Cluttered Attic Secrets (14 page)

The next morning, Tina drove to Brandon’s condo. He took Leslie’s car to their parents’ house, then he and Tina went in her VW to Leslie’s.

Hank stood on the front porch in his black bomber jacket. She could feel his eyes on her as she and Brandon went to join him. She wanted to fall into his strong arms and stay there for a long time. Instead she simply said hello and unlocked the door.

Hank put his hand or her arm. “Remember, anyone in there can hear whatever we say.”

“Oh, yes, that could be a problem.” Even though his flesh didn’t touch her skin through her light jacket, she tingled. Ignoring the sensation, she asked, “Should we see if anyone’s in the secret room before we start?”

“Yes. If it’s clear, we can relax.” Hank took his hand away from her arm. She missed it.

Tina noticed Brandon was watching them, his expression puzzled. “You two have a fight?”

Hank looked at Tina. “I’m not fighting.”

Tina opened the door and walked inside without saying anything. She led the way upstairs, and in Leslie’s bedroom, placed her purse on the bed and took out her gun. Hank pulled his out of the holster under his arm. “I’ll go first.”

Tina rolled her eyes. “Be my guest.”

“There’s probably no one here.” Hank ignored her eye rolling and started up the stairs. “They gave Leslie a day, and they wouldn’t want her to find them here.”

“But we’re still checking.”

“Yes. Brandon, stay where you are. I don’t want to be crowded up here. Tina, keep a couple of steps behind me, please.”

“Yes, sir.” Tina stopped on the next to last stair while Hank entered the attic. When she heard him walk toward the back, she went to stand on the landing and waited.

“All clear.” Hank moved toward her with his cat-like walk, and Tina looked away. Why did he have to be so gorgeous?

When he got close enough, he holstered his gun and bent down to kiss her on the lips. She gasped. “Don’t.” Her voice was so faint, she wasn’t sure he heard her. The kiss intensified, and she melted into him, her arms by her side. She almost dropped the gun. “Oh, Hank.”

He ended the kiss and stepped back. “Don’t fight it, Tina. We belong together. You know that. You know I have very good reasons for what I do. Always. I’m not trying to hurt you. I love you.”

His gray eyes bored into hers, and she had to lower her own so she wouldn’t sink to the floor in a puddle of goo. The words came involuntarily. “I love you, too.”

He smiled. “All right. Now let’s see what we can do to help Leslie.”

She took a deep breath. “Yes. Right now that’s the most important thing.” She suddenly realized she still grasped the gun in her hand. “I need to put this away,” she muttered.

Hank laughed as he followed her downstairs.

Brandon stood at the bottom, looking unhappy. Tina wondered how much he’d heard. “Let’s get to work. You okay, Brandon?” She put her gun back into her purse.

“I’m fine.” He walked toward the hallway. “You have a good system for us to use to get through everything as quickly as we can?”

“Of course.” She smiled at him. They walked up the stairs. When they reached the top, Tina looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed. It still had that old attic smell, intensified by the bright sunlit day. “There’s one clear corner. We each start in one of the others and quickly go through everything, only looking for papers and journals. Try to work in a grid-like pattern. Don’t read much of anything you find, just put it aside and we’ll look at it all more thoroughly away from the house.”

Brandon looked impressed. “You really educated yourself about your new profession, didn’t you?”

Tina felt surprised by the compliment. Brandon rarely handed them out. “Thanks.”

“Well, let’s get started,” Hank said. “Tina, you have first choice of corner.”

Tina glanced around and pointed to the one nearest the secret room. She noticed an old desk, and a four-drawer, wooden file cabinet. “That looks promising. We need to empty some boxes to put in the papers we find.”

Brandon opened the nearest carton and pulled out an old toaster. “Looks like a lot of small appliances in here.” He set the toaster on the floor and lifted out a coffee pot.”

“That’s Faberware,” Tina said. “Could be rather valuable. Be careful with all that stuff.”

Brandon nodded and placed the coffee pot on the floor next to the toaster and pulled out another item. “What’s this thing?”

