by Simon Archer
“There’s no way those can be real!” he said, stepping away from the vanity. “That would be hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stones!”
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of what?” Andi asked as she and Vila walked up to Jack and me. I simply pointed to the mirror. They glanced at it and looked at each other.
“What?” I asked them, recognizing the ‘I know it’ look on their faces.
“That is a queen’s table,” Andi informed us. “There’s no doubt about it.”
“What does that mean, ‘a queens table’?” Jack asked for clarification.
“It means there is no other person that vanity could’ve belonged to, other than a queen. By the looks of it, probably an English or Spanish queen,” Vila filled us in.
“I wonder how many times the phrase ‘Holy shit’ can run through my mind in a five-minute time span,” Jack laughed.
“Well, get ready for one more time… I think I just found the door,” I said, nodding toward the wall just a few feet away. The girls and Jack turned their heads to look.
“I don’t see anything but some boards,” Andi said finally.
“I have a feeling it was meant to be that way,” I replied.
I grabbed a rag Jack had nearby and walked to the wall. I started dusting off a two-by-four beam, and then ran the rag along the corner near the ceiling, and where the floor met the wall. The seam for the door was so well hidden that if the lamp Jack had set up would’ve been anywhere else, I most likely would’ve missed it. I didn’t see a knob of any kind, so I simply pushed. It took a lot less force than I expected for the wood and drywall to move. It only opened a few inches before hitting the paneling on the outside of the house, but it was most certainly the most likely explanation for how the furniture got into the attic.
“I’m not sure why they would’ve put paneling up on the other side of the door, but I bet that is how they got this stuff in here,” I said, the excitement of solving a puzzle coursing through me.
“What is on the other side of the paneling?” Jack asked.
“Not sure. There isn’t a window on this side of the attic,” I replied. “Actually, did you notice there are no windows at all?” Andi and Jack started looking around.
“Bennett,” Vila said sweetly. Being that there was no reason for her to be extra sweet, my guard automatically went up.
“Yes, Vila,” I answered casually.
“What did you do a little over a year ago?” she asked, voice still overly nice. I thought about what she may be referring to.
“Found you and Andi?” I asked, hoping I was on the right path.
“Yes!” she called out, exaggeratedly excited. “And what do we do?” I was racking my brain for where she may be going with her line of questioning. Then it hit me. I didn’t bother asking her, but instead, I walked directly over to the door and put my hand on the wood. Images started flashing before my eyes at such fast speeds, and I couldn’t pick out any single one. Once they started to slow, I removed my hand.
“That’s better,” Vila said, laughing. She crossed her arms and waited for me to report what I’d seen.
“What did you just do?” Jack asked, looking from Vila to me. He’d never seen me use either of my wishes before.
“I just saw the history of this room, and by doing so, saw part of the history of every piece up here,” I told him.
“Holy shit… again! What did you see?” he asked, eyes wide.
“All the furniture in this room was stolen,” I told them.
“Stolen from whom?” Andi asked. She looked like she’d just come across her favorite hobby.
“From a nearby museum,” I said. “All of this belonged to a display that was showing here a long time ago. I can’t tell exactly what year it all happened. A group of thieves robbed the museum and put the furniture here.”
“Why would they put it here?” Andi asked.
“Why would they leave it here?” Vila followed up.
“How did nobody ever find it?” Jack added.
“Whoa, you three!” I laughed. They were all so intrigued by the crime that the desire to figure out the mystery just came flowing out of them. They stopped and stood quietly, all three fidgeting while waiting for me to give them more details. “The thieves pretended to be a construction crew hired to do some roofing work while the owners of the house were away. They built this attic without anyone knowing about it and hid the furniture inside. They hauled it up here one piece at a time, along with other building materials, and not a single person noticed.”
“Not a bad plan, honestly. A little elaborate but obviously well thought out,” Andi commented.
“They thought out the hiding of the furniture, even the retrieval of it. They planned on selling a few pieces they’d set aside and then offering the owners of the house a sum that they couldn’t refuse to sell the house. Then they could bring the pieces down one at a time and sell them off without raising red flags,” I explained. “They were definitely in it for the long-game.”
“So, what happened to them, then?” Vila asked impatiently.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “The history of the door only tells me what happened but what people talked about in this area.” I walked toward the hole to go down the ladder. When I got to it, I turned, and all three of them still stood across the room. “Are you coming?”
“Coming where?” Jack asked, puzzled.
“To the museum. I know which one it is. I bet they’d be interested in getting their exhibit back!” I called out. The three of them nearly ran to catch up. When we were down the ladder, we tucked it back up and agreed not to tell Lottie and Lorraine about it just yet, fearing for their safety. We did rock-paper-scissors to decide who had to go tell them we were leaving for a few minutes. Jack lost, so he was on the hook. Surprisingly, he didn’t get hung up chatting with them.
“How did you get in and out of the patio so quickly?” I asked him. “I figured they’d tried to rope you into wedding plans!” Jack reached up to his neck and picked up an earbud lying on his shirt.
