Searching for Gatsby: A Ronnie Lake Murder Mystery (An Accidental Lady Detective, A Private Investigator Crime Series Book 3)

by Danforth, Niki

  The kiss ends, but he keeps me close. “I don’t know if this works with your schedule, but I had already decided when I got up this morning to play hooky with the hope of spending the day with you.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, and it’s your choice how we spend it.”

  “Give me a sec, and you stay here.” I disengage from his embrace and walk over to a kitchen cabinet. I root around the back for a tea canister and take out a little key. Then I head for a small closet under my stairway.

  Inside, I unlock a fireproof file cabinet and remove the other two pieces of the ASE Gatsby—Win’s and Casey’s. I come back to the island and pick up his portion of the ASE Gatsby and hold the three pieces together. They fit perfectly as the one book it originally was.

  “After I drop my car at the shop, let’s go on a treasure hunt in Lambertville!”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Okay, where would you like to start?” Jamie asks as he parks the car near the bridge on the Lambertville side of the Delaware River. It’s taken us less than two hours to get here.

  “Fortunately, the clue says Lambertville…” I answer as we get out of the car. “…or we’d have to walk over the bridge and check things out in New Hope, too.” We stare across at the town on the other side in Pennsylvania.

  “And that would create an even larger haystack…” he mumbles, “…you know, to find the needle in a haystack.”

  “Hey, it’s a small town, only several thousand people, so it’s not that large a haystack. Come on, humor me. We may finally get some answers, or at the very least, have fun on this treasure hunt.” I look up and smile at him. “We need to be on the alert for something that can help us figure out the next clue in the book after Lambert and ville—we’re looking for LPLDM or something that’s similar to that.”

  “Casey’s father couldn’t have created a more indecipherable clue.” Jamie links his arm through mine.

  “But we’re going to figure it out,” I say with determination as we start out.

  We walk along Bridge Street and make our first left. We’re not sure where to begin and find ourselves easily distracted by the charming shops and galleries that line the streets in this historic community.

  “Even if we figure out what this means, and that’s a huge if,” Jamie says, “how much do you want to bet that the coins aren’t there anymore, that someone else found them years ago?” He glances around. “Shouldn’t we stop for a coffee and a mid-morning snack? I’m hungry.”

  I burst out laughing. “Wow. I don’t believe it. Jamie Gordon, we just got here, and all you can think about is filling your stomach.”

  He embraces me for a long kiss, and it’s then that I sense a vehicle driving by us very slowly and stopping sporadically. Since my back is to the road, I open my eyes during the kiss and watch the reflection in the café window while a small, dark SUV drives by. As Jamie practically waltzes me into an adorable café, the car quickly drives away, leaving me unsettled.

  ~~~~~

  Half an hour later, we’re back outside, continuing our walk. We cover the center of town, quickly moving past more shops and art galleries, antiques stores, the library, restaurants, a bed-and-breakfast, and a couple of inns.

  Several times I notice a small, navy blue SUV with dark tinted windows. It sounds like the same vehicle that passed us earlier. I can’t see inside the vehicle, but I memorize the number on the rear New Jersey license plate. Maybe Will can have a buddy run the plates for him.

  I don’t say anything to Jamie because we’re having fun, and I don’t want to alarm him. He probably already thinks I have an overactive imagination about finding these coins, and I don’t need to add fuel to the fire by announcing that I think someone may be following us.

  Then a different thought stops me. What if that car has nothing to do with these coins? Recalling the active rumor mill surrounding Jamie, I wonder if this vehicle concerns his supposed shady business dealings. Have I fallen for a man of questionable character?

  Fortunately, he interrupts my runaway thoughts. “Well, we’ve combed through this town, and so far we haven’t come up with anything. What should we do next?”

  “LPLDM. LPLDM,” I repeat, more to myself than Jamie. “There are two Ls. It’s probably a good guess that one of them stands for Lambertville.”

  Jamie looks at me and shakes his head with a smile. “I agree, probably a good guess. But what do you make of the rest of the letters?”

  “I don’t know. I need to think about it.” I reach up and kiss him despite his possible outlaw status. “Come on. It’s been at least a couple of hours since we had anything to eat,” I tease. “Let’s take a break.” He gives me a huge grin. I think he’s had enough of our treasure hunt.

