“Okay. Where are you?”
“Thanks, Pete.” I gave him the name of the place and he promised to be there with his brother-in-law’s truck in twenty minutes.
We loaded the dolly once more, and Aunt Ibby pronounced the Buick filled to capacity. Jim had found an old corn broom among the leftover items, so I began the floor-sweeping process while Jim began piling the remaining artifacts outside the locker. My aunt went in search of plastic bags to hold the sweepings.
“Wonder what’s in this one.” I leaned the broom against a good-sized wooden crate propped against the rear wall of the nearly empty space. Some of the slats on the top and sides were broken and a few were missing altogether.
“Dunno,” said Jim. “Want to give me a hand moving it outside?”
“Sure,” I said, pushing the broom out of the way and moving to one end of the thing while Jim positioned himself at the other.
“Okay, miss,” he said. “One-two-three, lift!”
The crate was more awkward than heavy, and as we moved together, crablike, toward the entrance, one of the broken slats was exactly at my eye level. As soon as we stepped out into the sunlight, I let go of my end with a muffled scream.
Looking straight at me from inside that crate was another eye.
CHAPTER 2
Jim lowered his end of the crate to the ground—a lot more gently than I had. “What’s wrong, miss?” There was real concern in his voice. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t answer right away. I was busy processing what I’d just seen. Or what I thought I’d just seen. That corpse-in-a-barrel story flashed through my brain.
“Jim,” I said, surprised that my voice sounded so normal, “I’m fine, but do me a favor?”
“Sure, miss. Anything you say.”
“Take a look into the crate, will you? Right there. Where there’s a slat gone on the side.”
“Uh—okay. Here?” He bent and touched the side of the crate next to the missing slat. He used that condescending tone you’d use when speaking to someone you suspect might not have both oars in the water. “You want I should look in this hole, right?” I knew he was trying not to smile.
“Yes. That’s it.” You might not feel so smug when you see what I saw, I thought.
The man jumped backward so fast he nearly landed on his rear in the dirt. “Holy Mother of God!” he yelled. “There’s somethin’ in there!”
“What’s going on?” Pete had arrived, and Aunt Ibby, clutching a handful of Salem’s official overflow trash bags, was close behind him. “Are you all right, Lee?” Pete didn’t wait for an answer, but moved quickly, facing Jim and positioning himself between me and the crate.
Jim, his face drained of color, pointed at the wooden container. “In there. It . . . it looked at me.” He jerked a thumb in my direction. “Her too, I guess.”
“You got a crowbar?” Pete asked.
“In my locker,” Jim said. “Hang on. It’s right around the corner.”
“Get it.” Pete peered into a crack at the top of the thing. “Looks like some kind of painted animal. I can see its ears.”
“Painted?” I said, feeling like a doofus as I watched Jim scamper away.
“What’s in there, Maralee?” my aunt asked. “What did you see?”
I laughed, relieved. “I saw a big brown eye looking back at me. Scared me just a little,” I lied. Scared me a lot!
Jim returned, still pale, handed a crowbar to Pete, then stepped back against the side of the building. “You gonna open that thing?”
My aunt piled the trash bags onto the floor of the near-empty locker, walked right up to the crate, leaned across the top of it and peeked into the same space Pete had just checked out. “Oh, lovely. I think it’s a horse. Open it up, won’t you, so we can see, please, Pete?” There was a sound of splintering wood as the sides of the crate came apart.
The thing inside was swathed in a tangle of quilted fabric. Pete tugged at the material closest to the top, partially revealing the owner of the mysterious eye. My aunt was right. It was a horse.
The layered mane was windblown, highlighted with gold leaf, the forelock flipped. A jeweled halter was accented with a single, finely carved rose. The brown eye Jim and I had seen sparkled against the palomino face; and even though the paint was faded, dirty and chipped in places, the wooden horse’s head had an air of elegance.
“It’s a carousel horse,” Aunt Ibby said. “Quite a nice one, I think.”
I studied the wooden animal’s flamboyant mane and friendly face. How could I have been terrified by such expressive eyes? “He’s beautiful,” I said. “Let’s see the rest of him.”
