The next morning, after I hauled all our supplies for the day trip out to the car like a pack mule, Sawyer, Beau (who had insisted on coming by jumping onto my back and then perching on Saw’s backpack/diaper bag like a raven), and I headed toward Richmond to see Berlinda with a quick stop at the local donut food truck for a dozen of their huge glazed. The drive was mostly interstate, my least favorite kind, but it was made tolerable by Sawyer’s newfound love of storytelling, which typically involved superhero-like feats of physical prowess performed by himself or Baby, his doll. I kept myself busy by deciphering his grammatically cryptic sentences and marveling at how his brain worked. Still, the drive was tiring, and I looked forward to our meandering return home via backroads in a couple of hours.
We arrived right on time, and Berlinda met us at the door in a velvet track suit, full make-up, and pearls. She looked perfect, and I was glad that I had at least styled my hair into a half-back, half-down number instead of my usual ponytail and that the coffee I’d spilled on myself was hidden under my cardigan. “Come in, you two. Thanks for making the trek to visit us, and look at these,” she said as she admired the donuts in their clear-plastic case. ”
I glanced back to see Beauregard beginning his usual spin before settling into the driver’s seat for a nap then smiled at Berlinda as I marveled at her home. The Jeffersons lived in a beautiful brick cottage just up the street from Richmond’s carillon, and as we walked in, I heard the bell tower ring out across Maymont Park and the neighborhood at large. It reminded me of the church bells that sometimes rang in our little town, and I felt more at home than I usually did in the city.
Inside, everything was modern and gorgeous. Beautiful vibrant paintings hung on the walls, and the gleaming hardwood floors were adorned with elegant, rich Oriental rugs. The furniture was simple but smart, with lots of rich wood and lush fabric, and the fire was going in a fireplace that was flanked by two built-in bookcases. I wanted to just stay and relax, but instead, I was performing my usual scan to be sure that Saw could not destroy anything.
Berlinda must have seen my visual sweep because she said, “I toddler-proofed a bit. Anything in here is fair game, and if it gets broken, it’ll be a memory of our fine visit.”
I felt my throat tighten at this kindness. So many people invited us over, but when we came, our visits ended up being stressful for everyone because Sawyer was not a child who could just “touch with his eyes,” no matter how hard I tried. That Berlinda had protected not only her things but our time together was a precious gift. “Thank you,” I squeaked.
Sawyer was hiding behind my legs, and while I knew he would warm up quickly, I appreciated that Berlinda simply knelt down across the room and said, “Sawyer, it’s nice to have you here today. If and when you feel like it, Mr. Jefferson is in the backyard building some benches for our garden. He could use always a helper.”
Blonde locks edged out from behind my knees, and then my son looked up at me and shook his head. “That’s fine, Love Bug. We brought some books and toys. You can sit with me for now, okay?”
“You make yourselves at home,” Berlinda said with a gesture toward the velour loveseat by one side of the fireplace. “I’ll be right back.”
I sat down with Saw on my lap and warned him about the fireplace, which had a screen in front of it that looked sturdy but perhaps not Turbo Tot-proof. He nodded and then took out his toy excavator and slid to the floor. When Berlinda returned with a plate of tiny country ham biscuits, donuts, a lidded cup with chocolate milk, and coffee for the adults, I sighed. Hospitality at its finest.
Berlinda poured me a mug of coffee from a silver pitcher, and as I added cream and sugar from the matching set, I said, “Thank you so much for having us over. I just can’t wait to show you what I found.”
“Well, I hope you’ll be able to wait one minute while I inquire, now that I can see you, into how you are. You really are okay?”
Again, I felt myself choking up. “I am. It was a fright for sure.” I shot a look at Sawyer, who was busily building a kindling tower on the hearth. “But we are okay.” I wanted to say more, to explain about how the sheriff had given us a protective detail, that a car was outside right now keeping watch, but Sawyer understood more than he often let on. I didn’t want to scare him.
“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” She smiled at me and tilted her head to Sawyer. “Glad to hear you’re both well. Now, what is it that you wanted to show me?”
