by Penny Drake
“Someone with a severe mental impairment, Mr. Archer,” Ms. Hawk said behind me. “One that is not his fault.”
“I know that. It doesn’t change the fact that his impairment killed both him and his brother,” Zack replied. He stepped carefully into the kitchen. I followed. The pile of Styrofoam trays that obscured the refrigerator looked like a miniature sled hill. Mrs. Biemer, my landlady, has a whole litter of conniption kittens if I leave a pizza box in my room overnight. What would she say to this mess?
“Let’s look for some kind of study or den or something like that,” Zack said as Ms. Hawk and I squeezed around the junk piled in the kitchen. “Start with the most obvious.”
“No,” said Ms. Hawk. She was toying with the hawk pendant at her throat, something she often did when she was thinking.
He cocked his head. “No? Why? Some sort of investigation technique I don’t know about—start with the least obvious lead?”
“I am not an investigator, Mr. Archer. Besides, in this house we are more akin to archaeologists.”
I couldn’t help laughing at that. Indiana Faye was on the job! All I needed was a bullwhip. I gave myself a few moments to imagine myself whooshing around darkened caves, cracking my whip against cowering bad guys and using it to swing across open pits of molten lava. Zack would be tied up in a tomb somewhere, and—
Hmmmm. Probably best to put the brakes on that line of thought.
“So what’s the first step, then?” Zack asked.
“We survey,” Ms. Hawk replied primly. “Get an overview of the site. In this case, we should see what is stored in which rooms and, incidentally, clear out any other traps.”
“That’s why we brought you, Zack,” I put in. “You can test the traps for us, being a big, strong man and all.”
The last part of that sentence came out a little more seriously than I’d intended, and I flushed a little, bracing for his snappy retort. Rather than reply, however, Zack gave me a long, almost hungry look. My blush deepened, and I was thankful the room was dim so he couldn’t see.
“So,” Ms. Hawk broke in, “I believe the first thing to do is check the kitchen. We didn’t set off any traps on our way in, but that doesn’t mean none exist. Move carefully, please. And do remember, Mr. Archer, that my liability insurance does not cover you.”
We set to work, carefully checking the clear spaces on the floor for traps and wires. The kitchen would have been spacious and well-appointed if it weren’t for the trash. The cabinets—oak, if I was any judge—looked original to the house. Grime-encrusted tile countertops lay under mounds of paper. The refrigerator and stove peeked out from under piles of takeout bags, boxes, and trays. After some hunting, I found a porcelain sink. One side was filled with stacks of used McDonald’s cups. The other side was miraculously empty. I tried the faucet. Clear water flowed. I wouldn’t have dared to drink it, though I suppose the uncles must have had some kind of water supply. Did the house have a hot water heater? I didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t even know if the place had electricity, let alone gas. I hadn’t seen so much as a light switch.
“Hey, look,” Zack called from across the room. His voice was muffled, as if the trash around him was sucking up the noise. “I found another door.”
The door in question was at the other end of a trail through the jungle of junk. Its hinges were on this side, which meant it opened outward. Zack cautiously tried the knob, and it moved under his hand. I couldn’t see Ms. Hawk among the gloomy piles of stuff, though I could hear her moving around. I shined my flashlight beam full on the door. Looked like a pantry to me. What kind of trap could you hide in a pantry?
“Be careful opening that,” Ms. Hawk’s voice cautioned. I had a wild image of an anvil dropping on Zack’s head like Wile E. Coyote and stifled a laugh.
“Ready?” Zack said. “One…two…three!”
He yanked the door toward himself, using it a shield. I held my breath, waiting for something to smash outward or drop downward or do something else entertaining. Nothing happened. My beam flashed into the area beyond. I got a distorted view of shelves stacked with oddly-shaped objects with occasional glints of metal or glass. The room was definitely a large pantry, with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Boxes stood knee-deep on the floor, and the shelves were crammed. My light wandered over the interior, and I stared.
“What?” Zack demanded. He was peering out from behind the door. “What is it?”
“Clocks,” I said in wonder. “It’s filled with clocks. Look at them all!”
