Chapter 37

“Oh, Ms. Beauton,” moaned Eric. “What have you done now?”

To me Eric said, “Hold on to that hat.”

Maisie handed it to me, while Eric walked over to the moving men and showed them his badge.

He made a phone call, and then said to Priss, “Let’s go inside and have a little talk.”

I peered in the hat to see if she was hiding anything else in it. She’d done a good job, but I dared to wedge a fingernail under the fabric. And there it was. It hadn’t been in a box after all. My fingers trembled. I was holding an original van Gogh sunflower in my hands.

“Maisie,” said Eric. “I’d like you to come, too.”

Maisie’s face paled until it was almost a toasted gray. She went along, though, and the rest of us fell in line.

Orso caught up to me. “Is that the van Gogh? How did she get hold of it?”

I handed Edgar the photo of his dad, which he promptly showed to Orso.

“This is your father? Well, I must say that’s a disappointment. I rather liked the idea of a daughter and son. I enjoyed it if only for fifteen minutes.”

“It’s not you?” Edgar asked.

“No. This is Randy Johnson, the man who ruined my life. The one who ran off with four priceless items we were transferring to a museum.”

Edgar frowned. “Then how did my mom get this picture?”

Orso rubbed his face. “I was with her the day she took the photograph. It was before Randy scammed me. She dreamed of living in a house like this. We had a lovely day together,” he said wistfully.

We gathered in Dolly’s apartment. It wasn’t the same without Dolly’s furniture and clutter. The hardwood floors were fabulous and would help sell the house, but the room was eerie now that it was empty.

Eric turned to me. “Would you go get Olivia? I think she should be here.”

I raced up the stairs and asked Olivia to come down. She shut her eyes for a few seconds. “We had a good long run. I guess in the back of my mind, I knew it would all come out one day.”

She walked down the stairs in front of me like she was bravely going to her doom.

When we walked in, Orso was speaking. “I hired Randy, the man in Edgar’s photo, to help me transfer priceless items to a museum. Unfortunately, on arrival at the museum, it was discovered that four items were missing, one of which was the small van Gogh sunflower. I knew I didn’t have them. I’ve never stolen a thing in my life, but Randy disappeared and was nowhere to be found. The prosecutor insisted I made him up to take the blame. I wasted a lot of years in prison because of this guy. If anyone knows where I can find him, I’d be most appreciative.”

I had a very bad feeling that we all knew where Randy was. What we didn’t know was how he ended up behind the bookcase, or why someone put him there.

A look passed between Priss and Olivia. Priss said, “Dolly killed him. She was like a sister to us, so we helped her drag him up the stairs and hide his body.”

“Didn’t he smell?” asked Edgar.

“Thankfully it was a bitterly cold fall and winter that year, which helped more than you would think.”

“That would have been 1991?” I asked. “The year of the rat, which was really the year of the goat?”

Olivia looked pained.

Maisie shook her head. “I knew it. I knew Mom was responsible.”

“Dolly?” I asked. “I find that so hard to believe. Why did she murder him?”

Olivia looked down at her hands. “He was three-timing her.” Her chest heaved. “He had proposed to Dolly, and to Priss, and to me. He was seeing all three of us, right under our noses. Right here in this house! The man was horrible.”

“How did he break his neck?” asked Eric.

Olivia began to cry. “It wasn’t Dolly!”

Priss’s eyes widened. “Yes, it was. Remember?”

“Oh, Priss. It wasn’t any of us. Dolly and I went up to his studio apartment on the third floor and found him with Priss in flagrante delicto. Priss said she was his fiancée, then I said I was his fiancée, then Dolly chimed in, and she thought she was his fiancée! The fuss moved out into the hallway with everyone shouting, and yelling, and arguing, and smacking him. How could he do that to us? He was moving toward the stairs, undoubtedly to escape us, and the three of us, we didn’t mean to, but we all three pushed him. I remember it like it was yesterday.” Olivia closed her eyes. “I swear he tumbled down those steep stairs in slow motion. All three of us reached our hands out as if we could catch him or stop him from tumbling. And then he finally came to a stop. I knew it was bad from the angle of his head. No one can turn their head like that and survive. He was gone. He was there kissing up to all three of us one minute and the next minute, he was just gone.”

Her shoulders heaved and fell. She wiped her face with her left hand. “We dragged him up the stairs.” She snorted. “I remember old Mrs. Collins dropping by. We were in such a panic. I thought she would never leave. We couldn’t bury him. A neighbor would notice that for sure. And he was too heavy for the three of us to put in a car and take someplace. We could barely get him up the stairs. So we propped him up and built that bookcase.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” asked Eric. “You could have said it was an accident.”

“Are you kidding? We didn’t want to go to jail. And none of us had any money for expensive lawyers. And you know the funny thing? For twenty-seven years no one came looking for him. Not a soul. No neighbors asked how he was doing. No friends dropped by to see him. His employer didn’t call. Nobody reported him missing, either, as far as I know. He was a man who disappeared and nobody ever came looking for him until the day Edgar showed up with that picture of his dad.”

“You’re confirming that the man in the photograph is the skeleton behind the bookcase?” asked Eric.

“I thought you had figured that out.” She sounded a wee bit sarcastic for someone who was about to go to jail.

“The police did a DNA test to see if the bones were a match to Edgar. That man wasn’t his dad,” said Eric.

Olivia froze. “We went through all of that for nothing?” She buried her head in her hands and sobbed. It wasn’t until she looked up that I realized she was laughing. “Priss tried to kill that boy Edgar seven ways to Sunday. He’s destined to live for sure.”

“Olivia!” screamed Priss.

“Honey, it’s over.”

“She’s the reason Nolan fell down the stairs?” I asked.

“Yup. She unscrewed the lightbulb and placed a magazine on one of the steps. He flew right on down. Was just the wrong guy is all. It was supposed to be Edgar.”

“And the firecracker at the concert in the park?”

“All the news reports said she was a boy. They never would have said that about me, that’s for sure. And she clobbered some poor guy who was hanging around. She thought he was Edgar.”

Eric looked at me and raised his palms. “Who was that?”

“I think it was probably Jack Miller. Was Priss the one who threatened Edgar by choking him? She could have killed him then.”

“Can you believe it? Somebody else almost did the job for her.”

“She could have killed him last night when she drugged him,” I said.

“I thought I left him belly down in a stream bed. I whacked him over the head pretty good, too, with the neighbor’s shovel.” Priss sighed. “All I really wanted was that picture of Randy. Without it, he had nothing on us.”

“So you were the garage thief?” I asked. I couldn’t have been more surprised.

Priss seemed proud of herself. “Where did you think I got the fireworks and the shovel?”

A group of police officers walked in. Priss and Olivia were going to jail.

“Wait!” I cried. “How did you get the van Gogh?”

“It was a gift to Priss from Randy.”

“What happened to the other three items?” asked Orso.

“I have no idea,” said Olivia. “I imagine Dolly sold them. We had to get rid of everything in the room he was renting, so they might have gone in the trash.”