Digging Up Trouble

The voice from the other day, the one coming from Greta’s kitchen, haunted me.

If he had them, you had them. And I want them back. Now.

Russ had no right to them and neither do you.

Had he finally given up on Greta giving the item back and resorted to taking it back? By force?

“Greta?” I called out.

I took another minute to look around the living room, at the broken face of the old grandfather clock, the old typewriter 156

Heather Webber

upside down on the floor, the old buffet cabinet turned on its side, its doors open wide.

The dining room hadn’t fared much better. Whoever had been searching was careful not to break any of the good china.

How courteous.

A set of silver littered the floor. Nothing looked missing, though I supposed Greta would have to be the one to go through things piece by piece.

I felt myself getting angry for her. This kind of intrusion was such a violation of privacy and security.

“Greta?” I yelled.

Get out, my inner voice yelled.

I listened, but only for a second. I couldn’t leave until I knew if Greta was okay.

In the kitchen, the cabinets and pantry had been emptied onto the floor. The searcher was thorough. Even the flour and sugar canisters were dumped out—into the sink.

Trash spilled out of a plastic white can onto the linoleum.

A brown banana peel, old newspaper, a take-out soup cup from Growl that still had mushrooms clinging to its insulated sides. Forest Mushroom? Mushroom Barley? There was also a Growl take-out bag, coffee grounds, and some wadded paper towels.

I quickly checked the back hall. More of the same de-struction. But no Greta.

A brown rotary phone hung on the kitchen wall, and I told myself to call the police.

I headed for the stairs instead.

On the second floor the bathroom was a mess, drawers opened. I tried not to notice the everyday items of Russ and Greta’s life. The toothpaste, the deodorant, razors, shaving cream, but couldn’t. It smelled horrid in there even though Digging Up Trouble

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the window was open. The scent of someone who’d been horribly ill. Lingering from Russ’s bout with the flu?

The window looked out into the backyard, and from up there was a bird’s-eye view of both the Lockharts’ and the Hathaways’ yards. I took a deep breath of clean air and hurried into the hall.

There were only two bedrooms. I went for the closest and pushed open the door. “Greta? Are you here?”

The first thing I noticed was that this room hadn’t been searched.

The second was that Greta lay diagonally across the bed on her back, wearing the same frumpy housecoat she’d worn the last two times I’d seen her.

Only this time she was very clearly dead.

Eighteen

I’d been told not to go anywhere by the baby-faced officer first on the scene. Not that I could—his car blocked the end of the driveway.

Brickhouse had clucked when I called to cancel my one o’clock appointment. I hadn’t told her why.

Officer Baby Face had informed me detectives would want to speak with me, and my stomach hurt really bad, so I had a good idea just who those detectives would be.

I sat on my front bumper and looked at the house. Russ had died of a heart attack. What had killed Greta?

I hadn’t seen anything that would indicate she’d been murdered. No blood, no bruising. But it just seemed too coincidental that she’d die of natural causes during a bur-glary.

Who’d broken in?

I tilted my head, looked at the Lockharts’ house. The accounting books were the only things I could say for certain were missing. And Bill had been looking for them.

I jumped to the conclusion and figured he’d taken them.

But why ransack the rest of the house? To make it look like someone else had done it?

The man from Greta’s kitchen? That person would make a Digging Up Trouble

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great scapegoat. How convenient that Bill had heard the man’s threats.