I had been fairly buzzing with excitement about sharing the photo and the family tree with Berlinda, but suddenly, I realized that I was holding the story of someone else’s family in my hands, a story she may not know and may not want to know.
I took a deep breath and prayed that I wouldn’t hurt her with this information. Then, I reached into my leather messenger bag and took out the copy of the photo that I’d paid the Historical Society to make for me.
As I handed it to her, I said, “This is your grandmother, Alice Scruggs, on the porch of your store.”
Berlinda’s hand flew to her mouth as she studied the photo. “Grandma Alice. Oh my. I’ve never seen a picture of her before.”
A wave of relief flooded through me. Berlinda had called her Grandma, which meant she knew of her before this. “No pictures at all?” I asked both out of curiosity and to mask my relief.
“Well, not when she was this young at least. She looks just like my mother.” Berlinda pulled the image closer to her face and said, “Wait! Is that Mother?”
I watched as Berlinda’s face flushed and tears sprang to her eyes as she looked up at me. “They’re at the store. That’s the front porch of the store.”
I nodded, too emotional myself to speak.
Her gaze returned to the photo. “Mom never talked about her childhood much, but she did talk about her mom, my grandmother.”
My breath caught, and I cleared my throat. “If you don’t mind me asking, I’d love to hear about what she remembered.”
“Oh, I’d love to tell you, have you include it in your article if you want. I want everyone to remember these two amazing women.” Berlinda’s eyes shone as she spoke, and I understood at least a bit of what she was feeling. Everyone wants to know their story matters. Everyone wants to be heard.
I took out my notebook and was just about to write the date at the top when Sawyer stepped to my shoulder and whispered, “I want to help make bench.”
I looked up at Berlinda to be sure she’d heard, and she smiled widely.
“Oh, good, Mr. Jefferson needs help. Maybe your mom and I can talk out there. He has a fire going in the firepit by his shop, so we’ll be warm.” Berlinda stood.
I smiled. Sawyer wasn’t going to go anywhere without me, and I appreciated that Berlinda realized that. But I was also glad Saw would be distracted since I needed to focus and since the conversation might not be really appropriate for toddler ears.
Sawyer and I followed Berlinda into the backyard after putting on our coats, and when I saw the comfy chairs under a pergola with a warm fire glowing in the middle of a stone hearth, I grinned. This was a treat for both Sawyer and me.
“Well, hello young man. Would you be willing to help me make some holes in this piece of wood?” George boomed as he saw Sawyer approach. Mr. Jefferson was a big man, six foot four at least and broad in the shoulder. In contrast to his slim, petite wife, he looked massive, but he also sported a long white beard against his dark skin, and with his suspenders and red shirt, he looked downright jovial.
“Mama,” Sawyer said as his chubby cheeks flushed with delight. “Santa Claus needs my help.”
Berlinda grinned. “Yes, he does, Sawyer. And Mama and I will be right here if you need her, okay?”
Sawyer looked at me for one last second and then turned toward Santa and held out his hands. “I use drill,” he said.
“Well, sir, I guess you will since you know your tools.” George looked at me and winked.
I turned to Berlinda. “He builds a lot with his Boppy, and while Boppy is awesome, he’s no Santa Claus.” I laughed.
“George cultivates that impression from about September until January. He even plays Santa Claus at the local bookstore some years. Loves it.” Berlinda picked the photograph back up and said, “Okay, now tell me about this photo of Mother and Grandma Alice.”
I filled Berlinda in on where I’d found the image and then gave her the printout I’d made of her family tree. Her eyes roved over the page when I handed it to her, and then she met my gaze. “Paisley, you have outdone yourself. Thank you. I recognize many of these names from Mom’s stories about Grandma’s family, but I’ve never been able to make sense of how we are all kin.” She held up the paper. “This is a precious thing you’ve made here.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you think so. I didn’t want to seem like I was intruding on your family history. But I know that sometimes people don’t know how Uncle So-and-So is actually an uncle.” I smiled.
“And for African Americans, it’s even harder because we don’t know much beyond a few generations back. You’ve leaped the wall as my genealogist friends say, and we can maybe find where our people were enslaved. Thank you, Paisley.”
I blushed and said, “Really, it was a small thing for the gift you gave me of being able to visit your store before it was torn down.” I sighed. “How are you with that?”
