by Kira Reese
“Maybe there are some jewels from ancient Greece in it,” said Nick. “I guess you know I get a cut if there is. It was my idea to open it.”
“If jewels are inside, I’ll be long gone. Sorry, that’s just who I really am.”
Our bantering ended when another call came in. The man said he heard I could resolve a case better than the police. I wondered if my friend Lacy was the one spreading word around about me. The caller asked if I had heard about the teenager who went missing a few days ago. I had read the article. The police considered her a runaway.
“She is no runaway,” said the man. “My wife and I would like to meet with you soon.”
I suggested four o’clock the following day and he agreed.
If more treasure were inside my urn, I could get my business really going. Even wealth would never deter me from going after criminals.
Chapter 3
Shocking Discovery
When I pulled around to the garage that evening, the aroma of grilled steaks met me. The autumn sky had cleared and the air was crisp. Nick was someone who swore outside grilling was a year-round hobby. In early December of the previous year, he actually shoveled two feet of snow to get to his grill at the edge of the patio. He looked like an Eskimo trudging across the tundra. While he withstood the wintery blast, I made our salads in the cozy kitchen. To each his own was my motto.
“I thought you’d like to celebrate tonight with a couple of T-bones. I have everything done inside,” he said. I gave him a huge bear hug.
Inside, two glasses of pinot noir were on the table. A huge bouquet of roses were placed in the center. When Nick thought celebrate, he did it up right. It hadn’t dawned on me that I may very well be a wealthy private investigator. At the very least, I may be a well-off one.
“This is really something,” I said to Nick when he came in and set the rest of our dinner on the table. He lit the tapered candles. It was going to be a romantic night. I reached for the steak knife and asked, “How did the house sale go?”
“We can both celebrate. I sold the house. You bought a rare piece of pottery for a mere ten dollars. What more could we want?”
“The treasure inside that urn?” I asked. In a way, a little guilt tried to make its way inside me. “I wonder if I have any obligation to tell the garage sale lady about its value.”
“She told you it had been sitting in her basement, didn’t she? And she did sell it to you because she wanted to get rid of it.”
“That’s all true. I wonder if it has some kind of a curse on it or something. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want it.”
“I’ll tell you what. If we start experiencing strange happenings in our house, we can sell it to an antique dealer or an art gallery,” said Nick. His laughing eyes literally danced in the candlelight.
“Agreed.”
Once we finished dinner, Nick stood up and blew out the candles. “Dishes and clean-up can wait until tomorrow,” he said. The lamp in the living room gave enough light for us to make our way into the bedroom. It had been a good day and the night proved even better.
I was in my office alone the next morning. Natalie wasn’t expected until just after lunchtime. At ten on the dot my phone rang. It was Albert.
“Candace, you will want to come on down, and we’ll talk about the urn.”
His voice sounded somewhat strained. My heart, which had been on a racetrack since I bought the urn, thudded a little and then seemed to stop. Maybe it wasn’t a treasure, after all.
“Is it good news or bad?” I asked Albert.
“It will be good news for you, of course. There is something else about it that I want to discuss with you but not on the phone.”
“I can’t be there until after lunch,” I said. After I hung up I wondered why, at a time like this, I adhered to my rule of keeping the place open during set business hours. I called Nick. “Albert has some news he wants to tell me about the urn. He sounded funny.”
“Maybe he was wrong about it being authentic?” asked Nick.
I told him what Albert had said. “He said it is valuable, but there is something mysterious regarding the urn. I have a strange feeling about it. Can you get away and meet me there at one thirty? I have to wait for Natalie to get here.”
“I’m working at home today. I’ll be there. Albert has me a little more than curious, too.”
Later, I waited for Nick to arrive at the appraiser’s shop, so we could go in together. The palms of my hands were like ice. “You’re shaking, Candy. Things will be fine.” He rubbed my hands in his warm ones. The bell signaled to Albert we were there.
He greeted us with a smile, and I introduced Nick to him. The words were all I could manage to say for the moment.
“I won’t keep you wondering any longer, Candace,” said Albert.
He led us to his office behind the door in back of his shop. Aya exchanged places with him in the front of the shop. I heard the bell ring three or four times. Albert and Aya had a good business going. Albert’s office was spacious and decorated in an up-to-date fashion—not one antique stood out, except the urn.
It sat on his mahogany desk. Stacks of papers were at one end and folders at the other end. The urn stood alone in the center.
“Did you get the urn open?” asked Nick. I still hadn’t found my voice.
“I did,” said Albert. “That’s what I want to talk about. When I got the sealed lid off there were ashes inside the vessel.”
His eyes searched mine. As if on cue, Aya brought a tray of iced water in for us. I held the glass with both hands and sipped. I knew I had to respond some way. “Maybe it was some kind of dirt or sand,” I said. “Are you sure they are ashes?”
“I’m sure. And I’m sure they are human ashes.”
This time I gulped the next drink of water. Nick appeared frozen in place.
