Deadly Greetings (Book 2 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (23 page)

“
Until you need something
else,” he grumbled before he hung up.

Lillian smiled at me. “There, that wasn’t
all that difficult, was it?”

“
Do I even want to know what
you’ve got on him?” I asked my aunt.

“
Now, Jennifer, you just
heard me pledge my silence to him. I’m not going to say another
word about it.”

I was ready to pump her for more—I could
tell Lillian wanted to share—but suddenly the front door opened and
Sara Lynn stormed inside.

“
That was cute, Jennifer,
calling me and then keeping the telephone off the hook so I’d have
to drive over. Now that you’ve got me here, what do you
want?”

I’d nearly forgotten about calling my
sister. “Sara Lynn, I swear it was just an accident.”

“What, you just happened to hang up after
giving me this number?” She looked around at the boxes, then asked,
“What are you two doing here, anyway?”

Lillian said, “We’re working. Jennifer’s
telling the truth. Someone else called as soon as she got off the
line.”

^:
Sara Lynn sat on the
couch. “I don’t see any card-making supplies around. What kind of
work are you doing?”

Before Lillian could say anything, I chimed
in.

“
Maggie’s attorney needed
somebody to clean the place up, and we took the job to supplement
our income.” Well, most of it was true, though I’d left out parts
of the rationales behind our actions.

It didn’t look like Sara Lynn was buying it,
though. “Don’t bother to embellish any more. You two are snooping
around again. I can’t say I’m shocked, but I’d be lying if I said I
wasn’t disappointed.” on Lillian said, “Then perhaps you should
leave.”

“
You called me, remember?
What was so urgent that it couldn’t wait?”

Lillian said, “You know what? Perhaps it’s
not important after all. Sorry we bothered you at home.

Why don’t you get back to your dinner? I’m
sure it’s getting cold by now.”

Sara Lynn’s voice faltered, then she said,
“That’s not all that’s getting cold. I’ve lost my appetite lately
for eating alone.”

That softened Lillian immediately. “Child,
every marriage has troubled times.”

“
Coming from you, I’d say
that qualifies as expert testimony,” Sara Lynn snapped.

Before things could escalate, I said, “The
reason I called you was for some information. Did Maggie quit
scrapbooking cold turkey a few years ago?”

“
What? Of course not. She
started making cards around then, but she was still buying supplies
at For ever Memories right up until she died.”

Lillian asked, “When was the last time she
was your shop?”

“
Why do you two want to
know?” Sara Lynn asked

“
Please, just humor us,
okay?” I asked. “Do you need to check your receipts before you
answer?”

“
Would you have to?” Sara
Lynn asked me. “Two weeks ago she bought a new scrapbook and some
stickers. She said she wanted to make a present for a new
friend.”

“
It wasn’t for a man, was
it?” I asked.

“
Do you mean a boyfriend?
No, I was fairly sure ii was a woman, given the cover she chose.
Honestly, at what age does it cease being ‘boyfriend’ and
‘girlfriend’? Surely we can come up with a more dignified set of
labels for later in life.”

“
I prefer ‘paramour’
myself,” Lillian said.

“
Okay, maybe I spoke too
soon,” Sara Lynn said “‘Boyfriend’ might not be so bad after
all.”

“
You didn’t happen to get a
name, did you?” I asked.

“
No, sorry. Let me look at
her books a second and I can tell you immediately. There they
are.”

It only took my sister two seconds to notice
something was wrong. “At least two are missing, do you realize
that?”

I was glad to have some independent
confirmation. “That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. It’s a
lot harder to tell what happened by what’s missing than what’s
there, isn’t it?”

“
So what do we do now?” Sara
Lynn asked.

Lillian wasn’t having any of that. “ ‘We’
aren’t doing, anything. You are going to go home while Jennifer and
I stay here and work.”

Sara Lynn shook her head. “I believe I’ll
stay here with you, if I’m welcome. Right now the last thing I need
to do is rattle around in that house alone, and to be honest with
you, I could use something productive to do.”

