Chapter Thirty-three.

            Angie stood, heart pounding, with her back against the front door. She knew enough not to turn her back on whoever, whatever, hid in the darkness.

            What had she really seen when the door to the apartment opened?  Nothing but a crooked gray shape, barely there at all. Angie had half-blinded herself with the flashlight beam, yet she had seen the figure twist away and flee into the black beyond.

            And there was this: the shape had had a voice; a distinctive, feeble and frantic voice.

“Help me,” it had pleaded. “It’s dark in here. I’m scared.”

            It had been a logical assumption that the apartment was dark because the lights had gone out during the storm. But perhaps, all was not what it seemed. She reached behind her with her left arm, then her right arm, until she found a wall switch. She flipped it up.

            The overhead fixture in the front hallway snapped on, pinning Angie under its sick yellow light. But the light did not make the dark disappear; instead the dark had retreated and regrouped in the rooms beyond, as if waiting to see how brave, or foolish, this interloper might be.

            Not so brave. It was time to get out.

            Angie turned her body just enough to locate the knob of the door and turn it. She was breathing heavily; her heart lurched back and forth between her chest and her throat.

            She turned the knob, and backed out into the hallway.

            Angie took note of the signs of the retreating storm outside: the wind was far less fierce, and the rain had softened. The thunder had rolled out and the pyrotechnics seemed over for the here and now.        

            That fact did not make the dark hallway any less intimidating. The falling night had stolen any daylight the storm had left behind, and the small window in the stairwell was a gray rectangle. The air had not been freshened by the storm; it was as stale and suffocating as before, still noxious  with mold and mildew. Angie imagined the air had even sucked up her panicked breaths and added them to the ghostly exhalations of every creature who had ever had to live in these sorry surroundings.

            She pivoted, ready to sprint down the hall back to the down staircase. Then she saw that the door directly across the hall was open, just a crack.

            Had it been open before?

            Angie didn’t think so.

 

            She fearfully raced through the possibilities. The obvious explanation was that the door had been open all along. The second, really terrifying explanation was that someone else was up here on the second floor. If that were the case, then the obvious person would be Paul Tillinghast. He owned the place, after all. The second, more terrifying possibility was Susan Novak was here. She had spotted Susan Novak on Wickenden Street just hours ago. Would she prefer Paul Tillinghast were here or Susan Novak?

            Susan Novak was clearly dangerous: a burglar, a thief, an imposter and heaven knew what else. Paul Tillinghast, on the other hand, was her boss, a nice man and a respected Providence business owner. Then again, Angie would be obliged to explain to her nice boss why she was sneaking around the second floor of his building…again. Of course, he would probably just fire her, not kill her, ha-ha, and yet:

            Angie had never been quite convinced that Paul had nothing to do with the theft of her mirror.

             Nevertheless, all things considered, she would rather, if it were anybody, it be Paul Tillinghast inside that room and not Ms. Susan Novak. Particularly since she had already decided (against her best instincts and despite all the horror movies she had ever seen which proved over and over how nothing good ever comes from such actions) that she was going to take just a little peek into the room across the hall.

            Another thought came to her as she moved towards the door. Maybe the little old lady wasn’t a ghost, but just a frightened person running from the dark and the unknown? Maybe she had somehow slipped through the apartment door behind Angie’s back, and hidden herself inside this room across the hall.

            Or, maybe the little old lady was a ghost, and she wanted to play hide-and-seek…

 

            Angie gingerly nudged the door. She was stunned when the door swung wide open so fast that it felt as if someone had yanked it from the other side.

            That terror was nothing compared to the shock of what she saw inside the darkened room beyond.

            So many people! Staring back at her, mouths wide open.

 

 

 

Chapter Thirty-two.

 

        Before Angie could respond (although she was so shocked by the desperate voice on the other side of the door that she probably wouldn’t have been able to anyway) the hallway again exploded with a blinding light, and the crash that followed was so violent Angie stood paralyzed with fright. She felt exposed and vulnerable in the dark hallway, opposite the stairwell window.  A lightning bolt could stab through the glass, maybe, and strike her where she stood.

            Angie’s own mother had been deathly afraid of thunderstorms. When a storm hit, she made Angie get off the phone. Nobody was allowed to take a shower or even get a glass of water from the tap. Anything electric, including (especially) the TV, got switched off, and the plugs pulled out of the wall for good measure.

