by Loretta Ross
Reynolds nodded to himself, pulled his backup piece, checked the safety, and passed it to Death butt-first.
“You’re lending me your gun?”
“Just until you get your own back tomorrow.”
Humbled, Death took the gun with an awkward nod. “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
“I did a background check on you. I don’t just know that your lungs are messed up, I know how they got that way. You can just give that gun back tomorrow.”
“Why was Eric Farrington answering 911 calls?” Wren asked. Death shot her a quick look, grateful for the change of topic.
“He wasn’t,” the chief said. “A technician working on the phones accidentally routed one of the 911 lines to the jail. Eric tells me you threatened to cut his balls off, by the way. I told him not to worry. If anyone really believed he had any balls, they’d have cut them off years ago.”
Death snickered, then regretted it as it triggered a coughing fit that had black spots dancing in front of his eyes again.
The chief pounded him on the back until he could breath, then turned his attention to Wren. “I doubt Fairchild will be back anytime soon. He’ll have to know that we’re going to be watching your house now. But if he does come back, we’ll get him.”
“Unless,” Death added, “you atlatl him first.”
six
A loud bang jolted Wren awake with a painful gasp and a tight knot of terror in her chest.
“Screen door next door.”
Death’s voice was calm, but she was lying with her head against his arm and she could feel his heart beating like a trip hammer.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
They lay side by side on top of Wren’s bed, both clad in sweats, Chief Reynold’s gun within easy reach on the nightstand. There hadn’t been any real discussion about Death staying the night. It just happened. The police dug the bullets out of her living room walls and nailed sheets of old plywood over the shattered front window and the window in the door. Death had showered and changed while there were still cops obvious in the yard, then he’d stood guard at the bathroom door while she did the same.
“Are we still going back to the Campbell place this morning?” she asked.
“Do you still want to? I’ll understand if you’re afraid.”
“No, I want to. I’m not letting that … that …”
“Scumbag?” Death suggested. “Weasel? Scoundrel? Creep?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘son of a bitch’.”
Death sat up and grinned down at her.
“Son of a bitch works for me.”
“Okay, so, I’m not letting that son of a bitch control me. How about we have some breakfast and then go see if we can’t find ourselves some jewels?”
_____
“Is your truck running okay?”
Death was riding to the Campbell place in Wren’s truck and he frowned and leaned over, trying to see the gauges.
“Why?” she asked, instantly panicked. “Do you hear a funny noise? Is it shimmying or bobbling? Do you smell antifreeze or burning or something?”
“No, it’s just that we’re barely moving.”
She frowned over at him. “It’s going as fast as I always go.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You mean you’re driving like this on purpose?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m doing almost the speed limit, you know.”
“Huh. You drive like a little old lady.”
“How do you think they get to be little old ladies?”
“Cute. Well, I’m gonna be a little old man by the time we get anywhere.”
She shot him a sly, sideways glance. “So, you’re saying that you’re a little man?”
“Oh, no!” He raised his hand and wagged a finger at her as she cackled at him. “You did not even go there.”
They stopped first at the pawn shop to ransom Death’s gun, then went to the police station to return the Chief’s. There was little new information on Declan Fairchild. The Chevelle had been stolen from a used car lot and had turned up abandoned in the next town over, atlatl dart still embedded in the back window.
“Just for the record,” Reynolds asked, “why did you feel the need to throw a spear at him. He was already driving away, wasn’t he?”
“I wanted to encourage him to not come back.”
The Campbell house and property took up almost an entire block. Death made Wren circle it twice before she pulled into the driveway.
Death grinned and looked down at her. “Remind me,” he said, “am I protecting you today or are you protecting me?”
“We’re protecting each other.”
“You’re unarmed.”
“I have my slingshot hidden in my bra,” she said, and then leaned away when he tried to see.
“Why didn’t you bring your atlatl?”
“My bra’s not that big.”
He laughed out loud at that, swinging down from the truck, loose and carefree and yet watching, always watching, looking for movement in the shadows and securing the perimeter.
Wren came around the truck with a set of keys at the ready and he followed her onto the porch, peering through the windows into the dim interior. When he was satisfied the coast was clear he nodded to her. She unlocked the big front door and he guarded her back and allowed her to lead the way inside.
“You know, the last time I was here was when I found the dead body.”
“Yeah. Try not to do that anymore.”
The front door opened into a massive formal entry hall.
“This room is a perfect cube,” Wren said. “It’s sixteen feet square and sixteen feet tall. The staircase is made from Virginia oak that was shipped by barge up the Mississippi and then across on the Missouri to Independence, where it was transferred to horse-drawn wagons for the remainder of the journey.”
“Not by train?”
“The railroads didn’t come this far west yet.”
“I see. And is Virginia oak really that much better than Missouri oak?”
“They apparently thought so. If nothing else, having to ship it would have made it outrageously expensive. That would have been a bragging point. I think the wood for the parquet floors came from Virginia too.”
