Treasure in Exile

by S. W. Hubbard

“No one knows. They’ve been checking the donation records and she never sent us a dime while she was alive.”

  “Well, that’s fantastic, Dad—congratulations. I’ll tell Sean. Maybe the basketball team can get new uniforms, huh?”

  “So, can you be here first thing tomorrow morning? The Board of Directors want to talk to you as soon as possible.”

  “With me? Why?”

  “Didn’t you listen to my voicemail messages? The executor says the interior of the house contains every stick of furniture and piece of art acquired by Vareena Tate’s father-in-law and his father before him from the time the house was built in 1882. The Board wants to talk to you about handling the estate sale.”

  I lean back in the passenger seat and smile.

  Screw you, Sutton Courte.

  Chapter 8

  THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT my upcoming interview with the Parks Center Board has put a spring in my step as I make my second sales call of the day. I’m meeting solo with George Armentrout, my networking score from the party, while Ty goes off to his afternoon classes at Palmer Community College.

  Birdie Armentrout’s house is much smaller than the last house in Melton where I organized a sale. And I pray to God it doesn’t contain anything as creepy as the home of the Eskew family did. But size is relative. No house in Melton is tiny-small. Birdie’s house is quite spacious, if on the smaller end of grand.

  Basking in the early afternoon sun, the house exudes an English village charm. There’s a rose-covered trellis over the front gate, which showers me with delicate pink petals as I walk through. All along the twisting flagstone walkway are exotic flowers planted to look like a scene in a Monet watercolor. No garish petunias or geraniums—the kind of common plants even a black-thumb like me can recognize. These delicately shaded and unusually shaped creatures a gardener must order from arcane catalogs or grow from heirloom seeds.

  The wide, covered front porch contains wicker furniture with chintz cushions. How nice to sit out here and read with a glass of iced tea. Before I can raise my hand to ring the bell, George has opened the door. He’s wearing a tweed sports coat and a tie over saggy wide-wale corduroy pants. Not office attire, but surely not what a man would wear to pack up his sister’s belongings.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.” George reaches out for me as if he thinks I might run away. His eyes slant downward at the corners. Today they’re red-rimmed. Allergies, or has the poor man been crying?

  I step into the foyer, where a pleasant clove-y potpourri wafts through the air. But under that scent lurks an acrid, burnt smell. From what I can see, the house is immaculate, the only sign of disarray a pile of junk mail on the hall table.

  George picks up a crystal tumbler from the table as he leads me to the living room. “Can I get you a drink? Scotch? Vodka?”

  Good grief, I haven’t even eaten lunch yet. “No thanks—I’m fine.” When we sit in angled wing chairs, I see that George’s hand trembles and some pale amber liquid sloshes out of the glass onto the mahogany end table.

  “Oh dear!” George pulls out a handkerchief and wipes up the drips. “Birdie is very particular.” He glances around and bites his lower lip. “She loved this room.”

  Everywhere in the room there are flowers: dried flowers, paintings of flowers, flowers in the pattern of the Chinese rug, flowers needlepointed on the pillows, flowers worked into the weave of the damask upholstery. “She’s a gardener?” I ask.

  George’s eyes light up. My quite obvious observation has pleased him, and he tells me all about her reign as president of the Melton Garden Club and her membership in the International Orchid Society and the Perennial Gardeners Association. This burst of enthusiasm wears him out and he slumps back in his chair, throwing up his hands in dismay.

  “I don’t know what to do. All her lovely things. Sometimes when I visit her she’s having a good day and she recognizes me and we chat. Then she cries and begs to come home.” George leans forward and looks in my eyes. “I tried to keep her here at home. Hired twenty-four-hour caregivers. But she would slip out of the house at night. The second time she climbed out a window. Was missing for eight hours. The police found her wandering on Route 202, right outside Bernardsville. And when the caregiver was in the bathroom, Birdie put a plastic container on the stove and turned on the flame. Nearly burned the house down. So I had no choice....”

