Sink Trap (2 page)

I love my mother, and I truly believe she loves me. But that didn’t mean we dropped in on each other, or palled around together.

Or understood each other.

To tell the truth, I was surprised she even knew where to find me.

“I went by that charity house first. I assumed you were there.” She refused to call the project by its proper name, Portland Homes for Help.

“I finished there before I came to work.” For a moment I remembered the rich odor of fresh-cut pine and the scent of new carpet. The house was nearly done, smelling like hope and the promise of help for one deserving family.

“It’s
charity
, Georgiana,” she said, as though reading my thoughts. She says that’s a mom talent that never goes away. She’d been really good at it when I was a teenager, but you’d think it would lose its potency when I passed thirty.

Apparently not.

But it explained how she found me. The Homes for Help crew ratted me out.

I nodded, bit my tongue, and waited for her to go on.

“I’m on my way out to the Clackamas Commons Development,” she finally continued. “Gregory and I.” She
always referred to her boss as Gregory, not Mr. Whitlock, and I wondered for a moment about the apparent level of familiarity before I focused back on her words. “—so we’re going to take over sales for all three hundred units.”

“Great, Mom. Really. If anyone can sell those places, it’s you. I can picture the commissions stacking up.” I grinned at her, to let her know I really was pleased. “But you didn’t need to come all the way out here to tell me that. You could have called.”

“It was on my way,” she lied, waving a freshly manicured hand in dismissal.

Plum Crazy. The color registered without thought. I hadn’t had a manicure in over two years—not since I left the high-wire act of corporate competition—but it used to be my favorite color. And it described perfectly the way my mother made me feel.

I turned away and crouched back under the edge of the sink. “That’s great news, Mom. Thanks for telling me. But I need to get back to this job.”

I really didn’t expect it to work, and it didn’t. But it did make her get to the point. Finally.

Her tone became all-business, as though someone had thrown a switch. I found her ability to change so abruptly a tad creepy. Then again, it was a useful talent.

“I just talked to Barry,” she said.

So she’d come to see my boss, Barry the Plumber, not me. “He promised me the two of you would get this inspection done by tomorrow.” She glanced around the warehouse, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “And he said he’d start on the house as soon as you finish here.”

She paused and I hoped we were finished, but she had one more zinger before she left. “I asked for you on this one, Georgiana, because I know you need the work. I just hope you don’t waste too much time on that
charity
house when you have a
paying
job waiting.”

She walked away, her heels clicking loudly in the empty space, and I wiggled back under the sink. Charity, I reflected, was not one of Sandra Neverall’s strong suits.

Be fair, I reminded myself, as I went back to work on the corroded pipes. Charity was what forced her to go to work after my dad died. The beloved Dr. Neverall of Pine Ridge, Oregon, had treated his patients for free, and left his widow with a stack of unpaid bills and a load of resentment.

I promised myself I’d cut her some slack.

Or at least I’d try.

 

 

The inspection of the vacant Tepper warehouse hadn’t gone well. The last tenant, a construction company, hadn’t treated the place well, and so far we’d discovered one restroom with some serious leaks, and a stopped-up utility sink.

Fortunately for me, clogged pipes are easier to diagnose than leaks, so Barry took the bathroom and I got the sink.

But on this job, nothing turned out to be simple. I’d struggled with a plumber’s snake for twenty minutes before I gave up, grabbed my tools, and crawled under the sink where my mother had found me.

Plumbers, in my limited experience, spent an inordinate amount of time under sinks. Or under houses. I’d take the sink any day.

From my cramped quarters back under the sink, I heard familiar footsteps echo through the empty warehouse. Over my shoulder I saw the worn steel-toe boots of my boss, Barry Hickey.

Lately, I identified everyone by their shoes.

“Hand me that work light, would you, Bear? I can hardly see what I’m doing under here.” The nickname fit his stocky frame and brown hair, though I didn’t use it often. It seemed a little too familiar.

But sometimes Barry felt more like the older brother I never had than my boss. And it didn’t hurt our budding friendship that I made the office computers do tricks he didn’t think possible.

Barry thrust the small round light under the counter, into my outstretched palm. “Getting late,” he said. “I’m done with that bathroom for now. We could knock off for the night, come back in the morning when you can see what you’re doing.”

I wiggled farther under the sink and grabbed the wrench handle with my leather-gloved hands. I tightened the jaws around the connecting ring of the drain pipe, digging into seventy years’ accumulation of unidentifiable corrosion.

“I can see,” I protested. “Besides, another five minutes, I swear, and I’ll be done under here.” I grunted as I pushed against the wrench, my reward a scant inch of movement. “And we can’t come back tomorrow,” I continued as I braced myself for another push. “We have to do the walk-through on the Tepper house.”

The two properties were both owned by Martha Tepper, a retired librarian who’d left town a couple weeks back. I’d heard she was tired of Oregon winters and wanted someplace with sunshine.

I thought she went to Arizona, though I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t seen much of her since I left for college, but I remembered her from summer vacations when I camped out in the mystery section of the library.

Now my mother and Gregory were working with Rick and Rachel Gladstone, Martha’s attorneys, on a deal for both properties.

“You promised Sandra it’d be done, and she wants to get back to the Gladstones before the end of the week.”

The wrench moved again. The pipes in the warehouse were old, but I had the right tools and a whole lot of stubborn.

“Sandra?” A disapproving tone crept into my boss’s voice. “Georgiana, she’s your mother.”

It bugged Barry when I called my mom by her first name, but it was one way I kept my personal and professional lives separate. And as long as Hickey & Hickey worked for Whitlock Estates Realty, I needed that separation.

