Skeletons in the Attic (A Marketville Mystery Book 1) (26 page)

If Misty’s revelation shocked me, it was mostly because she didn’t strike me as a trophy wife.

Misty sensed my surprise. “I know. I’m not his usual type, which over the years has become younger, blonder, and bustier. We met as teenagers at the beach in Lakeside, had a hot and heavy romance, got married without a lot of forethought, and rented in Marketville while Leith finished university in Toronto. When he graduated a couple of years later, he moved to the city and I stayed up here. It was all very amicable.”

“So you’ve remained friends.”

“A more apt description is that we’re friends between wives. When he’s married, we’re cordial. How cordial depends on how secure or insecure the current wife is.” Misty shrugged, resigned to the reality of the relationship. “We were already divorced by the time your mom went missing, but Leith was a friend of your dad’s, and I was a friend of your mom’s. We banded together. The reward poster was Leith’s idea. I’m fairly certain he was planning to fund it. He was doing alright by then and your parents didn’t have a bean between them.”

Yvette and Corbin Osgoode had plenty of beans. Too bad they hadn’t been willing to pony up a cent for their only child. Then again, if there had been more money available in the way of a reward, would the outcome have been any different?

I thought about the letter my father had left for me in the safety deposit box. I’d read it so many times I could recall it verbatim.
Things changed when Misty Rivers rented the house. She told me the house was not haunted, but possessed by your mother’s spirit. I know it sounds farfetched, but another renter had insinuated much the same thing.

Misty was convinced your mother had been murdered, and she wanted to help me seek out the truth. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first. I’m not a believer in spirits or psychics, but I’ve never been able to reconcile your mother’s disappearance. I decided to put my trust in her.

At the time I read it, I assumed Misty had been a stranger who had rented the house. Now I realized the error of my assumption. A psychic touting stranger would never have convinced my father to buy a coffin, let alone put a skeleton in it. That still didn’t explain why Leith had kept his relationship with Misty a secret.

“You, Misty, I can almost forgive. After all, you did come here to talk to me and I sent you packing. But why didn’t Leith tell me? Why all the secrecy?”

“Your father had expressly told both of us not to say anything to you unless it was absolutely necessary. He wanted you to look at this with an open mind.”

“And now?”

“You’ve uncovered a lot in a short time. More than anyone expected. Better you hear the truth from me than from another source. To be honest, I figured Maggie Lonergan or Ella Cole would have said something, but I’m guessing neither one knew about Leith. Trust me, if they had, you would have heard. Regardless, it was only a matter of time. As I’ve said before, your investigative abilities are impressive.”

“Not so impressive that I’ve found anything out to solve the mystery. When you think about it, I’m no further ahead than you were thirty years ago. Except that now I have a coffin with a skeleton in my attic.”

“I’m sorry about that. One of my more lame-brained ideas. I’m actually surprised that your father agreed to it, let alone followed through with the purchase.” Misty gave a sad smile. “It only goes to underline how desperate he was to find out the truth.”

“So the séance—”

“I wouldn’t know how to hold a séance if my life depended on it.”

I sighed, wondering what to do with them.

“If you like, I can see if my theater group would like it. They always put on a Halloween play.”

“That would be great.”

Misty got up. “I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I just hope I’ve been some help.”

“You have, thank you. Before you go, did my father tell you anything about the accidents he had at work?”

“Accidents?” Misty frowned. “No, why? Surely you don’t believe his death was any more than an unfortunate industrial accident.”

An unfortunate industrial accident. The exact words the caller had used to tell me about my dad’s death.

“I don’t know what—or who—to believe any longer, Misty. The more I dig, the more nothing is what it appears to be on the surface. One thing I do know. That skeleton I found in the attic isn’t the only false clue. Of that much I’m certain.”

Chantelle called a few minutes after Misty left. Seeing her name displayed on the caller ID, I didn’t bother with the formality of a hello.

“What’s up?”

“I might have a line on your grandparents, Peter and Sandra Barnstable. I still need to confirm some details, but it looks like they might have gone to Newfoundland a few years ago.”

I thought about the travel brochure from Newfoundland and Labrador that I’d found in my dad’s filing cabinet. At the time I thought it was because he wanted to go whale watching there someday. Could it be he had found his parents?

“Newfoundland. Are you sure?”

“Well, no, if I were sure, I wouldn’t be calling to ask you questions.” Chantelle sounded more than a bit annoyed, not that I could blame her. She’d offered to help me—gratis—and here I was second-guessing her.

“I apologize. I just had a long visit with Misty Rivers and my head is spinning.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Not yet. Maybe tomorrow evening, over pizza and a glass of wine.”

