“Yes. He’s bringing a better ladder. I left the back door open for him. I’m not climbing those stairs again.”
I told her what I had found.
“Let’s not mention the trunk to him,” she said. “I don’t want anyone else to know what’s in it before us.”
“But that’s what we probably need the most help with. It’s huge.”
“Will it even fit through the opening?” she asked.
“It got up there, didn’t it?”
“Good point. Well, let’s deal with it later.”
I told her about the paintings.
“What am I going to do with a bunch of old paintings?”
“They could be valuable. You never know.”
“I doubt—. Here comes Tymon.”
“Hello, Tymon,” I shouted down to him.
He looked up at me. “Please tell me you didn’t get up there using this rickety stepladder.”
“’Fraid so.”
He moved the stepladder out of the way and raised one of those outdoor extension ladders through the opening in the ceiling. Then he put something that looked like a strip of rubber on the floor in front of it so it wouldn’t slip.
My father used to say you can do anything with the proper tools. On one of our rare family outings, my parents took me to Kiddieland when I was seven or eight, and I got stuck in the roller coaster car on the Little Dipper. At the end of the ride, the metal lap bar that holds you in wouldn’t unlock. The park staff tried to get me out, but twenty minutes later, I was still stuck in the car. After my father had seen enough, he told my mother he was running home and would be back as soon as he could. He returned with just one tool, and I was freed within seconds. My father and Tymon must have gone to the same school.
Tymon climbed the ladder and stuck his head up into the attic.
“What’s that foul smell up here, Tymon?”
“It smells musty. Is that what you mean?”
“Like urine.”
“Could be the fiberglass insulation. It can get that way, especially when a room has been closed off for a long time.”
“Just about knocked me over when I first opened the trapdoor.”
“You’re not thinking of bringing that old trunk down, are you?” he asked.
I didn’t know how he could even see the trunk with the pillar in the way.
He must have read my mind. “I’ve been up here before,” he said. “Looks the same as it did twenty years ago.” He glanced over to a far corner. “Had to fix a roof leak once. Can still see my patchwork.”
“Let’s get some of this stuff down and worry about the trunk later,” I said.
For the next hour, Tymon and I got the items Minnie and I decided were of interest down to the second floor, with Tymon doing most of the work.
Thanks to Tymon’s ladder, it was much easier coming down than it had been going up.
“Tymon, can you wait downstairs a few minutes?” Minnie asked him. “We’ll be right down. Grab yourself a cold drink if you like.”
She handed the metal box to me. “Find a hiding place for this downstairs, will you? Wait ’til I leave, and I’ll distract Tymon in the kitchen while you find a place for it.”
Minnie grabbed the mop, the rope, and the knife and disappeared out the bedroom door. I waited a couple of minutes, tucked the metal box under my arm, and went downstairs. I shoved it under Minnie’s bed before joining them in the kitchen.
“We have something for you,” Minnie said.
I couldn’t imagine what the two of them would have for me.
Tymon disappeared and returned with a large cardboard box that he set on the kitchen table. I peered inside to find some of the things I had kept in the back room of my office.
“Where did you get this?”
Neither of them responded.
“From my old office?”
Tymon shook his head.
“Where then?”
“Doesn’t matter. He found it. Is that everything?” Minnie asked.
I rummaged through the box, and the only things I believed were missing were the bank statements and business cards.
“Where did you found these things if not in my old office?”
“Some things are better left unknown,” Minnie said. “That way you can never be implicated.”
Implicated meant only one thing.
Tymon announced that if we didn’t need him for anything else, he was going to go home. “If you want help with the trunk later, let me know. I’ll leave the ladder here just in case.”
Minnie walked him to the back door, while I tried to get my mind around what they had just presented to me. The only thing I could think of was that Tymon or someone had broken into Elmer’s house or his office and stolen the items for me, and while I was extremely grateful to have my belongings back, I didn’t know how I felt about the manner in which they had been secured.
Minnie returned to the kitchen and asked me if I would bring her the metal box. When I did, she placed it on the table, examined the lock, and then disappeared. She returned a minute later with a bobby pin.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Don’t underestimate me.”
Minnie fiddled with the lock but couldn’t open it. She shook it. “Something’s in there. Can’t tell what though.”
She disappeared again and then returned with a crochet hook. When that didn’t work, she retrieved a second crochet hook and worked both of them inside the lock at the same time.
“Have you done this before?” I asked her.
Minnie just smiled and kept jiggling the hooks in the lock until it opened.
She looked at me with a wide grin.
“You’re good.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” She stared at the box. “I’m afraid to open it.”
“Why? Afraid something is going to jump out at you?”
She lifted the hinged lid. I couldn’t see what was inside, but the look on her face told me it was a surprise to her.
“What is it?”
Minnie took out a piece of paper and handed it to me.