Zack edged around to look inside. I moved my beam about so he could see. Every shelf in the pantry was piled with clocks. Round clocks, square clocks, cuckoo clocks, alarm clocks. A miniature grandfather clock lay sideways on one shelf, its pendulum forever stilled. All the clocks were dusty, but I caught glimpses of movement here and there—a few second hands were still ticking off forgotten moments in the dark.
“Wow,” Zack said. “Kinda neat, too.” He reached for the camera at his belt, then thought the better of it. “I’ll wait until I can get some better lighting in here.”
“What’s in the boxes?” Ms. Hawk asked.
Zack leaned down and rummaged through a couple. “Broken clocks and clock parts. I’ll bet the uncles figured they’d get around to some repair work one of these days.”
“Back to work, then,” Ms. Hawk said.
“Time’s a-wasting,” I added.
The rest of the kitchen survey turned up nothing of obvious interest—no booby traps, no boxes marked SERIOUSLY IMPORTANT PAPERS—READ NOW! We moved on to the dining room. The curtains Ms. Hawk had opened earlier allowed dusty sunlight to illuminate the place. Through the grimy windows I could just make out the fire truck with its ladder extended up to the third floor, where the bodies were. I stared at the huge mound of mail on the long dining room table and wondered if anything was hidden at the bottom.
“Doubtful,” Ms. Hawk said, as if reading my mind. “If Lawrence Peale wanted to show Mr. Archer something important, he wouldn’t hide it beneath a pile of paper. He would put it where he could get his hands on it easily.”
We found no traps in the dining room, either. Three doors led off the room—one to the kitchen, one down the back hallway that ended in the shoe-covered staircase to the second floor, and one to an enormous space that was probably a sitting room or parlor, though the only thing that was being entertained was more junk. Every piece of furniture sagged beneath piles of it. About half of the room was taken over by stacks and stacks of books—paperbacks, hardbacks, encyclopedias, dictionaries. One tall heap seemed to be made up of nothing but bibles, giving literal meaning to the phrase “swearing on a stack of.”
Another section of the room was actually fairly tidy, considering. A huge set of bookshelves was faced with dozens and dozens of three-ring binders. In an actual clear space in front of them sat an ironing board. On it perched an iron and a small…microwave? I shined my flashlight on it. Yep—it was a microwave, one that looked like it actually worked. Well, why not? Who among us hasn’t wished for a hot snack while doing the laundry?
Beneath the ironing board lay several long, narrow objects. I picked my way through the mess to get a better look. Boxes of waxed paper interspersed with rolls of paper towels. Weird, but what in this house wasn’t? I pulled one of the binders off the shelf and opened it. Waxed paper crackled, and a bright red leaf the size of my hand looked up at me. It had been expertly ironed between two sheets of paper. A neat label beneath it said Acer saccharinum: silver maple.
“Leafing through the collection?” Zack said, peering over my shoulder. “Ha ha.”
“You ruin the joke when you laugh at it yourself,” I said, flipping a few more pages. Quercus rubra: red oak. Betula alleghaniensis: yellow birch. Fagus grandifolia: American beech. “This is what he showed you the first time?”
“Yeah. Like I said—second-grade collection.”
“It’s a standard way to preserve leaves, Mr. Archer,” Ms. Hawk said. “Dry the
m in a microwave between paper towels, then iron them between sheets of waxed paper.”
“The preservation method might be standard,” Zack said, “but it makes for a boring photo shoot.”
“Did he show you the collection in here, Zack?” I asked. “In this room, I mean?”
“Yeah, but this is as far as I got in the house.”
“If the leaf collection was important to him,” I said slowly, “he might have hidden other important stuff in it.”
“We’ll definitely examine the collection more closely once we’ve finished our survey,” Ms. Hawk said. “Meanwhile, we should keep moving.”
My stomach growled and I felt the early pangs of a hunger headache coming on. I tried to check the time, but the face of my watch was coated with dirt, and I had to wipe it on my equally filthy shirt first. To my surprise, it was nearly six.
Before I could say anything, Zack spoke up. “You know, it’s getting late, and I’m starving. Why don’t we call it a day and come back bright and…well, maybe not early, but sometime before noon.”
Ms. Hawk pursed her lips, then nodded. “Nine o’clock,” she said. “We’ll meet here.”
