Treasure Built of Sand (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 6)

by S. W. Hubbard

  Worry stabs me in the gut. “That’s just two weeks from now,” I object. “I need a little more time to do research, so I can get you the best prices.” I won’t say this to Brielle, but I know more about antiques than contemporary designers. I slide off my stool and peer into the living room. The sleek pale blue linen sofa and striped arm chairs didn’t come from Pottery Barn, that’s for sure. Even though they’re immaculate, I won’t get anywhere near what Brielle paid for them. But I know some New York interior decorators who would drool over this stuff. I just need time to catalogue it and get them out here.

  Brielle stalks after me and lays a cool, smooth hand on my arm. “I don’t care what you earn from the sale. I just want the house cleared.”

  I don’t care what you earn from the sale? That’s what clients tell me when they’re the executors of their Great-aunt Mabel’s paltry estate and they want me to get rid of the old gal’s clutter. Brielle may not care if I sell all this at bargain basement prices, but I care. I want to wring maximum profits from this sale.

  “The set-up won’t take long,” Donna offers. “We’ve never done a sale in a house that’s so clean and uncluttered.”

  Brielle looks over her shoulder at Donna. “Clutter makes me anxious.” Then she directs her gaze at me, with eyes the same limpid green as the ocean. Her hand has tightened on my arm, and her sharp nails prick my flesh ever so slightly. “I need to know you can unequivocally meet my deadline.”

  Geez, this is a woman used to getting her way. I try to imagine having so much money that I could afford to toss out all the furnishings in my vacation home without concern for compensation. My head isn’t going there. First, I don’t see a vacation home in my future any time in the next decade. Sean and I are still scrimping to replace the dog-chewed sofa in our family room.

  But I won’t profit at all if I don’t get the assignment. I’m going to have to bust my hump, especially when I add in the hour commute to get here. “I was only hesitating because I won’t be able to drive down here every single day.” I take a deep breath. “But we can have the house cleared by October 1. I guarantee it.”

  Brielle’s shoulders relax. I hadn’t realized how tense she was. This Japanese designer dude really means a lot to her. I guess she needs to boast about him to her friends.

  I step away from her and take out my iPad to snap a few pictures. “Will anyone be using the house in the next two weeks?” I sure hope she’s not going to block my access on weekends.

  “No. My husband, son, and I will all be in Palmyrton.” Brielle brightens. “Would it make your work easier if you stay here?”

  Donna’s eyes widen. “Live in this great house while we work?”

  Brielle pivots. “Why not? I’m getting rid of everything anyway.”

  I work hard not to laugh. Brielle isn’t even aware of how horrible that sounds. It’s as if Donna and I are dogs finally permitted up on the furniture now that it’s going out to the curb. “That’s a generous offer. It would make it easier if we could stay overnight, especially the night before the sale.”

  “I’ll get you the keys and the code for the alarm system.” She strides back to the kitchen and returns with a leather covered notebook and a Mont Blanc pen. “Now, tell me what else you require to get this project done on time.”

  “We need to walk through the entire house so I can take pictures. I can start working on estimates as soon as we get back.”

  “Easy enough. Follow me.”

  The only rooms we haven’t seen on this level are the powder room, laundry room, and a small study. I take a few pictures and follow Brielle up the wide staircase. One side looks like it’s totally open to the living room below, but there’s an almost invisible Lucite railing. Nevertheless, I hug the wall as I climb.

  Upstairs we follow Brielle into an immense master bedroom suite with a sitting room, dressing room, and the biggest walk-in closet I’ve ever seen. Who needs this much room for sundresses, sandals and bathing suits? The closet is totally empty. “You’ve already taken out your clothes. That’s good. Are there other personal items you want to pull from the sale?”

  Brielle stands in profile to me, her long, narrow nose and pointed chin outlined by the sun. Her nostrils flare. “Nothing. Sell it all.”

  “What about this nice family photo? You all look so happy.” Donna has picked up from a side table a photo of Brielle, her handsome son, and her decidedly homely husband, framed in a white wood picture frame.