“Bank of Ireland—Irish currency of some sort.”
She nodded and turned the box around so I could see inside.
It was filled with bills. I flipped through them.
“They all say one hundred pounds.”
We stared at each other for a long moment.
“O’Gowan’s?” I asked.
“I told you I thought he must have had a stash.”
“Makes sense since that was his room down below, so he was the only one with access to the attic.”
“Do you think it’s still good?” she asked.
“What do you mean? Does Irish money have an expiration date?” The date on the top one was 1942. I flipped through the top twenty notes or so. “1930s and ’40s. Want to count it?” I asked her.
“Yeah...over a glass of Scotch.”
Minnie poured, and I started counting, creating stacks of ten hundred-pound notes. In the end, we had thirty-seven piles with two left over.
“So how much is that worth?” she asked.
“I have no idea—37,200 pounds. They could tell you at a currency exchange though.”
“If it’s like a peso, it won’t be worth much.”
“Good point. Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Famished.”
“Do you like Chinese?”
“Love it.”
“My treat.”
I ran out to pick up dinner, and by the time we finished eating, it was almost eight o’clock. Afterward, too tired to do much of anything else, we said goodnight to each other.
TWENTY
The Key
The next morning, I awoke to the savory smell of bacon wafting up the stairs to the second floor, compelling me to hurry through my morning routine. I joined Minnie in the kitchen and asked her if there was anything I could do to help.
“You can help by letting me take care of you.” She
turned to face me. “You don’t have to be so damned independent, you know.”
I tried to stifle a smile. I had become self-reliant because I knew first-hand that people you depend on could be gone tomorrow.
“Yes, m’am,” I said to appease her.
She turned back around toward the stove. “Don’t get smart with me, young lady. And you need to smile more—it looks good on you.”
While Minnie finished cooking, I thought about how different her life would have been right now if she hadn’t lost her husband and daughter.
She served me a heaping plate of bacon, eggs, and hash-brown potatoes.
“What—no toast?”
She stared at me for a long moment before smiling a half-smirk. “That better be your sense of humor, Gracie.”
I liked teasing her. “So what do you want to do today?” I asked her. “Do you want to tackle the trunk, go through the stuff we brought down from the attic, see how much money you’ve just inherited? What’s next?”
“The money can wait, but one thing I would like for you to find out, if you don’t mind, is what right do I have to it? Is there someone you can ask?”
“I don’t know who I’d ask off-hand, but I can probably find someone. It’s your house though. The money was there when you bought it, so I would think it’s yours.”
“Well, in the meantime, I want to help you find out everything you’re after so you can figure out whatever it is you’re trying to figure out and move on. That’s what I want to do next. So you tell me what that is.”
“I don’t think anything in the attic is going to help me with that, unless there’s something in the trunk.”
“Let’s do that then.”
“Let’s, as in let us?”
“Whatever I can do from down below, I’ll do, because you won’t catch me climbing up that ladder. But before we go there, I’ve been meaning to ask you, why do you really think Elmer booted you out?”
“If Tymon found my belongings in Elmer’s possession, which I assume he did, I’d say his reason was tied to them somehow. I just don’t know how. Elmer’s a user—once he gets whatever it is he’s after, he’s done with you, and that’s what I think happened.”
“How did you come to meet him?”
“I answered an ad to sublet the office.”
“In the paper?”
“No. It was posted on the bulletin board in the small branch library where I used to go all the time. Why? What are you getting at?”
“Looks like that’s how he lured you in.”
“Which investigative school did you say you went to?”
“I’m just using a little common sense.”
“That could be, but I still don’t know what he would want with me. Maybe it’s tied to him buying my parents’ house.”
“Remember, he’s Henry’s cousin. There’s that tie-in.”
“I know. Well, one thing is for sure—he’s hiding something.”
While we cleared the table and did the dishes, I told her everything I knew about Elmer.
“Henry’s the common factor,” she said after drying the last glass. “And I can handle him,” she added, rolling up her sleeves like she was getting ready to take him on—physically.
I looked at her in disbelief.
“What? You don’t think I can handle that little twerp?”
Nope. I had no doubts.
* * *
Minnie and I had agreed to leave breaking open the trunk for another day. It was supposed to reach eighty degrees, which meant the attic would be a hundred. My room was already unbearably hot, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
I decided to try a new approach on the Midnighter case—sitting in that tree fort was obviously not working. An hour after sunset, I drove to the neighborhood where the thefts had taken place, parked the car at the end of the street, slouched down in the seat, and waited.
Forty-five minutes into my watch, I saw movement halfway down the block—three young boys playing kickball. When one of them got hit in the head with the ball and started crying, the game ended and the boys disappeared.
An hour passed without any activity except for the stumpy-tailed cat crossing the street three times, the last time carrying something in its mouth, probably a bird or mouse or something. My mother used to talk about a cat she once had that would catch a variety of critters at night and leave them on her front porch for her to find in the morning.
