Yikes! I had to get moving. I dropped the lid to the garbage can and tried to grab hold of the necklace again but it slid out of my hands, onto the ground. No time left! I clambered over the gate into Ida’s yard.
Had Oliver seen me? I couldn’t be sure. As I snuck along the hedge, hurrying as fast as I could, my heel caught in a mole hole, and I went sprawling to my knees again. Oh joy; I was batting a thousand. This time the heel snapped when I went tumbling, and I frantically pulled off my shoes as I scrambled to my feet. I tested my ankle—no real damage, just a bit of a skinned knee.
The headlights had reached the back gate, and the car rumbled to a stop. Oliver parked in the alley, as did a number of people who lived in this neighborhood. I pushed closer to the hedgerow and hurried to the front of the lot. A glance over my shoulder showed a light flickering on in his living room. Afraid he might come out on the porch, I looked frantically for something to hide behind, but the front yard was well-groomed, and there weren’t any overgrown bushes here.
If I raced directly across the street, I would run headlong into the bramble-covered lot. Even the sidewalk was scattered with the thorny vines, and I wasn’t wearing shoes. Nix that idea. But if I dashed kitty-corner across the street, I’d be on the edge of Horvald’s double lot. There were plenty of flower bushes over there that I could hide behind. I could catch my breath without being seen, and not terrify the kids by racing panicked into the house.
I charged across the street and up the incline leading to the rose garden. As I pushed through the bushes, I dropped to my knees and crawled behind the biggest one, a monster of a rosebush, already heavy with swelling buds. I peeked around the edge, cautiously looking back at Ida’s house. Sure enough, Oliver stood on his front porch, looking around as if he was searching for something. After a few minutes, he turned, went back inside, and shut off the porch light.
I fell back, sprawling on Horvald’s lawn. So much for a simple walk home. From now on, no more shortcuts. Of course, now I had a pretty good idea of who’d been in my house, robbing me blind, but I wasn’t sure if I’d been ready for that tidbit of information. I liked it better when I thought Jimbo was my nemesis. At least he was up front about his feelings. I could handle a biker tossing a brick through the window easier than a friend’s nephew stealing my beloved possessions.
As I lay there, catching my breath, it occurred to me that if Oliver really was the one who’d ripped me off, he might have robbed my store, and he also might be behind the recent spate of burglaries. If that was true, he might have been the one who attacked Norma Roberts, and that made him dangerous.
“Emerald? Are you okay? Emerald?”
The voice penetrated my thoughts, and I forced my eyes open. Horvald hovered over me, a concerned look on his face. I struggled to sit up, realizing I must look a mess. I was wearing an expensive dress covered with smudges of garbage, I probably smelled pretty ripe, my feet were bare, and I had a pair of broken heels in hand.
“Uh… yeah… I think I scraped my knee, but I’m okay.” I felt like an idiot; how was I ever going to explain what I was doing sprawled in his flower bed?
Horvald reached down and helped me to my feet. He eyed me up and down and shook his head, then draped an arm around my back and helped me into his house. “You can call your youngsters from the house and let them know you’re okay. No offense, Emerald, but you aren’t looking your best tonight.”
As he deposited me in a rocking chair, I started to slump back, then stopped, realizing I was covered with flecks of garbage, dirt, and grass stains. I kept my back rigid, not touching the cushion. “I’ll be all right,” I said. He handed me the phone, and I punched in my number and told Randa that I’d be home in about ten minutes, but until then, under no circumstances was she or Kip to let anybody in. “Nobody at all, do you understand? If Murray or Joe shows up, call me over at Mr. Ledbetter’s house.” I pointed to the number printed neatly on the phone and looked at Horvald questioningly. He nodded. “His number is 555-8442.”
When I was done, Horvald sat down in the chair across from me. “Before I forget, I was outside in the garden this morning and saw somebody on your porch. He looked like he was fiddling with the door. I didn’t know whether or not he was a friend of yours, so I yoo-hooed at him, and he took off and ran around the side of your drive and up the alley. I didn’t get a clear look at him. Like a damned fool, I left my glasses inside.”