  ~~~~~

  We walk out of the train station restaurant after lunch, and Jamie heads in the direction of the car.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “Home? Aren’t we ready to leave?”

  “That was just a break. Let’s give it one more shot and slowly retrace our steps. This time let’s pretend we’re Casey’s father as we look around.”

  “You’re kidding?” There’s that slight smile again. “I mean about pretending to be Casey’s father?”

  “No,” I answer. “Try to imagine what he was thinking when he was looking for the perfect place to hide the coins.”

  “Okay.” Jamie laughs. “Let’s go.” He walks briskly down the street.

  “I said slooowly.” I run after him. “Slowly retrace where Casey’s dad might have gone.”

  Hearing a car behind us pick up speed, I glance back. Sure enough, it’s the navy blue SUV, but it makes a fast right turn and I lose sight of it. It’s spooky. I’m pretty sure no one even knows we’re here.

  We meander along the charming streets all over again, but come at them from the opposite direction in order to get a different view of the buildings. This time we also stop to read every sign and historical marker. It’s like a local history lesson, but nothing triggers LPLDM.

  We do take our eye off the ball for a moment as we hold hands like school kids enjoying each other’s company and almost walk by an old nineteenth century mansion.

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Come on. Let’s check this out.” I take his hand and backtrack. “First, I need the right angle.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think I’ve seen that mansion in a painting at Casey’s house.” I stop on what I believe to be the exact spot, pull out my phone, and find the pictures. “This is it.”

  “You’re right. It’s the same place,” Jamie says, as he looks at my phone and then at the building. “That’s bizarre. We walked by this one before.”

  “Yep, and missed it.” We study the photo of the painting and agree it’s the same house. I snap a couple shots of the exterior from the same angle as the painting.

  We walk up the steps and stop to read the handsome dark green plaque to the right of the door.

  Lambertville Public Library

  Established 1932

  Dunbar Mansion

  Constructed 1870

  Residence of Dr. John Dunbar

  Prominent Lambertville Citizen

  “Lambertville Public Library, Dunbar Mansion,” I say. “L-P-L-D-M. It works for me, what do you think?”

  Jamie looks surprised and impressed at the same time. “I agree. We’re at the right place.”

  The sign on the door lists the days and hours of operation, and we enter a cozy, old-fashioned library with lots of nooks to settle in with a good book. I glance into a room on the right—perhaps the old dining room—and see a half dozen computer stations for patrons who wish to access the library’s twenty-first century resources.

  A librarian is on the phone in a small room behind the check-out desk. We pass by the wide staircase and a sign that says non-fiction is downstairs and fiction upstairs.

  We go through what was once
perhaps a front parlor on the left and is now a whimsical children’s book room, where the furniture is scaled to these young readers. I have to smile, as I remember taking my own kids to story-time with Ms. Fairchild at our local library.

  Jamie and I continue searching, and everywhere there are rows of book shelves artfully positioned to not make the spaces feel cramped. The overstuffed chairs arranged around the fireplaces in each room beckon readers to relax with whatever book they’ve just found in the stacks, so I sit down.

  “What are you doing?” Jamie stares at me sitting in an especially large overstuffed chair.

  “I want to check something.” I pat the space next to me and he sits down.

  I pull out the three pieces of Gatsby and with Jamie’s help fan out the edges of book’s pages. There are several marks that matchup between the three sections.

  “See this?” I say to Jamie. “It’s nothing like the beautiful book George Smithson showed me, but I’ve been thinking this is a sort of crude fore-edged drawing. It’s not perfect, but doesn’t it look like someone drew a rectangle with a line in the middle?”