Tina laughed. “That’s a Veg-O-Matic. You mean you’ve never seen one of those?”

“Come to think of it, right here in Grandma’s kitchen. But I never knew what it was called. So, these must be her things.”

“Probably. Seems about the right era.”

“And this?”

“A Dazey Donut Maker,” Hank said. “My mother had one. I wonder what happened to it.”

“This I recognize,” Brandon showed them a hand mixer. “I’m just going to pull everything out and use this box. Seems clean.”

“Yes,” Tina said, “we can all use it since it’s rather large. Let’s get to work.” Tina was surprised to realize she was enjoying herself.

But she was unhappy and astonished to find the desk completely empty. She opened the top drawer to the file cabinet. It held several old-fashioned office supplies. A stapler, a tape holder with yellowed tape still in it, and a pencil box. Pens, pencils, erasers, a tiny box of curled white binder reinforcements, and old black and red typewriter ribbons. She closed the drawer.

Her breath caught when she opened the second drawer. It was stuffed with papers. She pulled a few out and looked at them, disappointed to see sales receipts and recipes. She grabbed as many as she could hold, though, and took them over to the box. “I found some papers, but they don’t look promising,” she said. “Either of you find anything?”

Both men said no, and Tina walked back to the file cabinet. The two other drawers were also filled with papers, and she took them all to the box.

She looked around the rest of her area and decided to tackle an old brown, camel-back trunk next. It was filled with clothes, but she carefully lifted them out to check for any papers. Disappointed when she didn’t find any, she put the clothes back and started on a chest of drawers. The men were hardly making any noise, and since they hadn’t said they found anything interesting, she figured they hadn’t.

Almost three hours passed without finding any more papers. Tina straightened her back and stretched. “Time for a break, guys. I’ll go see what Leslie has to drink in her kitchen.”

“We’ll all go,” Hank said. “We stick together, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

Tina found bottled water in the refrigerator and handed them out. They sat at the table, Tina facing the window. She saw movement in the yard. “What’s that?” She pointed.

The men turned to look.

“It’s gone.” Tina set her water down.

“What did you think you saw?” Hank asked.

“I’m not sure. A person. A small person. Possibly a child.”

They all stood up, and Hank led the way to the back door. “Probably just a neighborhood kid. But we need to check it out.”

When they arrived outside, Tina didn’t see anyone. “It could have been a bird.”

“Just to be sure, let’s walk the perimeter.” Hank kept his voice low. “Brandon, you take the back. Tina, the hedge. I’ll check out the driveway.”

When Tina approached the hedge, she heard something odd. She stopped to listen. Snuffling. An animal? She moved carefully toward the noise. Peeked into the hedge.

A young girl stood there, shoulders hunched, with huge, sorrowful brown eyes full of tears.

“Oh, honey.” Tina held out her arms.

The girl’s tears stopped, and she stood staring at Tina for a moment, then shrank back into the hedge.

Tina dropped her arms. Of course, she realized, the girl wouldn’t fall into a stranger’s embrace. “Are you all right?” Tina knew the child was not all right, but she had to say something.

The child began to nod, but then vigorously shook her head. Tina estimated she was nine or ten years old. She wore a dress and had a brightly patterned headband around her light brown hair. She wiped the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand and stood staring at Tina.

“My name is Tina. What’s yours?”

“Sophie.” The tears stopped, and the girl stood staring wide-eyed at Tina.

“What’s wrong?” Tina longed to touch her.

“Don’t want go in cellar anymore!”

“Tina?” Hank approached her. When he saw the child, he stopped short.

The girl tried to shrink farther into the hedge, but she was trapped. Tina felt bad about that. “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you. We want to help you. Tell me about the cellar.”

Tina noticed that Hank didn’t move. He had an uncanny ability to stay perfectly still, and she was glad he neither twitched nor spoke.

The little face scrunched up into a frown. “I don’t like cellar. Mean old house.”

“How is it mean?”

“We can’t go indoor. Secret spaces.”

Tina felt confused, but then she realized the girl must meant they couldn’t go inside using a door. And the girl said “we.”

