Book Clubbed (20 page)

“I did point that out to him.”

“So why was he so annoyed?”

“He doesn't like to be kept out of the loop. He threatened to talk to you, too.”

“Then I guess I won't be checking my phone messages for the next couple of days. I hope you didn't tell him we'd gone snooping in Betsy's house.”

“Not a word,” she replied.

“Good,” Angelica said as they approached the house. The trunk lid was up on Antonio's car and he had his head buried in it.

“Do you need some help?” Tricia offered.

Antonio straightened. “You are just in time, lovely ladies. If one of you would take the keys—”

“I will,” Angelica said, appropriating them from him, and quickly marched toward the front door, leaving Tricia and Antonio to carry in the stack of foam take-out boxes that were packed with food.

“Looks like you brought enough to feed an army,” Tricia said as he handed her one of the stacks.

“A well-fed workforce is a happy workforce,” he said, snagging a bottle of wine and tucking it under his arm before he grabbed a large paper sack. “I will come back for the rest of it.” He slammed the lid and they started for the steps, which someone—probably Antonio—had thoughtfully salted earlier that day.

“I came by this afternoon,” Antonio admitted, as though reading Tricia's mind. “I wanted to make sure the Dumpsters had arrived.” They had, and now took up the entire length of the home's driveway.

Angelica stood in front of the front door and called to them. “Good. We've got to get this place emptied out tonight—even if it
takes
all night,” Angelica said.

“I don't understand.”

“We can discuss it while we eat,” Angelica said, turned, and unlocked the door.

“Where's Ginny?” Tricia asked Antonio.

“She will be here soon. I called her just before I left the Brookview Inn. She said she would be changing her clothes and would be here as soon as she could.”

Angelica had already set Sarge free by the time Tricia and Antonio made it inside. They walked through the stacks of cartons and into the kitchen, putting down their boxes. Angelica had peeled off her coat, but as Tricia went to unfasten the buttons on her own, Angelica stopped her.

“Since the Dumpsters are already out there, why don't you two start taking stuff out to them so we can have more room to work.”

“Why don't
you
carry the stuff out?” Tricia asked, annoyed.

“Because someone needs to take charge, and as I am a natural-born leader, I have taken on the burden of command.” Funny, everyone had looked to Tricia to take charge the night before.

“Marvelous idea,” Antonio said. “I will take out the first bag of trash and then bring in the rest of our dinner.”

“Get to it. Tricia, you know where all the trash is stacked,” Angelica said and turned back for the kitchen.

Tricia ignored her last comment. “What exactly does the burden of command entail?”

“I'll set up our dinner while the two of you tackle some of those bags of trash. When Ginny gets here, we can eat and then the real work will begin.”

Though unhappy with her assignment, Tricia nonetheless headed back to the living room and began taking the bags of trash out to the Dumpster.

Ginny arrived ten minutes later, breathless and full of apologies but ready to start work. With three worker bees now in attendance they set up a kind of bucket brigade, with Tricia tossing bags out the side door to Ginny, who tossed them to Antonio, who tossed them in the Dumpster. It took only ten minutes to clear out the mess from the evening before, so they could start making a new mess.

Angelica had impeccable timing, announcing that dinner was served just as the last bag landed inside the Dumpster. Tricia had been ready with a snarky quip, but had to eat her words when she saw that while the three of them were on garbage patrol, Angelica had been scrubbing the kitchen. The table, sink, and counters were certainly cleaner than they had been the night before, and she'd spread out the food, buffet style. Sarge trotted around the table looking hopeful, but Angelica admonished them not to feed the bichon frise. “He's already had his dinner. You don't want him to get fat and have to go on a doggy diet, do you?” But it was hard to eat such delicious chicken, beef, and pâté with Sarge's little brown eyes following every bite.

Antonio poured wine for all of them, but Tricia noted that Ginny didn't touch hers. Apparently she still hadn't shared the news of her pregnancy with her husband.

