It was the middle of April, the first mild day of the year. I tried to open the apartment’s lone window to let in some fresh air only to find it was stuck. Twenty minutes of struggling later, I managed to get it to open a few inches. The cool, crisp air that wafted in was refreshing.
I crawled into bed and hoped it wouldn’t take me long to fall asleep. I didn’t want to think about my conversation with Fern, Elmer Berghorn, or my renewed enthusiasm about solving my case until the morning when I had a clear head and was fully rested. Right then, I wanted only quiet, dreamy thoughts.
The acidic smell emanating from what I surmised was the rooftop vents of the dry cleaner two buildings away interrupted my journey to slumberland. What—they ran a night shift? If the odor from whatever cleaning solvent they used was that strong all the way at my place, what was it like for the workers?
I pulled the sheet over my mouth and nose in an attempt to filter the air I breathed and tried to fall asleep.
It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be so much traffic outside my apartment at that time of day, and the incessant honking of car horns told me nighttime drivers were no more patient than those behind the wheel during the day.
The dreamy thoughts I longed for must have been hiding somewhere. I changed positions and waited for them to appear.
I hadn’t realized there were so many types of sirens—some low-pitched, some high-pitched, some long ones, some short ones, whoop-whoop ones, some off in the distance, and others speeding by right in front of this building.
I closed the window. So much for fresh air.
EIGHTEEN
The Cavalry
I was glad for the weekend—I had spent the latter half of the week working twelve-hour days in order to fit in Attic Finds work, and I had nothing to show for it. I needed the weekend, away from work, to clear my head.
I spent a little time cleaning my apartment and then headed for Six Corners to buy a new pair of shoes—and not from a thrift store. I went to Sears and bought myself a pair of brand-new never-been-worn black Mary Janes.
After running several errands, I picked up some dinner for later and drove home.
Luck was with me—there was a parking space near my apartment door. I juggled the assortment of bags I had amassed until I could comfortably manage them without dropping anything and headed upstairs. At the top of the stairs, I was surprised to find several large boxes blocking my door.
I put everything down, shoved the boxes out of the way, and put the key in the lock. The key didn’t work.
What the...?
The boxes weren’t sealed, so I peered inside one of them. “That’s my toaster,” I said aloud. Another one contained my clothes.
I ran downstairs and tried my office-door key. It didn’t work either.
I flew back upstairs and frantically searched the other boxes and found my case files. I tore through every box looking for items from the back room, but nothing associated with Attic Finds was there.
Only one person could have been behind this: Elmer Berghorn.
I plopped myself down on the top step, kicking out of my way an array of clothes I had flung out of one of the boxes. I had nowhere to go. And worse yet, the only evidence I had pointing to my real identity was gone.
I looked at all my worldly possessions strewn about me in the filthy hallway. After a good cry, I quit feeling sorry for myself and then beat myself up some for behaving like a helpless little girl. I inhaled a deep breath, marched down the stairs, and headed for the nearest phone booth.
“Minnie?”
“I was just thinking about you. How are you?”
“Not good. I’ve been evicted from my apartment and my office and—”
“What? Well, you get yourself right over here, ya hear? With all your things.”
“They won’t all fit in my car. I’ll have to make several trips.”
“Stay right there. I’ll have my cavalry come get you.”
Her cavalry?
While I waited for Minnie, I put everything back in the boxes and thought of ways to get even with Elmer. What gave him the right to kick me out anyway? He knew the law, and he knew I knew the law.
One hour and several spiteful plots to destroy Elmer later, I wondered if there really was a cavalry coming to rescue me. My stomach was growling. I retrieved the takeout chicken from one of the grocery bags and tried not to think about the ice cream and TV dinners that were gradually defrosting. The chicken was cold and shriveled and bore the flavor of the cardboard box it had been sitting in. I hated that man.
The heavy rap on the street-level door to my apartment startled me. I rushed down the stairs and asked who was there.
“The cavalry, ma’am.”
Okay, so that made me smile.
I opened the door to find Minnie, Tymon, and two men—two young, strong men—standing there.
“We’re here! Where’s your stuff?”
After I showed them what I had, Tymon left to bring his truck around front. When he returned, he told Minnie and me to step to the side and let his young helpers do all the heavy lifting, which they completed in a matter of minutes.
Minnie rode with me to her house.
“Thank you for coming to my rescue,” I told her.
“I’m just getting even, you know.”
“Even? For what?”
“Coming to mine. And before you ask me what I mean—and I know you’re about to—tell me what in the hell is going on?”
I told her all I knew, which wasn’t much.
“I don’t like the timing—right on the heels of you hooking up with Fern,” she said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You’re the detective, you tell me.”
“You think there could be a connection between Elmer and Fern?”
