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

by S. W. Hubbard

  The house is a perfectly maintained colonial: driveway plowed, walk shoveled, bird-feeder filled, cheery red and pink Valentine’s Day flag blowing in the breeze. It’s hard to be frightened by someone who decorates for minor holidays, but I remind myself that Bernadette’s house is straight out of HGTV and still contains a lot of rage.

  I take a deep breath and ring the bell. Inside I hear the Westminster chimes and the sound of a small dog yapping. I wait with my heart pounding.

  And wait.

  I ring again. Nothing.

  I step back to see if anyone’s peeping through the curtains. The house seems empty.

  I’ll have to come back later. But now my adrenaline is pumping. I’ve got to do something with all this energy. Tie up some loose ends.

  Resolve…something.

  I think of what sits in my office safe now that the cash is gone: the Tiffany lamp. A big lump of potential help for Ty. College tuition. His own car.

  A defense lawyer.

  I shiver and get back in my car to head for my office. Today is the day we will make Harold tell us where he got the lamp. Jill keeps wanting to wait for him to have one of his good toilet-engineering days, but the effects of the meds he got at the hospital have worn off, and Harold seems to be getting worse, not better. Today may be as good as he ever gets.

  A plan forms as I drive. I will bring the lamp to the house so Harold can see it in a familiar setting. I’ll get Nora to meet us there so Jill has some extra support.

  I will make this happen.

  “Harold, remember the lamp you bought from the man with the sunglasses?” Jill coos.

  Nora has slipped away from work for an hour, and she Jill and I are gathered around the kitchen table with Harold. The lamp glitters before us.

  He shakes his head. “That lamp was lost in the fire. Very sad.” He turns and wanders back to his card table in the foyer.

  Nora rubs her temples. “This will never work. My brother George is back in town. He’s softened recently on wanting to tear down the house. I told him to meet us here so he can see the lamp and see how much progress you’ve made clearing out. But if Uncle Harold acts like this, George might change his mind again.”

  Jill doubles over, wheezing so hard she can’t catch her breath. Just then, a cold breeze sweeps through the kitchen. A younger, much better groomed version of Harold steps into the kitchen.

  “George!” Nora turns on an upbeat voice. “You made it. Meet Jill and Audrey. This is the Tiffany lamp they found. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

  Nora’s brother puts one reluctant foot in front of the other like he’s walking the plank. He circles the lamp with a dubious expression on his face. “Looks like all the other dusty old crap Harold collects.”

  I shine my flashlight under the shade and the colors jump to life. The purple irises, the yellow lilies—it really is a magnificent creation. The more I see it, the more convinced I am that it must be real.

  “Humpf.” George jams his hands in the pockets of his jacket and glances around the kitchen. “This house is like a freakin’ time capsule of the eighties. Look at that wallpaper.”

  Cheerful fat geese–once white, now a dingy gray—waddle around the border near the ceiling carrying baskets of flowers in their beaks.

  Nora smiles. “Remember when Mom put it up? She was so pleased—it was the height of fashion.”

  George turns his back on his sister. “You seem to forget you’re four years older. I have no memory of things ever being happy and normal in this house.” He studies the lamp again. “If Harold has managed to acquire something of artistic value, it’s pure chance. He has no eye for beauty.”

  I switch my flashlight off and the lamp returns to obscurity. Is it my longing for it to be real that makes it more beautiful?

  Harold wanders back into the kitchen. He takes one look at George and freezes.

  George’s eyes widen. “My God, he looks awful,” he blurts, as if Harold were in a coma.

  Nora elbows her brother into silence. “Look who’s here, Uncle Harold.” Nora speaks in that high-pitched, sing-song that parents use to convince toddlers they should be happy to see the dentist. “It’s George. You haven’t been together in a while.”

  Harold blinks his eyes a few times then looks away.

  Nora crosses the room to him and puts her arm around his shoulders. “Come over here, Uncle Harold. Let’s look at this lamp. Remember? You got it at a garage sale, I think.”

  Harold steps closer and his face stiffens. I’ve come to know that look, and it’s not good. It usually appears when Harold’s about to dig in his heels on something.

