The Milburn Big Box Set

by Nancy McGovern

  Nora steepled her fingers together, and tried to figure it out. “No. He isn’t. But when he last called me, he mentioned that he’d be at Tiffany’s house.”

  “That’s impossible,” Harvey said. “It’s still cordoned off by the police, isn’t it?”

  “It is?” Nora asked, astonished.

  “Sure. I know the place. Had to make it my business when she died. Let me take you there.”

  He drove through dusty roads, driving as recklessly as ever, until they finally halted at a dingy old bungalow. On the porch, an old man was sitting in a rocking chair, a pot of iced tea standing next to him on a stool. His wife, a blue haired lady with large convex glasses covering nearly half her face, was talking animatedly to him. A little farther away was a shed, with yellow police tape surrounding it.

  “So, for all her wicked ways, Tiffany was rooming with an old grandpa and grandma,” Nora said.

  “Well, she rented that old shed and gave them as little money as possible, I’ll bet,” Harvey said. They got out of the car, and the old couple perked up, looking astonished that someone had come to visit.

  “Hello there,” the old man said cautiously. “You lost?”

  “Not at all.” Harvey gave him a winning smile. “At least, I hope not. My friend Nora and I were wondering about that shed of yours.”

  “You reporters?” the old man said, looking a little annoyed now. “Go away if you are.”

  “Reporters!” The old woman banged a stick on the porch. “Can’t stand em! I was tellin my great grand-daughter Emmy the other day-”

  “No sir,” Harvey said. “We aren’t reporters. Matter of fact, Nora here owns the new diner in town. I’m from Harvey Nathaniel Real Estate and Construction Co.”

  “Oh, I know the diner.” The old man nodded. “My granddaughter bought me a good sandwich the other day, plain honest ham and cheese. I can’t stand this new-fangled artsy cooking where they put all sorts of things into an honest man’s dinner. The other day I asked for mac and cheese and my great grand-daughter put tarragon in it. I thought tarragon was some kinda animal. Turns out it’s an herb. But why put it in mac and cheese? The most I ever put in was caramelized onions.”

  “Caramelized onions taste good on anything,” the old woman said, smacking her mouth. “Why my mother used to say, if you got potatoes and onions, you got yourself a meal. It was true, too. We were poor as mice, but we had a full stomach as long as we could grow our own potatoes.”

  “Well, let them talk, woman,” the old man said. “They aren’t interested in your potatoes.”

  “They should be,” the old lady said. “Why, the recipes my grandma had, those were the days we used everything in the kitchen. My great grand-daughter tried to throw away a loaf of bread the other day because the package said it was expired. Can you imagine! Good bread, could make good bread pudding out of it if you added in a few raisins and a little cinnamon.”

  “Well, you never used it,” The old man said. “It’s turning green with mold now. About time we throw it away.”

  “Well, I could have used it, but then I was tired after Emmy left,” she said. “You don’t like to eat anything I cook anyway.”

  “You never make me lamb,” he said. “That’s all I want to eat before I die - a good roast leg of lamb.”

  “Well, the doctor’s said with your cholesterol, you might just die if I give you that kind of rich food,” the old woman retorted.

  “Er…” Harvey cleared his throat. “Sorry to butt in. We were just wondering if a friend of ours came by? His name was Dillon.”

  “Dillon? No. Nobody’s been by here except the police,” the old man said.

  “You must know Dillon. He was a friend of Tiffany’s.”

  “Oh, I know him.” The old man wrinkled his nose. “Completely disreputable man.”

  “Well…” Harvey sighed. “He said that he was at Tiffany’s house. Guess he lied to us.”

  “Oh, well, he probably is at her house,” the old man said. “Now dear, about that leg of lamb-”

  “Wait, what? This is where Tiffany lived, isn’t it?” Harvey asked.

  “Yes it is,” the old man said. “I used to love it when you roasted it every Sunday. Remember that? It was before Jace went off overseas. We’d have a full house here. Toni and all her friends would drop by.”

