A Deadly Grind (15 page)

“Jaymie, I’m scared! Can I come over after? Can we talk about it? Do you
really
think I should call the cops?”

“Yeah, sure, of course,” Jaymie said. Heidi should definitely tell the police about Trevor being at the Bourne auction. “Hang up and do that right away.”

Heidi hung up.

Trevor Standish had wanted to buy her Hoosier cabinet, and so had someone else with whom he’d fought. Coincidence? Could Trevor have just been one of those guys who hopped in to the bidding on anything that seemed to be heating up?

But Jaymie didn’t think so, because that very same night he had broken in to her place, and then been murdered by someone else. The guy he’d fought with, maybe? Since he could not have thought that he could steal her Hoosier, he must have planned to search it. And that meant there was something valuable in it. It
had
to be that button. It was a great place to hide things. Mr. Bourne had said his father had hidden things in the Hoosier.

It was definitely time to get to know her purchase a little better.

Fourteen

A
S TWILIGHT GRAYED the sky and the neighborhood quieted around her, Jaymie dragged the looming cabinet away from the porch wall, the feet screeching on the wood porch floor and pulling up some of the gray paint. She had to be careful to not let the unsecured upper cabinet fall over in the move—it rocked a little and made her nervous, but stayed on—then she began at the top and worked down. Her hands were trembling, so she forced herself to calm down and pay attention to what she was doing. There may indeed have been a valuable button inside, but where?

Now that it had occurred to her that the item of value in the cabinet could have been hidden there many years ago, it changed everything. A Hoosier cabinet, Jaymie discovered, truly was a dandy place in which to hide things. Lots of nooks and crannies!

First, she got on a step stool and checked the top and back of the upper cabinet. Lots of dust, but nothing else. The top cupboard, with two square doors that latched in the center, held nothing, but it was interesting nonetheless. She had a book about Hoosier cabinets—she had lusted after one of the antique kitchen centers for a long time—and she knew that the smooth white paint in the interior surfaces of the cabinet was called “milk paint.” It was used because it was nontoxic for shelves or other surfaces where food was stored or prepared. That fact amazed her, considering the lead that makers had used in paint on children’s cribs and toys in the past.

The long left cupboard still had, as she had discovered right away, the flour sifter, a long, large hopper made of tin. She had already searched it, forcing it to make it tilt out. It still stuck as she did it again, despite the obvious signs of wear, an arc on either side of the cabinet wall marking where it had been tilted out by two generations of Bourne housewives. Originally the hopper could be filled with flour, then the baker could just put her cup measure under the sifter and pull a lever to fill it. There really was nothing in that part, no mysterious button, no hidden valuables, nothing glued or taped behind it or in it.

She knew that Trevor Standish having thought there was something of value in the Hoosier did not make it so. He could have died for nothing. She wasn’t sure what would be better, to find what he had been looking for, to discover that there never was anything in the Hoosier or to figure out that whomever had killed him had taken whatever it was he was looking for.

Now to the cranky tambour door. This was the one she had been anticipating, because it would tell the tale of how original the piece was. This lowest cabinet in the upper section originally held all the glass spice jars, but much could have been lost or broken in almost ninety years. When they had lifted the upper cabinet onto the lower, she had thought she’d heard something clinking around inside, but she wouldn’t know until she opened it up.

She pushed and pulled the tambour, but it wouldn’t budge. She tapped it, then got a butter knife from the kitchen and put it under the bottom and gently pried it up a fraction of an inch; from there it slid up with a whack that caused the butter knife to fly out of her hand, clattering down onto the porcelain top. Hoppy came to the back door and barked at her. Darn!

“Sorry, buddy. Scared me, too.” She peered into the interior and, lo and behold, the original spice jars on a carousel mounted to the top of the interior were intact, as were two larger jars that would have held sugar and tea or coffee. “Wow,” she breathed, almost forgetting about the treasure she was hunting for in her rapture over the beauty of the Hoosier. She turned the carousel of spice jars and examined the other jars, but there was not another thing in that section.

Hoppy limped over to the cabinet and sniffed, curious as always, nosing the lower drawer.

“Something in there, m’boy?” she asked the intelligent little dog, and he looked up at her with a quizzical look. Wouldn’t that be a story to tell people, if the valuable button was in the drawer and her little Hoppy found it?

