Chapter 57
“I first met your mother in the spring of 1984,” Misty said. “It was a blustery day in late March, the kind of day where you start to think winter will never let go. We were manning the Canada Day tree-planting booth at the Marketville Home Show. It was held indoors, but we had set up the display outside the front doors. It was your mom’s idea. She figured we could get people coming and going. Mostly I remember how we just about perished from the cold.”
A memory. Me, tobogganing down a hill, laughing, my mom clapping and cheering me on, her face red from the cold. I wondered if I could find the hill again. I saw Misty looking at me with open curiosity. “Sorry, you were mentioning the cold. It made me remember tobogganing with my mom.”
Misty nodded. “That would have been the hill over by Tom Flanagan Park. Sorry to say that it’s no longer there. It’s all houses now, with ravine lots and fenced-in yards.”
Another lead gone. If I could have walked that hill, maybe another memory would have come to me. As it was—
“Back to the day I met your mom,” Misty said, interrupting my thoughts. “The idea was to hand out brochures about the initiative and get more volunteers for the big day. We also handed out maple seedlings for local residents to plant on their own property on Canada Day. Your mom was a born leader, and I’ve always been more of a follower, so we were well suited. By the end of the day, we’d formed the beginning of a friendship.”
“If you were friends, then why didn’t my dad know who you were?” I thought about Misty standing beside Leith with the reward poster. “Or maybe he did, but for some reason Leith didn’t bother to share that information when he was going over the terms of my dad’s will.”
“You mustn’t blame Leith. Your father was insistent. If anything happened to him, you were not to be told about our past history. To say Leith was unhappy about that condition would be an understatement, but your father was not to be swayed. He truly wanted you to go at this with a completely unbiased eye.” Misty smiled. “He also knew you, Callie. If you thought some swindling psychic was after his money, you’d work tirelessly to find the truth on your own. The fact that you’ve learned as much as you have in such a short time proves him right.”
“But you’d been living here when he drew up the will. When he had the accident. He’d hired you when he was alive. He must have trusted you.”
“He did. He trusted me enough to know I’d do what I could to help you. Even if you didn’t want my help.”
“The locket and the tarot cards. You hid them under the carpet, knowing I’d find them.”
“I knew you were being left money to renovate the house. The carpeting was well past its prime and there was hardwood underneath. I figured you’d remove the carpet sooner rather than later. Putting the envelope there would lend a hint of mystery. Nothing like a good mystery to motivate a curious mind.”
“Where did you find them?”
“In the attic.”
“You were in the attic?”
“It’s not like I broke into it,” Misty said, her tone indignant. “Your dad gave me the key and asked me to take a poke around. He knew I’d been a friend of Abigail’s and he thought I might find something that didn’t add up. The locket was in a blue trunk, in a small enameled box with some other jewelry.”
“Was the photo of Reid inside when you found it?”
“Why do you ask?” Staring down at her fingernails.
“Because I showed the locket and the photograph to Reid, and he claimed not to know anything about it. I’m inclined to believe him. He was very forthright about his affair with my mother. He had no reason to lie about the locket.”
Misty looked up, stared at me with those piercing dark eyes.
“No reason to lie about the photograph, maybe. The locket…that’s a different kettle of fish entirely.”
Chapter 58
“What are you saying, Misty?”
“That maybe I added the photo of Reid and faked his handwriting.”
Faked? Sounded more like forged to me. “Maybe?”
“Alright fine. I did add the photo. But I know for a fact that Reid gave that locket to your mom.”
I thought about what Reid had said. I don’t know anything about a photograph inside a locket. Not, I don’t know anything about a locket. I realized how easily he had played me. “The locket, it was from the twenties. Was it some sort of family heirloom?”
Misty nodded. “Reid told Abby it had belonged to his mother, or was it his grandmother? It doesn’t matter. It was some sort of family heirloom. He’d kept it hidden from Melanie because she wouldn’t have appreciated it. Melanie liked new things. She would have viewed the locket as a hand-me-down. Your mom, on the other hand, she loved anything vintage.”
I thought about the Calamity Jane poster in the attic. “That still doesn’t explain your duplicity.”
“I wanted you to know about Reid. The locket alone wouldn’t have done that, now would it? You’d just have thought your dad gave it to your mom. Or that it was something passed down from your grandmother.”
That much was true. In fact, without the photo of Reid, it’s likely I would never have connected him to my mother. “I assume you selected the tarot cards for the same reason.”
Misty nodded. “I’d hoped that you would come to me for an explanation about them. When you didn’t…well, I could hardly ask you about them, now could I?”
“I wasn’t sure I could trust you. I’m sorry.”
“I probably would have felt the same way, if our roles were reversed. What did you end up doing about the tarot cards?”
“I visited Randi at Sun, Moon & Stars. It turns out she used to live here, just before you, though back then she went by the name of Jessica Tamarand. She broke her lease, claimed the house was haunted.”
“Ella told me about the previous tenant. I gathered she and Ella didn’t get on too well.”