“Ten,” Zack said.
“You may show up when you wish, Mr. Archer,” Ms. Hawk said. “But if Terry and I find something when you are not here, I won’t feel obligated to show it to you.”
“Oh, all right,” Zack said, making a face. “Have it your way.”
“I usually do.”
Zack stuck out his tongue behind her back, and I found myself trying not to laugh at him. We made our way outside. It was still hot and muggy beneath the trees. The fire department was still working up at the third-story window trying to figure out how to free Uncle Lawrence’s body from the pile of magazines. I assumed they’d already removed Uncle Howard. Slava was long gone, probably already at home eating that cherry cheesecake. My stomach growled again at the thought.
Ms. Hawk, meanwhile, headed for the car to update Belinda, who had been waiting all this time. Or maybe she had been napping again. Zack sidled up to me. His face and body were streaked with dust, and his blond hair was gray with it.
“You didn’t thank me,” he said.
That caught me by surprise. “For what?”
“For getting you out of there.” He mopped sweat from his forehead with one sleeve and only succeeded in smearing dirt around his face. “I heard your stomach growl halfway across the room. Now me, I was ready to go on all night.”
His own stomach growled at that moment. I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “Really?”
Zack laughed. “Okay, you caught me. I’m hungry, too. Listen, how about—”
“No,” I said.
“You don’t even know what I was going to—”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I know what you were going to ask. No, I don’t want to have dinner with you, even if it’s your treat. I’m tired, I’m cranky, and frankly I don’t trust you.”
“I bet you like cheeseburgers,” he countered, ignoring the trust remark. “You look like a cheeseburger woman. Ever eat at Blimpy’s?”
“Cheaper than food,” I said, reciting the restaurant’s official slogan and feeling disgruntled that Zack was somehow able to spot this about me. I don’t like cheeseburgers—I love them. And you can eat them all day at Blimpy’s because their burgers are cheap, fast, and totally delicious. I could almost taste the first bite of salty, greasy burger, the onion and pickle creating tart taste bursts on my tongue.
“So,” Zack said, “you want to meet—”
“No,” I said firmly. “I repeat: I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I don’t trust you.”
“Fine,” he sighed extravagantly. “See you tomorrow!” He trotted over to a patch of lawn, upended a black mountain bike hidden by the tall grass, and pedaled away with a little wave. I watched him go for a moment—it was worth watching—then turned my back. This let me catch Ms. Hawk’s gesture beckoning me back to the car, where Belinda still waited. Time to go home.
The three of us rode in silence. We had to ride with the windows down because the mold and dust in our clothes was setting off Belinda’s asthma, so I was covered in a wash of hot air instead of cool AC. I was feeling grouchier by the minute. My clothes were sticking to me in all the wrong places, dirt and grit itched over my skin, and I was starving. Ms. Hawk, who didn’t look half as dirty as I felt, coolly negotiated traffic while Belinda stared thoughtfully out the window. Back at the office, we dropped Belinda off at her car with a promise to keep her updated on our search tomorrow. Ms. Hawk said she would lock up, so I retrieved my clothes from the conference room closet and trudged down the hot sidewalk to the parking structure on First Street.
I drive a little brown Jeep Wrangler, the kind with a fold-down roof. I like it quite a lot, actually. It’s small enough to zip around Ann Arbor’s clogged, narrow streets and park in Ann Arbor’s small, clogged parking lots but powerful enough to overcome Michigan winters, when sliding across the ice becomes a way of life. Today, I wouldn’t have minded a little winter. It took a while for the AC to kick in, and I left the windows down as I drove out of the lot and struggled against rush-hour traffic. Eventually I pulled up in front of a large Victorian house, two stories tall with a little two-story tower, painted light blue with white trim.
I parked in the gravel lot beside it, climbed the steps to the wraparound porch, and entered through a side door that put me in the dining room. A long trestle table ran the length of the room, and it was already set for twelve. The hardwood floor was polished to a warm glow, and I smelled pot roast, potatoes and fresh bread.
“Honey,” I called, “I’m home!”
“Supper’s in ten minutes.” Honi Biemer, my landlady, poked her head into the dining room from the kitchen. “So you’d better—good lord! What on earth happened to you, young lady?”