  “Oh, I never liked your sister much, but her daughter was a darling.” The old woman nodded. “Maybe I should make you some. Just for old time’s sake. Next time Emmy’s here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nora interjected. “We’re not sure we understand. Isn’t this where Tiffany lived? Isn’t this her house?”

  “Well, it’s where Tiffany lived, but it isn’t her house,” the old man said. “Her house is on 15 Oasis Street. Dump of a place. She was telling me it’s more or less been abandoned for more than twenty years now. She was trying to fix it up, turn it around.”

  Nora and Harvey looked at each other. Simultaneously, they headed back to the car.

  “Wait, won’t you have some iced tea?” the old lady asked.

  “No, we haven’t the time!” Harvey smiled. “But thank you so much, for everything.”

  Once again, Harvey drove fast, his tires screaming and his car hugging the corners as he turned. But in fifteen minutes, they had pulled up at 15 Oasis Street.

  The house must have been gorgeous once. Nora tried to imagine it as it was when it was first built. All they could see now was the skeleton of that long gone home. Red brick jutted out from odd corners, while the paint was yellow and green with mold. The downstairs windows were boarded up, though one of them had a slat missing. The upstairs windows had broken panes and a tilting gutter.

  Harvey was tapping on his smartphone, and said, “Got it! The house is registered to a Brittany Jones. That’s Tiffany’s sister. I’m betting she just abandoned the house and forgot about it, or maybe Tiffany had a deal to split the money if she managed to flip the house.”

  “So that’s probably why it flew under Sean’s radar.” Nora nodded. “He searched for property owned by Tiffany, but not her sister.”

  Gingerly, they stepped inside. The smell of chalk hit them as they did. Inside, they could see that Tiffany had made some progress. She’d stripped away every last bit of the house, and was in the process of laying tiles on the floor. Bare electrical wiring hung from the walls, while a faucet lay by the side of the door, a spider walking delicately on it.

  “Nice.” Harvey grimaced. “Think Dillon is still here?”

  “Why was he here anyway?” Nora wondered.

  “You can bet we are going to ask him,” Harvey said.

  “I’m getting a bad feeling about this, Harvey,” Nora said. She stopped at a photo frame that had been dashed on the ground. The photo inside had been torn into shreds. She picked them up and tried to piece them together, but clearly some parts were missing.

  “I’m getting a bad feeling too,” Harvey said, as he moved into one of the rooms, and found yet another photo, all torn up.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “We do what we have to,” ge said. “We check this place out, and then we call Sean.”

  “Do you think… do you think he’s part of something here?” Nora asked. “I mean, I know that…”

  “I don’t know,” Harvey said, his eyes looking haunted. “The thing is, as much as I hate Sean, I’ve never thought he’s capable of evil. Taking a few kickbacks, or looking the other way over something minor, that I think he’s capable of. But anything involving murder? I think I trust him to do the right thing.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” Nora asked.

  “Then I’ve gambled on the wrong man,” Harvey said. “But I’ll make sure he pays for it as much as I do.”

  They both climbed up the stairs, hand in hand, and stopped midway.

  “Do you smell that?” Nora asked.

  Harvey nodded. “My worst fears are coming true,” he said.

  Almost as soon as the
y had spoken, the door creaked open. They heard footsteps in the hall.

  “Who-” Nora exclaimed, but Harvey held up a hand, silencing her.

  They both walked downstairs, as quietly as possible. The footsteps had moved into the kitchen. Nora felt a huge tension build up in her stomach. This was not good - this was very, very dangerous. Having Harvey here made her feel safer, and simultaneously made her feel very worried about his safety.

  “We’ll get him,” Harvey said softly. Then, springing into the kitchen, he shouted, “Freeze! Don’t move! Hands in the air! Now!”

  The man in the kitchen dropped the handkerchief he’d been holding, and held his hands straight up. “Don’t shoot! I’m not armed!” he cried.

  “Joe!” Nora exclaimed. “It’s you!”

  Joe turned around, his eyes wet with tears. “Yes. It’s me.”

  “What’s going on?” Harvey looked confused. “What are you doing here?”

  “He’s known Tiffany for a while now,” Nora said. “After all, Joe was having an affair with her!”

