“Just the facts, ma’am, if you please. Let us conduct the investigation.”
“Of course, mein fuhrer, I mean Constable Wilberts.” I glanced at Ronnie, but he just stood there looking apprehensive, whether for himself or me I couldn’t tell. “Anyway, that’s about all. What with all the break-ins around here, I thought I’d better…”
She snapped the notebook shut and put it back in her breast pocket. She turned to Conklin, who had been absent from the festivities, but now returned to stand at attention by my side.
“Mr. Conklin, could you check to see if anything is missing from the house?”
She had to be kidding. Give him a few weeks to check the inventory sheets and he might have been able to tell. Wrong.
“Most of the valuable pieces are locked in cabinets, Officer, and it will take some time to check everything. It seems unlikely that an intruder could gain access to my keys and take items away without anyone hearing him.” He cleared his throat modestly. “However, there is a piece or two missing from the sideboard in the hall.”
We tripped over each other trying to get to the hall first, me trying to remember what had been on the top of that tall, multilevel cabinet. But even when I noted the empty spots on one of the ornate shelves, my mind’s eye drew a blank.
The notebook was out again, and Conklin told the constable, “A five-inch jade figurine, Officer, in the style of a Chinese dragon. Ivory in colour.”
“Valuable?” Tammie’s freckled face was wrinkling in concentration as she wrote. I wanted to give Ronnie a swift kick. He hadn’t uttered one word so far. Marc swore by Ronnie’s meticulous and painstaking methods of police work, but he was no good at the upfront details, that was clear.
“The jade is worth four or five hundred dollars,” Conklin said. “But it is an attractive piece, and Mr. Pembrooke liked to handle it. Also missing is a gold hummingbird, which is encrusted with semiprecious stones, valued at about a thousand dollars. I would have to consult the insurance papers to be sure of that.”
Snap. The notebook went back to the pocket. “If you find anything else is missing, Mr. Conklin, give me a call at the station. In the meantime, you folks can get back to sleep now. And keep the doors locked.” She gave me a baleful glance and started for the door, her short frizzy hair bristling with disapproval.
Ronnie didn’t follow. He called to the departing Tammie, “Constable, I think we should have a look at the doors and main floor windows. You check the front, and I’ll look at the back. The rest of you can go back to bed if you want.”
I gave Ronnie an approving nod. It was about time he showed some gumption.
Nobody wanted to go back to bed, so while Mitch and the girl followed Tammie, the rest of us went with Ronnie as he checked the doors at the back of the house, including the exit into the garden from the employees’ wing. There was no sign that someone had attempted to force his way into the house, and the windows were shut and locked as well. Conklin was never derelict in his duties.
Tammie’s search turned up no forced entry at the front of the house, and the two police officers left at last, this time with Ronnie in the lead. The entire household stood under the portico to watch them drive away, the lights on the top of the cruiser flashing and whirling. Tammie’s idea. But there was no siren, and that was thanks to Ronnie I was sure.
I gave Ronnie some thought. He was about thirty and single, with a pleasant, homely face. Just the right man for Caroline, after she had recovered from her bad marriage, of course. Both of them were too shy to get anywhere on their own, but with a little help, who knew? I had noticed Ronnie giving Caroline several sideways glances when she wasn’t looking. I resolved to think of some way to introduce them properly, after the reunion was over.
The crickets and frogs were silent, and a few birds were stirring in the pines. Dawn was imminent and the heavy air promised yet another day of oppressive moisture. On the horizon, the indistinct glow of the rising sun erased the heat lightning, and thunder continued to rumble quietly. It was eerie to hear thunder while the sun shone from a bright blue, cloudless sky day after day, although the eeriness seemed almost commonplace now.
But no creepier than an intruder entering Hammersleigh House and taking a jade figurine and gold hummingbird from the front hall. While leaving behind not a trace of his passage.
After the departure of the police, we all wandered off to our respective bedrooms, but it seemed no one felt inclined to get back into bed. One by one, we turned up in the kitchen, showered, dressed and looking for sustenance.
