Damn. I look up innocently. “Oh, hi Henry.” I can’t even bring myself to say, “How are you?” let alone “Congratulations.” You wouldn’t think he’d be so friendly to someone he just screwed over.

  The line moves, and we are almost parallel to each other. The creases in Henry’s forehead grow deeper as he lifts his grizzled brows. “How come you turned down the Tate job?”

  My jaw nearly comes unhinged. “I didn’t turn it down. The Board gave it to you.”

  We inch a little closer. Henry holds out his hands palms up. “I told Levi we oughta get you in to help with the antiques, but Levi said you weren’t interested.”

  “What!” I tap my chest and my voice rises. “I suggested we work together too! Levi said you wanted to work with an antiques dealer you’ve worked with before.”

  Henry’s eyes widen. “Levi said what?”

  By this time, people in the line are staring at us. My turn is next. “Meet me outside.”

  By the time Henry joins me in front of the post office, my hands are trembling with anger. I tell him what happened in my interview and show him the email I got from Levi.

  Henry scratches his close-cropped head. “I don’t understand. Dennis Sykes called me a couple days ago and asked was I interested in doing a quick clear-out of an old house that some elderly ladies left to the Parks Center. He made it sound like some house in the neighborhood full ‘o cat shit and piles of newspapers. Then him and Levi take me to the Tate Mansion. I nearly passed out. Place is like a museum inside. I told ‘em I didn’t know how to sell stuff like that. And that’s when I said ‘Audrey Nealon would know. We could work on it together.’ And Levi looked me square in the eye and told me you weren’t interested.”

  “Unbelievable! Why would he say that? I’m dying to work on that job.”

  “And,” Henry shoves his hands deep in the pockets of his baggy gray work pants, “Dennis told me if I needed help with the antiques, he’d send over a guy from that antiques store on Fairmont Avenue.”

  I feel tears prick my eyes. Dexter Abernathy is the most crooked, low-down schemer in all of Palmer County. He would cheat his own grandmother. I once heard him tell a woman that five thousand dollars worth of her Rookwood Pottery was just worthless knick-knacks, but he’d take it off her hands for twenty bucks.

  “So you’re working with Dexter on the job?” I can barely choke out the words.

  “Give me a little credit for havin’ the brains I was born with, girl. I could see as soon as he stepped into that house that he was out to cheat us. He was lickin’ his lips and his eyes got all shiny like a kid at Christmas. And then he started poor-mouthin’ everything. ‘This here’s got a scratch, this here’s the wrong color, ain’t nobody want this kinda table, but I’ll help you get rid of it.’ So I showed him the door. Then when I saw you in line today, I thought, well if Audrey don’t want the job herself, she could at least tell me someone honest that could help me out.”

  “But I do want the job.”

  “Well, I can see that now.” Henry sticks out his hand. “Whattaya say we split this job fifty-fifty? I figure I’ll still come out further ahead than if I worked with that hustla, Abernathy.”

  I feel like Dorothy arriving in the Emerald City. I’m going to get the chance to explore the Tate Mansion after all. I grab Henry’s hand and shake hard.

  “What about Dennis and Levi?”

  “I don’t know what they’re playin’ at, but I don’t like bein’ lied to. You leave them to me.”

  And just like that, Another Man’s Treasure is back in the game.

  Chapter 19

  “WOW!”

  “Amazing!”

  “Dope!”

  The staff of Another Man’s treasure is finally inside the Tate Mansion. We stand in the magnificent front hall as Henry Bell watches our reaction. The walls are raised panel walnut, the floor an intricate herringbone parquet. The staircase turns halfway to the second floor where a stained glass window casts a soft glow on the landing. A six-foot marble Aphrodite stands guard at the doorway of the front parlor. Some landscape oils in heavy gilt frames hang on the walls, but pride of place goes to a larger than life-sized portrait of a stout man with bushy pork chop sideburns and a handlebar mustache.

  Donna stares up at his stern visage. “Is that Vareena Tate’s husband?”

  “Nope, that’s Edgar Vernon Tate, Senior, Vareena’s husband’s grandfather. He’s the one who made the family fortune and built
this house in 1882. He died long before Vareena came on the scene.”

  “Good,” Donna says. “I wouldn’t want to crawl into bed with him every night.”

  “Yeah, it’s hard to imagine these stiff old Victorians having any kind of sex life.”