  That explains the burnt smell. I pat his hand. “I’m sure you made the best decision to keep her safe.”

  “I suppose. But I can’t bear for her possessions to be hauled off to the Goodwill. And I can’t fit it all in my condo.”

  In many ways, these gone-to-a-nursing-home sales are sadder than true estate sales. George seems so forlorn and lost. If Jill still worked for me, she’d throw her arms around him and encourage him to have a good cry. Unfortunately, I’m not that capable in the presence of grief.

  “Let’s go through the house and I’ll help you pick out a few items that you want to save as mementos. The rest, I’ll sell. Everything your sister has is so well cared for. I know that people will buy it and give it a second life in their homes.”

  George perks up a bit. “Really? That’s a nice thought. Birdie would like to know someone is cherishing her belongings.”

  I don’t mention that the sofa may be purchased by a crazy cat lady whose ten felines will shred the cushions, and the table may soon be marked with rings from the beer bottles of some frat boys starting out on their own. George need never know the final destination of Birdie’s pride and joy.

  As we walk through the rooms, George tells me about various pieces: the vase purchased on a trip to Spain, the lamp received as a gift from an old friend, the painting discovered in an antiques shop. Each time he picks up an item I’m sure this is one he’ll want to keep, but he always sets it down and keeps going. Finally, I realize all George really wants is to talk about his sister. The good old days of their childhood, playing golf and tennis and sailing. The happy times they shared puttering in the garden or traveling to Europe. How she comforted him after his wife left him. How she filled the void left by sons who’d grown and flown. I’m happy to be George’s sounding board. In fact, it’s nice to have a client who’s genuinely fond of his departed relative. A refreshing change from the recent string of “how soon can you clear this out and give me my check?” clients.

  I ask him a few questions about the past, admire some of the pieces. But George doesn’t require much response from me—just a few uh-huhs and reallys—so my mind is busy tabulating an estimate as we move through the house. Although she has no exceptionally valuable antiques or artwork, Birdie’s home has enough nice stuff in good condition to yield a low five-figure sale.

  A change in George’s tone jars me out of my mental math. “What do you think really happened?” he asks.

  I guess my face looks blank because he continues. “At the party? To Loretta?”

  Sean has told me virtually nothing about the case other than what’s been released to the press. One bit of insider info I’ve gleaned from overheard conversations is that Loretta’s fingerprints were found on the bannister in a facing out position, as if she’d been looking over the railing. Gripping the railing as she contemplated her jump, perhaps.

  Or hanging on for dear life.

  But I don’t say that to George. “Well, the police seem pretty certain she didn’t fall down the stairs.”

  “No one at the club wants to believe that, but I agree with the police. I’m sure Loretta didn’t trip and fall,” George says. “Something was bothering her that night. There was something about Loretta’s manner that reminded me of Birdie. You know, when she got the news.”

  “News?’

  George lowers his voice. “About her Alzheimer’s. That there was nothing the doctors could do. Ten years ago Birdie was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she was full of fight. And she licked it. But when the doctors told her she had Alzheimer’s, she knew she didn’t have much time left.... And there was this
resignation, this aloneness that I couldn’t touch, no matter how I tried. And that’s what I saw in Loretta at the party, underneath her smile.”

  Wow—now George has my full attention as we head to the second floor of the house. “Loretta was terminally ill?” I know the autopsy has been done and there’s been no mention of this. But if she were terminally ill, that would be a motivation for suicide.

  “No, I didn’t mean literally the same as Birdie. Loretta has never been robust, but she didn’t have cancer.” George grips the handrail tightly as we walk upstairs. “Her attitude, her demeanor—she was very tense.”

  Was that unusual? I barely knew her, but Loretta seemed like one pat on the back would shatter her in a million pieces. I remember what Natalie said about Loretta. That she was full of yearning. “I overheard someone at the party say she had problems with her son.” I say this to George’s back as I follow him.