I had instructed Caroline that she was responsible for cooking one meal per day, five days a week, and I preferred that meal to be dinner. We would all get our own breakfasts and lunches. After all, she had a lot of other duties to perform, like doing something with the raggedy mutt that was scampering around under the table, trying to attract Rasputin’s attention.
However, that early Sunday morning found Caroline beating a bowl of yellow batter. I said good morning, but before I could repeat my wish that she not bother about breakfast, she hastened to assure me this was a special occasion since Mitch and Tiffany were visiting and she wanted them to have a good breakfast. Tiffany. I should remember that.
“I want to make some blueberry pancakes for the young people.” That was sweet, considering she was only a few years older than the young persons in question. “And for yourself, of course,” she hastened to add.
What could I do except thank her and make myself a cup of lemon balm tea? I set the table, and when Caroline turned around to hand me the maple syrup, I saw her eyes were even redder than before.
“Caroline, I want you to take the rest of the day off. You worked too hard yesterday. It was your first day and you cooked a meal for ten people before you even settled in. And I know you didn’t get enough sleep.” I set the flatware in place.
“But I’m fine.” She handed me the butter.
“We forgot to discuss which days you’ll have off each week. Sundays for sure, and that’s today. What other day do you want? Or do you want to take the second day at random? Maybe we could create a monthly schedule.”
“That’s great, Lyris. I have no plans, so why don’t you just make up the schedule. Any day is fine.”
I looked at her again. She seemed more than tired.
“Caroline, are you feeling okay?”
Her eyes filled up, but before they quite spilled over, Mitch came in.
“Are those pancakes? I’m starved.” He sat down and looked expectant.
I looked at him. “Good morning, Sunshine. You look like you just crawled out of a swamp full of alligators.”
He gave me a sour look, which went well with his dark-rimmed eyes. Well, that made three of us so far. I was sure my own eyes were baggy from lack of sleep.
“Mom, was it necessary to patrol the hall all night? You’d think you didn’t trust us or something.”
“Or something.” I passed him a platter of pancakes piled a foot high. “Where is…uh.” Damn, what was that girl’s name? I’d forgotten it again.
“Tiffany, Mom. Her name is Tiffany. How come you can’t remember that?” At that moment, the goddess herself arrived.
“Good morning again, Tiffany. Sit down and have some breakfast.” Her blonde hair was tumbled and uncombed. She had changed to cut‑off shorts and a T-shirt that just reached the bottom of her perky bosom. She looked adorable to me, and what she looked like to Mitch was apparent by the expression on his face. The way she gazed back at my son made me blink and indeed made me realize I should never again forget her name.
“I wanted to tell you, Mitch, it was very responsible of you to take your father home last night. I don’t know what might have happened if he had driven himself. Marc couldn’t have allowed it…”
“Yeah, well, Dad had a little too much to drink, that’s all.” He took a bite, chewed and swallowed. His dark eyes, so much like my own, were troubled. “He’s having severe financial problems, you know. His
business isn’t doing so well and the mortgage on the house is in arrears.”
“Real estate has been in a slump, true, but it’s picking up. I’ve noticed that several of his listings have Sold signs on them, so I’m sure he’ll…”
“The problem is, Mom, that when Dad had to give you half his assets, it pretty much put him in the red. He took a mortgage on his house and cashed in his investments. And he even took out a loan. He’s hurting, Mom, and now with three more kids to support, and a wife, it’s no wonder he’s drinking. Not that there’s any excuse for getting drunk, but I can sort of understand why.”
Dennis had certainly been filling his son with a lot of drivel. When we separated, we had agreed to keep our differences just between the two of us and not ask Mitch to take sides. However, it appeared Dennis had broken that pact and if Mitch was ready enough to get involved, he needed to hear both sides.
“Mitch, it upsets me to hear you refer to your father’s assets, his house, his investments. Remember that I worked during my entire marriage, so anything your father and I had, we accumulated together. That made half of it mine.” I took a swig of my lemon balm tea, now lukewarm, and continued.