            Angie’s mother’s fear of thunderstorms stemmed from a terrifying incident in her childhood. Angie’s mother was alone in the house, doing her homework at the dining room table. The sky was an ominous purple; the room grew darker and darker. She heard the porch swing squeak wildly in the accelerating wind, accompanied by a fast-approaching rumble of thunder. Far from frightened, she told Angie, she was secretly thrilled by the dramatic weather. She felt like the heroine of a gothic novel.

           “It was a dark and stormy night…”

           Suddenly, a ball of lightning shot through the dining room window, blazed straight down the center of the table and then blasted out through the front window with a loud pop. Angie’s mother wasn’t hurt. But from that point on, she was, understandably, petrified of thunderstorms, and she passed a measure of her phobia on to her daughter.

            As the thunder faded, Angie could hear the voice again on the other side of the door; frantic and tearful.

            “The lights went out! It’s so dark! I’m all alone, help me!”

            Angie put her mouth to the crack of the door and said, “Open the door, and I will help you!”

            There was a silence.

            “Are you a stranger?” the voice whispered.

            “No,” Angie reassured the voice. “I work in the shop downstairs. Let me help you. Let me in.”

            A split second later, another, even more intense flash of lightning saturated the hallway. A heartbeat later: another earthshaking boom. Angie pictured the storm spinning over the shop with a single-minded malevolence.  

            The thunder subsided into ominous rumbling, and the voice from the other side of the door whimpered pitifully.  

            “Let me in,” Angie said softly but urgently. “I’ll help you. I will. All you have to do is open the door.” She still had the ring of keys in her other hand, but even if she found the key to the apartment door, she couldn’t use it now, not when somebody was inside. That would be a home invasion, wouldn’t it? Even if she was trying to help the person inside? Reluctantly, Angie slipped the ring of keys into her tote bag. She could only hope that the person on the other side would open the door of her own volition. And that the new door lock didn’t need to be keyed from the inside to open. Whoever was there sounded too scared and helpless to hunt for a key and wrestle with locks.

            Then she heard a tentative twist of the knob, and the door slowly opened inward, not wide, but enough for Angie to discern a tiny, stooped shape in the gloom, no taller than her shoulder. She couldn’t see a face. But she was pretty sure that the person in front of her was female, and elderly. Frail, and somehow, insubstantial.

            Angie had her flashlight in hand, still switched on but angled down toward the floor. She didn’t want to shine it directly in the face of this little person just to see what she looked like. This lady already seemed traumatized enough. So Angie shined the beam up and under her own chin, hoping to allay the woman’s fears.         
            See, I’m harmless!

Her action had the exact opposite effect.

 The old lady wailed in terror and threw up her arms to push the door closed.

             Angie said “No, no! It’s okay, it’s okay!” and slid her foot quickly over the doorsill before the

door could slam shut.

              Stupid, stupid! she told herself. With your face lit from underneath you must have looked like a graveyard ghoul, come to suck her blood.

              The door whacked the inside of Angie’ right ankle, which really smarted, then it bounced back and opened wide.

              The little old lady twisted away with a cry of panic. She took a few desperate, shuffling steps into the interior of the apartment and then the darkness swallowed her whole.

              Angie walked in; closed the door, and went to look for her.

              
             Who was this person, and what was she doing in this apartment? Angie wondered. Paul had not mentioned he had a new tenant, and after all that had happened, surely he would have?

             The apartment was far darker than it should have been, she realized. The last time she was here, the kitchen windows let in light and noise from the street. Even with the storm, shouldn’t it be brighter in here?

             Remembering the apartment layout: kitchen dead ahead, living room to the right, bedroom to the left; Angie walked straight back to the kitchen. She saw immediately that the sheer curtains which had hung from the windows and back door were gone; replaced with thick dark shades, pulled down past the sills. The former clutter of objects on the counters was gone, too.

              The little old lady was not in the kitchen. The next likely place was the bedroom. Angie walked out of the kitchen but paused for a moment at the threshold of the tiny living room. She played her flashlight around the room. It appeared exactly as it had the last time Angie had been in the apartment: a tidy, squared off arrangement of worn sofa and chairs, a scratched wooden coffee table, and a half empty bookshelf. It seemed obvious that nobody, including the little old lady, actually lived here.

