Skeletons in the Attic (A Marketville Mystery Book 1)
Page 5
With that taken care of, I made myself a mug of vanilla rooibos tea accompanied by a couple of chocolate chip cookies. Not that I made a habit of eating cookies for breakfast, but my cupboards were pretty much bare, and without milk the bran flakes were even more unappetizing than usual.
I remembered the Marketville Post and fetched it from the front hallway. Before long I was immersed in flyers and making a store-by-store list. I was almost starting to feel like a proper homeowner, instead of a daughter looking for clues into her mother’s disappearance.
I headed out the door at nine, wandered up and down the aisles of four different grocery stores, and stocked up on essentials, non-essentials—note to self: never shop for food on a two-cookie stomach—and everything required for Saturday night’s dinner. I even found a nice six-bottle wine rack, perfect for the kitchen counter.
My next stop was the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, known to everyone as the LCBO, and Ontario’s only option if you wanted hard liquor. Started in 1927 after prohibition ended to control the sale and distribution of alcohol, it amused me that almost ninety years later the government still didn’t trust the concept of privatization. Well, they were softening some on beer and wine, but the rules for selling either were arduous at best.
The city snob in me was surprised at how swanky this particular LCBO was, as nice or nicer than any of the Toronto area stores I’d frequented in the past. Carefully laid out, there were aisles and aisles of liquor, liqueurs, imported and domestic beer, assorted fruity coolers, as well as wine separated both by country and color. There was even a huge Vintages section at the back of the store, though most choices were well outside of my rather modest budget. I made my selection of more affordable reds and whites from the Australia and Chile aisles. The man at the checkout counter was nice enough to put my purchases in a couple of boxes and carry them to my car. Civilized.
My final stop for the day was at an office supply store, which, according to its flyer, just so happened to have some paper shredders on sale. If I was going to go through the papers in my father’s filing cabinet, I was going to need one.
A serious young associate was more than happy to discuss the pros and cons of cross-cut versus strip-cut shredders. Apparently cross-cut paper shredders sliced paper into small squares or diamond shapes, whereas a strip-cut shredder cut paper into long strips.
“The cross-cut is more expensive, but it’s also more secure,” the associate said, his expression grave. “The long strips created by the strip-cut shredder can be reassembled by someone with enough time and patience for the task.”
I imagined Misty Rivers riffling through my garbage—anything to bolster her so-called “psychic” abilities—and opted for the cross-cut shredder. You couldn’t put a price tag on privacy.
I got back to Snapdragon Circle just past noon, made myself a tuna salad sandwich, and prepared my first report to Leith. I’d already decided not to mention the envelope until I could find out more about the contents. Besides, it was week one. He wouldn’t be expecting much.
To: Leith Hampton
From: Calamity Barnstable
Subject: Friday Report Number 1
Discovered a PVC skeleton in a papier-mâché coffin in the attic. Police believe it might be a prank. Have not been back in the attic since. On the to-do list. Had locks and front door peephole changed. Met Royce Ashford, next door neighbor. Misty Rivers came by the house and offered her assistance. I declined for the moment. Began stripping old carpet. Revealed hardwood underneath.
I reread the email. It was a recap of what he already knew, but it would suffice. I hit “send” and pondered my next steps. I knew I should finish stripping out the carpeting, but I was too sore and tired to think about it. That left going through my father’s papers, researching the best resource for figuring out the meaning behind the five tarot cards, or rummaging through the attic.
I opted for my father’s papers. I carried the shredder into the living room. I remembered seeing a blue recycling bin in the carport, retrieved it, and put it next to the shredder. What didn’t need shredding could be recycled. I went to the small bedroom and push-pull-dragged my father’s filing cabinet down the hall and into the living room.
The first task would be weeding out the meaningless. The idea being, if it wasn’t meaningless, it might have a meaning.
The first few file folders were devoted to household expenses: hydro, natural gas, telephone, Internet, and cable. By the looks of it, he’d been saving them for the last decade. Since he hadn’t owned a business where he could write expenses off, there had been no need to keep them. I shredded the bills.
The second batch of paperwork covered my father’s income tax returns for the past six years. I went through them line by line, but the only thing of real interest was an annual deduction for a safety deposit box at a bank in Marketville. I went to the kitchen cupboard where I’d tossed the brass key ring. Sure enough, there was a key that looked like it could have belonged to a safety deposit box. I made a note to contact Leith to find out how I could access it as the beneficiary of my father’s estate. People didn’t keep safety deposit boxes without good reason.
Next up were a bunch of manuals which covered everything from tools and appliances to lawn mowers and a home gym. I vaguely remembered the home gym, a contraption that had all sorts of weights and pulleys, but it had been a few years since I’d seen it at my father’s house. So far, the filing cabinet was proving to be a bust.
I went through the manuals one by one, tossing them into the blue bin after a cursory glance. Mixed amongst them was a travel brochure for Newfoundland and Labrador. I fought back tears, remembering my dad’s bucket list wish of whale watching.
