by Sofie Kelly
“Tuesday night, after the meeting with the town council. Ruby helped me.”
Jaeger had died on Wednesday. “Was Jaeger here?”
“He was in and out,” Maggie said. “Lots of people were.”
It was way too big a coincidence that the puzzle box would belong to anyone but Jaeger Merrill. “Jaeger’s masks were made from metal and found objects, weren’t they?” I said.
She nodded, still shifting through the papers. “They were. He had a great eye.” She pointed at one sketch. “That mask for instance. It was in the store and there was something unsettling about it.” She flipped through the papers underneath that top one, and then suddenly she stopped and turned to look at me. “He did do one piece and the basic face—the base if you will—was made out of wood, several different pieces that he carved and fitted together.”
“It’s possible Jaeger made this,” I said, turning the box over. If he had, he did very fine, meticulous work. “There are hours and hours of work in this.”
“How do you know so much about these boxes?” Maggie asked.
I ducked my head, brushing my hair gingerly off my forehead. “A…friend of mine gave a puzzle box to my dad, and then Dad and Ethan found one at a yard sale and spent an entire weekend trying to get into it.”
I remembered the two of them coming home with their two dollar treasure and I smiled at the memory.
“What is it?” Maggie said.
“I’m just remembering Dad and Ethan, they couldn’t get that box open and pretty soon they were fighting about it. My brother was trying to make this chart with arrows to ‘map the process’ and my father wanted what he called an instinctual approach—in other words, trial and error.” I couldn’t help laughing.
“Finally, my mother came sweeping out from the kitchen—I remember she had some kind of long gold scarf flowing behind her, very dramatic—carrying a wooden meat mallet she’d gotten from who knows where—probably one of the neighbors—threatening to ‘open’ the box herself if they didn’t stop arguing over it.”
Maggie grinned at me. “Did they?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Did they ever get it open?”
“Someone, uh, opened it for them,” I said. I slid my finger over the end of the box and then pushed on an edge. A small section of the side panel extended itself forward. I pushed it back into place and felt along the bottom edge. It took a couple of tries but finally I managed to slide out a thin bottom panel.
“Oh wow,” Maggie said. “Could I try?”
I handed the box over to her. “Go ahead,” I said. “I don’t know how many moving pieces there are and the trick is that you have to move them in the right order or you won’t get the box open.”
She moved her long fingers over the polished wood, sliding the bottom in and out and moving the side section again.
“We should call Marcus,” I said. I looked over the stack of boxes, wondering where the heck Owen was. He could be sitting on the top watching us for all I knew. Given his massive kitty-crush on Maggie I knew he had to be close.
“Right,” she said, so engrossed in playing with the puzzle box, she didn’t even look up. Then my words seemed to register and her head snapped up. “Wait a minute. Why?”
The portfolio was glove-soft leather. The puzzle box had been beautifully crafted by someone, Jaeger, maybe? I had no way of knowing.
I did know neither item seemed to go with Jaeger’s starving artist persona, although they probably fit right in to Christian Ellis’s more lavish lifestyle that Maggie had described to me.
“Because these things ended up in a box of your things less than twenty-four hours before Jaeger died,” I said. “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s as simple as he stashed them in the wrong box. Maybe he was hiding them. Given that we know it looks like he was up to something hinky, I think Marcus needs to know what we found.”
Maggie laced her fingers and squeezed her palms together. “Kathleen, do you think there was something ‘hinky’ about Jaeger’s death?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. All I can tell you is, in my experience, it’s not a good idea to keep secrets from Marcus.”
Maggie nodded. “You’re right. I just wish we could call your dad or your brother and maybe get this thing open.”
I gave her the Mr. Spock eyebrow. It’s very impressive. “I didn’t say we couldn’t do that as well.” I pulled out my cell phone. “Do you want to call Peter, first?” I asked, holding it out to her.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Maggie said with certainty. “I’m not going around acting like I need to protect myself when I haven’t done anything wrong.” She dipped her head toward the phone. “Call him.”
I hesitated. While I felt it was important to let Marcus know about the box and the portfolio, I wasn’t sure we should keep Peter out of the loop.
Maggie narrowed her eyes at me and gestured to the phone. “Call Marcus,” she said. “Or I will.”
I punched in the number for Marcus’s cell, which I had memorized for some unknown reason, and he answered on the fourth ring. I explained that Maggie and I had found something at the studio that he needed to see. He didn’t ask what or how or why. All he said was, “I’m about ten minutes away.” I told him one of us would be at the back door to let him in and hung up.
“I’ll go down and wait for him,” Maggie said. She handed the puzzle box to me and stood up, brushing her hands on her pants. “That thing’s worse than Rubik’s Cube.”
She headed down the stairs. After a moment I got to my feet and looked around for Owen. I couldn’t see him anywhere.
“Owen!” I hissed.
Nothing. Where the heck was he?
I looked around all the boxes and then walked to the far end of the hall. “Owen, where are you?” I whispered. Why did he have to pick now to prove I had zero control over what he did?
