Body in the Antique Trunk-A Lady Locksmith Mystery

by Curry, Edna

  Body in the Antique Trunk

  By Edna Curry

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This is a work of fiction. All names in this story are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.

  No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the author, except for short excerpts for reviews.

  Credits:

  Cover by Bev Haynes

  Chapter 1

  Some days, nothing goes right and I wish I’d stayed in bed.

  It all started over breakfast. Not that eating raisin toast and coffee at my oak kitchen table had anything to do with making this a bad day, you understand. I was on my second cup of coffee and going over my schedule for the day when my cell phone rang. “Hello? Cassie Jennings, here.”

  “Hello. Are you Canton’s 24-hour locksmith?”

  I grimaced. I ran a one-woman business out of my house. And yes, I took calls on a 24 hour basis, usually people locked out of their car or home. I hated the crazy hours, but it paid the bills. When I got more established, maybe I’d be able to close up after my office hours and turn on an answering machine like the other locksmiths in the area did. But not yet. “That’s right. How can I help you?”

  “This is Sarah at Johnson’s Realty, over in Middleton. I have a house where the renter left a few weeks ago and we just learned of it. I need the place secured. Can you do that?”

  “Sure. Do you need it done right away?”

  “Yes, please. They left the house a mess and it’s unlocked. Could you go over this morning, change the locks and put on the security key box?”

  I chewed my lip and glanced at my notebook. There was nothing on my schedule that couldn’t wait a couple of hours. “Okay. I’ll stop by in about an hour.”

  “Thanks. I’ll have the key box and instructions ready.”

  I hung up, put my dishes into the dishwasher and poured the rest of the coffee into a small thermos to take with me. I filled a larger thermos with ice and water.

  Fluffy, my long-haired calico cat, rubbed my ankle, reminding me I hadn’t filled her food and water dishes. I quickly did that, then gave her soft gray, white and yellow fur a goodbye pat. She thanked me by waving her tail and purring, then hunched down to munch her food. She was a stray who’d shown up on my back doorstep one rainy night a few months ago. I couldn’t turn her pleading eyes away and let her inside. I’d toweled her off and fed her and she’s been my faithful companion ever since. One nice thing about having a cat for a pet is that you can leave them for hours at a time. They’re happy as long as they have food, water and a clean litter box.

  I glanced at the thermometer on my kitchen wall. Sixty two degrees. A chilly morning, but you never knew about July in Minnesota. It could reach as high as ninety before I got home. My jean jacket should be enough today. I pulled it on and headed out to my work van.

  I was excited to see the rose bushes outside my seventy-year-old house beginning to bud. I couldn’t wait for the colorful display of summer blooms after a long, wet spring.

  Since I keep most of my tools in the van, it’s ready to go at a moment’s notice. I jumped in and drove to Middleton, about fifteen miles away. I’d done work for Johnson’s Realty before, so I knew where to find their office.

  The hour I’d predicted was almost up when I got there. I hadn’t met Sarah before. She was a tall, slim woman in a business suit with red hair tied back in a bun. She looked me over suspiciously and even glanced at my name and logo printed on the door of my blue van before she relaxed and gave me a smile. I wondered what she thought of the casual jeans and jacket I wore. I dress comfortably because lock-smithing can often be dirty work.

  Sarah handed me the small key box, the code for it and a sign with the realtor’s name and address on it. “Here’s the address for the house,” she said. “Put this sign in the front window and please make sure it’s clearly visible from the front of the house. Change the lock on both the front and back doors. We don’t want anyone to be able to get in with the old key. When we’re ready to show the house, I’ll give my agents the code for the key box.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I’ve done these for Johnson’s realty before.”

  “So I hear. I’m new, myself. Oh, and there’s a separate garage out on the alley. Change the lock on that, too, please.”

  “Do you want the garage keyed the same as the house or different?”

  She shrugged and decided, “Different, I guess. Just put both keys in the key box.”

  I thanked her and then drove a few blocks to the address she’d given me. White paint peeled off the one-story frame house, showing weather-beaten gray wood beneath. A torn metal screen hung loose on the old storm door. The lawn was overgrown with tall grass and weeds and strewn with broken branches, beer bottles and God knew what else. Patches of brown spoke of long time neglect.

  I climbed the old wooden steps and gingerly pulled the screen door open. The unlocked knob gave under my hand.

  I stepped inside and looked around, a sour smell and stale air meeting my nose. Garbage, strewn clothes and a broken couch littered the living room. Boxes and a bags of stuff sat on the floor behind the couch.

  I glanced into the dining room and was surprised to see a nice, antique, rounded glass china cabinet. I recognized the fancy, criss-crossed leaded glass design of the top as one for which I’d found an unusual, round key a few months before. At that time, the lovely piece had been full of antique glassware and had stood in an elderly couple’s carpeted dining room. Now it was empty. How had that expensive cabinet arrived here in this mess? Or was this only a cabinet just like it? I looked it over carefully and noticed a small chunk of glass missing in one of the criss-crossed triangles on the right side. Yes, it had to be the same one I’d seen at the other home.