Berlinda sat back in her chair and propped her feet on the edge of the firepit. “It’s sad, really, but also necessary. The building is in terrible shape, and after Luther was killed there, I just couldn’t figure a way for us to reopen. It would just be so expensive, and I would want to be sure we did it well to honor Luther and the history of the building.” She shook her head. “All tragedy. All of it.”
I sighed. “I read the newspaper articles about Luther’s death. I’m so sorry. How horrible that must have been and then for them not to have caught the person who killed him.”
Berlinda sighed. “It was awful and so strange. Luther never had an enemy that I knew of. He was one of those people who was simply sweet and kind. He didn’t gossip, didn’t get into trouble, didn’t even much like to spend time with people except at the store. He read books and cooked the best venison stew you ever ate. He was a simple man, my brother. It still doesn’t make any sense to me why someone would kill him.”
I shook my head. “He sounds like he was a wonderful man.”
“He was. We were really close as kids. Our daddy died when we were young, car accident, and it was just us and Mother. The three of us were thick as thieves, even though Mom taught school and also supervised the help at the store.” She looked at the picture of her mom and grandmother again. “I always wished we’d lived in that house growing up. It seemed so fancy to be able to go grab a soda whenever you wanted.”
“Oh, you didn’t live there?”
“No, Mother believed it was better for us to live in town, closer to the school so that she could keep an eye on us. Plus, we needed the money she got from renting out the house behind the store to one of her employees.” Berlinda smiled. “It was always some nice, young man who just needed a little help to get his footing in the world. I think Mother imagined I’d marry one of those young men one day and take over the store. I wasn’t interested, though. I had it in mind to go to college already, and it didn’t suit me to live a life tied to that place, as much as I loved it.”
I nodded. I saw how hard Mika worked to run her store, how she couldn’t afford employees and so this meant she always had to be there. Mika loved it, but she was a woman in her forties. I could totally understand why a young woman wouldn’t think much of that life.
Berlinda held up the family tree I’d made. “Could I ask you to correct something here? Our Daddy’s name was Roger Angelis, not Robert.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry I got it wrong. That’s how his name was listed on Luther’s marriage certificate.”
Berlinda shook her head. “That’s because that wife of his flubbed it up. She wooed my brother right into stupid.”
I loved that expression, but quashed my smile when I looked at Berlinda’s frown. “So she filled out the marriage certificate?”
“I expect so. She did everything for him, treated him like he was an imbecile.” I could see a rise of red coming up over the collar of Berlinda’s sweatshirt. “I never did understand what Luther saw in her.”
I thought of the cookies on the kitchen counter in their house, of the little boy’s room in the back. “Do you keep up with Luther’s son?”
Berlinda snapped her head in my direction like a startled bird. “You know about Henry?”
“No, I mean, I saw his clothes in the house and assumed he was Luther’s son.”
Berlinda’s fingers were twisting the napkin on her lap into a tight tube. “He is. And no, we don’t.” Her tone was tight and her expression guarded for the first time during our visit.
I quickly changed tack. “Did they investigate Mary for Luther’s murder?
Berlinda broke the stare she was holding on the fire and looked at me. “Oh, yeah, we wondered about that, too, when he died, but the police said she had an alibi. She was a suspect for a time, though.”
“Do you mind if I look into her a little, just for my story? I won’t include her, but I find that researching everything I can helps me tell a more robust story, even if I don’t tell it all.” I was telling the truth, but I also wondered if twenty years ago the police might have missed something about Luther’s murder. I didn’t need to worry Berlinda with that idea, though.
“Sure. You’ve got her name right here, Mary Johnson. She grew up over in the Valley, I believe. Elkton or somewhere.”
“You haven’t talked to her in a while then.”
“Tried not to talk to her even when she was married to my brother. So no. Not a peep in over twenty years, which is fine by me.” Berlinda stared out across their garden, and I took that as a sign that this part of our conversation was over, which was fine by me.