  “It shouldn’t be in the kitchen,” he says. “It belongs in the living room. Lamps and appliances go in the living room.”

  “You’re right, Harold,” Jill says. “We just moved it temporarily so we could see it a little better.”

  Harold takes a step forward. “It needs to go back.”

  “Okay, no problem. We can put it where you want it.” Nora moves to pick up the lamp, but George grabs her arm and jerks her back.

  “Stop indulging his craziness! I’m sick of catering to his ridiculous whims.”

  Harold covers his ears. “Don’t wake the babies.”

  “Shut up!” George roars. “Never say that again!”

  Jill and I exchange glances. “Harold says that a lot,” I say. “What does it mean?”

  “How the hell should I know?” George is still irritated, but he’s lowered his voice. “He was always muttering strange incantations. The kids in the neighborhood thought he was a witch doctor.”

  Harold’s breathing gets more labored. He sidles closer to the table. “We have to put this where it belongs. It shouldn’t be here.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jill murmurs. She moves to pick up the lamp.

  “No!” Without warning, Harold lunges at Jill. He sinks his fingernails into her arm. “You’re the one who took it away. I don’t want you to touch it.”

  Jill gasps and winces, but never loses patience. “Okay, it’s all right.”

  Not so George. He grabs Harold by the collar. “Take your hands off her. She’s trying to help you, and this is how you act?”

  Harold squirms to escape his nephew’s grasp. His grimy sweatshirt comes halfway over his head. George is younger, but Harold is taller. They struggle until Harold’s right arm pulls out of his shirt. Unexpectedly, he’s free and lurches backward.

  One skinny hip catches the edge of the table.

  In slow motion the lamp tips.

  I dive.

  Shattering glass echoes.

  Emerald. Ruby, Amethyst. Gold.

  The colors are all that’s left.

  Chapter 40

  I pick up a shard of green from the floor and study the many shades: turquoise, emerald, sea foam, cream. Even without form, it’s beautiful.

  The destruction of the lamp triggered a huge screaming match between Nora and George. Harold bolted like a skittish horse. Nora eventually returned to her office, while George seemed to vaporize while our backs were turned. I expected Jill to dissolve in despair, but she didn’t shed a tear. Instead, the catastrophe seems to have hardened her resolve.

  Now she and I are alone at the scene of the crime. I step around the tragic pile of glass on the floor, strap on my respirator, and prepare to head upstairs. Jill reaches for hers and triggers a coughing fit.

  “Honey, please—stay down here. Now that we got the chicken incubator out of the way, I just need to sift through the collection until I find the valuable papers. You ride herd on Harold in case he comes back, and keep him out of my hair.”

  Jill lets her respirator slip from her fingers and clatter to the floor. Too out-of-breath to speak, she nods and sinks into a kitchen chair.

  Now I know she’s really sick. She’s staying only to make sure I stick with the plan. I’ve got to find those papers today and get Jill home to bed.

  The trudge up the stairs feels like the final assault on Mt. Eve
rest. Like the doomed climbers in Into Thin Air, the only thing that keeps me putting one miserable foot in front of the other is the dread of having come so far for nothing. At the door of the master bedroom I shut my eyes and give myself a pep talk. You can do this. The papers exist. Think like Harold and find them.

  Then I squeeze past the pantheon of stuffed birds in the bedroom and wriggle into the bath. The en suite bathroom was still a luxury when this house was built, and the bath doesn’t have the square footage of today’s master baths. There’s barely enough room for me to turn around. Through the murky glass door of the shower stall I see hundreds of Civil War books. Floor to ceiling, Bruce Catton to Jeff Shara, wedged so tightly I probably can’t even pry one loose. Harold could have slipped the papers between any two volumes, but somehow I doubt it. Books are books and letters are letters, and in Harold’s OCD mind, the twain don’t meet.

  I move to the bathtub: Civil War uniforms, hats, capes, disintegrating shoes. The trove has spilled over onto the floor. Under the blue wool of a soldier’s jacket I see the corner of a once-fluffy pink bathmat. Some of this might go for fifty or a hundred bucks on eBay, but I’m not here to screw with collectibles. The toilet must be in that little alcove, but it’s completely buried in weapons—swords, scabbards, rusty bayonets, rifles, revolvers, and a lead cannonball. Once I find the papers, it might be worthwhile to come back for a few of those guns. Right now, eyes on the prize. The his-and-her vanity is neatly divided between bullets in sink one and medals in sink two.

