Treasure of Darkness: a romantic thriller (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 2)

by S. W. Hubbard

  “No, I just don’t want to lose that number. It’ll be safer if we both have it. We’ll try to reach him again tomorrow.”

  A moment later the number arrives and I save it to my contacts. A 973 area code—that means Ramon is still nearby. I feel bad that I’ve lied to Ty, but I’ve got to give this information to Coughlin. Eventually Ty will understand that I’m looking out for all of us.

  I hope.

  In the bright light of morning, the world looks a little different.

  Harold’s house doesn’t seem so creepy.

  Coughlin’s help doesn’t seem so essential. I still haven’t talked to him since the make-out session. He hasn’t tried calling again after I let his call go unanswered yesterday.

  Maybe he’s busy. Or maybe he has doubts too. Either way, I’m glad. And I’m not so eager to be the one to call him looking for a favor. Maybe I’ll wait just until the end of the day to see if Ramon calls Ty again. The more I think about it, the more I suspect Ramon must have sneaked a call on someone’s phone without permission. So tracking down the owner of the phone might not help. It might even hurt if it scares Ramon deeper underground.

  Putting myself on hold instead of taking action doesn’t come easy, but it seems right. At least until it doesn’t. So I fling myself into work at Harold’s house to curb my impulses.

  By noon, we’ve tunneled another five feet into the master bedroom. Ty has hauled the industrial fasteners to a metal recycler and has returned to find us elbow deep in bird paraphernalia. Having Ty there proves a mixed blessing. He tirelessly hauls boxes downstairs and out of the house, but he never stops his running commentary of disbelief.

  “This is bull! Why we gotta save this? Why can’t it go straight to the dump? Who gonna want a busted parakeet cage?”

  Normally Jill wouldn’t show Ty the kind of patience she shows Harold, but I think she knows if she starts squabbling with him, I’ll walk out. So she puts in her headphones and cranks up her tunes and simply smiles at Ty as she gives him the next box of duck decoys to put in the van to be offered up to a hunting club in Pennsylvania.

  Ty comes back upstairs for his next load and pauses on the top step. “What’s that sound?”

  Scritch, scratch. Scritch, scratch. Scratch.

  “A squirrel,” Jill says before I can open my mouth.

  “Aw, man—I bet it’s rats. Listen to them! They sound like they’re runnin’ a race back there.”

  “Squirrels,” Jill repeats, thrusting a box into Ty’s arms. “I’ll show you the hole where they got in.”

  Ty shudders and retreats with his burden.

  “You know what’s weird about this house, Jill?” I ask as we stack endless copies of Peterson’s Guide to Birds.

  She giggles. “Everything.”

  “Yeah, of course. What I meant is, every house we clear out tells a story about its owners. Like Mr. Wainwright’s house was full of stuff for cooking and entertaining, so you could tell they’d had lots of parties there. And remember Mr. Reicker’s house back in October?”

  “He was the world traveler—all that pottery and carvings from foreign countries.”

  “And that lady whose son was a pro football player. She saved every trophy, every jersey, every ball he ever had.”

  Jill cocks her head, her respirator making her look like a quizzical giant insect. “And your point is…?”

  “This house doesn’t tell the story of the people who actually lived here. It just tells the story of Harold’s bizarre obsessions. Do you think we’ll ever reach the stuff that Nora, and George, and their mother left behind? I mean, if we clean out these bedrooms, will we eventually excavate deep enough to find Nora’s stuffed animals and George’s Matchbox cars and Sharon’s, I don’t know, 1980s leg warmers?"

  “Geez, Audrey—you’re making me sad.”

  But I’m on a roll and can’t restrain myself. “Has Nora been upstairs since we’ve cleared a path to all the bedrooms?”

  Jill shakes her head. “I don’t think so. She doesn’t seem to want to explore the house.”

  “Understandable, I guess. Not like she’s taking a stroll down Happy Memory Lane here.” I run my hands along the doorframe of the nearest bedroom. “Which bedroom was hers?”

  “I dunno.”

  “I can guess,” Ty says as he climbs the steps.

  None of the bedroom doors can be closed because of all the stuff oozing out of the rooms, but Ty moves the door of the second bedroom on the left as far away from the wall as he can and points to something on the outside of the door. Jill and I come around to look.

