My fingers rustled the tops of the manila folders. It was unfair, the pressure I was feeling to satisfy Jeb’s already unsatisfied clients. The law office had closed the day after his heart attack. And besides, the place was now my part-time investigative headquarters where I occasionally took orders to retrieve stolen bicycles or spy on unfaithful spouses. If things really got hopping, I might be asked to find somebody’s lost dog, who could be identified by no collar and a mild case of the mange.
I found Myrick, Mason, McClary. The files were nowhere near in alphabetical order. I’d almost exhausted the entire M section when I saw the Murdock name filed next to Meeples. MURDOCK, JEB E. I jerked the manila folder out of its slot, opened it, and stood there. I vaguely remember my mouth dropping open and the sound of the rotating fan rustling a legal pad on the desk behind me.
Inside the folder was the will I’d thought never existed, a document Jeb drew up for himself four years ago, six years after we married.
It was a standard draft with a peculiar ending. Jeb had bequeathed all his worldly goods to me, “especially the Eastlake walnut secretary, which I hope she will cherish since it was left to me by my Grand-daddy O’Neil Murdock and holds a sacred and undeniable truth in the bottom drawer.”
I read it again. And again. Sacred and undeniable? It didn’t sound like Jeb. And why couldn’t he have just stated his truth right there in the will? Probably in too much of a hurry to meet one of his redheaded conquests, perhaps the one who misfiled his will.
Furthermore, the Eastlake secretary was a nine foot tall monstrosity with the one redeeming quality of a small amount of burled wood along the upper cabinet edges. Besides that, I’d already cleaned it out and sold the thing to an antique dealer named Nell last summer because I hadn’t entirely cherished it as Jeb had hoped. I in fact loathed Jeb’s Eastlake secretary. One of the reasons being that the now noteworthy bottom drawer, the only drawer, stuck. Actually, the drawer had a small keyhole, and Jeb had always claimed he’d locked it and accidentally lost the key (with Jeb everything was an accident). I’d halfheartedly tried to pop the drawer open with a bobby pin before I sold it, figuring there was nothing of value there.
The stepback, he had called it. Grampy’s Eastlake stepback.
I don’t remember how long I sat in front of the fan with Jeb’s will in my lap, another one of his bombshell surprises. I was smack in the middle of my summer vacation from teaching high school algebra to the brazen juveniles of Deerfoot, Tennessee, and I’d fully intended to spend the weeks enjoying the unfettered company of Clint Knuckles, the new history teacher at Deerfoot High. His mustache reminded me of a thin Clark Gable. And he’d promised me my first official date as a widow that very evening — buttered popcorn and a decent movie at the Hippodrome Theater.
One thing was certain, I fully did not intend to spend my summer traipsing around Poke County looking for some walnut malformation with a stuck drawer. Jeb’s stepback could be in North Dakota for all I knew. Also, I wasn’t certain what he might’ve deemed sacred and undeniable.
Until my eyes wandered toward Jeb’s prized print of Thomas Jefferson on the wall near the doorway.
Sacred and undeniable truths? It was in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s original text.
Goosebumps materialized on my forearms, and I wondered what could ever be more sacred and undeniable than the truth. I suddenly knew how Jeb had chosen his words so carefully sitting there at his desk four years ago.
“Shoot-fire,” I said, and grabbed my Deerfoot directory.
Nell’s place wasn’t listed in the phone book, and I’d driven six miles before stopping a codger at a gas station for directions. He pointed down a worn asphalt road and told me Nell’s was at the edge of Poke County, “the last stop on the shady road to nowhere.”
Three more miles and I saw it nestled between two willow trees, a gray painted farmhouse with one sloping gable in front rendering NELL’S ELEGANT JUNK in bold turquoise letters. Except for a maroon El Camino in the parking lot, the place seemed deserted.
Inside, there was an oak counter holding up an old fashioned cash register and an untidy stack of children’s drawings, dragons with dimples, scales, eyelashes. Crackled endtables were stacked on dusty buffets, sepia-colored pictures hung crookedly on the walls, a couple of loveseats were spread with vintage linens. The only voices came from the back. Maybe Nell, I thought.
I wandered back there ready to explain myself, Jeb’s will, how I needed to make sure there’d been nothing in the drawer when I tossed it out with the wave of an indifferent hand...
That’s when I became aware of my breathing, the muscles in my throat. Jeb’s stepback was crashed facedown on a nine foot stretch of stairs, a filigreed chandelier dangling high above like a spotlight... then I saw the hand, a human palm, slightly open, purple, brushing one of the white painted spindles.
I hadn’t spoken to the couple, a middle-aged woman holding onto the banister’s curlicue and making a feeble effort at lifting the top of the stepback and a scrawny elderly man in an untucked shortsleeved shirt tugging from the top of the stairs.
I swallowed, managed an “oh no,” and grabbed a corner, trying to help lift the thing. “Lift it straight,” I said through gritted teeth. “We don’t want to damage the body.”
“Did you hear that, Hancil? Lift it straight up.” She duplicated my words like a screeching parrot.
I felt the weight of the stepback as I tried to raise it, but the angle was awkward. The outside corners were wedged against some shattered spindles, and there was no way to lift it more than a fraction of an inch.
The woman blotted her catlike eyes with a filmy handkerchief then waved it in the victim’s direction. “It’s bound to be Nell. We live down the road, the trailer. Came in here not ten minutes ago and found her plumb smashed up under that thing. Lord.” She dabbed.
“We got an episode here,” said Hancil. His knees creaked as he stood up, his hands bony wisps on his hips. “Cain’t lift the thing, Rosalie, must weigh nine hundred pounds.”
I felt my face warm and pale at the same time. “Has anybody called the police? An ambulance?” I asked.
The woman’s hair was short bleached blonde and curly. She was dressed from head to toe in Pepto-Bismol pink, a skirt, blouse, and bubblegum colored pumps that looked brand new. She looked up at Hancil with an inquiring mind. He rubbed his day-old beard. “This is not a quiz show, folks,” I said.
“There was no time,” said Hancil. “We thought she might still be alive.” He pinched a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket.
They watched as I got a foothold several steps up, then took a pulse. There was none. A yellowed tag on the back of the stepback read Eastlake, walnut, Plantation: Stepback Secretary, early 1800’s.
Rosalie wagged a finger all over the place. “I told her not to be movin’ this junk around by herself, there was bound to be an accident sooner or later. Bound to be. She wasn’t careful enough, not near careful enough. I told her you got to watch it around here—”
“We got an episode,” said Hancil. He was fighting a cigarette.
I remembered a telephone near the cash register and tripped over an old wicker baby buggy trying to get back. They scurried after me, Rosalie casually looking under chairs, buffets, inside armoires.
The wall phone was black, archaic. I shot around the counter and picked up the receiver.