Time Thieves (9 page)

She glanced at the shop. “I’m leaving for England and France in a few days and have a few pieces to work on, so I’ll be taking them with me.”

“Jewelry pieces?”

“In this case, yes.” She smiled. “I’ll be gone for three to four days this time.”

“Did you get your security system set up in the meantime? After the last break-in, it would be a shame to leave the house wide open for them to have a second try.”

She winced. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“Just trying to be careful.”

“Well, I’m happy to say the security system upgrade is supposed to happen tomorrow.”

He grinned. “Good.” He hesitated a brief moment. “Are you going to see your mother on this trip?”

That made her wince. Sari sighed, propping her chin on the palm of one hand. “I hadn’t planned on it, but I just found out that my mother’s house was broken into last night as well. She’s finally told me she has some of my father’s belongings she’s been keeping safe all these years. I’m going to retrieve them.”

“Valuable?”

“My father said they were, but she had them appraised and found them to be worthless.”

“But not to you?”

Her face softened. “No, not to me. I’m wondering if the books she has of his are the ones from that shelf.” She pointed up to the open space in the bookshelf.

“Does it matter?”

She shook her head. “No, not really. It would be just another mystery solved. In my head, I see the bookshelf full from the last time I saw it as a child. When I came back, the shelf was no longer full.”

“Then it probably is those books.” Ward walked over to take a look at the volumes. “Wow – time travel, time space continuum, timepiece repair. Crossing time.” He turned back to look at her. “Really? He believed in time travel?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what he believed. I was too young back then to discuss it with him. Now I’d give anything for a day with him.” She sighed. “The things we don’t value until it’s gone.”

“Except you did value him. And he knew it,” Ward said seriously.

She smiled, the shadows in her eyes lightening. “Thanks. I hope he did.”

B
efore he left,
Ward helped Sari to haul more boxes from the small attic down to her shop. She’d planned to give away or recycle anything that was of no value, and hopefully she could find something personal to identify those who’d owned the various belongings. She had a family tree somewhere around, but she didn’t think it went back very far. Maybe four generations. She spun around in the shop, wondering where it had last been.

Her eyes lit on the half empty bookshelf. She needed to get those items back from her mother. Who knew what information her father had deemed valuable? She would have them in a couple of days, but that was too long. Maybe she should have had her mother priority ship them. No, they were too valuable. What if something went wrong and they were lost or damaged?

In the meantime, she stared at the orderly mess in her shop. Maybe she should have left everything upstairs like Ward had suggested. No, of course she couldn’t do that. It would have been the easy answer.

Time to get to work. She packed the clothing and other items she wasn’t keeping neatly into boxes, then set them against the back wall to deal with later. Grabbing another box, she opened it up and dug in. This set of belongings all appeared to be from a woman. There were dresses, underclothes, shoes, hair clips, and handkerchiefs, putting the belongings somewhere in the sixties as far she could see. Interesting. This person should be on the family tree then. She continued to go through box after box, but outside of a few trinkets, there were no books, journals, pictures, or any other identifying items. There was a beautiful handheld mirror. It appeared to be real silver, and there were tiny jewels or cut glass pieces inlaid in a delicate pattern around the edge and the front of the handle. On the back in a big ornately carved circle were the initials
MH
.

Sari sat back on her heels. MH? Offhand, she couldn’t think of any relative with a name starting with that letter. Not that there were many relatives. Her father had been an only child. His mother had also been an only child. His father had a sister though, who’d died as a young woman. Damn, she couldn’t remember her name, but she’d have lived about the right time. Sari stared down at the mirror.

This was likely to be her belongings.

Maybe the parents couldn’t bear to part with them. As Sari surveyed the sad pile, she decided there wasn’t much here to remember a child by. As she repacked the various items of clothing, she searched pockets and creases, looking for anything she might have missed. Still nothing. She shrugged and packed it all away again – except for the mirror.

The mirror was special. She laid it out on her shop desk and studied it. She had no plans to sell it, not when it was from a family member long gone, but it looked old. Very old.

Sari realized that although she’d barely started in on the piles of stored belongings, she was already tired. Tea time, then. Maybe she’d recoup enough energy to continue. She wandered into the kitchen and filled the teakettle, and as she waited, she checked her emails. There were several responses she’d been looking for, one from the customer she’d emailed about the necklace and another about a small statue. Good…sales.

There were several business emails that she took a moment to answer before she clicked on the last one. It was from Brodin, her father’s old friend. She’d kept in touch with him over the years. In fact, he’d been a big help to her and her mom back when her father disappeared. He’d been on the fringe, not quite a friend but also not quite a stranger.

She read the message. Stopped, leaned forward, and read it again. “
Found any interesting watches lately? I hear you came home with a special one from your last trip. Interested, as always.”

Not possible. How could he have known? Then Sari laughed. The collector’s world was small and if she’d been at the show, chances were good he’d been there too. Maybe not at the same time, but who knew – although she’d like to think he’d have come up and said hi to her.