“I lost a fight with a horde of dust bunnies,” I said.
Mrs. Biemer—the only time you can call her “Honi” is when you first get home—looked me up and down. She’s a plump grandma type with bright black eyes and silver hair pulled into a grandma bun, complete with stickpins. At the moment she was holding a bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes. Even from across the dining room I could see little puddles of melted butter gathering in it like tiny gold lakes on a snowy mountain.
“Don’t you dare track on my floor,” she said. “Leave your boots on the porch. And hurry to supper. I have a surprise for you.” She turned and bustled back into the kitchen.
“Yes, ma’am!” I saluted her retreating back, kicked my filthy boots onto the porch, and padded quickly out of the dining room, through the public living room, and down the hall to my bedroom. Mine is the last one on the right. It’s one of the bigger ones, actually, and nicely-furnished. I have a comfortable double bed (freshly washed comforter and sheets provided every Saturday), a nightstand, a bookshelf, and a small entertainment cabinet in the corner with TV, VCR, DVR, CD, and DVD. I’m wondering what kind of V or D will come next, but I’ll add it, whatever it is. I have to keep a whole shelf just for the remotes. Buying DVDs is a waste—unless Orlando Bloom is involved—since you can rent them just as cheaply, which means I have space for books, which are not a waste, even though I love all three of my e-readers—they help me save even more space for print books. (Hey, it makes sense to me.) The stuff most people would call keepsakes are shoved under my bed, out of sight. They’re no one else’s business.
A sliding glass door opens onto the wraparound porch. The yard beyond the porch is shaded by a pair of oak trees, leaving it dark and cool in the summer and causing no end of trouble for Mr. Biemer, who spends inordinate amounts of time coaxing grass to grow in areas with permanent shadow. I see a thick lawn as a mowing headache, but since I pay rent not to worry about it, I leave it all to him.
I grabbed my bathrobe from its hook on the closet door and dashed down the hall to the bathroom. The Biemer Boarding House has three full baths—one
on this floor and two upstairs—and although technically all the tenants can use any one of them, we each gravitate toward the one closest to our individual bedrooms. Luckily “my” bathroom was unoccupied. I peeled off my clothes—I swear my sports bra made a Velcro “ripping” sound as I pulled it over my head—and took the cool, refreshing shower I’d been fantasizing about for the last two hours, though I had to cut it a little short. The Biemer Boarding House has some strict rules about mealtimes. Mrs. Biemer lays out a hot breakfast at seven on weekday mornings and makes cold breakfast available until eight-thirty. Lunch is on your own. Supper hits the table at exactly six-thirty and is cleared away at seven sharp, even if you’re in mid-bite. Mrs. Biemer makes up for the draconian rules by cooking great food you don’t want to miss.
I wrapped my robe around myself and zipped down to my room, where I yanked on shorts, t-shirt, and sandals and pulled my wet hair back with a scrunchie. Major frizz coming on, but nothing I could do about it unless I wanted to miss ten precious mealtime minutes blowing it dry. Fat chance there.
I got to the table right on time and counted it a victory. Mr. Biemer, a wiry sixty-something with a gray buzzcut and tortoise-shell glasses, was standing behind his chair at the head of the table. The other boarders were taking their places up and down the long table. The Biemers rent to both men and women, and they seem to attract people from the ends of the age spectrum—we’re all either in our twenties or over sixty. Only five of us live here long term. The rest come and go, college students mostly, or people who need a place to stay for a month or two while they’re between apartments or in town on long-term business. None of us long-termers pay them much attention, or even bother to remember their names.
Mrs. Biemer was setting a pitcher of ice water on the table just as I arrived and took up my usual place to her right. The longer you live at the Biemers’, the closer you get to sit to them, and only Clara Boatwright, a rail-thin old lady who can do incredible things with a crochet hook despite her coke-bottle glasses, has lived at the Biemers’ longer than I have. Clara always sits across from me. Her eyesight is bad, but her hearing is perfectly good, and she nodded a greeting when I sat down. This end of the table is like having dinner with your mom and grandma, if you have them. Technically I have one of each, but I pretend I don’t, so it’s nice to eat with Clara and Mrs. Biemer.