She added, “I hate leaves. Nothing but a big mess.”
Ah. Just a little nature hating with our meal.
Of course. We were without a gardener or a handyman at the moment. No big surprise, as Vera wasn’t the ideal employer and word travels. If you are the most hated woman in your community, it can be very inconvenient keeping your acreage pristine. The way they spoke about Vera in Harrison Falls, you’d think trees wouldn’t even grow here. Most likely no one in any of the surrounding communities was willing to work for the daughter of the man who closed the Van Alst shoe factory and brought the area to its economic knees. It was a long time ago, but feelings still ran high.
Vera, being Vera, did nothing to improve that situation. And as Uncle Mick would say, “Sometimes people need someone to hate.”
It crossed my mind that life might be more congenial if I could help her find a replacement gardener. Of course, I had no idea who that might be, but I was definitely going to give it some thought. I didn’t rejoice in the idea of spending weekends riding on the tractor mower, an activity that Vera was perfectly capable of requesting under “other duties as required” in my constantly changing job description.
The signora launched another stealth attack, depositing thick rustic toast, with lovely melted butter, on Vera’s plate. I thought Vera’s face would break at the sight of it.
“Is there zucchini in that bread, Fiammetta? You know I detest that vegetable and it is one more thing to loathe about the fall.”
“Zucchini good! Vitamins! You eat, Vera.”
Good luck with that, signora, I thought, gratefully accepting a couple of pieces for myself.
“Bah. No zucchini. Take it away. I can’t stand the sight or the taste of it.”
Since the signora’s small, bizarre garden seemed to have produced enough zucchini to feed the county, I figured Vera would have a job avoiding it. I hadn’t thought about it in the bread, which was delicious.
“And you, Miss Bingham, what is the progress on my Sayers collection?”
Well, I had found the town it was probably being held in, but I couldn’t see that placating her for long. Nor would she be impressed with our optimistic plan of combing through the streets of Burton with Karen peering out the window over the tops of her gold-rimmed glasses in the hopes of recognizing her client’s home as we rolled by.
“We have an excellent lead,” I said with a big false smile, a Kelly family specialty.
“Make sure it pays off,” she said before going back to her crossword. End of conversation. Was it my imagination or was Vera’s glance even more antagonistic than usual? I knew that the Van Alst resources were strained. Was Vera thinking that she could do without me and save my salary and food costs?
What would I do? I was socking away most of my money to get back to grad school, and I couldn’t even go back home. Anyway, Uncle Kevin was now installed in my former digs until things cooled down in Albany. Or someone died.
Outside the window, crimson, gold and orange leaves continued to drop to the ground, while Vera grumbled to herself over the New York Times crossword and I stuffed my face. I was worried though. I loved this job and I had a feeling that I’d better get my game on if I wanted to keep it.
• • •
A HALF HOUR later I was banging on Karen’s door. No answer. The lumpy man next door stuck his head out the door and said, “Keep it down or I’ll call the police. People are trying to sleep.”
I tried opening the door. Unlocked as usual. I was in a panic when I burst into her second-floor apartment. No Karen in the book-strewn living room.
“Karen?”
I thought I heard a moan from the bedroom. I tripped over a pile of elderly cookbooks on my way and stopped, sagging with relief on the door frame.
Karen stared at me blearily from the bed, her unevenly cut red hair wilder than usual.
She smiled weakly. “I’m sorry. I know we’re supposed to go to Burton this morning to look for that client in the Craftsman house, but I don’t think I can even get up. All that excitement at the book fair knocked me off my feet. I can hardly stand up.”
Big mistake on my part. I should have realized how tiring it would be. Karen wasn’t supposed to get exhausted. She was supposed to rest and heal. She had many months to go before she would be anything like normal. I was new to this arrangement. I had to adapt.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have put you through all that.”
“Don’t be crazy! I loved every minute of it. That’s the nicest my colleagues have ever been to me. All those hugs. If I’d realized the benefits, I would have gotten hit on the head years ago. Anyway, it did me a lot of good and now I know I can go back to that world when the time is right. But today, I can’t even get out of bed.”
