While Candace showered to get ready for school, I inspected the Colt. I didn’t own a gun, but I knew my way around firearms. I’d trained at a range. My aunt and Nick had both encouraged me to do so. The safety was on. The magazine was empty. There were no bullets in the cedar box. Was the gun a keepsake?
As I returned the gun to the cedar box and set the box at the bottom of the hope chest, questions roiled in my mind. If the killer had used the gun, why not steal it? Why empty it of bullets and return the gun to the hope chest? And another thing . . . why put all of the other items neatly on top of it? Wouldn’t the killer have been in a hurry and dumped the things inside?
A half hour later Candace, looking dazed, sat at the picnic-style table in the dining area as I made us a hearty breakfast.
The sun was rising as I sat down to eat. Striations of gray and orange clouds decorated the sky. I stared at my scrambled eggs and my stomach lurched. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew I needed fuel. Candace pushed her food around with her fork but didn’t take a bite. Out of view, I could hear Cinder chowing down on his kibble and slurping water. He hadn’t a clue what was going on. Oh, to be a dog.
“What are you going to do with the gun?” Candace set her fork down.
“I’m going to leave it where it is and talk to Aunt Max about it. And I’m removing the hope chest’s key.”
She huffed, chin jutting forward. “I wouldn’t touch the gun. Ever.”
“I believe you, but I don’t want any of your friends to gain access.”
“Waverly’s the only person I’ve ever had over.” The moment Candace and Waverly had met, they had become fast friends. They both loved skiing and books, and yes, boys.
“Rory,” I stated.
“Get real. He’s come to pick me up once. Okay, more than once. But he hasn’t stayed.” The edge in her voice was challenging.
I didn’t take the bait. Instead, I downed a bite of my eggs. They tasted bitter. Off. They weren’t. It was me. My taste buds. But if I ate, Candace would eat. I forced down another bite and gazed out the window at the distant view of the lake.
Why had my father owned a gun? At first, his business had done well, allowing him to invest in a family vacation home at Rubicon Bay, but ultimately, a few ticked-off clients, as Rosie had called them, had refused to pay and the business had flagged. Dad had been forced to sell the vacation home. Had one of his clients threatened Dad or the family? Or, as Rosie had suggested, had our father gotten mixed up in something criminal in an effort to recoup his losses?
No, I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. Dad had walked the straight and narrow.
“Shouldn’t you have the gun checked out?” Candace asked.
“I will. But I want to research its provenance first.”
“Its what?”
“Ownership or previous ownership.” Maybe the gun had belonged to my father’s father or grandfather. Or perhaps my father had received the gun as payment. If that were the case, I wanted to make sure it hadn’t been used in a crime other than, and hopefully not in, my parents’ murders.
“Oh, right,” Candace said. “The police do it all the time using the serial number.”
I smiled at my niece. She watched a lot of crime shows on television. Like me, she enjoyed solving puzzles. But she was naïve. “Aunt Max claims it doesn’t always work that way,” I said. “People think there’s a master list somewhere, like for guns all over the world, starting with the number one, but there isn’t.”
“Really?”
“No, ma’am. There is no big computer keeping track of every serial number. It’s not like the VIN number on a car.”
“The what?” Candace squinted.
I explained what that was. She was learning to drive. “There is no national database of guns, no centralized record of who owns what. This is one of the main issues between gun rights activists and their opponents. There is the National Tracing Center and, on any given day, agents run a thousand-plus traces. They sort through enormous record books that gun stores are required to keep.”
Candace said, “TMI.”
I understood the verbal shorthand: too much information. I locked my lips with an imaginary key and pointed to her food. “Eat.”
• • •
After dropping Candace at school, I drove home and made a beeline for the bedroom. I hadn’t returned all the items to the hope chest. I’d set many in piles against the far wall. I retrieved the pen and pad beside my bed and knelt on one knee beside the chest. Cinder crowded me and whimpered. I nudged him away and commanded he lie down. He did. I unlocked the hope chest, lifted out the gun box, opened it, and removed the gun. I peered at its serial number. I knew from experience that numbers could often be misread. Zero versus the letter O, the numeral one versus the lowercase letter l or the small-cap I. I jotted down the number meticulously. I even took a picture of it with the camera on my cell phone.
As I was setting the gun in its case, my phone rang. Rosie.
“Did you find it?” she blurted out before I could say hello. This time her speech was slurred. “The gun?”
“Rosie—”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do? What’s next? I want to help.”
“Not when you’re loaded.”
“Don’t be a self-righteous—” She cut herself off. At least she had the sense not to denigrate me. Assailing me with verbal attacks would not win her points. “Sorry. I . . . you know . . . I . . .” She clicked her tongue. “Touch base when you have a plan.” She ended the call abruptly.
I closed the gun case lid, ready to return the case to the chest, when I noticed something on the left side of the box. A second smaller button. I removed the gun from the case, set it carefully on the floor, and depressed the button on the box. A slim drawer popped out. Within was a receipt for the Colt .45 from a gun shop in the Bay Area. The receipt was made out to Grayson Baxter—Grandpa Gray. My mother’s father.
Grandpa Gray, a man of English-Scottish origin and educated on the East Coast, had moved west with Grandma Patrice when he’d landed a job at General Motors in the San Francisco Bay Area. He could tell the most terrific stories. Bald-faced lies, my grandmother had kidded, but I’d listened intently to each one. Sadly, Grandpa Gray had died penniless, his bad business decisions as well as his gambling addiction destroying him and taking their toll on our family.
I stared at the gun and thought of my mother. How had she felt about inheriting it? She had been a peaceful soul, as artistic as her mother, and driven by the will to create beauty in the world. Why had she kept it? Why hadn’t she mentioned it to me?
Rosie was right. I needed to learn more.