  “What malicious lies!” Joe shouted, his face turning red. “I was doing no such thing!”

  “So how did you know about this place?” Harvey asked. “Why are you here?”

  “I heard Nora when she was on the phone with Dillon,” Joe said. “I thought I’d come check it out myself.”

  “Oh, please,” Harvey said. “You murdered Tiffany. You tried your hardest to erase all evidence. Sergio was looking for you, wanting to kill you as revenge. But lucky for you, he broke into my house first, and I killed him. Meanwhile, you’d gotten rid of Tiffany. You’re the only one who had free access to the keys, right? Easy enough for you to sneak in there and kill her!”

  “I never did.” Joe had tears running down his eyes. “I could never harm Tiffany. I couldn’t!”

  “Why not?” Harvey asked sarcastically.

  “Because I loved her!” Joe sobbed. He sank to the floor, crying miserably, his head buried in his hands.

  “Quit the drama.” Harvey gave him a gentle kick. “Your time’s up, and you’re trying to fool us. You just told her you didn’t have an affair with her. So what’s all this nonsense about-”

  “I loved her,” Joe sobbed. “I did.”

  Harvey took out his phone, and began dialing Sean. “I guess it’s up to Sean to find out the rest,” Harvey said.

  “Wait, Harvey,” Nora stopped him. “Let Joe talk.” There was something in the way he was sobbing, like a man whose entire life was crumbling in front of him, that made her want to speak to him.

  “Thanks,” Joe said, sniffing, as he pulled himself together. “I guess I have no choice, do I? I have to come clean.”

  “It’s your only chance,” Nora said. “Your only chance to be declared innocent.”

  “I’m not even sure I care about that anymore,” Joe said. “But here goes. When Tiffany came back into town a year ago, she said that she’d changed. She’d turned a new leaf. She told me she wanted a second chance at life, and wanted to undo all the wrongs of her past. She told me I had a chance to undo my past too.”

  “Your past?”

  “Yes. A single mistake I made, decades ago. I was a Casanova back then. Some will tell you I still am, but these days, I just talk, I don’t act up. You know? Back then, I and my wife Jennifer were going through some rough patches. I slipped. I had an affair with a woman. Less than a year later, she gave birth to Tiffany.”

  Nora gasped. “So then-”

  “That’s right. I loved Tiffany. Of course, I did. She’s my daughter!”

  *****

  Chapter 19

  The three of them sat on chairs that Harvey had found in the backyard. The sun was about to set now, and the tiny kitchen was increasingly becoming cold. Nevertheless, they sat together, talking about the victim who nobody had really cared for.

  “When did Tiffany find out?” Harvey asked, a little more kindly. “That you were her father?”

  “Tiffany always knew, I think,” Joe said. “Or maybe she just suspected. Her own father treated her older sister Brittany really well, but he always hit Tiffany, or told her she was worthless. He knew too, I think, that she wasn’t his blood. But back then, if you were married, you stayed married. As for me, I suspected Tiffany might be mine. But I wanted to stay married to my Jennifer. I ignored her, thinking that as long as she was with her mother, Tiffany would be fine. Eventually, when she moved out of Milburn after graduating high-school, I lost track of her. I was glad she went away, now I didn’t have to feel fear every time I ran into her at church or the supermarket. Eventually, Tiffany’s whole family moved to California, and I felt even more glad. I thought she was out of my life for good.”

  “But she came back.”

  “Yes. She came back, and told me she knew I was her father, that her mother had told her before she died. Tiffany said that she’d done a lot of things wrong in her life, but when her mother died, that’s when she decided that enough was enough, she couldn’t let her past overshadow her future. She told me she wanted to try hard, to be a good mother, to be a good citizen. I helped her out. I gave her a job at the factory.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She was really good for a little while,” Joe said. “But then, when she started dating Dillon, she began going back to her old ways.” He sighed. “I kept warning her that it couldn’t go on, and eventually, I knew she was going to get fired. I really don’t know why Bernard kept her on as long as he did. She performed atrociously. People kept whispering that she and I were having an affair. I hated all those malicious rumors. But what could I do? If I told people that she was my daughter, Jennifer would leave me. Whereas rumors like that have spread before, and Jennifer has always stayed by my side. I decided to let them talk. it wasn’t hurting anybody.”