“So what are you going to do about the missing stuff? You’re going to confront him about it, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure what confronting him would do, Minnie. He’s not going to hand over the missing items just because I ask for them. I’ll probably consult with an attorney to see if I have any recourse.”
“An attorney?! That crumb bum throws you out for no reason and you want to go by the law to get back what’s legally yours? That man needs a taste of his own medicine.”
“No, I’m go—”
“Don’t do anything just yet,” she said as I pulled into her driveway. Tymon pulled in behind us. “C’mon, let’s see what we can salvage from your groceries.”
“Minnie, whatever it is you—”
She didn’t let me finish—she was out of the car and heading toward Tymon’s truck. When I caught up to her, she put her arm around my waist. “Don’t argue with me, Gracie. You’ll lose every time.”
* * *
I woke up and for a brief moment didn’t recognize my surroundings. Flowered drapes, stone fireplace, birds chirping outside, the smell of coffee drifting into the room.
Then it quickly came back to me.
Despite Minnie’s narrow somewhat lumpy sofa, I felt as though I’d had several hours of quality sleep—stress and exhaustion will do that to you. I’m not sure when I fell asleep, but I think it may have been when Minnie and I were in the middle of a conversation because I don’t remember saying goodnight or anything.
Minnie emerged in her robe and slippers carrying two cups.
“I put lots of cream and sugar in yours. Try it. You might like it.”
I took a sip of the coffee, and it wasn’t bad.
“How did you sleep, Gracie?”
“Okay. And you?”
“Thanks to worrying about you, I tossed and turned all night.”
“Please don’t worry about me. I’m not going to let the likes of Elmer Berghorn get me down, not for long anyway.”
“We’re going to get your things back.”
“My guess is that they’re long gone by now.”
“We’ll see.”
We finished our c
offee, and Minnie told me to use the bathroom as long as I needed it to get ready. She had work to do.
In her robe and slippers?
It didn’t take long for me to get ready for the day. When I came out, Minnie was standing in her bedroom doorway with her hands on her hips.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. What did you say was the address of your parents’ house? It’s on Ferdinand, right?”
She was up to something.
“Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just curious.”
“If you tell me—”
“What is it?” she asked me.
My eyes were drawn to the picture hanging on her bedroom wall—the one with mountains in the background, a stream on the left, and deer grazing on the right.
“That’s the same painting.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“That’s the same painting as the one in the photograph of the woman and baby in the rocking chair. It’s the same painting. Where did you get it?”
“I don’t remember. It’s so old, I...it may have been left here. I don’t remember.”
“I wish I had that photograph. It could have been taken in this room.”
“Don’t you worry about your photographs. Now, what was that address?”
I gave her the address.
Minnie and I spent the morning cleaning Marcus O’Gowan’s old room and the upstairs bathroom, washing linens, and moving a few pieces of furniture upstairs so I had a comfortable place to stay...temporarily. Minnie acted like an old mother hen when it came to my well-being. And to be honest, I kind of liked it.
Except for the fostering I received from Mrs. Miller, I hadn’t been mothered since my own mother had died, and even though it was up for grabs whether she was my real mother, the memories still had an effect on me. My mother had vacillated between two types of mothering: overprotective and indifferent. There were times she fussed over me, made decisions for me, and controlled my every move. And there were other times I didn’t even know where she was in the house. What made it difficult was that I didn’t know which mother to expect on any given day.
The rollaway bed in my new temporary quarters didn’t seem too bad—at least a little wider than Minnie’s sofa—and by the time she was through decorating it with bright white sheets, a flowered bedspread, and a few throw pillows, it looked pretty inviting.
We were just about ready to stop for lunch when I remembered to ask Minnie about the attic. She pointed to the ceiling above a three-drawer dresser in the small alcove of the bedroom.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Look closely.”
I stared at the ceiling until I saw a fine rectangular line camouflaged by the linen-like texture of the plaster.
“So how do you get access to it?”
“I have no idea.”
“You’ve never been up there?”
Minnie shook her head.
“Do you have a ladder?”
“There’s one in the basement.”
“Can we get it?”
I followed Minnie to the basement, and we struggled to carry the six-foot stepladder up two flights of stairs. Hindsight told me it would have been easier to carry it myself—half the time we were pulling it in opposite directions.
I wasn’t that steady on a ladder, I soon found out. Minnie was holding it at the bottom, but my legs were shaking, making it unstable. Once at the top, I pushed the trapdoor up and slid it over. I was immediately overcome by a sickeningly musty smell mixed with a urine-like odor.
I gave myself a few seconds to steady myself before I stood on the top step.
“It says ‘DANGER – DO NOT STAND ON TOP STEP,’” she said to me.
Too late, I was.
“There’s stuff up here. I’m going to look around, if that’s okay.”
“Be my guest,” she said. “You wouldn’t get me to go up this ladder,” she mumbled.
“It’s pitch-black up here.”
