Sell Low, Sweet Harriet Read online

  “Your parents must have traveled a lot, considering the interesting things they owned,” Pellner said.

  “Yes,” Jeannette said. “They did.”

  I wondered if she would tell him why or if he would ask. Jeannette glanced at me. I gave her a little nod.

  “They were retired CIA,” she said.

  Pellner’s expression didn’t change. He kept his cop face locked and loaded. I thought his dimples deepened just a bit, but his impassiveness was impressive. Unless he already knew and didn’t want Jeannette to know for some reason.

  “Do you have any reason to think what happened here had anything to do with that?” Pellner asked.

  “No.” She sat back and thought. “It is strange that someone with no ID came to the house pretending to be my brother. But as far as I know, that chapter of their lives was over and done with ten years ago.”

  “Sarah, do you have any other thoughts about what happened? Anything you forgot to mention?” Pellner asked.

  “He said he came to see if there was anything else he wanted before the sale or that his wife might want,” I said.

  “He’s not even married,” Jeannette said. “Never has been.”

  I wished I would have known that earlier. “There must have been someone else in the house. Or he was let in. Right? I saw footprints in the snow outside the window.”

  Pellner nodded after hesitating.

  “Any leads on who that was? How they got away?” I asked.

  “One of the officers followed the footprints through the backyard, through the neighbor’s yard, and out onto the next street.”

  “So the person either parked there or someone was waiting for them?”

  “Most likely parked, because of how the footprints ended in the street.”

  I was surprised Pellner told us that much. Take this with what had happened in Bristow’s office and maybe he was finally beginning to trust me. It made me realize I trusted him more all the time, which hadn’t always been the case.

  Pellner stood. “Thank you both for waiting here for me.”

  “Is it okay to go back to the house?” Jeannette asked.

  “Yes,” Pellner said. “I’d like to meet you there. To see what, if anything, is missing.”

  “Can Sarah come too?” Jeannette asked.

  I straightened up, surprised that Jeannette wanted me to go with her.

  “She’s been in the house recently and did a thorough walk around,” Jeannette explained. “A second pair of eyes will be helpful. She’s studied everything more than I have.”

  Pellner had started to shake his head but stopped. “Okay. I’ll meet you over there in a few minutes.”

  Chapter Eight

  I met Jeannette back at her parents’ house. We sat in my Suburban with the engine running and the seat warmers going. This past week of unusually cold weather seemed to seep into my bone marrow. We had decided to wait for Pellner out here since neither of us were eager to go back into the house.

  “Thanks for agreeing to come back over here. If you don’t want to go through with the sale, I understand.” Jeannette looked thoughtfully at her parents’ house.

  On the drive over I’d had a brief thought about telling her I didn’t feel comfortable doing the sale. That she should find someone else. I’d just let that man, whoever he was, waltz into the house. The whole idea of it had me unnerved.

  But I had bills to pay and at least two more months of winter to get through before garage-sale season started up again. And that was only if spring came early, which wasn’t all that likely considering this was New England. When CJ had tried to convince me to move to his hometown in Florida, one of the things he’d mentioned was I could run my business year round. At times I saw the sense in that, but I still didn’t want to leave Ellington.

  Pellner pulled up ten minutes later. It had started to snow again—tiny, mean flakes that stung my cheeks as we hurried into the house. After shedding our coats in the living room, we all headed to the study.

  “Is this the only room he was in?” Pellner asked.

  “I’m not sure. He was down at this end of the house alone for thirty minutes or so,” I said.

  Pellner frowned. I interpreted the look as he had hoped we could take a quick look around the office and then get out of here.

  “Okay,” Pellner said. “Let’s start with the study. We know he was in there.”

  Jeannette and I went in the office. Pellner leaned against the door.

  “I took a bunch of photos when I was here the first time,” I said. “Maybe that will help us identify anything that is missing.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and sent the pertinent photos to Pellner.

  “I’ll go look in the master bedroom while you two search in here,” he said.

  “Why don’t I take a quick look in the guest bedroom,” I suggested. “It’s the only other room back here besides the bathroom.”

  It only took me a couple of minutes in the guest room. A drawer on the Danish modern dresser was open slightly. I didn’t remember it being that way, but it could have been. The dust ruffle on the bed was flipped up. It hadn’t been that way earlier. That I was sure of. I glanced in the bathroom as I headed back to the office. The bath mat was askew, but again I might not have noticed it earlier.

  When I got back to the office, Jeannette picked up file folders while I compared the pictures I’d taken to what was in the room. Five minutes later, Pellner came back to the study.

  “Any luck?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  Jeannette slumped into the desk chair. “Me either, but I didn’t know what papers were in what folders. Or for that matter what folders were in the files.” She looked at us. “I have no idea if anything is missing or not.”

  Pellner and I exchanged a look.

  “And then there’s this,” Jeannette said. She yanked open a deep drawer and gestured at the contents. It was crammed to the brim with everything from office supplies to knitting needles and yarn. “My parents weren’t good at throwing things out. According to them, you could never tell when that old mint tin would come in handy.”