Somebody messing with my door? Cripes! Thank heavens I’d called the locksmith. “Thanks, Horvald. I don’t think it was any friend of mine. Next time you notice something like that, call the police, would you?” He nodded and then disappeared, probably to get me a roll of paper towels and the 409, I thought.
I dropped my shoes and the broken heel on the floor. So somebody was trying to break into my house again. Could it have been Oliver, back for another round? What the hell was left for him to steal? Maybe he’d had second thoughts and wanted my computer, the television, and Randa’s telescope. Damn it! If only I’d managed to keep hold of that jewelry, I could prove he’d been in my house. Thinking of him prying through my dresser drawers made me queasy, so I tried to shake the thought out of my head. I’d deal with the whole mess once I got home. Right now, I just wanted to get some of this muck off me.
A noise from the kitchen brought me out of my thoughts, and I glanced around. This was the first time I’d ever been in Horvald’s house. The living room was a masterpiece of tidy organization, just as I’d expect it to be. No clutter anywhere, but the room felt far from sterile. No, it felt like a museum, almost; like a tribute to passive beauty. What few knickknacks he owned were artfully arranged with careful precision. A menorah graced the mantel, and a few jade plants added color to the room. Horvald returned with a mug of mint tea. I sipped it gratefully and, as I set the cup on the end table next to the chair, noticed a lovely cobalt box with a Star of David on the lid.
“What a pretty box.” I could feel a wave of emotion wash off Horvald as I spoke.
“Thank you. It belonged to my wife.” He pulled up an ottoman and sat next to me. “Are you feeling better?”
I nodded. “I had a bit of a run-in with a dog. Ended up being chased through a couple of yards, and yours looked like a safe place to hide. The dog took off when he couldn’t see me anymore.” It sounded plausible and would account for my appearance. I needed to talk to the cops before I started spreading any rumors around. “I ran out of gas and had to walk home.” Then, because I couldn’t help myself, I asked, “You’re married? I don’t think I’ve ever seen your wife.”
“You never met her,” he said. “Ruthie died ten years ago, long before you arrived in Chiqetaw.” He retrieved a photograph from one of the console tables near the fireplace. The woman in the picture was in her forties, with dark curly hair that tumbled past her shoulders. Her smile blazed out at me. If she had found me in her rose garden, she would have welcomed me in and tucked me in bed and made me chicken soup. She wasn’t a beautiful woman in the traditional sense, but the radiance in her eyes lit up the room, even through a photograph taken long ago.
“She was beautiful, Horvald,”
He gazed at the picture. “I miss her. The garden was her pride and joy, her fairyland. I try to keep everything up the way she would have liked, but it’s not easy. I’m sixty-three, and don’t always have the energy I used to.” His voice broke, and I suddenly felt sorry for the older man.
Regretting every joke I’d made about his late-night jaunts out to weed his flower beds, I laid my hand on his arm. “You loved her very much.”
He rested his hand on mine. “She was killed by a drunk driver. I didn’t even make it to the hospital in time to say good-bye.” His grief eddied through the room, gentle waves rocking against the shore.
I sniffled. “I’m so sorry. Thank you, though, for trusting me enough to tell me about her.”
“I haven’t talked about Ruthie to anyone in a long time.” He straightened his shou
lders. “You shouldn’t be worrying about an old man like me. Back to business, young woman. How are you feeling?”
I considered the question seriously. How was I feeling? Scared out of my mind, but he didn’t need to know that. “Filthy and in need of a shower. Skinned knee’s going to bruise, but I’ve had worse. I should get home to the kids, though.”
“Why not wash your face and hands first?” He pointed out the bathroom and handed me a dark green washcloth. Good, I wouldn’t leave visible stains on it. I shut the door and turned on the hot water, then pumped a handful of soft soap and lathered my face and arms. I squinted into the mirror. Gluck. I looked like I’d fallen into a Dumpster; which—when I thought about it—was pretty much what happened. My dress would have to go to the dry cleaners and even then, I had the sinking feeling the grass stains were here to stay. Maybe I could dye it bright green. Like shopping for new clothes, without the hassle of going to the mall.