  He studies it for a moment. “Well, sure. But it’s not the greatest rectangle. Look the top isn’t very straight.”

  “Or maybe a curve on purpose?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like a piece of furniture?” I offer.

  “So far, I haven’t seen much furniture except for these large chairs,” he points out.

  “There’s still more on the fiction floor.” I get up and take his hand to follow. “Remember, the next clue was second floor.”

  We find similar rooms upstairs—each with a reading area close to an old fireplace. The difference on this floor is that a number of antique side tables, bureaus, and highboys add more richness and warmth to the rooms.

  I notice that Jamie, ever the dedicated book collector, has now become distracted from our mission, no longer in such a hurry as he looks through the fiction stacks. We slow down and wander around the second floor. I walk through the right side and he heads left.

  “Is anyone upstairs?” the voice that was on the phone when we first came in calls out.

  “Yes,” I call back and go to the top of the stairs. Jamie looks out from one of the doors. “My friend and I’ve been transferred to Philadelphia with our jobs, and we think we may want to live in Lambertville.” Jamie raises his eyebrows, while I continue, “We’ve been walking around since early this morning. There’s so much to see. It’s such a charming community.”

  A woman, perhaps in her mid-seventies, comes into view downstairs. “You’re right about that, and welcome to our town, by the way.” She peers up at me over reading glasses that rest on the tip of her nose.”Would you like to fill out the form to get a library card?”

  “May we pick that up on our way out?” I ask. “We are so enjoying our break and browsing upstairs.”

  “Take your time,” the librarian says. “I’ve lived in town for fifty years, so please let me know if I can answer any questions.”

  “Thank you,” I respond.

  Jamie and I arrive at the back room, where there are no shelves filled with books. This one feels more like an elegant old reading room. Magazine-filled tables sit among comfortable old chairs. Beautiful paintings hang on the walls, each with a discreet sign displaying the name of the donor and giving some background on the artist.

  Almost simultaneously, we glance at the wall to the left of the fireplace, and there it stands. It’s beautiful, and we can’t take our eyes off of it.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The tall desk with an attached bookcase above it gleams in the sunlight from a nearby window.

  “Is this a stretch?” I ask, quickly fanning the page edges again to reveal the crude, curve-topped rectangle with a line halfway through it. “This piece roughly matches the drawing. The line through the middle could represent the top of the desk and the bottom of the bookcase. What do you think?”

  Jamie looks down at the fanned pages and breaks into his wonderful laugh. “Yeah, I think you’re right, Sherlock.”

  The light also twinkles off a number of green glass ovals inlaid in the panels surrounding the cubby holes of the desk. I quickly snap some pictures with my phone.

  “Somebody has polished this secretary with tender-loving care,” Jamie says as we walk over to it.

  “Don’t you mean desk? Olivia’s the secretary,” I say. “Well, she was somebody’s secretary.”

  “I think in this case, the word secretary is being used as a piece of furniture.” Jamie’s eyes crinkle with interest, and I grin back. “And where’d you come up with Olivia?”

  I click through my pictures of paperback pages with the clues. “See? Olivie secretary? I figured it was a mistake, and that maybe the writer meant Olivia-comma-secretary. What do you think?”

  “That makes sense, except these green ovals inlaid in the desk take me in a different direction. They could be olivine, or glass copies of—”

  “Olivine?”

  “Sometimes it’s called peridot,” Jamie says. “So I’m thinking Olivie secretary is really Olivine secretary. And whoever wrote this down left out the n—you know, a hand-written typo.” He smiles. “It would be unusual and an easy way to describe it.”

  I put my hands on my hips and look at him, astonished. “How do you know all of that?”

  “It’s simple. I like old American desks.” Jamie laughs. “So, it’s something I know a little about.”

