The Gift of the Magpie

by Donna Andrews

  Chapter 7

  “There you are,” Michael said, when I walked into the kitchen. “I was just about to call and see if we should come and join one of your Helping Hands projects.”

  They all looked considerably less contented than I’d have expected of people who were munching on freshly baked gingerbread persons.

  “I thought you guys were going Christmas shopping,” I said.

  “We just spent two hours trying,” Michael said. “And we bought exactly one present.”

  “Yeah, but I think we’re going to have to return it,” Josh said. “I just figured out that Mason already has that game.”

  “His grandparents get him every new game as soon as it comes out,” Jamie said, with a sigh. “It’s really exasperating.”

  “Not for Mason, I expect.” Although I knew from conversations with their good friend’s mother that it frustrated her as well. “And I bet you guys enjoy it, as long as you’re not trying to buy him a present.”

  “So I’ve suggested that we do what you always do at a time like this,” Michael went on.

  “Buy gift cards?” I was only partly kidding.

  “No—we’re going to do something else with our conscious minds,” he said. “And see if our subconscious minds can come up with some good present ideas. So, you got any Helping Hands projects that the boys and I could pitch in on today?”

  “You could ask Dad when he’s going to manure Mrs. Diamandis’s rose garden,” I suggested.

  “Ick,” Josh said. “If we really have to.”

  “It’s kind of cold today,” Jamie said. “It might be better if we could help Grandpa do something indoors.”

  “Or you could come over and help us clear out Mr. Dunlop’s house,” I suggested. “It’s mostly indoors, and we need a lot of volunteers.”

  “Mr. Dunlop?” Michael echoed. “You mean Harvey the Hoarder?”

  “A real live hoarder?” Jamie asked. “Like on TV?”

  “That would be gross,” Josh said—but his tone reminded me that at their age, gross might not be a deal-killer.

  “Just like on TV,” I said. “But if you go, there are two rules you have to follow.”

  “I knew there was a catch,” Josh grumbled.

  “First, no matter what, you do not make fun of Mr. Dunlop or his stuff.”

  They nodded.

  “And the second is that you don’t throw anything away unless Mr. Dunlop says you can.”

  “Then what are we going to do with his stuff?” Jamie sounded puzzled. For that matter, Josh and Michael looked puzzled.

  “We’re packing it in boxes and taking them over to the Furniture World building,” I said. “So he can take his time sorting it over there while a Helping Hands team fixes up his house so it doesn’t fall down.”

  “Sounds weird,” Josh said.

  “But we can do it,” Jamie said.

  So as soon as they’d all changed into the oldest clothes we could find, Michael and I headed over to Mr. Dunlop’s house with the twins in tow.

  Back at Harvey the Hoarder’s things were … well, not exactly hopping. But at least I could see some signs of progress. There were rather a lot of cars and pickups parked on both sides of the street, so presumably there were volunteers at work inside. Either that or more Haverhills had arrived to glower at him from afar.

  Actually, I could see three of them now. Morris and Ernest were leaning against the middle of their three cars, with their arms crossed, looking straight ahead as if ignoring each other. In between and facing them was a woman, not quite as tall but just as thin and angular. She seemed to be lecturing them. Or perhaps that was merely the Haverhill style of conversation.

  Michael dropped me in front of the house and the boys rode off with him to find the nearest parking space. Very near the front walk I spotted a familiar sight—Rose Noire’s van with its faded lavender paint job and the HERBAL vanity plate. Given how close she was to the door, I decided that she must have been one of the first volunteers Mother recruited.

  An enormous truck from the Shiffley Moving Company was parked directly in front of the house and a small squad of athletic-looking teenagers—two girls and five boys—were lounging in or near it, all either staring at their cell phones or showing their cell phones to each other. They looked up when I arrived, several of the boys scrambled to their feet, and they all greeted me with either “Hey, Ms. Langslow,” or “Hey, Ms. Waterston,” depending on which name they’d met me under.

