Skeletons in the Attic (A Marketville Mystery Book 1) (14 page)

After a day of being hunched over a microfiche reader, I was more than ready to take a break from research and investigation. My Sunday morning ritual had long included a breakfast of poached eggs on rye toast and a thorough reading of the
Toronto Sun
with a focus on the Entertainment section. I especially enjoyed Liz Braun’s tongue-in-cheek, and often hysterically caustic, look at celebrity life.

I slipped on a pair of fuzzy pink slippers and padded my way to the bottom of the driveway to pick up my copy of the paper. In Toronto, there had been newspaper boxes in front of the condo, but in Marketville the only choice was a trek to the local convenience store or home delivery, which meant someone in a minivan tossing out plastic-wrapped papers wherever they happened to land.

I bent over to grab the paper and caught Ella Cole in my peripheral vision. Given the bulk of her newspaper, she was a
Toronto Star
subscriber. I always took the
Saturday
Star
, which included a section with
New York Times
book reviews. I also enjoyed Peter Howell’s insightful film reviews and Jack Batten’s
Whodunit
reviews of recent mystery novels.

I nodded at Ella, taking in the fluffy yellow bathrobe and matching flip-flops. She took it as an invitation to start up a conversation.

“The new roof looks good, Callie.”

I glanced up at it and nodded in agreement. It was a major improvement and thankfully they’d been all but done by the time I’d returned home from the library, with no one falling into the attic. I’d had to swallow hard when it came time to pay the invoice. Roofs were expensive.

“I think they did a good job.”

“If Royce recommended them, they’re solid. Such a nice young man, always so polite when I run into him on my evening constitutional. Any plans for today besides reading the paper?”

As if she hadn’t been eavesdropping the other night.
“I’m going shopping with Chantelle across the street.”

“Well, you have a good time, dear, and don’t forget to let me know when you’re ready to tackle that garden.”

The promise extracted, I made my way back into the house, just as Royce was coming out of his to collect his papers. From the looks of it, he subscribed to the
Sun
and the
Star
.

“What can I say, I’m a newspaper junkie,” he said with a grin. “I also get the
Globe and Mail
through the week and the
New York Times
online. It’s amazing how different the same story can be when told from different points of view.”

The same story told from different points of view.

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

Thankfully, shopping with Chantelle was both educational and enjoyable. Educational because it turned out she had a keen eye for a bargain and wasn’t afraid to haggle for more. Enjoyable because she genuinely seemed to be having fun, and her enthusiasm was contagious.

That being said, being around Chantelle was somewhat humbling to the ego. I’m no beauty queen, but I’ve always considered myself relatively attractive in a girl-next-door sort of way. With Chantelle in the picture, I became invisible. Men just seemed to gravitate towards her, not that I could blame them. I wondered why Royce hadn’t fallen victim to her very obvious charms. What did he know that I didn’t?

We wound up going to more than a dozen stores, and my credit card got a vigorous workout with the purchase of queen-sized mattress and box spring for the master bedroom. “Think long term and think positive,” Chantelle said, when I suggested buying the less expensive double—along with a headboard with an attached nightstand which was, according to Chantelle, “Perfect for smaller spaces.” She even talked me into splurging for new sheets, a comforter in shades of turquoise and cream, along with several ornamental throw pillows, and matching lamps.

“I can’t believe you were planning to pick out paint without knowing your color scheme,” Chantelle said when we finally stopped for coffee. She flashed me a sly grin. “Besides, you never know when you’ll need to impress an overnight guest.”

I cursed myself for immediately thinking of Royce and blushed. Maybe it was also time to upgrade my lingerie. My underwear was nice comfortable cotton—entirely sensible but far from sexy. I also tended to sleep in oversized cotton t-shirts, most of them from running events.

If I thought I could stop spending money after a quick lunch—my treat, naturally—I was sorely mistaken. Still, when Chantelle insisted the small bedroom would make a perfect office, I had to admit it made sense. I dragged my tired butt out of the diner, ready to check out a discount office supply store that sold new and secondhand furniture.