  Brielle takes it from Donna, flips it over, and attempts to open the back. I guess she wants the photo if not the frame. Brielle’s forehead furrows as she pries at the clips, but they refuse to budge. Next, a chunk of perfect coral fingernail sails through the air.

  Brielle squawks and the frame crashes to the floor. Wood splinters and glass shards skid across the polished teak.

  Did she drop it or throw it down?

  Accident or fit of pique that she couldn’t immediately get what she wanted?

  I’ve only known Brielle Gardner for half an hour, so I can’t tell. But I suspect she’s not going to be the most easy-going client I’ve ever worked with.

  “I can sweep that up,” Donna offers.

  Brielle stoops down to retrieve the photo from the mess, shooing Donna away as she does so. “My cleaning lady will take care of it.” Then she leads us out of the master suite to the bedroom across the hall.

  Decorated in shades of navy and pearl gray, this bedroom has a distinctly masculine air. “My son uses this room when he’s here.”

  “How old is he?” Donna can’t restrain her natural chattiness. “It looks too neat for a teenager’s room.”

  And too impersonal. There’s not even a favorite seashell picked up from the beach or a souvenir from the boardwalk.

  “Austin is seventeen. He’s naturally tidy—maybe it’s genetic.” Brielle waits while I snap a few pictures and we move on to two luxuriously decorated guest bedrooms. “You can make yourselves comfortable here when you sleep over. And there’s another guest bedroom on the lowest level.”

  So we descend past the kitchen again to the lowest level of the house. The biggest TV I’ve ever seen hangs on one wall. A cushy half-round sofa faces the screen, and behind it stands a pool table. The windows face a swimming pool.

  “Wow, your son and his friends must love hanging out here!” Donna comments.

  True, this space could be a paradise for teenage parties, but I can’t imagine Brielle allowing bowls of nacho cheese Doritos and red Solo cups full of SunnyD and vodka in this pristine cream and taupe room. Unlike Donna, I feel no need to comment. I keep taking pictures as Donna explores.

  “Look, a little kitchenette and another bedroom and bathroom.” I follow the sound of her voice and take my last pictures.

  I feel a presence right behind me. Then Brielle’s smooth low voice speaks in my ear. “Please don’t mention to anyone that Mr. Maki will be decorating my home. He’s doing it as a personal favor. He usually works on much bigger projects.”

  I edge away. My ear feels hot from her breath. “No problem. I don’t know a soul to tell.”

  Chapter 3

  Once we’re outside, I toss Donna the keys. “You drive. I’m going to start my research.”

  Donna points the Honda toward Palmyrton and immediately starts chattering. “Wow, that’s some house, huh? Do you think we’ll make a lot of money? We’ve got to, right?”

  “We’ll certainly make more than on the Gellner house. The tricky part is getting the right buyers to follow us down here. Brielle’s neighbors might show up for the sale to satisfy their curiosity, but I doubt one rich resident of Dune Vista Lane is going to want to buy another’s cast-offs.”

  Donna bites her lower lip. “I hadn’t thought of that. Hey, maybe we should promote the sale with some ads in the local newspapers in some of the less ritzy beach towns, like Keansburg and Monmouth.”

  “You work on that when we get back to the office.” My fingers fly over my iPad screen as
I Google the names of the designer furniture I took pictures of. Twenty grand for a sofa, five grand for a lamp. Unbelievable that Brielle would toss this furniture the way a college kid jettisons his Target nightstand at the end of senior year.

  “Brielle must make a lot of money at her shop in Palmyrton if she can afford to redecorate this beach house from top to bottom,” Donna muses as she merges onto the Garden State Parkway.

  I snort. “I’m sure that shop is just a hobby—a way for her to satisfy her need to shop once she’s already filled up her own houses. Let’s just see what her husband does for a living.”

  A little more Googling and I have my answer. “C. Everett Gardner III, managing director of the Gardner Group, one of the biggest private equity firms on Wall Street. That’s where all Brielle’s money comes from.”