  Keep Out is scratched into the wood.

  “Didn’t do much good, did it? Jill says. “Harold and Sharon still invaded each kid’s room. I guess George must’ve been in one of the rooms at the end of the hall, and Harold in the other.”

  I think about yesterday’s debate with Jill. Clearing these other bedrooms is not on our agenda. Is that why Nora is comfortable with us working in the house? She knows the kitchen, foyer, hall, and master suite are safe to explore, and she’s confident we’re not looking for extra work in the other rooms.

  “Do you think Harold has any interest in reclaiming his bed?” I ask, just to see what kind of reaction I’ll get from Jill. “That flimsy cot Nora set up in the foyer for him can’t be very comfortable.”

  Ty throws up his hands. “I am not clearing out his bedroom!”

  Jill waves off the suggestion. “No one is asking you to. Nora doesn’t expect us to clean the whole house. Anyway, the cot in foyer is better than sleeping wedged on top of boxes, the way he was before we got here.”

  It’s hard to imagine a middle-class American, an MIT graduate no less, living in the kind of squalor Harold endured before our arrival. Had there been a memorable day when he realized he could no longer reach his bed? Or did he slip into sleeping like a possum in a tree, one inch at a time? On my way downstairs with a box I pause in front of Harold’s cot. I guess this narrow, thin-mattressed bed represents a step in the right direction for him. Maybe that’s the uncomplicated reason Nora doesn’t care about reclaiming the other bedrooms.

  As the afternoon progresses, Ty’s scowl gets more and more ferocious. “This is bull, Audge. We bustin’ our asses and all for nuthin’. I bet even that lamp we found is a fake. What’d the expert guy say?”

  I pull up two chairs and hand Ty a soda from our cooler. Then I pull out my phone and call up an email I received early this morning to let Ty read it.

  Ty leans forward and opens his eyes wider and wider as he reads. “He’s coming out here to look at the lamp? He’s gonna buy it? Jill!”

  Jill skids up and grabs the phone. “Take it easy,” I tell her. “He says the photos are very interesting and he needs to examine the lamp in person to make a determination of authenticity.”

  Jill’s eyes light up. “But he thinks it’s possible the lamp might be a real Tiffany?”

  I nod. “He wouldn’t come clear out here on a whim. He’s got some other business in New Jersey, but he’s making a detour for this lamp.”

  Jill starts jumping up and down. “I knew it! I knew it! I knew we’d find something awesome in here. Why didn’t you tell us right away?”

  I point to her dancing with Ty. “Because I knew we had work that needed to get done before he arrives.”

  “You think the lamp is safe locked up at the office?” Ty asks me.

  “No one knows it’s there but us, right?” I ask.

  “I don’t have nobody to tell,” Ty says. “If I told my friends about an old lamp worth six figures they’d think I was smokin’ rock.”

  “Jill?”

  “Uhm, I told Nora. But I said not to get her hopes up. When I told her where we found it, she said Harold must’ve gotten it recently at a garage sale. Her theory is that anything valuable has to be buried, dating to the time when Harold wasn’t so crazy. She didn’t seem too excited.”

  “Was she mad that you were exploring the living room?”

/>   “Mad? Of course not. Why?”

  I shrug and turn away. Later, when I pass through the foyer, I peer into the living room. Jill, attracted by light reflecting on the colorful shade, found the lamp only three or four feet into the room. Beyond that point is an impenetrable wall of mini-fridges, upright vacuums, humidifiers, and bread-making machines. I have no idea how someone as scrawny as Harold got it all packed in here, but whatever lies on the other side of that fortress is staying there. God knows, I’m not going in to explore.

  Buoyed by the prospect of pulling down some green on the lamp, Ty returns to work cheerfully. He hauls out Audubon prints in warped frames and boxes of bird-watching binoculars without a complaint. Then I hear a shout.

  “Augh! Get away! I’m gonna have nightmares all week.”

  “Oh come on—this one’s kinda pretty.”

  Now what could that possibly be?

  I run upstairs to look. From the depths of the room, sixteen bright golden eyes stare unblinkingly.

  Eight stuffed owls. Ah, Harold.