                But whoever she was, and why ever she was here, she needed help.

                Angie turned and walked quietly across the front hallway to the bedroom. The door to the bedroom and bathroom wing was open. The bedroom door was open; inside it was completely dark.  The person had to be hiding either in that room, or the bathroom, or possibly in a closet. Angie cautiously opened the closet door between the bedroom and bathroom, and shone her flashlight up and down. It was obviously a linen storage closet with sheets and towels stacked neatly on the lower shelves; spare blankets and bed pillows stowed away on the top shelves. No room to hide.

                Angie closed the closet door, and her flashlight beam caught a framed portrait on the wall full-on.

                The hologram.

                She had forgotten how genuinely creepy it was; how the three dimensional images were constantly moving and morphing as if inside the frame were real people; trapped alive under the glass. The twin images were dressed in what looked like the identical black suit; though one was wearing a scarf of some kind, and one wasn’t.  Two colorless eyes stared into Angie’s; then, when she moved slightly to the right and shifted her angle of focus, the head swiveled and the eyes turned away. Both expressions, empty, emotionless; reminded Angie of  nineteenth century death portraits in which deceased family members are formally propped up and posed for all eternity.

              The subjects, Angie knew now, were Peter and Paul, identical twins; separated at birth. Peter stayed with his mother, Paul was taken away by his father. How was it decided who would stay and who would go? Which boy would grow up poor in his mother’s arms, and which would be raised in the lap of luxury? Did the mother agree to the separation of her twins, or was she too powerless to stop it?

              Angie stepped back from the picture and turned away from the portrait of a family tragedy. She needed to find the little old lady.

              As she stepped into the bedroom, a lightning flash illuminated the room for long enough that Angie could see that no one was hiding there, at least not in plain sight. The thunder followed a beat or two later. Perhaps the storm was beginning to move away. But the ominous growling of the thunder as it receded made Angie shiver.

              Apparently it frightened the old lady, too, who betrayed her hiding place by whimpering in a low voice, “Oh, oh…”

              Angie was pretty sure the voice was emanating from the bedroom closet. The same clothes closet where, the last time Angie was here, she saw, or thought she saw, a man hiding; his shoes sticking out from beneath a jumble of hanging clothes.

              Angie opened the door, the closet smelled of mothballs and cedar; of must and dust. It was still crowded with a thicket of hanging clothes. The shelf above held a few colorful round hatboxes with ribbons for handles and plain brown cardboard containers. Covering the floor were layers of women’s shoes, once neatly paired, now falling into disorder. The shoes were an array of fashioned ladies’ shoes of vintages ranging from the thirties to the fifties; the kind of shoes her grandmother and mother would have worn. She saw no men’s shoes. She saw no little old lady. She pushed the clothes aside as well as she could; and thrust her hand in until it hit the back wall of the closet. She felt along from one end to the other. Nobody was in the closet.

              She could have sworn the voice had come from the closet. Well, maybe from under the bed. She looked under the bed.

              No.

              Now what, now where? The bathroom?

              Angie left the bedroom and walked into the bathroom. Unlike in a horror movie, the shower curtain was open. The tub was empty. For no good reason, Angie opened the medicine cabinet. That was empty, too.

She backed out of the bathroom and decided to search the apartment again. The little old lady was here.  Had she left through the front door or the back? No, Angie thought, I heard her!

              She looked again in the kitchen, in the living room, and again in the bathroom and bedroom.

              Nobody.

              Finally a chilling thought occurred to Angie.
              Maybe there is no little old lady.

              Maybe I am chasing a ghost.

 

Chapter Thirty-One.

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Angie waited a moment and heard no sound on the other side of the door. She didn’t really expect to; but this odd old building had surprised her before. Her gaze dropped to the lock and she saw with dismay that it was brand new. Paul had replaced the lock sometime during the last week. She trained her flashlight on it and saw that it was a Medeco brand lock. She knew Medeco locks were expensive and virtually impregnable. Now what? Now nothing; unless the key to the new lock was also on the key ring.

            She transferred her flashlight to her left hand and shined the beam on the ring of keys in her right hand; sorting through them awkwardly, looking for a Medeco stamped key that looked shiny and new.

            Suddenly came a stunning flash of lightning that lasered through the high window in the stairwell and lit up the dark hallway; then a deafening crack of thunder followed so quickly after it seemed that the two events happened simultaneously.