“I don’t want to say anything negative about your father to you, but his financial problems could be the result of poor planning, and perhaps trying to live beyond his means. We split everything straight down the middle. You’re right, he has a new family now to support, but his income is much higher than mine and he should be able to handle his new responsibilities without difficulty. Many people live on a lot less.”
Mitch had the grace to look ashamed of himself. “I know all that, Mom. And believe it or not, I know what you had to put up with. It’s just, well, you have so much now.”
“Your father has a wife who loves him, a beautiful little girl, and two more on the way. In the eyes of many people, your father is a rich man. And if you’re thinking of Hammersleigh House, this place won’t be truly mine for twenty-five years. You know that, I’ve explained…”
He put up a hand to stop my words. It appeared I was not destined to finish a sentence that morning.
“Sorry. I don’t mean that, Mom. I’m not explaining very well. It’s just that you got half of everything. Now you still have it all, plus this house. It just seems that Dad got short-changed.”
I closed my eyes, frustrated with my son. Usually we were on the same wavelength, but it seemed he would have to figure this out for himself. How could I compete with Dennis, who was playing the sympathy card?
I changed the subject.
“So, Tiffany, you’re studying gerontology? Which university are you attending?” I could tell by Mitch’s look of exasperation that I was already privy to this information.
Tiffany flung her hair back and forked at least half of the stack of pancakes onto her plate before she answered. “I thought you knew, Lyris. I go to Guelph too. I’m going into third year in September.”
Caroline saw the pancakes disappearing fast and tossed more ingredients into the bowl. She averted her face from us as she worked.
Tiffany looked at me. “The furniture in my room is very strange. Every piece has horrible animal faces on it. I had the feeling they were looking at me all night. I didn’t shut my eyes.”
That’s not why you didn’t shut your eyes, my girl. “So that’s where that furniture went. It used to be in my room. Very gothic, isn’t it?” Both pairs of eyes swivelled toward me, and I pretended great interest in my teacup.
I said to Mitch. “You remember, don’t you, that the reunion is next weekend? Are you still going to help me?”
“I guess. I’ll take Friday off work and arrive late Thursday night.”
“You, too, Tiffany. You’re welcome to attend the reunion and get to know all the Pembrookes.” If meeting Mitch’s extended family didn’t scare her off, she probably deserved to become part of it.
Tiffany wrapped herself around Mitch’s arm. “Thanks. I’ll be here.”
“It’s a funny thing about last night,” Mitch said. “Those things were taken, yet there were no signs of someone breaking in. If it wasn’t for the fact, Mom, that you saw somebody outside last night, I’d say he was already in the house or had a key.”
Behind us, something crashed into the sink. “Sorry,” Caroline mumbled, “it slipped out of my hand.”
“You’re overtired and need some sleep. Why don’t you go lie down?”
“I will. Just as soon as I clean up.”
I didn’t argue with her. I hated cleaning up even more than cooking.
“Mom, are you going to keep dating that cop? You know, the one who was here last night. For dinner?” Mitch qualified his question as though I had various cops dropping in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“You mean Marc Allaire? What, don’t you like him?” It hadn’t escaped my notice that Mitch had not addressed one word to Marc at the dinner table or after.
“He’s okay, but I don’t know. I never thought you would fall for someone like that.”
“Like what? What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing’s wrong with him. He just seems so different from Dad.”
Well, that stopped me in my tracks. Any response I made would be wrong, or worse, flippant. “I suppose there’s no accounting for taste, is there?” I had to be content with that.
I quit playing with my pancake and dumped it in the garbage. Grabbing an apple on the way out, my mind was already turning over the plans for the day. I met Conklin in the hall and he gave me a half bow. “Madam.” He was dressed in his butler clothes and looked in better shape than the rest of us.
“Conklin, how do you think those items were stolen without any sign of a break-in?”
“I don’t know, Madam. If the motion detectors had not been tripped, it would be a simple deduction that the thief did not break in, but was already in the house. I have no theory to offer given the facts.”
