Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) (20 page)

“Jill, did you see a file folder and a book on the counter here when we came in?”

“No, the counter was empty.  I remember thinking how neat your dad is.”

I glance around the kitchen.  Nothing.  But I know I brought those things down here from upstairs.  I can see myself putting them on the counter.  Where is the stuff?  My heart starts to beat a little faster.  I flip open cabinet doors and pull out drawers.

“What is it, Audrey?  What are you looking for?”

Ignoring Jill, I pace around the kitchen.  Why does it matter?  It was only a kid’s drawing and Dad’s old book.  But where did it go?  Why can’t I find it?  A cool breeze sends a shiver through me.  I’m near the short hall leading to the powder room.  I step in there and see the window wide open. I feel my own nails sinking into my palms. Isabelle and I didn’t open any windows yesterday.

I think about the car with the dented bumper. Is that the car that pulled out last night when I left here? It’s not my imagination.  Someone is following me, watching me. Someone broke into this house. Someone was down here last night when I was upstairs. Someone took that folder and that book.

“Audrey?” 

I’m aware of Jill’s voice in the way I might be conscious of a foreign language radio station—meaningless background chatter.  My whole focus is on that window, on the sickening sensation that someone really has been following me. That the noises I heard here last night weren’t random bumps in the night.  That maybe all my crazy little suspicions aren’t so crazy.  It’s not paranoia if someone really is out to get you.

“Audrey?  Are you ready to leave, or what?  I have to be back downtown for my yoga class by six.”

“Hmm?”  I’m staring at the wide-open powder room window, its curtain rippling slightly in the breeze.  Could a skinny man fit through there?  It would be tight, but I  think he could.  No more burying my head in the sand--I need to tell the police about this.  I’ll call detective Farrand as soon as I get back to the office.

“Yeah—let’s go.”  I lock the door, then toss the car keys to Jill.  I don’t want her to see my hands trembling on the steering wheel.  “Do you mind driving?  I’m kind of tired.”  She looks at me strangely, but does as she’s told.   

As we wind down the hill toward downtown, I blurt out what’s on my mind. “Jill, there’s something I have to ask you.  The trunk of jewelry that we found in Mrs. Szabo’s house—did you ever…I mean, when I was in the hospital and you were taking care of Ethel…did you happen to look through that trunk?”

Jill’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.  “What do you mean?”

“I went in the closet last week and the trunk was in a different spot.  The brooch that had been on the top was on the bottom, like someone dumped it out and put it all back in again.”

Jill’s gaze darts from the road to me and back again.  “What are you saying?  You think I stole stuff from that trunk?”

“No, no, no.  I need to know if you looked at it, because first I thought someone broke in, but there was no sign of that.  And then I realized you have the key, so maybe you might have—.”

“You think I’m a thief.”  Jill’s voice keeps climbing up the scale.  “That’s basically what you’re saying.  A thief!” 

This isn’t going the way I hoped.  “Jill, listen.  I’m not mad if you looked at the stuff.  It would be better if you did, because if you didn’t that means some stranger really did break in.  I just need to know the truth: did you move that trunk?”

We’re in front of the office by now and Jill throws the car into reverse.  With a few vicious cranks of the wheel, she parallel parks.  “When you were in the hospital I came to your condo every day to take care of Ethel.  I fed her and walked her and cleaned up after her and that’s all I did.  I didn’t snoop through your closets or steal your stuff or touch anything and  I can’t believe you think I’m—.”

“Jill, stop—”

“a thief and a liar and I thought you trusted me but apparently not and—”

“Jill I do, I—”

She tosses the car keys in my lap.  “I’m going to yoga.  Have a nice night.”

Watching Jill stomp off, I’m not sure what to think.  Can I attribute her over-reaction to just plain Jill-yness, which means she didn’t look through the trunk and I do have to worry that someone…Brian?....was in my apartment?  Or did she freak because she really did go through the trunk and help herself to something?  I’m not quite sure which possibility I prefer. 

When I walk into the office, the place has been transformed.  The usual chaos of boxes, packing material and stacks of unsold junk has been cleared away.  Ty, a slight sheen of sweat highlighting his rippling biceps, stands watchfully by the window.

“Wow, this place looks great,” I say, happy to latch onto anything that will distract me from what just happened. 