“Put these babies in, make your announcement, and then point to them when they start talking! They never question whether a call, or music, or whatever is actually coming out of them!” Jack gloated.
“I don’t know why we bothered with deciding who would tell them. Seems you have it down to a science,” I laughed.
“Oh, we played to see which one of you saps could get stuck chit-chatting!” Jack joked back. I opened my mouth to snipe at him, and he lifted an earbud at me. “Can’t hear you!”
I couldn’t keep a straight face, and neither could the girls. The four of us walked out of the house, laughing so hard our stomachs started hurting.
19
The local museum reminded me of a library the moment we walked in. There was an unspoken threat of expulsion if your voice raised above a specific volume, or at least that is how it felt. The four of us walked directly to the customer service desk and asked to see the curator. They informed us that the curator was giving a tour and that we’d have to wait another half hour if we wanted to speak with her.
“Can we join the tour?” Andi asked politely. The elderly woman at the desk looked her up and down.
“If you can catch up, sure. But, I have to charge you full price for the tour,” she said rather snottily.
“Not a problem,” I told her. “Give us four tickets, please.” The woman took her time ringing us up and getting our tickets. When she handed them to us, she pushed her glasses up where they’d slid down her nose and looked us over again.
“The tour should be right about at the diamond exhibit,” she informed us, no more pleasant than before we’d received our tickets. “If they aren’t there yet, they’ll be at the bugs, if they’ve passed it, go to the geology exhibit.” She didn’t wait for us to respond before pulling the shade on the window half-way down so she wouldn’t have to see us anymore.
“Such a pleasant employee,” Jack
commented sarcastically.
“Perhaps she was irritated that we were late,” Andi joked. “People of that generation tended to dislike tardiness!”
“No kidding,” Vila laughed. “So, where is this diamond exhibit? It sounds like my kind of viewing experience!” The four of us looked around until we found signs pointing to an escalator, indicating that we needed to go upstairs. We hopped on and rode up, admiring the three-story high Tyrannosaurus Rex erected in the middle of the building.
“Vila, did you ever have one of those as a pet?” I asked, ready to get slapped for making a crack at how old she was, regardless of her staying young forever.
“Nah,” Andi jumped in. “She preferred the smaller species, such as pterodactyls and cockroaches.” Vila’s eyes went from surprised at my question to shocked at Andi’s reply. She didn’t know who to hit first. She looked at me and put her hands on her hips.
“I would expect that from her,” she said, exasperated. “You, however, are about to be pushed off the escalator!”
I laughed but kept my eye on her because I was never sure what she was kidding about when it came to retaliation. She turned to Andi, and an evil smile crossed her lips.
“You were old enough to be a grandmother before I made you a genie, so forget which dinosaur I had as a pet. Why don’t you fill us in on how they were created?” Vila hissed at Andi. Andi’s face dropped, and her eyes narrowed.
“Did you forget you were centuries old before you even made me? That’s hundreds of years old. That’s multiple decades times ten years old,” Andi retorted. We were nearing the top of the escalator ride, and I was beginning to worry that the girls weren’t paying attention to the stairs disappearing into the floor.
“Ladies--” I tried to interject.
“Did you notice the black stripe in your hair?” Vila asked Andi as snottily as possible. “That is what color your hair used to be before it turned white from old age!”
Andi nearly snorted. “Jealousy doesn’t look good on you, Servilia. Especially when it comes to you wanting to ditch that ridiculous purple streak!” she sniped, sticking her nose up in the air.
“Ladies!” I yelled. They both looked at me, irritated that I’d interrupted their banter just in time for me to point to the floor before they got tripped up by the end of the escalator. They jumped just in time and started laughing.
“Dang it!” Jack called out. “I would’ve paid money to see the two of them biff it!” Andi and Vila looked up at him.
“What the hell does ‘biff it’ mean?” Andi asked curiously, and Jack stared at her in disbelief.
“You know… biff it. Take a digger. Eat shit,” Jack went on. Vila joined in, staring at him, and neither girl changed their straight-faced expression. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You haven’t heard any of those?”
Andi looked at Vila and tossed her hair over her shoulder with flair.
“I guess he just wanted to be part of the ‘getting old’ jokes,” Vila said to Andi as though Jack wasn’t standing right there listening.
“Hey, now!” Jack protested before busting up, laughing. The girls walked away, looking for the diamond exhibit, and I hung back with Jack. “They don’t miss a beat, do they?”
“Not often, that’s for sure,” I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as we walked. “Biffed it, though? Really?”
“Shut up, Anders. Not all of us are two days out of Pampers!” he scolded humorously. The two of us chuckled quietly as we trailed along after the girls. A few minutes later, we caught up with the tour right at the diamond exhibit where Ms. Cranky downstairs had predicted it would be. The curator, a mid-thirties woman with short brown hair, blue eyes, and a round frame conducted the tour, and when she saw us approach, she waved at us to join her.
She prattled on about the diamonds set up in cases all around us, and it reminded me why I didn’t visit museums much: I found them dreadfully boring. The items on display were pretty interesting, but the methods in which museums delivered information about the items bored me enough to make me want to jump on the T-Rex and make a break for the exit.
