The Yellow Packard (3 page)

After regaining her composure, she took another step into the room. “I thought I was alone.”

“I came over right after the funeral to do some looking around. In fact, the sheriff is here, too. Our cars are out back, so guess you didn’t see them.”

Janet walked over to a chair beside the walnut desk, her pumps clicking on the wood floor, and sat down. As she felt the breeze blowing into the room from an open window she pondered what she’d just been told.
The sheriff? Why would he be here?

Just a few feet away, Johns rested his elbows on the desk and pushed his hands together, his fingers interlocked. The large brown eyes peering through the attorney’s round, thin-framed glasses indicated a contemplative air. As his two chins came to rest on his hands, he took on the look of a French bulldog. Taking a deep breath, he noted, “Your aunt was a very meticulous woman. As eccentric as she was, she was also a creature of habit. I’d come to visit her on a business matter, and we’d always end up in this room where she’d serve me a cup of tea and some shortbread cookies. It was that same routine every trip. Never changed. I always took what she served, but I hate hot tea, and if I never see another shortbread cookie in my life it will be too soon.” Janet wasn’t sure what to make of the comment.

Leaning back in the high-backed desk chair, his eyes roved from one shelf to another as if he was taking inventory. After several minutes of silence, only interrupted by the songs of birds and sounds of traffic coming in from outside the open window, he noted, “There are over six thousand books on these shelves.”

Janet grinned. “She probably knew the exact number.”

“Not only that,” he instantly returned, his fingers tapping a book on the desk, “but she has each of the titles listed right here in this journal. She even wrote down what she paid for each book, when and where she bought it, and she rated its literary value. I’ll be honest, in looking through her notes, I’m a bit surprised by her taste. Though she owned all the major classics, it seemed she was decidedly fond of detective yarns and mysteries.”

Janet nodded. “She was a big Charlie Chan fan; I knew that. She read all the Sherlock Holmes stuff, too.”

The attorney nodded. “I know in real life she did love a mystery. She followed the crime beat in the
Commercial-News
much more closely than she read the society pages. She constantly talked to me about criminal trials from all over the nation, always looking for hidden clues—those the cops had missed.”

“She had files on unsolved cases,” Janet chimed in. “She told me tales of lost treasures and shipwrecks for my bedtime stories. Not exactly the kind of thing a kid needs to hear before the lights are turned out.”

“I heard some of those stories, too.” Johns laughed. “What always amazed me was that she could mention a book and immediately walk over to its place on the shelf and pull it down. She was that way about everything. This old house is filled with all kinds of stuff, and she could still tell you which drawer in which chest in what room was a thimble she bought in 1922.”

“No doubt,” she agreed, “she had a mind like no one I ever met.”

Johns’s tone suddenly grew even lower and more serious. “And that’s why the sheriff has been going through this whole house from top to bottom the past two days. There’s something wrong, Janet.”

“Wrong?” Her puzzlement resonated in her tone.

“As executor of her estate, I quickly went through her records. It seems that about six months ago Abigale withdrew just over $100,000 from the bank. That was practically everything she had. I made some calls and discovered she had them give her the cash in one-hundred-dollar bills. Now I know she’s been fixing up a few things around the house—she bought that new Packard; she made a trip to Chicago, too; and it was well known she constantly gave out cash to those going through tough times. Did you know that just last week she paid for a ten-year-old boy’s cancer surgery? It was somebody she’d never met. Just read about the family and their need in the newspaper. She probably did a few other things like that in the past half year, but I seriously doubt she could have gone through all that money.”

Janet folded her hands over her dark blue skirt. The single schoolteacher carefully considered her aunt’s habits and the lawyer’s words before speaking. “So what are you saying?”

“I don’t want to alarm you, and I hope I’m not jumping to any conclusions, but I believe she might have been robbed. In fact, she might have been murdered for that cash.”

Janet’s gaze shot to a photo of her aunt on the desk directly in front of her. As she looked into the woman’s kind eyes, a chill ran down her spine.