  “We’re on call,” one of the girls said, as if to explain why they weren’t inside working.

  “As soon as they have something packed and ready to load, they text me and we go in to get it,” one of the boys explained, a little self-importantly. “But we’re not supposed to hover around inside, ’cause it might make him nervous.”

  “Is stuff coming out steadily?” I asked.

  “It’s pretty d—.… um, darned slow,” the girl said. “But yeah. Slow but steady.”

  “This is our second load,” said the boy who seemed to be—or at least thought himself—the boss.

  “First load was barely half full,” another of the boys pointed out.

  “Yeah, but Ms. Cordelia thought it was important to get some things over to the furniture store as soon as possible,” the first boy said. “She thinks as more and more of his stuff goes over there he’ll start being drawn there, and it’ll get progressively easier to pack and move the rest. We’ll probably take this load over pretty soon.”

  I glanced inside the truck. About half full. I could spot several small items of furniture—an easy chair almost completely concealed by quilted mover’s pads, a small chest of drawers in a similar state—but most of the load consisted of Shiffley Moving Company boxes, in two sizes (medium and large), neatly stacked, all bearing labels with four digit numbers on them. I spotted one box labeled BOX 0123. Did that mean they’d already packed over a hundred boxes? That was a good sign, surely.

  “All right,” I heard one of the kids say. “Here comes the Not Just Tacos Truck!”

  Several of the other kids cheered.

  I turned to see the flamboyant maroon-and-gold food truck coming down the street toward us. Deacon Washington, who was at the wheel, seemed to be eyeing the available parking dubiously. The volunteers’ vehicles filled most of the space on both sides of the street and nearly to both ends of the block.

  “Can we move a few vehicles to make room for him close to the house?” I asked. “Because the sooner he gets settled—”

  I didn’t have to finish the thought. While the teenagers sprang into action, I strolled over to welcome the deacon. The food truck was his new pet project. It had started life as a taco truck, but once Abner Washington bought it he’d expanded its menu to include ham biscuits, pulled pork sandwiches, French fries, onion rings, coleslaw, chili, split pea soup, fried chicken, fried catfish, ribs, black-eyed peas, collards, candied yams, cornbread, hush puppies, egg drop soup, and sweet-and-sour chicken. It was painted to match the robes worn by the New Life Baptist Church’s world-famous choir. Most of the time the deacon operated it at public events to raise funds to support the choir’s activities, but lately he’d taken to showing up at Helping Hands projects and feeding the volunteers for free. Well, technically for free; he had a donation box somewhere on the truck, and once told me the donations—all of which went to support the choir—usually came to more than he’d have made selling his food, without all the trouble of making change.

  My mouth had started watering at the mere sight of his truck.

  “Morning,” he said. “Once I get parked we’ll be ready to serve in about half an hour. Can you take a menu card in for the volunteers to see?”

  “Gladly,” I said. “Although most of the old hands have probably memorized it and already know what they want. Save me a few of those ham biscuits.”

  He laughed and saluted. I took the menu card and went inside.

  The living room was—well, not transformed yet. But clea
rly a transformation was underway. Two women were slowly packing things in boxes. Slowly, because they were using their cell phones to take a picture of every single object before they wrapped it in paper and put it into a box. One of them looked up and I recognized Joyce Grossman, wife of the rabbi of Temple Beth-El.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “Slowly but surely.” She sat back on her heels and held up her phone. “We’re making a kind of visual inventory. So if he suddenly decides he needs something, we can track down which box it’s in.”

  I tried to imagine the circumstances under which Mr. Dunlop might feel the sudden need for a gilt-trimmed Victorian mustache cup, an Art Deco smoking stand, or a pair of bronze bookends shaped like peacocks. My imagination wasn’t quite up to the job. Joyce laughed at my expression.

  “If it keeps him happy,” she said. “And keeps us moving forward.”

  “Amen,” I said. “Carry on.”

