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The drive to Aunt Nora’s house was like déjà vu for Paige. Nothing looked much different than when she was a kid. Oh, there were a few new buildings, and some had been torn down, but the overall feel of the landscape and the way the road twisted and turned under the car felt the same way an old, worn-in glove did: familiar and safe.
And a little boring.
Paige did her best to shrug that thought off, but it was almost as well-known to her as the drive to her aunt’s house. Her whole life, she’d struggled with the feeling that her hometown and everything about it was stale and worn out. Deep down, she thought she was meant for something different than this place and these people. Something more exciting.
More important.
Paige shook her head, irritated with herself. What was more important than home and family? Nothing, that’s what. She’d do well to keep her silly thoughts of adventure buried where they should be. The only thing they’d ever gotten her was a half-finished novel and some major debt. And about ten extra pounds from that de-lish Italian pasta.
Scott slowed the Oldsmobile and turned into Nora’s dusty driveway. There was already a car there. The blue Chevy Malibu must belong to their cousins. So much for getting there before them and looking around. She exchanged glances with her brother, and he rolled his eyes.
“I’m just going to head to the station with this stuff from the shop,” Scott said. “If you see anything in the house you think I should know about, give me a call. Otherwise, I’ll come pick you up in a few hours.”
“Are you sure you can’t come in? I might need protection, you know.”
He laughed and reached across his sister to open the door. “You’ll be fine. It’s not like they’re witches or anything. If you need me, call my Bat-phone.”
Paige stuck out her tongue, grabbed her purse, and got out of the car. Scott backed the car up but then stopped and rolled the window down. “Try not to fight with them, for real.”
Paige widened her eyes and tried to look as innocent as possible. “Fight? Me? Why would I do that?”
Scott pressed his lips together, rolled the window up, and drove off, leaving a cloud of dust behind the car.
As Paige looked around, she noted that nothing had changed here, either, since the last time she’d been on the property. Aunt Nora’s lot was pretty small, stuck in a row of similarly aged wood-framed houses. There was a small garden behind the house, fenced in to keep the rabbits out. The garage was almost as big as the house itself and housed her old Mustang. She also kept her lawnmower and gardening supplies in there.
The house was nothing special—just a tidy two-story with a small covered front porch. Aunt Nora had flowers growing close to the house and a lovely little brick walkway stretched from the bottom step of the porch through the grass of the front yard to the driveway.
Nora’s house was painted pale yellow with white shutters and flower boxes hanging under each of the second story windows. Nora would have had to open the windows one by one and lean out to tend the plants in the boxes. Paige thought about her aunt’s dying words to take care of the flowers and captain somebody or other.
Paige acknowledged she was avoiding going inside her aunt’s house, dealing with her cousins, and seeing Aunt Nora’s things. But she couldn’t stand in the front yard and look around forever. She needed to be practical and get on with it. She trudged her way over to the steps leading to the porch and inched up them, holding the rail. Her hand ran over its familiar shape. She had raced up and down these stairs so much in her youth, always holding the rail, that she knew all its curves and dips as well as she knew the face of an old friend.
She hesitated with her hand on the front door knob. She really didn’t want to do this. But she knew she had to, so she turned the knob and pushed.
The noise assaulted her the second the huge oak front door creaked open. Paige looked at the ceiling, begging any unseen spirit that felt like it to give her strength, and stepped into Aunt Nora’s front room and closed the door behind her.
The room was empty, but arguing voices floated in from beyond it. She practiced deep breathing and headed to the kitchen while she listened to her cousins. It was decorated all in country style. A light blue and white checkered pattern graced the wallpaper, and there were butcher block style countertops. Chickens adorned many surfaces, including the towels that hung on the oven and the ceramic jars on the counter that Paige knew held flour, sugar, and salt.
“I already looked in there!” Patty’s voice came from the den, just beyond the kitchen.
“You might have looked already, but you’re terrible at it. You’d miss seeing a wart right at the tip of your own nose.” That was Taffy, her voice an octave higher than her sister’s. Paige felt a shudder move through her body. She was not looking forward to having to talk to the women. Growing up, they’d loved to play tricks on Paige and Scott. The two of them had been almost like one person—it was hard to find any differences between them other than their voices. They had the same opinions about everything, liked and hated the same foods, and even married brothers, so they managed to keep the same last name.
