The Mandie Collection (2 page)

“Someone has stolen my father's will,” Mandie said with a deep frown. She explained what John Shaw had told them about the theft.

“That is too bad, with that woman claiming she has your father's latest will,” Joe replied. “What are you going to do?”

“You mean, what are
we
going to do?” Mandie corrected him with a big grin. “We—you and I—are going to find the will, the one we discovered at Charley Gap. And we don't have long to do it. Uncle John says we're going to your house early Monday morning in order to be ready to go to the hearing in the Bryson City courthouse. So we only have today and tomorrow, and tomorrow will be cut short because it's Sunday and we'll have to go to church.”

“Well, I sure hope you have some ideas,” Joe replied.

Mandie looked around the room. Uncle John was explaining to Dr. Woodard what had happened, and everyone seemed to be at a loss as to how the will could have been stolen.

Mandie waited for an opening in the conversation and then she said, “Uncle John, Joe and I will look for the will.”

“Amanda, dear, I have looked all over the house and have not found a clue as to what has happened to it,” Uncle John replied.

Mandie stood up and walked over to pick up her cloak. “If it's anywhere in this house, Joe and I will find it,” she said. Looking at Joe, she added, “Just give me time to change out of these traveling clothes.”

“Don't go too far away, dear,” Elizabeth told her. “It will soon be time for the noon meal. This house has a lot of territory to cover, with three floors, an attic, and a cellar besides.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Mandie agreed. As she passed Joe, she said, “I'll be right back, soon as I can put on another dress.”

“I'll be here,” Joe said with a big grin.

Mrs. Taft stood up and said, “That is a good idea, Amanda. I need to get out of these things and into something more comfortable, too.” Glancing at the others, she added, “I'll rejoin y'all shortly.”

As Mandie left the room and hurried up the wide staircase, Mrs. Taft followed. At the top Mandie looked back and said, “See you later, Grandmother.”

Mrs. Taft put her hand on Mandie's shoulder. “Dear, don't worry about this matter too much. My lawyer is very capable, and he's sure to find a loophole in that woman's claim even if you don't find the will,” she said.

Mandie looked up into her grandmother's eyes and said, “But, Grandmother, this is such a mystery I won't be able to stand it until I do find the will.”

“Well, if you do find the will, we'll see that the thief is brought to the law to pay for his bad deed,” Mrs. Taft said. “Now you run along and change, and I'll do the same.”

“Yes, Grandmother, I'll hurry,” Mandie replied as she hurried down the hallway to her room, and Mrs. Taft went in the opposite direction to the room she always occupied when visiting John and Elizabeth.

In her room Mandie quickly shed the heavy traveling clothes and put on a red gingham dress that she took out of the huge wardrobe in her room. She brushed out her long blond hair and tied it back with a red ribbon from her bureau drawer.

But her mind was not on what she was doing. Her thoughts were lining up ideas on where to begin the search for the will.

“How could the will disappear from a locked room?” she asked
herself as she quickly tied the sash to her dress. “And Uncle John said the lock was broken on the desk but not on the door to his office. Someone had to have the key to get into his office—” She paused with a loud gasp. “Maybe Uncle John is not telling it right! Maybe he left the door to his office unlocked accidentally and doesn't want to admit it!” she exclaimed.

She hastily shook out the wrinkles in her long full skirt in her hurry to rush back downstairs and share this idea with Joe. Almost taking the steps two at a time, she stopped at the door to the parlor. She caught Joe's attention and he came to join her in the hallway. Uncle John and her mother were talking with Dr. Woodard.

“Ready?” Joe asked as she motioned for him to follow her.

“Yes, come on,” Mandie said in a low voice. “Let's talk a minute.”

Mandie ran back up the stairs to the landing and sat down on the top step. Joe followed.

“What is it?” he asked as he sat beside her.

“We have to talk low so no one will hear us,” Mandie whispered to him. “I've been thinking about the door to Uncle John's office not being unlocked, and I think he might not be telling us the truth exactly.”

“You mean your uncle John might have been lying?” Joe asked in surprise.