  Like relatives awaiting the doctor’s verdict on the health of an ICU patient, we all gather around and watch as Carter Lemoine, 19th century decorative arts expert from Christies, examines what we’ve come to regard as “our” Tiffany lamp.

  His brow furrows. He puts on his half-moon glasses. He squints. He takes off his half-moon glasses. He runs his long, exceptionally clean fingers over the shade, which Jill had been about to spritz with Windex before I yanked the blue bottle from her hands. Flamingo-like, he twists his long neck to stare up under the shade and emits a strange little grunt.

  Finally, Ty cracks. “Whattup? Is it legit?”

  Mr. Lemoine straightens. He pulls out a white handkerchief and methodically polishes his glasses. Finally he speaks. “Hard to say.”

  Ty is wearing his “don’t mess with me” look, a look that makes men much, much larger than Mr. Lemoine scurry out of the way. Our expert, however, is not intimidated.

  “I can say with reasonable certainty that the lamp does contain Tiffany glass.” He picks up a pencil from my desk and with the eraser end points to purple iris petals and green leaves. “But I can’t verify with confidence that this lamp was created by Tiffany Studios.”

  “Say what?”

  Mr. Lemoine draws himself into a lecture pose. “As you know, there was a period in the 1930s when Tiffany glass fell out of fashion. Wealthy people would give the lamps to their servants. Entire windows ended up salvage yards.” Mr. Lemoine shudders. “Then, when prices began to rise, artisans would use the glass from broken and damaged Tiffany pieces to create new pieces.”

  Ty nods. “Kinda like a rapper sampling old songs to make a new track. That’s not illegal.”

  Mr. Lemoine arches his eyebrows. “A novel analogy, and quite apt. But when the rapper creates a new song, he puts his own name on it. He doesn’t claim it’s a piece by an old star.”

  Ty offers Mr. Lemoine his clenched fist for a bump to acknowledge a point well made. After a confused pause, the art expert gives him a tentative tap.

  “Wait,” Jill says. “There’s gotta be a way you can determine if this is a reassembled Tiffany or a real one. Isn’t there like…lab work, an art autopsy or something?”

  Mr. Lemoine shakes his head. “That’s why we must establish the provenance. If you could show that the lamp had been sold previously as an original, that would help. Or if the man who put it in his garage sale could say from whom he received it….”

  “And if we can’t,” Jill’s voice gets quavery, “this awesome lamp will be worthless?”

  “Oh, not worthless. I agree, it’s a lovely piece. But Tiffany lamps sold by Christie’s have fetched between $700,000 and $1.2 million. A dealer who handles lesser pieces,” he pauses as if it pains him to admit such creatures exist, “might be able to get you $5,000 for this with no verification.”

  “Hold up. You’re sayin’ even though it’s all real Tiffany glass and it’s just as pretty as a lamp that Tiffany made in his studio, if some no-name dude assembled the pieces it’s only worth $5,000? That’s messed up.”

  Mr. Lemoine arranges his Burberry scarf around his neck. “Scarcity and authenticity create value. That’s the nature of the art business. So, speak to your eccentric friend and see if you can determine from whom he purchased the lamp. Even the family name of the previous owner could be helpful in verifying authenticity.”

  “Wow! Up to a million two if it’s a real Tiffany.” Jill sprawls in her desk chair fanning herself with a take-out menu. “And we get twenty percent of that. So that’s twenty thousand dollars?”

  “Two hundred thousand,” Ty corrects. “And you went to college?”

  “Shut up. I was an art major.”

  “Two hundred thou divided by three—that’s $63,000 for each of us,” I say. “If we can get Harold to remember where he found it. That’s a big if. So no sports cars yet.”

  “You’re splittin’ the money even-up with us?” Ty sounds as incredulous as if a total stranger had offered to share his Lottery winnings.

  “You two found it. I didn’t want to take this job, remember?”

  “Neither did I,” Ty says. “If you goin’ by that, Jill should get it all.”

  “You rescued me from the cat tomb—that’s worth 63K.” Jill stands and circles the lamp. “If only you could talk and tell us where you’ve been.”

  “What’s your strategy for getting Harold to cooperate?” I ask.

  “I think I’ll bring him and Nora here to look at the lamp. Harold will need to see it to remember, but now that I know how valuable it is, I don’t want to drag it back to the house.”