“Sounds like a plan. In the meantime, I’ll try to find out a bit more about the Barnstables. Could be they just went there for a visit and left again. The thing is, I found a record of them going there about ten years ago, but there are no records of them leaving. Of course, they could have bought a car from the
Auto Trader
and driven to who-knows-where.”

Who-knows-where. There was a lot of that going around.

The phone rang again less than five minutes later. According to the caller ID, it was the Glass Dolphin.

“Arabella, nice to hear from you. Any more information about the locket?”

“Not the locket, the poster.”

I wandered into my bedroom and looked at the Calamity Jane poster hanging on the wall. “What about it?”

“I studied all the photos you sent to me and something seems a bit off. I checked with Levon, and he agrees. We’ll have to remove it from the frame to be sure.”

Levon was an antiques picker, Arabella’s ex-husband and ex-business partner, and oddly enough, her best friend. “Be sure of what?”

“I think it’s probably a very recent reproduction. Which means it wouldn’t have any value beyond decorative.”

A reproduction. I’d imagined my mother scouring around antique malls looking for the perfect gift. Now it looked as if my poster was just one more thing that wasn’t all it seemed to be.

“I wasn’t planning on selling it, so the value isn’t really a concern to me. I’d like to find out either way.”

“As long as you’re sure you want to know the truth.”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. Then why not bring it to the Glass Dolphin along with the locket?”

We went back and forth, comparing calendars and availability, and finally made arrangements for me to go to the Glass Dolphin the following week. At this point, I didn’t see either the locket or the poster offering me any additional clues into my mother’s disappearance, but it would be nice to see Arabella again. I was overdue to visit her new shop.

With Misty gone, Chantelle’s possible news about my grandparents, and Arabella’s suspicion over the Calamity Jane poster, my mind was a complete and utter mess. I decided to bake some peanut butter cookies. If they turned out half decent, I would bring half-dozen to Royce and see where it might lead. I already knew he had a sweet tooth, and if I could cultivate that, more the better. I know it probably made no sense, but I was starting to feel ready for a relationship, and I couldn’t get Royce out of my mind. The fact that his father complicated things, well we could work around that, couldn’t we?

That decided, I wasn’t sure if the recipe I’d found online was the one my mother had used. Even so, ‘Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Cookies’ recipe seemed easy enough, even for someone with my limited baking skills.

There was something therapeutic about mixing together the simple ingredients of peanut butter, baking powder, baking soda, white and brown sugar, eggs, flour, and vanilla—the real stuff, not the imitation kind that tasted like chemicals.

I’d just set the oven temperature to 350, dropped spoonfuls of cookie dough onto a greased baking sheet, and was about to flatten and put a crisscross pattern on the tops with the tines of a fork, when the doorbell rang. I wiped my hands on a terrycloth tea towel, wondering if Royce had somehow sensed what I was doing and had come to share the experience. The idea of it made me smile and I found myself humming as I went to the door, knowing that I probably had flour on my face, and not caring.

The hum stuck in the middle of my throat when I saw who was standing there.

I recognized my grandfather from the society newspaper photo Chantelle had shown me. He wasn’t wearing a tux, but his crisply pleated khakis and pale blue button-down shirt reminded me of the sort of business casual attire the bank’s executives used to wear on Fridays. Us call center types didn’t tend to dress that well even on a regular day, but then again, we were tucked inside miniscule cubicles where no one saw us—or cared to.

I opened the door, wishing I wasn’t covered in peanut butter and flour, and hoped my hair looked reasonably tame tucked inside its ponytail.

“Can I help you?”

“Corbin Osgoode. My wife, Yvette, was here earlier. She insisted I pay you a visit. Here I am.” His voice was the gravelly baritone of a longtime smoker.

I felt my face flush under the layer of flour and wanted to kick myself. “Please, come in. Forgive my appearance. I’ve been baking. Or trying to. Peanut butter cookies. They should be ready in a half hour or so. If you’d like a sample.” I realized I sounded like a blithering idiot but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

Corbin merely nodded and walked stiffly into the living room. I got the coffee going using freshly ground Arabica beans, finished crisscrossing the peanut butter cookies, and put them in the oven, setting the timer for eight minutes. The last thing I needed was a burned batch. I took a few deep breaths until I was ready to face my company.

I put down a tray with two mugs of coffee, milk, and sugar. “The cookies will take a bit longer. They’re still baking.”