The girls, however, hung on to every word the woman said. Each time she’d give the history of a stone then turn away, Andi and Vila would shake their heads and giggle quietly. When they hung back far enough for us to chat without disturbing the tour, I tapped Andi on the shoulder.
“What is so amusing about the diamonds?” I had to know. They both started giggling again.
“Nothing specific, just the incredible amount of misinformation that woman has about these particular stones,” Andi replied.
“Somebody went to a great deal of trouble centuries ago to make up grandiose tales about the adventures these diamonds have seen, that’s for sure,” Vila chuckled. She thumbed her hand over her right shoulder. “That one over there was actually found in a mine after the owner had already had it cut and polished. The drunkard dropped it on his way home from a gala, and when a slave found it and turned it in, he set the slave free and made up some lie about having discovered it in an ancestor’s belongings to cover up his idiocracy.”
“At least he let the slave go,” Jack interjected.
“That he did,” Vila added. “He wasn’t a bad man, just a proud one. He ended up making more money off letting museums display the thing than he would’ve if he’d sold it. His family has continued to make money off that thing for quite some time now.”
“Hey, that’s better than a life insurance settlement. There’s no cap!” I joked.
“Nope! There sure isn’t!” Vila agreed just as our group started to head to the next exhibit. I glanced back at the T-Rex and considered making a run for it one last time before walking deeper into the museum and away from my exit strategy.
I endured another forty-five minutes of mind-bendingly boring chatter before the tour finally came to an end. The four of us hung back while the other attendees thanked the curator and filed out. When they were all gone, we stepped up, and I held my hand out to the woman.
“Hi there, I’m Bennett Anders,” I introduced myself. “I recently moved here. These are friends of mine, Andi, Vila, and Jack.”
The woman looked us over with a pleasant smile and nodded. “I’m Caroline. It’s nice to meet you. What can I help you with?” She was straight-to-the-point, which was a quality I appreciated greatly.
“I have a very large amount of furniture in my possession stolen from this museum several decades ago. I can’t tell exactly what year. I thought you might want it back,” I said bluntly. I wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush. It rather impressed me when Caroline’s face barely changed. She had a slight dilation of her pupils to show her interest in my statement, but that was it.
“How did you come about thinking your furniture was once ours?” she asked plainly. I should’ve expected the question but hadn’t.
“Someone left a note with it,” Andi stepped up and lied.
“Oh, a note? What did it say?” Caroline asked her. “Can I see it?”
“No, you can’t see it, unfortunately,” Vila chimed in. I was beginning to feel like we should’ve prepared for this conversation a little better.
“Why can’t I see it?” Caroline continued questioning us.
“Look, did this museum ever have a queen’s vanity on display with a diamond and gem-stone encrusted mirror? Probably English or Spanish?” I decided I was the one who needed to be asking the questions. Caroline looked me up and down without being unpleasant about it and turned on her heels. She waved the four of us to follow her as she walked toward the customer service counter. She disappeared behind a door marked ‘Employees Only’ and returned a moment later on the other side of the counter, carrying a large book. She slammed the book down and started flipping through the pages until finally, she stopped. She pointed at something on the page and looked up at me.
“Does it look anything like this?” she asked, looking me in the eye. I looked where she was pointing on the page, and there wa
s no doubt that the picture under her finger was of the vanity in my attic.
“That looks exactly like it,” I confirmed for her. She looked up at me and tilted her head.
“And this note?” she asked cautiously. Andi stepped forward, but I put my hand up to stop her.
“There is no note, but I think you know that,” I told her. “I recently purchased a home here, and we discovered a hidden attic. There are scores of antique pieces up there. Desks, dressers, china cabinets, dishes… anything you can think of in the way of old furniture.” Caroline stared at me for a moment longer and then broke out into a massive smile.
“I cannot believe it!” she hollered so loud the cranky old woman came to the ticket window to see what the ruckus was about. “You’ve found the Leifette collection!” She slammed her hands down on the book in front of her and leaned forward over the counter. “That collection has been missing for fifty years!”
“Fifty?” I gasped. “That can’t be! I don’t think my house is even fifty years old! The architecture wasn’t styled that way until forty-years ago at the earliest!” Disappointment rushed through me. There was no way the furniture I had was the same as what she was talking about.
“You’d be amazed. You’re from the States, aren’t you?” Caroline asked me, her enthusiasm remaining.
“Yes, I am. Why?” I wasn’t sure how my origins played into our situation.
“I imagine your house is flat-topped and rather angular, yes?” she asked. “Even if it doesn’t look like it on the inside?”
“Well, yes,” I answered.
“That design wasn’t common in the States fifty years ago, you are right about that. It was common here, though,” she told me. “Even though our weather is practically perfect here, flat-top designed houses were all the rage a while back to help ward off hurricane damage.”
“Flat-tops take on hurricanes better than pitched roofs?” I digressed.
“Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is, there is a very good chance your house is, indeed, fifty years old, most likely older.” Caroline was smiling so big, and she made me smile.