  Gingerly, I open the vanity drawers. Eighties era tubes of dried out Maybelline lip gloss and compacts of blue and purple eye shadow are nestled together with maps of the Gettysburg battlefield and walking tour brochures of Civil War sites in Richmond. This seems promising.

  Next drawer: Sharon’s electric curlers and a museum guide to Appomattox Courthouse.

  Final drawer: Brut aftershave, Gillette shaving cream and brochures on Andersonville Prison.

  I yank open the cabinet under the sink: flinging aside evaporated cleaning supplies, I see a narrow box in the back. Yes!

  No. Guides to every Civil War site in North Carolina.

  Only one place left to look. I put my fingers on the latch of the mirrored medicine cabinet door. My exhausted masked face peers back at me in the spotted glass. Please, God…

  I open the door to narrow shelves jammed with packets of Bayer aspirin and bottles of Robitussin and tubes of Neosporin. I sweep the long-expired medications aside.

  And there, jammed behind the removable shelves is a thick manila envelope. I claw the shelves out. Printed on the upper left hand corner: William C. VanderMere, Historical Artifacts.

  Inside is another envelope, acid free to protect fragile documents. I peek inside and see the spidery handwriting of 150 years ago.

  “Dear General Lee,”

  “Jill, I found it!” I clatter downstairs, clutching the manila envelope in my hand. Harold, back at his card table as if nothing has happened, looks up briefly as I tear past him into the kitchen. “Look!”

  Jill’s head rests on her arms flat on the kitchen table. She must have dozed off. I squeeze her shoulder to urge her up, but she doesn’t move.

  “Jill, look. I found the papers.” I shake her, and her left arm falls limply to her side.

  Her face is gray, her lips blue.

  “Jill!” I pull her upright in the chair. Her body is dead weight.

  She’s not breathing.

  I scream, but there’s no one but Harold to hear me. Frantically, I scrabble through my tote bag to find my phone. Why, today of all days, is it in my bag instead of my pocket? My shaking fingers release the envelope into the tangle of junk in the bag. Finally, they close over the familiar rectangle of the phone.

  I dial 9-1-1 and shout at a maddeningly calm woman that I need an ambulance. “She’s blue. She’s not breathing. What should I do?”

  The woman drones calm instructions in my ear about stretching Jill out and checking her pulse. I do as she says, but how can this help? Oh, God—why don’t I know CPR?

  I stare into Jill’s slack, blue face and a wave of terror overtakes me. She can’t die. I can’t let her die.

  Crazed, I run to the always-open kitchen window and scream. “Help!” Maybe Bernadette will hear me. “Help, please someone help me.”

  I dart back to Jill and try to find a pulse in her cold arm. Hopeless. My own hands are shaking too hard. Tears blur my vision.

  How could I have let this happen? Why did I let her work in this house? George is right. This place radiates evil.

  “Helo-o-o-o? Is everyone all right here?” A male voice calls from the foyer. Definitely not Harold.

  “Help! In here, in the kitchen.”

  A moment later, Ed Brandt appears in the doorway. “I heard shouting as I ran by. You okay?”

  I’ve never been so happy to see Ed’s busybody face. “Jill’s not breathing. I need someone who can do CPR.”

  He nudges me aside and drops to his knees. “I learned after a buddy dropped dead during a race.”

  I have to give Ed credit. He performs CPR ceaselessly, falling into a rhythm of chest compressions and rescue breathing. I’m too hysterical to provide much help, but as Jill’s face gradually pinks up, I dare to hope that she will recover.

  I sense a presence above me.

  I glance up to see Harold frowning. How long has he been in the kitchen? I’m always unnerved by Harold’s ability to pop up or slip away so soundlessly. “That man shouldn’t be here. He’s a stranger.”

  “He’s a neighbor, Harold. Jill’s sick. He’s helping her.”