“Who can’t go in door?”

“Auntie and me. And that man.”

“Sophie!” someone shouted. “Sophie, you come home this instant.”

The girl’s eyes became even bigger, and she pushed past Tina. Before Tina or Hank could react, Sophie was halfway across the yard. Hank started after her.

“Let her go,” Tina said. “She’ll be too scared to tell us more now. And we don’t want her to get into any more trouble than she’s probably already in.”

“I’m still going to try to see where she’s off to,” Hank said over his shoulder.

Tina followed him. When she reached the driveway, she saw Peter Collier standing next to his car, watching everyone. “What’s going on?” he called.

Tina ignored him. Brandon had caught up to her. “What happened?”

“Little girl hiding in the hedge. We think she’s been in the house.” She kept her voice low, hoping Peter Collier couldn’t hear her.

“And she got away?”

“Someone called her. We didn’t want to stop her.”

Brandon didn’t say anything more. Tina glanced at him. His face looked pale, and sweat stood out on his forehead and upper lip, even though the air was cool and they had only gone a short distance. “You need to go rest. You don’t look well.”

“I’m fine.”

Tina scowled at him, but kept pace a few steps behind Hank. They rounded a corner and stopped when they saw Sophie run up to a woman. The woman bent down to say something to the child. When she looked up and saw the three of them, she grabbed Sophie’s hand and pulled her down the street. She kept looking over her shoulder.

“Since she’s seen us, we might as well follow her,” Hank said. The woman and girl were practically running, and when they came to a car parked in the street, the woman shoved the girl into the driver’s side, and then pushed her into the passenger seat, and climbed in herself. Within seconds, she sped away.

Hank pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and wrote down the license plate number. “Wonder if she lives here and drove away so we’d think she lives someplace else.” He wrote down the house number, too, then looked across the street and entered that one, as well. He put the notebook away.

They stood staring at the house a few moments. “Why don’t we go knock on the door?” Tina asked.

“I don’t know how it would help.” Hank turned and walked toward Leslie’s house. “Either the people there know nothing, or they know a lot and won’t tell us anything. We need more information before we try talking to them.”

“Did the girl say anything to you?” Brandon asked.

Tina wanted to run a cool cloth over his sweating face. Impulsively, she took his big hand into her own and told him what Sophie had said.

He squeezed her hand. “Poor little girl.”

“You all right?” Tina asked.

“I will be as soon as I catch my breath.”

She wondered. She knew he was in good shape so the slight exertion should not have affected him at all.

They entered the kitchen, and Hank locked the door. After they sat down at the table, Hank called Lisbeth. He told her what had happened and gave her the license number and house addresses. When he ended the call, he said, “She’ll find out if Sophie lives in either house, and if not will check out the rest of the street. And the address on the car registration.”

Tina finished the last of the water in her bottle. “I hope they can get child protective services to see Sophie soon. She didn’t look abused, but she sure was unhappy.”

“Lisbeth said she’d get them involved. What did you think about what Sophie told you?”

“I’m pretty sure your surmise was right about a child going in through the window, then unlocking the cellar door for someone else. We now know there’s a child, a man, and a woman involved. What they’re up to is as murky as ever.”

“Yeah, bad luck about her mother calling right when the girl might have told us more.”

“I’m not sure the woman is her mother.”

Hank looked thoughtful. “Right. We might as well get back to work in the attic.” Hank looked at Brandon. “You don’t look good. I think you’d better see a doctor.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Tina said. “At least go home and rest.”

“I’m going back upstairs with you. I’ll sit down and go through stuff up there. No worse than resting at home.”

Tina shook her head. “You men. I hate it when you go all macho on me.”

Both of them laughed. “Poor little Tina.” Hank stood up. “Brandon has a point. This is not heavy work we’re doing. Let’s go.”

Tina had just opened the bottom door of a chest of drawers when her cell rang. A strange voice said, “Clear out of Leslie’s Young’s house. Now. All of you. Remember what happened to her before. Could happen to any of you.”