Aha. His lips said no, but his eyes said yes. I had some thoughts myself, but they were too formless as yet to discuss with anyone.
I went upstairs to my bed. I had a date with Aunt Clem that afternoon and needed some sleep before sitting across the table from her crystal ball.
CHAPTER 12
Cowbell Lane. Cowbell Lane
When I was a child, I liked to chant these words to myself as I walked with my mother to visit Aunt Clem at Hollyhock Cottage. I always expected to come across a fat cow wearing a bell tied around her neck with a red ribbon. The bell would tinkle every time the cow bent down to munch the grass. I never saw the cow, but the words still lifted my spirits as I remembered those sleepy summer days that never seemed to end.
Today, as I parked on Cowbell Lane and got out of my car, I felt like kicking its tires. The air conditioner had conked out, and Wes at the garage couldn’t get to it until the following Thursday or Friday. The short drive from Hammersleigh had reduced me to a wilting shadow of myself. I pulled my cotton skirt away from my damp thighs and pushed my hair behind my ears, wishing I had tied the hair on top of my head before leaving home.
Referring to Aunt Clem’s house as a cottage was like calling Hammersleigh House a raised bungalow. Built high above a quiet lane that went nowhere, Hollyhock Cottage was a beautiful example of Queen Anne architecture. Pale yellow with white trim, the house had a wrap-around porch that dripped gingerbread. I climbed the fifty-six steps past flower beds bursting with waving clumps of daisies, ripe pink peonies and of course, hollyhocks. There were hundreds of hollyhocks in colours ranging from white, through all shades of pinks to the darkest burgundy.
The painted wooden sign swinging from the moon gate arch on the porch read, “Welcome to Hollyhock Cottage Bed and Breakfast.” Aunt Clem advertised her bed and breakfast business, but not the other one. She got all the psychic clientele she could handle by word of mouth. Sundays she reserved for family, but needless to say, we mostly stayed home and watched television instead. Not because we didn’t want to know what the future held, but beca
use she had never lost the intimidating demeanour from her teaching days. I was on her doorstep that Sunday afternoon only because I wanted to question her about the 1943 reunion.
When ringing the bell brought no response, I knocked on the wooden screen door. I heard slow heavy footsteps approaching. Last chance to cut and run, I advised myself, then snickered at my cowardly impulse.
The face that appeared behind the screen did not share my amusement at life’s little foibles, and it wiped the smile off mine. Twyla Malinski was Aunt Clem’s maid, housekeeper, companion, and did whatever else needed to be done. She was also Dennis’s aunt, so enough said on that subject, but I was sure she was pleasant enough to strangers and anyone else not previously married to her favourite nephew.
The door was not going to open without further explanation, not for me.
“Good afternoon, Aunt…Mrs.…um, Twyla. I’ve come to see Aunt Clem. Can I come in?”
I was pretty agile for my age and managed to sidestep the door that opened so suddenly, it just missed my nose. She left me standing in the foyer and clumped her way down the hall. Her ample backside jiggled with indignation as she disappeared into Aunt Clem’s spirit room.
I turned to the cigar store aboriginal that guarded the stairway. “Do you get the feeling Twyla would like to kick me back down the steps to the street?”
The wooden statue didn’t answer, being busy gazing over my head at eternity. He was a handsome devil, dressed in buckskin with applied wooden fringes and painted beads. Peter had drooled over this specimen, believing it would make a wonderful conversation piece for his antique shop. I wouldn’t mind him standing close by my bed at nights either.
Leaving Charlie―my name for him since he looked a lot like a young Charlton Heston―to his Zen state, I wandered into the parlour, which was used as a guest sitting room, and was again amazed at Aunt Clem’s ability to recreate the perfect Victorian ambience. But perhaps it wasn’t a recreation, but a blip in time. There was nothing in that room that wasn’t buttoned, tufted, ruffled, fringed or tasselled.
Cheat the Hangman Page 12