“She saw Ella as a busybody, and Ella saw her as standoffish. But it was Ella that told me that Jessica worked as a psychic at that ‘new-agey’ place behind the whole foods store. I checked and saw that a Randi worked there. I figured Randi might be Jessica Tamarand. I was right.”
“You don’t need psychic abilities,” Misty said with a smile. “You’re much better at playing amateur detective than I am. I’d heard of Randi, of course, but I never connected the dots. What did she tell you about the cards?”
“Essentially, she felt that whoever had sent them had chosen cards that would represent a literal meaning. She didn’t think that they were from an actual reading. That’s when I began to think you might have been behind the cards, though at the time I thought they had been sent to my mother and she’d hidden them so my dad wouldn’t find them. It never occurred to me that you might have hidden both for me to find. At least not until I spoke with Gloria Grace.”
“Randi was right. I did select them based on the imagery. I didn’t think you knew anything about tarot cards, and as I said before, I assumed you’d come to me for an interpretation.”
“I appreciate what Randi told me about them, but she was quick to point out her reading was subjective.” I pointed to the cards on the table. “Will you tell me what you meant them to represent?”
Misty tapped each card with a silver-tipped fingernail then gently pushed The Empress and The Emperor in my direction. “The Empress, of course, represents your mother, The Emperor your grandfather. Notice how The Empress looks as if she might be pregnant, how The Emperor is so stern and authoritative. Your grandfather, the obstinate old goat, he could never forgive your mother for getting pregnant as a teenager. He even refused to speak to her or your father, let alone acknowledge you. Then something happened just before she disappeared. It made me think he might have had a change of heart.”
I started in surprise. This was something new. Yvette believed that Corbin had been too stubborn to change his mind, and I’d found no evidence to the contrary, not since I’d been to Marketville and ce
rtainly not while I was growing up. “What happened?”
“She received a phone call one day at the food bank. That in itself was surprising. None of us had ever received a call there. She seemed flustered during the call, not that it lasted long. When she hung up she said something along the lines of forgiveness coming at a high price, but she wouldn’t elaborate.” Misty sighed softly. “That phone call rattled her to the core. A week later, she was gone.”
“What made you think the call came from my grandfather?”
“I’ll admit it’s a leap. But if not your grandfather, who else could it have been?”
I didn’t have an answer. I only knew that if it was my grandfather, my grandmother hadn’t been aware of it. “What about the next two cards, The Lovers and the Three of Swords? Randi told me that the Three of Swords represents sorrow, deep sadness, and heartache. What interested her were the three swords, as if the unhappiness was shared between the lovers and a third party. Is that what you meant? That the affair between Reid and my mother was causing pain to all of them?”
“Randi is very astute. Your mom tried to break it off with Reid, I can’t tell you how many times. She just couldn’t seem to make a clean break. She’d go a few weeks, even a few months without seeing him, but he was like opium to her. It was only a matter of time until your father found out.” Misty tapped the Death card. “That was the death of their marriage.”
Another surprise. There had never been a whisper of my mother’s infidelity, not when I grew up, and not in my father’s letter to me.
“He knew?”
“Not at first, not for a long time. Love truly can be blind. Of course, once Maggie the mouthpiece got wind of it, there was no stopping her from going to see your father as a ‘friend.’” Misty laughed. “Ella Cole used to call her Magpie Lonergan, an aptly fitting name.”
I smiled, remembering Ella saying those exact same words.
“Your father had a tough time reconciling it,” Misty continued, “and the strain of trying to work things out really seemed to wreak havoc with your mom’s health. She’d lost a lot of weight, and she’d already been thin to start with. Her skin took on a waxy look, and her hair had all but lost its shine. I told her I was worried about her, and that’s when she told me they were considering a trial separation. I suppose that’s what made the police so suspicious of your father. They just couldn’t prove anything, and without a body—”
“But you believed him, didn’t you? So did Leith. Otherwise why would the two of you hand out reward posters?”
“I’m not sure what I believed, Callie. I suppose I just wanted to find out the truth. Your mother might have been an adulterer but she was my best friend, and that meant something to me. It still does. As for Leith, we go back a lot further than that reward poster. You see, once upon a time, we were married.”
Chapter 59
If Misty’s revelation shocked me, it was mostly because she didn’t strike me as a trophy wife.
Misty sensed my surprise. “I know. I’m not his usual type, which over the years has become younger, blonder, and bustier. We met as teenagers at the beach in Lakeside, had a hot and heavy romance, got married without a lot of forethought, and rented in Marketville while Leith finished university in Toronto. When he graduated a couple of years later, he moved to the city and I stayed up here. It was all very amicable.”
“So you’ve remained friends.”
“A more apt description is that we’re friends between wives. When he’s married, we’re cordial. How cordial depends on how secure or insecure the current wife is.” Misty shrugged, resigned to the reality of the relationship. “We were already divorced by the time your mom went missing, but Leith was a friend of your dad’s, and I was a friend of your mom’s. We banded together. The reward poster was Leith’s idea. I’m fairly certain he was planning to fund it. He was doing alright by then and your parents didn’t have a bean between them.”