We found a gently used desk in cherry laminate that came with bookshelf hutch and two file drawers, perfect for my needs and reasonably priced. I fell in love with a brand new comfy black leather swivel chair with an adjustable back, but balked at the price, which was three times the cost of the desk. Somehow Chantelle managed to talk the sales manager—a rather anemic-looking man in his mid-thirties—into knocking the price down by thirty percent if we took the floor model. I wondered if I could have negotiated the same deal, without Chantelle, and somehow doubted it. There was something about her that just made you want to do what she asked. At least when she was being charming. I thought back to our initial encounter at the store. There was definitely a darker side lurking behind that charismatically persuasive exterior.

That dark side showed up a whole lot sooner than I would’ve liked to see it. After we loaded up Chantelle’s pick up and dropped everything off at Sixteen Snapdragon, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner after a day well spent, pun fully intended. Chantelle suggested Benvenuto, a local Italian restaurant known for its oven-baked pizza, fresh garden salads, and authentic hot table. “They make the most incredible rapini and artichoke pizza,” she enthused, “and I know you like pizza.”

I did, and rapini and artichoke sounded good to me. Unusual, perhaps, but certainly worth a try.

The trouble started when we were waiting to be served, and the couple at the front of the line selected the last two rapini and artichoke slices. It wasn’t as if Benvenuto didn’t have any other choices. There were at least ten other pizzas with a variety of toppings ready to go, including one that looked more like a pie stuffed with rapini and mozzarella.

I think Chantelle would have been able to let it go. Except one half of the couple was an absolutely gorgeous young woman—porcelain skin, waist-length black hair, jade green eyes, legs that went up to her ears. She appeared to be in her early twenties, although the way girls seemed to mature these days, she could have been younger. Judging by her wandering fingers and her incessant, fluttering kisses on his face and neck, she was clearly into her equally attractive, but considerably older, male companion.

“Babysitting, Lance?” Chantelle asked. Her voice had taken on that maple syrup quality I’d noticed in the renovation center. So this was Lance Thomas, Chantelle’s ex.

Lance turned, as if noticing her for the first time, although I suspected from his rapini-artichoke pizza order—Chantelle’s favorite by her own admission—that he’d spotted her earlier. Whether that was true or not, from the annoyed expression on his face, he was far from pleased with the chance encounter.

“Chantelle. I didn’t realize you still came here.”

“There are some things you couldn’t screw me out of in the divorce. Where I choose to dine is one of them.”

“I see you’ve found a new puppet to string along.” Lance looked at me as if I was an unsuspecting mouse that the cat had dragged in. “A quick warning, lady. Chantelle has a way of cutting off those strings when you stop serving her purpose.”

Folks around us started to avert their eyes and shuffle their feet. One woman took out her phone, probably to videotape and post the encounter online. Part of me wanted to disappear. Part of me wondered what purpose I might be serving. The biggest part of me was seriously annoyed at being referred to as a puppet. I also really resented being called ‘lady.’

“The name’s Callie, not lady, and I think I’m quite old enough to take care of myself.”

“Unlike the adolescent pawing all over you,” Chantelle chimed in.

Lance gave her a withering glance. “You have no idea who you’re associating with, Callie. Chantelle does nothing that doesn’t benefit her in some way, and I do mean nothing. Why should you be any different that the rest of us mere mortals? It took me almost a decade to see through Chantelle’s tricks. Trust me, your time will come. Everybody’s does.”

With that he put his arm around his date’s waist and steered her out of the restaurant.

“I guess they won’t be wanting their salad and pizza,” the cashier said with a shrug. She gestured to the two plates waiting at the pickup counter. “Are you two interested? It’s on the house.”

“Free pizza and salad,” Chantelle said. “Always tastes better than eating crow.”

“Great, I’ll pop it in the oven for a quick warm-up. Won’t be a minute.”

“No need on my account,” Chantelle said. “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

We ate our lukewarm pizza and salad and made weak attempts to recapture the earlier magic of the day, but we never quite managed to recover the illusion. Our excursion ended on a clumsy note, both of us making vague promises to get together soon. Any thought of confiding in her or asking about her genealogy work was put on hold.

Later on, lying in bed, I replayed the restaurant scene over and over again in my mind. Was Lance right, was Chantelle just playing me? If so, for what purpose?