I could tell from the set of Lillian’s jaw
that she was about to throw Sara Lynn out despite my sister’s plea,
but I could tell she needed me, and I didn’t have the heart to say
no to her. “Of course you can help us. We’ll even cut you in on our
earnings.” My sister nodded. “Thank you, but I’m willing to do this
for an old friend.”

That touched me. “I think of you as a
friend, too,” I said as I put an arm around my petite sister. She
pulled instantly away. “I was referring to Maggie. You will always
be my baby sister.”

“
I knew that,” I said,
trying to hide my frown. It didn’t help matters that Lillian had
found the display life amusing and wasn’t trying to hide her
delight in any way. “Enough talk,” I said, ready to move on. “Let’s
get to work.”

Sara Lynn said, “The first thing we need to
do is close the windows. Are you two trying to heat all of Rebel
Forge?”

“
Talk to your sister. She’s
the one with the fresh-air fetish,” Lillian said.

Great. I’d reached out to my sister in her
time of need, and I’d ended up being on the wrong end of a majority
vote. Sometimes it just didn’t pay to be nice.

“
Let’s do this in an
organized fashion,” Sara Lynn said, stepping into her usual role of
leader director president. “We’ll mark boxes ‘Personal,’ ‘Charity’
and ‘Trash.’ Any objections?”

“
No, that sounds fine,”
Lillian said, smiling behind Sara Lynn’s back but holding it long
enough for me to see. It wasn’t mocking, just an acceptance of how
my sister worked.

“
What room were you two
going to do first?” she asked.

“
We’d thought about starting
with the bedroom,” I admitted. “Where would you like to
begin?”

“
The bedroom’s fine,” she
said. “Ladies, we all knew Maggie and cared about her, so it’s
perfectly fine to shed a tear along the way.”

That was another side of Sara Lynn, an
emotional woman to balance the efficiency in her. I didn’t doubt
she was a hard person to live with; hadn’t I experienced that
myself? I just always thought of her marriage to Bailey as a goal I
hoped to achieve someday. Hearing about their problems was not a
part of my fantasy, and I was sad to hear that it was a part of her
reality.

“
Let’s do the clothes first,
shall we?” Lillian suggested. “They’re always the hardest for
me.”

Sara Lynn nodded her agreement. I didn’t
care where we began, just as long as I could look for clues about
what had really happened to Maggie.

Sara Lynn asked, “Who is her main
beneficiary? Does anyone know?”

“
I could always call Patrick
back,” Lillian said.

“
No, let’s leave him alone
tonight unless we really need him,” I said. I couldn’t bear the
thought of Lillian making him squirm again. “We’ll just do the best
we can.”

Sara Lynn said, “I’m not just being nosy;
it’s an important question. Who knows why one person holds
something as sentimental? You’d be amazed at the things I’ve kept
over the years.”

“
Like what?” Lillian asked,
clearly intrigued as she opened the closet door.

Sara Lynn started neatly folding the first
dress after she put the hanger in a box she’d already labeled
“Hangers.” “I’ve got an entire box this size full of cocktail
napkins, matchbook covers, silly fluff like that that wouldn’t mean
a thing to anyone else in the world.”

“
If it was important to
Maggie, she’ll have it tucked safely away as well,” I
said.

“
True,” Sara Lynn said as
she gently laid the first dress in the bottom of another box. “Tell
you what, I’ll start on these. Lillian, why don’t you work on the
chest of drawers, and Jennifer, you can pack away the knickknacks
and photographs. They’re everywhere, aren’t they?”

I agreed. “It looks like Maggie enjoyed
being surrounded by things that gave her joy.” As we worked, each
of us on separate tasks but together in the same room, we chatted
about dozens of things. It was a sad occasion and a working one in
more ways than one, but the Shane women were together, and that
part of it was good indeed.

There was a marked absence of real clues
there, though. After we’d stripped the room of everything personal
in it, Sara Lynn carried the last box of donations out of the room.
I jumped on the opportunity and said to Lillian, “I was expecting
to find something in here that might help.”

