The Other Side - J. D. Robb [135]
“My wife says some things just need a woman’s touch. I guess that dang lock is one of them, huh?” Mr. Brown joined her in the vestibule, looking around, nodding his head, his hands on his hips. “I’ll get the moving crew back in here first thing Monday morning to remove the items on the list you sent me. I’ve lined up a good antique dealer for the rest of this stuff. My team can come in Tuesday and start the salvage. If that works for you . . . ”
Nodding vaguely, she was still wrapped up in the odors that hadn’t faded in her olfactory receptors.
“In fact, I can take those two little tea tables you want shipped to Florida right now. You said to rush them?”
“Mmm, I did, to in-laws from my mother’s third marriage.” She was staring at a photographed portrait of the three sisters hanging in the hall and speaking absently. “She stole them during the divorce, but I guess she didn’t want to take the grudge too far beyond her grave. They’ve been calling. . . . ” She paused. “They all looked so young here.”
He nodded noncommittally. “I can drop them off at the postal business center tonight . . . the tables, I mean . . . or first thing Monday morning on my way back here. They’ll box ’em up and ship ’em. Insure ’em, too.”
“That’s fine. Thank you.”
He hurried off to fetch a classic eighteenth-century Massachusetts reverse serpentine tilt-top tea table and an American Chippendale from the same era. She ambled down the hall, her high heels clicking in the silence, toward the big kitchen at the back of the house renovated—made bigger and updated—almost fifty years earlier for her aunt Odelia, who’d loved to cook.
The scent of apples and cinnamon grew stronger, thick like a palpable thing. She stopped and turned with the distinct impression she was being watched. “Creepy old house, you’ll be whistling a different tune next week, I promise you.”
“You talkin’ to me, ma’am?” Mr. Brown met her in the hallway coming from the small parlor.
“No.” She looked him over. “Why are you out of breath? Are you ill?”
“No, ma’am—”
“M.J.”
“But I’m plenty embarrassed to tell you . . . well, it’s the damnedest thing, but considering the lock and the windows and all, and what I told you before . . . I guess I just assumed that once we got the door open . . . ”
“What is it, Mr. Brown?” She was down to her last drop of patience.
“I can’t lift the tables.” She stared at him until he finally looked away. “I also can’t push them, and the little doily deal and candy dish on the one in the living room won’t come off. Queer as snow in July, is all I’m sayin’.”
“No, what you’re saying makes even less sense than that.” She stepped around him, heading for the living room. “It makes no sense at all.”
She strode up to the mahogany claw-and-ball-foot tea table where the scent of baby powder tickled her nose and all but made her sneeze. Taking the faded old crochet doily in one hand and the small crystal bowl in the other, she lifted them off the table . . . rather tried to lift them off, but they wouldn’t budge. They wanted to, she could feel a tiny bit of give, but it was as if something was holding them in place. She pried up the edges of the doily to see if some idiot had glued them to the table.
“Is there a light in here?” The sun had yet to set, but it was dark and gloomy in the house.
“Power’s off, but I’ve got a flashlight out in my truck.”
And he was out the door. M.J. could sense his trail of relief and didn’t blame him. She hadn’t been able to shake the sensation of being watched, but it didn’t feel . . . well, it didn’t feel threatening, like being watched by a stalker or someone who meant her harm might. It didn’t make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up or call on her instinctive alarm to run. Still, it wasn’t entirely comfortable, so she whispered out loud, “It’s rude to stare at people, especially if they’re not allowed to stare back.”
“There, you see? I told you she’d catch on quickly.” It was