She read the short three-sentence message again then started to type out her response. “Not sure how you knew, but I did indeed make an interesting find on my last trip. Too early to tell how interesting,” and she sent it off. He was also one of the few people to have heard her and her mother’s garbled version of events as he’d come by with the second watch in the set soon after her father disappeared. Her father was supposed to wait for his return so they could compare the two watches. Instead, her father had been so interested he’d taken an early look.

Lucky for Brodin that he hadn’t been there at the time. Maybe they’d both have disappeared.

Brodin had given her and her mother both long, disbelieving looks at the time, deciding they were hysterical females, and that her father had finally washed his hands of them. He proceeded to come up with a more factual version.

Then he’d called the police.

As she’d grown older, she hadn’t been able to forget his watch had supposedly been one of the matched set. She’d asked him about it early on, but his had been stolen a few years after her father’s disappearance. He’d been looking for it ever since.

So had she. It was likely her closest link to finding out what happened to her father.

*

Four days later,
she sat back in her plane seat and waited for the hubbub around her to die down. She’d finished her business in England and should be at her mother’s in time for dinner. She patted her oversized purse in her lap. Business had gone well. Very well, actually. She grinned. In fact, it had gone excellent, if her new purchases turned out to be half as good as she thought they would. Now if only her mother’s visit went half as well.

After stowing away her bag, she leaned back and closed her eyes. To her surprise, she slept. She came awake at the sound of the
Fasten seatbelts
signs coming on and the captain’s voice pouring through the cabin.

She blinked several times to reorient herself. Straightening her seat, she buckled up. Looking out the window, she saw the bright lights below. Sunlight twinkled and caught on the glass surfaces.

A beautiful sight, and still nothing inside called to her. For her entire life, she’d been trying to get back home. The home she’d grown up in. The home she’d been forced to leave. The home she’d loved.

She’d always be just a visitor here.

And a reluctant one at that.

Hours later, one of the reasons for her reluctance was in full force.

“I’ve changed my mind. It’s my right,” her mother pouted. Her lips literally curled and her voice became childlike. Sari stared, and in spite of her mother’s words, humor crinkled her insides. The older her mother got, the more obstinate and manipulative she became.

A part of her hated it. Another part recognized it for what it was – an attempt to bind her to her mother. Her father’s possessions were one more thing she could hold over Sari’s head.

And she loved to play mind games like that. Sari hated them. And with every passing year, she hated it a little more.

“It’s not yours anymore. You gave them to me. Therefore you can’t change your mind. I will take the items home with me. If you continue to try to stop me, you can bet it will be a long time before I return.” Sari kept her voice even and flat, letting her voice show how she really felt over her mother’s tricks.

“But I didn’t hand them over. So you can’t take them.” Coolly, her mother walked over to the side table and refilled her wine glass then walked out onto the patio. Cool evening air wafted across Sari’s face as she joined her.

“I’m sorry you feel that you have to do things like this in order to keep control over me. It’s not going to work. My father’s items are not yours, and I will not allow you to play games with them. You know how important they are to me.”

“And I know that you won’t ever visit unless I have something to give you.”

Considering she’d only been gone from France for six weeks, that was hardly fair. But it was so typical of her drama queen mother. “I would have come to visit, but it would be on my time, not by you jerking the family strings just because you can.”

Lisbeth sniffed. “I didn’t do that.”

Sari laughed. “Yes, you did. You always do. You’re very generous, but you like to keep dragging me back. I need to be home and get my house in order. It won’t be long, a couple of months, but with my business trips already taking me away, I can’t afford the time.”

This time, it was Lisbeth’s turn to laugh and it was much colder. In an icy voice, she said, “What you mean is that it’s almost the anniversary of your father’s disappearance, and you want his things to once again try to figure out what happened.”

Sari’s gaze sharpened. She studied her mother’s face before turning away abruptly. She walked to the edge of the patio and stared out into the blackness of the evening, the lights of the neighbors the only illumination in the sky. After a long moment she tried to explain, knowing her mother had yet to listen. “I have to. I need to know what happened.”

“Nothing happened,” her mother cried. “Your father walked out the door one day and never came home.”

Sari spun on her heels. “Really? After all this time, you’re still trying to stuff that garbage down my throat?” She glared in disbelief. “You might want to rewrite history to suit you, but I was there, remember? I saw him pick up the watch and disappear like a puff of smoke in front of me. I saw it. And for all your lies you’ve tried to feed me in the years since, I’ve not forgotten it.”

Her mother tried to stuff her fist in her mouth as she looked at Sari with wounded eyes.

Sari closed hers briefly. “Mom, I can’t forget. I loved him. And I miss him so much.”

“He’s gone. Can’t you accept that?”

“No.” Sari stared into her mother’s eyes, willing her to understand. “I can’t. I have to explain what I saw, and I want to know where my father is.”

“He’s gone. That’s all there is to know.”

Sari clenched her jaw. As she stared into her mother’s face, she realized it was fear that hid in the back of her eyes. Whatever had happened, she was afraid of something happening again. She was most likely afraid for Sari herself. “Are you afraid that whatever happened to Dad might also happen to me?”