She started searching the lower cabinet, the bottom tin drawer first; she pulled it right out and examined it. Tin had been used to make the bottom deepest drawer because it would have stored bread or other baking; metal kept the wee beasties out. Originally, it would have had a sliding tin lid, but that was gone. Contrary to Hoppy’s “pointing,” there was absolutely nothing in the drawer, so maybe he was just sniffing the ghost of long-dead mousies. The other drawers were almost empty, but one did hold some of the other discs for the grinder. The sliding breadboard was intact, and the largest bottom cabinet held only the memories of baking pans and pots from long ago.

There was nothing else inside: zip, zero, zilch. No button of any kind. She sat back on her haunches and looked it over. So what was it about the Hoosier that made it such an object of interest that the murdered man had come to blows over it at the auction? She stood up, stretched and regarded it, mystified, then opened the flour sifter cabinet again.

The cabinet still had what looked to be the original table of weights and measures stuck to the door, but one corner was loose. How had she missed that? Her heart thudded. Could there be something
behind
it? She gently peeled back the corner and tried to see, but it wouldn’t come far enough away. Darn it. She didn’t want to damage it with no cause. She pressed gently on the cardboard poster; there could not be a button behind it, nor anything else, because it was completely flat.

There was
nothing
in the Hoosier.

“I may as well clean it properly, then, Hoppy, before it goes into the kitchen, right? Who knows, if I take it apart, maybe something will pop out at me!” The little dog yapped happily in reply. “First things first; how to get this upper cabinet off the base without killing myself?” It was heavy and awkward and teetered perilously when she moved it. She pictured the heavy upper section falling on top of her and shuddered. Lifting it down would require some strength, but it was more the awkwardness of the piece. She tried to move it, and it rocked; maybe she shouldn’t try it alone.

“Hey, let me give you a hand.”

She jumped and whirled around at the voice behind her, her heart thudding against the wall of her chest. It was Daniel at the summer porch door.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have spoken up like that!”

“It’s okay, I was just startled. You have great timing,” she said. Thinking suddenly of Trevor, she watched his face. “How are you doing? You okay?”

He shrugged, took his glasses off and looked down at the floor as he wiped the lenses on his shirttail. “I’ll be all right. It’s been a shock, and seeing his body . . . Zell met me there. At least he was some help. Then I had to talk to Trevor’s mom. She’s really upset.”

“Oh, Daniel, that must have been so hard!”

“Yeah. She hasn’t seen Trev for a few months. Said he had some project under way that he wouldn’t tell her about, but it was connected with his dad somehow.”

“That’s too bad, that he never got to finish whatever it was. Unless he did. Maybe he did.” She considered mentioning her musings about Trevor Standish and her mysterious Hoosier cabinet, but hesitated.

“I told her I’d help with his stuff back in Indiana, help his brother clear out his apartment. Maybe I’ll be able to figure out what the mysterious project was from that.”

“That’s nice of you,” she said, putting one hand on Daniel’s shoulder. She squeezed and was surprised that, as slim as he looked, there was still some muscle in the guy. “Did you tell her in what circumstances he died?”

He shook his head. “What would be the point? The poor woman has been through enough in the last few years. She had breast cancer, then Trev’s trouble . . . it’s not fair. I’m glad she has Trev’s little brother to stay with her. He was always the responsible one in the family.”

“What about Zell? Has he seen Trevor lately? Does he know what your friend’s project was?”

He shook his head. “Zell’s been working in Kuwait for the last year or so, until his employer’s company went bust. That’s what made this get-together so great; we hadn’t all seen each other since our fifteen-year college reunion two years ago.”

“But you’ve talked to them both, right? On the phone?”

“Yeah. But Trev’s been distracted lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about him the last coupla days, and some things keep nagging at me.”

“Like what?”

“Well, about six months ago or so, he called me up out of the blue. We talked for a minute, but then he asked me to invest in a venture.” Daniel grimaced. “Last time I invested in anything of my friend’s I lost a bundle. Zell may run Trevor down for his get-rich-quick schemes, but he’s had his share of them himself.”

“It may have been legit, though,” she said.

“I hate to say it, but that was unlikely. Trev’s moral center was always a touch off. He was fired because of an incident at Ball State. Plagiarism.”

“You call plagiarism being a touch off, morally?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. I know that’s real bad, especially for a professor.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure. He’s supposed to be teaching his students that plagiarism is wrong.”

