Natalie looks at her watch. “My goodness–nearly nine. Come on, Roger, I’ll drive you home.”
I open my mouth to insist that I can do it and someone, maybe Dad, maybe Sean, kicks me sharply under the table. I shut up, and the two of them wander off, arm-in-arm.
That leaves Sean and me to finish off the second bottle of Cabernet.
With Dad gone, I can finally ask the question that’s been on my mind all night. “Any progress in finding Ramon?” I want to know what he knows, but I’m not quite ready to reveal what I’ve discovered.
The busboy comes by to refill our water again even though there’s barely an inch of space in the glasses.
Sean shakes his head. “No one’s talking. We can’t even get a solid ID on the victim. I’ve been canvassing—” He pauses and waits until the busboy leaves.
“Man, that busboy is irritatingly attentive,” I say
Sean watches him retreat to the kitchen. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Our conversation dries up. “What’s the matter?” I ask.
“Does that guy look familiar to you?”
“Who? The busboy? Why would I know him?”
“Could he be one of the guys we saw at that first house when we were looking for Ramon?”
I start to twist my head. Sean reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “Don’t look at him. He’s watching us.”
“He is? Why?” Then I remember the guy I saw in my rear-view mirror as I was pulling away from the Church of Living Praise. I didn’t see his face clearly, but he was short and stocky, just like the busboy. Uneasiness presses in on me and I feel like I can’t get a full breath. I’m not up for more risk, more danger. Part of me wants very badly for Sean to take care of the Ramon problem, take care of me. I want to immediately blurt out to Sean my conversation with Pastor Jorge, but I know I have to be more cautious. If I tell him I’m scared, he’ll head right over there and start interrogating the poor man and ruin any chance of negotiating with Ramon. I look at his impassive face and know that behind that façade the wheels are spinning. If I withhold information from him now, he’ll never forgive me, never trust me again.
I lean forward and speak in a low voice. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
The sandy eyebrows rise a quarter inch.
“Remember how Ty said Ramon was religious? Well, I discovered the church he attended, and I spoke to the pastor.”
Sean’s eyes narrow. He looks like he’s practicing deep breathing to stay calm.
“It was only two days ago. But I think, maybe, that the busboy could be the same guy who watched me leave the church. Possibly. But—”
Sean flexes his right hand at the wrist. “Not here. Let’s go.”
Both Sean and I have our cars at the restaurant. He escorts me to mine, which is covered in a light dusting of snow that’s started falling while we ate. “Drive straight to your condo. I’ll be right behind you. Don’t slide through any yellow lights.”
“Sean, really, I’m not sure—”
“Do as I say. We’ll discuss this at your place.”
I know better than to protest. And truthfully, seeing his car illuminating the snowflakes right behind me every time I glance in my mirror is reassuring. Ten minutes later, we’re sitting on my sofa. When Ethel sprawls across both of our laps, I don’t shoo her away. How mad can Sean get with her furry tail brushing his arm?
“Talk.”
“Okay, so when you told me that Ramon couldn’t get out of the country with the money too easily, I just thought I’d ask around at the local churches to see if anyone knew anything.”
Sean rubs his temples. “You’re a regular Miss Marple, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t think it could hurt.” I want to say, “You weren’t doing it,” but I bite my tongue.
“Go on. How many churches in Palmyrton know you’re looking for Ramon?”
“I didn’t just go door-to-door. I narrowed it down to the two most likely. The priest at the Catholic church was clueless, and then I went to the Spanish evangelical church, and that’s where I got lucky. I think.”
I try my best to recreate my entire conversation with Pastor Jorge, pausing to ask Sean occasional questions. “Did you know the dead boy had only been in Palmyrton for a week?”
Sean nods. “He had no I.D. Took us a while to find anyone who even recognized him. Some people said he called himself Jose. Others said Juan. No one knows his real name.”
“Pastor Jorge says the boy and Ramon were from the same village.”
“He was probably helping the kid, so the kid was trying to cover for Ramon. That loyalty got him killed.”