“Janet, I’ve got no evidence. She’d been dead for at least a day when Mrs. Clawmind found her. The coroner ruled that she died of a heart attack. That’s logical. She was seventy-nine, but to me she seemed to have more energy than most college kids. She was always out, going places in that Packard. When I saw her earlier this week, she seemed as healthy as a horse. Yet even with that in mind, I’d buy that she’d died a natural death if at least some of the money were still here. But it’s not. We’ve looked in every drawer, under the beds, in the attic, and everywhere else she could have hidden cash. We found nothing but the change in the living room couch!”

The sadness that had tugged at her heart over the past few days now overwhelmed her. And it wasn’t the money. She didn’t care about that. It was the picture of Aunt Abbi being murdered—she couldn’t bear the thought of the woman she so loved dying in fear.

“So what do you think might have happened?” Janet asked, the words tugging at her heart even as they spilled from her mouth.

“There were no signs of violence,” he assured her. “If she was murdered it wasn’t in a traumatic fashion. Maybe someone poisoned her. My guess is that someone found out where she kept her money, devised a scheme to kill her in a manner that wouldn’t attract immediate attention, and then took the cash. By the time I suspected foul play, the undertaker had already embalmed her and pitched the fluids that might have told us something.”

As the color drained from Janet’s face, a sick feeling twisted her stomach into a thousand knots. This couldn’t be true. Aunt Abbi, the kindest woman in the world, never had an enemy in her life. She spent her days helping everyone. She was the living embodiment of the charge to reach out to the least of these. No one could have hated her enough for that. She just couldn’t have been murdered! Janet’s unexpected plunge into a darkness she’d never known or expected was interrupted by the attorney’s words.

“Sheriff Akins and I figure it has to be someone who knew her pretty well. Unless Jed finds something out back in the carriage house, the money is gone. With that in mind we’ll have to wait until the thief shows his hand.”

“I don’t understand,” Janet replied. “What do you mean shows his hand? You said you had no evidence, only suspicion.”

He forced a smile. “We aren’t completely lost in a fog. You don’t see a lot of hundred-dollar bills being tossed around here or even in Danville. Thus we’ll alert store owners, banks, and businesses to watch out for someone flashing a lot of C-notes.”

A knock at the front door caused Janet to glance out the window to the porch. Through the sheer curtains she spotted a man waiting by the door.

“Come on in,” Johns yelled.

Within a few seconds he joined them in the library. Janet had known the law officer for more than twenty years, and during that time he had never been one to waste words. He said what he had to say, and he did it succinctly. This moment was no exception.

“Found nothing.”

“Then,” Johns announced as he rose from his chair, “we’d better quietly get the word out that we’re looking for a big spender.”

“On it,” Atkins answered. A few seconds later he was out the door and headed to his car.

“I can’t believe it,” Janet whispered, pulling herself to her feet and moving over to the front window. Glancing out toward the street she noted a solitary figure walking slowly past the house. She had never seen him before. Of course that was nothing unexpected. She hadn’t lived in Oakwood in five years. But there was something about the way this man stared at the house—almost like he was taking inventory— that sent chills up her spine. With one look from the scruffy stranger’s dark eyes, all the bittersweet, heartfelt memories that had flooded her soul over the past few days were replaced by fear’s cold reality.

Chapter 3

I
t was twenty degrees warmer than it should have been as a high-pressure system took root over the Midwest, pushing people and machinery to the limits. For the last week countless cars had overheated, icehouses had sold through their blocks of frozen liquid, and department stores were completely out of fans. During that time, Janet and the sheriff carefully observed Janie Timmons and her workers deftly remove and catalog every piece of furniture, dish, glass, and painting in the old Watling place. Even her aunt’s clothes were tagged and hauled away to the auction barn. By early Friday afternoon the home was nothing more than empty rooms and bare walls.

Atkins began a final exhaustive inspection of the premises. After finishing his duties at the law office and changing into work clothes, Johns joined the sheriff about five thirty.