“Anyway, after that I gave him some money. He was dead broke and in trouble. He had borrowed money from the wrong people, and they wanted it back. He called it a loan, but he was in such bad shape financially, I didn’t expect it back. And I didn’t get it.” He shrugged. “No big deal, but I wasn’t going to give him more. It had already affected our friendship.”

“What kind of a venture was it that Trevor wanted you to invest in this time?”

“That’s the thing, he wouldn’t tell me.” Daniel shrugged and looked away. “I thought he was just looking for another handout, and I told him all my money was tied up in stock. I think . . . I’m
sure
he knew I was lying. He didn’t call me for a few months after that. I feel so bad that that’s how we left it.”

“Don’t feel bad. You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “He organized this reunion; that shows he wanted to see you again.
That
should be your last real memory of him.”

He nodded, but looked thoughtful, his brow furrowed. He swept his lank hair off his forehead. “That’s a little weird too, now that we know he was in Queensville for a while. What was he doing here? Zell says when they last talked, a few weeks ago, Trev told him he was going to be rich. Said he had some scheme that was going to pay off big, he just had to finesse the details. People were trying to cut him out of the big money, he said, but they couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?”

“I guess Trev said he was going to ‘get to it first’ and leave them in the dust.”

That didn’t make a whole lot of sense, unless . . . the valuable button was still a possibility. “Do you think it’s associated with why he was on my summer porch?” she said, still not willing to talk about the valuable and elusive button.

“Maybe, but if it was someone who was after Trevor for some other reason—I loved the guy, but he did have a knack for getting himself in trouble—that could be just incidental. Somebody could have followed him here, if they wanted to knock him off.”

“I guess,” she said. Trevor was involved with some folks he thought were shady, people he didn’t trust, so why go looking for some motive apart from that? “I hope they catch whoever did it soon.”

“So do I, for your sake, and for Trevor’s family. But it’s up to the police now.”

“What if they never figure it out?”

“They will, Jaymie. They know what they’re doing. That detective has been talking to everyone in town, and sooner or later they’ll figure it out.”

Meanwhile, there was a murderer wandering around out there, and she was angry that he—or she—was still on the loose.

“Anyway, can I help you?” he said.

“Sure. I’d appreciate it.” She told him what she wanted to do: take the upper cabinet off the bottom so she could take the porcelain work top into the kitchen to clean it properly.

“Can you do that?” he asked, bending over and examining the side brackets. “Isn’t it all attached?”

“No, the upper cabinet sits in these metal brackets; they hold it in place,” she said, pointing out the rusted brackets. “The tabletop slides out from under it a foot or more so the cook can have more workspace. It’s completely removable. Normally the brackets would be screwed to the upper cabinet, but the top part was taken off to move and hasn’t been screwed back into place. I don’t have to take the top cupboard off to remove the work top—I could lift and pull it out—but the whole thing is a little unstable because the screws aren’t in place, so I want to lift that off first.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

They grunted a little and got the upper cupboard down onto the floor and shoved it to the free space on the other side of the summer porch. Then he helped her lift the porcelain work top; it was more awkward than anything. When she turned it over, something fluttered and flapped.

“What’s that?” Daniel asked, pushing his glasses up and peering more closely in the yellow light that spilled out to the porch from the kitchen.

There was a paper package taped to the underside with decades-old cellophane tape, yellowed with age and crumbling. She pulled it off and turned it over in her trembling hands. The outside of the package just looked like lined foolscap of the kind used many years before in schools. She unwrapped it in the dim light of the porch and saw that the paper was only a blank wrapper for something much older.

Much,
much
older.

She swallowed hard. This
had
to be the valuable treasure that was hidden in the Hoosier. It was high-quality rag paper, probably the only reason the letter had survived. Remnants of red sealing wax were stuck to the edge, and she opened it carefully so it wouldn’t flake off. It was from, if the date at the top could be believed, 1776. “Wow,” she said, holding it up so Daniel could read it, too. “Do you think it’s real?”

“I don’t know. I’m no document expert. Now is when we need Trevor; he’d be able to tell us in an instant.”

Jaymie felt a shiver pass through her, and she met her companion’s serious gaze. “Daniel, you do realize that this is what Trevor was after, don’t you?
This
is why he broke into my house.
This
is why someone killed him.”