Death of a Garage Sale Newbie (14 page)

When she and Tammy entered Earl’s shop, Ginger spotted two men whose welding helmets made them look like bugs. Earl and the teenager who must be Trevor were hunched in the corner of the shop.

The smaller bug placed the welding rod on one of the arms that came out of the Bobcat while the larger bug watched. From time to time, Earl jerked forward spastically as if he were about to grab the welding rod out of the kid’s hands. But he stopped midspasm and continued to watch.

Tammy had arrived only a few minutes before them. She said she spent the time talking to her mother and calling work. Kindra had offered to get Arleta settled inside, an offer Ginger readily accepted. The aura with the bright lights floating across her field of vision had started. She was still hopeful that she had taken the medication soon enough to at least reduce the migraine’s strength.

Tammy crossed her arms and shook her head, staring across the expanse of the shop; a faint smile formed on her lips. “I don’t suppose there is any way we can get them to notice us.”

Ginger wasn’t sure what to make of this Officer Welstad. She had seemed compassionate that night she had to tell them about Mary Margret. But her actions after that had been contradictory. Maybe the police department really was trying to cover up something, and they had gotten tired of watching Ginger at a distance, so they sent in Tammy to buddy up to her.

And maybe the incident in the parking lot had made her paranoid.

The sparks stopped flying off of Trevor’s welding rod. Both men tilted back their welder’s hats. Trevor rose to his feet, set the rod down, and tore off his heavy welding gloves. “Cool, way cool. Mom, did you see? Mr. Salinski taught me how to weld.”

Trevor continued to bounce around the shop; then he ran back to a corner and grabbed a skateboard, which had a motor mounted on it. He tilted it toward his mom. “Check it out. We used an old board that belonged to one of his sons, but I’m going to do the same to one of my boards.”

“That’s neat. Trev, we’ve got to go. It’s late.” Tammy offered Ginger a furtive glance. “We’ve used up enough of these people’s time.”

He dashed toward his mom. “Mr. Salinski is an inventor. Cool, way cool. Can you bring me out here again tomorrow? He’s like a genius or something. He knows everything.”

“Trev, that’s up to him.”

“Trevor is welcome anytime.” Earl grinned as he wound up an electrical cord and placed it on a hook. “He’s a good hand.” He patted the boy on the back. “Come on, son, we need to put the tools away.” They retreated to the far end of the shop where Earl held up each tool, handed it to Trevor, and pointed to where it needed to go.

Ginger’s heart squeezed tight. Somehow, she had thought that she would be the one learning the names of tools and where they went. She could have alphabetized them.

Tammy put her hands over her mouth. Her voice wavered. “I know this won’t make any sense to you, Mrs. Salinski, but your husband is an answer to prayer.”

Ginger smiled. Whatever Tammy’s motive was for staying close to them, she obviously loved her son.

Contradictory emotions swirled and chugged inside Ginger as she watched Earl give Trevor a friendly punch in the shoulder and hand him another tool. She was glad that Tammy’s prayers about her son had been answered and happy that Trevor thought everything in Earl’s workshop was cool, way cool. It was just that the night she had brought Earl his Stroganoff, she had pictured herself standing where Trevor was standing. Somehow, she thought she’d be the one wearing the extra welding cap and handing Earl his tools. Once she learned the names of them, of course.

Trevor bounded across the shop. Tammy put her arm around her son. “Come on, we better get home. I’ll only be able to get in half a shift, if that.” Worry colored her voice. “Grandma’s waiting up for you.” Trevor dashed out of the door carrying his new motorized skateboard.

Tammy stood in the doorway for a moment watching her son. “Maybe you will reconsider about your friend. I have a few things I can look into, visiting the place where her body was found for one.” She looked Ginger in the eye. “But I sure would appreciate your help.”

Ginger nodded. She was warming up to the idea that Tammy was the real deal. Most people didn’t cry when they talked about prayer being answered if they were just pretending. Perhaps she should tell Tammy about the threat. It would be so nice not to have to keep it to herself.

Ginger pressed her lips together. “I wish I could give you my help, but I can’t.”

Tammy stared as if expecting more explanation.

Ginger was too tired to explain…too tired and too afraid.

The police lady left, closing the door behind her.

Earl continued to work, smiling and shaking his head. “That boy is something, huh?”

“He seems like a nice kid.” Ginger’s heart felt like it had been compressed to microscopic size.

“He’s a quick learner. It’s nice to have some help out here…and some company.”

“I’m happy for both of you.” Her voice lacked commitment. A pain she could not name welled up inside her. That coupled with an impending migraine meant it was going to be a doozy of a night.

