Midsummer Night's Mischief Page 6

  Darlene continued, “I knew Mom had all this food in her pantry, and I just knew she’d want us to get it. So we hurried in and gathered it up. And I—” Her eyes widened, and she looked helplessly around the room. Her voice dropped to a whisper as she continued. “I glanced in the den in passing. And I noticed that the Folio wasn’t sticking out of the bag anymore. I assumed that Sharon or Kirk or someone had moved it. Maybe put it in a safer place. Like I should have.”

  “Darlene, don’t blame yourself,” said Sharon. “We were all preoccupied.”

  Wes spoke up at last. “Mom, did anyone else have a key to Grandma’s house besides you?”

  Darlene shook her head. “I have two keys, actually, the spare I have always had, plus Mom’s keys. They’re in her purse, which is back at our house.” She had a pained expression on her face. “Mom’s purse, with its spare change and hand lotion, I managed to protect. Yet a priceless seventeenth-century artifact, I somehow overlooked.” She sighed heavily.

  Wes looked thoughtful. “Didn’t Grandma keep an emergency key hidden in the front yard? Under a rock or something?”

  For a moment, the family looked at one another in silence. Then, all at once, they got up and headed for the front door. I started to follow, then paused at the library—the den, Darlene had called it. It was in such a state of disarray, I realized it would be futile to look for any evidence at this point. I wandered back to the kitchen to take a look at the back door. Not that I had any clue as to what I was looking for. I could still hardly believe that someone had actually stolen the Folio right out of Eleanor’s home. I also couldn’t help remembering what Sharon had said at the visitation—that maybe Eleanor hadn’t died of natural causes, after all. The thought gave me goose bumps.

  After opening and closing the back door, I looked up to see Wes coming into the kitchen by himself.

  “The key was still there,” he said. “Took us a couple minutes to find the right stone. Hard to say for sure, but it didn’t look as if it had been used lately. The key was pretty crusty.”

  Just then, Darlene came into the kitchen with a guy I recognized from the photos at the visitation, Wes’s younger brother, Rob. In a T-shirt and jeans, he resembled Wes. He had the same build, only slightly shorter, and the same chiseled jawline. He was cute. Instead of dark hair, he had sandy hair, which was sticking out from beneath a blue baseball cap. Seeing me, he immediately came over and stuck out his hand.

  “Hi there,” he said with a friendly smile. “I’m Rob.”

  “Keli,” I said, shaking his hand.

  Wes took a step closer to me and gave his brother a warning look. Interesting. Then he addressed Darlene. “Mom, we need to call the police. We’ve got to report that the Folio was stolen.”

  “Oh, no,” said Darlene, looking around the room. “I can’t believe it. I just don’t believe it. I can’t—”

  “Mom,” said Wes, cutting her off. “Want me to call?”

  She nodded and fell into a chair.

  Rob perched himself on a stool, looking pensive. “Guess the next call will be the insurance company, huh? Well, at least we don’t have to worry about selling the old book. Now it will just be the insurance proceeds to divvy up.”

  I suddenly had a horrible thought. Had Eleanor added the Folio to her insurance policy? If she hadn’t, there was no way her homeowner’s insurance would cover the loss of a million-dollar valuable the insurer knew nothing about.

  Wes looked at Rob incredulously but didn’t say a word. Flipping through a phone book on his grandmother’s counter, he found a number for the local police station and placed the call.

  Sharon had to leave for work—the second shift at Edindale Medical Center, she said—but the rest of us waited in the backyard, which was lush and fragrant in the warm afternoon sun. It was a sizable yard, dotted with maple trees and fruit trees, lilacs and rosebushes. It was the kind of paradisiacal yard that tempted me to leave my cozy town house for greener pastures.

  Darlene, who looked like she wanted to keep busy, emptied the birdbath and turned on a hose to refill it. Then she started pulling weeds from the vegetable garden. Rob sat in a lawn chair on the small patio, eyes glued to his smartphone. I watched as Wes ambled around the yard. He stood on the back steps and then walked slowly down the path that led to an old toolshed and then to the wooden fence along the alley. He went through the gate, passed the garbage cans, and looked up and down the alley.

