A Body in the Bargain: A Kate & Kylie Mystery Read online

  “Bookcases would be great,” I said.

  “And I think they’ll have all kinds of other good stuff,” she said. “Mrs. Cadbury’s selling that fine old house and moving to Savannah to be near her daughter. I heard Maxie Lewis saying at church that they’d already let her take her pick. You know she was a Cadbury and grew up in that house. She’s living at Camelot Court now, and she said she couldn’t fit more than a few little things into her place, and they’ve got a lot of nice things left.”

  “Wait,” I said with a grin. “There’s actually a place in River Valley called Camelot Court?”

  “That’s the senior village,” Kylie said. “There was a big flap when they built it right off Morgan Road with all those one family homes, but it’s turned out to be better looking than some of the houses around it. You know it takes a while for River Valley to accept anything new, but it filled up the first year, and they’ve got a waiting list now.”

  She ate the last bite of her chicken sandwich and said. “Anyway, you’ll see it tomorrow, because we’re going to the Dabneys’ sale after we go to the Cadbury’s sale, and that’s on Morgan Road.”

  We were almost back in my car when Kylie said, “Hey look, there’s our new police chief! Hey, Daniel, come over here and meet Kate Marley.”

  He wasn’t in uniform. He was in khakis and a sports coat. He had dark curly hair and was good looking in an entirely different way from Buddy Carson——a little older, too.

  “He’s single,” Kylie whispered as he walked over to be introduced.

  His name was Daniel O’Reilly. His eyes were blue. It struck me that maybe if one of those men on the covers of Kylie’s romances got a haircut and wore a coat and tie he’d look like Daniel O’Reilly.

  “You must be the one who just moved into the house on Charter Lane,” he said with a smile. “Is everything all right over there?”

  I think I managed, “Fine. Thank you.” and “Nice to meet you.”

  For a little while late Friday afternoon I wished I’d stayed with the Carsons.

  I had unpacked all my kitchen things and realized that while there was plenty of cabinet space, I really missed the old kitchen table and the Hoosier cabinet where Grandma kept her staples and her extra dishes.

  I remember Grandma telling me once that when her mother bought it, it was the latest thing in modern kitchens. It even had a slide-out metal counter.

  I had my computer and my little television set, but the computer/cable guy wasn’t coming until Monday.

  I set up my easel in the dining room, but there was nowhere to put my paper, paint, and brushes. My Kindle needed Wi-Fi. I felt strangely disconnected until I dug into my box of books and found a copy of “Emma.”

  I can always read Jane Austen’s books again, the way some people can listen to the same music over and over.

  I put sheets and a spread on my new mattress, and began to read it again. I fell asleep at about the time Emma met Harriet Smith, that girl whose life she was going to mess with so badly.

  Chapter 3

  I woke up just as the sun was rising, made myself some coffee in my 4-cup coffee maker and found my favorite mug.

  When the coffee was ready, I got a little sketchbook and a pencil headed to the back steps, coffee mug in hand.

  The back steps had always been my favorite place at Grandma’s house. Nobody can see you there. There are huge hydrangea bushes on both sides of the steps, and on that spring morning, they were already covered with big green leaves, though the blooms were just forming.

  I opened the sketchbook, but I wound up writing in it instead of drawing.

  “First morning at home in River Valley. Up to see the sun rise.”

  That seemed like a better beginning than, “Came home and was robbed.”

  I thought about the new police chief, and wondered if he agreed with Buddy that I was a “cute blonde” and if he liked cute blondes, and why he wasn’t married. Or if he had been married.

  I wasn’t about to ask Kylie anything more about him because I know her. She’s the “Emma” of River Valley. I’d be invited to supper like it was no big deal, and I’d get there, and Buddy would be grilling steaks with Daniel O’Reilly, who wouldn’t have known I was going to be there.

  Of course, there’s no way I was going to write any of that down, so I made a “to-do” list for the next week.

  Find out who mows lawns.

  Get new driver’s license with right address.

  Find out about house insurance.

  Don’t forget to go see Aunt Verily.

  Aunt Verily had ruled over the River Valley Carnegie Library for nearly half a century and had given me employment every summer that I was in high school and one summer when I was in college. (I practically ran the Summer Reading Club single-handedly.)

  She had introduced me to dozens of writers I might never have read otherwise and encouraged both my drawing and my awkward first attempts at creative writing.

  I vowed to be at the library with coffee for her on Monday morning, and then I began to make a list of things I needed to look for at the yard sales. I stopped when it seemed overwhelming.

  Kylie pulled up in Buddy’s oldest truck at 8:15 a.m. It was overcast by then, and I noticed there were two umbrellas and a plastic drop cloth in back.

  “It’s going to rain sooner or later today,” she said, handing me the page she had torn from our weekly paper, The River Valley Register. She had circled the yard sales listings.

  “Rain’s a good thing if you’re prepared,” she went on. “It will keep the crowds away and maybe give us better choices—especially if people have their stuff outdoors. They always want to get rid of it fast if it looks like rain, and even faster if it starts raining. We’re going to Cadburys’ first.”

