by Ace Collins
“She was a really strange woman. I mean just plain weird.”
Her cousin’s words tore Janet from her long lost recollections and to the tall figure sliding out from behind the Packard’s steering wheel. Though Abigale Watling had also been Jim’s aunt, he’d never been close to the woman. His eyes were not filled with wonder or nostalgia; his was the grim, impatient, almost nervous glance of a person who couldn’t wait to be somewhere else.
Janet had little in common with Jim. She never had. So talking to him always seemed to be an ordeal. Still, in order to take the raw edge off the moment, she posed a question that demanded a response.
“When was the last time you were here?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, his tone as flat as the Illinois prairie that surrounded the old place. “Maybe ten years. What about you?”
“About three weeks ago.” Her voice lifted with the thoughts of that recent visit. “Aunt Abbi and I got out the old dolls. As we talked about the days so long ago, we played with them, sitting in the turret over there. We also spoke about all the summers I spent here and all the times I drank lemonade under the old sugar maple.” She paused for a moment, relishing another memory, before adding, “I’ve never known anyone who was kinder. She so wanted to make everyone’s dreams come true.”
“To you she was a fairy godmother,” the heavyset, pasty-faced man cracked, “but to me she was just a weird old lady. She was always prying into my life. Always asking questions! Poking her nose in places it didn’t belong.”
“She wasn’t strange,” Janet shot back, “just different. I liked that about her. She didn’t feel the need to be just like everyone else. And she was never boring or predictable. And if she was asking questions, it was just because she wanted to know what was going on in your life.”
As he strolled up behind her, Jim groaned, “Whatever stirs your drink! Why don’t we just compromise and call her eccentric?”
Ignoring the jab, Janet walked slowly through the gate of the yellow picket fence that separated the yard from the street. With a quick, determined stride she stepped up onto the eight-foot wide wraparound front porch. She was studying the gingerbread railing when she heard Jim’s footsteps behind her. Without turning her head, she sighed. “I think she would have loved the funeral.”
“She’s dead, so what difference does it make? Personally, I thought it was too long. We should have just had a graveside service. After all, she never married, and you were about as close to a kid as she ever had. What a waste! I wonder how much she dropped on that fancy coffin. And why did everything have to be yellow? Yellow casket, yellow flowers. They even dressed her in a bright yellow dress. Who does that? Her friends died years ago. So who was really left to care?”
Janet twisted to stare deeply into her cousin’s frigid, gray eyes. She’d never really understood him. He’d always been so bitter and aloof. Now, even in the minutes after they placed Aunt Abbi in the ground, he was as cold as a gravestone. Pushing sincere words from the depths of her heart, she whispered, “I cared. And you know how she loved yellow.”
“Well that’s your loss then,” came the terse reply. “And I hate yellow because whenever I came here it is all I ever saw! If something wasn’t yellow, she painted it yellow.”
Janet shrugged. Not only did she not understand Jim, she didn’t like him. At this moment she felt like telling him that, too, but his words stopped her before she had the chance.
“What tees me off is her will. She left everything of any value to that orphans’ home downstate. All she gave me was a stupid old desk. All the stuff she had, and she gave me one worthless hunk of wood.”
“Well it did belong to your father,” Janet argued as she lowered herself to the porch swing. She was already gently rocking by the time he answered.
“And he’s dead, too, so what good does that do me? I don’t want it. It’s just an old piece of wood. I mean who uses rolltop desks anymore? Not me. They just take up space and collect dust. I told her attorney—what was his name?”
“Johns.”
“Yeah, old man Johns. Anyway I told him he could put it in the estate sale and send me whatever it brings. She could have at least given me that Packard. Don’t like that yellow color, but it still would have made an impression when I drove up to work.”
“Sounds like you,” she quipped. Wrapping her hand around the swing’s support chain, she added, “It’s not like she didn’t give you anything. After your folks died, she was the one who paid for your college. You wouldn’t have a degree if it weren’t for her.”
He shrugged. “I’d a figured out a way. I never needed her. Besides, you’ve got nothing to complain about. She left you all her cash.”
Janet almost laughed. “Well don’t feel like she shortchanged you too much. I got $75.04. That was all there was in her checking account. Her savings account was empty. So when they sell that desk, we’ll be about even.”
He leaned his full form into the porch railing, a look of astonishment framing his face. “Then what happened to the old bat’s money? When we were growing up she was loaded. She paid cash for everything. She never had a loan in her life.”
Janet shook her head. “Mr. Johns said she was heavy into the stock market when it crashed.”
“Doesn’t that just beat all,” he snarled. “Our aunt has to be the one woman in the state who played the market. If I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any at all. I hated her and I hate this town!”
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his gray wool slacks, the tall, rotund thirty-year-old ambled back across the yard, out the gate, and to his light blue, 1931 Plymouth coupe. Without a word he opened the door, slid in, and hit the starter. As the flathead roared to life, he hollered out the window, “I’m headed back to Springfield. No reason to stick around. Don’t spend all that money in one place.”