My plan for Monday morning was to pay the attic another visit with the hope of finding something to help me with my investigation, a diary, perhaps, or letters and photographs. There might also be another find—beyond the locket and the Calamity Jane movie poster—to take to Arabella Carpenter.

I steeled myself for the claustrophobic atmosphere of the attic and pushed my way up through the entry in the closet. The first thing I saw when I popped my head in was the coffin. Even knowing my father had put it there didn’t make it any less creepy. I thought about hosting a séance and shivered in the too-warm space.

I surveyed the rest of the attic. There was a large steamer trunk and a smaller blue trunk with brass trim. It would have been nice to take them both into the living room, but I knew I didn’t have the strength to do so on my own, and this was one thing I didn’t want to ask for help with. At least not yet.

I decided to start with the large steamer trunk. It looked as if it was made of leather and strips of some sort of hardwood. I found the correct key from the oversized brass ring and opened the trunk to find creamy satin lining and a whole bunch of clothes. Clearly, my dad had taken whatever things had been in my mother’s closet and stored them here, thinking she might return
.

I rummaged through the pile gently, pulling the contents out piece by piece. It wasn’t a huge wardrobe, but all the basics were covered. Jeans. T-shirts. Sundresses, shorts, and skirts. A couple of blouses and blazers. A plain black jersey knit dress, the sort that could take you to dinner or the theater. Nothing resonated with me, though a sweatshirt from John Cougar Mellencamp’s 1985
Scarecrow
tour made me smile. My dad had been a huge fan of Mellencamp until the end.

It wasn’t until I came across a pair of pink and black striped body suits, the stripes on the upward diagonal, that I felt tears threaten. One suit looked to be about a woman’s size eight. The other was clearly made for a young child. A pair of black knitted legwarmers, a woman’s and a child’s, were pinned to each body suit, as were black leotards.

The sight of them brought back memories I didn’t even know I had. Me and my mother, trying out a series of aerobic moves to a Jane Fonda workout video, falling down on the floor in a crumpled heap, hysterical with giggly-girl laughter.

I wondered if a woman who practiced video aerobics alongside her six-year-old daughter—in matching spandex outfits, no less—would abandon her child without so much as a word. A daughter she walked to and from school on a daily basis. I put the outfits aside and looked through the rest of the trunk’s contents. Nothing stood out. Nothing brought back any other memories. I put everything back as it was and tried very hard not to cry.

I opened the blue trunk next. Inside was an off-white wedding dress with an empire waist, white strappy sandals with tiny rhinestones, a beaded white purse, a blue garter, and a tiny blue-and-gold enameled case. Inside the blue velvet-lined case were a pearl necklace and a pair of matching pearl stud earrings. The purse was empty, save for a silver dollar from 1979, the year my parents were married.

So these were my mother’s wedding things. I pulled out a thin white cardboard box and lifted the lid to find a photo album. I set it aside for the moment and continued my search.

There wasn’t much else. A round, blue-and-gold enameled, jewelry box—a larger version of the one used to keep the wedding pearls. I opened the jewelry box to find a silver chain with a Sagittarius horoscope charm, a pair of silver hoop earrings, and five thin silver bangles in assorted filigreed patterns. No rings.

Was this all the jewelry my mother had owned? Or had she taken some of her favorite pieces with her? It didn’t seem like much, although according to my father, nothing had been missing. It made sense that she’d be wearing her wedding ring.

I opened the photo album next and did a quick scan before starting back at the first page. There were precious few photographs inside, but each one was neatly labeled underneath. I couldn’t help but notice the four blank spaces where the four seasons of a happy family had once been.

The first three pages of the album were dedicated to my parents’ wedding day. My father looked incredibly young but undeniably happy, his wavy brown hair styled into an unfortunate mullet. He wore a steel blue brushed corduroy suit, a white shirt, and a light blue and white striped tie. I shuddered at the fashion.

My mother wore the off-white empire-waist dress I had found in the trunk, along with the white strappy sandals with tiny rhinestones. Her blonde hair had been fashioned into an elaborate updo, highlighting her long, slender neck, the pearl necklace, and the matching pearl stud earrings. There was no sign of the beaded purse. She held a lace-wrapped bouquet of baby’s breath and lavender in front of her stomach, presumably to hide her baby bump.