  I started wandering around myself, tracing the perimeter of the house and pondering how someone might have gotten in without a key. There was no cellar door, no other entrance, and all of the first-floor windows looked intact. On the north side of the house, I looked up and noticed a window was slightly open. But it was out of reach without a ladder. The closest tree, a towering, bushy pine, was a good eight feet from the house. Besides, pines were difficult to climb. Too sticky.

  I walked back to the patio, where Wes was talking with his mom.

  “Who are the neighbors?” I asked, pointing to each side of Eleanor’s house.

  “That’s Mrs. Ross there,” answered Darlene, nodding toward the house on the pine tree side. “She’s a widow. She was at the visitation. The other side is the Perrys. They were at the visitation, too.”

  The police arrived, two middle-aged officers named Buchanan and Shakley. They dutifully took notes while Darlene gave them the same account she had relayed to me. The officers looked at the front and back doors and walked through the house, but they didn’t stay long. They said they would talk to the neighbors, and then they left. They weren’t gone thirty seconds before Wes grabbed my arm.

  “Let’s follow them.”

  “What?”

  “I want to see who they talk to, find out what they learn. Come on.”

  Admittedly, I felt silly. It was comical, really, the way we were trailing two cops, trying to be nonchalant as we sauntered down the sidewalk in this peaceful, leafy neighborhood. We tried to stay back a good half block while keeping the officers in our sight. Every time they turned to approach another front door, we turned quickly to face the other way or ducked behind a tree or a parked car. I didn’t know who was more conspicuous, a couple of uniformed police officers going door-to-door or the two goofballs behind them.

  Secretly, I was having a blast.

  “Too bad we don’t have a dog to walk,” Wes murmured from the corner of his mouth. “It would be the perfect cover.”

  “Do you have a dog?” I asked. Hey, I wasn’t going to miss an opportune “getting to know you” moment, crime-fighting mission or not. I was a practiced multitasker.

  “Nah. Too much responsibility. And I’m not home enough. Maybe someday, though.”

  Intriguing. I was about to ask a follow-up question when Wes suddenly pulled me off the sidewalk and alongside an SUV that was parked in a short driveway. We crouched down and peeked through the vehicle’s side windows. Shakley and Buchanan were walking to the front of a nice two-story frame house painted pale blue, with manicured bushes in the front yard.

  But it wasn’t the house or the cops Wes was eyeing. I followed his gaze and saw a girl of fifteen or sixteen standing like a statue behind a juniper bush on the side of the house. She regarded the cops with wide eyes.

  I looked at Wes questioningly. He shrugged and whispered, “She was walking around from the backyard and practically dove behind that shrub when she saw them. I’m pretty sure she didn’t notice us.”

  The cops stood on the front porch, speaking to a ponytailed woman wearing cargo shorts and a white polo shirt. We could hear indistinct voices, punctuated by the occasional “Oh!” and “No, I don’t think so.”

  Before I realized what was happening, the officers stepped aside and the woman, ponytail swinging, trotted down the steps and made for our direction. I tensed up and grabbed Wes’s arm, ready to bolt. Though to be seen running away would probably have proved more embarrassing than getting caught.

  Wes placed his hand on my knee and gave me a wa
rning look, but his eyes sparkled. I had to stifle a sudden urge to giggle out loud.

  “Brandi!” the woman called out loudly as she rounded the corner of the house.

  The girl behind the bush started backing up. She looked like she was ready to bolt, too.

  The woman spotted her and stopped short. “Brandi! What are you doing back there?”

  “Mom!” the girl hissed. “I don’t want to be seen like this!”

  I couldn’t blame her. She had on a string bikini, which wasn’t so bad in itself. But for a cover-up, she wore a tentlike gray painter’s shirt. Her legs were bare, except for the shiny oil she’d slathered on. And on her feet was a pair of clunky orange Crocs. A crooked topknot fell limply over her forehead.

  As the officers came up behind her mother, she quickly pulled the band off her head and shook her hair loose. Then she pulled her shirt closed.