  We were parking on Taylor Street when I saw someone I recognized——a tiny woman, thin as a rail, but with perfect posture. She was heading down the sidewalk, wearing a shiny maroon pants suit, carrying a large shoulder bag over one shoulder, and gripping the handle of a closed umbrella with the other.

  “It’s Miss Merkle,” I said. “The woman who made me hate Hamlet!”

  “The woman who made me hate the whole English language,” Kylie said with a laugh. “The woman who almost kept Buddy from graduating. Would you believe she still walks her two miles a day, rain or shine?”

  “Do you remember that poem she made us all memorize?” I asked, and Kylie nodded with a grim look.

  “So live,” we both recited, “that when thy summons comes to join that innumerable caravan where each shall take his chamber in the silent hall of death…”

  We couldn’t get any further without laughing.

  “Hey,” I said. “It looks like she’s stopping for the Cadbury’s sale.”

  “Probably looking for some spider webs and bats to decorate her house,” Kylie said.

  The Cadbury’s home was one of the older ones in River Valley, a fine old Victorian. The sale was disappointing, though. It turned out that a used furniture dealer had come by on Friday and agreed to purchase most of the furniture and take it away. Still, there was one decent bookcase for sale, and a wooden toy chest that had a teddy bear decal on the front and a loose hinge. Kylie, who actually owns her own tool chest, persuaded me that the hinge was a two-minute repair and that the chest would look great painted white.

  “You could use it almost anywhere,” she said.

  “I think it’s just the right height for my television set,” I said.

  I paid $12 for those two pieces, and we paid for them and carried them to the truck before going back see if there might be some lamps inside.

  Meredith Merkle was at a table covered with dusty old books, even more ancient magazines and a few pamphlets. There was a mildewed smell, and she was covering her nose and mouth with a lace trimmed handkerchief as she went through t
hem.

  She wasn’t looking up, and Kylie went right ahead. I thought I should be courteous.

  I said, “Hi, Miss Merkle. Do you remember me?”

  She blinked through her glasses and lowered the hanky long enough to say, “I haven’t become senile, Katie Marley. Of course, I remember you. You’re the one who fancied herself a writer and an artist.”

  She seemed to have finally found a thin volume that interested her and began to look through it. I realized I had been dismissed.

  Kylie and I looked at two lamps shaped like shepherdesses. They had ruffled shades. I shook my head.

  “Well, there’s nothing else worth looking at,” she said. “Let’s cover the things we’ve got and have the umbrellas handy. It’s going to rain any minute.”

  The gray clouds were looming as we headed for the Dabneys’, which was four blocks away on Morgan Street.

  “There’s Camelot Court,” Kylie said, pointing to a cluster of brick apartments that wound back from the tree-lined street at the top of a hill.

  “It looks nice,” I said.

  “I thought it was good that they saved some of the trees on that land,” Kylie said, and then she was signaling to turn right.

  “And here’s the Dabneys’ place,” she said.

  As soon as we got out of the truck, and opened our umbrellas we were slowed down by a conversation with Maxie Lewis, a tall, elderly lady with blue hair. She wanted to tell me how happy my Aunt Verily was about my coming home. It was nice to meet somebody welcoming after being snubbed by Meredith Merkel.

  I was also thankful that I had seen a copy of The River Valley Register when I was home earlier for my grandmother’s funeral, and could say the one thing I knew she would like to hear.

  “I see you’re still writing your social column for The Register,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “They won’t hear of my stopping, you know, and everybody counts on me to get their little social items into my Ramblings.”

  There was a rumble of thunder.

  “Nice to see you,” she said, “I’d better hurry back to my apartment before the rain starts.”

  It may have been partly the overcast skies, but the Dabney sale seemed dreary. I did find a little table that looked about the right size for a bedside lamp or maybe to go beside my easel. It was painted red and gold, which are the River Valley High School colors. Kylie was right behind me saying, “Remember to look at the bones. It’s a well-made table. Paint it with that paint I’m going to bring over for the chest and the bookcase, and it can go anywhere. Now come with me. I’ve found a sofa for you. It’s in the garage.”

  Fat drops of rain had begun to fall, and there was a crack of lightning.

  We hurried to the Dabneys’ garage. I flinched when I saw the sofa.

  It was boxy in shape, a study in rectangles. It was olive green.

  “No,” I said. “I hate it.”

  “Forget the color,” Kylie said. “Look at the bones. You can get really cute slipcovers online now, and you’ll have something for your folks to sleep on when they come to visit. Let me find Doris Dabney and see what she wants for it.”

  “Kylie,” I said. “My folks are buying one of those motorhomes, and they’ll sleep in that. I think maybe I’d rather just buy a new sofa. I saw some nice ones at Ferguson’s.”

  “Did you see the price tags on those?” she asked, hands on hips.

  There was another crack of lightning, and everyone was running, including the Dabneys. Doris Dabney, who was a stout middle-aged blonde, had an umbrella and was taking money in her hand while her husband and son picked up tables and boxes of yard sale items and rushed them to the garage. I handed her a five dollar bill for the little red and gold table as she passed us.