Over the course of several hours the men searched every corner of the home for hidden passages, loose boards, and false walls. Sadly they found nothing. It was just past nine when they completed that work, and a disappointed Johns and Atkins joined Janet on the Elm Street mansion’s front steps. It was still so hot the mosquitoes had called off looking for human targets.

“We can be sure of one thing,” the weary attorney noted, sweat dripping from his brow, “she didn’t hide any cash in the house. Every place it could have been stashed has been checked and rechecked. And if any false walls were in that old place, we’d have found ’em. The money is simply not here.”

An exhausted Atkins plopped his lanky form onto the steps and ran his right hand through his short-cropped brown hair before adding, “This has proven to be a colossal waste of time and energy.”

The heat, combined with their hard work, had done the trio in. It was an exhausted and frustrated Janet who moved away from the men to the one familiar thing still remaining at the now empty old house. After taking a deep breath, she eased down onto the swing. Even as she rocked back and forth, the hot, damp air all but smothered her.

“So,” Johns mumbled from a spot he’d taken leaning up against the porch railing, “I think my gut feeling was spot-on. Someone knew where she kept that cash, and they took it.”

Pushing off the railing, he ambled over to Janet and asked, “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Plenty of room,” she assured him while stopping her slow, rhythmic swinging long enough for the middle-aged attorney to ease onto the wooden slats. As the pair began to swing, he took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his receding brow.

“So,” Janet said, “you’ve got banks and stores on the lookout for folks with a wad of hundred-dollar bills?”

Johns nodded, “Have had since you and I talked in the library right after Abbi’s services.”

Janet didn’t answer; there was no need to. She had nothing to add. She was convinced that someone had not only robbed her aunt, but murdered her as well. It would have been so much easier to handle if they had just found the money. Then she would have known Aunt Abbi died a natural death. Now, much more than anything else, she needed to be assured the old woman didn’t spend her last few moments consumed by fear.

“You lost a lot of money in this deal,” Johns noted, breaking a silence that had fallen over the trio like an unwelcome fog. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

It was too dark to see his face, but she heard in his tone a sincere regret for her loss. His tone also seemed to hint at a bit of guilt on his own part. Maybe as her attorney he sensed he should have watched Aunt Abbi more closely. Maybe he should have been aware that she’d withdrawn cash from the bank. But in truth that wasn’t his job. The old woman made those moves on her own, and she was sound enough mentally to conduct her own affairs. If there was fault to be given, it was Abbi’s. She wasn’t careful enough. Yet that didn’t make her death any easier to swallow.

Johns’s deep voice once more filled the darkness, “You know I was there the night your parents died in that car wreck two years ago. I was looking out my window when the drunk ran the stop sign and hit them. Such a senseless tragedy! Not only do I wish it hadn’t happened, but I also wish I hadn’t witnessed it. Still keeps me awake at night.”

“You were the one who called me,” Janet quietly replied. “I’ll never forget that call. Changed my whole world. Turned it upside down.”

“And you came immediately back and stayed right in this old house for those three weeks while we got things straightened out.”

“Aunt Abbi made those days a lot easier for me.”

“And that’s why I feel so bad now,” Johns admitted. “Your folks barely left you anything. You don’t make much as a grade-school teacher. Now, just when you could have had a real break, put together a nest egg of sorts, there’s nothing here for you.”

“I’m not worried about that,” she quickly assured the man. “I’m not like my cousin. I never planned on getting any of Aunt Abbi’s money. For me that was never important. I’ve got a job and an apartment, and that is more than a lot of folks have in these hard times. My parents always told me it wasn’t what a person has, but what a person is. I think they’d be proud of the kind of person I have become. And they’d have been proud of Aunt Abbi, selling everything for the orphan’s home, too.”

“Yeah,” Johns sighed, “but that missing cash still should have been yours.”

“It was the car,” Atkins matter-of-factly announced as he steered the conversation in a direction that Janet couldn’t have predicted. “If she hadn’t bought that blame car she’d still be alive.”

“What do you mean?” Johns shot back.

“That Packard was bad luck,” the sheriff quickly replied. “You surely heard the story about what happened when it was delivered?”