I Still Dream About You: A Novel (26 page)

L
ATER
, M
AGGIE WAS
standing out on Crestview’s front porch, looking at the big door to see if it should be sanded and revarnished. She decided it was fine. All they needed to do was clean the small glass window in the middle and maybe have someone come over and power-wash the stonework in the front. That always freshened up an old house. As she was looking up, she noticed three small words carved in the stone archway over the door:
THIRLED NO MORE
.

Thirled?
What did that mean? She had never heard that word before. Had it been misspelled? Was it supposed to be “Thrilled no more”? But that didn’t make sense. Was it a family name?

When Maggie got back to the office, she asked Ethel and Brenda, but neither knew what “thirled” meant. Then it occurred to her that since the man who had built the house had come from Scotland, maybe it was a Scottish word. Brenda went to her computer, sat down and Googled “Scotland, Thirled.” What popped up surprised both of them, especially Brenda.

Brenda, who had majored in history, had never read anything about this before and said, “No wonder the poor man was happy to be thirled no more.”

W
HAT MOST PEOPLE HADN’T KNOWN WAS THAT THE CROCKER
family had descended from a long line of thirled men, and even after the practice had ended in 1799, in the ensuing years, they had not fared much better.

Angus Crocker had been cold, dirty, and hungry much of his life, one of twelve children raised in a filthy hovel that sat outside the coal mine where his father worked, barely scratching out a living. Angus had been a good student, but just like his brothers, when he was ten, he had been sent down into the mines. A boy of his class, with no money, had no hope of ever rising higher than a miner, but when Angus was fifteen, fate stepped in and changed his life. In 1863, during the Civil War in America, there was a shortage of men to work the mines of Pennsylvania, and when a letter was posted that a mining company there was hiring and paying good wages, Angus jumped at the chance. He worked the night shift in the coal mines outside of Pittsburgh and sent himself through school during the day. Within eight years, he had worked himself up to mine boss, then to shop foreman, then to superintendant. Ambitious and smart, he caught the eye of a few men at the top. Impressed by Angus’s ability to strike a bargain and control his men, they promoted him to a
management position, and he was soon traveling to and from Scotland to negotiate the company’s interests there. Kicked up in social status, he was on one of these trips to Edinburgh when he met and married Edwina Sperry, the only child of the industrialist James Edward Sperry. It was a good match. By law, upon her father’s death, Angus would have complete control of his wife’s inheritance and of all the Sperry mines in Scotland. As a dutiful son-in-law, he gave up his job in America and worked exclusively for his father-in-law. Thirteen years later, after the father died, he and his wife moved into the large family home in Edinburgh, and Angus Crocker took over the running of the mines. With the father’s money and Angus’s ability, the Crocker-Sperry mines soon became the biggest producers of coal in the country.

At age thirty-nine, Edwina Sperry-Crocker was pregnant for the first time, and Angus was deeply relieved. At last, there would be an heir with both Sperry and Crocker blood flowing in his veins. For Angus, it meant another large step away from the dirty coal mines of his youth. To be sure that everything went well, he hired a private nurse to attend to his wife’s every need in her last important weeks of pregnancy.

When the day finally arrived, the family doctor was called to the home, and Angus paced the floor downstairs, waiting for news. Edwina was frail, but after a long, hard labor, the young nurse, wanting to please her wealthy employer, rushed to the upstairs landing and announced to Angus that his wife had just given birth to twins. He had a son and a daughter! Twins had not been expected, but all Angus cared about was that he had a son, whose name would be Edward. He needed a son to carry on the Crocker-Sperry name and protect the business. Now no one, not even his grimy, greedy brothers and sisters, always looking for a handout, could ever dare steal what was rightfully his. He had an heir! Jubilant, Angus immediately retired to his study, poured a whiskey, and started planning the boy’s future. Tomorrow, he would send for his lawyer and change his will; everything he owned would now go to his son. In the unlikely event that he were to die before the boy came of age, arrangements would
be made for a generous monthly allowance for his wife and the girl, but the day the boy turned eighteen, everything, the mines, the properties, would be his son’s to pass on to his own son after him.

Later, when he left Scotland and built his new home in America, Angus stood and watched with great pride as the stonemason carved
THIRLED NO MORE
above the entrance.