If my father looked young, my mother looked positively like a high school senior, but her smile was radiant. There were about a dozen photos in all, and based on the backdrop they’d been shot in a studio. There wasn’t a single picture with anyone else. I pulled one photograph out of its plastic sleeve to find YOUR TIME TO SHINE PHOTOGRAPHY stamped in gold on the back. No photographer’s name. I could do a Google search of the company, but the odds that they were still in business were remote. The digital age had destroyed the careers of many.

After the wedding pictures, the next photos were of me as a baby in a variety of poses. Inside a playpen wearing nothing more than a diaper, splashing in a green plastic wading pool in the shape of a turtle, hugging a gigantic stuffed panda bear with bright black button eyes. I felt a twinge deep in my belly. I could remember dragging that panda everywhere me. I must have had it for years, though when and where the panda went was now a mystery. I suppose at some point I just lost interest and my father donated it to charity or tossed it in the trash. The thought of either made me more than a little bit sad.

There was a photo of me and my mother baking in the yellow and brown kitchen, or rather, she was cutting out cookies into star-shapes, while I was licking a wooden spoon, a dab of flour on my left cheek. I was wearing the red and white apron, the one with the tiny heart-shaped pockets.

The next page held a couple more photos of me, this time with my father building a sand castle on the beach, another with him standing next to me on my tricycle. I wished I could remember those events.

Instead of being placed in chronological order in the album, there was an entire section devoted to my birthday photos, each one showing me all dressed up in a frilly dress with ribbons or another sort of ‘tamer’ in my curl-crazed hair, while I attempted to blow out the pink and white number candle on a cake frosted with chocolate icing. The birthday photos stopped at six. My father had never been much on taking pictures, but even if he had this album had been stored inside this attic for years.

There was another section of photos taken with department store Santas. In year one, I was nearing eight months old, and my mom held me tight while standing next to Santa. In years two and three, I sat perched on Santa’s knee, with a terrified look on my face as though I was desperately trying not to cry. The next three years I looked decidedly happier, with a wide smile and a confident jut of the chin. Perhaps I’d figured out by then that a visit with Santa meant presents.

One thing stood out above all. Despite the care taken with the album, the sections carefully laid out, there wasn’t one photograph of the three of us as a family. Was that why my mother had asked Ella to take the four season series? Was she worried I’d look back at these photos and think we weren’t happy? That we weren’t a family? I closed the album, knowing it was just another question that I couldn’t answer.

The final find was a white envelope stamped in red: CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE/CERTIFICAT DE MARIAGE. I opened it up and unfolded the paper.

At the top left, PROVINCE OF ONTARIO. Ontario’s official seal in the center. PROVINCE DE L’ONTARIO at the top right. I skipped the rest of the French, since only the English side had been completed.

“I do hereby authorize and grant this license for the authorization of marriage between:

James David Barnstable

of 16 Snapdragon Circle, Marketville

and Abigail Alison Osgoode

of 127 Moore Gate Manor, Lakeside”

The license was signed and dated December 1, 1978 by the issuer of marriage licenses in Marketville. The Certificate of Marriage followed, signed and dated December 8, 1978, with the ceremony at Marketville Town Hall. There were two witness signatures. The first was from a Dwayne Shuter of Toronto. The second was from the Justice of the Peace who performed the ceremony.

Dwayne Shuter. I couldn’t recall my dad ever mentioning him, yet he must have meant enough to my parents to witness their civil service ceremony. Maybe he had been a friend of my mother’s. I would do my best to find him and see what he remembered.

The marriage certificate also revealed other information. If my math was correct, my mother had been about four months pregnant when she married my dad, and he had already owned the house on Snapdragon Circle.

I closed the trunk, taking the album and marriage certificate. I now had a lead in Dwayne Shuter. I also knew my mother’s maiden name was Osgoode, that she had lived at 127 Moore Gate Manor in Lakeside. For the first time, I felt the faintest flush of optimism. Maybe, with a bit more time and effort, I could actually solve this mystery.