Working carefully, Pete and I unwound the large dirty quilt wrapped snuggly around the horse’s body. Aunt Ibby stood close by, offering advice. “Careful now. Looks like some of that dried paint is sticking to the cloth. Oh, dear, that little rose is chipped.” Jim sat a judicious few feet away on the top step of the folding ladder.
“Kind of like an equine striptease,” I said as the last of the fabric slowly fell away, revealing the wooden horse, straining at his jeweled halter, mane wind-whipped. The right hoof was raised, the flowing tail curved around the rump.
“Looks just like the horses the little kids used to ride on the merry-go-round down at the Salem Willows,” Jim offered, leaving the ladder and moving a little closer to the horse.
“They still do,” I said. “Only now the horses are made of fiberglass, not carved out of wood like this one.”
“Well, let’s load up what’s left here onto that dolly and put it in the truck.” Pete lifted a box full of beat-up, old fireplace tools. I paused for a few seconds, admiring his powerful back muscles moving beneath a Red Sox T-shirt; then I added a rusty frying pan and a framed print of Washington Crossing the Delaware to the pile. “Miss Russell says we have to bag up all the trash and take that home too,” he said. “That right?”
“Them’s the rules,” Jim told him. “I’ll start bagging.” He reached out a tentative hand, touching a carved bell on the horse’s saddle. “You mean somebody made this whole horse? They carved it out of wood?”
“Looks that way,” Aunt Ibby said. “I’ll be doing some research on it.” She was already scrolling on her smartphone, so I knew that my tech-savvy aunt was well on her way to becoming a carousel expert. “I’m posting a picture of it,” she said. “I’ll bet at least one of my Facebook friends knows something about wooden horses.”
Within the hour the locker was swept clean, 265-dollar payment made, Jim paid and generously tipped, and the truck bed filled to capacity with assorted junk, plus one fine carousel horse. Pete and I climbed into the front seat of the borrowed truck and prepared to follow the Buick to Winter Street.
“What in the world are we going to do with it all?” I wondered aloud.
“Your aunt says the furniture and lamps and dishes can probably all go to Goodwill. She says she’s sure you’ll probably want to keep the horse. I guess all the rest, except for a couple of boxes and that one she’s been carrying around like a baby, will get thrown out with the regular trash.”
“The horse is going straight upstairs to my apartment,” I said. “Cleaned up a little, he’s going to look wonderful in the living room.”
I watched Pete’s face. He smiled and shook his head. “If you say so.” He pulled the truck into the driveway beside the garage.
Aunt Ibby had already begun unloading the Buick, and three open cartons were lined up in a row on the flagstone walkway leading past the garden to the house. “Hello, dears,” she called as we climbed out of the truck.
“I think I’ve found a few more roses among the thorns.”
“Keepers?” I asked.
“Keepers,” my aunt declared, lifting a brightly colored and oval-shaped item from the box marked TOYS. “Look at this. Russian matryoshka dolls. These look hand carved too. Like the horse.” She opened the figure, revealing a smaller doll nested inside, then another and another. “All carved f
rom a single block of wood. Remarkable.” She moved to the next carton, the one marked GAMES. “These are chess sets,” she said. “Wonderful hand-carved chess pieces, and the other box, the one that’s marked ‘Dresses,’ that one is full of beautiful handmade doll clothes. They’ve all been wrapped in that special blue paper they use to preserve wedding dresses. And look at this.” She held up a heavily carved dark brown wooden clock. “It’s a lovely, old cuckoo clock. I’ve fiddled around with it a little and I think I can get it to work.” Arms folded, a wide smile on her face, she surveyed her treasures. “As the woman at the sale said, I think we scored big-time.”
“Seems so,” I agreed. “Can I have the clock?”
“Of course. I thought you might like it.”
“What are you planning to do with the rest of it?”
“I have plans. Don’t worry. Pete, as long as you have the truck, do you think you two could drop off the furniture and decorative things at the Goodwill store? We’ll just bag up everything else and put it out front with the regular trash tomorrow morning.”
“Sure,” Pete said. “I don’t have to check in at the station until seven o’clock.”
Sounded easy. Drop off furniture and décor. Bag up everything else. Of course nothing is as easy as it sounds. It took a good two hours for the three of us to sort and determine exactly what was donation-worthy, and what was destined for the next morning’s curbside collection.