Ginger’s eyes shot open
. She blinked several times. She rolled on her side to check the clock. Five-fifteen. She’d only had three hours sleep. No bright spots floated across her field of vision, but her temples throbbed and her forehead felt tight. She’d managed to reduce the full-blown migraine to a stress headache. A welcome exchange. She pulled the covers up to her chin and listened.

Earl snoring beside her drowned out the possibility of hearing anything else. The bed shook on his nasally exhale. An intruder could be in the house stomping around and listening to music, and she wouldn’t hear it.

Earl must have slipped into bed after she’d fallen asleep. His schedule was so erratic, based only on the level of interest he had in the contraption—no, invention—he was working on. She’d seen him go twenty hours without sleep.

She turned over on her side. Earl had found his assistant, and it wasn’t her. She squeezed her eyes shut. She ought to be exhausted. Her dreams had awakened her, and now she was hopelessly alert. After three more minutes of listening to Earl’s impression of a motorboat, she sat up and threw off the covers.

His snoring subsided enough for her to hear a plastic something or other fall off the countertop. Just Phoebe, the monster cat. She played all night. This was how the cat amused herself when she wasn’t sleeping on Ginger’s head. She had grown used to the sound of things being pushed off countertops and display cases in the night. She had long since packed away the breakables.

Ginger rubbed her temples. Her dreams had been of someone watching her, following her in a brownish-gold car, looking at her through binoculars. And then when the man pulled the binoculars away from his eyes, he had no face.

Then she found herself at a dock by a lake. Kindra yelled for help, flailing in the water. Morning mist nearly obscured her from view. The panic in Kindra’s voice had planted fear inside Ginger. The residue of the angst still paralyzed her even though she was awake and aware that it was a dream.

In the dream, Ginger stood on the dock and threw what she thought was a life jacket to her friend, but when she looked down through the clearing mist, she realized it was the vest Mary Margret had bought from Arleta. Kindra’s screams and the splashing of water grew fainter and fainter. The dream had ended the moment she heard water lapping on the shore.

Ginger slipped into her bathrobe and headed toward the family room, where Kindra was sleeping. The nineteen-year-old lay on the couch, one leg stuck out from underneath a fleece blanket with kittens frolicking on it. Her blond hair covered most of her face. Moonlight washed over her pale skin.

She tiptoed across the family room and covered Kindra’s exposed leg with the blanket. The dream didn’t make any sense. Kindra was a wonderful swimmer. Yet Ginger could still feel the tightness in her chest the dream had caused. She listened to Kindra’s soft breathing. Checking on the kid felt so natural. For years, she had gotten up in the night to check on her own four babies.

Phoebe knocked something heavy onto the kitchen floor. With a sigh, Ginger ambled into the kitchen. Her babies were gone, and now all she had was this mutant cat. The feline sat in the middle of the kitchen floor flicking her tail, chin in the air. Mary Margret’s shell box lay on the floor with a few stray shells scattered around it.

Ginger picked up the box and turned it over in her hand before placing it back on the counter. She refolded the vest and flipped through the photo album, shaking her head with each passing photograph. She lingered for a moment by the photo of Arleta and David, arms around each other, surrounded by piles of rocks. They looked so happy.

She slammed the photo album shut. What in this pile of junk had caused Mary Margret to make that frantic phone call? Something horrible, something from the past.

David had been an archaeologist; his whole life had been about looking at the past. None of this made any sense. It was a puzzle with too many pieces missing. Yet Tammy felt strong enough about what she had seen at the police station to track Ginger down in the middle of the night.

She angled the photo of David surrounded by pine trees with the houses and radio tower on the edge. When she had first flipped through the album, this was the photo that struck her as familiar. Maybe it was a place she had visited.

Phoebe strutted to the door, sat back on her haunches, and stared at the doorknob.

“You want to go out, baby?”

Ginger stepped out onto the porch. There was just enough light to make out the silhouette of trees and Earl’s workshop. Was someone watching her now? She zipped her bathrobe to the neck and shoved her hands in its plush pockets. The whispered threat about her friends ran through her brain on a loop.

Lord, what I am supposed to do?

A few hours later, Ginger sat at her table watching Kindra dance around the kitchen while she talked on the phone to Tammy. Had she ever had that much energy? Her muscles were heavy from lack of sleep. Brain fog clouded her thoughts.

Kindra placed a hand over the phone. “Please, Ginger? You’ve got to take me to Suzanne’s anyway. You might as well come out to the archery range.” Kindra pointed the phone like it was a conductor’s baton.