It occurred to me that maybe he’d knocked that cardboard box off the top of the pile because there was something he wanted me to see inside. Had he been able to somehow smell that the leather portfolio had belonged to Jaeger Merrill? Heaven knows he could smell a catnip chicken over in Rebecca’s kitchen.
I crouched down in the middle of the hall. I heard Maggie letting Marcus in downstairs. “Owen!” I hissed again. “Stop messing with me!”
Almost as fast as a finger snap he was there in front of me, with the same smug smile as the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary, although in this case it was a piece of paper, not a yellow bird. And Owen hadn’t swallowed it. It had just been in his mouth.
He spit the torn piece of paper at my feet and put a paw on it for emphasis.
“I see it,” I said. “Now go get in the bag.” I could hear Maggie and Marcus on the stairs. He looked at the canvas bag on the floor where I’d left it by Maggie’s door. I swear he smirked at me.
And then he disappeared.
25
“Thanks for calling me,” Marcus said. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved blue T-shirt over a long-sleeved gray one.
I’d gotten to my feet and was waiting, holding the portfolio and the puzzle box when he got to the top of the stairs.
“You’re welcome,” I said. I handed him the leather case.
“Maggie said you found this in a box of her things?”
I pointed to the cardboard carton, still on its side on the floor. “It definitely belongs…belonged to Jaeger. Maggie recognized the top sketch.”
He flipped through some of the other papers without comment, then looked at the puzzle box. “And the box? What’s in that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He smiled. “You didn’t look?”
“We couldn’t.” I handed him the box. “It’s a puzzle box.”
He frowned. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Maggie reached over and took the box out of his hands. “See? There’s a piece here that slides out. And
another on the opposite side.”
I took a few steps away from them and pulled out my phone. I counted eleven rings before my father answered.
“Hello, my sweetheart,” he said. “I knew it was you.”
“No you didn’t,” I said, smiling at the sound of his voice.
“I did,” he insisted. “You’re the only person who wouldn’t hang up when I didn’t answer right away.”
That was true. “So what took you so long?”
“I was trying on my leather pants.”
It wasn’t quite as odd as it sounded, given that my dad had played a number of dashing, leather-clad swordsmen over the years. Still…“Do I want to know why?” I asked.
He laughed. “Probably not.” My dad had a great laugh, deep and rumbly. I could almost feel the vibration in my chest and for a moment the longing to be back in Boston with my family took my breath away.
I had to swallow a couple of times before I could speak. “Dad, um, I called because Maggie and I have a puzzle box we need to get into. Do you think you could help?”
“I can try sweetheart. I’m assuming you don’t know who made the box or anything about it.”
I glanced back at Maggie and Marcus. Marcus had his cop face on and Maggie looked very serious. “No, Dad,” I said, quietly. “I don’t. But this is important.”
There was silence on the other end for a moment. “Katie, there’s something you’re not telling me. Probably more than one thing, but interrogating you is your mother’s job so all I’m going to say is please be careful, whatever it is you’re doing.”
“I will, Dad,” I promised.
“Describe the box,” he said.
I walked over to Marcus and Maggie and silently held out my hand. Marcus gave me the box. I described what I was looking at to Dad.
“It’s not an antique, is it?” he asked.
“No, it’s not. I think it was made fairly recently.”
“How far out does the piece on the right side move?”
I worked at it and told him.
“Okay, let’s see what we can do,” he said.
We probably tried six or seven different combinations of moves, but the box didn’t open. I could see Marcus was getting impatient, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. Finally I shook my head and handed it back to him, taking a few steps away.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Katie,” Dad said.
Marcus had turned the puzzle box over and was studying the underside.
“I’m guessing it would be a bad idea to try to pry it open.”
“You could damage what’s inside,” Dad said. “My advice would be to either keep trying—maybe there’s a part we missed—or”—he hesitated—“if you really need to get this box open, ask someone who knows a lot more about them than I do.”
Roma’s wonderful meal suddenly felt like a piece of stone from Wild Rose Bluff in my stomach. “I don’t really want to do that, Dad,” I said in a low voice.
“I know,” he said.
“Thanks for trying.” I wished that he were a lot closer so I could hug him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help. Call your mother when you have time. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said.
I disconnected the call and looked over at Maggie. Owen adored her. Hercules liked her and I had no idea how I would have adjusted to life in Minnesota if we hadn’t become friends.
I walked back over to her just in time to see her shake her head angrily at Marcus.
“I don’t know how to open that box,” she said, enunciating each word slowly and carefully. “I don’t know what Jaeger was doing, but whatever it was, I wasn’t part of it.”
She reached over and grabbed the top carton from the pile by her door and thrust it at Marcus. “Here. You want to search my things for evidence? Go ahead!”
“Maggie, I’m just trying to do my job,” Marcus said. There were tight lines around his mouth.
I took a deep breath and let it out. I put one hand on Maggie’s shoulder and the other on Marcus’s arm. “Stop,” I said. My voice was louder than I intended and it bounced off the walls of the hallway.