I glanced at my phone, eleven-fifteen. Sawyer was going to pass the tipping point from adorable to tantrum in about fifteen minutes, so I knew I needed to ask the hard question I had. I took a deep breath and just went for it. “Berlinda, I’m sorry to have to ask this, but do you know who your grandfather was, your mother’s father?” I rushed on. “I ask because I couldn’t find any records about him, and I wondered if your mom knew him at all. Wondered if he and your grandmother were married, if he worked at the store with her? I mean, clearly, I have no problem with a woman being a mother on her own, but in that day –”
Berlinda interrupted me and smiled. “She wasn’t married, not that I know of. And I imagine that was hard for her. I don’t know the exact circumstances of my mother’s birth, but I do know there was a secret there. The story was too painful for Mother, so I didn’t press much when I was old enough to understand it hurt her to talk about it. But I have always been curious.”
I sat back and took another deep breath before I asked my next question. “Would it be alright with you if I did a little research into that, too? See if I could maybe figure out who your grandfather was and the story behind his relationship with your grandmother?” I tilted my head and raised my eyebrows. “Please tell me to mind my own business if you’d like.”
Berlinda leaned forward and took my hand. “Paisley Sutton, if we didn’t trust you with our stories, we would never have let you in our store. I appreciate you asking, but there is nothing there that you can turn up that will surprise me or hurt me. Whoever that man was and however he came to be my grandfather, I am grateful because, well, here I am.”
“Thank you,” I said as I squeezed her hand. “One more hard question, and then I’m done, I promise.”
“Your questions aren’t hard, Paisley. Just honest. I like honest. Ask away.”
“Any idea who might have killed Bailey Thomas or why she was living in your store?” I winced, hoping I hadn’t gone too far with my nosiness.
“Not a clue on your first question, but the second one is easy. She was living there because I told her she could.”
I sat back hard against the Adirondack chair. “You told the woman who keyed your car that she could live in your store? Why?”
“Because she needed a place to live, and the house was sturdy and available.” Berlinda said it so matter-of-factly that it took my brain a minute to realize that her generosity was so natural that she thought nothing of it.
“Wow. That’s mighty generous.”
Berlinda shrugged. “I’d have wanted someone to do the same for me. George was a little hesitant. A single woman alone in an old building, I guess, but it’s technically my building so.” She took a long breath. “I hope that place gave her a little peace in her last days.
I sighed. “I’m sure it did. Does the sheriff know that?” I asked.
“He does. I told him the day he called. Figured it was important for him and others to realize she wasn’t squatting or some such. She was just down on her luck and needed a place to stay.”
I shook my head. “Berlinda, you are something else. Thank you for your time, and thanks again for allowing me to salvage a few things from your store. I’ll send photos of what I found over to you when I get it back from the police. It’s evidence.”
“Well, that’s kind of you, Paisley, but whatever you find is yours to keep. We conducted business, and anything I needed from that place I took years ago. But I would love to see the pictures just so I can see what you do with this salvage business of yours. I love that you make treasure out of what might have become trash.”
I grinned and stood up. “Have they rescheduled the demolition of the store yet?”
“Not yet. My understanding is they have to close the case or have it under investigation for a time at least before they can take down the crime scene.” She shrugged as she stood up. “It’s been falling down for ten years. It can wait a while longer.”
Sawyer barreled into me and held up a small figurine. “Santa George made me a little man,” he said. Sure enough, the figurine was a miniature version of Santa George himself.
“Thank you,” I said as George walked over. “He’ll treasure that.”
“And I’ll treasure this,” George said as he waved to a small bench on the ground. Up and down the legs were small drill marks that looked a lot like woodpecker holes. “It’s one of a kind, and it’s going to be perfect on the other side of that fire.” He carried the bench over, put it down, and sat on it. “Sturdy as a rock. Thank you, Sawyer. You are a fine assistant.”
“I made that bench with Santa,” he said to me as he held onto my leg.
Berlinda put her chestnut fingers in my son’s blonde hair and said, “Yes, sir, you did. Well done.”
We had barely made it out of the city center when Sawyer fell asleep, and I put on Over the Rhine’s Ohio album as I wandered west across the state. Their music had a way of settling into and over me so that I could think, and the conversation with Berlinda had definitely given me a lot to think about. First there was Luther’s wife, who sounded like a real gem and who definitely had some motive to kill him, if petty anger was motivation enough. I was a little bit inclined to do a little digging into Angelis’s murder, but I had enough questions about the store itself without putting my nose where it didn’t belong.
