Betty slammed a cupboard door, snapping me back to the present. "Nothing in any of these."
Lauren scratched her elbow. "What are we looking for again?"
"I'm not sure. Anything that implies she was murdered?"
Betty rubbed her hands together. "Weapons, killer, motive. Got it."
"Too bad she didn't take pictures of her killer as she died," Lauren grumbled.
That was too bad. But I didn't know of any incidences where, as someone was being murdered, they held out a camera and gasped, Cheese!
"Maybe she did." Betty shrugged. "We should look for her phone."
"The lawyer didn't give me a cell." I scanned the wall until my eyes landed on a landline. "It's possible she didn't have one."
After looking appropriately astonished, the girls stepped up to the wall-mounted phone, studying it.
"What is that?" Lauren asked.
"It could be a hotline to the Kremlin," Betty suggested.
I joined them. "It's a phone. What we had before we had cell phones."
"Why is it attached to the wall?"
"Because it's attached to a phone line." I pointed out the window to a telephone pole.
"That's barbaric!" Betty shouted.
"What's barbaric?" Kelly asked as she walked into the room.
"A landline." I pointed at it.
"Ah. Hey, I think we found something." And she turned and walked out of the room.
We followed, bypassing the dining room and entering into a parlor filled with musical instruments, including a piano, trombone, clarinet, harp, and tuba. Each instrument, with the exception of the piano, sat in a chair in front of a music stand, waiting to be picked up and played. I was surprised the girls weren't trying to play them.
The walls were lined with bookcases filled with sheet music and more photos. Aunt June had posed with opera singers I didn't recognize, Miles Davis, Liberace, and the Rolling Stones.
"A music room!" Lauren clapped her hands. "It's like the band room at school!"
"What did you find?" I asked Kelly.
I didn't have a musical bone in my body. This room was a puzzle to me.
"Here." She handed me an envelope. "We found it in the tuba's funnel." She paused. "Is that what you call it? A funnel?"
"Sounds like it should be called that if it isn't." I took the envelope.
It was sealed and, in shaky handwriting, addressed to me. I opened it carefully, just in case. Letters are extremely easy to booby trap with everything from anthrax to an explosive device.
Pulling out the letter, I read:
Merry! You are a clever one in finding this. Welcome to Clue #1!
"Read it aloud, please," Betty groused.
I repeated the first line before continuing.
If you have found this first, then bravo! I wasn't sure if you'd find it first but hoped if you found #2 or #3 first, you'd wait to read them all in order.
There were more?
After writing the note that would be sent with my remains, I decided that you might not believe that I was murdered. So I'll tell you why I think so.
I can feel it in my bones.
Good luck finding the rest of the letters!
"That's it? She could feel it in her bones? And she thought that was a clue?" I shook my head at the letter.
Kaitlyn craned her neck to see it. "Maybe you have to read between the lines."
Kelly said, "Maybe she really was crazy."
"Now we really do have to scour the place just to find the other notes," I said. "But I have to wonder if this is all just the rantings of a crazy woman."
Once again, it all came back to the fact that I knew nothing about her. Aunt June could've been a crank who was having fun with me or simply imagining things. How would I know? Maybe tomorrow's hair appointment with Basil would give me more intel.
We continued searching, with my group backtracking to the dining room as Kelly's group searched the sitting room on the other side of the music room.
The dining room had a large, heavy table surrounded by eight chairs. They looked like antiques. Against one wall was a large china cabinet filled with dishes. On the other wall was a framed photograph of Mt. Everest.
Had she been there? It was possible, considering all the photos of celebrities I'd seen her in. I wish I really had known the woman. Crazy or not, she had led a very exciting life. And that's coming from a spy. I'd thought my life was an adventure, but this woman from tiny Behold, Iowa had me beat.
"I wonder if she'd ever been married," I thought out loud. "She didn't have any children, I don't think."
"What makes you say that?" Lauren asked as Betty crawled around the floor underneath the table and chairs.
"She left everything to me. If she'd had kids, she'd have left it to them."
"Maybe she didn't like her kids," Betty called from the flat of her back beneath the table. "My parents say stuff like that all the time."
I had to ask. "About you?"
"No. About my brother."
I had the sneaking suspicion that her parents had included her in that conversation, and it made me a little sad. Betty wasn't a bad kid. She was adventurous, precocious, and quite possibly brilliant. Who wouldn't want that in a kid?
"Maybe," I said. "I'll have to ask Nigel." I pulled out my cell and called the lawyer.
Emmy answered and transferred me to her boss.
"Hickenlooper, of Hickenlooper, Hickenlooper & Hickenlooper," he said.
Well, obviously he was Hickenlooper. There wasn't anyone else there besides Emmy. And I still thought it was weird that he named his company that.
"It's Merry, Nigel." I grinned, imagining him wincing at my informal use of his name. "I'm still at the house. I have a couple of quick questions. Was Aunt June ever married? And did she have any children?"
There was a long, martyred sigh on the other end of the line. "No, Miss June was never married
