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

by S. W. Hubbard

  “You’re letting my attacker go?” My voice cracks with outrage.

  “We have no reason to hold him. It’s your word against his.” He leans across the table until his face is inches from mine. “We have a murder to investigate. Mr. Ramirez had nothing to do with it.”

  “But wait—there was someone else. While I was out on Saturday night, my neighbor saw someone prowling around my condo, looking in my windows. She called the police. Check your records.”

  “Yes, we know all about your neighbor.” He checks his notes. “Mrs. Simchak, is it? She doesn’t seem to recall exactly what she saw—a medium sized person in a hat and ski jacket. Maybe black, maybe white, maybe Hispanic. Not even sure if it was a man or a woman.” He smirks. “You didn’t coach her very well.”

  When Sean was trying to date me, my word was as good as gold. Now, a day after our break-up, it’s worthless. I think of all the women who have ever accused men of assault and haven’t been believed—the battered wives, the date-raped co-eds. Suddenly, I’m one of them.

  I jump up. “So now I have to look out for this man and his friends around every corner?”

  He gathers his notes and slides them in a folder. “You’ll be just fine. We’ll see Mr. Griggs tomorrow at nine.”

  Now I’m scared.

  For me. And for Ty.

  Chapter 35

  I spend the next hour on the phone with Emil Swenson trying to find a lawyer who will go with Ty when he talks with the police.

  “I need a crackerjack criminal defense lawyer, Mr. Swenson. Someone who knows how to cut a deal with the police.”

  “Hmmm. Martin Levine is the best criminal attorney in Palmer County.”

  “The name sounds familiar. Is he the one who got that woman who poisoned her husband off by convincing the jury the weed killer blew into the potato salad at a windy picnic?”

  “That is he.”

  He sounds like an awful person, but just who I need to protect Ty. “Great. How do I reach him?”

  “Ms. Nealon, you should know that Mr. Levine charges upwards of $600 per hour. And I rather doubt he can be procured on such short notice.”

  Six hundred dollars times an all-day interrogation—I don’t need my math skills to know my empty checking account can’t support this. “Well, who can I get on short notice who’s reasonable?”

  Mr. Swenson clears his throat. “There are some criminal attorneys who hang around the bail-bondsmen looking for work.”

  “Not an ambulance-chaser! Someone good.”

  After a long pause, Mr. Swenson speaks. “There is a young attorney who used to be a prosecutor. He knows the police. He’s just started his own criminal practice.”

  Perfect. Surely someone like that can work the deal Ty needs. Mr. Swenson promises to have the guy contact me. While I’m waiting, I call Ty. All I know is he’s not in Palmyrton. I don’t want to know more.

  “The police want to talk to you tomorrow at nine. I’m getting you a good lawyer.”

  “I don’t need no lawyer.”

  “My God, Ty—have you never seen an episode of Law and Order? That’s what the suspects always say, and in ten minutes, Lenny and the other guy have a confession.”

  “I’m not confessing nothin’. My mistake when I was arrested before was trying to make the cops understand how it went down. Now I know better. I got three facts I’m going to tell them: Ramon called me to give back the money ‘cause it was mal suerte; I picked up the money at the closed rest stop on Route 287; I don’t know where Ramon is now. I say those three things over and over and nothing else. If they want to know what he told me about the coyote who killed Horacio, they’re gonna have to let me walk.”

  “Ty, half of that isn’t true. You can’t lie to them. They’ll keep picking at you until they trip you up. I won’t let you take the chance of being arrested. You’re not going in there alone.”

  “A lawyer is expensive. We don’t have the money.”

  It’s not Ty’s job to worry about money. He’s in the jam because I let him know too much about my finances. “We will when we sell the lamp. And find the Civil War papers.”

  “But we need that money for—”

  “Shut up, Ty. We’re hiring a lawyer.”

  After an hour, Mr. Swenson still hasn’t called me back, so I decide to seek comfort at Maura’s.

  “What you need is some retail therapy.”

  Shopping is Maura’s answer to all of life’s problems. And all of life’s joys, for that matter.