  In the kitchen, several more workers were emptying Mr. Dunlop’s pantry and putting most of the foodstuffs into black plastic garbage bags. As I watched, one of them picked up a box of cake mix, turned it around until she found the expiration date, rolled her eyes, and stuffed it into the bag. Had Mr. Dunlop noticed this? If he was coping this well with trashing food—even food that the eye roll suggested was laughably past its expiration date—maybe this was going to be easier than I thought.

  I glanced over at the kitchen table. It was clear now, except for what appeared to be an ornately carved box in the center. Mr. Dunlop was sitting in his usual place. Cordelia and Rose Noire, sitting opposite him, looked absorbed in whatever he was saying.

  “—it’s actually strips of intricately tooled wood layered on top of a cigar box.” He lifted up the box’s lid, and turned it so they could see that the inside of the lid said, in ornate gold-accented lettering, “Hirschl & Bendheim’s Prime Strictly Long Havana Filler.”

  “Tramp art,” Cordelia said. “One of my great uncles was fond of doing something rather like this.”

  Mr. Dunlop seemed cheerful. In fact, he looked up and waved when he saw me.

  “They’ve found my Christmas tree,” he announced. “The artificial one. I thought of buying a new one, but I knew the other one must be around here somewhere.”

  “And we’re going to set it up in the front window of the furniture store where everyone can enjoy it,” Cordelia announced. “Harvey’s got a lot of nice antique ornaments that we should come across sooner or later.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “Hey—we could throw a little party and help you decorate it.”

  “What would I serve?” He glanced over at the pantry crew and his expression looked less happy.

  “We’ll make it a potluck party,” I said. “Much more fun. Speaking of food, the Not Just Tacos Truck is here—put your orders in.”

  I handed Mr. Dunlop the menu card—Cordelia and Rose Noire, as regular volunteers, probably didn’t need to look at it by now. I left them discussing the options.

  “Oh, I do wish I knew whether the collards are truly vegetarian,” Rose Noire sighed.

  “Probably not,” Cordelia said. “Go for the pulled pork, Harvey. It’s to die for. Or the ribs.”

  I left them to it and went out into the living room. Joyce was shaking her russet curls over the object she was about to photograph—a set of six pink china elephants in graduated sizes, from over a foot tall to barely an inch.

  I went down the hall to see what was happening in the bedrooms. Only two, thank goodness, and both small.

  In the first bedroom—the one that actually appeared to be used as a bedroom—Randall Shiffley and my cousin Horace were practicing some kind of odd dance step. They slowly circled the room, taking a short step forward and then bouncing slightly on the forward foot. Then another step and more bouncing. I watched in puzzlement.

  “I think that’s the only bad place,” Randall said finally.

  “So far,” Horace answered. “We’ve only cleared about half the floor.”

  “Oh, I get it,” I said. “Testing for rotten boards?”

  “My foot went clear through the floor over there,” Horace said, pointing toward one corner of the room.

  “Once we get it emptied out we can tell whether it’s worth patching, or whether we should just put down a whole new floor,” Randall said. “And that ceiling’s gotta go. Place will be a whole lot less claustrophobic when that’s back to a normal eight-foot height.”

  He scowled up at the ceiling—which was only a few inches from the top of his head. Of course, Randall was at least six three and wearing cowboy boots that probably added another two inches to his height, but still.

  “Are you seriously planning to raise the ceiling?” I asked. “Won’t that be a big project?”

  “We don’t actually have to raise the ceiling,” he said. “Just expose the real one. What you see is a drop ceiling.”

  “Why would anyone deliberately make their ceiling lower?” I asked.

  “Well, the house dates from around 1900, maybe 1910,” Randall said. “Long before air-conditioning was invented. Most people in that situation just use window units, but if you really want central air, you can have it as long as you can retrofit your house with some kind of duct system. Which is what they did—probably in the eighties, by the look of it. And did a pretty half-baked job of it. They ran all the ductwork across the ceiling, then covered the whole thing over with that false ceiling.” He frowned and shook his head.