I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll drive over and have a look. But I don’t suppose you remember anything more about the client? Besides the hair?”
She shook her head.
“Was it short and silver like George Beckwith’s?”
Her eyes widened. “No, not George’s. There was a lot of it, past his collar. Kind of a Beethoven look. Very dramatic. And he was courtly. I remember that. No one could call George courtly. Just uptight.”
“Nothing else?”
“I wish.”
Me too.
I left Karen with hot tea, this time served in a lovely oversized blue-and-white Royal Copenhagen cup. I’m partial to that soft blue-and-white combo. Books weren’t Karen’s only love. She had quite the china collection. I loved it too. I wanted to Pin almost everything in the cabinet to my Pretty Things board on Pinterest. I quickly made some toast, added marmalade and collected a nice selection of old magazines for her. There were no new magazines in the apartment or in Karen’s life. She liked it that way. She protested that she was perfectly happy. I put on her favorite bit of Mozart, but it still seemed wrong to leave her alone in the apartment.
“Get out of here,” she said with a weak grin. “You’re eating into my reading time.”
“Fine, but I’m locking the door for your own safety.”
That settled it. I would have to volunteer Uncle Lucky to start coming by twice a day. Karen needed more help than I could provide without risking her business. And if her business failed, she’d lose the building and her apartment too. It was getting a tad too chilly to sleep in the Cozy Corpse van. Karen was proud, but she’d just have to deal with having someone help out. Uncle Lucky could use Walter as a cover for doing just that. It might help disguise the fact he was besotted with Karen.
I had more than the missing Sayers collection on my mind when I finally left. I felt the weight of Karen’s entire survival on my shoulders.
• • •
I HAD THREE reasons to head for my uncles’ house. Only one had to do with Karen.
I prepared myself to dodge invitations to join them for breakfast, but it was not to be. Uncle Mick’s ginger hair was uncombed and his face was the color of the signora’s late-season tomato crop. I could already hear him fussing as I approached the kitchen in the back of Michael Kelly’s Fine Antiques.
Uncle Lucky sat silent, but obviously vexed, his inch-thick ginger eyebrows furrowed. In front of him, the bowl of Frosted Flakes that sat untouched and rapidly getting soggy said it all. Uncle Mick was a Count Chocula man and his bowl was in the same condition.
Only Walter seemed happily able to eat, as his doggie bowl was shiny clean. I couldn’t help but notice that he was being served in a Wedgwood soup plate, a step up from cheap imports with doggie designs. His eyes bulged over the rim in delight.
“Everything all right?” I said.
Lucky sniffed.
Mick glowered at him. “What your uncle means to say is that life isn’t always easy.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “I never heard that before.”
“Don’t start now, my girl. I know you haven’t had it easy with your father disappearing like that when you were just a newborn babe and your poor darli
ng mother . . .”
Uncle Lucky cleared his throat warningly at Uncle Mick. What was the matter with the two of them?
I had actually been thinking the source of the tension in the room was more likely the fact that Uncle Kevin had moved into my former digs. Kevin takes a little getting used to. As long as I remembered, he’d been a problem for his brothers. Why would they be surprised? Why wouldn’t they have a plan B? Now he was a problem for me because I had no plan B place to go if Vera had a nuclear meltdown over the missing books. No point adding to the fallout by bringing that up.
I held up my hand. “It’s okay. I don’t own all the bad luck in the world. What’s happening to upset the—?”
A crash from upstairs distracted all of us. A thundering on the stairs followed.
“Saints help us,” whispered Mick. “That Kevin is going to be the death of poor Lucky.”
“Ah,” I said. “Of course. He’s been here nearly twenty-four hours now, hasn’t he?”
“Sixteen hours. He’ll be flyin’ under the radar for a bit,” Uncle Mick said. “Feels like forever already.”
Lucky nodded.
At that second Kevin burst through the door. “Going stir-crazy here. There’s nothing to do in this place. I don’t know how you two stand it at all. Are you a hundred years old?”
