At Wick's End - Tim Myers [20]
After I ate, I decided it was the best time to go through those boxes one last time, and then load them into my truck and get rid of them.
Saving her personal possessions for last, I opened each box of clothing, checked them all one last time, then sorted them into piles. I was surprised to find a crumpled piece of paper in the bottom of one of her pockets. The boldly written note said, “YOU AREN’T GOING TO GET AWAY WITH THIS, I’LL SEE TO THAT.” Now what in the world could that be about? It sounded like a threat to me, and I wondered who’d written Belle such a dramatic note. A sudden thought struck me. Could this note be tied to her death? Had the writer carried through with their threat and pushed Belle off that ladder? Something had been going on in my great-aunt’s life just before she’d died, and I was starting to get the feeling that her accident hadn’t been one after all. I already knew there was no reason for Belle to have been up on that ladder, the boxes of sheet wax on the floor proved that. The note just confirmed my suspicions. How hard would it be to set the scene to make things look like an accident? Belle was older, how old I couldn’t imagine, and I could see the police swallowing the setup, no matter how competent Coburn seemed. If he wasn’t looking for a homicide, would he see Belle’s “accident” for what it was?
I thought about calling him, but I didn’t have enough to go on, certainly not enough for his high level of requirement of proof. But there wasn’t anything to stop me from looking into Belle’s death. I searched the rest of her things for another clue about what might have happened, but there was nothing else that stood out. In the end, I tucked the note in one of Belle’s books and tried to get some sleep. Eve was right; tomorrow’s lesson with Mrs. Jorgenson might be the deciding factor in whether I could afford to keep running At Wick’s End, and I had to be ready for my prize pupil.
The next morning, Eve wouldn’t even let me out on the sales floor. Instead, I practiced making sheets into candles over and over again. Even at our cost, I wasn’t comfortable with how much material I was burning through, but Eve had insisted in the end it would pay off. After a while, I needed a breather, so I went into our office and leafed through the candlemaking book I should have studied the night before. It still couldn’t hold my attention though; I was focusing on what might have happened to Belle. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that someone had stolen the last few years of her life. I was still sitting at the desk thinking about how I was going to prove it when Eve stuck her head into the office after knocking once.
“Mrs. Jorgenson’s been waiting out front for five minutes,” she said in a hushed whisper, as if announcing the arrival of a pope or a president.
“Why didn’t you let me know?” I asked.
“She’s been shopping and I’ve been helping her, but I think she’s getting restless. Harrison, you can’t keep her waiting,” Eve said insistently.
“Then I guess we’d better get started,” I said as I closed the book.
I found Mrs. Jorgenson browsing the store shelves, picking up a candle now and then, studying it, then handing it to Eve, who was again waiting by her side with a basket nearly full of candles.
“I trust we’re ready to begin,