Corbin nodded, though his face was so tight it looked as if it had been placed in a vice and squeezed.
I jumped up when the oven buzzer went off and darted into the kitchen, grateful for the reprieve. All this time I’d wanted to speak to this man. Now that he was here, I had no idea where to start and no idea what to say. I transferred the cookies to a wire rack to cool and tried to steady my nerves.

Corbin—I couldn’t think of him as my grandfather—was sipping coffee when I came back into the living room.

“I have to admit you’ve taken me by surprise, coming here,” I said.

“Yvette can be very persuasive.” He cleared his throat. “Let me start by saying how very sorry I am about your father’s death.”

“Are you? Very sorry? Because I happen to know that you had no time for either him or me while he was alive. I also know you stopped Gloria Grace Pietrangelo from writing about you. So you can spare me the false sympathy.”

Corbin frowned. “Who is Gloria Grace Pietrangelo?”

“She was the reporter from the
Marketville Post
covering my mother’s disappearance. Wrote under the byline of G.G. Pietrangelo. She found out you and Yvette were my grandparents. When she told the editor about it, she was told to drop it.”

At least he had the good grace to blush. “I admit I quashed the press. It’s hard enough to run a successful business without having all your dirty laundry aired in public.”

I stared at him open-mouthed. “You consider a missing daughter dirty laundry?”

“You misunderstood. What I meant is that reporter would certainly have put in our estrangement with Abigail. I didn’t feel that information was relevant. I still don’t.”

“But with your money, your connections, surely you could have done more to find out what happened to my mother. Surely you could have gotten past her having a baby and marrying my father.”

Corbin’s pressed his lips together in a thin line. “Thank you for the coffee and cookies.” He got up and walked out the front door. He was halfway down the driveway when he turned around and spoke again.

“I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Yvette, then, and now. Sometimes the truth can break your heart.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The bastard drove away without answering.

After what could only be described as a restless night’s sleep, I woke up to the sweet smell of lilac wafting through my open bedroom window. I pulled my blinds all the way up and admired the deep purple flowers juxtaposed against shiny dark green leaves. Not so pretty, perhaps, most of the year, but when in bloom, lilac bushes were truly spectacular, both in scent and in sight. Next year, if I were still living here, I would take Ella Cole up on her offer, plant a garden or two.

I grabbed a quick shower, pulled my hair into a messy ponytail, tossed on a pair of khaki shorts and an old race t-shirt. I was just about to go out and cut a few stems of lilac to put in a vase when the phone rang. I checked the caller ID. Shirley.

“Hey Shirley, it’s been a while. Are you calling to tell me you’ve finally retired?”

“Not exactly. The library asked if I’d stay on another year. I said yes.”

“Well, good for you. Nice to know you’re appreciated.”

“It is, but that isn’t why I’m calling.”

“Then to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye out for anything that might help you find out more about your mother’s disappearance. Not just local papers, but across the country. Last night I found something. In a small town Newfoundland newspaper.”

My stomach flip-flopped. “Newfoundland?”

“Newfoundland. But what I found, it isn’t from the capitol of St. John’s as you might expect. It was in a place called St. Bernard’s-Jacques Fontaine. A small fishing village. Apparently the locals call it Jack’s Fountain.”

“Jack’s Fountain.”

Shirley laughed. “I know, eh? I might have found your father’s parents, or at least a newspaper photo of the two of them. It isn’t much, but who knows where that might lead? I’ll make you a copy of it.”

My curiosity was sufficiently piqued, and not just because of the Newfoundland connection. “I’ll try to pop by later on.”

I’d barely hung up with the phone rang again. This time the call display said ‘Private Caller.’ Probably a telemarketer but…

“Hello.”

“Callie, it’s me. Gloria Grace.” Spoken in a rush. “Corbin Osgoode had been sending your father money every month for the past thirty years.”

That might explain how my dad had managed to save one hundred thousand dollars. “I had no idea. How did you find out?”

“My source is confidential. The bigger question is, why?”

What was it Corbin had said?
Sometimes the truth can break your heart
.

“I don’t know. But I’m going to try and find out.”

I was still mulling everything over when the doorbell rang out its sing-songy chime. After a couple of months in Marketville, I was almost getting used to having drop-in visitors. Almost being the operative word. I opened the door.

Dwayne Shuter was recognizable from his LinkedIn photo, the scar over his eye more prominent without any digital enhancements. The car in the driveway was also a giveaway, a black Mercedes coupe with the license plate DW*SHUTR.

A slender woman stood next to him. She was twenty or so years older than me. Good skin, shoulder-length straight blonde hair streaked with hints of silver. Clear blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face, the nose just a little too wide.

“Calamity,” my mother said. “We need to talk.”