A few minutes later, Meeka and I were securely in the kayak and Lily Grace gave us a gentle push onto the lake. Meeka, always in tune with my moods, sat in the well between my legs. Normally, she stood with her front paws on the edge of the boat, looking over the side for fish. Tonight, she sat there and looked mournfully at me instead.
“I wish you could have met Gran. The two of you would have loved each other.”
She gave a sharp exhale and leaned against my leg in reply.
The next thing I knew, I was standing on the dock at home, pulling the kayak out of the water. Normally, getting out of the thing was a huge exercise in caution. I was always afraid of tipping and ending up soaked. Tonight, I hadn’t even thought about it and hopped right out. Success tended to come much more easily when I didn’t overthink things.
Chapter 10
I was so anxious to get inside and talk to Tripp, I thought, for about two seconds, of leaving the kayak on the deck. With all the tourists in the area, that was a really good way to lose a nice kayak. After taking two minutes to put it back in its proper spot in the rack inside the boathouse, I rushed upstairs to drop off my dry bag and give Meeka some food. I found Tripp in the house putting the finishing touches on dinner.
“Oh good,” he said as he glanced up at me, “you’re just in time. Since it’s been so hot, I thought pasta salad with plenty of veggies and little cheese cubes sounded like a good idea. What’s the matter?”
While he dished up the pasta salad and set a plate in front of me on the kitchen bar, I told him about the autopsy report.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you’re not really surprised, are you? I mean, we already figured something was suspicious.”
A few weeks earlier, while cleaning out Gran’s bathroom, I came across a harlequin doll that was meant to represent Gran. Donovan, village council member and owner of Quin’s clothing shop, supposedly had the ability to foretell death. He claimed he would go into a trance whenever this knowledge came to him and he’d create a porcelain harlequin doll that resembled the to-be victim in death. I’d had no doubt that Donovan’s precision with the Gran doll was accurate, right down to the tiny blue fingernails and large lump over the doll’s left eye. While I didn’t for one moment believe his knowledge of impending death was supernatural, I had no way to prove how he knew these things. Regardless, that doll was what made me realize the police report my family received didn’t make sense.
In his report, the late Sheriff Brighton explained that his conclusion was that Gran had slipped on water on her bathroom floor or tripped on the bath mat, hit her head on the edge of the tub, and fell into her already full bathtub where she drowned. As I’d just told Lily Grace, Tripp and I walked through that scenario step-by-step, numerous different ways, and decided that the report couldn’t possibly be accurate.
“I haven’t studied the autopsy report in detail yet,” I told Tripp as we settled in to eat, “but it supports the conclusion you and I came to. And, there was no water in her lungs. She didn’t drown.”
“You’re saying that someone staged it to make it look like an accidental drowning?” Tripp’s smile turned into a wince. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get so excited about that.”
“Don’t worry about it. That’s probably the same reaction I have when clues in a case come clear to me.” I chewed and swallowed a mouthful of pasta salad. “This is good, by the way.”
He smiled his thanks at me.
“I have to figure this out,” I insisted. “I have to find out the truth of what happened to Gran, and I have to catch whoever did this to her.”
“I know you do and wouldn’t even think of trying to stop you.” He waited a beat before adding, “Because I know you, I have to say I’m a little concerned that it will consume you.”
I shrugged off his worry while sipping iced tea. “There’s something in this house that will help, I know it. I’m going to find it.”
“Just don’t let yourself become so involved with this hunt that you get sidetracked from getting the bed-and-breakfast ready. As you’ve told me a dozen times, we’re on the clock.”
He meant the deadline my parents had given us. We had one year to at least break even, or they were putting the house up for sale. That meant the two thousand acres Whispering Pines occupied would also be sold. The villagers would have first chance at buying the property, but if they couldn’t and whoever did buy it didn’t want to host a village, everyone would have to leave. No pressure on us whatsoever.
“I’m all set with my Pine Time stuff,” I promised. “Everything is ready to go. All I have to do is hit the go button on the website and the ads. Once I figure out what happened to Gran, I’ll be able to focus on the house and running the B&B.”
Tripp gave me a skeptical smile but didn’t argue.
I finished dinner, helped him with the dishes, and told him I was going up to the attic.
“I’m going to finish looking through those boxes tonight. If there’s something up there that will help me, I will find it.”
“Tonight? You do realize how many boxes you have left?”
“I do. Which means I need to get busy. It’s not like I’ll sleep otherwise.”
Anticipating a long night, I made coffee and filled a travel mug.
The attic occupied the third level of the house and had never been finished. Once everything else on the first and second levels was complete, our plan was to create a caretaker’s apartment for Tripp to live in up there. We hadn’t decided if we would include a kitchenette or if Tripp would simply use the first-floor kitchen, but there was plumbing for a bathroom. It was almost as though my grandparents had anticipated this very thing. Putting in an apartment or another room, not Tripp living there.
There was a ton of furniture in the attic; Gran’s obsession. I had already moved the lighter weight pieces to one side of the space. I hadn’t been as organized with the storage boxes, however. I took a few minutes to set aside the boxes I’d already looked through and then called Tripp to help me with some bigger pieces of furniture.