Mandie quickly looked at Joe and felt her face grow warm. She could never accuse Uncle John of lying. “Well, no, not lying exactly,” she began trying to explain. “Maybe he was just manufacturing the truth. Maybe he was afraid to say he left the office door open.”

“Mandie!” Joe said, frowning at her. “Why would he be afraid to tell us the truth?”

“Well, maybe he thought we'd be awfully upset about it if he left the door unlocked, giving someone access to his office and an opportunity to steal the will,” Mandie replied. “He'd figure he should have been more careful about such an important paper. After all, he didn't even take it to the courthouse in Bryson City after I gave it to him when he came to Grandmother's house in Asheville.”

Joe reached for her hand and squeezed it tight. “Mandie, please don't go making up tales,” he said. “Especially not about your uncle John.”

Mandie quickly withdrew her hand, sat up straight, and said, “I'm
not making up tales, Joe Woodard. My mind is imagining things. That's all.” She stood up.

Joe rose beside her and said with a big grin, “But, Mandie, tales are the product of imagination.”

Mandie looked sharply at him and asked, “Don't you ever imagine anything? Don't you ever see two or three possibilities for the solution of a problem? How are you ever going to solve a mystery without some imagination?”

“I'll let you solve the mystery,” Joe said, still smiling down at her. “I'll just go along to help when you need me.”

Mandie reached to grab his hand and give his arm a hard shake. “Then we'd better get going,” she said, returning his smile and turning to go on up the stairs.

“All right, but at least tell me where we're going to start,” Joe replied as he followed her to the second floor.

Mandie paused at the top and said, “I think we should begin searching on the third floor since that is where Uncle John's office is.” She quickly continued up the staircase to the next floor. Joe came right beside her.

The bedrooms on the third floor were seldom used since there was ample space below for a houseful of guests. All the doors were kept closed, and Mandie opened the first one they came to. The shutters on the windows were closed, but the sun was shining outside and sunlight filtered through the slats which were not shut all the way. A huge, four-poster bed covered with a white hobnail spread stood in the middle of the room with a bureau, a chifferobe, and a washstand placed around the walls. Two large upholstered chairs faced each other in front of the fireplace.

“I suppose we should look in all the drawers we can find,” Mandie suggested as they stepped inside the room.

“All right, if that's what you want to do,” Joe said with a sigh. “But do you really think someone would steal an important paper like a will and then just go put it in a drawer?”

Mandie turned around, placed her hands on her hips, and said, “No, I don't, but we have to start somewhere and somehow until we get some more ideas.”

“Then we'll look in all the drawers,” Joe agreed, walking over to
the bureau, and then he looked at her and asked, “How about under the mattress, too?”

“All right,” Mandie replied as she pulled open a drawer in the chifferobe. It was empty. She then took it completely out and turned it upside down to examine the bottom.

“Mandie, what are you doing?” Joe asked from the bureau where he was examining some linens in the drawer he had opened.

Mandie replaced the drawer as she looked at him and replied, “The will could have been stuck to the bottom of a drawer, you know.” She slid the drawer shut and quickly asked, “Remember where Uncle John's will was hidden that time he was supposed to have died in Europe?”

“Under the carpet,” Joe quickly replied.

“In his office,” Mandie added. “Let's see if the door to his office is unlocked.”

Mandie hurried out of the room and down the hallway to her uncle's office. As she tried the door handle, Joe caught up with her.

“Locked!” she said in disappointment.

“He said he always keeps it locked,” Joe reminded her.

“But Mr. Jason had the key that time we were looking for his will,” Mandie reminded him. “And Uncle John said no one knows where he keeps the key.”

“But, Mandie, Mr. Bond had the key because your uncle was going to be away,” Joe said. “Your uncle would have left all his keys with Mr. Bond.”

“Oh, shucks!” Mandie exclaimed, stomping her foot.

“You could ask him if he'd let you look in his office,” Joe suggested.

Mandie thought for a moment and said, “But he said he had looked everywhere, and he probably wouldn't want us snooping in his office.”