  “But it hurt somebody,” Nora said. “It hurt Sergio.”

  “Sergio.” Joe sighed. “When Tiffany was sober, she kept telling me how he was the love of her life, but that they’d had a love-hate relationship. She told me that she’d committed a grave sin when she was with him. She told me that she’d pay for it all her life. I couldn’t understand what it could be. I told her that if she’d cheated on him, she should confess. Maybe now that she was getting sober, he’d understand and take her back. She laughed and said, “No. It was something worse than you can imagine- only I justified it to myself. I told myself it was all for the best. The truth is, I did it for money.””

  “Did what?”

  “I don’t know.” Joe shook his head. “I asked her so many times, but she always said that she couldn’t bear to tell me. She said that nobody who knew what she had done could possibly love her. She said her only excuse was that she was high all the time back then. She wanted to change, and I tried to be a good example for her, I tried to show her the right path, but…” he gave a sigh. “It was no use. Once Dillon was in her life, she went back to her old ways.”

  “Maybe it would have worked eventually,” Nora said gently. “A lot of addicts take time, and relapse several times before recovering completely. It sounds as if she were slowly improving herself. Maybe, bit by bit, she would have crawled out of her cave of addictions, if only she hadn’t died.”

  “Died? You mean if only she hadn’t been murdered!” Joe spat out.

  “The thing is,” Harvey said, “I still feel like you’re a natural suspect here. Tiffany was your daughter, and you didn’t want anyone finding out. She was probably blackmailing you to get money. So you took the keys from Bernard that night, and murdered her.”

  “I didn’t,” Joe said. “I swear, I didn’t. I could never harm my own blood.”

  “If you didn’t, who did?” Harvey asked. “There’s you, there’s Dillon, there’s Chase, and there’s me. We all have motive, but only you and I had the opportunity. I know I didn’t do it. It all boils down to the keys - only you could have gotten them. Then there’s the way she was killed. Men like Dillon or Chase would kill her with a gun or
a knife, or strangle her. They wouldn’t know enough to get the ammonia and inject her with it. For that matter, they wouldn’t have access to sleeping pills.”

  “The sleeping pills were Tiffany’s,” Joe said. “She told me she took them sometimes when she was anxious. She had some shady doctor prescribe them for her. I didn’t approve, but what could I do?”

  “Plenty more, I feel,” Harvey said, standing up. “Look, daylight’s getting low. Let’s call Sean now, Nora.”

  “Wait, before you do,” Joe said. “There’s something upstairs that you might be interested in.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A safe,” Joe said. “A secret safe where she hid her belongings. I know where it is.”

  “All right,” Harvey said, looking doubtful. “But no fancy moves, Joe. I’m watching you.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

  Joe led the way upstairs, talking as he did. “She’d fall of the wagon every once in awhile, but when she was sober, my Tiffany was working very hard at flipping this house around. She told me that her secret dream was to have her entire family living in it.

  “I wish I could have done more for her. She idolized me, you know? When I was good to her, her face would light up like a little toddler who has been given candy. I think that’s what she wanted most in life, parents who loved her. Yet growing up, she never had that.”

  Harvey nodded. “Poor girl.”

  “You know, it’s all clear to me, except for one thing,” Nora said. “Why did Sergio keep asking for you? How did he even know you? If you were her father, why did he care? He can’t possibly have been jealous.”

  Joe shrugged. “Beats me.”

  They rounded the corner on the stairs, and entered the master bedroom. With a sudden scream, Joe turned around, and flung himself on Harvey.

  *****

  Chapter 20

  Instinctively, Harvey pushed him away, and uttered a yell of wrath. “What’s the matter with you!”

  Joe was trembling, biting his nails. He pointed to a pool of blood flowing out from under the bed. Nora’s stomach gave a lurch. Under the bed lay a dead body. Even though it was face down, she instantly knew whose it was.