  “People had kids, so someone musta been hookin’ up,” Ty says as he moves into the front parlor. “But I sure wouldn’t wanna do the nasty on that sofa.”

  Donna giggles as she runs her hand over the knobby wooden back and the scratchy horsehair upholstery. “Ouch. Maybe that was their birth control.” She hugs herself and slowly pirouettes. “Two old ladies lived here all alone? I’d be kinda scared.”

  “Try being stacked in a house over on Findlay where a guy who works days shares a bed with a guy who works nights. That’s scary.”

  “I just meant—”

  But Ty has moved on, prowling the perimeter of the room. “Lots more paintings. They need a cleaning, but they’re in good shape.”

  Heavy maroon velvet drapes cover the windows, making the interior gloomy but protecting the art from light damage. More landscapes with ornate frames hang on every wall. While Ty and I study them, Donna looks at the furniture.

  “Is this where they hung out? These chairs look just as uncomfortable as the sofa.”

  “This is the formal drawing room, where the Tates would have received guests,” I explain.

  “Huh. The room is big, but it’s so crowded.” Donna runs her dust cloth over an inlaid table. “I don’t think you could have much of a party in here without knockin’ stuff over.”

  Parties. Did this dark, cavernous house ever contain laughing, joyful people? “Vareena moved into this house as a young bride in the middle of World War II. This room would have been old-fashioned even then. I wonder what she thought of it?”

  “I guess she couldn’t talk her husband into redecorating, huh? That happened to my friend Patty. She and her husband bought the house her husband grew up in when his parents went to assisted living. Patty had all these plans to modernize, but Mario wouldn’t let her change a thing. She’s stuck with these 1980s vertical blinds and Laura Ashley wallpaper. Ugh!”

  “Vareena and her husband hardly had a chance to live here together. He shipped out to France right after they married. A few months later, he was killed.”

  Donna swats at a cobweb in the corner. “Maybe after her husband died she didn’t have the heart to change anything in the house.”

  I think of my childhood home. It was virtually unchanged from the day my mother disappeared until the day my father had a stroke thirty years later. Certainly he hadn’t had the heart to redecorate.

  “What’s this weird thing? It looks like a wreath in a glass box.” Donna holds it out to me.

  “Cool—Victorian mourning hair art! The different colors are from the different colored hair of the dead people in the family.”

  Donna nearly drops the shadow box. “Eeeew! What are we going to do with that?”

  “It’s a pretty good example—should bring four or five hundred bucks.”

  Henry shakes his head. “White people into some strange shit, you ask me.”

  The back parlor is where the family should have gathered, but this room doesn’t look like it’s been used either. There’s an elaborate onyx and marble chess set, but when I move the queen, a dust-free ring lies beneath her. A spinet piano stands in the corner, but there’s no sheet music, and the ivory keys are brittle and cracked. A Victorian sewing cabinet stands beside a chair that looks less uncomfortable than those in the formal parlor. When I look inside I find a piece of fabric on which someone has started to work a cross-stitch sampler. The needle is still stuck in the brittle, yellowing fabric. “Look, it was going to be a picture of this house. Someone set it down a hundred years ago and no one ever moved it. It must have been Edgar Jr.’s wife, the one who died in childbirth. She would have been Vareena’s mother-in-law if she had lived.”

  Was she the last person to regard this place as a real home? Apart from a light coating of dust, the Tate mansion seems like a restored historic house open for tours. Mount Vernon without the velvet ropes to keep grubby fingers off the antiques.

  Except this house hasn’t been restored. It simply has never changed.

  Donna looks around the room and shivers. “If they didn’t ever have company and they didn’t sew or play games or listen to music, what did Maybelle and Vareena do all day?”

  What indeed?

  Henry gives a magician’s wave of the hands. “All this is just for show. I think they must’ve spent their days back in a little room by the kitchen. There’s nothing fancy in there. Old paperbacks...a radio. I’ll handle that. You just pay attention to these front rooms and we won’t get in each other’s way.”

  I’m desperately curious about Maybelle and Vareena’s life in this house, but I’m not about to get on Henry’s bad side in my first ten minutes inside the Tate mansion.

  “Will do. There’s plenty to keep us busy here.”

  Henry nods and disappears down a long hallway.

  “How did they cook?” Donna asks. “Like pioneers with kettles and a fire?”