By midnight, I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and called it a night. On the drive home, I thought about the necklace Anna was wearing in the photo of her and me in the rocking chair and had an idea. When I got home, I pulled the photo from the evidence box and examined it more carefully.
I retrieved my mother’s jewelry box—one of the few personal things I had of hers—and combed through it. I didn’t find the necklace, but I did notice that the felt lining at the bottom was loose, so I dumped out the contents onto the bed and picked at the lining until it was halfway up. Underneath was a small envelope. Inside it was a key.
Tymon’s ladder was still in the room, on its side tucked behind the dresser so it would be out of the way. It took me a while, but I managed to right the ladder, poke the trapdoor out of the way with the top of it, and then lean it inside the opening. Excited at the possibility that the key might fit the trunk, I started to scramble up the ladder.
Halfway up, the ladder started to slip at the bottom, and there was nothing I could do but fall with it to the floor.
* * *
When I came to, Minnie was saying repeatedly, “You’re all right Gracie. You’re going to be all right.”
All I could see were Minnie’s feet—I was lying face down on the floor, my head pounding.
“The ambulance is on the way.”
“What happened?” I tried to get up, but Minnie held me down.
“They said to keep you stable, for you not to move. You could have internal injuries.”
“What happened?” I asked again.
“You fell off the ladder.”
I closed my eyes until I recalled what I had been doing last.
“Where’s the key?”
“What key, dear?”
“I had a key.”
She patted my head like you would do to a faithful dog and said, “Why don’t you just close your eyes and relax until they get here.”
“Find the key. I must have dropped it.”
“Okay, dear. Whatever you say.”
* * *
I spent two days in the hospital—two days too long, if you asked me. I had a concussion, a fractured kneecap, and eight badly sprained fingers. Apparently, I had forgotten to put that rubber thing in front of the feet of the ladder so it wouldn’t slip, a minor detail that had cost me dearly.
Minnie was in her glory taking care of me, even though she complained about going up and down the stairs at least a hundred times a day. I didn’t need much—just food really—but you couldn’t tell Minnie anything. She had a mind of her own.
They told me my knee had a stable fracture, which meant the broken ends of the bones were aligned right, and as long as they stayed that way, it could heal on its own. Unfortunately, the only way they would remain that way was if I stayed off of that leg. At least the concussion had healed, and my fingers would eventually be good as new.
I had been given a set of crutches, which Minnie hid from me. I was not happy about that, but she was my caregiver and, well, my only friend at that point. Someone had removed the two ladders from my room. No surprise there. So that I could get to the bathroom without putting weight on my knee, Minnie rolled into my bedroom a desk chair on wheels.
I told Minnie that I remembered finding a key in my mother’s jewelry box and was going to see if it fit the trunk in the attic when the accident happened, but she said she had combed the room and found no key. I wondered if maybe the bump on my head had done something to my memory.
It was the afternoon of my third day out of the hospital, and I heard
Minnie coming up the stairs. I could tell what time of day it was by her footfalls on the wooden steps—quick and snappy in the morning, starting to slow down toward the middle of the day, and lethargic and heavy toward evening.
“I brought you some lemonade, dear,” she said. “How does that sound?”
“It would sound better in your kitchen.”
“You’re not supposed to walk on that leg.”
“I could use the crutches if I knew where they were.”
“Crutches down those stairs? Are you crazy? You must have hit your head harder than we thought.”
I glanced over at the area of the floor directly under the attic trapdoor and noticed the glint of something shiny that had caught a ray of sunlight streaming in through the window.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What? Where?”
“Right there, next to that darker floorboard, halfway to the wall.”
Minnie walked over to where I was pointing.
“I don’t see anything.” She took a step toward the window. “This floorboard is loose. I wonder if that happened when you fell.”
“Gee, I hope I didn’t damage anything when I just about killed myself trying to figure out what was in your trunk in your attic.”
“Just remember, Missy, whose idea it was to go up there.”
“It’s in the crack. There’s something shiny in the crack,” I told her.
“I don’t see a thing.”
Then I didn’t see it either because the sun had gone behind a cloud or something. I had one foot on the floor when Minnie stopped me. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“I’ll use the rolling chair!”
“Stay where you are.”
“But the key. I think that’s the key!”
“I don’t see a—”
“Will you do me a big favor?” I asked her.
“That depends.”
“Will you please go get your lantern and shine it on the floor, like the sunlight was doing a minute ago?”
Minnie gave me a look that only she could give, but then proceeded downstairs to fetch the lantern. Her footsteps now sounded like she weighed two hundred pounds.
When Minnie returned, I asked her to sit on my bed while I shined the light. “Now do you see it?”
Regarding Anna Page 14