“I packed up the van with the stuff goin’ to Sister Alice,” Ty says. “Then I cleaned up this whole corner here.  There was boxes and bubble wrap and tape and shit everywhere.  No wonder Jill can’t never find what she’s looking for.”

I give him a long, silent stare.  His gaze drops to the floor.

“Look, Audrey—about this afternoon.  I didn’t mean to leave Jill with all the work.  I thought I’d jus’ be out for fifteen minutes or somethin’. .”

“Sounds like the ‘or something’ turned into the entire afternoon.  What’s up with that?”

Ty rolls his powerful shoulders.  “It’s complicated, Audge.  I got some shit I’m dealin’ with.” 

“What kind of shit? Where did you go?”

Ty shakes his head.  I know that stubborn, hard-eyed look.  He’s not talking. 

I’ve been thinking over the past two days how I’m going to ask Ty about the other trips in the van without revealing that it was Coughlin who told me.  Now’s the time to roll out my plan. 

“There’s something else I have to ask you about.  My friend Lydia’s husband is a salesman—he’s on the road all the time.  He told me he passed the AMT van on the Turnpike north of New Brunswick.  I thought he must’ve been mistaken, but now I think he was right.  What do you say?”

Ty looks like I kicked him in the balls.  His skin actually changes color—I didn’t think African Americans could blush.  “My cousin Marcus,” he stammers.  “He graduated from Rutgers last spring.  He asked me to help him move some stuff he left in his old apartment.  That’s why I took the van to New Brunswick. It was the day I delivered that table to Somerville, so I figured it wasn’t much further.”

Sounds plausible.  I want to believe him, but what about Paterson, what about today?

“Look, Ty, I’ve been very happy with your work.  If you need a day off to take care of personal business, all you have to do is ask.  But it’s not okay to drive my van without permission.  It’s not okay to just head out without telling anyone and stick Jill with all your work.  And it’s definitely not okay to insult her when she objects.”

Ty’s head droops lower.  “I’m sorry about that.  I didn’t mean nothin’. It’s just, sometimes when I’m worried, stuff don’t come out right, know what I’m sayin’?”

Boy, do I ever.  I reach out and put my hand on Ty’s forearm.  It looks very small and white there.  “Ty, if you’ve got problems, why don’t you tell me about it.  Maybe I can help.”

My fingers scald him—he flinches away from my touch.  “I can handle it.  Just some drama with this girl I’m talkin’ to.  Her parents don’t like me.”

Before I can plead any further, Ty lopes to the door.  “Tell Jill I said sorry and shit.  I make it up to her.”  And he’s gone.

Sorry and shit.  An eloquent apology, if ever there was one.  Uneasily, I look around the ship-shape office.  What kind of problems is Ty up against?  Would standard-issue girlfriend drama have produced this reaction?  Or is he feeling guilty about something, guilty and in over his head? Guilty and exposing me to dangerous people, just as Coughlin said? Am I being willfully obtuse, unable to admit I was wrong about Ty all along?  Or is Coughlin manipulating me, playing on my fears so I’ll give him something he can use against Ty?

If I tell Coughlin Ty’s been acting sketchy because of a girl, he’ll want to know the name of the girl, and I know damn well Ty won’t give that up.  I decide to bide my time and keep an eye on Ty.  In the meantime, I need to call Farrand and tell him about the break-in at my father’s house. He answers on the first ring.

I explain about the open window at my father’s house and the missing items.  As I hear my words tumbling out, I start to squirm.  Spoken aloud my concerns sound so paltry and insignificant. I feel I’m bothering him, distracting him from important work.

“Anything else missing?” he inquires blandly. “Jewelry, electronics, cash?”

“No, but—”

“But what?”

“Last night, when I was there alone, I heard noises downstairs when I was upstairs.  I think whoever broke in was there when I was.  He was, he was…watching me.”

“Watching you do what?”

What indeed?  Wander aimlessly around the house…dig through every file folder in the desk…scroll through the computer…find a drawing and a yearbook.  Put some papers in a folder. Leave said folder behind.

“Well,” I begin.  “I just…since the attack, I’ve kinda felt like—.”

I pause. I picture him on the other end of the line rolling his eyes.  But I’m wrong.