Janet casually observed the car as it swept around a corner and headed out to Highway 150. He had never cared about anything but himself. It was as though he’d been born without a heart. Yet rather than hate him for his selfishness, she pitied him. He’d probably never known a truly happy day in his life.
Pulling her lithe sixty-two inches off the swing, she resolutely walked to the front door, turned its old brass knob, and strolled into the old home’s parlor. The house was crammed with antiques. Her aunt simply couldn’t resist adding more and more fine pieces. They were arranged in a semblance of order, but the house was so crammed full it was difficult to slide between the chairs, couches, love seats, and tables just to get to the library. And it was the library, complete with its floor-to-ceiling, twelve-foot-high bookshelves that contained Abigale Watling’s most prized treasures. This was the room where she’d spent most of her time. Sliding open one of the oak pocket doors, Janet smiled and stepped into a place that smelled of lilac perfume and musty pages.
“She did love to read,” Samuel Johns announced from behind the room’s large center desk.
His deep voice caused her to stiffen in shock. He must have noticed because he immediately lowered his tone and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
After regaining her composure, she took another step into the room. “I thought I was alone.”
“I came over right after the funeral to do some looking around. In fact, the sheriff is here, too. Our cars are out back, so guess you didn’t see them.”
Janet walked over to a chair beside the walnut desk, her pumps clicking on the wood floor, and sat down. As she felt the breeze blowing into the room from an open window she pondered what she’d just been told. The sheriff? Why would he be here?
Just a few feet away, Johns rested his elbows on the desk and pushed his hands together, his fingers interlocked. The large brown eyes peering through the attorney’s round, thin-framed glasses indicated a contemplative air. As his two chins came to rest on his hands, he took on the look of a French bulldog. Taking a deep breath, he noted, “Your aunt was a very meticulous woman. As eccentric as s
he was, she was also a creature of habit. I’d come to visit her on a business matter, and we’d always end up in this room where she’d serve me a cup of tea and some shortbread cookies. It was that same routine every trip. Never changed. I always took what she served, but I hate hot tea, and if I never see another shortbread cookie in my life it will be too soon.” Janet wasn’t sure what to make of the comment.
Leaning back in the high-backed desk chair, his eyes roved from one shelf to another as if he was taking inventory. After several minutes of silence, only interrupted by the songs of birds and sounds of traffic coming in from outside the open window, he noted, “There are over six thousand books on these shelves.”
Janet grinned. “She probably knew the exact number.”
“Not only that,” he instantly returned, his fingers tapping a book on the desk, “but she has each of the titles listed right here in this journal. She even wrote down what she paid for each book, when and where she bought it, and she rated its literary value. I’ll be honest, in looking through her notes, I’m a bit surprised by her taste. Though she owned all the major classics, it seemed she was decidedly fond of detective yarns and mysteries.”
Janet nodded. “She was a big Charlie Chan fan; I knew that. She read all the Sherlock Holmes stuff, too.”
The attorney nodded. “I know in real life she did love a mystery. She followed the crime beat in the Commercial-News much more closely than she read the society pages. She constantly talked to me about criminal trials from all over the nation, always looking for hidden clues—those the cops had missed.”
“She had files on unsolved cases,” Janet chimed in. “She told me tales of lost treasures and shipwrecks for my bedtime stories. Not exactly the kind of thing a kid needs to hear before the lights are turned out.”
“I heard some of those stories, too.” Johns laughed. “What always amazed me was that she could mention a book and immediately walk over to its place on the shelf and pull it down. She was that way about everything. This old house is filled with all kinds of stuff, and she could still tell you which drawer in which chest in what room was a thimble she bought in 1922.”
“No doubt,” she agreed, “she had a mind like no one I ever met.”
Johns’s tone suddenly grew even lower and more serious. “And that’s why the sheriff has been going through this whole house from top to bottom the past two days. There’s something wrong, Janet.”
“Wrong?” Her puzzlement resonated in her tone.
“As executor of her estate, I quickly went through her records. It seems that about six months ago Abigale withdrew just over $100,000 from the bank. That was practically everything she had. I made some calls and discovered she had them give her the cash in one-hundred-dollar bills. Now I know she’s been fixing up a few things around the house—she bought that new Packard; she made a trip to Chicago, too; and it was well known she constantly gave out cash to those going through tough times. Did you know that just last week she paid for a ten-year-old boy’s cancer surgery? It was somebody she’d never met. Just read about the family and their need in the newspaper. She probably did a few other things like that in the past half year, but I seriously doubt she could have gone through all that money.”
Janet folded her hands over her dark blue skirt. The single schoolteacher carefully considered her aunt’s habits and the lawyer’s words before speaking. “So what are you saying?”