M
AGGIE WAS ANXIOUS TO GET CRESTVIEW ON THE MARKET AS
soon as possible, and she had hired Griggs Roofing, the company they always used, to inspect the slate roof. On Saturday morning, when Maggie drove up to the house, she saw that Mr. Griggs was already up on the roof working, and his ten-year-old son, Warren, was out on the front porch. He was a sweet little boy, and Maggie was happy to see him. As she headed up the stairs, she could see that he was busy playing with something. She assumed it was a toy or a ball, until she got a closer look, and then she almost fainted. The object he was scooting all around the stone floor was the missing foot!

Oh, Lord. She had to be very careful how she handled this, so as not to alarm him. She casually walked over and said, “Hi there, Warren.”

He held the foot up and shook it at her. “Hey, look what I just found! It’s a foot; it’s got toes and everything!” He rattled it at her again.

“Oh, yes, I can see that. Where did you find it, honey?” she asked, trying to remain as calm as possible.

“Down there in the bushes,” he said, pointing at the boxwood
hedge. “I’m gonna take it to school on Monday. I think it’s a real dead person’s foot.”

Maggie smiled at him. “I know it looks real, but it’s not.”

Warren shook the foot again. “It looks like a real foot to me.”

“No, darling, it’s much too small to belong to a real person.”

He held it up and looked at it. “Are you sure?”

“Oh yes. You’ve heard of a lucky rabbit’s foot, haven’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, what you found is a lucky monkey’s foot.”

“A monkey foot?”

“That’s right. The lady who used to live here lost it when she was moving out, and she’ll be so happy you found it. I know she’ll want me to give you twenty-five dollars as a reward. Isn’t that wonderful? Give it to me, and I’ll take it to her right now and bring you back your reward, okay?”

Warren still seemed a little reluctant to hand over the foot, so Maggie added, “Why, she might even give you thirty dollars!” She had been prepared to go as high as fifty, but luckily, Warren settled for thirty.

As she drove back across town with the foot in her purse, Maggie was horrified. What was her life becoming? Just three days ago, she had stolen a dead body and lied to the police, and she had just shamelessly bribed an innocent child. Once you took that first criminal step, it was all downhill from there.

Brenda was waiting for her in front of the storage unit, and when she pulled up, Brenda opened the car door and got in.

“Where is it?” Brenda asked, looking around to see if anyone was watching.

Maggie opened her purse. “It’s in here,” she said, looking around as well. “Oh Lord, I feel just like we’re doing some kind of dope deal.”

Brenda took the foot out and put it in a small paper sack from Baskin-Robbins. “Got it.” As she climbed out of the car, Brenda added, “I just hope it’s the right foot.” And she walked away.

Maggie called after her, “What do you mean, ‘the
right
foot’?”

But Brenda didn’t hear her. Oh great, Maggie thought, now she was going to have to worry about that. Did she mean the right foot as opposed to the left foot? Or did she mean the right foot for that particular skeleton? Oh God, she was being punished for stealing that listing from another agent; she just knew it. Finally, Brenda came back out and walked over with a strange look on her face.

“Well?” asked Maggie. “Was it the right one?”

“The right foot?”

“Yes …”

“No, it was the left foot.”

“What? It can’t have two left feet.”

“No … it was the right foot, but it was the left foot. Anyhow, I hate to tell you this, but a toe is missing.”

“
What?
What toe?”

“The little toe. Didn’t you count the toes before you put it in your purse?”

“Nooo, I didn’t count the toes! Oh, Lord.”

“Well, just calm down, and look in your purse; maybe it got caught on something …”

“Dear God in heaven.” Here she was in broad daylight, searching for a dead stranger’s little toe in the bottom of her purse. But after a minute, she found it and handed it to Brenda. She would never be able to use that purse again, and it was brand-new. But at least they had all the parts in one place.

O
N MONDAY MORNING, THE CLEANING CREW MAGGIE HAD HIRED
was crawling all over the house, so when Brenda came in after lunch with all the comparables in the area for them to go over, they went into the library to get away from the noise. Brenda sat down at the desk and opened her briefcase. “Did you know that eight out of ten of the houses that sold last year were Babs’s listings?”

“I’m not surprised,” said Maggie.

“How does she do it? She’s like a shark: eat and swim, eat and swim.”

As Brenda was busy getting all the papers in order, Maggie happened to glance over her shoulder at the oil portrait hanging above the fireplace. She had seen it several times before, but this was the first time she realized that the man in the portrait was dressed in the same formal Scottish kilt as the skeleton.