Even in the dim light and under a heavy coat of dust, the wood floors gleamed. Police tracks criss-crossed it, the overall sense of disorder a nagging itch at Death’s military soul. He wanted to go find a private and make him clean it. The Virginia oak staircase rose from the center of the room, met a landing six feet up the back wall and divided into two smaller stairs that climbed left and right to a mezzanine that circled the hall on the second floor.
Dust sheets covered everything, from sparse groups of furniture that Death suspected were more for show than for use to the framed pictures covering the walls.
Wren began pointing out doorways, beginning on their left. “There’s the sitting room, then the morning room, then the formal dining room. The kitchen is down that hall at the back. It’s actually a converted housekeeper’s sitting room. The original kitchen was in a separate building out the back. That way, if it caught fire, it wouldn’t burn the whole place down. There’s also a pantry and some other utility rooms down there. Oh, and the bathroom, if you need it. The Historical Society got the lights and water turned on again.”
“That was considerate of them.”
“Well, as soon as we get done with the auction they’re going to start working in here anyway, getting it ready to open as a museum.” She half turned and indicated the doors on their right. “The study is at the back, then the library, then the parlor. The tower opens into the parlor and that’s where I found the naked dead guy.” She hesitated for a minute, chewing her lower lip. “I don’t suppose you’d like to go make sure that he’s gone, would you?”
Death laughed. “The cops took the body away two days ago!”
“Yeah. And your point is?”
&n
bsp; He chucked her on the nose, walked past and checked the parlor. “Yup, no naked dead guys here. Though there could be a naked live guy, if you think you’d like that.”
Her face turned red and she glanced away, embarrassed. “You’re incorrigible!”
“Think of it as a teachable moment. Guy offers to take his clothes off for you: Straight guy.”
She stuck out her tongue at him and took a firmer hold on her notebook. “So. Where do we start?”
“What would you normally do? What were you doing when you found the naked dead guy?”
“I was walking around looking at everything going, ‘dang! Where do I start?’”
Death laughed. “Let me re-phrase that. What is it you need to do for the auction?”
“I need to make a list of everything in here, then track down the provenance on everything I can. Then we’ll take the list to the Historical Society and they’ll decide what pieces they want to keep for display and what pieces they want to sell. It’s going to take a long time to prepare this auction, but when it happens it’ll be huge. Not only is there a lot of stuff in the rooms, but the attic and two of the outbuildings are crammed too. Sam and Roy looked it over when they put in the bid to do the auction and they think it’s a hodgepodge of things ranging from priceless antiques to plain old junk.”
“So maybe clear the house first, then the attic and then the outbuildings?”
“Yeah. When we get to the attic and outbuildings I’ll conscript some of the grandsons to come do the lifting.”
“The grandsons?”
“Keystone Auctioneers is a family business. Originally it was Roy and Sam and their dad. Now it’s them and their sons and grandsons.” She looked around again. “Why don’t we start with the furniture?”
Death started pulling the dust sheets from the furniture. Wren watched him, frowning slightly and chewing on her lower lip.
“What’s the matter?”
“You know, you don’t have to help me. I know you’re really here to look for the jewels.”
“Right. But the best way for me to do that, I think, is to get a feel for the house. Helping you is as good a way to do that as anything.”
Wren nodded, but still didn’t look happy. After a minute, Death set aside his armload of dust sheets and went over to cup her cheek in his palm.
“I’m not going to pass out on you again.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She sighed and nodded and followed him back to the door. He’d uncovered a chunky wooden combination hat rack/umbrella stand and she photographed it and recorded the pictures in her spiral notebook. He searched through the compartments, not really expecting to find anything but wanting to be thorough. Wren was still uneasy, working her way up to asking him something, and he waited patiently.
“Death?”
“Mmm?”
“Would you tell me what happened to your lungs?”
“You didn’t get the story from Chief Reynolds?”
“No. I tried, but he said I should ask you. He just said that you’re a good man.”
Death ducked his head, more embarrassed by praise than he would have been by censure. “It was in Afghanistan. I was wounded in action.” He stopped there, but she only waited in silence so after a moment he went on. “Hummer we were riding in hit an IED, then came under fire from insurgents. I had three guys with me. We were all banged up to some extent, but I got two of them out and under cover. Our driver, though was trapped behind the steering wheel. I went back for him and got him free, but we barely made it clear of the vehicle before it took a direct hit and exploded. I took a chest full of shrapnel. Everybody thought we’d been killed when the Hummer went up, and we had to hide out in a dirty cellar for three days before we were able to contact U.N. forces. My injuries got infected and I wound up with double pneumonia and a collapsed lung.”
He stopped and grinned down at Wren, who was watching him with tears in her eyes. “I got all my guys out. They’re all okay now.”
Wren sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I think the chief was right,” she said.