“I suppose you're right, and not only that, whoever took the will wouldn't leave it in his office where he might find it,” Joe told her.

“So we'll just have to search all the bedrooms like we were beginning to do,” Mandie said, turning back down the hallway. Glancing up at Joe by her side, she added, “And then we'll do the attic.”

Joe stopped walking and replied, “The attic? I've been in the attic in this house before, and it is a great big jumble. It'd take a week to go through all that mess up there.”

Mandie stopped to reply. “Well, we don't have to look through everything, just the possible hiding places.”

“Which would be anywhere and everywhere,” Joe told her.

“Come on,” Mandie said, walking back toward the bedroom they had been in. “Let's hurry and search all the rooms on this floor first, and then we'll go up to the attic.”

“Don't forget your mother said not to wander off too far or too long because it would soon be time to eat,” Joe reminded her with a teasing smile as he caught up with her.

“Don't worry. You will have your food,” Mandie teased back. “But right now we've got to get through all these rooms. This is going to be a big, big job.”

They returned to the bedroom where they had begun. No clue was found to the missing will, and so they moved on to the next room, and the next, and by the time they searched the third room, Mandie decided it really was going to be an awfully big job. Whoever stole the will more than likely took it with them out of the house, and all this work could be wasted time, but somehow she had to search for it to satisfy her curiosity.

CHAPTER TWO

LIZA CONFESSES

By the time they had hurriedly searched the entire third floor and found nothing, Mandie decided it was time to quit and get washed up for the noon meal. She turned to go to her room, and Joe headed toward the room he would be occupying with his father during their visit.

“I'll meet you back at the top of the steps in five minutes,” Mandie told him as he went in the opposite direction down the hallway. “That is, if you want to go with me to the kitchen. I haven't seen Liza and Jenny and Abraham since I got home, and I ought to speak to them before we eat.”

“Sure, I'll see you in five minutes,” Joe promised.

Inside her room Mandie suddenly got the urge to search the place. She rushed around, opening drawers, looking in the bottom of the huge wardrobe and under the carpet, but she didn't find anything except what she expected to be in the various places.

“Oh, well!” she exclaimed as she finished and stood in the middle of the floor. “It would be pretty dumb for someone to go to the trouble of stealing the will and then putting it in here.”

She quickly freshened up and went to find Joe waiting for her at the staircase.

“I believe you took
two
five minutes,” Joe teased her as they started down the steps.

“I searched my room—” Mandie began.

“Searched your room?” Joe interrupted as he stopped to look down at her.

Mandie halted by his side and replied, “Why not? The thief could have hidden the will in my room to make it look like I had stolen it.”

“Mandie, where did you get such an idea? That would be the last place they would hide it because they'd figure you'd find it, so there wouldn't be any reason for them to take it,” Joe answered. “Whoever took that will didn't want you to have it.”

Mandie frowned as she thought about that for a moment and then she said, “Then it must have been my stepmother who took it since she has another one that she claims gives her my father's house.”

“That sounds like a logical deduction, but that may not be the correct answer,” Joe said. “How could she have ever got in this house in the first place, much less in your uncle's office, without someone catching her?”

“Well, somebody took it, and I'm sure the servants wouldn't do such a thing,” Mandie told him as they continued down the stairs. “So somebody from outside got in somehow and took it. And I still think Uncle John might have accidentally left his office door open!”

“Even if he did, the unknown person had to get into the house and up to his office without being seen,” Joe reminded her. They stepped down into the hallway on the first floor and walked toward the kitchen.

“We'd better hurry,” Mandie said, rushing ahead to open the kitchen door. Joe followed.

Liza was the first one to see them. She stopped in the middle of taking up the pot of green beans into a large bowl on the stove. “I sho' is glad to see you, Missy 'Manda,” she said with a big grin. “Been kinda dull round heah widout you. Gits dat way ev'ry time you goes 'way.” She danced across the big room to touch Mandie's shoulder as she added, “And Mistuh doctor's son, I'se glad you heah, too.”