  His shoulders stiffen as he continues up the stairs. “Crawford has always been a disappointment to his father. Loretta was used to being the mediator.” He says no more on that matter as he climbs. So maybe the bad-boy son wasn’t what was bothering her.

  At the top George turns to face me. “What was she even doing on the second floor of the club? That’s what’s been nagging at me.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “The Board Room, a small office for the club manager, some storage rooms. The club manager was downstairs supervising the party, so why would she have gone up there?”

  I’m guessing Loretta went up there specifically because she knew it would be empty. Knew that no one would be there to stop her suicide. But George doesn’t seem to have made that connection.

  By this time we’ve made it into the first bedroom. “Did you tell the police about your concerns?” George doesn’t know that the lead detective on the case is my husband. And even though Sean won’t tell me information about the case, I feel a responsibility to send info his way if I can.

  George gazes around the room as if he’s not sure where he is. He steps next to the bed and picks up the edge of a handmade quilt—wedding ring pattern—his fingers worrying the hand-sewn binding. “I was so upset after...er... it happened. Once the police established that I’d never left the parlor that evening, they let me go. That night I lay awake thinking, thinking about Loretta.” His eyes well with tears.

  “So you were close friends?”

  “I don’t remember ever not knowing Loretta. Our families belonged to the same country club, and to the 1780, of course.” His fingers clutch the quilt, pulling it up from the bed. “And back when I was married, we socialized as couples—Loretta and Frederic, Marian and I. Our boys and Crawford went to the Bumford-Stanley school together. Oddly enough, Loretta and Birdie and I were actually distantly related. Fifth cousins—we shared the same great-great-great grandmother, I believe. Birdie was the one who discovered it. She was...is... an amateur genealogist.”

  I gently remove the quilt from his nervous hand before he damages it. “This has been a terrible month for you. To have to put Birdie into a nursing home, and then to lose Loretta so soon after.”

  George offers me a rueful smile. “Loretta was a very private person. But people tell me things. They always have, even when I was a kid. I guess I come across as harmless. Or too dull to cause trouble. That’s how my ex saw me.”

  I squeeze his hand. “Maybe people see you as kind and gentlemanly.”

  He slips away from me and moves to look out the window. I can relate to George. People tell me things too. Sometimes terribly intimate things about their families and their finances. People are vulnerable after a death, even a death that doesn’t break their heart. Now it seems like George wants to confide in me but isn’t certain if he should.

  I’ve learned a thing or two about interrogation from the man I share my bed with. I keep my mouth shut and wait.

  “Loretta wasn’t one to rock the boat.” George begins talking so softly I have to hold my breath to hear him. “She was concerned with appearances. Didn’t like confrontation. But she had a good heart. She did. She felt her wealth carried a responsibility to help others.”

  He says this as if he thinks I’ll protest. “I’m sure she did. It was very generous of her to organize that fundraiser for the Parks Center.”

  George spins around. “That’s what I don’t understand. Loretta was never the one to take the lead in putting an event together. She wasn’t bossy like some of the others. My ex-wife, for instance. Loretta was more of a loyal foot-soldier. But she was obsessed with this party. Asked my advice over every little thing. Made me promise three times that I’d come.”

  “And then....”

  “It killed her.”

  Chapter 9

  BEFORE HE WENT OFF to his classes, Ty made me promise we could go look at the Tate Mansion from the outside when he returned. Now, as this eventful day ends, I do some Google research on the mansion as I wait for Ty.

  The house was built in 1882 by Edgar Vernon Tate, Sr. Tate’s son, Edgar Vernon Tate Jr., took his father’s modestly prosperous metal fabricating business and turned it into a manufacturing powerhouse. In 1910, he married, and the young couple moved into the mansion on Silver Lane. Then tragedy struck. In 1913, Mrs. Tate gave birth to Lawrence and died in childbirth. Edgar Tate never remarried.

  World War I was good for Tate’s business, and in 1920 he took a grand tour of Europe buying up art and antiques from newly impoverished French and English aristocrats. I tremble with excitement anticipating what might await me inside that house. But the article deflates my expectations a bit when it implies that Tate was a philistine who might’ve been duped into buying low quality items at an inflated price.

