“Okay,” I said.
She looked around uncertainly. “Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah, really.”
A smile stretched across her face. “Cool.”
Mac was at the cash desk. “We can pick Rose up in fifteen minutes if that works for you.”
“It does,” I said. “By the time we get what we need and drive down to get her, it’ll be fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll start loading boxes,” he said.
I walked over to Charlotte. “Good morning, sweetie,” she said. She was wearing a bright blue apron over her skirt and sweater. Nick had her eyes and her smile.
I put my arm around her shoulder. “Avery is going to clean under the stairs and do inventory. Could you freshen up the front window?”
“Of course,” she said. “And Liz asked me to remind you about lunch.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I said. “My dress is upstairs.” I raised an eyebrow. “And let me guess—she also told you to tell me to show some leg.”
“Let’s just say among other things, and leave it at that,” Charlotte said, giving me a hug.
I laughed.
“I’d love to tell you she’s wrong about Channing Caulfield,” she began.
“But she’s not,” I finished.
The always pragmatic Charlotte shook her head. “No, she’s not. And he didn’t get where he is because he’s a softie.”
“Liz will eat him for lunch,” I said.
Charlotte smiled again. “My money’s on her.”
I patted the pocket of my jeans. “Phone’s on and I’ll be back in time to change,” I said.
Rose was standing at the bottom of the driveway when I pulled up to the house, carrying one of her big totes as usual. She climbed into the backseat. “Good morning, dear. Good morning, Mac,” she said. She smiled at Elvis, who was sniffing the bag she’d set next to him on the seat. “Good morning, Elvis,” she added.
I smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “Good morning, Rose,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” she said as she fastened her seat belt. “I know how important this is to Stella.”
Mac turned in his seat. “Hi, Rose,” he said. He looked at me. “So, are we still going to work the same way?”
I nodded as I pulled away from the curb. “Uh-huh. We’ll start in the kitchen and work out to the front of the house. Remember, Stella wants the dishes.”
He nodded.
“And those colored Pyrex bowls,” Rose added.
Mac and Rose talked about our plan of attack as we drove out to the house. Elvis watched them both as though he were actually following the conversation.
As I pulled in to the driveway I glanced over at Paul Duvall’s house on the other side of the street. There was no sign of him or his daughter.
“Want to check things out before we start lugging in boxes?” Mac asked.
“I do,” I said.
We all got out of the SUV. Rose carried Elvis. I unlocked the front door and stepped inside the house. Rose set Elvis down in the entryway. He sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose at me.
I could smell bleach. Stella had told me on the phone she’d wiped up the kitchen floor. It was better than the scent of blood and death that had been here before.
I hesitated for a minute, remembering Ronan Quinn’s body crumpled on the floor. Mac gave my shoulder a squeeze and eased past me as if he could read my mind. He stepped into the living room and looked around. “We’re taking that bookcase, aren’t we?” he asked, pointing at a tall, glass-fronted set of shelves to the left of the big window overlooking the street. It was piled with stacks of old newspapers and issues of National Geographic.
“Yes,” I said, walking over to join him. “Along with the sideboard and the hutch.” I pointed to the heavy wooden pieces against the end wall. “And a friend of Mr. P. wants to buy all those Geographics.”
“You’re kidding?” Mac said.
Elvis had started for the kitchen with Rose. She turned to look at Mac. “Oh no,” she said. “Elwood and his brother, Jake, have a little side business selling old books and magazines. They’ll take every one of those Geographics and keep your eyes peeled for any copies of The Saturday Evening Post. Elwood will take those, too.”
“Elwood and Jake?” Mac whispered. “The Blues Brothers? She’s messing with me, isn’t she?”
I grinned at him. “It’s Rose, Mac. There’s no way to know for sure.”
We followed Rose and Elvis out to the small kitchen. The smell of bleach was stronger. Elvis walked around gingerly sniffing the boxes piled by the windows where a table and chairs should have been. “That’s the wine,” I said. “It stays where it is.”
“Got it,” Mac said. He and Rose were already walking around looking in the cupboards. Rose would pack the dishes Stella wanted to keep while Mac did an inventory of everything else on his iPad so we’d know what we had when it came time to have the in-house estate sale I was planning.
“I’m going to do a walk-around,” I said.
Mac waved at me over his shoulder. I walked back out to the living room. Along with the pieces of furniture, there were a couple of framed paintings that I was taking back to the shop to sell on commission for Stella. I hoped to get more money for them by putting them on our Web site.
Elvis wandered out from the kitchen. “Let’s go take a look in the bedrooms,” I said.
We went down the tiny hallway. The master bedroom was the starkest room in the house with just a double bed and two dressers. Someone—Stella probably—had long since taken Edison Hall’s clothes. The room had an air of sadness about it. I’d noticed a couple of blankets folded at the end of the living room sofa the first time I was in the house. I suspected Edison Hall had been sleeping there and not in this room.
The next bedroom was almost as large as the master and it was jammed full of stuff. If there was logic or a pattern to what was stored there, I couldn’t see it. At least most of the stuff was in boxes. The downside was that none of them were marked. I looked in the top of one of them. It held six cans of Spam and a large jug of water. Supplies in case of a natural disaster? I wondered. I carried the box out into the living room so I could go through it to see if the food had expired.
I stepped back into the room in time to see Elvis jump onto the seat of a low rocking chair, balance and leap from there to some boxes.
“Hey! Where are you going?” I said.
He meowed at me and started making his way across the stacked cartons. I reached for him, but he was already more than an arm’s length away. He turned and looked over his shoulder at me and then jumped down, out of sight, onto a lower pile of boxes. To the right there looked to be just enough space to squeeze around the piles and get the cat.
The boxes had a musty smell about them and the room was full of dust. I sneezed as I lifted a garbage bag out of my way and dust motes rose in the air. “I hope you’re not back there with anything that has fur and a long tail,” I muttered.
Eventually I worked my way to the back wall of the room. Elvis was sitting on the window ledge. I had dust in my nose, on my shirt and—I was pretty sure—in my hair. There didn’t seem to be a speck of it on Elvis’s sleek black fur. In fact, he almost looked smug. On the windowsill next to him sat what looked to me to be an old model train engine. I picked it up while the cat watched me.
The steam cylinder was painted a dark brown with the word ROCKET stenciled on the side in gold letters. A black stack of a smaller diameter rose maybe four inches above it. The only model train items I recognized were Lionel, and I knew this wasn’t.
“Let’s go ask Mac about this,” I said to Elvis.
His response was to launch himself onto the nearest stack of boxes. The flaps were folded down, not taped shut, and Elvis pawed at one edge.
“Leave that alone,” I said sharply.
He completely ignored me, scratching at the edge of cardboard again.