  “You honestly think he can remember where he got that one thing out of all the tons of junk he’s collected?” I ask.

  “It wasn’t too far into the living room, so it must be a fairly recent acquisition. And Harold’s got an incredible memory for facts. It’s people and emotions that confuse him.”

  “You bring him back here.” Ty stands up and stretches his powerful arms. “If he won’t say where he got this lamp, I’ma knock the dope right outta him.”

  Chapter 20

  At 3:00, my phone chimes a reminder: Rosa Parks Center at 4:00. That’s right—I’m supposed to help Dad with the Chess Club today. Working at Harold’s makes the prospect of teaching complex board games to restless third-graders look enticing. Before I leave, I pull Ty aside. “Maybe Ramon will try to call at the same time tonight. Can you swing by my place tonight so we can be together if he calls?”

  Ty nods. “You got it.”

  Halfway to the Parks Center, I break into a cold sweat. Will I run into Sean there? If I do, will I keep the chatter light, pretend like nothing happened? Can I pull that off? More important, will I be tempted to tell him about Ramon’s call?

  At the Center, I find Dad in a room setting up chess boards in various stages of play. He hands me two diagrams. “This is Kyle’s game, the other is Jamal’s. I’m teaching them the Sicilian Defense. You do that and I’ll work with the beginners.”

  “Really? I get the fun stuff?”

  Dad keeps his eyes on the knights and pawns. “I want you to come back.”

  Before I can process this, Dad changes the subject. “By the way, Sean told me he’s got a lead on the identity of the boy who was killed.”

  My head snaps up. “Really? Did he say anything about Ramon?”

  “No. He’s working nonstop on this case. He won’t be here today.”

  “When did he tell you—” But before I can finish, a horde of kids tumbles into the room. Kyle and Jamal and their partners quickly catch on to the Sicilian defense, which allows me to watch my father from the corner of my eye. He’s remarkably patient with the beginners, even the little girl playing house with the king and queen on her board. He succeeds in getting everyone going on a basic opening and referees a few squabbles about which pieces can move in which directions. The hour passes quickly and as abruptly as the kids exploded int
o the room, they’re gone—off to Cooking with Marie or Homework Helpers.

  “Wow, that’s a whirlwind! No wonder you need help.”

  Dad sits in a kid-sized chair with his long legs stretched out. “If they had put me in a room with all those kids when I first came here, I wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes. But I started with Kyle and Jamal, and every week a couple more players trickled in. Now it’s—”

  “A zoo!”

  “A nice zoo, though. Don’t you think?”

  Could it be my father is seeking my approval? Talk about role reversal! “Definitely nice. But, all that noise—it doesn’t bother you?” Growing up, our house had all the liveliness of the period rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One icy glance from my father silenced any visiting friends, and few cared to return.

  He turns a rook over and over in his hands. “I know it’s no excuse, Audrey, but I was terribly unhappy during your childhood. Other people’s joy, no matter how innocent, grated on me. Your laughter, your silliness, only reminded me of all I’d lost.” He sets the chess piece down. “I’m sorry, Audrey. I can’t bring those years back.”

  My eyes itch with welling tears. Part of me wants to fling my arms around my father, but perched in that tiny chair as he is, I would flatten him. Besides, I don’t recall ever sitting in my father’s lap, or resting my head on his shoulder. How can I begin now?

  I open my mouth, not sure what will come out. Before any words form, one of the girls from the class skids into the room. “Mr. Roger, Miss Audrey—Mrs. Dawn wants to know can you be chaperones on our trip to the Play-O-Rama?” Her braids bob up and down, pink plastic barrettes clacking. “Please say yes or else we can’t go!”

  I look to my dad for direction. If he’s in, I’m in.

  Dad struggles up from the low chair. “All right, Briana. Tell Mrs. Dawn we’re coming.”

  I have no point of reference to comprehend Play-O-Rama. These giant indoor playgrounds didn’t exist when I was a child, and even if they had, no one, not even my generous grandparents, would have brought me to one. We enter a cavernous room with the decibel level of the main runway at LaGuardia. Immediately, our twelve charges take off, heading for what looks like a huge hamster tunnel maze. Within it there are slides and ball pits and rope ladders and all sorts of obstacles to exhaust even the boundless energy of the Parks Center kids.