“What exactly are you looking for?” he asked as we set down a sofa and went back for a heavy steamer trunk.
“Anything that will tell me about the history of the village. Gran mentioned journaling in the emails she used to send me, but I don’t know if she ever did that. If she did, I’m hoping the journals are up here.”
“You really think that would uncover her killer? Lift with your legs.”
I grunted as we hoisted the trunk. “Sugar, Reeva, and Briar all told me that’s where I needed to start. At the beginning.”
“So, we’re looking for a bunch of books.”
I smiled at the way he was suddenly a partner in this excavation, and gratitude spread over me like a thick blanket on a cold winter night. With the attic better organized, I realized there weren’t as many boxes left as it had seemed when they were spread out all over the place. We started at opposite ends of the pile and methodically worked our way through every box. Many of them, like those I’d already gone through, were filled with holiday decorations. Those, we set in a corner; I’d decide what we wanted to keep and what to get rid of later. Other boxes held photo albums, filled with pictures of my grandparents when they were young, my dad as a little boy, and the many trips Gran and Gramps had gone on once Dad had left home.
“These might be helpful for you.” Tripp held up two photo albums, both with the Triple Moon Goddess symbol on their covers. The symbol—a full moon with a pentacle inside flanked by crescent moons on the left and right—was the one the Originals had adopted for their logo, of sorts.
“What’s in them?” I asked.
“I’m just guessing,” he said as he flipped pages, “but they look like they were taken here in Whispering Pines. There’s a lake and trees everywhere.” He looked closer at one picture. “This looks like the pentacle garden mid-construction.” He turned another page. “It’s so weird to see this place without all the buildings.”
&n
bsp; My heart skipped a beat and I asked him to set the albums near the stairs. “I’ll look through them later. Let’s finish the boxes.”
Two hours later, we finished the last box but hadn’t come up with anything else even remotely helpful.
“You’re sure she kept journals?” Tripp asked.
“I’m not sure of anything,” I snapped then blew out a slow breath. “Sorry. It would be nice if answers could come easily, just once.”
“Don’t give up yet. You know there’s more in the basement and in the loft over the garage.”
“True. I forgot about the garage. Maybe I’ll go start there.”
“Jayne, it’s almost midnight. Whatever is there will still be there tomorrow. Go get some sleep. We have to work in a few hours.”
“Fine,” I reluctantly agreed. “I’ll look at the pictures in those albums before I go to sleep. It’ll be like a bedtime story.”
~~~
Tripp was right, some of the pictures showed the progress of the pentacle garden during construction. I recognized Gran and two fortune tellers that I was sure were Effie and Cybil, their preferred clothing styles of monochromatic gypsy skirts and button-up blouses hadn’t changed much in the last fifty years.
One young woman, with wavy, raven-black hair that fell almost to her waist looked a lot like Morgan, so I guessed she was Morgan’s mom, Briar. No, that couldn’t be right. I did a quick calculation. This had to be Dulcie, Morgan’s grandmother. The woman responsible for this plot of land turning from a single-family homestead into a village. I had to show these to Morgan and Briar.
A second album was filled with pictures of the kids who lived here. A few pictures had just one or two kids in them, but most were of a group. Along with my dad, I spotted two blondes that had to be Flavia and Reeva but couldn’t decide which was which. Two younger girls with red hair were probably Sugar and Honey. The others who showed up in many shots with Dad—three boys and three girls—I couldn’t identify.
Mixed in with the regular photographs were a few Polaroids, the instant-developing kind. Most of those were of the adult villagers, all in Wiccan robes. They probably took Polaroids to capture memories of their rituals, rather than bringing film in to be developed, to keep them private. People still thought Wicca and devil worship were synonymous. So not true.
I’m not sure how long I sat there looking back through the photographic history of Whispering Pines because I fell asleep on the loveseat in my apartment sitting room. I woke with a jolt at three in the morning with a thought screaming at the front of my brain.
“Steamer trunk,” I exclaimed loud enough to wake Meeka. She scowled at me, stood, spun in two circles, and then lay down again.
We had searched through every box and every drawer of every piece of furniture. I had tried to open that steamer trunk, but it was locked. I’d made a mental note to get the keys and find out what was inside, but my mental note-taking app must have been on the fritz because I never thought of it again.
As I was preparing to drive up to the village from Madison, just before Memorial Day weekend about two months ago, my mother had given me a keyring, the diameter of a grapefruit, loaded with dozens of keys.
“Your grandmother has an addiction to collecting antique furniture. And it seems every piece has a lock.” Mom had said this with a stiff shake of her head, indicating how impractical she found Gran’s collection. Mom was much more of a minimalist; less clutter and less to clean. She handed me the keyring pinched between two fingers, as though the entire set was infected with a communicable disease of some kind.
“What does the color coding mean?” I’d asked of the three keys with silicone disks around their heads.
“My understanding is that the blue key is for the front door. Purple for the backdoor. The green one is for the garage. Good luck figuring out which goes to what otherwise. Once you do, I suggest identifying them somehow or you’ll have to go through the entire ring every time you need a key for something.”
