Gone But Knot Forgotten Page 5

  Before he left, Malo wanted to examine the house in the daylight, so I took them all on a quick tour to get the layout. In each room, the two men checked the windows and doors. Everything was locked tight.

  The five of us ended up in Harriet’s large closet. I pointed to the hole in the carpet and the stain on the floor. “This is where she died.”

  Birdie turned green and walked out to the hallway.

  Lucy followed her. “If it’s all the same to you, Martha, let’s start downstairs first. I don’t think Birdie’s ready for this room.”

  Good thing I vacuumed up the flies. “Of course. Let’s go back downstairs.”

  Two sets of biker boots clumped heavily down the stairs. One of them slowed down to help Birdie.

  When we got to the foyer, Malo started to leave, then stopped. “What about the garage?”

  I’d completely forgotten about the garage. “I’ve never actually been inside.”

  We walked to the kitchen and found a door I’d overlooked the day before. Malo flipped the dead bolt and turned the knob. Overhead lights flickered on in the ceiling of a spacious and nearly empty three-car garage. White cupboards lined one wall and held household cleaning supplies, a floor scrubber, a carpet cleaner, a shovel, a ladder, and a child’s fishing pole. A late-model black Lexus sat in the middle of the nearly empty space. No matter how much money she enjoyed, Harriet never would have owned a German car.

  My own garage bulged with junk. Piles of dusty sacks and boxes of stuff accumulated over the last twenty years reached the rafters, along with old furniture, household detritus, and half-empty paint cans. Before she moved to Boston, my daughter, Quincy, claimed half the garage as her free storage facility.

  “The garage door locks electronically,” said Carl. “Nobody can get in without a code.”

  Birdie twisted the end of her white braid. “Well, now we can be certain of the POE.”

  Lucy’s head jerked up. “Huh? What’s POE?”

  Every eye focused on Birdie.

  “Point of Entry, dear. The intruder must have used a key on the front door.”

  Carl chuckled and Lucy rolled her eyes.

  We decided to work our way from one end of the downstairs to the other starting in the library. Carl set up his laptop on the table, and Lucy plugged in her equipment. I reached into my purse and retrieved the insurance rider listing every piece we needed to locate and label.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know how a private person can collect books like the ones we’re about to look for, but these are truly treasures.” I showed them the list.

  Birdie gasped. “Are they real?”

  I nodded. “I know, right? The insurance company says they’re real.”

  Lucy said, “We’re not going to be putting sticky labels on those.”

  We began to search the library shelves for the four-volume original edition of Memoir, Correspondence & Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, published in 1829; ten volumes of The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, published 1850-1856; and The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, French edition published in 1791.

  Since Lucy reached nearly six feet tall, she took the job of reading the top shelves. “Was Harriet interested in Early American history?”

  To accommodate her arthritic knees, Birdie sat on a chair and inspected the lower shelves. “Well, I guess so. Consider the books we’re hunting for. All authored by the Founding Fathers.”

  I scanned titles on the middle shelves. “Harriet majored in history at Brown. She collected Early Americana in general—wooden toys, watches, Native American baskets.”

  An hour later we had finished our search of the bookshelves and sat at one end of the library table while Carl worked quietly at the other.

  My heart sank. “A fortune in first editions is missing.”

  Carl glanced up from his computer. “What were those titles?” I showed him the list and he started typing. “Give me a minute.” He tapped at his computer and the three of us stared at him. He finally stopped. “Nothing with those titles has been submitted for authentication or sold in the last year through auction houses or any other legitimate venue.”

  “So the perp must be hanging on to the goods unless he took them to a fence.” That was Birdie, bless her. “Shouldn’t we call this in?”

  Carl smiled and gazed down at his keyboard. “I’m going back to work.”

  The loss of such important books felt devastating. “This is just the first place we’ve explored. There are many other rooms to go through. Harriet might’ve kept them somewhere else in the house, somewhere not out in the open.”