_____
It took all morning to work their way from room to room on the first floor, uncovering and documenting furniture. Wren was obviously reluctant to go back into the parlor and Death tried to tease her out of it. Finally, as noon approached, they had nowhere else to go unless they wanted to move up to the second floor. Death caught Wren eying the staircase longingly and took her shoulders.
“Hey. I know you’re not real anxious to go back in the parlor, but the more you put it off, the worse it’s going to be. I already checked it, remember? No more naked dead guys, I promise.”
She hesitated. “Did it smell … funny?”
“Funny like a clown?”
She smacked his arm, hard.
“Ow! Hey, wounded warrior here, remember?”
She rolled her eyes and he grinned down at her. “Okay, sorry. No, it didn’t smell like anything but dust. I promise. The body wasn’t there long enough.”
Wren looked doubtful but finally followed him into the parlor, half hiding behind him and sniffing cautiously. Once they stood in the center of the room, she finally relaxed and moved away.
“This is a nice room, as long as there’s no dead guy here.”
“Yeah, it’s bright. Got a nice feel to it.”
“A lot of hiding places,” she suggested. “I’ve always thought the Civil War jewels were probably hidden in some secret compartment built into the walls or something. Maybe they could be in here.”
“Maybe.” Death let his doubts creep into his tone.
“You don’t think so?”
“What happened to Carolina’s husband? You said he was away fighting for the Confederacy. Did he survive the war?”
“Yeah, he lived to be in his nineties.”
“And you’re sure he never found the jewels? If he was a Southern sympathizer, his fortunes probably went downhill after the war was over. Maybe he sold the jewels and was just too proud to let anyone know.”
“No, we know he didn’t find them because he spent the rest of his life looking for them. In 1872 he even had a big party where he invited everyone in to try to help him find them. He re-married that year and wanted to give them to his new bride. Of course, that started a bunch of ghost stories about Carolina guarding the jewels because she didn’t want another woman wearing them.”
Here in the dust and sunshine the room had a pensive air. Standing in a home that had outlived its family in all their generations, Death could well believe there were ghost stories, and maybe more than stories even. He didn’t think he’d like this mansion nearly so well in darkness, even without a naked dead guy.
“Huh. Well, okay, then. If he didn’t find the jewels, then they weren’t in any kind of secret compartment in the walls.”
“How do you know?”
“His family built this house. If there were secret compartments, he’d have known about them.”
Wren smacked herself in the forehead. “How come I never thought of that? It sounds so obvious when you point it out.”
“Well, I am the detective.”
She started to say something, doubtless some clever comeback, but something else caught her attention.
“Hey! What’s that?” She darted across the room, stooped beside a covered chair and came up with a thin, translucent violet disc. “What is it? It looks kind of amethyst-ey. Could it be something off one of the pieces of jewelry? It’s so tiny!”
Death grinned. “Hey! Good job! You found Flow Whitaker’s missing contact lens!”
She stared at him.
“What?”
“Flow Whitaker? Naked Dead Guy? He was wearing colored contact lenses. One of them was missing. The police looked for it but, no luck. We’ll have to tell them you found it.”
She shrieked and flicked her fingers, flinging it across the room.
“… and lost it again.”
“It’s okay. It was just a contact lens!”
“It was a dead guy’s contact lens! It was in his eye! It was in his dead eye! Ewww!”
“It’s not like he was contagious. Stupidity is not catching, I promise. Neither are broken necks. Look, I’ll prove it to you. You take your clothes off and I’ll catch you when you climb in the window.”
Wren glared.
“See?” he asked. “Guy trying to get you naked: straight guy.”
She hit him again and stormed off in the direction of the bathroom. Laughing, Death wandered over in the general direction Wren had thrown the contact lens. It only took him a minute to spot it again. Light coming in the windows over the staircase made it shine against the dark wood of the fourth stair from the bottom. He leaned over to pick it up and froze.
The riser between the fourth and fifth stair had been removed, exposing a dark, empty recess under the fifth step. His first sick thought was that he was too late—Fairchild had gotten the jewels and gone. But then he realized that the thick layer of dust inside the hiding place lay undisturbed except for one clear hand print in the middle.
He heard Wren come into the parlor behind him. She must have read something in his posture.
“Did you find something?”
“You could say that.” He straightened and turned to face her. “I know why Declan Fairchild came after you last night.”
“After me. You think he was after me?”
“Yeah. He came here first and found his stash of jewels was missing. He must think that you’re the one who took them.”
seven
The Paper Pagoda Chinese restaurant was housed in an old, red, wood-frame building set on a rocky promontory, hard by the east end of the swinging bridge. Wide decks, built up on stilts, surrounded it on three sides, hanging out over the swift currents of the upper Osage. It had always reminded Wren of a houseboat on the river.
Wren sat inside in a booth now, watching out the window as rain drops spattered on abandoned patio furniture. A bright morning had given way to a blowsy, blustery noontide, with the promise of real storms in the thunder rumbling across the water.