  “Brandi,” said the woman sternly. “There was a robbery over on Willow Street, just across the alley from our garage. These officers are asking around to see if anyone saw anything. Probably last night.”

  The girl held back, doing her best to stand behind her mother as the police officers questioned her. I watched as she shook her head and muttered one-word responses. Even from where we hid behind the SUV, I could see Brandi darting her eyes, looking anyplace except at the officers. She looked so guilty, I almost began to wonder if she had stolen the Shakespeare book.

  The cops must have thought the same thing.

  “Where were you yesterday between four and eight thirty?” asked Buchanan.

  Brandi glanced at her mother, who answered for her. “Brandi was grounded yesterday, so she was in her room reading all evening—except for when we had dinner from six to six thirty or so. I don’t suppose she would have seen anything, unless it was out her bedroom window.” She turned to her daughter. “Did you see anything?”

  Brandi shook her head quickly and examined her cherry-red fingernails. The officers stared at her for a second. Officer Shakley handed a business card to Brandi’s mother.

  “Give us a call if you think of anything,” he said.

  They left and moved on to the next house, and Brandi followed her mother into their home.

  I looked at Wes, eager to speculate about what little Miss Teen Spirit was hiding. But he stood up with a groan and stretched his back.

  “Time to get back,” he said. “I guess those cops know what they’re doing.”

  The walk back to Eleanor’s house was much less fun than before. Wes didn’t say a word. I imagined he was thinking about his grandma or maybe his mom. But something about the telltale worry lines around his eyes made me wonder if little Miss Brandi wasn’t the only one with something to hide.

  CHAPTER 7

  Monday morning I started the day at a mortgage company’s office, representing the buyer at a real estate closing. It was pretty routine; I’d done a million of these, so no big deal. But I felt distracted and anxious. Every time someone mentioned insurance, I got this uneasy flutter in the pit of my stomach.

  My worst fears were realized when I returned to the office. Darlene Callahan was waiting for me in the reception area. Although she was dressed neatly in slacks and a short-sleeved blouse, the dark circles under her eyes and the neglected gray roots made her appear drawn and harried.

  Julie gave me an apologetic look. “She didn’t want to make an appointment,” she said quietly. “She’s been here about twenty minutes.”

  “That’s okay. Ms. Callahan. It’s nice to see you again. Let’s go back to my office.” I tried to keep my voice bright, but I felt uncommonly nervous. The worried look on Darlene’s face didn’t help.

  Darlene followed me into my office and sat down in one of the two armchairs facing my desk. I set down my briefcase and took my seat. Sometimes I sat on the same side, next to a client, but this time I felt like having the protective barrier the desk provided, at least psychologically.

  “I didn’t expect to be going through my mom’s things so soon,” Darlene began. “But between searching for the book and then looking for the insurance policy, I feel like I’ve turned that place upside down and inside out two times over.”

  “No luck?” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “I found her bank papers and the safety-deposit box key. I just came from the bank. But all that was in the box was the deed to her house, the title to her car, and her marriage certificate. So, that’s why I came here next. I figured you must have a copy of the insurance policy for the Folio.” She looked at me hopefully.

  Crap.

  I swallowed hard. “Well, no,” I said as gently as I could. “Eleanor was taking care of the insurance. She didn’t ask me to . . .” I trailed off, feeling extremely lame.

  A deep mottled flush rose from Darlene’s neck into her cheeks. She took a slow, ragged breath. “Ms. Milanni, this is a multimillion-dollar piece of property we’re talking about here. You were handling Mother’s affairs, taking care of all the business involving that Folio. You were representing her in the sale, and . . . and . . .” She stood up, her voice rising. “What do you mean, she didn’t ask you to? Was she supposed to ask you to cross every t and dot every i? Isn’t that your job? To protect her interests? Didn’t you have a duty to her?”

  By this time, I could feel that my face had to be as red as Darlene’s. I understood why she was so upset, but all I could think of at that moment was that I had to get her out of my office. This was not a pretty scene, and I had to put an end to it.