  Had the elderly couple sold it to these slobs? This house was such a contrast to their lovely home. Why would the people who’d lived here left behind something that valuable?

  Frowning, I looked around for anything else valuable, but saw only dust bunnies and trash. I shrugged and went on through the kitchen to check the back door and almost gagged. The kitchen was the source of the sour odor. Flies buzzed around a sink full of dirty dishes. Empty take out cartons, chicken bones and milk cartons spilled from an overflowing garbage can.

  I went back to my van for my tools, pinning kit box and the lock. As I closed the van’s side door, an older blue Chevrolet sedan drove slowly by. A person wearing dark sunglasses and a John Deere cap pulled down over his forehead gave me a long look, obviously checking out me and my van. Long hair hung around his or her neck. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman.

  Oh, oh. Was this going to be one of those deals where the former tenants weren’t through moving out? Had they come back for the nice cabinet? They certainly didn’t want the couch or dirty dishes. I hate those jobs. I do what I’m told by the legal owner, but there’ve been times when I’ve changed locks while an officer stands guard. Should I call Sarah? Or the cops? The sedan moved on and with a sigh of relief, I decided to wait until I was sure I needed help before making the call.

  ***

  Buddy slowly drove by the dilapidated house. A white Pontiac van sat in front of it. Damn, he was too late. He should have come back last night after he’d seen that the renters had moved out. But he’d been tired and hungry and put it off. His own fault for being lazy. Now they were changing the locks. He recognized that van. It was the lady locksmith he’d seen changing the locks for another house. Damned interfering b
itch! She’d pay for this. He remembered where she lived in Canton.

  He’d run into this situation before. The realty company always had a locksmith put one of those key boxes with numbers on it, and gave their agents the code to get in to show the house.

  Buddy drove on, not wanting anyone else to notice him there.

  ***

  I changed the locks on both the front and back doors, put the new key in the key box and locked it onto the doorknob. With the house secured, I picked up my bag of tools and walked across the messy yard full of tall grass and windblown trash to the garage. Both the garage doors and the small door on the side were closed, but unlocked. I gagged from the overpowering, horrible stench as I opened the small door and looked inside. “Phew!” After the mess in the house, I’d expected the same out here. But it was empty except for a huge stack of black bags and boxes all along the front wall of the garage.

  I backed out of the garage quickly. Those bags and boxes must be full of trash, too. Maybe they couldn’t afford the pickup fees.

  Then I realized this over-powering smell wasn’t from just moldy food or rotting garbage. I’d encountered that odor once before. There was a dead body in here!

  Swallowing bile, I turned and ran to my van. Back inside it, I grabbed my cell phone to call 9-1-1.

  “This is the sheriff’s office. What’s your emergency?”

  I recognized Deputy Tom’s voice and cringed. Tom’s not my favorite person, nor I his. “Tom, it’s Cassie Jennings. I’m at a house in Middleton.” I took a deep breath of fresh air, trying to get the stench of the garage out of my lungs, and gave him the address. “I’m changing the locks on the house and garage here for Johnson Realty. There’s a dead body in the garage.”

  “How do you know that? Did you see it?”

  “No, but I smelled it.”

  Tom snorted derisively, “You know what a dead body smells like?”

  “Yeah, I do, Tom. It’s not something you ever forget, once you’ve encountered it.” I shuddered.

  He hesitated, then I guess he decided to believe me. “I’ll have a team right out there.”

  “You’ll call Chance?” Detective Chance Martin was a former Minneapolis homicide detective who now worked for our sheriff’s department who I’ve been dating. He’d burned out on city violence and left the big city for a peaceful life in our rural county of farms and small towns. Trouble was, it wasn’t always so peaceful out here, either.

  Since he was the only person with any homicide experience on our county sheriff’s department’s staff, I knew he’d be the one Sheriff Ben would put in charge of this incident. He was not going to be pleased to find me here.

  “Yeah, I’ll call him,” Tom said.

  I sighed and waited for the officers to show up. While I waited, I called the realtor and told Sarah what I’d found. After her excited reaction, she calmed down a bit and I continued, “I changed the locks on the house, but I can’t do the garage until the cops are done.”

  “Oh. I guess we have to let them do their thing.”

  “We don’t have a choice. It’s a crime scene.”

  “Okay. Let me know what’s happening.”

  As I hung up, two police cars drove up and parked. Chance strode from the first one. My heartbeat sped up as it always did when I saw him. He’s a hunk, delightfully tall, ruggedly built, with curly brown hair. And he’s usually very nice and friendly to me.

  But now he was in his cop mode. His piercing blue eyes glared from below his heavy eyebrows as he paused in front of me. “Cassie. What are you doing here?”

  “Working, Chance.”

  “Do you always have to be involved when there’s trouble in our county?”

  My temper flared and I glared back. “I’m not ‘involved’ as you call it. I just got here and whoever is stinking up the garage has been dead for quite a while.”

  He frowned at me, his expression surprised. “Yeah? You’ve smelled a dead body before?”

  I swallowed and nodded. Chance stared at me, and then he and the sheriff exchanged looks. Chance’s expression plainly said we’d talk about this later. This was one more thing about my past that I hadn’t told him. “Where is it?”