  “You seem to forget that I hate shopping. It doesn’t cheer me up,” I protest from my fetal curl on her sofa. “Plus, I’m broke.”

  “Nonsense. You look good, you feel good. All your pants are too baggy. If I was walking around looking like I had a load in my diaper, I’d feel depressed too.”

  “Maura, I have a legit reason to be depressed—the police think I’m a hysterical liar and they released the guy who wants to hurt me and now they’re after Ty and I just broke up with the man who might know how to help me.”

  “So call him.”

  “I will not! Don’t you understand? I broke up with him. I told him we couldn’t see each other anymore. I can’t turn around a day later and beg him to come to my rescue. For all I know, he’s the one who put this crazy idea in their heads.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “His feelings are hurt. He seems to think I’ve been stringing him along—pulling him closer, then pushing him away. Maybe he told the other cops to let the busboy go to get back at me.”

  “Oh, Audrey—surely you don’t believe that of Sean?”

  “I don’t know what I believe.” I pause to blow my nose. “I know that Sean is a good cop, an ethical man. But he’s wounded. And wounded people don’t always act rationally. My father is living proof of that.”

  Before Maura can respond, my phone rings. Mr. Swenson at last. I sit up eagerly to hear what he has to say. But as he talks, I sink back into the sofa. By the time he’s done, I’ve curled up with Maura’s arty shawl pulled over my head.

  She lifts up the corner and peers in. “What did he say?”

  “The lawyer he had in mind isn’t free to represent Ty. But Mr. Swenson has called the police and arranged for one more day before Ty has to go in. Mr. Swenson is going to represent him. He says he’ll use the extra time to do a little research on the crimes Ty may have committed.”

  “So, that’s a plan. Why do you look green?”

  “Maura, everything about Emil Swenson is sort of grayish-beige. His office. His hair. His suits. Even his voice. He’s not a criminal defense lawyer. He’s not a wheeler-dealer. He has to do research because he doesn’t know how to handle this. Ty needs Alan Dershowitz and I’m giving him Mr. Rogers.”

  Maura ponders this for a moment. Then she springs to her feet. “C’mon. We won’t go to the mall. Just stop in a few little shops here in town. The fresh air will help us think of something.”

  I can see it’s pointless to protest. Maura hauls me out of her apartment building and heads to Palmyrton Square, chatting away about some store that sells miracle pants that make every woman look ten pounds thinner. I let my problems drift into my subconscious for a while, hoping that if I give them a rest, some solution will reveal itself.

  After fighting a brisk breeze for three blocks, we stop in front of a big window filled with headless mannequins wearing very short, wildly printed dresses. The sign over the door reads “Chloe, Chloe” as if the customers are shaking their heads over what the owner has to offer.

  “I hope we’re stopping here for you,” I say, “because this doesn’t look like my kinda place.”

  “Just you wait,” Maura answers as she shoves me through the door.

  Inside, she immediately strikes up a conversation with the salesgirl instead of shooing her away with a muttered “just looking” the way I always do. Before long, Maura has an armful of outfits in the fitting room and she begins dressing and undressing me like I’m a giant Barb
ie doll. She’s right about the miracle pants—they do make me look good, but I put my foot down at an orange and green geometric print blouse.

  “No way—it looks like something road workers wear to be visible to drivers.”

  The mini-skirted salesgirl, who looks all of nineteen, teeters over in her six inch platforms holding a drape-y taupe thing. “It doesn’t look like much on the hanger, but it’s fabulous on. People have been snapping it up.”

  Although the girl’s own wardrobe choices don’t inspire confidence, I try the top on and sure enough, she’s right. I look at myself in the mirror and see a confident, classy woman looking back. Score one for retail therapy.

  “I’ll take it,” I say. “I can wear this to my perjury trial. Now, can we stop shopping?”

  “A neutral outfit like that cries out for accessories,” Maura says. “You need a scarf.” She unwinds a brightly colored silk oblong from a display, but I check the price before I let her wrap it around my neck. “Seventy-five dollars! No way.”

  “Never mind. I know a better place for scarves.”