Then, there was the question of who Sheila’s father and Berlinda’s grandfather was. I wanted to focus most of my attention on seeing if I could discover his identity, but I really had no idea how to go about doing that. I was hoping that Dad and Lucille might have some ideas given how long they’d lived in Octonia. Maybe they had some guesses. Or maybe they’d have some suggestions about who I could ask, discreetly, about their guesses.
But for most of the ride, I pondered the fact that Berlinda had let a woman who had vandalized their personal property live in a building they owned. It seemed impossible to me to be that generous – that generous and that wise. After all, they hadn’t gone in and cleaned up the place. I thought it was a sound choice to tell someone they could have a dry place to live but not to go so far as to make that place perfect. I probably would have made the mistake of cleaning up the place, and from the looks of things, that effort would have been wasted on Bailey Thomas. If she couldn’t be bothered to throw away molding cookies . . . I shook my head.
Still, she’d been there with Berlinda’s permission, so that meant whoever killed her knew she was living there. I tried to think back to what I’d seen in the house, but nothing came to mind that made me think someone else was staying there with her. The boy Henry’s bedroom had seemed like it was just as he left it on the day his father was killed, and I hadn’t noticed any suitcases or anything in the other bedroom. But then, I had beat a pretty hasty retreat once I’d found Thomas’s body, so maybe I’d missed something.
But if I was right, someone came to that house with the intention of killing her, which seemed to back up what the sheriff had said about someone bringing heroin along for that purpose. Someone was very determined to end Thomas’s life, and I was hoping the killer had more of a reason than just being held up in the grocery store line. Sadly, Thomas’s own behavior seemed to demonstrate that even small slights could bring up the biggest rages.
Sawyer must have been exhausted from his bench-building escapades because he was still sound asleep when we crossed Highway 29 close to town. He would probably wake soon, but I figured I had enough time to just drive by the Scruggs store. I was hoping that seeing the place again would jar something else loose in my mind, remind me of something I had thought was incidental.
As I turned toward the mountains, my phone rang, and I snatched it out of the console before the ringtone could wake the sleeping toddler. “Hello,” I whispered into the mouthpiece.
“Paisley?”
“Yes, it’s me. My son is sleeping. What can I do for you?”
“Oh, sorry. Hope I didn’t wake him,” the woman on the line said. “I’m calling from the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Shifflett wanted me to let you know that you can come pick up most of your salvaged items from the Scruggs store. They’ve been cleared from evidence.”
I was surprised. I thought maybe it would be months before I’d get those things back. “Wow, that’s fast.”
“The sheriff made a judgment call that the items you’d gotten from the store were technically in another building from the murder and so didn’t need to be held. It’ll be a bit longer for the clothes and such, though.” I could hear her shuffling paper in the background.
“Okay, where do I come?” She gave me the address of the evidence locker in a building downtown, and after I hung up, I immediately started trying to figure out when Saw and I could pick everything up.
He was beginning to stir, so I picked up the pace and slid Beauregard back further in the front seat, an action which got me quite the glare. “I just didn’t want you slamming into the dashboard, boy,” I said as I scratched his chin. He continued to glower at me.
I began to slow on the last curve before the store, and since Sawyer was bound to wake up anyway, I put on my turn signal to move into the parking lot. But before I actually turned, I saw a big Dodge Ram pickup in the small, gravel lot. Sometimes people stopped to answer calls or, like me, fish binkies out from under the car seat, so at first I thought nothing of it. Then, I saw the large, white guy with a big red beard on the front porch.
He was peering in the windows of the store, and as I slowed further, I saw he had a crowbar in his left hand. Just as my tires started to growl against the gravel, I changed course and pulled back on the road. I tried to keep my speed steady, make it look like I’d just mis-steered a little, and drove on down the road. I had no idea what the man was doing, but I did not think it in my best interest for him to see me.