  She continued shrilly, “You don’t drive out of a used car lot until the vehicle is insured, for Pete’s sake! And something this valuable . . . Shouldn’t you have kept it in your custody?”

  “Darlene,” I said as calmly and firmly as possible. “Please don’t be so hasty. Let’s not jump to conclusions until we have all the facts.” I stood up, as well, and walked around my desk. “I’ll go see the appraiser right away. Maybe he’ll know something about the insurance.”

  Darlene’s eyes still flashed, but she didn’t say anything. I grabbed my briefcase and headed for the door, which stood ajar. That’s just great. The whole office had probably heard this mortifying exchange.

  “Besides,” I said, “it’s been only two days. The Folio may turn up yet. The police are working hard to track down the thief.” As if I had any insider knowledge of what the police were doing.

  I held the door open for Darlene. She hiked her purse on her shoulder and took another deep breath.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let me know if you learn anything useful.”

  As soon as she left, I rushed over to my file on Eleanor and grabbed the paper on which I’d written the local appraiser’s name and address. Then I hightailed it out of my office, trying not to see which of my colleagues were staring at me from their own office doors.

  Satterly’s Rare Books was a short drive from the office. That is, if you had a car. Since I lived so close to the square, I usually didn’t have my car at work. Luckily, Edindale’s bus system was pretty reliable. I walked the three short blocks to South Central Illinois University, waited about five minutes, then hopped on the bus. Four stops later, I stood on the corner of Main and Whitney, looking at the piece of paper I’d grabbed from Eleanor’s file. Then I crossed my fingers, walked two doors down, and entered the dimly lit, climate-controlled bookshop owned by one Theodore Cornelius Satterly.

  With a name like Theodore Cornelius Satterly, I imagined the proprietor to be a neat, bespectacled gent in tweeds. Crenshaw’s long-lost twin maybe. So when I saw a portly fellow sporting faded jeans, an even more faded Smokey the Bear T-shirt, a bushy mustache, and one courageous gray comb-over walk in from the back room, I thought I must be meeting the janitor.

  “Howdy, miss. What can I do you for?” he said, squeezing past a sky-high stack of books to fit himself behind the counter.

  “Hi,” I said, putting on my friendliest face. “I’m looking for Mr. Satterly. My name is Keli Milanni.” I pulled a bus
iness card from my purse and handed it to ole Smokey.

  “You’re lookin’ at him,” he said, glancing at my card. “I’m not being sued, am I?”

  I was opening my mouth to respond when Satterly burst out in melodious laughter. “Just kidding, just kidding.” He hefted himself onto a stool, eyes twinkling and mustache twitching. I had a feeling this man liked to find amusement in the smallest things.

  “Mr. Satterly,” I began.

  “Call me T.C.,” he said. “Everyone does.”

  “T.C.,” I said, trying again. “I represented Eleanor Mostriak. She brought in a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio for your appraisal. I’m not sure if you heard—”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” he said, sobering instantly. “So sorry to hear of her passing. Saw the obituary Saturday and couldn’t believe it. Such a nice lady. Seemed healthy, full of life.” T.C. shook his head and examined his fingernails.

  “Did you hear about the theft, as well?” I asked.

  “Theft?” He looked up questioningly.

  “Yes. Um, unfortunately, on Saturday someone broke into Eleanor’s home. At least, I think they broke in. Anyway, it appears they took the Folio and nothing else.”

  T.C.’s eyes widened, and his gray eyebrows rose halfway up his broad forehead. “Good Lord! Someone stole the Folio? It wasn’t locked up in a bank?”

  I shook my head sadly. “It wasn’t in a bank,” I said.

  I watched him closely as he processed the information. He did seem to be truly surprised. After a moment, he stared wistfully out the shop window behind me. Almost to himself, he murmured, “The First Folio. Amazing condition. I held it in my hands. Right here, in my hands.”

  “You were confident it was legitimate, even though it hadn’t been authenticated yet?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve been in this business a long time. It looked like the real deal to me, and I was very interested in acquiring it. Mrs. Mostriak told me she wanted to keep the sale local.” He heaved a sigh and shook his head again.