Right now, my problem was that I couldn’t remember where I put the keyring. I searched through each of the eight drawers in the dresser Tripp and one of the crew guys had brought over from the attic for me. I checked in the three kitchenette drawers with no luck. Then I remembered, “Side table.”
This time, Meeka woke with an angry bark.
“Sorry. I need to find those keys.” I opened the only drawer on the table in the sitting area, reached to the very back, and, “Success!”
I nearly tripped running down the stairs on the outside of the boathouse. Then, I nearly tripped over Meeka as we ran through the yard. She seemed to think this was a new middle-of-the-night game of some kind.
“We aren’t playing,” I scolded as we ran. This didn’t stop her, she just ran in bigger circles around me, barking the whole while. By the time I made it through the house and up two flights of stairs to the attic, I was completely winded. I bent at the waist, hands resting on my knees, and waited for my heart rate and breathing to slow.
Then came the painstaking process of going through all those keys one-by-one. By the time I was on key number twenty-something, I heard a voice shouting from the bottom of the stairs.
“Jayne?” It was Tripp. “Are you up there?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
I listened to his footsteps pounding up the stairs as I continued trying keys. He appeared wearing nothing but a pair of light cotton lounge pants. The sight of him shirtless almost made me drop the keyring.
“Seventeen minutes after three in the morning,” Tripp announced, his own breathing a little elevated. “That’s the time, in case you were wondering. What are you doing up here?”
“We forgot about the steamer trunk. This thing is so heavy, something is obviously in there.”
“This couldn’t wait until morning? No, never mind. Stupid question. Of course it can’t.”
“Why are you up at seventeen minutes after three?”
“I was sound asleep until I heard Meeka barking.” He scowled at her, and she turned her back in shame.
Finally, four keys later, I found the one that opened the trunk. With wide eyes, I turned to Tripp who was kneeling next to me now. I released the latch on the right as he undid the one on the left and then we lifted the lid.
I gasped. “Jackpot.”
Inside, were dozens of books of various sizes and colors. Some leather, some linen, and all of them tossed inside in no sort of order.
“Any chance you’ll wait until later to organize these?” Tripp asked with a look that said he already knew the answer. “I’ll go make coffee.”
Chapter 11
By the time the crew arrived at seven o’clock, we were organizing the last of the journals. We had forty-five chronological stacks of journals, each stack representing a year, set neatly against the far wall of the attic. Some years contained a single book, others as many as five.
“One year is missing.” I stood by the first stack on the left. “The journals start at 1966, the year Gran and Gramps moved here. I’m not sure when other Originals started coming.” I walked along the row, past twelve years’ worth of journals, and came to a gap. “This is 1978.” I took a step, spanning the gap, to the next stack of books. “This is 1980. Where are the books for 1979?”
“They’re not up here. We’ve checked everywhere. It’s not like you can’t start reading. We don’t have to keep looking now, do we?”
I gave him what must have been a withering look, because he backed a couple steps away. I was so tired of there always being holes to fill.
“No, not now,” I agreed, “but I need to find them.”
Rebounding from the glare, he moved closer and wrapped me in a hug. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been until the strength of his arms and the warmth of his body relaxed me. I felt like I had so much to prove to so many people. Mom and Dad were expecting me to make the B&B a success. So was Tripp. The entire village expected me to be a good sheriff. They didn’t know the terms of the B&B�
��be a success in a year or sell—but I think a few had a feeling something big was riding on this. It was getting to be too much.
“I think,” Tripp said, “we’ve looked through everything we can possibly look through up here. You’ll need to start with what you’ve got because we both need to go to work soon. We’ll look in the basement and garage tonight. How does that sound?”
Logically, that made sense. I was exhausted, though, so I only felt the frustration of needing to find the year of missing books.
“Come with me.” He grabbed the first three stacks of journals, six in all of varying thicknesses, then took my elbow and led me downstairs. “Just in case you have some time today, and you want to start reading, I’ll put these in your car. You go get ready for work.”
I stood in the middle of the yard and watched as he carried the books to the Cherokee. I’d never had anyone in my life before who took care of me the way he did. My mother probably did when I was little, but by the year I started middle school, she decided to open the salon. My dad spent more and more time at his dig sites with each year that passed. I was the bigger sister, so it was always expected that I would take care of Rosalyn.
As for Jonah, my ex-fiancé, it became clear that he wanted a traditional, old-fashioned marriage. He loved coming home to dinner on the table, even though that usually meant pizza, carry out, or something from a box that I warmed up in the microwave. He was so determined to live out his dream, he gave me cooking lessons for Christmas one year, presumably in the hopes that I’d be a topnotch hostess when it came time to throw dinner parties for all his political cronies.
It was obvious that I’d struck gold with Tripp. What was I waiting for?
Twenty minutes later, I was showered and dressed in my uniform. I needed coffee, about a gallon of it. Tripp, of course, knew this and had it ready for me when I re-entered the house.
“I made it extra strong.” He handed me a mug and grinned. “Do me a favor and don’t make any important decisions today, okay?”
Original Secrets: A Whispering Pines Mystery, Book 3 Page 9