Yvette and Corbin Osgoode had plenty of beans. Too bad they hadn’t been willing to pony up a cent for their only child. Then again, if there had been more money available in the way of a reward, would the outcome have been any different?
I thought about the letter my father had left for me in the safety deposit box. I’d read it so many times I could recall it verbatim. Things changed when Misty Rivers rented the house. She told me the house was not haunted, but possessed by your mother’s spirit. I know it sounds farfetched, but another renter had insinuated much the same thing.
Misty was convinced your mother had been murdered, and she wanted to help me seek out the truth. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first. I’m not a believer in spirits or psychics, but I’ve never been able to reconcile your mother’s disappearance. I decided to put my trust in her.
At the time I read it, I assumed Misty had been a stranger who had rented the house. Now I realized the error of my assumption. A psychic touting stranger would never have convinced my father to buy a coffin, let alone put a skeleton in it. That still didn’t explain why Leith had kept his relationship with Misty a secret.
“You, Misty, I can almost forgive. After all, you did come here to talk to me and I sent you packing. But why didn’t Leith tell me? Why all the secrecy?”
“Your father had expressly told both of us not to say anything to you unless it was absolutely necessary. He wanted you to look at this with an open mind.”
“And now?”
“You’ve uncovered a lot in a short time. More than anyone expected. Better you hear the truth from me than from another source. To be honest, I figured Maggie Lonergan or Ella Cole would have said something, but I’m guessing neither one knew about Leith. Trust me, if they had, you would have heard. Regardless, it was only a matter of time. As I’ve said before, your investigative abilities are impressive.”
“Not so impressive that I’ve found anything out to solve the mystery. When you think about it, I’m no further ahead than you were thirty years ago. Except that now I have a coffin with a skeleton in my attic.”
“I’m sorry about that. One of my more lame-brained ideas. I’m actually surprised that your father agreed to it, let alone followed through with the purchase.” Misty gave a sad smile. “It only goes to underline how desperate he was to find out the truth.”
“So the séance—”
“I wouldn’t know how to hold a séance if my life depended on it.”
I sighed, wondering what to do with them.
“If you like, I can see if my theater group would like it. They always put on a Halloween play.”
“That would be great.”
Misty got up. “I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I just hope I’ve been some help.”
“You have, thank you. Before you go, did my father tell you anything about the accidents he had at work?”
“Accidents?” Misty frowned. “No, why? Surely you don’t believe his death was any more than an unfortunate industrial accident.”
An unfortunate industrial accident. The exact words the caller had used to tell me about my dad’s death.
“I don’t know what—or who—to believe any longer, Misty. The more I dig, the more nothing is what it appears to be on the surface. One thing I do know. That skeleton I found in the attic isn’t the only false clue. Of that much I’m certain.”
Chapter 60
Chantelle called a few minutes after Misty left. Seeing her name displayed on the caller ID, I didn’t bother with the formality of a hello.
“What’s up?”
“I might have a line on your grandparents, Peter and Sandra Barnstable. I still need to confirm some details, but it looks like they might have gone to Newfoundland a few years ago.”
I thought about the travel brochure from Newfoundland and Labrador that I’d found in my dad’s filing cabinet. At the time I thought it was because he wanted to go whale watching there someday. Could it be he had found his parents?
“Newfoundland. Are you sure?”<
br />
“Well, no, if I were sure, I wouldn’t be calling to ask you questions.” Chantelle sounded more than a bit annoyed, not that I could blame her. She’d offered to help me—gratis—and here I was second-guessing her.
“I apologize. I just had a long visit with Misty Rivers and my head is spinning.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“Not yet. Maybe tomorrow evening, over pizza and a glass of wine.”
“Sounds like a plan. In the meantime, I’ll try to find out a bit more about the Barnstables. Could be they just went there for a visit and left again. The thing is, I found a record of them going there about ten years ago, but there are no records of them leaving. Of course, they could have bought a car from the Auto Trader and driven to who-knows-where.”
Who-knows-where. There was a lot of that going around.
The phone rang again less than five minutes later. According to the caller ID, it was the Glass Dolphin.
“Arabella, nice to hear from you. Any more information about the locket?”
“Not the locket, the poster.”
I wandered into my bedroom and looked at the Calamity Jane poster hanging on the wall. “What about it?”
“I studied all the photos you sent to me and something seems a bit off. I checked with Levon, and he agrees. We’ll have to remove it from the frame to be sure.”
Levon was an antiques picker, Arabella’s ex-husband and ex-business partner, and oddly enough, her best friend. “Be sure of what?”
“I think it’s probably a very recent reproduction. Which means it wouldn’t have any value beyond decorative.”
A reproduction. I’d imagined my mother scouring around antique malls looking for the perfect gift. Now it looked as if my poster was just one more thing that wasn’t all it seemed to be.
“I wasn’t planning on selling it, so the value isn’t really a concern to me. I’d like to find out either way.”
Skeletons in the Attic (A Marketville Mystery Book 1) Page 24