Arleta and Earl sat eating omelets Arleta had whipped up while she told stories of cooking over a fire for an entire archaeology crew. Earl’s eyes were barely-open slits. So far his contribution to the conversation had been three groans and an “uh-huh.” Ginger had learned early in their marriage the he wasn’t technically human until his second cup of coffee.

“Tammy can go rooting around all she wants.” Ginger pushed a piece of omelet across her plate. “I just don’t think it’s going to do any good for us to play Columbo.”

Kindra spoke back into the phone. “Just a second, Tammy. Ginger’s thinking about it.”

Ginger put a hand on her hip. “That’s not what I said, young lady.”

“Just take me to Suzanne’s. Even if you don’t want to continue investigating, we do.” She leaned forward and mouthed, “Pleasepleaseplease.”

“Is Trevor coming with Tammy?” Earl took a bite of toast.

Ginger nearly jumped off her chair at the sound of Earl using actual words.

“I don’t know. Let me ask.” Kindra turned her attention back to the phone.

Arleta glanced at the clock on the wall. “I need to head home and get those shingles on my roof. I can take Kindra into town.”

Kindra said good-bye and hung up the phone. She scooted in beside Ginger at the table. “Tammy says she can bring Trevor. So does that mean you’re taking me, Earl, or is Arleta?” Kindra grabbed a slice of marmalade-slathered toast, tore off tiny pieces, and popped them in her mouth.

Earl rubbed his face and blinked several times. “Why don’t I just take you straight to the archery range, and Suzanne can meet you there. I wouldn’t mind talking to Trevor again.”

Ginger sat up straight in her chair. “You want to talk to Trevor?”

“Yeah, he’s got some good ideas.” The glassiness cleared from his eyes. “He catches on quickly.”

A twinge of jealousy pinched the back of Ginger’s neck. The distance between her chair and Earl’s felt like a million miles. She had good ideas, too.

If Kindra and Suzanne went to the range, they might be in danger. “You know, Kindra. I think I will go with you and Earl.”

“Super-duper. I knew you’d change your mind.” She patted Ginger’s leg. “I’ll call Tammy and Suzanne and have them meet us at the range.”

“Tell me you found the name?” Tammy stood outside Deaver’s house, which featured a fence made of old bicycles and several large antennae on the roof.

Bradley looked different without his white coat. The khakis and the
Star Trek
T-shirt made him look like a bald teenager. He waved a piece of paper in front of her. “It took some doing.”

“How on earth did you track down the name of the hiker who found the Parker woman’s body? Was it embedded on one of the hard drives? Did you piece together the report from the trash?”

“Actually, it was harder than that. I checked the newspaper story that came out a while after she was found.” He handed her the paper. “The one that said it was an accident.”

“Did you have to go to the library?” She had just swung by there with Trevor so he could check out books on engineering and electricity to show Earl.

“No, I save all the newspapers I subscribe to.”

“All?” Tammy pictured a room stacked floor to ceiling with newspapers. Or worse, Bradley cutting out articles that had secret messages hinting of conspiracies and filing them in alphabetical order. She put the brakes on any kinds of thought connected with Deaver’s personal life. She just didn’t need to go there. Bradley was helping her, he could be trusted, and that was all that mattered.

She unfolded the piece of paper. “Remington Shaw. Sounds like a soap opera star.”

“And get this.” Deaver pulled another piece of paper out of his briefcase. “Remington is also a member at the archery range. Here’s the entire list with phone numbers.”

Ah, the legwork Officer Vicher was supposed to have done. She patted his shoulder. “Thanks, Bradley. Maybe I will call this Mr. Shaw and see if he can meet me up at the range.”

Deaver grinned. “Already got it done for you”

“What would I do without you?”

Deaver zipped up his briefcase. “So what did Stenengarter say about your being late for your shift?”

She shrugged. “I have a meeting with him later today. I told him I had an emergency with my son, which was the truth.” She kept her voice even, but the encroaching tension in her back betrayed her calm demeanor.

Deaver rubbed his nose and cracked his knuckles. “Hope it goes okay.”

Tammy waved the membership list. “Thanks for doing all this for me.” She stared at the list of members.

What was a hiker doing wandering around the woods in the middle of the night?

The dirt road that led to the archery range wound around the mountain. The car jostled side to side as Earl drove the single lane.

Ginger stared into the evergreen forest. Mary Margret had died out there, somewhere between the time she made the last phone call close to noon and when her body had been found that night. What had she been doing all that time? Someone must have forced her to drive her car here. But why?