  I laugh. “The house isn’t that old. The original kitchen would have had a coal stove and an icebox. And servants to keep them functioning. But when Ty and I peeked through the window, it looked like the kitchen had been updated in the 1940s—either right before or right after the war.”

  “That means there could be some McCoy pottery or some old cast iron frying pans, and big mixing bowls. And those...” Ty makes a winding gesture.

  “Flour sifter.” I supply. “Or did you mean an apple-peeler?”

  “How do you guys know all this?”

  Ty shrugs as he pulls out the iPad and prepares to start taking photos. “You pick it up. Work and learn. I didn’t know nuthin’...anything...when I started. Right, Audge?”

  Nothing about antiques and collectibles...plenty about life. “You were always curious. That’s all it takes to learn anything new.”

  Donna thinks about this. “Hmmm. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t learn chemistry in high school. Maybe I wasn’t dumb, I just wasn’t curious about all those molecules and formulas.”

  “Chemistry might be interesting if you have a good teacher. I had Mr. Wysocki.” Ty mimics snoring. “I thought the English class I’m taking now was going to be boring, you know, with poetry and shit, but the teacher is tite. We learn about all kinds of stuff. Like the other day we were talking about logical fallacies.”

  “What’s that?” Donna asks as she helps him move a chair out of the shadows for a better photo.

  “That’s when you’re not thinkin’ straight and you’re not givin’ a good reason for what you’re doin’. Like when I used to tell my Grams I had to hang at the playground on Fowler street instead of shootin’ hoops at the Parks Center because all my homies doin’ it. And she’d say, ‘if all your homies gonna jump off a bridge, you gonna jump too?’ See, that right there is the Bandwagon logical fallacy. Grams didn’t know it was called that, but she knew sure ‘nuff it was a bullshit excuse.”

  “I took a logic class in college.” I pause in my note-taking. “There was something in Latin...post hoc ergo—”

  Ty spins around and high-fives me. “Propter hoc! That means just because something happened before something else, doesn’t mean the first thing caused the second thing. Like when you say, “‘I got the flu right after that big snowstorm. Snowstorms cause the flu.’ The snow didn’t cause the flu, a virus caused the flu. Just so happens that flu season and snow season are around the same time.”

  “I wish I had stayed in college.” Donna says softly.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Sacred Heart in Connecticut. It’s a beautiful school, but far away, ya know?”

  I don’t want to point out that for some people, two hours wouldn’t be far enough away from home.

  “You could go back to Palmer Community,” Ty says. “It’s a good school.”r />
  Donna shakes her head. “It’s too late now.”

  “Never too late to do somethin’ you really wanna do. You wouldn’t be the oldest person there. I gotta dude in my class who’s sixty-six. He waited ‘til he retired from a factory job to go to college. He doesn’t hafta go, just wants to.”

  “That’s nice,” Donna pulls out her trusty microfiber cloth and polishes a curved glass cabinet filled with Dresden figurines. “But it wouldn’t work for me.”

  Ty and I exchange a look behind her back. He feels it too. There’s something in Donna’s tone that tells us to drop the subject.

  Chapter 20

  BY LUNCHTIME WE HAVE the front and back parlors catalogued, and we’re ready to move deeper into the house. I send Ty and Donna out for sandwiches, and use the break as a good reason to slip into the kitchen where Henry is working with his men.

  When I walk in, they are just finishing brown bag lunches. With a quick nod, Henry indicates the break is over and the guys head back to the garage.

  Henry stays seated. “I talked to Levi on the phone last night. Told him we were working together now.”

  I slide onto a chrome and vinyl chair. “How did that fly?”

  Henry methodically folds an empty Kit-Kat wrapper. “I asked him why he didn’t tell me up front that they talked to you about the job first...that you had the idea we could work together.” He stuffs the lunchtime litter into one bag. “Gave me some runaround. The Board...confidentiality...blah, blah, blah.”

  “Did you ask him why he lied to me and told me you preferred to work with someone else?”

  “He said you musta misunderstood.”

  “I showed you his email. Levi said it in black and white.”

  Henry holds up his hands to ward off my objections. “I know. But he was squirming. I felt like I had to let him off the hook.”

  I don’t feel so compassionate. The lies he told Henry and me about each other could have ruined our working relationship. I want to squeeze the truth right out of that man.