  Donna narrows her eyes in determination and floors the gas pedal. The Honda rockets past a lumbering church van in the right lane. “I’m embarrassed I don’t know this, but what exactly is a private equity firm?”

  “They gather money from rich people and use it to finance start-ups and then the rich people get richer and so does the firm.” I let my iPad rest on my lap. “There’s a whole ‘nother world of wheeling and dealing out there that mere mortals like us know nothing about.”

  Donna casts me a sidelong glance. “Do you wish you were rich, really rich, and you could do anything you ever wanted?”

  I don’t answer immediately. When I was in college, many of my fellow math majors chose to become bond traders and stock analysts. I could have followed that path—I had the grades to be recruited by a top firm. If I had, I wouldn’t be worrying about how we’ll pay for a new furnace if ours dies this winter. But I’d despise getting up for work every morning. And if I’d become a stock analyst, I would never have solved the mystery of my mother’s disappearance. Would never have met Ty.

  Or Sean.

  I have no regrets.

  “I know it seems like I’m always worrying about money, but what really matters to me is running my business successfully. I wouldn’t want to win a hundred million dollars in the lottery and then spend my days wasting it like Brielle. That would be boring.”

  “I suppose,” Donna sighs. “But I just wish—”

  I wait, but Donna doesn’t continue. From the depths of her oversize purse in the back seat, her phone begins to trill the opening bars of “Born in the USA”.

  Donna twists in the driver’s seat and looks over her shoulder. “That’s Anthony’s ring tone.”

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” I command as the Honda drifts out of the left lane. “I’ll get it.”

  When Donna’s husband calls, she always answers. I fish her phone out of her purse, accept the call, and hold the phone up to her ear.

  Donna opens her mouth to say hello, but before she can form the word, a volley of sound emerges from her phone. I can’t make out the words, but they’re fast and angry.

  “I know. I thought we’d be back by now. But it took longer to get to the house than I thought. And then we had to talk to the lady and then...”

  I look out the window in a futile attempt to give Donna some privacy, but I can hear Anthony’s angry tirade continue.

  “We are on the road. I’m driving, that’s why I didn’t answer right away.”

  I steal a glance at my assistant. Donna’s hands clench the steering wheel, her knuckles getting whiter by the second.

  “Because Audrey asked me to. She had to do some research. But Anth—”

  A car lays on its horn as Donna changes lanes without signaling. I want to get home in one piece. “Pull over. I’ll drive.”

  Donna pulls onto the shoulder of the Parkway, and I get out of the car to give her some space. As traffic whizzes past us, I pace on the shoulder. In the six months that Donna has worked for me, I’ve only met her husband Anthony once when he came to the office to pick her up. He’s in his mid-forties, ten years older than Donna. I guess you could say he’s good-looking—dark, thick hair, a strong jaw, broad shoulders, perfect teeth. But his muscle is starting to turn to fat and his smile is half sneer. Maybe I’m being ridiculous, but I still hold it against him that he cast his eye over our cozy abode and snorted, “This isn’t exactly Trump Tower, is it?”

  The insult didn’t hurt my feelings, but I can work up a knot of anger every time I recall the emotions that passed over Donna’s face that day. First, hurt, that he’d insulted the office she enjoyed working in. Then embarrassment that he’d insulted it in front of her boss. And finally, worst of all, shame that she had once again fallen short in her husband’s eyes.

  Right then I knew that Anthony is one of those people who makes himself feel bigger by making other people feel small. And I really can’t forgive him for that.

  At times, Ty and I have noticed bruises on her arms, but she has never missed a day of work or had a mark on her face. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Anthony is emotionally abusive even if whatever he does to Donna physically doesn’t rise to the level of assault.

  The glare of the midday sun on the windshield makes it hard for me to see how Donna is doing. Finally, the driver’s side door opens, and she emerges. Her eyes are red and swollen and her tears have left tracks of black mascara down her cheeks. Silently, I hold out my arms and she sinks into them, resting her head on my shoulder.

