Drooping perennials and overgrown grass along the back of the house made it difficult to search for the pseudorock. 'Be careful,' Tricia whispered. 'Don't step on the flowers. If the sheriff comes out here again, we don't want her to know someone's been snooping around.'
'I think I've got it,' Angelica said.
Tricia hurried over. Using the flashlight, Angelica held back a swath of grass. A little white plastic rock sat sheltered by the greenery. She lifted it up and a fat worm recoiled at being disturbed.
'Oh, ick!'
'Grow up,' Tricia warned, still whispering. The key was embedded in the dirt, bringing a small clod with it as Tricia picked it up. 'Nobody's used it for a long time.'
'Why are we whispering?' Angelica asked.
Tricia cleared her throat. 'Come on.'
She wiped the dirt from the key, stepped up to the back door, and inserted it in the lock. She turned it, grasped the handle, and let herself in. Fumbling around the door, Tricia found the light switch, flipped it, and a meager glow emanated from the kitchen's single, overhead fixture.
Angelica crowded against her. 'Move over.'
The tiny off-white kitchen was tidy with signs of a life interrupted. A newspaper sat neatly folded on the white painted table. A solitary coffee-stained mug occupied the dry stainless-steel sink. A stack of opened mail on the counter awaited consideration. Dusty footprints marred the otherwise clean, but dated dark vinyl floor-no doubt those of the sheriff and her deputies.
'Prisons look homier than this,' Angelica offered.
She was right. Not a picture, an ornamental hanging plate, or even a key rack decorated the bland walls. No curtains, just a yellowing blind hung at half-mast over the room's only window. Tricia fought the urge to pull it down completely.
'Creepy,' Angelica muttered.
'My sentiments exactly. And how would I feel if this were my home being violated by a couple of strangers?' Tricia wondered aloud. Still, she swallowed down the guilt and stepped into the darkened, narrow hallway, with Angelica so close on her heel she could feel her sister's breath on the back of her neck.
The light overhead flashed on, and Tricia's heart pounded. She whirled to find Angelica with her hand still on the switch. 'Sorry.'
Tricia ground her teeth, hoping her glare would scorch.
'Looks like a bedroom here,' Angelica said, poking her head into a darkened room. She found that light switch, too. The smell of old paper and leather permeated the space. A twin bed wedged into the corner was made up, the patchwork quilt covering it the only splash of color in the room. On the small nightstand next to it was an open book and a pair of reading glasses, looking like they awaited their owner. The walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stuffed with old tomes, while stacks of homeless books stood in front of the bottom shelves. Tricia stepped closer to examine the titles nearest her.
'Are they cookbooks?' Angelica asked eagerly.
Tricia shook her head. 'No. But wow-!' She picked out a dark volume, holding it reverently as her trembling fingers fumbled to turn the pages for the copyright information. She let out a shaky breath, throat dry, making it hard to speak. 'It's a first edition.'
'Of what?'
'Dickens.
'Must be worth a few bucks, huh?'
Tricia turned on her sister, ready to lecture, but the passive expression on Angelica's face told her she didn't have a clue about antique books, their intrinsic value, and there was no way she could readily explain it, either. 'Yeah, it's worth a few bucks.' She drank in some of the other titles, their brittle leather covers and the gold lettering on their spines making her catch her breath. Alcott, Alger, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Twain, Whitman-the quintessential collection of nineteenth-century American authors. The only author missing was Edgar Allan Poe-and a good thing, too, or Tricia might have been tempted to-
'My God, if they're all first editions, there's a fortune in this room alone.'
'I thought you said Doris only sold cookbooks.'
'That's what her store was dedicated to, but obviously her taste in literature was much more discerning.'
Angelica shrugged. 'If you say so,' and she trotted out of the room. Tricia fought the urge to touch each and every one of the spines, and backed out of the room, turning off the light and silently closing the door with a respect usually held only for the dead.
A trail of lights led to the living room. Angelica stood in the middle of the worn and dingy, putrid green wall- to-wall carpet, sizing up the space, which, like the bedroom, was primarily a storage place for books, though the shelves here seemed to hold mostly contemporary fiction. 'Lousy taste in furniture,' she said at last, her gaze fixed on the olive drab sofa, its lumpy cushions and sagging springs declaring it a reject from the 1960s. 'You'd think with all those valuable books, she'd live in a space to show them off.'
'Maybe that was the point,' she said. 'She could only afford them if she lived like this.'
Angelica shook her head. 'Not my life choice.'
Nor Tricia's. Still, it was a choice she could understand. 'I'll take the desk. You want to investigate the rest of the house?'
'Sure.'
Tricia was glad to note the drapes were heavy, effectively blocking the light so it wouldn't be visible from the street. Knowing that gave her more confidence to inspect the cherry secretary that stood defiantly against the west wall. It was tall, topped with a glass cabinet that held an antique glass compote, several more old books, and a silver mercury glass vase with hand-painted roses. Tricia grasped the pulls and opened it. The cubbies inside were stuffed with envelopes, a checkbook, and other assorted papers-not Doris's doing, as evidenced by the tidiness of the rest of the house. Had the sheriff been in a hurry when going over the house's contents? Maybe she'd found what she was looking for and had shoved everything back in the pigeonholes with more speed than efficiency.
Utility bills, bank statements, magazine subscription notices, but no last will and testament. Abandoning the top section, Tricia opened the first drawer. Extra checks, a phone book, pens and pencils, paper clips, scissors- typical desk fare.
The next drawer held more receipts and the minutiae of a busy life. She sorted through the papers and found a stack of five or six paper-clipped statements from New England Life Insurance Company. Tricia glanced over the information. Policy Number 951493. Insured's Name: Doris E. Gleason. Plan of Insurance: Whole Life, issued six months previous. Nowhere on the statement did it list who the beneficiary was, probably for security reasons. Tricia took the oldest one, folded it, and slipped it into her pocket, then replaced the others.
She opened the last drawer without enthusiasm. In it were a little pink photo album and a bulging string envelope. The album drew her attention. She picked it up and opened to the first page to find a fuzzy black-and- white photograph of a baby. In fact, the book was dedicated to the child, whose features quickly changed from nondescript to the all-too-familiar features of Down syndrome.
The string envelope contained receipts and canceled checks, each of them referencing the Anderson Developmental Clinic Group Homes, located in Hartford, Connecticut. The letters referred to a Susan Gleason as 'your daughter.'
'Oh boy.' If Doris had no other living relatives, who would take on the responsibility for her mentally disabled child? Would the young woman-oh, no longer young, she realized-lose her spot in a group home? End up on the streets, homeless?
'Trish! Come and see all these wonderful old cookbooks,' Angelica called.
Tricia replaced the album and envelope, closed the drawer, and wandered toward the back of the little house. She found Angelica, book in hand, in another small room crammed with boxes and shelves.
'Look, it's the