“Antonio, I'm sure you heard about the fire at Betsy Dittmeyer's house overnight,” Tricia said.

“I did. Everyone at the inn was talking about it.”

“And that it was arson?” Angelica asked.

He nodded.

“I'm afraid if we don't finish tonight, someone might find out that Betsy's garbage had been housed here for the past couple of years and do the same. That's why we must get the house emptied. I'm not going to lose the Chamber's only viable home to an arsonist.”

Antonio looked unhappy but nodded in agreement.

“Does this place have any outside lights? If it's lit up like a Christmas tree, it might discourage anyone from coming nearby,” Angelica continued.

“Do you think we should call Grant or maybe Fire Chief Farrar?” Tricia asked.

“It probably wouldn't hurt. Once we're finished, I think I'll do just that,” Angelica said.

The temptation to linger over their lovely meal was thwarted when Antonio suddenly became businesslike and announced that it was time to get back to work. “I'm hopeful, but not anticipating, that we will finish our work here tonight. And that will not happen unless we get started.”

“Shall I clean up here?” Ginny asked, looking hopeful, and before Angelica could volunteer for that lighter duty.

“Yes. The rest of us will begin clearing out the upstairs,” Antonio said.

“I'll make my calls first,” Angelica said, and turned to grab her purse and her cell phone.

“Why don't we do the same thing we did outside: someone toss the boxes downstairs and we open them here. That'll save us lugging all the trash down the stairs,” Tricia volunteered, but Antonio shook his head.

“The Dumpster sits directly under one of the upstairs windows. We can simply toss the trash bags into it.”

“Good idea,” Tricia agreed, and the two of them started for the stairs to the second floor, leaving Ginny to tidy the kitchen and Angelica with her phone.

Sarge seemed to think they were competing in a race, and zoomed on ahead of them, excitedly barking for them to join him at the top of the landing.

Tricia started working in the smaller of the bedrooms, dumping boxes and methodically going through the accumulated mess. Sarge thought it was some kind of game and sniffed at the items. He'd pick one up, carry it around the upstairs, showing off his new toy before dropping it and grabbing something else.

Soon Ginny joined them, but rather than stand over her emptied boxes, she sat on the floor sorting the wheat from the chaff, while Angelica and Antonio worked in the other room.

The pickings weren't anywhere near as good as they had been the night before, and soon Antonio opened the window on the south side of the house and began tossing the trash into the Dumpster.

Before the end of the first hour, Tricia's back ached. By the end of the second hour, her legs were sore. By the end of the third hour, she loathed the sight of boxes and newspaper clippings, and hated Betsy enough to have done her in—that is, if someone hadn't already beaten her to it.

Finally Ginny called out, “This is boring! How much longer until we can go home?”

Tricia surveyed the bedroom. “We've got only two more boxes to go; how many do you guys have?”

Angelica didn't answer right away, presumably counting the boxes before answering. “Nine.”

“Why don't I go help them while you finish up in here,” Ginny said.

“Okay,” Tricia agreed, and lifted the interleaved flaps on the next-to-last carton. She looked inside. More papers. Betsy collected the most useless stuff. But mixed among the newspaper clippings and recipes torn from magazines were a handful of lovely old postcards. The stamps were old. If the cards themselves weren't worth anything, maybe the stamps were. She set them aside, and tossed the rest of the papers into a trash bag.

As she went to lift the flaps on the last carton, she noticed a wet spot on the side of the box and suddenly realized Sarge had been missing for quite some time. Had he relieved himself on the box, known he'd done something naughty, and decided to lay low before anyone noticed? She shook her head and opened the box, glad she hadn't tried to lift it. It was full of old books, with wads of yellowed crumpled newspaper to cushion them and fill out the box. Lifting them one at a time, she inspected the titles. Nothing special at all: a couple of cookbooks, a few dog-eared paperbacks, and several little blue books from Alcoholics Anonymous. The copies of the
Nashua Telegraph
were at least ten years old. Had Betsy saved them and then decided to use them for packing, or had the box been sitting somewhere like a garage for a long time and she decided to move them to the house to make room for more junk in her own home?