“Move over and let me look.” A loud thud followed the order and then shrieking erupted. Paige crept to the kitchen’s open, arched doorway and peered into the living room.
It was pure chaos.
Papers were strewn about on almost every available surface, including the floor. Patty flailed around on the floor, lying on her back with all four limbs waving around in the air like a toppled turtle. Taffy ignored her sister, her hooked nose stuffed in papers.
Paige thought about the view from the hotel in Portofino and sighed deeply before crossing the room. She grabbed Patty’s arm and hauled her to a standing position. Her cousin blinked at her and then pushed her straight, limp hair back from her face. “Oh. You’re here.” She turned to her sister and spoke louder. “Paige is here.”
Taffy looked up from the papers and peered at Paige as though she doubted her sister’s assessment of her identity. Then both women went back to their work without further acknowledging their cousin’s presence.
Paige groaned a little and stepped carefully through the clutter on the floor until she made it to the couch. She shoved some stacks of paper over and sat on one of the cushions, crossing her legs and arms. “What are you guys looking for?”
Taffy shot a look over her shoulder at Paige that quite clearly meant, Are you stupid? “The will,” she said in a matching tone of voice.
Paige bobbed her head. “I see. No luck yet?”
“No, we can’t find it,” Patty confirmed, breathing hard from exertion.
“Huh. Imagine that.” Paige pulled her cell phone out of the purse and punched something into the search engine. She tapped the number that came up and put the phone to her ear.
“Who’s she calling?” Patty asked. “Who are you calling?” she said again as she seemed to realize she could ask her cousin directly.
Paige didn’t answer the question, but when someone on the other end of the line said, “Tag Portman’s office—how can I help you,” she said, “Yes, Mr. Portman is . . . was . . . my aunt’s lawyer. She passed away yesterday, and we’re going to need to view her will and find out who the executor is.”
The lawyer’s secretary clucked her tongue, made sympathetic noises, and offered her sympathies before she asked Paige her aunt’s name and put her on hold. Paige continued to stare at the twins, both standing with mouths slightly gaped, obviously in awe of Paige’s mental prowess.
The secretary returned to the phone line and told Paige that Mr. Portman would bring a copy of the will to Nora’s house right away.
Paige ended the call, slipped the phone back in her purse, and swung her foot back and forth while she shared the news. Her cousins exchanged looks.
Taffy finally cleared her throat. “Well,” she said. “Well. That’s good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I think you should clean up this mess before he gets here. You wouldn’t want him to think you were a couple of buzzards trying to pick Aunt Nora’s bones clean, would you?”
They shot her an identical irritated look but began picking up the papers. As they cleaned, Paige decided to take a look around the rest of her aunt’s house. She made her way down the hall to the bathroom doorway. Aunt Nora’s toothbrush sat in a cup on the edge of the sink, and Paige had to swallow a lump in her throat at the thought that her aunt had left the house in the morning not knowing she’d never brush her teeth again.
When she got upstairs to Aunt Nora’s bedroom, she hesitated. Maybe she should leave this for Scott to examine later. He was the real detective, after all. What if she messed up some evidence or something? But the room seemed to tug on her, so she entered it and turned around in a circle. It was bright and cheerful, all done in yellow and white. A frilly quilt was neatly pulled up taut over the bed, and everything was in its place. Her silly cousins obviously hadn’t made it in here to root around for a nonexistent will yet, thank goodness.
Paige wandered over to the window and looked out at the road. A rabbit hopped past the window, and Paige sighed. She felt close to Aunt Nora in this room, almost like her ghost might pop in and say something to her any minute. But she knew better than that. Her aunt was gone, and that was that.
“Paige! Mr. Portman’s here,” Patty yelled.
Paige took one last look around. The sun glinted off the window box outside the window. The bright shimmer made her wonder if her aunt’s spirit was there, bidding her goodbye. Patty yelled again, and Paige pulled the door closed behind her.