  What do I care? Maybe the paintings won’t be worthy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but one landscape from the Tate mansion is bound to be more valuable than all the stuff in that gated community condo that I turned my back on. Is all that artwork still inside the mansion, or did Vareena have to sell it off bit by bit over the years?

  I skip ahead to an article that references the wedding announcement of Lawrence Tate and Vareena Soares that appeared in the Palmyrton Daily Record and the New York Herald Tribune in 1942. The blurry photo shows a handsome young man in an Army Air Corps uniform and a young woman in a suit with a nipped waist. She has high cheekbones, wavy hair, and a sensuous mouth. Not conventionally beautiful, but very striking. Soares. That’s a Portuguese name. I guess Lawrence Tate stepped outside the WASP tribe to marry Vareena. The article says they were married “in a small private ceremony.” Was that because of the war, or because Papa Tate didn’t approve?

  Two weeks Later, Lawrence Tate shipped out to France.

  Two months after that, his plane was shot down.

  I close my laptop and gaze up at the water spot on my office ceiling. What a time that was! The whole country united in the war effort. Every man from every strata of society serving side-by-side. It’s hard to imagine when all I’ve ever known are wars that divide. Wars that educated, wealthy young men can easily avoid. Reading Vareena and Lawrence’s story so soon after my own courtship and wedding, I’m struck by how quickly they committed. Did they sense that their days of happiness were bound to be brief? Did their parents urge the young couple to wait, or were even the older generation caught up in the whirlwind of wartime drama?

  I think about the weeks leading up to my wedding, when I walked around in a cloud of anxiety that this happiness couldn’t last...that something was bound to come along and snatch joy from my tenuous grasp. If Sean weren’t killed in the line of duty, then surely Maura, my maid of honor, would be mowed down by a truck or Dad would have a second stroke. Did Vareena feel that way when her new husband shipped off to fly missions over Germany? Or was she totally unlike me...a cock-eyed optimist, positive that her luck would hold?

  Ty walks in and breaks off my morbid reverie.

  “Let’s roll!” His earlier low mood has dissipated. Maybe he’s gotten good news from
Charmaine, or maybe he’s accepted that there’s not much he can do about her parenting decisions. Either way, he’s raring to go.

  We drive toward a section of Palmyrton nicknamed Millionaire’s Row. Until the mid 1800s, Palmyrton was a sleepy little farm town. Then a railroad line was built connecting it to Manhattan, and lots of industrialists built country homes here. As more wealth was drawn to the area, the town became a destination in its own right, not just an escape from the city. The houses on Millionaires Row are huge, and the ones that face Palmer Avenue are exposed to too much traffic to be desirable as homes for today’s oligarchs. Most of those houses have been converted to something else: high-end offices, a banquet hall, a fancy assisted living, and the 1780 Club. But Millionaire’s Row continues onto some quieter side streets. The Tate Mansion is right around the corner from these behemoths.

  Ty looks up at the road sign as we make the turn. “Silver Lane?”

  “Not too subtle, huh?”

  We pass big, perfectly restored houses surrounded by manicured lawns as we gradually climb a hill. We clear a tall stand of hedges at the crest, and the Tate Mansion stands before us.

  Ty whistles. “Two little old ladies lived all alone in there?”

  The house is a rambling grey stone gothic revival, with a columned front porch and many tall, skinny windows. On the second floor, above the front door is a Juliette balcony with tall French doors. On the third floor are pointed dormers and gables trimmed with gingerbread. A three-story tower looms over the rest of the house. Thick green ivy climbs up to the roof.

  Ty doesn’t have to say aloud what both of us are thinking. Just a few miles away on the other side of town, entire families are crammed into one-room apartments.

  Ty squints. “Kinda creepy.”

  The house is impressive without being beautiful. “It’s definitely got an Addam’s Family vibe going on.”

  “What’s that little fence on top of the tower?” Ty asks.