  “I gather you disapprove,” I said. “What would you have done—run the ductwork through the crawl space?”

  “That would work,” he said. “Though they’d have had to cut openings through these nice oak floors—”

  “Formerly nice oak floors,” Horace muttered.

  “And they might not have wanted to do that. Looks as if there’d also be room to run the ductwork up in the attic space—that would be my preference. Either one would be preferable to this nonsense.” He reached up and slapped the ceiling dismissively. “Even if they had to go with the drop ceiling option, they could have taken a little more trouble and kept it to a few inches instead of more than a foot. Not sure if whoever did this was lazy or stupid or both. But never mind. Once we get this place emptied out we’ll figure out the best way.”

  He looked around with an almost proprietary expression and just a touch of impatience, as if he couldn’t wait to get his hands on poor Mr. Dunlop’s much-abused house.

  Just then we heard thumping coming from below.

  “I hope that’s not rats.” Horace looked anxious.

  “Only someone in the crawl space,” Randall said. “Can you call out the window and ask what they’re doing?”

  “Not at the moment,” Horace said. “Give me an hour and I can work my way over to it.”

  “I have a better idea.” Randall went over to the corner where Horace had put his foot through the floor and put his face down near the hole. “What’s going on down there?”

  “Whole crawl space is full of lumber and cinder blocks and other junk,” Michael called back. “I’m going to start pulling it out.”

  “I’ll come and help,” Randall said. He stood and turned to us. “Probably a good idea to check out the crawl space,” he added. “Might give me an idea of where else the floor’s gone bad.” With that he strode out.

  “At least we’re cleaning this place out now,” Horace said. “It’s a total death trap. What if he had a fire here? Or fell and broke something? And can you imagine what it would be like if he died in here?”

  “No,” I said. “And I’d rather not try.”

  “Actually, you don’t want to.” He shook his head. “But take it from me—it’s a darn good thing we’re straightening him out.”

  With that he went back to packing.

  I left him to it and went back out into the hall. From the bathroom I could hear someone humming “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” in a soft contralto. I stuck my head in and saw my friend Aida stuff
ing towels in white plastic garbage bags.

  “We’re throwing the towels away?” I asked.

  “No—trash goes in the black plastic bags.” She had to pull down a dust mask to speak. “So he can’t see in and change his mind. White plastic’s for laundry. Because everything in his linen closet’s covered with dust.”

  “Good plan.” I glanced across the hall at the closed door to the back bedroom.

  “No one working in there yet?” I asked.

  “Check it out,” she said.

  I took a step closer and opened the door. A small avalanche of paper landed on me. And I was lucky it was only a small avalanche. The opening was full of paper, up to within a few inches of the top of the opening.

  “I guess he uses this bedroom as an office,” I said.

  “Not sure the word ‘uses’ is exactly accurate—he does his computer work on a laptop at the kitchen table. But yeah, he calls that his office. Here—” Aida handed me several flattened moving boxes and a roll of packing tape. “You knock it down, you pack it.”

  So I assembled a couple of small boxes and began filling them with paper. At first I thought I’d try to do a little rough sorting and pack like papers together, but the piles were so random that I soon gave up. I was unearthing bills, newspaper clippings, magazines, envelopes of photographs, promotional calendars, appliance manuals, coupons, letters, and who knew what else—all mixed together in what seemed like no particular order.

  I gave up trying to sort—that could come later. I concentrated on filling boxes. And wondering why no one had ever taught Harvey the proper use of file folders.

  Half a dozen boxes later, I started when someone came up behind me.

  “Wow, this is awesome!”

  Chapter 8

  I turned to see Josh and Jamie standing in the hallway. Josh, who had spoken, was looking around as if Mr. Dunlop’s hoarder house was a fascinating tourist attraction, or possibly a special event organized just for his entertainment. Jamie, who was eating the last few bites of one of Deacon Washington’s tacos, looked more troubled.