  “Back there in the garage. You might want a gas mask.” I shuddered and stayed in my van. No way was I going in there again.

  He nodded. “Too bad I don’t have one.” He turned away and said over his shoulder, “Stick around. I have questions.” Chance moved on past the house to the garage, the middle-aged, taller and lankier sheriff following him, talking to someone on his cell phone.

  I sighed and sat in my van, turning on the engine and starting the heater running to counteract the chill in the spring air.

  A few minutes later, another police car and a police van pulled into the alley behind the garage.

  ***

  Chance and Ben hurried through the tall, dead grass to the back yard. The side door of the garage stood open. Apparently that was where Cassie had entered it. Cassie was right, a horrible odor met their noses as they neared the door. Chance immediately switched to mouth breathing. Chance pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it over his nose and mouth. They both donned gloves and stepped inside.

  In the dimness of the garage, Chance found a light switch and turned it on. Only a dim bulb lit the darkness, so he moved to the rear and pulled the chain to open the large garage door. That let in sunlight and some fresh air, which helped ease the smell, but not by much. An old wooden workbench with rusty tools scattered on it sat at one end of the front wall.

  The main part of the garage was almost empty, but piled high along the rest of the front wall were many large cardboard boxes and black garbage bags. The bags looked bumpy, so were probably full of aluminum cans for recycling. A rotting carcass of a dead animal lay on the floor. “Looks like a fawn’s carcass, probably a road kill, picked up alongside the highway somewhere. It certainly wasn’t run over in here,” Ben said.

  “Right. Evidently someone wanted anyone who noticed the smell to believe the odor came from the dead animal. But my nose tells me different.”

  “Yeah.” Ben took pictures, then grabbed a pitchfork from the stash of tools leaning against the side wall and moved the dead fawn outside. Maggots wriggled on the wet, slimy concrete floor where it had lain. They took more pictures at each stage as they worked.

  They both began pulling away the smaller boxes to find the source of the smell of a human corpse. One had to be here somewhere. They opened a couple of the larger boxes but they yielded only household items and clothing. The bumpy bags were light and rattled and a slit showed crushed aluminum cans. Finally, at the bottom of the pile, they uncovered the most likely source, a big antique trunk. It had evidently been locked but the lock had burst and the lid was partly raised. Ben pulled away the last box from on top of it, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

  Chance lifted the lid to reveal a bulging, black plastic garbage bag inside. After taking more pictures, Ben gingerly slit the bag with his pocket knife and eased it open to reveal black hair and greasy yellow skin—a body bloated beyond recognition.

  Ben stepped away, pulled out his cell phone and called Dr. Sans, the medical examiner in the Twin Cities suburb who served their county. In fact, he served four counties on the rare occasions a medical examiner was needed in this rural area. Ben reported their findings and asked the ME if he wanted to see the body. Of course, he did.

  The crunch on gravel and slamming of car doors announced the arrival of the other officers and the police van they’d ordered. “Do you recognize him, Ben?” Chance asked. “You know a lot more local people than I do.”

  “I don’t think so, but it’s hard to be sure in this condition.” Ben shook his head and went back outside to greet the other officers and let them and Chance do the forensic detail.

  ***

  I fidgeted, waiting in my van and keeping one eye on the men at the garage. I’d rather have just gone on to my next job, but knew better than to d
isobey Chance’s order to stay. When he got into his ‘officer mode,’ it didn’t matter a bit if we were dating. He took his job very seriously.

  One of the officers began stringing yellow crime scene tape around the area. After a while, they carried a body bag from the garage and put it in the police van and it drove away. I’d had enough coffee, so found my thermos of iced water and poured myself a cupful to ease my dry mouth.

  Finally, Sheriff Ben drove off and Chance came back to talk to me. I handed him a cupful of the ice water and he drank greedily. “Thanks. Just what I needed.”

  “What did you find?”

  He frowned at me. “A dead man, just as you thought. You were called to change the locks here?”

  “Yeah. By Sarah at Johnson Realty in Middleton. She said the people had moved out a couple of days ago and left the house open. She wanted it secured with the locks and lock box she gave me. So I changed the locks on the house. Then I went to do the garage, too, as she’d asked. It was locked, so I picked open the side door. I just looked inside, realized what the horrible smell was, and came back here to my van to call 9-1-1. Tom took the call.”

  “You didn’t go inside the garage?”

  “No. I just stuck my head inside.”

  “So you only touched the side door of the garage?”

  “Yeah, and the knob when I picked the lock and then opened the door.”

  “But you changed the locks on the house?”

  “Yes, I said that.”

  “Were you inside the house?”

  I frowned at him. “Yes, I used the wooden table in the kitchen to sit at while I changed the locks. You know I usually work at a table if one is available. Working in the back of my van is not easy or comfortable.”

  Chance grinned at me. “I’m not objecting to your methods, Cassie. I just need to know where I might have to eliminate your fingerprints. Oh, and I’ll need the code to get inside the house, since we need to search the entire property.”

  I told him the code and he wrote it in his notebook. My cell phone rang and I said, “Sorry, I need to take this.”