  Kylie and I were a little wet by the time we had pushed the table under the drop cloth in the back and gotten ourselves into the cab of the truck. That’s when the downpour really started.

  “Well,” she said, turning on the windshield wipers, “I guess the yard sales are over for today. Let’s go see what we can find at Susie’s Shabby Chic.”

  As we got back toward the center of town, I spotted Meredith Merkle again. She was hurrying along with her open umbrella held high in one hand, clutching a paper bag close to her body with the other.

  Kylie stopped and rolled down the window,

  “You want a ride, Miss Merkle?” she called out.

  Miss Merkle shook her head fiercely as if we were criminals about to abduct her. She hurried on.

  “I knew she wouldn’t,” Kylie said with satisfaction. “But I still get credit for the good deed. Right? Now, let’s get some more shopping done.”

  Two hours later, the sun was shining, and we were both smiling and exhausted.

  At Susie’s Shabby Chic, I had found two treasures: a yellow ginger jar lamp that had good wiring and just needed a new shade, and a grand old wooden kitchen table that was just like the one my grandmother had. It only cost $20 because it had paint splatters all over it from somebody’s craft projects. There were two sturdy wooden chairs that would be fine with it.

  “I promise you it will be beautiful again,” Kylie had said. “I’ll bring over my electric sander and some walnut stain. For now, you can throw this table cloth over it.

  The tablecloth she had found was red and white checked. Not oilcloth like my grandmother had, but just the right look. I had asked Susie to call me if she ever got a Hoosier cabinet and she said, “Honey, I will, but those things have gone sky high. I hope you know that.”

  Then we had gone to the Good Will store and found a perfectly good rocking chair and a scratched-up chest of drawers missing half its drawer pulls.

  “See how smoothly the drawers pull out,” Kylie had said, using her fingernails to get the top drawer open. “This is a good one. All you need is a little stain for those scratches, and you can buy new drawer pulls. You can get whatever kind you like online, I promise. Let’s see if they’ll sell it for five dollars.”

  There was no more room in the back of the truck, and I was beginning to see things Kylie’s way.

  After we had unloaded our purchases at my place, and I put the tablecloth on the table, the kitchen seemed almost like the cozy place it had been through my childhood.

  “You know,” Kylie said, sitting down at the table. “You really ought to go after those folks and get that cabinet back. They knew that wasn’t something their granddaddy bought.”

  “I know, but I just don’t want to have a fight with them,” I told Kylie. “It was bad enough dealing with them when their granddaddy died and left everything he owned to my grandmother. They don’t give up easy.”

  Kylie shrugged and gave up arguing.

  “We did a pretty good day’s work,” she said. “And it’s all going to look great once it’s fixed up. I’ll come over Tuesday with my sander and stuff. I’ve just got to get those orders ready.”

  (The orders, I knew, were for Kylie’s current online best-seller—-—cotton drawstring pajama pants in calico fabrics that she washes ten times in hot water. I’ve got a pair. They’re great.)

  “And I want to call Doris Dabney about that sofa,” she said. “I heard somebody say that they‘ve already sold the house, and I know she needs to get that garage cleared out.”

  “I don’t want that ugly sofa,” I said.

  “You just can’t get past the color,” she said. “Would you just look at the slipcovers online? I’ll send you the link.”

  I woke up Sunday aching all over from hauling all the furniture around, but it was worth it just to have a shadeless yellow lamp on a red and gold table by my bed, and a table in my kitchen.

  Chapter 4

  People around River Valley will swear that my Aunt Verily never changes, but I’ve been away for the better part of ten years—first to college and then working in the city �
��and I can tell you that she really has gotten older.

  She still wears her snowy white hair in braids crisscrossed on top of her head, and she still wears pants suits with flowered blouses and long beads. She still puts on a little too much rouge.

  But she’s thinner now, and her back is a little more curved.

  First thing Monday morning, I got two cups of coffee with extra sugar and cream at River Valley’s one fast food drive-through and went by the library to see her. It’s one of the old Carnegie buildings, built to last forever.

  When I came in she was distracted. She glanced up and smiled, but then looked back down, frowning, focused on a problem. She was in a battle with the computer the regional library system had insisted on installing.

  “You’re just in time,” she said. “Come fix this thing for me!”

  I went around behind the old wooden counter, gave her a quick hug and glanced at the keyboard. White lettering was crawling upward on a black background.

  “Take your hands off that keyboard,” I said, laughing. “Don’t do another thing.”

  I put the two coffee cups down on the counter. She got up and let me take her place.

  I didn’t even try to figure out what she had done. I just shut the whole thing down.

  “We’ll turn it back on in a minute,” I said. “Now, good morning, Aunt Verily, how are you? So good to see you again. I brought you some coffee.”

  “Well, I hope you brought enough cream and sugar,” she said, still exasperated with the computer.

  She took her time putting three bags of sugar and two tiny containers of fake cream into her coffee. Then she took a sip, and sighed and smiled a little. I turned the computer back on.

  “They’re going to put three more of those things here for the public to use,” she said, “Thank heavens, I do have Dylan Swanson coming in after school each day, and he’s a computer geep.”