  So the shopping expedition continues. I trudge along in Maura’s wake, holding piles of items she wants to try on while my mind is a million miles away, replaying the interview with the state cop.

  Maura holds up two necklaces. “Which do you like better?”

  I squint. “Aren’t they exactly the same?”

  She shakes her head and goes back to picking through the racks of the funky Indian imports shop we’ve landed in.

  “What if the cops and I are both right?” I ask.

  Maura stops admiring herself in a strand of spangly beads and frowns at her reflection. “You’re not sure if the guy really did threaten you?”

  “Oh, he threatened me all right. But what if he wasn’t threatening me about Ramon? The cop kept asking me exactly what the busboy said. I realize now he never mentioned Ramon by name, but I leaped to the conclusion that a Hispanic man’s threats had to concern the other Hispanic man who’s causing me grief. Subliminal racism.”

  Maura offers a big smile to the woman in the sari behind the counter, and nudges me deeper into the store. “So you think he didn’t mean stop looking for Ramon?”

  “Yeah, and when he said stop talking to the big cop, maybe he didn’t mean stop talking to him about Ramon.”

  Maura holds a fuchsia and black scarf next to my face. “Then what did he mean?”

  “It has to be Harold’s house. What else am I involved in? Stop looking around Harold’s house. Stop telling the cop what you’re doing there. Most of the neighbors don’t want the house to be cleaned up; they want it torn down. And I was telling Sean about that when the busboy was hovering around at Fiorello’s.”

  “But why would this busboy threaten you about Harold’s place? He couldn’t possibly have an interest in that house.”

  “He works full-time as a landscaper and picks up extra money working at Fiorello’s. Maybe there are other odd jobs he’s willing to do for pay.”

  Maura tilts her head. “Like, he’s a hired enforcer? For whom?”

  “Bernadette and her Neighborhood Improvement Group. Maybe they hired him.”

  “This is a little far-fetched, girl.”

  “You didn’t see the riot outside Harold’s house. Those people are ruthless.”

  “But how would the Summit Oaks nosey neighbor brigade know this busboy dude?”

  “Are you kidding? No one in Summit Oaks does their own yard work or their own housecleaning.” I pick up a pair of paisley harem pants with an elastic waist. They look comfy. “Every time I’m at Harold’s place, I see work crews trolling through the neighborhood—cleaners, landscapers, snowplowers. They’re all Hispanic.”

  Maura removes the pants from my hand and replaces them with a fringy shawl. “Accessories only here. So what’s your next move? Bang on Bernadette’s door and demand that she call off her hit man?”

  “Perhaps a more indirect approach. I need to infiltrate the neighborhood inner circle somehow.”

  Maura moves toward the cash register laden with beads and scarves. “You’ve got the perfect undercover agent at home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ethel. I took her for a walk one day when you were staying with me and I met two cute guys, a young mother, and a bag lady in one trip around the block. Start walking her in Summit Oaks.”

  Chapter 36

  Overnight, five inches of snow has fallen, wrapping the houses, trees and streets in a cleansing blanket of white. Even Harold’s house looks clean. Despite the fact that all the main roads have been cleared since dawn, we arrive to find the neighbors in Summit Oaks behaving like the Donner Party. Everyone is outside digging and shaking their heads and wondering if they’ll ever get out, as if it never snows in New Jersey. They haven’t started eating one another yet, but I’m watching my back.

  Ethel is delighted by the snow, so it seems the perfect opportunity to use her for a little undercover work. I haven’t been alone on the street since the busboy was released, but it’s broad daylight and lots of people are outside and I have the dog to guard me. Still, I look around at every intersection, alert to every movement.

  As usual, Ethel walks me. I’ve allowed her to follow her nose and now we are heading up a steep hill. This street makes the outer ring of the Summit Oaks neighborhood—I’ve never been up here.

  Ethel sets off at a trot. Apparently there are some great-smelling mailbox posts over on this side of the neighborhood. Not to mention some juicy squirrels. A moving van is parked in front of 27 Elm; two burly men carry a sofa down the snowy walk. Isabelle Trent’s bright green Trent Fine Properties sign is still in the yard with sold plastered across it.