I was pretty sure Lucky rolled his eyes.
Mick said, “Why don’t you detail the cars again, Kevin? Just keep the garage doors closed this time.”
Uncle Kevin seemed to like this idea. His handsome, craggy face lit up. The mesmerizing blue eyes took on their signature twinkle. If there’d been a woman in the room, she might have been smitten on the spot, the poor thing.
I said, “How about if you do the Navigator first? I’m hoping to borrow it.”
He was through the door in a flash.
“He seems, um, restless,” I said.
Uncle Mick slammed the fridge door. “He’s a giant pain in the—”
“What about if he helps in the shop?”
I heard a gasp from Lucky.
Even Walter looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. His flat, black, wrinkled mug frowned in concern.
“What? Would that really be so very bad?”
Uncle Lucky shook his shiny bald head, sadly.
Uncle Mick spoke as if I were just a touch slow. “You do remember that there was a small dispute about a large amount of money? And that is why Kevin is keeping a low profile.”
“Ah.”
“You really think the people involved would never think to look in our shop for Kevin?”
“Point taken.”
“They are not the kind of people who listen to explanations. Kevin has seriously annoyed them. The rest of the family could be in an awkward situation.” He glanced to Lucky and Walter and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Awkward situation” is kind of a code in our family. Uncle Mick was more than a bit upset that Kevin had plunged the family into some unknown dangers.
“I get it. So Kevin has to keep out of sight, but being Kevin, he is restless and you’re being driven around the bend.”
“You hit the nail on the head, Jordan. He’s like the poster boy for ADHD. Lucky and I enjoy our quiet life. Now we’re at the end of our—”
“Maybe he can come along with me today. Karen is really not doing well and I have to hunt for a certain house over in Burton. I sure could use a driver so I can concentrate.”
Uncle Mick brightened. Uncle Lucky managed a small smile. Even Walter wagged his twisty stump of a tail. But then he does that no matter what you say. Still, his eyes bulged in a way that could only mean “Get this guy out of here.”
Of course, there’s always a downside.
Uncle Mick said, “But everyone knows you’re our niece, and most people know the Navigator too.”
I said, “I don’t plan to look anything like myself when I’m scoping out Burton. And please don’t try to tell me in all that parking space that you don’t have a single vehicle that isn’t officially registered to a Kelly. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Uncle Lucky made meaningful eye contact with Uncle Mick. I kept a straight face.
At last, Mick said, “Well, there’s always the Kia. We’ve been saving it for an emergency.”
I said, “Would you classify Uncle Kevin as an emergency?”
Walter barked.
Mick said, “I’ll get the keys. Registration and insurance are in the glove compartment.”
“Good. I’ll be back soon.”
Mick said, “Take your time.”
• • •
THE GOOD NEWS was that the Harrison Falls Public Library opened at noon on Sundays and my friend was on duty. Equally pleasing was the fact I’d been able to send Uncle Kev off on an errand. He’d have fun at the vintage costume rental shop and I’d have a Kev-free conversation. The bad news was that a visit to the library always made me a tad flustered. Lance, the reference librarian, was a handsome flirt, but he’d been my true friend since we were in our teens and he was an information gold mine. Too bad he has such an effect on me. I hoped the bright pink on my cheeks subsided before I got to the reference desk.
Dapper as usual in Banana Republic chinos and a crisp blue gingham button-down, Lance’s eyes sparkled, picking up the cornflower blue of his tie. “Is it cold out there, mademoiselle? Or are you just happy to see me?”
Mademoiselle? Lance’s conversation always seemed from a different time, a bygone era of gentlemen and romance, mixed with the modern metrosexual lady-killer.
That wasn’t helpful. My face was now deepest plum, clashing with the ocher in my mother’s Pendleton coat. Lance saw my discomfort and quickly changed the subject. “You have the look of a woman on a mission.” Those dangerously twinkling eyes sparked brighter.