  “That I buy, but how do you know about olivine?”

  “I’m a science geek, too.” He grins. “That started in second grade.”

  “You were reading about rocks when you were seven? Unbelievable.” My hand lightly sweeps over the doors as I admire the clean lines of the storage cabinet above the desk. “I love that you can put stuff away.”

  “Are you telling me that you’re a clean fiend?”

  “My kids never described it that way, but yes, I guess it’s true,” I say, laughing at myself.

  “Well, to further appeal to that neatnik in you…” Jamie lifts the writing table up to its tipped-in position, where we’re surprised to see the same green stones inlaid on the underside of the writing table that now faces out. The stones glimmer in the sunlight.

  “The slant-top desk could also stay shut to hide clutter.” He turns the key in the lock, and the desk is now closed. “These types of secretaries combined writing space and storage.”

  “Well, it’s a beauty.” I read a small inscription on the wall next to it. “Donated in 1935 by Rebecca Dunbar, daughter of Dr. John Dunbar.”

  “It’s nice that the family left it with the house, so that it’s part of the public library.”

  “Where do we start?” I ask. I take a large picture book from one of the tables. It’s about historic Lambertville and New Hope, and filled with photographs. I open it to the middle and put it on a coffee table in front of a sofa near the secretary.

  “What are you doing?” Jamie asks.

  “If someone comes up here, we need to be doing something else, like looking through this book together.” I smile.

  He grins and shakes his head. “Okay, read to me from your list, the part that comes after the secretary and second floor clues.” He unlocks the slant top and carefully lowers it, which reveals empty pigeon holes, slots, and shelving.

  “Okay.” I pull out my paper. “It says loose panel…next comes third from right, bottom row, then press button, and finally jiggle drawer.”

  He stares at all the slots. “Third from right, bottom row sounds like a good place to begin.”

  Below the open storage compartments runs a row of small drawers. Jamie reaches for the little knob on the third one from the right. It opens smoothly, and we look inside the empty drawer. He jiggles it several times, but nothing happens. He pulls it, but it doesn’t come out.

  “I guess this is a false clue—”

  “Not so fast. Have a little more faith.” Jamie pul
ls out the drawer as far as it will go. He also opens the drawers on both sides, which come out further, and their interiors are much longer than the middle one. He removes those two drawers and tries to slide his hand inside their empty slots, but his knuckles jam up against the openings.

  “Come on, you give it a try,” he says.

  I slide my smaller hand into the opening to the right of the original drawer.

  “I can touch the back.” I wiggle my fingers around. “What am I looking for?”

  “Do you feel any kind of depression in the wood?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “It’s all very smooth.”

  “Try the other side,” he urges.

  I take off my rings and slide my left hand into the opening on the other side. “There’s a little dent toward the back next to this shorter drawer.”

  “Good. Press it. It should release a slot or spring.”

  I try my best with the tip of my finger and finally feel something release. “I think I got it.”

  The drawer pulls out further and reveals several tiny compartments, all of them empty except for one. We peer inside. On the bottom of the drawer is what looks like a plain, old penny. I take some pictures, which could be important should I need to prove where this coin was found.

  I pick it up and hold it up to the light from the window. “Let’s see. It’s dated 1943.” I flip it around in my fingers. “Well, this penny hardly looks important.” Still, I snap close-up shots of both sides of it.

  “Don’t be so quick to judge,” Jamie says. “I don’t know anything about coins, but we can do the research later. Put it some place safe.”

  I tuck it deep into my front right hip jeans pocket, and he laughs. “Well, that took care of third from right, bottom row. What’s next?”

  I look back at my notes. “Let’s see. Loose panel. That was the first one.”

  Jamie moves around the desk examining its walls and paneling. I walk to the door and listen for any noise coming from downstairs that might tell me the librarian is busy putting books back on the shelves, talking on the phone, or coming upstairs to see what’s taking us so long. It’s quiet.