Vanilla Vices (8 page)

It was time to visit Aunt Teeks and see if there were any clues Dan managed to leave behind.

Otherwise, Grace and I were going to have a tough time tracking down whoever had killed him.

Chapter 9

I
t had been quite a
while since I’d been in the junk shop, but it hadn’t changed much. How on earth Dan had ever managed to find anything there was beyond me. In the largest room in the front of the building, stacks of old magazines were piled up on top of dressers that had been painted with pastels, while paintings of little apparent value leaned up against the walls haphazardly. The display room was a cacophony of items, and it almost hurt my eyes to look directly at it. Instead of the entire building being one open space inside, the first floor was a catacomb of smaller rooms that fed off the main room where we were currently standing. If I had to spend my days working there instead of Donut Hearts, I wouldn’t have lasted a week.

“Suzanne, are you going to have to inventory every single thing here? Because if you do, you’re never going to make it back to your own business,” Grace said, echoing my thoughts.

“Couldn’t I just hire someone to do it for me?” I asked as I looked around the crowded space in front.

“You probably could, but by the time they finish, you’ll have to sell everything in sight just to pay whoever does it. I suppose there’s another possibility.”

“What’s that? At this point, I’ll take any suggestions you have. We’ve been here ten minutes and I’m already overwhelmed.”

“You could always try to sell everything to one buyer,” Grace suggested.

I looked around at the mess that surrounded us. “Who would want to buy all of this junk?”

“It might be worthless from our point of view, but maybe we’ll be surprised. If you’re lucky, you might be able to find someone else who’s also in this line of work to take it all off your hands. Should I start looking into it for you?”

“As much as I appreciate the offer, let’s not do anything just yet,” I said.

“I understand. It’s probably prudent to wait. I just don’t want you to be overwhelmed by all of this.”

“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid,” I said with a rueful smile. Had Dan thought he was doing me a kindness giving me all of this? If so, our ideas of favors varied greatly. In the end, it was a last service I could do for him, whether I got anything out of it after his list of bequests was satisfied or not.

“Should we go room by room and see if we can find anything that might possibly be a clue? Where was his body found, do you have any idea?”

“It was in one of the side rooms where the cast iron things were kept. It’s hard to believe that Dan organized anything, but I’m starting to see a pattern here. This main room has a little bit of everything, a way to tease his customers into delving deeper into the building. Look through the doorways that open up from here. I can see cast iron in one room, jewelry and trinkets over there, and there’s even a space for small furniture. I have a hunch the deeper we dig, the more surprised we will be.”

“I don’t know. I’m kind of stunned right now, to be honest with you,” Grace said. After taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, she said, “We might as well go ahead and tackle the cast iron room first.”

We walked into the side space together, and we found walls covered with shelving, all heavy duty, since it was holding goods that had been cast in iron. There weren’t just ancient skillets and Dutch ovens there, though there were plenty of those, but besides the collection of cookware, there were trivets, fireplace covers, and even figurines that had all been cast long ago. One section held the old-fashioned irons, like the kind in old games of Monopoly. I usually chose the racecar when I played, but I’d settle for the thimble if someone else got to it first. I couldn’t imagine anyone choosing the iron by choice. I couldn’t imagine heating the real deal near the fire and then pressing my clothes with it. Then again, I rarely ironed anything at home now, and it was as easy as plugging in the iron and setting up my ironing board. The row of irons here had an obvious omission. That must have been where the murder weapon had sat, probably for years, rarely being picked up and examined until it had been used to commit murder. The floor beneath it still had traces of blood on it, though there was no chalk outline as I’d expected.

Grace must have wondered about the same thing. “Don’t they do chalk drawings anymore at the crime scene?”

“I guess not. It’s clear enough where they must have found him, though,” I said. Looking around the room, I said, “This isn’t the biggest space in the shop by any means. Why was Dan in here with the killer? Does the location of his murder give us any clues?”

“Maybe he suspected whoever was there was going to try to kill him, so he wanted something to defend himself. What better spot than around all of this heavy metal?”

I shrugged, and then I stepped back out into the front room again.

Grace asked, “Are you getting squeamish on me, Suzanne?”

“No, I just want to see something,” I said. I looked around the room for something else that might be used as a weapon. Within three feet of the door to the iron room, I found an old tool, a heavy wrench that would have served as a better bludgeon than an ancient iron. “Why didn’t the killer use this instead?” I asked as I picked it up. It wasn’t quite as heavy as an iron, but it would do the job just fine.

“Maybe they didn’t want to be seen from the outside?” Grace asked as she pointed to the windows facing the parking lot. “Or maybe Dan was already back there looking at something else when the killer came in.”

“I’m starting to see why the state police think this was just part of another robbery,” I said.

“How so?”

“In one scenario, Dan is upstairs. He comes down to investigate when he hears a noise, confronts the burglar, and then tries to get back upstairs. The thief panics, chases him, picking up an iron along the way and bashing him in the back of the head with it. But for that theory to work, we need to find the stairs that lead to the next floor.”

I walked back into the iron room, being careful to sidestep where I thought his body might have been found, and then on to the next space, where stacks upon stacks of old magazines, newspapers, and books were on display. From there, I finally found the stairs tucked away in one corner of the next room, one that contained nothing but doorknobs and hinges. There was enough ancient hardware in there to outfit a dozen homes. “This must be it,” I said as I put a hand on the newel post but didn’t ascend. Instead, I stood in front of the steps and looked around. “If I were coming downstairs in a hurry to investigate a noise in the front of the building, I wouldn’t go through the iron room or flee that way, either. The most direct route is through here,” I said, walking out of the hardware room and into one that held shelves of Depression glass, of all shapes and colors I could imagine. “This leads straight to the front door, whereas the other route veers off to one side.”