Finally, I get to my offer to work some kind of amnesty deal to bring Ramon in from the lam. I finish with, “I got the impression the pastor doesn’t know precisely where Ramon is, but maybe has a way to get a message to him.”
To his credit, Sean listens without interrupting. Then he leans his head back on the sofa and shuts his eyes. He sits that way so long I think he may have dozed off.
“It might work.” His eyes are still closed.
“Really?” I’m so excited I dump Ethel off my lap. She scrabbles to stay on the couch.
“I’ll have to talk to my commander. And the DA. And he’ll have to talk to the INS. They don’t normally like to make deals with illegals. But we got nothing on this case.”
I grab Sean’s hand, infused with hope that he can work miracles. “That’s fantastic!”
He straightens up and faces me. “It’s not a done deal, Audrey. If Ramon has committed any crime, no matter how small, they’ll never let him stay in this country.”
“I understand. But he really didn’t steal the money. Ty gave him soup and he accepted it. You have to make the DA and the INS understand that it was a case of mistaken identity. Mistaken Progresso identity.”
Sean cradles my face in his hands so I can’t look away from him. His hands are warm and hard but smooth. His touch is light. “You’re going to let me handle this. Entirely. Your work here is done.”
“Absolutely. I have enough to worry about at Harold’s house.”
“And if you want Italian food, don’t go to Fiorello’s. Not until I figure out who that busboy is.” His thumb strokes my cheek.
A tingle of electricity passes through my core.
“I’ll eat Chinese,” I whisper.
Our lips meet so lightly that I register the sensation more in my chest than my mouth. Uh-oh.
Sean kisses me again, this time with full intent. I push Ethel out of the way. I want to be held. My hands slide under the collar of his shirt and I press him closer.
He needs no further encouragement.
What follows is a make-out session of such intensity that I lose track of time and place. There’s only Sean’s all-encompassing warmth and the steady, hard thump of his heart.
And then the snowplow goes by.
Ethel launches herself at the living room window barking loudly enough to register on the Richter scale.
Sean sits up and makes a vague effort to straighten his clothing. He runs his hand over my disheveled hair. “I have a lot to do tomorrow.”
My heart is racing. That’s because Ethel startled me, I’m sure. “Will you call me and let me know how it goes?”
“I won’t have answers tomorrow.” His eyes search mine. “But I’ll call you.”
Chapter 18
I wake the next morning with a nose pressed against my ear.
A wet nose. Canine, not human. “Thank you,” I say to her. “You saved me from a very big mistake.”
Ethel cocks her head and begins a slow wag.
“Yes, this means a treat and an extra long walk.”
She leaps out of bed and races to the kitchen cabinet where her Milk Bones are stored. I follow, which necessitates passing the scene of the crime. The couch cushions are still dented and tumbled. Dear lord, what was I thinking?
I flush at the thought of Sean’s hands on my b
ody and my all-too-enthusiastic response. If Ethel hadn’t barked, I would have…. I shudder.
I toss Ethel a Milk Bone, and then, overwhelmed by gratitude, give her another. Astonished by her good fortune, she scoops them up and retreats to the laundry room before I can change my mind.
What got into me last night? I don’t want Sean to think I was rewarding him for agreeing to try to set up a deal for Ramon. I jab my Frosted Mini-Wheats under their milk bath. I wasn’t doing that, was I? No, I was genuinely enjoying myself.
A lot.
That’s what’s so terrifying. I can’t do this right now. It’s not what I want, not what I need. I laid my heart out for Cal and look what happened. Now, not two months later, I’m falling into the same snare with Sean. I need to stop and think.
Maura is back and what I need to do is hang out with her and all the lively people she attracts. Hang at parties, go to concerts, dance. I don’t want to get tangled up with Sean Coughlin. Not now. Not yet. Maybe never.
Ethel staggers into the kitchen to remind me it’s not a good idea to eat two Milk Bones before going out to pee. “I don’t know how I’m going to fix this, Ethel.”