At the bottom of the box was a very old and large—at least fifteen inches in length—Bible clad in cracked brown leather. Tricia carefully lifted the old book out of the box and set it on the edge of the empty box beside its former home. She opened the cover and looked for some kind of copyright date without finding one. Well, the text was at least two thousand years old, but she wondered if there was some other way of dating it. Sure enough, at the center of the book was a genealogy chart that began in 1847 leading up and into the twentieth century. The last entry was for a John Morrison—Betsy and Joelle's father? The date would be about right. So, it was the family Bible. This might be something that should be given to Joelle.

Tricia closed the cover and left it to concentrate on tidying the room. She scooped up the rest of the trash, placed it in the last of the plastic garbage bags, tied the end in a knot, and tossed it into the hall. Then she set the Bible on the floor, flattened the boxes, and carried them out into the hall.

Angelica, Ginny, and Antonio had made fast work of the remaining boxes and were finishing up as Tricia entered the room. “Hey, looks like we're just about done.”

“Thank goodness,” Ginny breathed, looking exhausted, and suddenly Tricia wondered if she should even be doing all this heavy lifting and carrying in her condition.

“Did you find anything interesting?” Angelica asked, as she used her hand to sweep more litter into one of the trash bags.

“Just an old family Bible, and not in very good condition. But I'm sure Joelle would probably like to have it.”

Angelica straightened, and Tricia noted there were cobwebs in her hair. “If she'd been cut out of the will, should you even contemplate giving it to her? And how are you going to explain where you got it?”

Those were two very good questions, but Tricia was too tired to think about the answer just then.

“I have had enough,” Antonio said and offered Ginny a hand, helping her to her feet. “We have found nothing of real value tonight, but the job is done. I have spoken to my contractor, and he will meet me here tomorrow to decide what to do with the floors and other renovations so that the Chamber may move in as soon as possible.”

“Hallelujah!” Angelica crowed. “I'll call my new receptionist and see how soon she can start. Maybe I can have her trained and ready to help us move in by next week,” she said hopefully.

Tricia hefted the Bible. “Do you mind if I take this home and have a better look at it?” she asked Antonio.

“Do as you wish. If you want to sell it, you may do that, too.”

“I don't know about that,” Tricia said.

“It is no good to me or my employer. If you don't wish to sell it, perhaps you can donate it to a worthy soul.”

Tricia nodded. “I'll find it a good home—one way or another.” And probably with Joelle. Now all she had to figure out was a way to tell her about it without revealing that Betsy had rented the little house and filled it with tons and tons of trash.

Antonio closed the upstairs window for the last time, locking it, and they started down the stairs with Angelica turning out the lights as she went.

Once back on the first floor, Antonio paused to take in the now spacious living room. “Ladies, you have done very fine work these past two nights. I'm sure my employer will be very pleased by your industry.”

“Yes, and please be sure to remind her that Tricia is not a member of the happy Nigela Ricita empire. Perhaps she should be given some kind of honorarium,” Angelica said.

“That is an excellent suggestion,” Antonio agreed.

“Oh, no—I don't need anything. I'm just happy I could help out. The Chamber needs its new home—and the faster they can move in, the better.”

“You have a good heart,” Antonio said.

Tricia felt a flush rise from her neck to color her cheeks. “Besides, you've already graced me with this Bible.” She hefted it. “That's all the reward I need.”

“I don't know about you, but I would've asked for a piece of that forty-four grand,” Ginny grumbled.

“My employer would not be
that
grateful,” Antonio said, and they all laughed.

While Antonio moved the few boxes of useful items to his car, Angelica found Sarge asleep on one of the heat grates, nudged him awake, and clipped his leash onto his collar.

As Angelica had suggested, Antonio left the outside lights on, and left one burning in the living room so that anyone walking nearby would see the house had been emptied. Now they just had to hope Betsy's arsonist wouldn't set the contents of the Dumpsters on fire.