A bit further down the road, when my cell service picked back up, I dialed the sheriff’s office. The sheriff got on the line immediately, and when I told him about the man, he said, “Paisley, drive out to 29 and go to the big red gas station. I’ll meet you there.”
I sighed, glanced at the toddler who had miraculously dropped off to sleep again, and went to flip my turn signal to turn left back to the main road. It was only then that I realized I’d had my right-turn signal on this whole time. If that man had looked, he would have known I was headed to the store.
Startled, I took the left too fast and felt the cat and everything else shift hard to the right. I overcompensated for my error by slamming down on the brake, and I heard all of Saw’s toys, a month’s supply of juice cups, and something heavy and solid slide forward into the passenger’s floor pan. I looked back to see Sawyer, somehow, still asleep, and then I glanced over to see a wooden box just below Beau’s gray feet. “Shoot,” I whispered. “The jewelry box from the store.”
I had forgotten all about it, and now, I had stolen it . . . if my heart hadn’t been racing from seeing the man at the store and thinking he had had probably seen me, it would have been at the thought that I might be charged with theft. But as I drove the few miles to the gas station, I took some long, deep breaths and resolved just to explain the situation to the sheriff and take the next step after that.
When I pulled into the station, I saw the sheriff’s marked cruiser immediately and pulled up next to it. A gold sedan pulled up on my other side, and only then did I realize this was the unmarked car that had been following me all day. I purposely relaxed my shoulders and reminded myself that we were safe, and then I woke up Sawyer, gave him my phone with videos on it, and stepped out into the parking lot, jewelry box in hand.
“Are you okay, Paisley?” The sheriff asked as he came around his car to lean against mine. “You sounded a little nervous on the phone.”
I sighed. “I was nervous, but honestly, I’m not sure why. I don’t even know that the man saw me.” I took another deep breath. “I think this whole situation has just got me a little worked up.”
The sheriff nodded and then waved his waiting deputy over. “You got a description of the guy?”
The young man nodded. “White, about six foot two with red hair and a long beard. Blue jeans with a green flannel shirt and brown work boots.”
“Good. Did you notice anything else about him, Paisley?”
I looked from one officer to the other and said, “Just the crowbar.”
The deputy made a note in his phone. “I didn’t see that. Thanks,” he said.
“Was he using the crowbar?” the sheriff asked me.
“No, it was just in his hand. Hanging there.” I glanced at Saw in the car behind me and lowered my voice. “But most people don’t walk around with crowbars, right?”
“Right,” the sheriff said. Then he turned back to the deputy. “Let’s get the word out about this guy, and why don’t you join the patrol car that’s there. Just in case.”
The deputy nodded at his instructions and went back to his car.
“Gracious. The poor Jeffersons. All this and then someone breaking into their store,” I said.
“It’s a good thing you were driving by . . . but I have to ask, why were you driving by?” Sheriff Shifflett’s expression smiled, but he also held my gaze while he waited for my answer.
“Honestly, I just wanted to see the building. Places really help me understand stories, and well, I just wanted to see this one up close again.” I explained about our visit to the Jeffersons that morning and how I was writing an article about their family and the store. “So I just wanted to share the air with the building for a few minutes.”
The sheriff listened intently and nodded along until I was finished with my long-winded explanation before he said, “Okay. Well, that all makes sense, and like I said, it was good you were going by. Now, I probably don’t have to say this, but that is still an active crime scene.”
I nodded. “I know. I wouldn’t have gone in. And I won’t.” I felt a flush rising in my cheeks. “Please know that I want whoever did this caught, and I wouldn’t risk that in any way.” I looked down at the jewelry box in my hands.
“What’s that?” Shifflett said as he followed my gaze.
“Well, this is really embarrassing, but I need to give this to you.” I held out the box as I explained that I’d put the box in my car during my visit earlier in the week and had forgotten about it in the midst of everything. “It happened to slide out from under my seat when I was coming to meet you.” I realized how weirdly coincidental this sounded, but I was telling the truth . . . and I had to trust the truth.
Sheriff Shifflett studied the box in my hands and then looked at my face again. “Well, I guess we should see what’s inside.”
I gasped. “We can do that? Isn’t this evidence?”