She whimpers.
“C’mon. Your problems I can fix. Then I’m going to go tunnel my way into Harold’s master bathroom. That’s my punishment for being such a screw-up.”
Ty has taken a long-arranged day off to help his cousin Marcus move to a new apartment, for which I’m grateful. Because of his legendary squeamishness, he’s even less enthusiastic about working at Harold’s than I am. Although Jill and I tease him about his weak stomach, we don’t push too hard. We all have a tacit agreement never to mention Ty’s brief stint in prison, and I suspect the thing he found most terrible about it was the lack of privacy and the exposure to strangers’ bathroom functions. So I’m glad that on AMT’s first official day of working the Harold Project, I’m solo with Jill.
I swing by the office to pick her up and we drive to Harold’s house together. On the way, Jill bounces with happiness. “I’m so-o-o-o excited that we’re doing this job together now, Audrey. I’ve tried to be really careful, but I’ve been worried that I might be accidentally getting rid of stuff that’s valuable. Having you there to consult will be great!”
The putative Tiffany lamp notwithstanding, I’m still pretty convinced that 99 percent of the stuff in Harold’s house deserves a one-way ticket to the dump. “Will Harold be there today? You know, I’m not going to have a lot of patience to negotiate with him about every little thing.”
“Harold comes and goes. But don’t worry—I’ll handle him. You don’t have to deal.”
As much as I don’t want Harold underfoot while we’re working, the thought of what he might be up to if he’s not at the house is equally worrisome. “He’s not going out roaming Palmyrton on his bike, bringing more stuff back to his lair, is he?”
Jill twists her mouth into this funny little pucker, which I’ve come to know means she’s about to tell me something she knows I won’t want to hear. “He goes out on his bike every day. The need to be in motion is one of the symptoms of his illness. Garbage collection days are stressful for Harold because he sees all the useful things that people throw out. So I’ve devised a cycling route for him that takes him through each neighborhood only on non-garbage-collection days.”
I glance over at her, not sure whether to be appalled or impressed.
“I don’t know how you can be so forgiving, Jill. Harold tried to stop us from coming up to rescue you on Wednesday. And that whole flashback to the Eighties thing, ranting about George and Nora when they were little—has he ever done that before?”
Jill shrugs. “Sometimes. He has a few delusions that crop up now and then. See, some paranoid schizophrenics think the government has implanted chips in their brain or that they’ve ridden on alien space ships. But Harold’s not like that, which is why I think he may not be a true schizophrenic. His delusions are more realistic, but they’re still not true. Like once he told me in a perfectly calm voice that his entire family died in a plane crash. So maybe he’s thinking about Nora and George, although they were older than babies when he lived with them. Or maybe he’s got some totally different delusion playing in his brain.”
She talks about his delusions the way someone else might say they have a few dandelions popping up in their lawn. “Doesn’t that scare you? He would have happily left you walled up, like the girl in that Poe story.”
“'The Cask of Amontillado',” right?” Jill waves her hand. “It wasn’t that bad, Audrey. I was just stuck. I knew someone would find me eventually.”
“The point is, Harold actually tried to prevent us from rescuing you. He may be delusional, but he knows what he wants and he’ll act to get it. Doesn’t that bother you?”
Jill shrugs. “He’s mentally ill, Audrey. Sick. I wouldn’t be mad if someone with Parkinson’s Disease didn’t help me get out.”
“Someone with Parkinson’s wouldn’t deny you needed help.”
Jill turns her whole body away from me. “Did you see that awful Mexican restaurant closed? I wonder what will go in that spot next? Palmyrton could use a good Indian place, don’t you think?”
Mercifully, Harold is nowhere to be seen when we arrive, and once we strap on our respirators, the smell isn’t too bad. Jill leads the way upstairs. Over the weekend she’s found a vet willing to cremate Petey the cat for a minimal fee, and Harold now possesses his ashes. We’re able to move past his tomb, and start in on the master bedroom.