O’Ryan, who’d come outside via the cat door, slowed the process by sniffing and pawing at almost every item. Finally, with upholstered items liberally sprayed with a lemony fabric refresher, lamps, coffee table and framed pictures dusted and polished to Aunt Ibby’s satisfaction, dishes washed and Mickey Mouse fresh from a trip through washer and dryer, the bed of the truck was packed and ready to roll.
Next came the disposal of the remaining debris. We each donned latex gloves, packed seven bags to the brim with assorted smashed, cracked, defective and fragmented remains of the anonymous somebody’s household goods, adding them to the two bags Jim had prepared, and carried the nine full bags to the curb for the next morning’s pickup.
The boxes containing the matryoshkas, the chess sets and the doll clothes were stacked in Aunt Ibby’s back hall. She’d already carried my clock—along with the mysterious carton that had prompted the purchase of all this—into her kitchen. The carousel horse, with bungee cords loosely securing his dusty fabric wrapping, leaned against the wrought-iron garden fence. In the bright sunlight the grime and chipped paint gave him a sorrowful look and the soft brown eye looked straight at me. Again.
I poked my head into Aunt Ibby’s kitchen. “What do you think I should do with my horse? Shall I put him in the garage until I can get him cleaned up, or should I take him upstairs now?”
She snapped her fingers. “I have a wonderful idea, Maralee! From what little research I’ve been able to do so far, it seems that old carousel horses are often worth restoring. Let’s have Mr. Carbone take a look at him.”
Paul Carbone was the furniture restorer who’d repaired the tarnished mirror on the bureau in my bedroom. I have a thing about mirrors—and some other objects too. I’d learned fairly recently that I have a unique, and not always welcome, talent. Seems that I’m a scryer. My best friend, River North, calls me a “gazer.” River is a witch, and she’s one of the few people who know that sometimes, when I look at a reflective surface, I see things that other people can’t see. They’re quite often things I wish I couldn’t see either.
“Okay.” I shook away the thoughts about mirrors. “Let’s call him.”
But she was already on the phone, describing the horse. “About forty-eight inches tall,” she said. “A stander. One hoof raised. Paint’s chipped and very dirty.”
I looked around the neat kitchen. Something new had been added. On the breakfast counter I saw what the mystery carton had contained. It was a tall metal urn, black with tarnish, but unmistakably graceful in its shape. It had a chimney-shaped top and an elegantly molded spigot on one side. My aunt had already polished one spot, where the gleam of sterling silver shone. Curious, I moved closer. In its smooth surface I saw the pinpoints of light, the misty swirling colors that always precede a vision.
I didn’t recognize the man. He lay, faceup, next to a little pine tree, sightless eyes wide open, a thin line of blood encircling his throat like a narrow red ribbon.
CHAPTER 3
I closed my eyes, turning my head away. “No,” I whispered. “Please, no.” It had been nearly a year since the visions, unbidden and unwanted, had intruded in my life. This one, like too many of them, showed me death.
Aunt Ibby’s voice seemed to come from a distance, slowly penetrating my consciousness. “Thanks so much, Paul. They’ll drop it off at your studio then. Good-bye.”
I opened my eyes, daring to look again at the urn. No picture of a dead man marred its surface. Just a tarnished, old piece of silver, with a chimney and a spigot. My aunt, all smiles, faced me. “Oh, you’ve discovered my treasure! Wonderful, old samovar, isn’t it? Sterling. Wait until you see it when I’ve finished polishing.” She crossed the room to the counter and patted the thing as though it was a pet. “I’ve always wanted one.”
I took a deep breath. “Nice,” I managed to say. “A samovar, huh?”
“Yes, indeed. It’s a beauty. But there’s good news about your treasure too.”
“My treasure?” I tried to block out the image I’d just seen, tried to concentrate on her words.
“Of course, dear. The horse. Mr. Carbone looked at my pictures of it on Facebook and he’s sure he can bring it back to its original condition. I told him you’d drop it off after lunch.”