I was just about finished when I came upon a small sales catalog selling anatomical models of all shapes and sizes. I flipped through it and found a skeleton named “Morton” who looked suspiciously like the one currently residing in my attic. The fact that someone had circled that particular model in blue ink pretty much confirmed that they were one and the same. The final nail in the coffin—pun fully intended—was a receipt, tucked inside the back cover, for “1 papier-mâché casket” from a Toronto store called Macabre Crafts & Ghoulish Creations. The receipt was dated less than two weeks before my dad’s death. According to their letterhead, the firm specialized in props for the film and theater industry.
Someone is playing a prank on you, Constable Arbutus had said. The coffin is nothing more than a stage prop, the skeleton a PVC medical model. Surely my late father couldn’t be the perpetrator of that prank. Or could he? Was the codicil in the will nothing more than an elaborate ruse? If so, why? I placed the catalog and receipt on top of my folder containing the rental agreements for Misty Rivers and Jessica Tamarand.
A search of the remaining files offered a few more useless manuals, but no answers. Maybe the safety deposit box would hold a clue, but it was late Friday and Leith wouldn’t be back in the office until Monday. For the moment, that was a dead end.
I looked around the room and spoke out loud, as if someone might actually be listening. “Damn it, Daddy, you’re really starting to piss me off.”
I slammed the filing cabinet drawer shut and stomped my way back to the attic, pushing back the tears that started to threaten. When I was finally ready to cry for my father, I didn’t want to be angry.
Chapter 11
I pulled myself through the attic entry, determined not to give in to my aversion to confined spaces. Unless I could enlist Royce to help me, it was unlikely I’d be able to move the trunks to the main level of the house, and I didn’t think our friendship—if we could even define it as such—was at the point where I could show him I had a coffin in the attic. I was going to have to go through everything up here on my own.
But not right this minute. Today my only purpose was to see if there was a message from my dad tucked inside the coffin, or something—anything—that might offer a clue as to what the hell he’d been thinking.
Morton stared back at me with his cavernous eye sockets. I gently lifted him into a seated position—now that I knew his name I felt an odd connection—then checked underneath the satin headrest. Sure enough there was a letter-sized white envelope.
I opened it and took out four photographs, each one of a woman, man, and young girl. They were standing in front of a small maple tree, holding hands and smiling broadly for the camera. I recognized a mid-twenties version of my father, a decade or so younger than I was today. I felt my throat constrict at the image of him smiling back at me, so vibrant and full of life.
I’d never seen a photograph of my mother until that day, but I knew without any doubt that she was the blue-eyed woman in the photos. I’d inherited her heart-shaped face, her slightly too-wide nose. I felt a touch of envy at her hair, glossy blonde and poker straight.
It stood to reason that I was the girl in the photos. There was certainly no denying the mass of chestnut brown curls untamed by hairbands or hats, or the serious black-rimmed hazel eyes. I looked to be about five, which meant these would have been taken the year before my mother had left us. I closed my eyes, tried to conjure up a memory, something, anything.
Nothing came to me.
What was interesting about the photographs—beyond the fact they’d all been taken in the same spot—was that each one had been taken in a different season. In one, the maple tree was leafless and covered in snow. In another, it was in full bud, a call to spring. In the third, it was covered in shiny green leaves, summer at its finest. In the fourth and final picture, the leaves had turned a deep crimson. Our clothing also depicted the seasonality, from coats, boots, and scarves, to light jackets, jeans, and running shoes, to t-shirts, shorts, and sandals.
I turned the photographs over, one by one, and noted the same backhand slant, in the same turquoise ink, that had been on the listing of tarot cards. Spring 1985. Summer 1985. Fall 1985. Winter 1985.
I was right. The pictures had been taken the year before my mother left. February 14, 1986, the date forever etched in my mind. Years later, when a boyfriend dumped me on Valentine’s Day, my father lamented that I’d fallen victim to the Barnstable curse. What I’d fallen victim to, I’d told him, was another classic example of my loser radar, a combination of poor judgment and lack of insight. I didn’t tell him that I’d actually been expecting a ring, or that I’d spent hours picking out just the right Valentine’s Day card, an adorable image of two porcupines kissing, with the message, I love you so much it hurts. It had hurt all right, just not in the way I’d expected.
I wondered who had taken the pictures, where they’d been taken, and why that particular spot had been selected. The maple tree, only slightly larger than a sapling in 1985, would be considerably bigger now, if it still existed. There was no evidence of it on this property, but then again Leith Hampton had said the only thing that grew was the lilac. So it was possible the tree had been here at the time. I placed the four photos back in their envelope, but I didn’t put them back in the coffin. Instead I continued my search to see if anything else had been hidden. Only when I was convinced there was nothing else hidden did I stop to wonder just why my father would have put these pictures inside a coffin with a PVC skeleton. My best guess was that Misty Rivers had talked him into some sort of bizarre ritual. I knew I’d have to talk to her, about this as well as the tarot cards, but I also knew I’d have to think through my approach. Something told me Misty was one very clever operator.