“Maybe he wanted to sneak up on the burglar,” Grace suggested.

“I suppose it’s possible, but if that were the case, how could Dan have been struck down so close to the front? Besides, there’s another reason that won’t work.”

“Why is that?” Grace asked.

“If Dan was fleeing, guessing from where the body likely fell, the killer would have had to reach around him to grab the iron before he hit him with it,” I said as I demonstrated what I was talking about.

“I know you’ve got an image in your head, but I still don’t see it.”

“Stand right here,” I said, pointing to the spot where his body must have lain.

“I don’t know about that, Suzanne. It’s kind of creepy.”

“I’d do it myself, but then I couldn’t show you what I have in mind. Come on. It will only take a second.”

“Okay,” Grace agreed reluctantly as she stood where I directed her to.

Once she was in position, I moved closer to the front, the place the killer had presumably chased Dan, at least in the official theory of what had happened. “See? To get to the shelf holding all of the irons, I’d have to reach around you. These pokers are much closer, and they would make better weapons, too. Why use the iron, then?”

“I don’t know,” Grace said, stepping quickly off the spot where she’d been standing. “Are we surprised their scenario doesn’t work?”

“A little,” I said. “Inspector Black is supposed to be some kind of hotshot. How could she miss this?”

“Maybe you’ve got it wrong,” Grace said.

“I’m willing to hear what you’ve got in mind.”

“What if the killer circled around? He’s breaking in, and he hears a noise himself. It’s Dan, so he goes around the corner to trap him from behind.”

“How would he even know that he could get back here? If this was random, then chances are good that he wasn’t here earlier.”

“Okay, how about this, then?” Grace asked. “What if he already had the iron nearby when he saw Dan? That would mean that he wouldn’t have to reach around to grab it.”

“So, he just picked up the iron ahead of time for a souvenir?” I asked her.

“Don’t be sarcastic; that’s my forte.” She stepped back up front and looked around. “Suzanne, look around. What is this place missing?”

It only took me a second to get it. “Anything made from cast iron,” I said. “You might be right. The iron could have already been here, and if what you’re saying is true, it was closer than the pokers, too. That makes sense.”

“Thanks, but it still doesn’t help us any. We’re working on the premise that this wasn’t random, remember?”

“That still doesn’t make your theory any less valid,” I told her. “The killer confronted Dan in the front room and then threatened him. When Dan tried to get away, he got an iron to the back of the head for his trouble. That means the murder probably wasn’t premeditated.”

“Because the killer didn’t bring a weapon with him,” Grace said.

“Or he did, but then he decided to use something else to muddy the waters.”

“If that’s what happened, then it worked. We’re no closer to learning his identity than when we stepped inside.”

“Maybe we should go upstairs and see what we can uncover up there,” I suggested.

“It’s as good an idea as any I have. Lead the way,” she said.

Once we found it, Dan’s bedroom surprised me. I’d been expecting an extension of his shop up there, the walls cluttered with old movie posters, large porcelain animals sitting on shelves surrounding his bed, and trinkets galore littering his dresser top. Instead, it was the epitome of simplicity. The bed was disheveled, as though its owner had been suddenly roused from his sleep, something that matched Inspector Black’s scenario more than it did mine. There was no bedspread or quilt on it, just a plain white set of sheets and a solid-blue blanket. The nightstand as well as the dresser were both Shaker-influenced pieces, yellowed pine furniture without any ornamentation whatsoever. There wasn’t a single bit of artwork hanging from the walls or shelves of any kind. It reminded me more of a monk’s cell than it did a junk dealer’s living space.

“Is this what you expected?” Grace asked me.

“No, I’m shocked, but it kind of makes sense.”

“How so?”

“Think about it. If you had to live with that chaos downstairs all day, wouldn’t you want someplace plain and simple to get away from it all?”

“I suppose,” Grace said as she moved to the dresser. “Let’s start looking for something that might help our investigation.”

I’d been a little queasy about going through a murder victim’s things when Grace and I had first started detecting, but I’d quickly gotten over that. After all, it occasionally happened that within someone’s most intimate and private spheres of their lives, we found glimmers of what might have led to their untimely deaths.

We didn’t find anything of interest there, though.

As for good news, at least the search hadn’t taken us all that long.

“What about his closet?” I asked.

“That’s next on my list,” Grace said.

“I’ll go find the kitchen and start looking there,” I said, “since the closet isn’t big enough for both of us.”

“Let me know if you find anything,” Grace said as she started going through Dan’s pockets from the clothes so neatly hung up inside.

“You do the same.” I left the bedroom and quickly found the small kitchen Dan used as a part of his living quarters. It wasn’t much more than a hotplate, a dorm-room minifridge, and a microwave oven. Four mismatched plates and utensils were in the small cupboard by the card table where he most likely took his meals. It was no wonder that he’d eaten at the donut shop and the diner so often. If I had to prepare and cook a meal in that poor excuse for a kitchen, I would have probably done the same thing myself. I almost dismissed the plates when, for the sake of being thorough, I pulled them out, each in its own turn, and looked closer at them.

To my surprise, between the third and fourth plates, a slip of paper fluttered out and landed on the scarred hardwood floor at my feet. What could it possibly be?

Written on the back of a discarded blank envelope in block letters, the message was clearly ominous. “YOU JUST LOST YOUR LAST CHANCE WITH ME!”

What did it mean, though?