“It is,” he said as he pulled gloves out of his back pocket. “I’ll take a picture so we know what it looks like, and we’ll replace anything we find. Just a quick look.”
Carefully, he took the box from me, set it on the hood of my car, and opened the latch. I leaned over to look inside and saw the sparkle of rings and bracelets. I knew nothing about jewelry, but I found it hard to imagine that people would put a jumble of real diamonds and gemstones into the mess that I saw inside. Everything was tangled. The sheriff snapped a quick picture with his phone, but when he tried to lift a single bracelet, everything in the box came with it.
“What a mess,” he said as he tried to free one or two pieces from the mass of sparkles. “Looks like most of it is costume jewelry, but I’ll get it looked at to be sure. Where did you find this?”
“On the top shelf of the closet in the bedroom where I found the body.” I held my tongue even though I wanted to explain, again, how I’d forgotten to mention the box earlier.
The sheriff nodded as he turned the jumble of jewelry around and around again. “Looks like someone put this project away for another day.”
I nodded. “That’s what I do . . . put things away until Sawyer is older and I’ll have more time to sort them out. Fixing broken jewelry, jigsaw puzzles, and a clean car are all on hold.”
The sheriff chuckled as he moved to put the ball of jewelry back in the box. “Hmm, there is one more thing.” He picked up an old-fashioned door key. It had a scrolled top and the bit was ornate with two teeth, each carved in geometric shapes. It looked like hundreds of keys I’d found in my salvage work. I sold them for three dollars apiece on my website, and jewelers bought them all the time to make pendants or interesting rings.
I leaned forward to study the object. “That looks like a skeleton key,” I said. “It could be valuable.”
The sheriff took another pair of gloves from his pocket and handed it to me. “You’re the expert. I’d probably end up calling you to evaluate this anyway.”
I smiled as I slipped on the gloves and then took the key from his hands. It was heavy, and at the top, I could see that an elaborate filigree had been pressed into the metal. I studied the barrel, looking to see if there were any words, but I didn’t see any, which meant I couldn’t specifically identity what the key was for. “It’s old. Maybe nineteenth century, and it will probably open a lot of things. I imagine it was for the doors in the house, but it could have been for something else.”
“Something like a safe?”
I looked at the key closely again. “Maybe? But it looks more like it’s for something larger. Could be a cabinet or a dresser.”
“Did you see anything in there that might have matched this key?” Shifflett gestured over his shoulder toward where the store sat over the hills.
I leaned back against the car and tried to remember my walk through the store and the house, but nothing came to mind. “I don’t think so, but I wasn’t really looking with that idea in mind. Anything that big would have been beyond my ability to take out that day.”
“So you’re saying you’re not the Salvage Dawgs?”
“I wish,” I said with a chuckle. “But I don’t come with a crew and a crane typically. I can’t carry out big items, so I don’t really pay attention.” I took a deep breath as I prepared to ask my next question. “But if you wanted me to walk through again . . . “
“Let’s do it. Can you go now?” He was moving toward his car.
“I can, but it will mean my son has to be in the car even longer. He’s patient with me, but I may be testing his limits. Give me thirty minutes to leave him with my friend, and I’ll meet you there?”
“Sounds good. Just wait outside when you get there.” He looked at me firmly.
“Of course,” I said and tried not to be annoyed.
Sawyer was reticent about our change in plans, and I couldn’t really blame him. I didn’t like shifts in my day’s outlook either. But he warmed quickly to the idea of visiting Auntie Mickey’s shop when I reminded him that she had “hot chocolate milk.”
And Mika was, as usual, totally happy to have a two-year-old running wild in her store. “Keeps me young,” she said.
“Funny, I feel ancient after a day with him myself,” I answered with a chuckle. “See you soon, and thanks.”
I left my son gamboling about her store like a chubby-cheeked elf and tried to work up some modicum of excitement about going back into the Scruggs store after I texted the sheriff to let him know I was on my way. Normally, I felt about trips to old buildings like I had about going to Kings Dominion Amusement Park as a kid . . . I was all bouncy and couldn’t wait to get there. But finding a dead woman, well, that had dampened my spirits.