“It’s perfectly normal for the victim of a violent crime to feel nervous and stressed, Ms. Nealon.  I can give you a contact at the County Victim Services department—they offer free counseling.  Do you have a pen?”

Dutifully, I write down the number, although I know I’ll never call.  I look at my right hand as it forms the number.  Is the ring what the watcher wants?  At the time the trunk was searched, the only person who knew I had this ring was my father.  He certainly didn’t break into my condo.  But he does have my keys, just as I have his.  He could have sent someone to search my place.  Someone like Brian Bascomb.  How can I explain this to the uber-logical Farrand?

He’s put on that bland, noncommittal tone cops use when they ask for your license and registration.  They must practice it at the police academy. “Possibly some kids noticed that your father’s house has been unoccupied for a while and they decided to use it for a little recreation.  Did you find any cigarette butts, beer bottles, condoms?”

Eeew, teenagers having a tryst in my father’s bed—could that explain the open window?  “I went all through the house and didn’t see any signs that anyone had been there,” I say.  “None of the beds had been messed up.”

“They may not have bothered going all the way upstairs,” Farrand says.  I blush hotly at the memory of Cal’s and my antics on my sofa. 

Farrand has succeeded in sowing the seeds of doubt in my mind.  Maybe I was imagining the sounds I heard last night.  Maybe that window had been open for a while and Isabelle and I didn’t notice it.  But what about the folder and the book?  They’ve definitely disappeared.

“Why would teenagers take a file folder and a yearbook that I left on the counter, and not take anything else?”  I ask him.

“Why would anyone take it, Ms. Nealon?  What was in it?”

“Just—”  Suddenly I don’t want to be talking to this guy anymore.  I definitely don’t want to tell him about my sentimental need for my childhood artwork, or about Brian Bascomb.  “Just some personal papers,” I finish lamely.

“Maybe the intruder needed a piece of paper and grabbed the first thing he saw.  If the folder was important to you, you might look around outside.  He may have dropped it.  If you’d like, I can send someone from community policing over to look around with you and make sure the house is secure.”

Farrand is so attentive, so prepared with a police service for every occasion.  Why not take him up on it?  Put my tax dollars to work and all that.  But I can’t bring myself to come across as whiny and demanding.  I’m low-maintenance Audrey—isn’t that what Cal likes about me? “Thanks for the offer, Detective.  I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

After I hang up with Farrand, I feel my fingers itching, creeping toward the computer keyboard.  Like so many other things, e-commerce has made the marketplace for old yearbooks much more efficient.  Want to relive your high school or college days but can’t find your yearbook?  No problem—all the old yearbooks ever given to Goodwill or the church bazaar or used book shops have been consolidated on a few websites.  Request the year and school you want and see what happens.  I’ve sold plenty of yearbooks on FINDYOURYEARBOOK.com.  Now it’s time to buy one—Princeton, Class of 69, In Stock.  I buy it and choose regular shipping.  It’ll be in my hands in under a week.  Maybe I’ve wasted my money, but there has to be some reason the thief took my folder and that yearbook.  There’s nothing I can do about the drawing, but I can try to see what was so interesting about that yearbook.

At 6:30 I’m dressed and waiting for Cal to pick me up for dinner at the Finneran’s. At 6:32, my phone chirps the arrival of a text message:
Held up @ office.  Head over to Anne’s.  I’ll meet u there.

Great.  Walking into Anne and Spencer’s house solo is right up there with root canal on my things-I’m-eager-to-do-list. 

Driving over, I realize the steering wheel is slippery with sweat from my palms and I’m not sure why.  This is not a big party.  Anne has been unfailingly nice to me.  I don’t even have to worry about what I’m wearing because Anne has that Barbara Bush-like frumpiness that I find so reassuring.  And yet….  And yet…

I turn a corner onto the Finneran’s street.  Almost all the leaves have fallen from the trees now, and huge piles line the curbs waiting to be scooped up by the public works department.  Plowing directly into one of those leaf mountains, I park the car and study the Finneran’s big Victorian.  Lights glow in all the downstairs windows; pumpkins and mums line the wrap-around porch. I let the sharp breeze push me up the walk into that Hallmark card. I want to be in there, yet my finger hesitates on the doorbell.  I feel a little bead of sweat forming between my breasts, despite the nippy night air.  Why am I so nervous?  I press and hear the chime echo on the other side of the door.  A dog starts barking and a calming voice reassures him.