“I don’t want to alarm you, and I hope I’m not jumping to any conclusions, but I believe she might have been robbed. In fact, she might have been murdered for that cash.”
Janet’s gaze shot to a photo of her aunt on the desk directly in front of her. As she looked into the woman’s kind eyes, a chill ran down her spine.
“Janet, I’ve got no evidence. She’d been dead for at least a day when Mrs. Clawmind found her. The coroner ruled that she died of a heart attack. That’s logical. She was seventy-nine, but to me she seemed to have more energy than most college kids. She was always out, going places in that Packard. When I saw her earlier this week, she seemed as healthy as a horse. Yet even with that in mind, I’d buy that she’d died a natural death if at least some of the money were still here. But it’s not. We’ve looked in every drawer, under the beds, in the attic, and everywhere else she could have hidden cash. We found nothing but the change in the living room couch!”
The sadness that had tugged at her heart over the past few days now overwhelmed her. And it wasn’t the money. She didn’t care about that. It was the picture of Aunt Abbi being murdered—she couldn’t bear the thought of the woman she so loved dying in fear.
“So what do you think might have happened?” Janet asked, the words tugging at her heart even as they spilled from her mouth.
“There were no signs of violence,” he assured her. “If she was murdered it wasn’t in a traumatic fashion. Maybe someone poisoned her. My guess is that someone found out where she kept her money, devised a scheme to kill her in a manner that wouldn’t attract immediate attention, and then took the cash. By the time I suspected foul play, the undertaker had already embalmed her and pitched the fluids that might have told us something.”
As the color drained from Janet’s face, a sick feeling twisted her stomach into a thousand knots. This couldn’t be true. Aunt Abbi, the kindest woman in the world, never had an enemy in her life. She spent her days helping everyone. She was the living embodiment of the charge to reach out to the least of these. No one could have hated her enough for that. She just couldn’t have been murdered! Janet’s unexpected plunge into a darkness she’d never known or expected was interrupted by the attorney’s words.
“Sheriff Akins and I figure it has to be someone who knew her pretty well. Unless Jed finds something out back in the carriage house, the money is gone. With that in mind we’ll have to wait until the thief shows his hand.”
“I don’t understand,” Janet replied. “What do you mean shows his hand? You said you had no evidence, only suspicion.”
He forced a smile. “We aren’t completely lost in a fog. You don’t see a lot of hundred-dollar bills being tossed around here or even in Danville. Thus we’ll alert store owners, banks, and businesses to watch out for someone flashing a lot of C-notes.”
A knock at the front door caused Janet to glance out the window to the porch. Through the sheer curtains she spotted a man waiting by the door.
“Come on in,” Johns yelled.
Within a few seconds he joined them in the library. Janet had known the law officer for more than twenty years, and during that time he had never been one to waste words. He said what he had to say, and he did it succinctly. This moment was no exception.
“Found nothing.”
“Then,” Johns announced as he rose from his chair, “we’d better quietly get the word out that we’re looking for a big spender.”
“On it,” Atkins answered. A few seconds later he was out the door and headed to his car.
“I can’t believe it,” Janet whispered, pulling herself to her feet and moving over to the front window. Glancing out toward the street she noted a solitary figure walking slowly past the house. She had never seen him before. Of course that was nothing unexpected. She hadn’t lived in Oakwood in five years. But there was something about the way this man stared at the house—almost like he was taking inventory— that sent chills up her spine. With one look from the scruffy stranger’s dark eyes, all the bittersweet, heartfelt memories that had flooded her soul over the past few days were replaced by fear’s cold reality.
Chapter 3
It was twenty degrees warmer than it should have been as a high-pressure system took root over the Midwest, pushing people and machinery to the limits. For the last week countless cars had overheated, icehouses had sold through their blocks of frozen liquid, and department stores were completely out of fans. During that time, Janet and the sheriff carefully observed Janie Timmons and her workers deftly remove and catalog every piece of furniture, dish, glass, and p
ainting in the old Watling place. Even her aunt’s clothes were tagged and hauled away to the auction barn. By early Friday afternoon the home was nothing more than empty rooms and bare walls.
Atkins began a final exhaustive inspection of the premises. After finishing his duties at the law office and changing into work clothes, Johns joined the sheriff about five thirty.
Over the course of several hours the men searched every corner of the home for hidden passages, loose boards, and false walls. Sadly they found nothing. It was just past nine when they completed that work, and a disappointed Johns and Atkins joined Janet on the Elm Street mansion’s front steps. It was still so hot the mosquitoes had called off looking for human targets.
“We can be sure of one thing,” the weary attorney noted, sweat dripping from his brow, “she didn’t hide any cash in the house. Every place it could have been stashed has been checked and rechecked. And if any false walls were in that old place, we’d have found ’em. The money is simply not here.”
An exhausted Atkins plopped his lanky form onto the steps and ran his right hand through his short-cropped brown hair before adding, “This has proven to be a colossal waste of time and energy.”