Still, I was eager to see if there was something that fit that key. People didn’t normally keep old keys in particular boxes if they were unimportant. Most of the time, I found piles of old keys in the junk drawers of kitchens or in a custodian’s locker in an industrial space. People, me included, were loath to throw out keys just in case, so we tossed them in with rubber bands and old batteries and dug them out when we found our old suitcase locks from 1987.
But someone had cared enough to put this one in this particular box. Given, the jewelry in there wasn’t well-cared-for, but as the sheriff had suggested, maybe someone was just waiting for a time when she’d have a quiet hour to focus and untangle that mess. Goodness knows, I was looking forward to those hours when Saw was a bit older, and I had more time to concentrate.
When I pulled up to the store, the sheriff was there, as was the deputy I’d seen at the gas station, his car parked prominently right by the side of the road. They were deep in conversation, so I took my time pulling together my salvage kit that Sawyer has strewn across the backseat. My mammoth Maglite was underneath his fox backpack, and my own mini-crowbar was wedged beneath his car seat. I found my fabric gloves, which I kept for handling paper or photographs, glued together by raisins, and my small tool kit with screwdriver and hammer was behind the rear seat and wrapped around the handles of my reusable shopping bags. Someday, along with an hour to think, I was looking forward to driving a clean car again.
By the time I had placed everything back in the black, soft-sided tool bag my dad had given me, Sheriff Shifflett was at the front of the store. I waved, tried to be sure I didn’t have old Goldfish stuck to my pants, and headed over. “Where do you want to start?” I asked.
“I guess we begin in the store, unless you think that’s a waste of time. You’re the expert, remember?” He took off his hat and looked at me.
“Oh, well, then, to be thorough, I think we should check there.” I started through the door, determined to look like an expert even though I felt like anything but. “Did you come through here the other day?”
“I did, but just for long enough to see that it would take a real feat to get to the house through here.”
“You got that right,” I said. “I had to belly-crawl . . . “I trailed off when I saw the sheriff’s expression: half-shock, half-respect.
“You crawled through there?” He gestured toward the tiny corridor that led to the back of the house. “With your young son waiting in the car?”
“I had let a friend know that if she didn’t hear from me to come get Sawyer.” I felt myself blushing again. It was hard being a single parent, and the choices I made to keep us all well came with some calculated risks, risks I really did consider before I took them. But the fact that I knew that never seemed to lift the shame I felt when people questioned my choices. “We can just go around,” I muttered in an attempt to change the subject. “I don’t see anything in here that would fit that key.” I swung my flashlight in one more arc around the room and then went back to the front door.
The sheriff followed me to the house’s exterior door, and I opened it carefully. I knew Bailey Thomas’s body was gone, but still, she had died in this place. I wanted to respect that.
Inside the kitchen, everything looked the same. Same moldy cookies. Same 1970s Formica. But nothing that looked like it would go with that key. I waved my light toward the living room and headed that way.
Again, nothing had moved, but this time, I noticed a tall, wooden pie safe in the front corner of the room near its only window. The piece of furniture stood about shoulder-height to me and was fronted with punched tin. It looked pretty rustic at first glance, as one might expect from a primitive piece of furniture in a rural home, but when I checked out the legs, I saw they were turned to curling feet, not just the sanded square legs I would have expected.
I ran my flashlight up the front of the safe, and sure enough, there was a keyhole right above the two knob handles. Typically, pie safes were handmade with wooden toggles that spun to keep the doors shut. People kept food in them – pies, yes, but also bread or fruit or anything you didn’t want bugs or mice to get. But I had never seen one with a lock. Food was often precious up in these mountains, but still, most people didn’t lock it up, not like this.
“Can I see the key?” I asked as I put my hand behind me. The sheriff took out a small evidence bag and then placed the key in my hands. “Thanks.”
I slid the key into the hole and turned. It slid like oil over glass, and I heard the tumbler inside clunk over. All of me wanted to reach up, pull one of the knobs, and open those doors to see what treasure awaited, but I knew this was not my job. I stood up and stepped back.
Sheriff Shifflett didn’t hesitate, and when he opened the door, we both had to lean in to understand what we were seeing. It took my eyes a minute, but then I realized that what I was looking at was stacks and stacks of cold, hard cash.