  Lucy swept her hand toward the shelves. “So, what are you going to do with the rest of these? Your friend read everything from historical novels to books on spiritism. Looks like she was into the occult.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t sound like the practical and pragmatic Harriet I knew, but profound grief can do weird things to people.”

  A metal clink and a thwap came from the foyer. Carl stood and motioned for us to be quiet. He took a gun out of his leather laptop carrier and walked through the living room, both hands on the weapon. He reached the foyer, relaxed, and tucked the gun into the front of his waistband.

  Birdie whispered, “I sure hope he has the safety on.”

  “It’s just the mail. Came in through the slot on the front door.” He returned to the library and handed me a couple of invitations to open Visa accounts and a flyer for Pepe’s Salvadorian restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard.

  Lucy stood and moved along the wall, tapping with her knuckles. “Maybe there’s a secret compartment in the library where she stashed the books.”

  Is Lucy serious? “I don’t think so. Three of these are outside walls and the fourth shares a two-sided fireplace with the living room. Just where would such a compartment be?”

  Lucy wouldn’t give up. “It’s true, the two outside walls with windows aren’t thick enough. But the wall at the end, the one covered in bookshelves, could be hiding something.” She pushed on the shelves and knuckled the dark paneling from one end to the other. After five minutes of knocking high and low, she gave up and shook her hand. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

  Birdie sat at the desk and checked the drawers, gathering all the papers for me to sort through at home. Lucy and I went into the living room to examine and catalog the five framed paintings.

  “Are these valuable?” Lucy asked.

  “I think I read none of them are worth more than ten thousand.”

  The paintings hung askew. I lifted the first painting; nothing hidden on the wall behind it. I reached to put the painting back and my finger caught on a sharp edge.

  “Holy crap, Lucy. Take a look at this. The paper seal on the back is slit open on the bottom edge.”

  Lucy helped me take down the rest of the art. “Someone tampered with all of them. What do you suppose was in there?”

  I looked at my friend. At this point she knew almost as much as I did. “Obama’s birth certificate?”

  CHAPTER 7

  On the way to the maid’s room, Birdie picked up one of the candelabras from the table. “This is very old silver and very heavy. You can see it’s been around for a long time by the nicks and dents along the bottom.”

  I examined the second candelabra. “This one has a big dent in the bottom. Someone must’ve dropped it.”

  We moved to the maid’s room. Lucy set up the bar-code equipment. Then she pulled down the carton from the top of the nearest pile and set it on the floor. The top of the box had already been slit open. I pulled back the flaps to find well-worn and stained white linen tablecloths and napkins with the letter “G” monogrammed in white thread. I looked at my friends. “These would have been precious to Harriet. They were hand-embroidered by her mother, Lilly Gordon.”

  “They’re old and stained,” said Lucy. “What are you going to do with them?”

  I sighed and wrote Donate with a S
harpie on the outside of the box.

  Lucy lifted down the second box. “This is heavy. Feels like books.”

  The seal was broken on this box as well. Several oversized volumes of the Talmud rested inside. Harriet’s father, Herschel Gordon, and my uncle Isaac belonged to a group that studied a different page of the Talmud each week. I wrote on the outside of the box, Donate, American Jewish University Library.

  We discovered two sets of fancy Bavarian china. I once helped Harriet and her mother bring them out of storage for use during Passover week, one pattern for meat and one for dairy. Harriet had whispered, “Just more stuff to keep clean.”

  I marked each of the boxes and Lucy stuck bar codes on them.

  Lucy knocked on every wall, looking for a hidden cache. She even tugged at the corners of the wall-to-wall carpeting, but nothing came loose.

  Birdie laughed. “Heavens, dear. If I were going to hide something, I certainly wouldn’t choose the maid’s room.”

  We moved into the kitchen and opened every drawer and cupboard. Lucy threw her hands up. “Do you really want to bar-code everything in here? There must be a jillion items.”

  “You’re right. I’ll hire an estate manager to sort them into lots for appraisal and sale.”

  I noted a couple of boxes of package brownies sitting on the shelf of the walk-in pantry and remembered, with a pang, the times Harriet and I made brownies during sleepovers.