  We round a corner, and stop short.

  “Holy crap! Where did that come from?” Ethel and I stare at a monumental Italian villa sandwiched between two modest ranch houses. Every other house in the neighborhood is sided in cedar shakes or clapboard. This one is stucco. Pink stucco. It’s got columns and two-story windows and a giant stone staircase leading to a massive front door that could keep Attila the Hun at bay. It stands out in Summit Oaks like a flamingo in a flock of ducks.

  Ethel gives the house three sharp barks and turns tail on it. “I agree, baby. That’s one ugly McMansion. No wonder Phoebe’s worried.”

  We trudge a little further and encounter a crowd of kids sledding. Their moms stand at the bottom of the hill to keep them from overshooting the yard and landing in the street. A little boy spins down the hill in a red saucer and slides to a stop at our feet. When the kid tumbles off into the snow, Ethel promptly joins him rolling through the drifts.

  “Can I take your dog for a ride on my sled?”

  “I don’t think that would work too well. She wouldn’t be able to hold on.”

  He studies her paws, registers the absence of opposable thumbs, and scampers off.

  “Danny loves dogs,” his mom tells me. “I promised him we could get one this summer.”

  The other ladies chime in, offering advice and asking me about Ethel. Shelter or breeder, big or small? Maura is right. Ethel is the ideal secret agent. If any of these chatty ladies were part of Bernadette’s riot, they’re showing no sign of recognizing me, bundled up as the Michelin man. Our conversation continues above the background noise of shrieks and laughter from the kids.

  “Isn’t this great?” a lady in a blue parka gushes. “After four years in Atlanta, Timmy doesn’t remember what real snow looks like.”

  “The first big snow of the season is fun, but if school is closed all week, I’ll kill myself!”

  “Yeah—my house already looks like a bomb went off in the family room.”

  “Speaking of mess,” the lady who moved from Atlanta asks, “can anyone recommend a reliable house cleaner?”

  Two ladies answer at once. “Estrella Camion.”

  “She’s great,” another lady chimes in. “She cleans for lots of people in the neighborhood. You’ll see her van ever
ywhere: SuperStar Cleaning.”

  “Is that the blue van with the yellow stars?” I ask. I’ve seen it in the neighborhood almost every day. On Friday is was parked on Acorn Lane all day—Bernadette, Phoebe, and Ed all seem to use the same service.

  “That’s the one.” One of the first recommenders continues, “Not only does she do a great job cleaning, but she also knows people to do any other job you need done: lawn work, gutter cleaning, snow removal. You name it, she’s got a friend or a relative who will do it.”

  My ears perk up. Does she know men who will do dirty work, like threatening women in Play-O-Rama? Estrella Camion. I file the name away for future research.

  “All I know is, if I don’t get some help with my cleaning, Bernadette will be sending the Health Department to condemn my house!”

  The ladies all laugh. The one who wants to get a dog continues in a lowered voice. “I heard the reason the Health Department refused to condemn the house is that Harold’s niece paid them off with some of the cash and jewels they’ve found in there.”

  “That can’t be true,” another mom objects.

  “How else can you explain how the house managed to pass inspection? There had to be a payoff.”

  Just then, two of the sledders crash. Amid shouts and tears, Ethel and I slip away.

  Interesting theory about the bribe. I’d believe it myself if I didn’t know that we haven’t yet found any cash and jewels. Ethel barks at the mail truck making his rounds. The carrier passes us with a wave.

  Finally we reach the crest of the hill. The mail truck is about five houses ahead of us. At the house to our right, a blonde woman on crutches with a cast on her foot stands on her porch eyeing the long, icy pathway from her door to her mailbox. I see more broken bones in her immediate future.

  I wave to her. “Don’t try to come down here. I’ll bring your mail up to you.”

  “Aren’t you an angel!”

  I wouldn’t go that far, but with so many things going wrong, it feels good to make one thing go right. I open her mailbox and take out the usual collection of catalogs and solicitations. On top are two bills and some brightly colored, hand-addressed envelopes. Mrs. Claire Dean , they all say.