“The urn is for sure a black-figure pottery piece.” Albert went on to explain its value. I was a little more than rich. He rambled on about its authenticity as if a dead person’s ashes were of mere coincidence. “The black figures are of Achilles. Last night I started thinking they were Zeus, but I’m now sure they are Achilles. The intricate detail of their features is an outstanding example of ancient Greek art. This urn has been well-preserved.”
The ashes, Albert, the ashes. Throat constricted, I lifted my glass for another drink only to find it was empty. Nick leaned in and poured more from the pitcher. Flooding my system with liquid may be the way to wash away thoughts of the urn’s contents. I realized the room was silent.
My voice squeaked. “Where do we go from here, Albert?”
He folded stubby fingers in a steeple-like position. The sing-song child’s verse of “Here’s the Church” played in my head. I refocused.
“I can’t tell you what to do. Maybe you should take it to the police. Better yet, take it back to the house where you bought it and let the seller know what was inside.”
I paid him for his appraisal. He wrapped the urn securely. Thanking him, I inwardly shuddered knowing I carried a dead person out of the shop.
“Let Natalie finish the day for you, Candy. Let’s go home,” said Nick. I nodded. “Are you okay to drive? You can ride with me, and we can get your car later.”
“I have to go by the office and cancel a four o’clock appointment. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll follow you there and wait. We need to be home where we can sort all of this out privately.”
I finished up at the office and left instructions for Natalie. She was dialing the number of my new clients when I left her on her own. I saw the thick romance novel on the corner of her desk.
Nick threw me a reassuring smile and followed me home. “I can’t believe this,” I said. My voice had fully recovered. Emotions swept through me like tumbleweeds in the wind. “What am I going to do? I have to give it back to the lady who sold it to me. It could be ashes that belong to someone in her family.”
“You can’t just give that valuable urn back t
o her. She sold it to you. If the ashes were a family member, she wouldn’t have sold it in the first place. She probably didn’t even know it had ashes in it.”
I recalled the way the maid and the workman, probably the gardener now that I thought about it, had hurriedly packed up stuff. It happened right after I purchased the urn. My detective mind took over. She knew what was in it.
“I’m sure once the urn sold that it was all that was important to that woman. Anyone could have bought it, and as soon as that happened, she planned to have everything else swooped up and packed away.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Nick.
“I’m sure of it. The whole point of having a garage sale in the first place was to get rid of the urn.”
“If that’s the case, she would have known the person would bring it back once the ashes were discovered.”
I didn’t mind Nick taking the part of devil’s advocate. I just wasn’t in the mood for it now. I was right in my assumptions. At any other time, I would have reminded him in a teasing manner that that was the reason I was a private eye and he was a realtor. Life had taken a serious turn the moment Albert disclosed the contents of the urn.
“I’m going back to her house tomorrow to tell whatever her name is that the urn has human ashes in it.” My resolve developed fast. “I won’t take the urn with me. I’ll ask her what she expects me to do with them.”
This wasn’t the last of me the apparition would see. I folded my arms across my waist and sat back in the chair. Nick didn’t say anything. We both turned toward the urn on the foyer table.
Was Achilles mocking me? I shook my head to clear it.
Chapter 4
Flash in the Night
Nick had a busy day ahead. He apologized that he could not come with me to the woman’s house where I bought the black-figure pottery piece.
“Be very careful, Candy, because you don’t know what this is about,” he said. “Above all, don’t go inside her house and get trapped there. Insist you talk outside.”
If the moment had not called for sincerity, I would have laughed at his precautions. I thought it was a good thing I had not told him of a few scary moments I had experienced in my line of work. He was right, of course. Once the woman found out I knew there were hidden ashes in the urn, she may not hesitate to do away with me. Those were my words. I didn’t want to tell myself out and out that she may kill me.
As I drove back to the house in the upscale neighborhood, thoughts went through my head in regard to the ashes. For one thing, whose remains were they? Maybe she killed her husband and cremated him. She probably had driven to the next state to get that done secretly and then poured the ashes into the urn.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said aloud. “If she killed him, why not strew his ashes over a cliff somewhere along the way back home?”
I wound in and around the labyrinth of shaded streets and manicured lawns that were not allowed to be marred with leaves that let go of their stems. I spotted the huge home where the sparse garage sale had been held several days ago. When I pulled into the driveway, nothing was out of place. I gazed at the house and allowed my eyes to reach the top floor. It dawned on me there was something a little unusual about this place that I hadn’t noticed the day I bought the urn. I squinted against the sun and then it hit me. Every drape and blind in every window was wide open. If I wanted to, I could put my face against one of those windows and peer into the rooms and see whatever I wanted to see. I was tempted to do that, but decided to ring the doorbell instead.
I rang it twice, allowing a short interval in between rings. It echoed as if the gongs of a church bell reverberated down the marbled hallway. I had no idea if the floor was marble or not but the sounds made me think so. I stood back a little so to be viewed from a nearby window if the owner preferred that before opening the door. Then I softly hummed a tune and once more tapped my index finger on the bell button.