  Lucy balanced on a wooden Windsor chair and reached into the back of every upper cabinet.

  I put my hands on my hips. “What in the world are you looking for up there?”

  “Dang if I know.”

  We drifted into the family room and Birdie pointed to the pile of video cassettes. “My, these are old.”

  “Jonah’s movies,” I said.

  Birdie read the titles and shook her head sadly. “Heartbreaking.”

  The media wall held a large flat-screen television and video components. Native American baskets and antique wooden toys sat on open shelves around the room, valuable items from the insurance rider.

  Carl’s heavy boots thudded on the kitchen floor. “Anyone hungry? It’s after one.”

  I found the flyer for the Salvadorian restaurant and ordered bean and cheese pupusas, fried yucca roots, chicken tamales in banana leaves, and fried platanos with sugar for dessert. A half hour later Pepe’s delivered two huge grocery bags full of hot food smelling like cumin, garlic, onions, and a hint of cinnamon.

  After stuffing our faces, we returned to the family room and carefully checked each basket against the list. I spotted a polychrome black on white basket shaped like a large pot with an opening just big enough for a hand. I carefully lifted it. “This was made over one hundred years ago by Dat So La Lee, a famous Washoe Indian weaver. It’s valued at one million dollars.”

  Birdie softly touched the dried grass coils. “Amazing. This looks so well preserved.”

  Lucy picked up the printout. “A penciled note next to the photo says Dat So La Lee’s main supporter and promoter was Abe Cohn, a distant cousin of Nathan Oliver’s. I wonder how long this has been in the family.”

  I turned the basket in my hands and something slid around inside. “What’s this?” My heart sped up as I pulled out a small key. I turned it over, looking for some kind of identification. “What do you think this is for?”

  “It’s too small for a door.” Birdie furrowed her brow. “Maybe this opens a cupboard or a safe.”

  “Or a jewelry box,” said Lucy.

  I added the key to Harriet’s key ring.

  We carefully examined and cataloged the rest of the baskets. A photo of an auction receipt stated Harriet paid $350,000 for a Mono-Paiute polychrome basket, shaped like a large salad bowl and woven by Nellie Jameson Washington in the early twentieth century.

  “Who knew baskets could be so valuable?” Birdie twisted her braid. “Don’t you think it’s odd your friend Harriet collected different kinds of Americana, yet she didn’t collect any quilts?”

  “Birdie has a point,” said Lucy. “I’d at least expect to see a Baltimore Album. I heard one sold at auction about ten years ago for three hundred thousand.” Baltimore Albums were a style of quilt popular among ladies of leisure in the nineteenth century with lots of intricate appliqués featuring flowers, baskets, and birds. Each block in the quilt featured a different usually symmetrical design.

  “Yes, I do find that strange.”

  After we accounted for every basket on the list, we moved to the antique wooden toys. The more valuable pieces in Harriet’s collection were a horse and wagon pull toy, a sailboat with some of the original paint and spinning tops, including an antique Hanukkah dreidel from Portugal with Hebrew letters painted on each of the four sides.

  Birdie looked at her watch. “It’s four, dear. We should get on the freeway and head home.”

  I nodded. “It’s been a long day.”

  Lucy wagged her fingers in an air quote. “No problemo. I had fun, considering.” She looked in the direction of Harriet’s bedroom and her voice dropped a notch. “We still have the upstairs to do.”

  We said good-bye to Carl and headed for Encino. They dropped me off at my house around sundown. Shabbat had officially started. I rushed inside to phone my daughter, Quincy, who lived in Boston, and left a greeting on her voice mail. Next I called my uncle Isaac, my mother’s brother. He took care of me, my mother, and bubbie the whole time I grew up. Uncle Isaac was the only father I ever knew.

  “Shabbat shalom, Uncle.”

  “Good Shabbos, faigela. What’s new?”

  I briefly told him about Harriet, but left out the grisly parts.

  “Oy! What a ganze shandeh. Such a nice girl. I knew her father, may he rest in peace.”

  “Will you come to her funeral? She needs a minyan.”