“
Jennifer, there may not be
anything of use to us in the entire house. After all, we’ve already
discovered something.” I nodded. “The missing scrapbooks—I know—but
it’s going to be hard to tell if it means something or not if we
don’t know why they were stolen.”

“
There’s more to do yet,”
Lillian said as Sara Lynn rejoined us.

With a little more delight in her voice than
I’d expected, she said, “We’ll be at this half the night. Let’s do
the kitchen next. I’ll make coffee.”

“
Make it strong,” I said,
fighting a yawn. It had been a long day, and it looked to be an
even longer night.

I found something while I was working in the
kitchen at the desk where Maggie did her bills. Sara Lynn was
disposing of the food, keeping a few things to the side for a
late-night snack while Lillian cleaned out the cabinets full of
pots and pans. In a letter holder on the desk behind a few bills, I
found a distinctive envelope I recognized from the shop with
Jeffrey Wallace’s name and address printed on the front.

“
Does this look familiar?” I
said as I held it up to Lillian.

“
It’s from one of those
ghastly new papers you’ve been making recently,” she
said.

I nodded, though I didn’t agree with the
“ghastly” designation. “That means Maggie made this card within the
last week.”

Sara Lynn said, “It’s got a stamp on it, so
go ahead and mail it.”

“
But it’s not sealed, is
it?” I said as I started to lift the back flap. Many of my card
makers enjoyed cutting out their own envelopes so they’d have
matching stationery, and Maggie was no exception.

Sara Lynn snatched it out of my hand. “You
can’t read that. It’s private.”

Lillian said, “More private than what we’re
doing now? Let me see it.”

Sara Lynn hesitated, but the tone of
Lillian’s voice was no doubt hard to refute. My sister handed her
the card, saying, “I still think you should mail it.”

“
Perhaps after we’ve seen
what it says,” Lillian said. As she pulled the card from the
envelope, I moved beside her so I could read it along with her.
Sara Lynn kept working, her silence showing all the disapproval she
needed it to express.

On the front of the card, there was an
anatomically correct stamp of a heart split in two, shaded the
ghastliest red hue I’d ever seen. The heart had been cut right down
the middle, and as I studied the card closer, I could see that
she’d glued the pieces in place. The front said, “My Heart Is
Broken.” I wasn’t sure I had the heart to read the rest of it, but
Lillian didn’t hesitate. Inside, Maggie had written,

Jeffrey, we’re finished. Leave me alone, I
mean it. Don’t take the last thing I have left between us, my
memories, Maggie.

So she’d broken up with him recently, and he
wasn’t taking the hint, from the look of the card. Funny that
Jeffrey hadn’t mentioned the fact that he’d just been dumped to me
when we’d talked about Maggie that afternoon. It appeared that he’d
taken it pretty hard, too. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d been
angry enough to kill her. I took the card from Lillian and tucked
it into my purse.

Sara Lynn saw what I was doing. “What on
earth are you going to do with that?”

“
You said I should mail it.
I’m going to do one better. I’m going to hand deliver it
myself.”

“
Is that wise?” Lillian
asked.

“
Probably not, but I want to
see what he has to say for himself.”

We were still clearing out the kitchen when
the telephone rang. I reached to pick it up without thinking.

“
Hello?”

In a muffled voice, I heard someone say,
“Get out of there or I’ll kill you all.”

Chapter 14

“
Excuse me,” I said. “What
did you say? I couldn’t understand you. Your voice is too muffled.”
I motioned Lillian and Sara Lynn to me, holding the phone out so
they could hear, too. I had no idea whether it was a man or a
woman. Maybe they’d be able to tell if I got the caller to repeat
the threat.

“
You only get one warning.
Stop this second or you’re all going to die.”

Lillian grabbed the telephone out of my
hands before I could stop her and said, “Grow up, would you? If
you’ve got a problem with what we’re doing, the front door’s
open.”

And then she slammed the phone down.

“
Do you think that was
wise?” Sara Lynn asked. “Whoever was calling was obviously
deranged.”

“
So think of it as a random
crank call,” Lillian said. “Some fool with too much time on her
hands, a bad case of insomnia and a twisted sense of
humor.”