There was a knock at the kitchen door. “Come in, Pete,” Aunt Ibby called. Pete appeared in the doorway, smiling, his dark hair damp and curling a little over his forehead. “Truck’s loaded,” he said. “What do you want me to do with Old Paint out there, leaning on the fence?”
“Thank you so much, Pete. The horse goes into the truck too, but he’s definitely not destined for Goodwill. Do you know where Paul Carbone’s furniture restoration studio is?”
“Sorry, no. Do you, Lee?”
“I’m pretty sure I can find it.” I moved away from the counter, from the blackened silver “treasure,” which was apparently destined to show me things I didn’t want to see. “It’s over near the Peabody line, in one of those small industrial warehouses.”
“Great.” Pete looked in the direction of the refrigerator. “Did I hear somebody say something about lunch?”
“My goodness! Lunch will be terribly late, won’t it?” My aunt looked at the clock. “It’s nearly three. But don’t worry. You two have just enough time to wash your hands while I throw something together.”
The laundry room, with its big double sink, was just across the back hall opposite the kitchen. Pete turned on the faucet and filled the shallow side, adding a hefty squirt of detergent. “You first.” He took both of my hands in his, lowering them into the sudsy water, then moved the faucet to the deep side of the sink and began scrubbing his own hands. He paused, watching my face. “You okay?”
“Sure,” I said, forcing a smile. “Just tired and dirty and hungry, I guess.” I located a brush in the cabinet above the sink and went to work on my nails.
“I thought for a minute you looked kind of—I don’t know—kind of worried.”
“What, me worry?” I gave him my impression of an Alfred E. Newman grin. Pete knows about my scrying. I had to tell him the truth about it. But it isn’t something we talk about. I didn’t see any point in telling him about the vision in the samovar. We finished washing, dried our hands on the long, cotton roller towel and cleaned the sinks. “Let’s go see what’s for lunch.”
“Smells good.” Pete sniffed the air as we hurried across the hall.
The spread on the round table looked anything but “thrown together.” Yellow crockery bowls of vegetable soup, thick sandwiches of roast beef and
hot mustard on sourdough bread and a frosty pitcher of lemonade—a picture worthy of the cover on a Martha Stewart magazine.
“You’re a wonder, Miss Russell,” Pete said, helping himself to a sandwich.
Aunt Ibby waved away the compliment. “The miracle of leftovers and the microwave oven.”
“It’s all delicious. Say, is that thing on the counter over there what was in the box you’ve been carrying around?”
“It is,” she said, “and wait until you see it when I finish polishing. It’s a Russian samovar. Sterling silver. From the late nineteenth century.”
Maybe that dead man is from another century. River says the visions can be from the past, present or future.
“Guess it’s worth more than you two paid for the locker—and you got Old Paint out there too,” Pete said. “Lee says she’s going to put the horse in her living room.”
“Yes, we scored big-time.” Aunt Ibby was clearly pleased with her new phrase. “And you’ll see, Maralee. Mr. Carbone will make that old carousel horse look like new.”
“I think he’s beautiful now. But he’ll look happier with fresh paint.”
From under the table O’Ryan gave a brief “mmrrow.”
“Better be careful,” Pete said. “O’Ryan might get jealous, thinking you have a new pet.”
I sneaked a bit of roast beef to the cat, who accepted it daintily, then gave my fingers an extra lick. “Never happen,” I said. “He knows he’s top cat around here.”
We polished off the lunch in record time. Even found room for a few homemade sugar cookies. It was a little past four o’clock when we climbed into the truck and set off for the Goodwill store. The horse was secured in the very front of the truck bed, with its head against the rear window of the cab. Whenever I turned to look in Pete’s direction, I could see that soft brown eye—no longer frightening—peeking through the glass.
“We might as well go to the Goodwill store in Peabody,” Pete said. “It’s just a few streets over from the horse painting guy’s place.”
“Good idea.” We left Winter Street and headed down Bridge Street to Route 114. It was a quiet ride. Pete was silent and I watched the passing scenery, preoccupied with my own thoughts. I felt the truck accelerate suddenly, then slow down. Pete, his stern cop face in place, hit the right-turn signal. Moments later we made an abrupt left turn. He watched the rearview mirror.
Murder Go Round Page 2