“Now, now Bix, that’s enough.”

It’s Anne.  I run my fingers through my hair and lick my parched lips.  Maybe, just maybe, I can smile without my face cracking in half.

The door swings open.

“Audrey, dear!”  Anne flings wide her arms and herds me into the house.  “That dreadful Cal called and told me he’d be late.  I said, ‘I’m already having a glass of wine and it doesn’t look good for a woman my age to drink alone, so you send Audrey over to keep me company.’  I’m so glad you listened.”

Frankly, it never dawned on me not to listen.  My self-will seems to evaporate in the presence of Cal, Anne and Spencer.

“We have to stay back here in the kitchen,” Anne says, taking my coat and tossing it heedlessly onto a Hepplewhite settee in the corner of the huge foyer.  “I’m making risotto and I have to keep an eye on it.  You know how temperamental risotto can be.”

“Actually, I have no clue,” I say.  “I’m more of a Minute Rice kind of girl.”

Anne throws her head back and laughs.  It’s a nice reassuring sound, the kind of laugh that makes you feel like you’re the most entertaining person on the planet. I watch as she bends over to check something in the oven. 

“I couldn’t boil water when I married Spencer.  We always had a cook when I was growing up.  Can you imagine!”  Anne rolls her eyes.   “Those days are gone forever.  Anyway, I soon discovered my husband expected a hot meal on the table every night.”

Bustling around her gleaming granite and stainless steel fiefdom as she talks, Anne stirs a pot bubbling on the stove, pours me a glass of wine, and causes some marvelous looking cheese puff thingies to materialize.  Despite the high-end design, the kitchen would never make it into a decorating magazine.  Piles of mail teeter on one end of the counter. A slightly cock-eyed bulletin board bristles with invitations and appointment cards; snapshots of Anne and Spencer and various combinations of children and grandchildren peep through the tangle. Post-it note reminders screaming “Leila B-day card!” and “artichoke hearts!” are stuck to the microwave and coffee pot.  The combination of the wine and the clutter works on me.  I begin to relax.

“So Spencer expected you to learn to cook?” I ask.  It’s hard for me to imagine Anne as a compliant, eager-to-please bride.  Wouldn’t she and Spencer have been married around the same time as my parents?  And Roger and Charlotte were apparently the model of equality. 

“Spencer and I met through his sister.  She and I were both Alpha Chi Omega at Bucknell,” Anne says. “A very smart family, the Finnerans.  All three children won full academic scholarships.”

On the face of it, her words conveyed pride, but something clicks for me.  The money was all on Anne’s side of the family.  Spencer Finneran was a poor boy who made good.

“I learned to cook for myself as much as him.  With Spencer in law school, we were poor as church mice. We couldn’t afford to eat out.  And I’ve never been one to subsist on celery and seltzer water,” she says, patting herself on her ample hips. 

I grin and pop another cheese puff in my mouth.  It’s so refreshing to be around a woman—thin or fat—who’s not talking about dieting. And, one who’s not concerned with fashion.  Anne’s droopy khaki slacks and navy cardigan make me look positively glamorous. I’m starting to have fun.

“Your mother never taught you to cook?” Anne asks. 

“My mother died when I was just three.”

Anne’s hands stop their deft chopping and she looks deeply into my eyes. “Oh my dear, how tactless of me.  Cal did mention that. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.  My grandmother was a good cook, but a fussy housekeeper.  She never really liked having me in the kitchen.  Too afraid I’d make a mess.”

“Well, as you can see, neatness has never been a concern of mine.” Anne waves her right hand, which happens to hold a large chef’s knife.  A slice of avocado sails across the kitchen.  The dog nails it.  As Anne returns to chopping, the phone rings. She glances at the caller ID, looks apologetically at me.  “My daughter, Ginny.  She’s stuck at home with a sick baby.  I’d better answer.”

Trying not to eavesdrop, I cross the kitchen to study some Italian pottery displayed on a shelf.  Still, I can hear Anne emphatically dispensing advice.