  “Of course. I’ll bring Morty and the boys.” Uncle Isaac played poker every week with his seventy-and eighty-year-old friends. At their age they were experts at funeral prayers. Poker and Talmud. A person should live a balanced life.

  “So, nu? What’s going on with you? You still seeing the detective? What about that big Jewish fellow, Yossi Levy?” Uncle Isaac always referred to Crusher as “that big Jewish fellow.” Crusher impressed my uncle when he confessed to using his do-rag as a religious head covering. At Shabbat dinner four months ago, we were impressed by Crusher’s knowledge of Torah, his “hidden depths” as he called it.

  “I haven’t heard from Arlo in months, Uncle. He dumped me, remember?”

  “But I thought he changed his mind.”

  Until he found out I slept with Crusher. “We had some issues.”

  “What about Levy?”

  Ah yes, what about Levy? I didn’t tell my uncle Crusher wanted to marry me. Knowing my uncle, I’d never hear the end of it. Uncle Isaac meant well, but I didn’t want him to pressure me. Better to be alone than with the wrong person.

  “I see Yossi from time to time.”

  “Okay, okay, I know when to stop asking. A glick auf dir.” Good luck to you.

  I laughed. “I love you, too, Uncle.”

  The house seemed unusually quiet as I covered my head with a sequined blue scarf. Lighting two candles in my bubbie’s silver candleholders, I recited the Sabbath blessing and thought wistfully about spending Shabbat with someone I loved. Did Harriet feel the same way in her isolation? Did she ever put pure white candles in those fifty-thousand-dollar candelabras and recite the blessing in her big, empty house? I felt lonely enough for both of us.

  The doorbell pulled me out of my reverie. I looked through the peephole. Crusher smiled at me from the other side of the door. He wore a brown tweed sport jacket, a blue shirt open at the neck, and a traditional black skullcap instead of a do-rag.

  Oh no. I didn’t know if I was ready for this. The only other time he’d come over in nice clothes, they ended up on my bedroom floor.

  I opened the door and he handed me a bouquet of pink roses and stepped inside. In
his other hand he held a bag from Brent’s. “I figured you’d be tired from working all day, so I brought Shabbat dinner.” He noticed the Sabbath candles flickering on the dining room table and when he looked back at me, his eyes glistened. “You feel like home.”

  I sensed my defenses evaporating. “I’m all dusty and yucky.”

  He gently tilted my chin and kissed me softly on the lips. Electricity sizzled down my spine.

  His deep voice cracked. “Go do what you have to do and I’ll get dinner ready.”

  My heart sped as I rushed to my bedroom. After a quick shower, I blew my hair dry and rubbed my body with fragrant oils. I chose a pink silk blouse and a long black skirt. Twenty minutes later I took a deep breath and walked into the living room.

  Crusher waited for me in one of the big chairs. When I walked in, he stood and looked at me for a full five seconds. “God, you’re beautiful.”

  Dishes of food rested on a white tablecloth at my dining room table. We sat and he opened a prayer book with a scuffed black cover. According to tradition, he chanted in Hebrew the Eshet chayil, from the book of Proverbs. Heat rose in my cheeks as he began the love song. An excellent wife, who can find? She is more precious than pearls.

  Then he raised the cup of wine for the Kiddush, the blessing that ushered in the Sabbath. He took a sip and handed the cup to me. The essence of all the Sabbaths and all the holidays for thousands of unbroken years lay distilled in the taste of sweetened Concord grapes. After he blessed the raisin challah I bought at Bea’s Bakery, he tore off two pieces, sprinkled them with salt, and handed one to me.

  A sense of peace slowly washed away the sadness. Everything felt right. A Sabbath table with familiar savory foods. A man who respected and embraced our common traditions. I studied his face in the candlelight. Gray flecked his neat red beard, and his startling blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled at me. The places inside me, aching and empty only an hour before, filled with the honey of life. We didn’t speak about Harriet. We didn’t speak about much at all but ate in a contented silence. Without discussion and without negotiation, I understood and accepted where this night would lead.