“Hold on. I’ll get the lantern.”
“No, wait! Let me get all the way up here first.”
I didn’t have that much upper-body strength, but somehow I managed to elevate myself up and over onto the attic floor. I peered down through the opening at Minnie.
“Okay. You can go now.”
A few minutes later, Minnie returned with the lantern and looked up at me.
“I’m not coming up there to give you this.”
“Well, I’m not coming down and then up again. Once was scary enough. In fact, I don’t even know how I’m going to get down.”
She flipped the switch on the lantern and shined it toward me. “How’s that?”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Look, all you have to do is climb halfway up. If I lie down on the floor and reach down and you reach up, we can do this.”
Minnie took the long cord attached to the lantern, hung it around her neck, and proceeded up the ladder.
“Why do you have it around your neck?”
“You think I’m going to climb this thing holding on with only one hand?”
“Well, what are you going to do once you’re halfway up? You’re going to have to take it off your neck somehow.”
She stopped her ascent and looked up. From there, she resembled one of those troll dolls—small and squatty with large eyes and hair standing straight up—and it was all I could do to keep from laughing.
“I have an idea,” she said. She climbed down from the first step, made a hasty sign of the cross, and disappeared. She came back in ten minutes with a role of tape and a mop.
“What on earth are you going to do with that?”
“Just watch me. Where there’s a will, there’s a way my Clarence used to always say.”
Minnie arduously wrapped the tape around the lantern, affixing it to the end of the mop handle. Then she raised it up to me as far as she could, using the slant of the steps of the ladder to guide it up to me. I lay down on the attic floor and tried to reach it, but Minnie was just a hair over five feet tall and had short arms, so the lantern was still a few inches out of my reach.
“If you go up on the first step, Minnie, I could reach it.”
I heard several Hail Marys and a series of grunts before the lantern was in my hand.
“Got it!”
I stood in the middle of the room and held the lantern up to get a lay of the land. One object immediately jumped out at me—a large decorative trunk, about three feet tall and four feet long, a combination of leather, wood, and brass. My heart pounded. Finding an old trunk in an attic—how exciting was that?
NINETEEN
Treasures or Trash?
My excitement had to be placed on hold—the trunk was locked. As I walked back toward the trapdoor, I almost tripped over a metal box. I picked it up and examined it. It weighed about five pounds or so, and it too was locked.
I looked down at Minnie who was still standing at the foot of the ladder.
“You know what we could use?”
“A Scotch?”
“Besides that.”
“What?”
“A rope.”
“And where do you think I’m going to get a rope?”
“You don’t have one?”
Her look served as her response, which was clear.
“Do you have clothesline?”
“Of course.”
“Can you bring me some?”
She turned to leave.
“And Minnie?”
“Yes, masser.”
She could be funny.
“Something to cut it.”
It was just as well I didn’t understand what she muttered.
While Minnie was on her mission, I walked the perimeter of the room to make sure there were floorboards everywhere and not any openings between joists where I could fall through. It was a good thing I did this because there were a couple of places where the floorboards were loose.
“So, Miss Einstein, how am I goi
ng to get this rope and knife up to you?” Minnie shouted from below.
I couldn’t see her throwing the rope up to me—it weighed too much—and certainly not the knife, so I was going to have to come down to get them.
“Too bad there’s not a man around,” I told her. “They come in handy for stuff like this.”
A ringing phone interrupted our conversation, and Minnie disappeared downstairs. She returned a few minutes later.
“Those stairs are going to be the death of me. Tymon is on his way over.”
“I better come down then.”
“Why? Maybe he can help.”
“Do you really want him to see what’s up here? What if it’s something...well, that you don’t want anyone else to see?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Why is he coming over? Just for a visit?”
“No. He has something for you.”
“For me? Like what?”
“We’ll show you later. Right now, we have to figure this out.”
“Do you think he’s left already?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I’d ask him if he has a better ladder.”
“This is the last time I’m going to...”
I didn’t hear the end of her sentence, but I didn’t have to.
I continued to scan the room. It was a nice attic, as far as attics went. I could walk to within just a few feet from the edges without ducking my head. It would have been better with an overhead light though, or at least a window.
Stacks of old National Geographic magazines sat in one corner next to an old-fashioned baby stroller, an empty file cabinet, and a pile of tarps. Two boxes sitting in the corner looked interesting. The first one contained women’s clothes that appeared to be from the Roaring Twenties. The second box contained scads of old photographs.
I continued my walk around the perimeter and found nothing more.
In the middle of the room was a huge pillar, and leaning up against it were several framed paintings. I couldn’t tell whether they were original paintings or prints, but the frames were nice.
I heard Minnie calling me and walked over to the trapdoor.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Good. There are a few interesting things up here. Were you able to catch Tymon?”
Regarding Anna Page 13