I rinsed the dirt off my skinned knee and found that Horvald had left a small bottle of Bactine on the counter, so I sprayed the scrape with the medication, hoping to stave off any nasty bugs. Finally, as ready as I was going to be, I wiped down the counter and returned to the living room.
Horvald walked me to the door. “You go home, check on your children, then come back when you’ve changed clothes. I’ve got a gas can, and we’ll go get your car running. Bring the youngsters with you. That girl of yours is always out on the roof with that telescope. I’ll bet she’s told you some tales about me working in the garden in the middle of the night?”
I couldn’t help but break into a big grin. “Well, yeah. She’s quite the little voyeur, that’s for sure.”
He laughed. As he stood in the doorway, waiting to make sure I got home okay, I spontaneously turned and gave him a huge hug before heading across the street. The moment my arms slid around his husky shoulders, I knew that here was a grandpa without any grandchildren.
MIRANDA AND KIP stared at me as I slipped into the house. I shook my head. “Don’t ask. I’m going to go take a shower. Lock the door, and don’t let anybody in unless it’s Joe or Murray.” After I showered, I picked up the phone, then stopped. Murray and I were still on the outs. I’d call Greg at the station about the jewelry as soon as we returned, but I really wanted to get my car home safe.
We piled into Horvald’s sedan. Within minutes, he had Miranda chatting about astronomy and Kip, about bikes. “How about some ice cream?” he asked.
I grinned at him. “You don’t have to do this.”
He waved off my protest. “Oh, let me. I love a good cone as much as the next person, and the Shanty Barn is right up ahead.”
The kids leaned forward from the backseat expectantly, and I broke down and accepted. They cheered as he turned right and entered the drive-through. After we ordered soft-serve twists, Horvald headed to Mike’s Service Station, and within half an hour, the Cherokee was back in action. We waved good-bye and pulled out away from the curb.
Miranda watched Horvald’s car disappear in the rearview mirror. “I like Mr. Ledbetter. He seems nice.”
I glanced at Kip in the rearview mirror. “What about you? What do you think about him?”
“He’s real,” was all Kip said, but it was enough to make up my mind.
“Kids, if you need help from now on when Mrs. Trask is gone, I want you to go to Mr. Ledbetter’s house. Don’t ever go over to Oliver’s again unless I’m with you. I’m serious.” They asked why, of course, and I fed them a line about not bothering him, knowing that they probably knew I was lying but too tired to address the issue.
After we got home, I put in a call to Greg and told him about the stranger Horvald had seen, the necklace, and my suspicions that Oliver was behind both incidents. “The necklace and earrings were stolen with the other things. He had to be the one.”
“The problem is, I don’t think that I can get a search warrant based on what you’ve told me; at least not tonight. Since the garbage is still on his property, you were really going through his possessions. I doubt if Judge Heinz would give us the time of day, the hard-nosed old coot. He’d have my head if I bothered him for something that wasn’t an emergency. Now, I could come out and dust for prints on your door, but I doubt if anything will turn up.”
“What if I did have the necklace?”
Greg sighed. “Then you’d give it to me, and I’d do some poking around—legal poking around—but I’d see what I could find out.”
I stared at the floor. That meant going back over to Ida’s house and rooting through the trash can again, all the while hoping that Oliver wouldn’t see me. Delightful. Oh yeah, just the ticket for a fun evening. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” Greg reminded me to be careful. I thanked him and hung up.
The kids told me about their day as I made myself a sandwich and nuked a cup of soup. Randa hopped on the counter, twirling her jump rope. I was glad to see she was finally getting some sort of exercise besides stargazing. Her raven hair glimmered under the light. “Mom, have you decided about the tests?”
At least I could give her a clear answer on that. “Yeah. Remind me to call your school tomorrow and make arrangements for you to take them. I warn you, though, if you do get skipped ahead, we’re going to have a serious talk about all the responsibilities I expect out of you. And you will listen, not just brush me off.”
Randa leapt off the counter and danced around the room. Naturally, Kip wanted to know what was going on, and she burbled along to him like a fountain gone amok.