“I might have another resource,” I said. I was surprised that my voice didn’t shake. It was the only part of me that wasn’t. “Just give me a minute.”
I opened my phone and dialed a number from memory and my heart pounded as it rang on the other end. He answered and for a moment I literally couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t speak. Then somehow I remembered how to do both.
“Hi Andrew,” I said. “It’s Kathleen.”
26
Maggie’s mouth actually dropped open a little.
Marcus was watching me and I had to work not to let my emotions show on my face or creep into my voice.
“Kathleen.” I heard Andrew swallow on the other end of the phone. “How are you?”
We hadn’t spoken in a year. I could see his face even without closing my eyes, his sandy blond hair, blue eyes and just a hint of a smile warming up his face. Was he in his office with his feet on the desk, tilted back in the old wooden office chair? Or was he upstairs sitting on the edge of the bed?
I gave my head a little shake to chase away the images because it didn’t matter. “I’m well,” I said. “How are you?”
“I…all right. It’s starting to get busy, work I mean.”
It felt so awkward to be making small talk with him. I needed to get to the point. “I, uh, need your help with something,” I said. Quickly, I explained the bones of the problem and that Dad hadn’t been able to help. Andrew didn’t ask why I needed to open a puzzle box that clearly didn’t belong to me. He didn’t even ask why I’d called him, although he had to have guessed what it was costing me.
“Describe the box,” he said.
I took it from Marcus again and explained what it looked like, trying to give him as much detail as possible.
“Any chance you could send me some photos?”
I looked at Maggie. “Can we take some pictures of the box with your phone and e-mail them to Andrew?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Do you have the same e-mail address?” I asked.
“I do,” Andrew said. “Nothing’s changed.”
No. Nothing had changed, including the fact that he’d taken off on a fishing trip with his buddies after we’d had a fight and had come back married to a waitress from a fifties diner that he’d met on the second day of the trip. The fact that a fair amount of alcohol had been involved hadn’t made me feel any better about it.
Maggie snapped the pictures and e-mailed them.
“Got them,” Andrew said after a minute. I heard a creak, the kind of thing that sounded like a horror movie sound effect. I knew it was his old chair, which meant he was in the downstairs office.
“Whoever made the box does nice work,” he said approvingly.
“Do you know how to open it?” I asked.
“I think so. It looks like a pattern I’ve seen before.” He gave me instructions and I relayed them to Marcus who followed each one precisely.
“Cross your fingers,” Andrew said, finally. “Let’s hope I’m right.”
He was. Marcus twisted the bottom panel and the top of the puzzle box opened. He nodded, and Maggie, who’d alternated between watching Marcus and watching me with troubled eyes, gave a small smile.
I moved away from them again.
“Thank you, Andrew, your help means a lot,” I said. The conversation was back to being awkward.
“Are you happy Kathleen?” he said quickly, probably thinking I was about to go.
“I am,” I said. “I really am.”
It was true. Maggie was my best friend, and while I didn’t have a clue what exactly Marcus was, I was happy to have him in my life, even when he annoyed the heck out of me—which was at least fifty percent of the time. And I had Roma, and Rebecca, and everyone at the library, and the Taylors and of course Owen and Hercules. I didn’t know what was
going to happen when my contract with the library board was up, but if they did ask me to stay, it would be very hard to say no.
“I miss you,” Andrew said, so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “I screwed it all up and I’m sorry.”
“I have to go,” I said. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” he said.
I closed the phone and turned back to Mags and Marcus. They were looking at the contents of the puzzle box. There were some photographs and sketches inside, along with an old fountain pen and that was it.
“Is that Santa Claus?” I asked, pointing to one drawing.
“Looks like it,” Marcus said.
Several of the photos were images of the Coca-Cola Santa. There were a couple of a bearded older man who felt familiar, maybe because of his resemblance to the Coke Santa in his red suit.
The sketches had obviously been done by Jaeger Merrill; they were his style and every bit of extra white space was covered with notes in his crablike handwriting.
“Why did Jaeger have a bunch of drawings of Santa Claus?” I asked.
“Don’t you get it?” Maggie asked. Her eyes danced and her cheeks were flushed.
It took a moment, but then I remembered decorating the library the previous Christmas with Mary and Abigail and hearing about Mayville Heights’s alleged connection to the iconic Christmas image. “Of course,” I said, nodding my head.
Marcus looked blankly at us.
Mags gestured at the pictures of the bearded man. “Does he look familiar?”
“No. Who is it?” Marcus asked.
I held up a hand. “Wait a second.” I leaned in a little closer. “Look. Take away some hair and thin the face a little.” He still didn’t see it. I looked at Maggie. “This is Everett’s father, Carson, isn’t it?”
She grinned her approval. “And these pictures and sketches, they just prove that the rumors were right.”
“What rumors?” Marcus said. There was a touch of irritation in his tone.
“That Carson Henderson was Santa Claus, of course,” Maggie said.
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