“No one is home,” said a voice behind me. I jerked around to see an elderly woman standing on the sidewalk a few yards behind me. Her hair was perfectly coiffed and white as snow. Her skin was silky looking and her voice melodious. Her petite stature looked as if she did not have a brittle bone in her body. “They left last night.”
“Do you know when they will return?” I asked.
“Never,” she said. “They moved away.”
I waited until she walked back to the main sidewalk and was out of sight. Once I was sure she was gone, I crept to one of the windows and looked in. There was not a stick of furniture in the room which I presumed was the living room. I looked back for the elderly woman again and hurried to the street to see if she was visible. She was. I jogged toward her. She sure made tracks for such an old person, I thought as I caught up with her.
“Excuse me, please,” I said. I tried to breathe normally and made a mental note to get back to the gym soon. “Do you know the name of the family who lived in that house?”
“The name is McNamara. I thought something was going on when I noticed a big cleanup happening the other day.” She shook her head. “A lot of trash went to the curb for pickup.” She shook her head again as if in disbelief. “Can you imagine someone hiring movers to move in the middle of the night?”
I agreed with her but wanted to get to my next point. “Where did they move to?”
“They kept their business to themselves. I don’t know where they slipped off to.”
I thanked her for her time. She had arrived at her home, and when she inserted her key into her door, she turned back and waved at me. Her first name was Esther, but she had not told me her last.
When I walked back to my car parked in the mysterious McNamaras’ driveway, I looked to see if any neighbors were outside. None were, and none peeked from behind curtains to check on me as to why I was there in their former neighbors’ drive. As if by direction, a sudden wind picked up from out of nowhere and whipped my shoulder-length hair around my head. Dark clouds began to gather across the sky, and I reached my car just in time before the rain slammed down. The large house looked eerily spooky as lightening lit up rooms in successive split seconds. There was no missing the fact that every room was empty. I shuddered, then pulled my lightweight sweater closer and backed onto the street.
Natalie called to tell me that new clients wanted to see me right away. I assured her I was on my way. I couldn’t chance losing a client. Natalie introduced me to Tracy and Mason Steckler when I came into the front waiting room.
Tracy dabbed at her emerald eyes and pushed back a strand of long golden hair. Her husband’s appearance was in stark contrast to the beautiful woman. A mixture of black and grey hair lined the lower edges of his head. Ironically, bushy eyebrows made up for lack of hair on top of his head. His dull grey eyes expressed very little. Both were approximately my height of five feet five inches.
“The police tell us Clarice is a runaway. That’s because her classmates have described her as wild and wanting to get away from home,” said Mason. Tracy sniffled audibly, and I handed her the Kleenex box from the corner of my desk.
I decided to get right to it. “What is home like?” I asked.
“She is happy at home,” said Tracy between gasps. “We are close, and she has everything she wants. We provide a good home.”
After getting more information, such as a concise description of Clarice and the last time they had seen their daughter, the interview ended. I set a time to come to their home. I wanted to see the missing teenager’s bedroom and observe her parents in their own environment first. Then one by one, I would interview her friends. Teenagers did run away from home on occasion, but I did not plan to take this approach. For now, she was someone’s daughter who was missing. I slipped the photo of her inside the newly tabbed folder.
The phone rang and I heard Natalie’s smooth voice answer. She put the call through to me.
“Hello, Mrs. Robertson,” I said.
“I am checking in to see if you have any leads on our r
ecent burglary,” she said.
In reality, I had made some progress. I hesitated now to tell Ellen Robertson that I found no signs of illegal entry into her home. According to the police file, they discovered the same thing the day the robbery was reported. I took a deep breath.
“I checked all of your doors and windows and found no scratch marks of any kind,” I said. “For now, I have to agree with the police findings that there was no indication that someone broke in.”
“We were told you would get to the truth,” she said. Her voice caused me to think of a cold ice cube. “Someone did enter our home and did steal a very valuable piece of jewelry.”
“I am not saying my findings are final ones. I want to look around again to be sure.” I paused for a split second. “I also need a list of anyone who attended the same gala you were at the night before the robbery.” I asked her for names of her neighbors, as well.
“You surely don’t believe friends are involved,” she said. “Those you mention are people we have known for years.”
“Mrs. Robertson, I have to look at everyone in order to get to the bottom of this,” I said.
When a client started to place judgment on my methods, grit emphasized my words. In this case, Ellen Robertson backed down in her tone of voice. We ended the call amiably, and I read every detail of my report so far. I felt it could be an inside job, which told me the Robertsons may be having financial issues and needed some insurance money. It was a theory only, and with no proof I could not go down that road at this point.
I had a bigger issue of my own. In my foyer on my antique table sat a Greek urn that held someone’s cremated remains. A familiar shiver shot through me—something that often occurred when I thought about the contents of my find.
Chapter 5
Deeper Interest