So, I filled him in on my little situation and set him out to hunt down the many different UK and American editions of Dorothy L. Sayers’s work. With luck he’d score me some images of covers too. He would no doubt come up with a whole bunch of details that I didn’t even know I didn’t know. His fingers were snapping away at the keyboard seconds later. I could have spent a whole day watching Lance do “his thing,” flipping his sand-colored hair absently as he pulled facts and figures from cyberspace and dusty volumes of reference materials alike. But I was not the only one who found Lance to be a bit dreamy. Behind me a slightly miffed group of octogenarians had formed. I was certain they disapproved of my casually leaning on the counter and my slightly north of the knee miniskirt, so I corrected my posture. The group clucked, unimpressed.
Feeling the pressure to release Lance to his duties, I said a quick good-bye and dashed toward the revolving door.
“Have you heard from Tiff?” he called to me, over the mauve and silver heads now crowding in.
I felt a pang in the chest but smiled anyway, shook my head and gave a shrug as I spun on my heel. It had been far too long since I’d had any good face time with Tiffany Tibeault, my best friend in the world. Her latest adventure was a clean, sustainable water initiative in Africa. She’d saved a bundle working as a nurse on the Alberta pipeline, and now she could afford to go do something good, working for an NGO. There was no one on Earth with more focused energy to give than Tiff. These water people would not know what hit them. She would do fantastic things, and I was so proud of her, but it was hard not to touch base. There was an empty feeling where my iPhone should have been vibrating. I missed her.
• • •
A LITTLE UNCLE Kevin goes a long way, even if you’re as fond of him as I was. After all, he’d been the one who showed me how to climb out a window using a rope, scamper up a tree to escape an imaginary bear or a real police officer and pinch Oreos from the package leaving no evidence. Not to mention the frogs in the closet, but the less said about that the better. Growing up as an only child, Uncle Kevin was the next best thing to a misbehaving brother who would get stuck with all the blame for joint escapades. Still, by the time we reached Burton,
I was desperately trying to tune out the constant whistling, chat, squirming and drumming on the steering wheel. The Kia Sorrento was a good-sized vehicle, but I sure felt claustrophobic cooped up in it with Kevin.
On the other hand, I was very pleased with our new appearances. For once I was the redhead in the family, with a shoulder-length mane of glossy auburn. Uncle Kevin was jaunty with a silver mustache, fake tortoiseshell glasses and a herringbone fedora. He would have made an excellent companion if he’d been able to keep still. It was a challenge to convince him to take an orderly approach to our slow cruise of the streets of the older section of Burton. He preferred random and of course he liked speed, but he didn’t do too badly, more or less. Anyway, the drive was beautiful.
Luckily, it wasn’t hard to find a prime example of a Craftsman house in the older section of Burton, as it was small and compact. Unluckily, I found three. I hadn’t asked Karen for any distinguishing features of the home where she delivered the Sayers collection. I’d thought that Craftsman would say it all. So I was stuck with 4 Washington Avenue, 22 Madison Street and 87 Lincoln Way.
All very presidential. This part of Burton was like a Norman Rockwell vision of small-town America. Golden oaks and bright maples punctuated wide lawns. There wasn’t a house that had been built after the thirties. The place screamed “family.” A number of families were getting an early start on Halloween with inflatable headstones on the grass and small ghosts floating in the trees. Old oak trees and wonderful gardens lined the streets. Even though I enjoyed my life at Van Alst House, I would have loved to reside here.
Daydreaming of a future in which I could spend my days tending roses, I looked forward to visiting our collector, maybe more than once. After all, I did a bit of work scouting for books on the side and I could always use a new buyer for anything that Vera didn’t want. I reminded myself to stop dreaming and find the right house.
I thought I could dismiss 22 Madison Street because of the collection of Fisher Price toys, Tonka trucks and headless Barbie dolls dotting the front lawn. Just in case, I took a picture to show Karen. I also used my phone to take shots of 4 Washington Avenue. The property was a bit run-down, but still mouthwatering. My dream is to settle down in such a house and restore, restore, restore.
The Sayers Swindle (A Book Collector Mystery) Page 4