  “Are the folders that were on the floor labeled?” I asked. “Maybe the labels will give us a hint as to what someone was looking for.”

  “Or they could have tossed folders they didn’t care about on the floor,” Pellner added.

  “But it won’t hurt to look.”

  Jeannette handed Pellner the folders. I stood by his side while he sorted through them.

  “Travel,” he said, holding up the first one. “Complete with magazine articles about places to visit. Crafts, kids’ activities, and recipes. All with articles clipped from magazines.” Pellner passed them over to me.

  I did a quick look through the articles, hoping there was something tucked in one of them. No such luck. We looked through more of the folders, passing them around to see if anything stuck out to any of us. Nothing did. Then we went through the files left in the cabinet to see if it would help us figure anything out. But that didn’t work either.

  “This seems to be a dead end,” I said. “We don’t have a good enough idea of what was here to say if anything is missing or what Fake Troy was doing here.” I shuddered.

  “Fake Troy?” Pellner asked.

  “Do you have a better name for him?”

  Pellner thought for a minute. “I guess Fake Troy is better than suspect number one, which is what I’ve been calling him.” He smiled. “I’m off. If either of you think of anything, call me.”

  We walked with Pellner to the front door. “Sarah, could I have a quick word with you?” We stepped out onto the front porch. I shivered wondering what Pellner wanted that he didn’t want Jeannette to overhear. Maybe it had something to do with Alicia.

  “I have a favor to ask you. This might be bad timing.”

  I tried to keep my eyebrows from popping up. That’s a first. It was usually the other way around. “Okay.” At least with Pellner I didn’t have to wor
ry about him asking me to break some law. “What do you need?”

  Pellner turned red. This ought to be interesting.

  “Next month is Valentine’s Day. And I’d like to do something special for my wife. I’ve been working so much lately that I want to make a grand gesture.”

  “Okay.” It came out kind of long and slow. Where was this going? “Dinner at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury is always nice. You could take her for the weekend.”

  “Five kids, all in school activities. We’ll never get away for the weekend.”

  “Does she collect anything?” I asked.

  “She has a shelf full of some kind of blue glass she’s always yelling at the kids to stay away from.”

  “What color? Light blue?” It could be Fostoria.

  Pellner shook his head. “A little darker than the color of your eyes. She has a name for it, but I can’t remember what.”

  “Cobalt glass.” Cobalt glass was a deep, rich blue that was popular during the Depression. Everything from canisters to eyewashes was made from it. It was still made, but not as beautifully as during the Depression. Sometimes pieces of cobalt glass had been prizes in laundry detergent.

  Pellner smiled. “That’s it. Could you find a piece for me?”

  “Sure. But I don’t want to duplicate what she has. Can you snap a picture of her collection and send it to me?”

  Pellner nodded.

  “Oh, and I’ll look for a vintage Valentine.” It might be harder to find than the cobalt glass. They were popular and paper was fragile, so it didn’t hold up as well as glass. “Anything else?”

  “No. Thank you. I appreciate it. I’ll try to send you a picture of it later today. Tomorrow at the latest.”

  Jeannette stood in the foyer when I went back in. She turned to me. “Was he trying to talk you out of doing the sale?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Like I said earlier, if you don’t want to do the sale any longer, I’ll understand. I had no idea anything like this would happen.”

  I had continued to think about it while we were in the house with Pellner. Was it worth the risk? Was there even a risk now? I’d never backed out on a client. I thought again about how I needed the work. “No. I told you I’d do the sale for you.”

  “But circumstances have changed.”

  “Whoever was here knows someone else is going to be around. I may hire a couple of people to help out so I’m not here alone.”

  “I’ll reimburse you for those expenses. And I think I’ll get a home security system installed until the sale is over and the house is sold.”

  “That sounds like a great idea.”

  “I wonder if this has anything to do with my parents,” Jeannette said.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s creepy. That man coming in here. Acting like he was my brother.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it’s some random burglar,” I answered. It made me wonder what secrets this house held.

  * * *

  That evening at six I sat with a circle of women in a crowded townhouse on base. Gender reveal parties and baby showers were always hard for me, since CJ and I had never been able to have children. But I’d been invited, and it seemed like a perfect time to listen to gossip like Special Agent Bristow had asked me to do. Plus, it distracted me from all that had gone on today. So far though, as expected, all the talk had centered on the mother and baby. I knew the mom from the thrift shop and the crowd seemed to be made up of thrift shop people, family, and her neighbors.

  We had played games, presents had been opened, we ate a light supper, and the cake was about to be cut. The inside of the cake would be either blue or pink, revealing the baby’s sex for the first time. Everyone leaned forward as the mother cut into the cake. She held up a piece that had pink and blue swirls.

  “It’s twins,” she announced proudly. “I already knew, but wanted to surprise all of you.”

  Everyone gasped and then leaped up to hug her. After congratulating her I took over cutting slices of cake and plating them. I took two pieces of cake over to the soon-to-be grandmothers. As I walked back I heard Alicia’s name and slowed.

  “I always thought Alicia and her husband were madly in love,” one woman said.

  “Then why did the OSI haul her husband in for questioning this afternoon?” the other said.