“Good grief, Ginny, she’s been crying for three hours.  Just give her a little Benadryl.  You both need to get some sleep.”  There’s a silence, then Anne continues.  “It’s Benadryl, honey, not arsenic.  I used to give it to you all the time, and you ended up magna cum laude at Yale.”  Another silence, then a final snap, “Well, if you don’t want to listen to me, I don’t know why you called.”  The receiver hits the cradle sharply.

Flustered by having overheard this less than idyllic mother/daughter exchange, I keep my back turned even after the steady thwack of Anne’s chef’s knife resumes.

“Come back, Audrey,” she calls.  “I promise I won’t yell at you too.”

I return to the stool at the island where I had been perched. 

“Grandchildren,” Anne sighs, “a constant source of joy and conflict.  Speaking of which, I understand my grandson Dylan paid a visit to your last estate sale.”  She brushes her gray bangs off her forehead with the back of her hand. A “V” of worry is etched between her brows. “Thank you for your patience.”

“Oh, no big deal,” I say, focusing my attention on folding my cocktail napkin into a fan. Patience?  Has Anne talked to Dylan about what happened at the Reicker sale? If so, apparently Dylan left out the part about Ty bringing him down in a full body tackle.

Anne pauses in her meal preparations.  Suddenly her face shows every one of her sixty-five years. “Dylan’s been going through a tough stretch. My son’s marriage has been a little rocky.”

So, that much of what Dylan told me was true.    I wonder about the rest of his accusation—‘my grandpa’s always got some piece of ass on the side.’  Can that be accurate, or was Dylan making another play for attention, as Cal insists?   I’m dying to know, but I can’t very well ask. 

Before I can say anything, Anne continues with a sigh. “Dylan takes everything so personally.  He seems to think everyone else’s family is perfect.  That the Finnerans are the only people with any problems.”

Hmmm—I can relate to that. Except the Finneran’s brand of family dysfunction—big, messy, exuberant—seems a lot more appealing than the cold, constipated secret-keeping of mine. “He doesn’t seem to be looking forward to being the grandson of the next governor of New Jersey,” I say.

Anne rolls her eyes. “He makes that clear to everyone, usually within the first minute of meeting them.  Dylan thinks his grandfather conceived this run for office as a personal vendetta against him.”

I laugh. “That’s exactly the impression he gives.  You really seem to understand him.”

Anne decapitates some broccoli florets with one sure blow.  “It’s taken me years to learn to cope with being caught in the spotlight of Spencer’s career.  Dylan’s not used to the glare.” Then she grins at me and grabs the wine bottle.  “Tuesday.  We all just need to make it through Tuesday.”

For some unaccountable reason I feel a lump forming in my throat.  I want to know how to chop like that.  I want my picture up on the kitchen bulletin board.  I want “Audrey—lunch!” scrawled on Post-it note. I even want to be scolded when I’m ornery. I want to belong here.  Here in the middle of this big topsy-turvy family so different from my own.

Then my brain makes a leap.  I visualize the picture of the young Spencer and Anne hanging on Reid VanHouten’s office wall.  “Did you know my mother?” I ask.

Anne’s knife pauses over some scallions.  “I don’t think I know any Nealons. Why do you ask?”

“Perry.  Charlotte Perry—she kept her maiden name. She worked for the Van Houten Group. I was in Reid Van Houten’s office the other day.  I saw a photo of you and Spencer on his wall.”

The knife resumes its rapid-fire assault on the vegetables. “Must’ve been some fundraising event.  Our paths cross all the time.”

“No, this was an old photo.  Mr. Van Houten said it was taken during Spencer’s first political campaign.  I understand the Van Houten Group handled the PR.”

“Did they?” Anne’s back is to me as she fills a pot with water.   “I suppose it’s possible—until Spencer got Cal to manage all that for him, there always seemed to be a revolving door of PR firms, hired guns and freelancers pulling Spencer in every direction.

“Mr. Van Houten said my mother might have worked on one of Spencer’s campaigns.”

“Did she?” Anne smiles and sweeps the broccoli into a steamer. “What a small world!  You’ll have to ask Spencer.  I was pregnant and coping with two toddlers at the time—I didn’t have much interaction with Spencer’s staff.”

Suddenly the dog, who’s been sprawled in front of the kitchen island waiting for another random scrap of food to fly off Anne’s chopping block, stands up and trots to the back door. 

“Ah, that must be Spencer and Cal now.  About time.”