I’d already messed that up once today, talking to Sandra herself. I wasn’t going to do it again.

“She is. When I’m at her house for Sunday dinner or we’re visiting her sister in Sweet Home. Not when she’s paying for a job, Barry. Then she’s Sandra. Or would you rather I called her Mrs. Neverall?”

Barry’s feet moved away, out of my line of sight. He paced across the dirty concrete floor of the warehouse.

Barry wasn’t good at waiting.

I herked on the wrench one more time and the connector ring broke loose. A couple good turns and I was able to put the wrench down and turn the coupling by hand.

The stubborn joint came free, releasing the end of the outlet pipe. A gush of stagnant water ran into the waiting plastic bucket. Judging by the stench, that water had been sitting in the pipe for a long time.

I dropped the rusty coupling in the bucket and wormed my way back out from under the sink.

“You know, Barry, you didn’t put ‘contortionist’ on the job description.” I reached back in for the work light and played the illumination over the end of the pipe to be sure the flow of stinky water stopped before I moved the bucket.

Barry chuckled. “You’re the girl who wanted to be a plumber,” he said.

“Woman, Barry. Woman. Your daughter is a girl. Maybe. But I am not a ‘girl.’ Haven’t been for years.” I reached under the sink to retrieve the bucket.

“Megan’s twelve. Of course she’s a girl.”

I glanced up, smiling and shaking my head. “Not so much anymore, Barry. She might tolerate you calling her that right now, but not for much longer.”

Through the high windows of the warehouse, the sky was nearly dark. I let go of the bucket and pulled back the cuff of my leather glove to glance at the scratched plastic bezel of my dime-store watch. I had learned the hard way never to wear a good watch when messing with pipes.

Nearly seven. I was late for dinner with Wade Montgomery.

I bit back a curse. Barry tolerated a lot from me, but one of his rules was no cursing in front of customers, which had morphed into no cursing on the job. Never mind that there wasn’t anyone in the building but the two of us, or that he was probably the only construction-trade guy in the country who didn’t swear a blue streak. It was still a rule.

The bucket stuck and I put my head back under the sink to see what the problem was, shining the light on the exposed pipe ends.

Something bright caught my eye. Given the condition of those pipes, there shouldn’t be anything bright under that sink.

Dirty, yes. Rusty, yes. Smelly, definitely.

But not bright and shiny.

I poked one gloved finger into the pipe, but the thick leather didn’t fit in the tight opening. I pulled the glove off, reached for the pipe, then reconsidered.

I had no idea what I was reaching for.

I grabbed a close-fitting latex glove from my pocket, stretched it over my hand, and reached back under the sink.

It was a lump of metal and stone, large enough to block most of the pipe. It should have been too large to have fallen down the drain, except the drain guard had rusted through, probably years ago.

The piece was lodged crosswise, and I pried it loose with my finger. It popped out of the pipe and landed in the bucket with a plop.

Curious, I fished it out.

It was a brooch. A very distinctive brooch, and one I thought I recognized. Martha Tepper, the retired librarian who was supposed to be in Arizona, had worn it every day, the same way a happily married woman always wears her wedding band. If it was the brooch I remembered, she never went anywhere without it. So why was the librarian’s
favorite accessory sitting in a glop of plumbing goo in my hand?

After being lodged in the drain pipe of an empty warehouse in Pine Ridge, Oregon?

And what was I going to do about it?

chapter 2

I stared down at the bucket of stagnant, smelly water. There might be a clue as to how the brooch got in the pipe in all that waste, and I didn’t relish the thought of sticking my hands in there.

But I wasn’t comfortable with not checking it out, either.

As I stood there, torn between curiosity and disgust, Barry headed back in my direction, his toolbox bumping against his leg with each step. He was probably late for dinner, too, I realized, with a flash of guilt.

“Will Paula wait dinner for you?” I asked, dragging the bucket toward the door.

With no reliable plumbing, we were better off emptying it outside. But maybe I shouldn’t dump it at all. Maybe I should take a closer look at what was in that drain along with the brooch.

“Already called her.” He grinned. “She fed the kids, but she said she’d wait for me.”

He reached the door a couple steps ahead of me, and held it while I went through. The gesture was typical
Barry. Hauling the heavy, stinky bucket was part of my job, but holding the door was the kind of small courtesy that was his nature.

The brooch was still in my pocket when Barry locked the door and headed for his pickup. I hesitated, the bucket hanging heavily from my hand. What if what I’d just discovered was important? What if there was something else important in there, and I just threw it away?

“Hold up a sec,” I called after him. “Got something I want you to look at.”

He came back to where I stood under the faint glow from a battered light fixture on the outside of the building.

I took the brooch out of my pocket and held it out to him. “Found this in the pipe. Do you recognize it?”

He shook his head, but his forehead wrinkled as though he wasn’t sure. “Looks kinda familiar, but I can’t say from where.”

“I think it was Miss Tepper’s.”

Barry shook his head. “Maybe, but you couldn’t prove it by me.” He thought for a moment. “Paula might know.”

Barry’s wife, Paula Ciccone, had taken over as librarian when Miss Tepper retired. The two women were friends, and if anyone would know about Miss Tepper, it was Paula.

“Don’t you think it’s strange, though, finding it in the pipes like that?” I asked. “I mean, I never saw her without it. She wore it every day.”

Barry shrugged. “People lose stuff down drains all the time, Georgie. Think about how many calls we’ve had where we found jewelry in the plumbing.”