  “What he’s doing doesn’t work.” Harold stretches out his hand to stop Ed. His long filthy nails revolt me.

  I’ve had all I can take. Something snaps.

  “Get out. Get out of this kitchen, do you hear me?” I spring up, stamping my foot and waving my hands like I’m shooing a feral cat.

  Harold backs off to a corner, and I turn my attention back to Ed.

  It feels like hours have passed since I dialed 9-1-1. Where is that damn ambulance?

  Then I hear sirens growing closer.

  “The ambulance is coming, Ed.” I run to the front door to let them in. No Harold. I hope he’s gone for the day.

  Uniformed men fill the house with barked orders and medical jargon. I answer their questions and call Jill’s mom. Ed sits in the corner recovering from his efforts. The EMTs load Jill on a stretcher, her face covered with an oxygen mask. Her eyelids flicker. She’s regaining consciousness, isn’t she?

  She’ll be okay. She will. She has to be.

  As they wheel the gurney through the foyer, Harold appears on the stairs. His eyes are glazed and his lips move as he watches the commotion. No one but me even notices him.

  One of the gurney’s wheels topples Harold’s card table.

  Harold snaps out of his trance. In an instant, he’s off the stairs. With a choked scream, he pounces on the EMT in the lead, sinking his long nails into the man’s exposed neck.

  “What the–? Get offa me!” But Harold hangs on, a furious cat.

  The cop who’s come along on the call finally pries Harold loose and twists his arm behind his back.

  “Please, let him go,” I plead, knowing that’s what Jill would want. “He’s sick, and scared. He didn’t mean any harm.”

  The EMT holds gauze to his neck. “Freakin’ lunatic. Good thing I’m up to date on my tetanus.”

  “He drew blood,” the cop says. “That’s assault.” He handcuffs Harold and drags him toward the door.

  Harold twists to look at me, eyes wide with fear.

  I turn my back. Harold’s on his own this time. I’m riding to the hospital with Jill.

  “Have you encountered rats in this house?”

  After huddling together for an hour in the ICU waiting room, Jill’s mother and I are finally talking to a doctor.

  “The neighbors keep complaining there are rats, but I haven’t seen any mys
elf. But we hear sounds of animals scurrying. Jill kept insisting they were squirrels. She worked at the house for a day by herself when it was really bad. And then….”

  My mind streams back to the day I first met Phoebe, the day we were dismantling the wall of coffee cans filled with buttons. I picture the scene when I saw the tangle of stuffing and straw that Jill had swept up behind that barricade of Maxwell House and Folgers.

  “And then what?”

  I pull out my phone and call up Google images.

  “Everyone uses the term rat’s nest when they talk about someone with tangled hair, or a really messy desk. But have you ever literally seen a rat’s nest? I haven’t.” I type the words and a string of images fills the screen: big piles of shredded paper, strips of cloth, puffs of insulation. I show the doctor. “We found a pile just like this at the house. And Jill swept it up.”

  He grabs his phone and barks out incomprehensible orders for tests. Then he tells someone to call the Department of Public Health.

  “What are you testing for?” Jill’s mother asks.

  “Hanta virus. It’s rare in New Jersey, but there have been a few cases. If that’s what she has, the house will have to be sealed off. Hanta is spread by inhaling particles carried in rat feces. It causes high fever and respiratory distress.”

  I search his face. “But once you know what it is, you can cure it, right?”

  “There’s no time to waste. Once the lungs fill with fluid, it can be fatal.”

  That evening the TV news is filled with reporters standing in front of Harold’s house talking in apocalyptic tones about the arrival of Hanta virus in New Jersey. Bernadette looms in front of the cameras, saying “I told you so” for every station. When I picture Jill lying in her hospital bed, I have to admit Bernadette was right. But that doesn’t stop me from throwing my shoe at her smirking face on the screen.

  Jill’s mother is allowed to sit by her bedside in the ICU, but I’m not. I long for Ty to comfort me, but he’s still not answering my texts. I only have Mr. Swenson’s office number, so he’s unreachable too. Could they still be in the interrogation? Surely Mr. Swenson would let me know if Ty had been arrested.