As we work, Jill talks. She is my Scheherazade, spinning the fascinating tale of Harold’s descent into madness. I’m dying to learn more about Nora’s mother, a woman who abandoned her children without ever leaving home. I can’t help but wonder what my own mother would make of her.
We’re standing in front of a solid wall of one-pound coffee cans. “I thought this was the bird room,” I say.
“Whatever’s in the cans might be bird-related.”
They’re stacked so tight that pulling one out would certainly precipitate a fatal can-slide. Jill sets up the step-ladder and succeeds in prying one out from near the ceiling.
“Heavy,” she says as she hands it down to me. “What’s in it?”
I begin to pry the plastic lid up, then freeze. “You don’t think it could be guano, do you?”
“Bird poop? Even Harold wouldn’t save that.”
“It’s a very good fertilizer.”
Jill’s eyes widen. “Oh, gawd!”
I pull off the plastic lid like ripping off a Band-aid. Best to know the awful truth quickly. Jill’s eyes are squeezed shut.
I look in cautiously and laugh. “Buttons.”
“Whew, that’s a relief. Not sure how that connects to birds,” Jill says. “But believe me, there’s definitely a pattern. Sometimes, it’s a pattern only Harold can see, but it’s always there.”
I do some quick arithmetic. Twenty across, twelve up equals 240 cans of buttons. “What are your plans for these, Jill?”
“Etsy,” she says. “Those crafters will eat these up.”
So we begin to dismantle the wall. Jill stands on the ladder and hands cans down to me, chatting all the while. But the work is hard, and soon we both fall silent.
I reach my arms up for another can. “What’s that noise?”
Jill cocks her head. Behind her is a faint but persistent scritch-scratch noise.
“I don’t hear anything.”
Scritch, scratch. Scritch, scratch. Scratch.
I set a can of buttons down and plant my hands on my hips. “Jill.”
“Okay, okay. I hear it. But I think it’s just a squirrel. I saw one pop in through a little hole near the roof the other day. The Bromley house had squirrels, remember?”
“In the attic, not the bedrooms.”
Shaking my head, I carry a load of cans out to the van. The snow has entirely disappeared while we were inside working and the sun is beaming, giving us one of those freakishly warm Ne
w Jersey winter days. As I stack cans, a voice behind me causes me to jump.
“Good grief, what was Harold doing with all that coffee?”
I spin around to see the neighbor lady I encountered the day I first met Nora here, the one who mistook me as someone from the Board of Health. “Not coffee, they’re all filled with buttons.”
She crowds right up behind me and sticks her whole torso into the van. “Amazing. What else have you found in there?”
I pull off my work glove and extend my hand. “I don’t believe we’ve formally met. Audrey Nealon.”
She backs away and gives me a little Queen Elizabeth wave. Can’t say I really blame her for not wanting to shake. “I’m Bernadette McMartin. I’ve lived next door for ten years. I’m chairwoman of the Summit Oaks Neighborhood Improvement Association.”
I bet you are. I offer my best cheerleader smile, which doesn’t amount to much. “How nice.”
“I’ve heard that you people are trying to help Harold stay in this house.” She blinks her eyes rapidly and squares her shoulders.
Despite my disgust with Harold, I take instant offense at being labeled “you people.”
“We’re helping Harold sell some of the more valuable items in the house. And recycle the rest.”
“Value? There’s nothing but trash in there.” Her chin juts up in certitude. “Vermin-attracting, foul-smelling, eye-sore-producing trash.”
I’m tempted to mention the Tiffany lamp just to wipe the know-it-all look off her face, but I still haven’t heard back from the expert at Christie's. “There are some items that can be sold or recycled,” I say.
“The people of Summit Oaks have had enough. Our lawyer has petitioned the town to have the house condemned.” The eyelids are batting like wipers in a flash downpour. “This health hazard is coming down, once and for all.”
As her voice gets louder and shriller, mine gets lower and quieter. “I don’t think anything’s been decided.”
Treasure of Darkness: a romantic thriller (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 2) Page 12