  We stand there and sway in silence as the never-ending tide of New Jerseyans moving from one end of the state to the other surges past us.

  What should I say? How can I help her? Sean has warned me not to insert myself into the middle of a domestic abuse situation in my usual bossypants way. He thinks Donna will turn on me to protect her husband as he has seen so many women do when he tries to arrest their abusers. He says both Donna and I will be worse off if she feels compelled to leave Another Man’s Treasure to shield her husband. So up until now I’ve tried to be subtle. When we donate items to the Palmyrton Battered Women’s Shelter, I talk about what great counseling services they offer. When my best friend Maura and I went away for a girls’ weekend, I talked about how important it is for couples to maintain some personal space. But if Donna recognized those messages were directed at her, she didn’t let on.

  This is different. There’s no denying she’s in a crisis.

  Finally, Donna lifts her head. She rubs her snotty nose against the sleeve of the blouse she was so proud of this morning. I guide her toward the passenger seat. “C’mon, let’s get you some tissues and a drink of water.”

  After we’re repositioned in the car, and Donna has done some preliminary clean up, she leans her head against the headrest and speaks while keeping her eyes focused on the roof of the car. “Nothing I do is good enough. Before I had this job, Anthony criticized me for not doing my part, called me a princess who didn’t want to work. Now that I have a job I love that pays a decent salary, he criticizes me for neglecting him, not being available when he needs me.” She takes a deep, quavery breath. “He called because he can’t find his gym membership card. He’s mad because I didn’t answer right away. Mad that I’m so far away from home. Mad that I don’t know where he put his stupid card.”

  “That’s what abusers do, Donna—they make you feel like everything they screw up is actually your fault.”

  There, I’ve said it. Called Anthony an abuser.

  I wait for Donna to leap to his defense, but she stays silent.

  I risk the next move. “Have you thought about leaving him?”

  Donna’s lip trembles. “God forgive me, I think about it every day. But how would I survive? I have no money of my own.”

  Her hands clench and unclench. “The house is in his name. Even my car is in his name. I’ve been so stupid. But when I got married, I thought it would be forever.”

  I rub her back. “We all think that. There’d be no point in getting married at all if you didn’t believe it would last. But people change. And if Anthony’s not good for you, you should bail out now while you’re young.”


  Donna bites her lip. “My mother says that’s the way marriage is supposed to be. That a man needs to feel like he’s the king of his castle.”

  “Oh, please!” I turn the key in the ignition and swing the Honda back onto the Parkway. “What you need is a good divorce lawyer. I know for a fact that your name doesn’t have to be on the title of your house for it to be considered marital property. Sell that house, take half the proceeds, and tell Anthony to go get his own castle without you as his slave.”

  Chapter 4

  Brielle Gardner’s offer to let me stay in her house while I catalog the contents has given me a brilliant idea: Sean and I can go down to Sea Chapel for a romantic getaway while I combine business with pleasure. Another Man’s Treasure doesn’t have a sale this weekend, and Ty has been talking all week about the parties and concerts he plans to go to. Of course, there’s no question that Donna would be able to leave Anthony for a weekend away from home. So I’ll work solo, with Sean handy for lots of breaks.

  I don’t ask Donna much about what happened when she got home from our trip on Wednesday, but she shows up for work bright and early on Thursday morning. The day flies by with Donna subdued but energetic in her plans to promote the Sea Chapel sale. When I leave the office on Friday afternoon, Donna and Ty shoo me out the door with reassurances and wishes to have a fun weekend. I swing by the Palmyrton Police Department to pick up my husband, drop off our dog, Ethel, with my dad, and we’re off for our spontaneous beach retreat.

  “ISN’T THIS GREAT?” I usher Sean into Brielle Gardner’s house as if it’s a luxury inn I’ve reserved just for us.

  Sean whistles and follows me through the living room to stand at the big windows overlooking the ocean. “Look at that empty beach. September is the nicest time to be at the Jersey Shore. No crowds. No traffic. Just the sea and the sand.”