Back in the den, the papers weren’t on every surface anymore but were piled in a precariously high stack on Aunt Nora’s rolltop desk in the corner. Of course, the cousins wouldn’t have actually put them back where they found them.
A man in a brown suit was on the sofa where Paige had sat earlier, a metal briefcase open next to him. He had a ridiculous-looking comb-over, but his hair was still completely black. Reading glasses perched on the end of a short, round nose, and he peered through them at a paper in his hand. When Paige entered the room, he looked up and smiled. “Oh, hello,” he said. “You must be Paige Murphy. I’m so sorry about your aunt. It’s quite a shock to hear she’s gone. What happened? Was it her heart?”
Paige shrugged a little. “They don’t know for sure yet,” she hedged. She didn’t want her cousins to know anything about the possible poisoning for as long as possible.
“Ah yes, well. I’m sure they’ll figure it out. In the meantime”—he looked back at his paper—“I have the will right here. Now, I’m the executor, so it will be up to me to see that your aunt’s wishes are carried out exactly as she asked.” He looked over his glasses at each of the women. “I don’t intend to entertain any shenanigans, either. What Nora wanted, she told me, and I wrote it down here all legal and clear. So, once I read the will, that will be that.”
The women all nodded.
“Okay, it says here that Nora left the house and its contents to Taffy Bickle and Patty Bickle.” He put his chin down to look over his glasses again. “That’s the two of you, right?” The twins nodded, not looking very happy. “Scott Murphy gets the Mustang in the garage, and she left him a small amount of money for its upkeep.”
Paige grinned. Scott was going to be ecstatic. He’d wanted that car for as long as she could remember.
“And the bookstore, all its contents, and all Nora’s pets hereby go to Paige Murphy. That’s it!” The lawyer put the paper back in the briefcase and removed four others. He got up, handed the copies of the will to Paige, and then grabbed the metal case. “You’ll all have to come to the office and sign some papers once I draw them up in the next few hours, but the terms of the will are effective immediately. Congratulations to all of you, and my sympathies on the loss of your aunt.” The man headed to the front door.
“Wait,” Taffy yelled and ran after the lawyer. “What about money? What about the gold coins?”
He turned around and gave her a stern look. “I don’t know anything about gold coins. As for money, all of her finances were tied up in the bookstore. So, unless you find stacks of cash hidden under the mattress, all monies will go to Miss Murphy. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
Taffy put her fists on her hips like a petulant child. “But the house isn’t worth paying the taxes on. That’s not fair!”
Portman shook his finger at her. “I told you there would be no shenanigans, young lady. No tomfoolery and no hijinks. Now, good day.” With that, he hurried out the door and drove away.
Paige handed a copy of the will to each of her cousins. Taffy and Patty both looked like volcanoes about to erupt. Their eyes looked like they might start shooting flames at any moment. It was Patty who finally spoke, unable to contain herself any longer. “The house? This house? Why would Nora leave two of us this tiny, worthless house that isn’t even on the coast and then go and leave the bookstore, on prime real estate, to only one cousin? That’s not right. Don’t you agree, Paige?”
“For all I know, the shop is in financial ruin and will have to be sold just to pay off the creditors.” She hoped she was wrong, of course, but needed something to deflect the cousins’ anger. “Besides, this house is nice and holds a lot of memories.”
Her cousins looked completely baffled. Taffy threw back her head. “Memories? Memories aren’t going to pay for trips to Europe and a new house. I was gonna buy a koala bear.”
“You know there aren’t koalas in Europe, right?”
“Whatever. A panda then. Anyway, we were going to build a new house that both our families could live in.” She glanced at Taffy, who was still fuming.
“I can’t believe we agreed to host that old bag’s memorial,” Taffy muttered to herself.
Paige’s phone buzzed, and she pulled it out. Saved by the bell. It was Scott, texting her from the driveway. He didn’t want to come in and deal with the cousins.
“Don’t worry about the memorial. We’ll have it at Beachside. Spread the word.” Paige turned on her heel and left, chuckling at the sputtering duo she could hear behind her. But before she even got to the car, it hit her. What on earth was she going to do with the bookstore?