Her sudden switch into teen motormouth status jogged my memory. “You wanted some new clothes. How about I let you go out this weekend and get them? You can get your hair done, too, but I want you to call a salon. I’d rather pay extra for a good cut than take a chance on an inexperienced beautician.” She gave me a quick hug and raced off for her room. Kip shook his head and disappeared into the living room.
I checked my voice mail. Safety-Tech had called to reschedule; they couldn’t send out anyone until Monday, which meant we had almost another week to get through without any protection. Peachy, but there was nothing I could do but wait.
The second message was from my sister Rose. She wanted to talk about our parents’ thirty-ninth anniversary. The affair wasn’t until early September, but she was starting to plan for it now. Typical. Rose was so tight that you could wind her up like a top and let her go and she’d never run down. We called her the Energizer Bunny when I was a kid. Since we’d grown up, we seldom spoke; it wasn’t that we didn’t love each other, we just lived in vastly different worlds, and she preferred her own set of friends and lifestyle. She’d fallen under Grandma McGrady’s spell, just as I’d fallen under Nanna’s. And so the War of the Grandmothers, as we’d called it since childhood, had also divided the granddaughters.
I put the kettle on for tea and sat at the kitchen table, scribbling notes. So Oliver was a thief. Jimbo had been telling the truth about not robbing my house. Was he telling the truth about the shop, too? And what about the manager’s wife? We knew Jimbo had thrown the brick through my window, but if he wasn’t behind the burglaries, then he couldn’t be the one who attacked her.
Oliver, on the other hand, had managed to get into my house and go through my things. I thought back, trying to figure out when he’d had a chance to snoop around without me knowing about it.
Bingo! He’d been alone here when I asked him to watch for the window pane to be delivered. Joe wasn’t around; I’d been on my way to pick up the kids from Harlow’s. Oliver would have been able to go through the house at his leisure then.
Another thought struck me as my gaze fell on the Peg-Board that held the key to the shed and the spare key to the front door. What if… I jumped up and pulled open the junk drawer, rummaging around until I found the old spare house key. I turned it over in my hand, examining it closely. There—little flecks of a pale substance clung to the metal of the house key. White, dry… powdery almost. I closed my eyes
. What did it remind me of? Flour. It reminded me of the dried dough on my hands after I made cookies. And what was like dough? Clay. Sculpty, maybe, or Fimo. Damn, he’d taken an impression of my house key! That’s how he’d gotten in when we were gone on our vacation to Mount Baker, and that’s why the door had been locked when I got home.
Damn squirrel, I thought, trying to push away images of him pawing through my stuff. Here was Ida, giving him a second chance at life, and he was ripping off her friends. I wanted to wring his filthy neck. I tossed the key back in the drawer. Trouble was, would the cops be able to act on what little evidence I had?
The kettle whistled, and I fixed myself a pot of tea. I poured the water over orange spice tea bags and hauled out a package of Oreos. Now what?
One thing was for sure: I needed to retrieve the necklace and earrings from the trash can. Tomorrow was garbage day, so I’d have to do it tonight before the evidence disappeared on its way to the landfill. That meant I had to wait until Oliver was asleep, then sneak back to the alley behind his house, a thought I didn’t relish. I toyed with the phone; if I could just call Murray, she’d bolster my courage. I let go of the receiver. Not a good idea. White Deer? She was more of a listener than a cheerleader, and a cheerleader was what I needed. Murray and I’d always encouraged each other on in the face of overwhelming odds.
I finished my tea and wandered into the living room to stare at the dragon, the lone inhabitant of my now bare and broken étagère. “Are you behind all of this?” I asked. “Did you summon all of our bad luck? And now you’re waiting for a bloodbath that I don’t know how to provide.”
The dragon sat poised, almost breathing. I lifted it up to the light. Jade was a peaceful stone, a lucky stone, and placing a curse on an object made out of it was like handing Pandora the key to the forbidden box.
“Whatchya doin’, Mom?” Kip was staring at me from his perch at the computer desk. “Did the dragon move again?”