  Whoa, that was news. Hauled him in for questioning? It made sense. Bristow and Pellner had been very vague when they mentioned suspects. Did that mean Alicia’s husband had gone from a pool of suspects to prime suspect? Why hadn’t Bristow told me that?

  “You know what they say—you never really know anyone.” The first woman shook her head.

  I wanted to break into the conversation and ask if they had any specific information about Alicia’s husband. I tried to transmit my thought to them, but they started talking about the base school. So much for my psychic abilities. I went back to my cake cutting duties, my thoughts more swirled than the pink and blue cake. Eventually, I cut a piece for myself and stood to one side eating it. As I ate, my friend Eleanor came over. We worked together at the base thrift shop.

  “Had you heard Alicia’s husband was questioned by the OSI?” I asked.

  Eleanor shook her light blond hair, eyes wide. Eleanor had a round, youthful face and wouldn’t ever look old. “No. Why would they do that?”

  I shrugged. While I might want to hear gossip, I didn’t want to spread any. “Did you know Alicia very well?”

  “She was a doll. One of those go-getter types. Did you hear about the Spouses’ Club cookbook? A fundraiser for scholarships and wounded warriors.”

  I nodded. The cookbook had been called A is for Apple, a Tribute to the Fall Bounty of New England.

  “Alicia not only spearheaded the project, but her brother owns a printing shop, so he printed them at a discount and mailed them to us. We made a bunch of money.”

  “That was nice of him.”

  “The general’s wife was really pleased. In the long run it would help Alicia’s husband’s career.”

  You would think in this day and age what a spouse did wouldn’t have any effect on their husband’s career, but some things never changed.

  “I wish I’d known her better. She sounded amazing.”

  “She was. It’s why it’s been doubly hard around here.”

  * * *

  On the way home from the gender reveal party I went to the store to buy ingredients for chicken marsala. It’s the meal I decided to learn to cook because I knew it was one of Seth’s favorite dishes. I’d found the recipe online. It didn’t look that hard or have too many ingredients. I bought thin-cut chicken breasts so I didn’t have to pound them like the recipe said to. Although pounding chicken might be good stress relief. The shallots I bought looked like baby onions. My list finished with flour, mushrooms, and garlic.

  Next I went to the packie—what people in Massachusetts called a liquor store—for the marsala wine. I got there only to find out there was sweet marsala and dry marsala. My recipe didn’t mention which type. Sweat started to break out on my forehead. It seemed inordinately hot all of the sudden. I unwrapped my scarf and unzipped my coat. Maybe I should just abandon this project while I still could. Get a grip. I took a couple of deep breaths.

  “Everything okay, miss?” A curvy woman stood beside me.

  “I’m a terrible cook.” The woman took a step back. It came out louder than I intended it to and I sounded like a nutter. I took another breath. “I’m trying to learn how to make chicken marsala, but there are two kinds of wine. My recipe doesn’t say which one.”

  “Ah, well I happen to be a pro at chicken marsala. I buy one of each and do half and half. It’s perfection. I use unsalted butter in the pan.” Her butter came out “buttah” and marsala “marsalar” with her accent. She droned on, talking about dredging, using the right amount of flour, clumping, and all kinds of other frightening things. “You can do it,” she summed up, “it’s easy.”


  Under her watchful eye I grabbed the two kinds of marsala wine and checked out. I waved goodbye and headed home, giving myself a pep talk about cooking.

  * * *

  My cell phone rang when I walked into my apartment just before nine. Pellner.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I flipped on a light in the hall. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?” I stayed put, wondering if I should run back outside. “I just got home from a gender reveal party on base.”

  “No one followed you?” he asked.

  “What’s going on? You’re scaring me.” I backed up to the door, looking toward my dark bedroom. I’d forgotten to leave lights on when I left. I couldn’t see into my living room from here. I did forget to leave the lights on, didn’t I?

  “The guy from the hospital.”

  “Fake Troy?” I asked.

  “Yes. He’s disappeared.”

  Chapter Nine

  I almost dropped my phone. “Explain exactly what you mean.”

  “The guy was in his hospital room and then he wasn’t.”

  “You didn’t have an officer posted at his door?” I asked.

  “We’re stretched thin, as always. Fake Troy, as you call him, was out of it anyway. And while this guy committed a bunch of misdemeanors, it didn’t warrant the cost of posting someone.”

  “Or pretending to be out of it so he didn’t have to talk to you.” I stayed by the door, trying to decide whether to go in or go back out. “Why are you telling me this? Why are you worried?”

  “He knows who you are and that you’ve seen him. I want you to watch your back.”

  My back was now pressed against the door to my apartment. I could feel the knob digging in. “How did he get out of the hospital?”

  “Someone wheeled him out in a wheelchair. The security tapes caught that much. But not what kind of car he left in.”

  “What did that person look like?” I asked.

  “Dressed in jeans and a bulky jacket with a Patriots logo. Stocking cap pulled low. Dressed like almost half the New England population in other words. He kept his head down. They’re still looking for more footage, trying to identify him. Fake Troy kept his head down too.”