house. Slowly and carefully, because nearly every square foot of floor was covered with furniture or small, fussy throw rugs, and nearly every square inch of horizontal table or shelf space with objects, most of them small and breakable.
Three sets of wind chimes and a bumper crop of cobwebs dangled from the crystal chandelier in the foyer. Three drab coats, a tangled mass of canes, and several dozen battered black umbrellas occupied the huge Victorian coat stand to my left, while to my right, a hall table displayed a heterogeneous collection of marble obelisks, painted china eggs, miniature foo dog statues, seashells, mineral specimens, and brass bells. I made the mistake of trying to draw aside the velvet curtain that partly filled the archway from the foyer to the living room, and the resulting dust cloud sent me into a fit of coughing so violent that all the tiny spiders I'd dislodged had managed to hide themselves by the time I recovered.
The living room held four mismatched velvet couches, their colors softened by time except where someone had recently moved one of the lace doilies or antimacassars, and so covered with needlepoint pillows that I doubt a small child could have found room to sit on them.
The massive velvet curtains might be wonderful insulation in the winter, but I longed to jerk them aside and fling open a few windows. The temperature outside had finally begun to drop, but inside it was near one hundred degrees. But touching the curtains would disturb months – maybe years – of accumulated dust. I didn't want to leave that much evidence of my visit.
So I blotted the sweat from my face with the hem of my shirt and tiptoed past glass-fronted bookcases bulging with faded, dusty books and odd bric-a-brac. A collection of elegant glass paperweights shared space with several dozen souvenir models of buildings and landmarks from around the world. I particularly liked the way the plaster Statue of Liberty seemed to be conversing with the miniature of
“Okay, Ted,“ I said aloud as I dodged a giant dead fern perched on a tiny fretted Victorian plant stand and narrowly missed overturning a whatnot filled with tiny china cats and shepherdesses. “I can think of three explanations for this. One – you were going to give up programming for an exciting new career selling antiques, collectibles, and kitsch. Especially kitsch.“
On the whole, I thought that explanation unlikely.
Wouldn't a dealer have better taste? I paused for a moment, distracted, to inspect a small curio cabinet that seemed to be entirely filled with the kind of little ceramic birds and frogs florists use to decorate inexpensive potted plants.
“Two – you're a medium and you've been channeling one of the legendary packrats of history.“
I reached the doorway to the kitchen and looked around. The calendar beside the phone was still turned to April, with its overly cute picture of a quartet of fuzzy yellow kittens spilling out of an Easter basket. On the windowsills, the earthly remains of dozens of houseplants rustled gently in the faint draft created by my arrival. And on the counter, among the trivets, trinkets, and tea cozies, I found a nest of pill bottles, all in the name of a Mrs. Edwina Sprocket. Who had apparently suffered from an impressive variety of ailments, including heart problems, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, indigestion, and constipation. The most recent refill dated from the end of March.
“Three – you convinced the landlord, or the heirs, to let you move in before they held the estate sale.“
The more I looked around, the likelier that explanation seemed. The kitchen cabinets held dusty canned goods. Mostly cream soups and other bland prepared foods. The refrigerator contents were definitely Ted – several six-packs of Coors, leftover pepperoni pizza, kung pao chicken trimmed with feathery gray mold, and frozen enchiladas. The only kitchen items that seemed recently used were a few utilitarian pans, utensils, and plastic dishes – stored in the dish drainer, probably because it would have taken a magician to fit another saucer into Mrs. Sprocket's tightly packed kitchen cabinets.
Other than the kitchen, the other rooms on the ground floor seemed undisturbed for weeks, except where someone – probably the Caerphilly police – had recently walked through, as I was now doing, leaving a trail through the dust. Most of the bedrooms on the second and third floor appeared to have been shut up for years. I sneezed a lot.
I had poked head and shoulders through the trapdoor to the attic and was peering around, trying to decide if it was worth searching, when the doorbell rang. I started, hitting my head on a low beam. And then I went downstairs to investigate.
The doorbell rang again as I tiptoed through the living room to peek out the lace curtains covering the glass panes in the door.
It was Frankie, looking as eager as ever, though minus the phony police uniform. But still, what was Frankie doing here?
I opened the door to find out.
“Oh, Meg – hi,“ he said, looking rather surprised to see me.
“Hi, Frankie,“ I said. “What can I do for you?“
“Urn… I saw your car,“ he said, teetering a little as he nervously wound one leg farther than usual around the other. “So I thought I'd see if I could help you out.“
I looked pointedly from my car to the giant hedges surrounding the driveway. Unless Frankie had X-ray vision, there was no way he could have seen my car from the road.
He squirmed. “So have you found any of Ted's files? We could really use some of his files.“
“The police took all his computer equipment,“ I said. “I'm just locking up.“
Maybe that was a sneaky thing to say – implying, as it did, that I was here as part of the police search.
“Oh, okay,“ he said. “Well… I'll be going now.“
I watched him drive away and waited until I was sure he was gone. Ted's files were urgent – but were they urgent enough to bring Frankie this far out of town? After work?
Strange.
I went back to explore the one part of the house I hadn't yet seen – the basement.
Of course, I thought, if this were one of those women-in-jeopardy movies, the basement would be where the escaped lunatic was hiding, or where the secret treasure was buried, and the soundtrack would swell with ominous music when I reached for the door handle.
And, I confess, I did start when I looked down the steps and saw a figure in the gloom. Santa Claus, to be precise. He was propped up in the corner where the stairs made a ninety-degree turn, his head slumped on his chest and his hat askew. I deduced from the improbable way his left leg was twisted that he was a life-size Christmas decoration, but I still checked him for a pulse before turning my back on him. The moth-eaten, life-size reindeer – irritatingly, only seven of them – were hanging by their antlers from hooks in the ceiling beams.
I noticed, with a sigh of relief, that the basement seemed ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house. And there I found more proof of Ted's brief occupation. A space at the foot of the stairs had been cleared of clutter, and here Ted had set up housekeeping. A futon. A makeshift desk, still bearing the outline, in dust, of a CPU.
The clothes Ted hadn't hung from the overhead beams were jumbled into a copier-paper box. In fact, the copier-paper box seemed to be the cornerstone of his decorating and storage scheme. Beside his futon, one box served as a bedside table, holding a digital alarm clock and half a dozen empty Coors cans. His desk was a board held up at each end by a stack of three boxes. The desk boxes contained computer manuals or small pieces of electronic equipment. A stack of about two dozen boxes formed a low wall between his niche and the rest of the basement – they contained a vast collection of science-fiction and mystery paperbacks and a small collection of relatively unkinky girlie magazines. In the tiny basement bathroom, Ted's towels, ragged and brightly colored, had been thrown unfolded into a copier-paper box, since the linen closet was overflowing with Mrs. Sprocket's vintage toiletries and faded, lace-trimmed towels.
I wasn't seeing much paper, anywhere. Which was unusual. No matter how much so-called computer visionaries touted the paperless future, in my experience, heavy computer users tended to have more paper around, rather than less. And I found no disks, Zip drives, tapes, or CD-ROMs. Unheard of. One thing I'd noticed about my