I looked around the attic, at the two trunks, and what looked to be a large, colorful poster wrapped in bubble plastic. It was getting late and I’d had enough of this attic’s skeletons, real and imagined, for one day. I couldn’t begin to imagine riffling through the trunks for another couple of hours in this dusty, claustrophobic space, and a quick try confirmed my guess that they would be too heavy for me to lift and carry out of the attic. The poster, though somewhat awkward, was light enough. Even if I couldn’t face it today, I could take that back down with me and check it out in the morning. I picked it up and carefully made my way back to the main floor of the house. I wasn’t a psychic, but I did see a large glass of chardonnay in my immediate future.
I meant to ignore the poster until the morning, I really did, but as I sat sipping chardonnay and dipping veggie slices into hummus, it kept calling out to me. I finally relented and got a pair of scissors to cut away the bubble wrap.
It turned out to be a framed movie poster—the kind you’d find in a theater—for the movie musical Calamity Jane. The poster depicted a hand-drawn Doris Day wearing a bright yellow shirt, pristine rawhide vest and tight-fitting pants, gold cowboy boots, and a wide brim hat. She was standing on top of a saddle with the words Calamity Jane TECHNICOLOR, flicking a whip, while Wild Bill Hickok, played by Howard Keel, stood behind her. The words Yippeeeee! It’s the Big Bonanza in Musical Extravaganza were directly above the whip, with WARNER BROS SKY-HIGHEST, SMILE-WIDEST WILD’N WOOLIEST MUSICAL OF ’EM ALL! at the bottom left.
One of the few facts I knew about my mom was that she loved fifties-era movie musicals, and this poster seemed to fit the bill. A quick Google query confirmed it. The film had been released in 1953 and included the hit song Secret Love. I thought about the locket from Reid. Was there a connection, or was it merely a coincidence?
Another Google search took me to a YouTube clip from the movie. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I watched Doris scamper along with her horse, stop at a tree, and start singing, arms spread wide before stooping down to pick up a daffodil. It got even cornier when she hopped back on her horse, and riding sidesaddle, continued to sing as she made her way back to town. The bottom line was that her secret love was not a secret any longer.
I knew the Hollywood version of Calamity Jane had been considerably softened, although it had been a couple of decades since I’d done any research, and I’d forgotten most of what I’d learned. I promised myself I’d read up on the real Calamity Jane. I could also bring the poster along with me when I visited Arabella Carpenter. It wasn’t an antique, exactly, but I knew Arabella had an interest in vintage posters. She’d told me about a group of railway and ocean liner posters she’d purchased from a collector in Niagara Falls. True, this didn’t fall into the travel poster category, but it wouldn’t hurt to show her and see what she thought. For all I knew, this could be a reprint. In the meantime, I could send her a few photos of it, back and front, the same way I had with the locket.
I turned the poster over and saw what I now believed to be my mother’s backhand slanted handwriting, albeit slightly more spidery than the examples found on the back of the photos. Had she been worried when she wrote the inscription?
For my very own Calamity Doris on her 6th birthday. Love always, mom.
Not love always mom and dad. Just love mom. Except that my birthday wasn’t until May 1st, and my mother had left on Valentine’s Day. Did that mean she knew she was leaving and wanted to be sure I had a birthday gift? Or was she the sort of person who bought things when she saw them and saved them for the occasion? And why had my dad hidden it in the attic all these years, wrapped in bubble plastic? Was it because my mother hadn’t signed it from him as well? Was there some sort of hidden meaning? I realized I didn’t know the answer to any of those questions, and probably never would.
I looked at the vibrant colors, the vivid fifties imagery. I could imagine this poster hanging in my bedroom as a little girl. It would have made adorable wall art. It still might, come to that. I decided to give it a try. It wasn’t like I had anything on the bedroom wall now, and it was unique.
Besides, it was a gift from my mother. The only one I had. That had to count for something.
Chapter 12
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I could have done a lot of productive, potentially case-solving things on Saturday—‘could have’ being the operative words. Instead, I gave myself permission to take the day off from sleuthing and carpet removal to explore the twelve-mile paved trail system that ran through the center of Marketville. According to the Town’s website, the trail followed the Dutch River and passed through parks and green spaces, past wetlands and historic cultural sites, and had links to trails in two surrounding towns. It sounded like a runner’s paradise.
The great thing about running—besides the fact that it allows you to eat more than kale and cabbage soup—is that it clears the clutter from your mind. By the time I arrived home, I had made the decision to show the photographs I’d found to Royce.
With that decision made, I felt as if I would at least accomplish something investigative. I went to work getting the lasagna—and myself—ready for Royce. I knew it wasn’t a date, but it didn’t hurt to put my best face forward.
Dinner went better than I could have hoped for. Not only did Royce have a healthy appetite, he was beyond complimentary, insisting the lasagna and Caesar salad was the best he’d ever had, and showering great praise on a store-bought baguette I’d turned into bruschetta. He also showed no reluctance to sitting cross-legged on the floor while we ate, our plates and wine glasses on the coffee table.
“It’s either here or at the bistro table in the kitchen, and that isn’t really meant for a dinner,” I said. “Besides, the smell of garlic might be a bit overwhelming in there. I know I need to find a dining room table, but I’m not sure yet how I’m going to use this space. I’ve been thinking of knocking down the wall between the kitchen and living room. Even if I don’t do that, the kitchen is long past its best before date.”