            Angie jumped; and her heart began to pound. The storm was here. She could feel it, smell it, roiling over the rooftop, revving up for another strike. She waited; it would come any second now.

            But instead of a flash and crash of light and noise, she heard a soft whimper from behind the door of the apartment.

            “Help me. I’m scared…” it said.

 

Chapter Thirty.

 

            Before venturing up the stairs that led to the second floor of Lost and Found, Angie went to the room where Paul kept the hundreds of black binders detailing, or so he had told her, all the transactions of the shop for the last fifty plus years of its existence. The room was windowless, but she could hear the thrum of rain on the roof and the low rumble of thunder as the storm rolled into Providence.

The last time she'd been in this room, she realized that she could never find the book that had the details of the purchase of the mirror without knowing the item number. Then it dawned on her that the item number must be in Paul's computer. So as soon as he left for his business trip she logged in and scrolled back to February and found the record of the sale.  

Item #685243; picture mirror, $95, to A. Russo, 140 Benefit St., Prov. RI

            That entry was what led Susan Novak to my house, Angie thought. So Paul had to have been involved; she doubted Susan Novak would be able to access the computer records. Paul, realizing too late that he had sold Angie a very valuable piece for a relative pittance, must have given Novak Angie’s address and let her do the dirty work.

            Angie studied the item number. She remembered Paul telling her he had to go back to a 1952 ledger to cross reference the sale. Let’s assume, she thought, that this item number contains the year, month and day of the transaction, plus a transaction or item number.

The number contained a 52, did that refer to 1952? If so, it narrowed her search down considerably; but what did the numbers surrounding it mean? Did they indicate that the mirror was acquired on June 8^th, or on April 3^rd? Did the two number prefix reveal the exact date of original purchase, or did the suffix? Or neither?

And was an item number, an inventory number, embedded in that series of numerals? It made sense.

            During her months working in the shop, Angie had taken numerous calls from people wishing to sell everything from an “antique” rake to a stuffed owl. She always referred those callers to Paul, if he was there, and if not, took down their phone numbers or email addresses.

Was the mirror part of an estate sale containing many items; or simply a single purchase on a very busy day? Did some poor soul (Angie pictured a bowed but proud old lady in a shawl) come through the door of the shop, make her way timidly to Paul, and inquire whether he would be interested in buying “this beautiful picture mirror, in excellent condition, sir, as you can see…”

Maybe Paul Tillinghast was known on the street as the “mirror man.”

Angie imagined the old lady’s next words.

“This mirror belonged to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, yes it really did, sir, the beautiful girl who married that red-headed senator from Massachusetts? She gave it to me as a gift. She summers at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, with her mother. I used to work there. I was only a housemaid but she took a liking to me, and she knew I admired this mirror. I told her once that the picture reminded me of my Ma and Da. When I had to leave my position because of my rheumatism…” here the old lady tried to straighten her back, wincing in pain, “she gave it to me out of the sweetness of her heart.”

              Her voice wavered. “It means the world to me, but…”

Her pale eyes filled with tears then, and Paul Tillinghast took pity on her. Maybe he discounted her story that the mirror had belonged to Jackie Kennedy, whoever that was. But he bought the mirror for a dollar, or two or three, and figured that he had done his good deed for the day.     

              But even if Paul had never heard of Jackie Kennedy in 1952, wouldn’t he, sometime during the turbulent years ahead, remember the mirror and the old lady’s story? And reconsider the value of that little picture mirror?

 In any case, the question remained: did the number refer to a particular lot containing many items, or did Paul assign each individual piece its own number? The answer would bring Angie that much closer to finding the name of the person who had sold the mirror to Paul all those decades ago?

            As Angie scanned the spines of the binders, as she reached up on tiptoes to see the top binders and crouched down to examine the bottom shelves, she realized with dismay that there were no binders marked by numbers which had 52 in the middle. Had they been stolen, too, by Susan Novak? Or did the answer lie between the loose leaf pages of some other binder? No matter; she had no time now to look further. Searching the upstairs apartment had to be her priority. And while she didn’t expect Paul would return to the shop after his trip, he might. He just might. So she had to go upstairs now.

            Angie turned off the lights in the records room and closed the door. She stood at the threshold of the darkened shop towards the windows. It was only half past five by her watch but outside it looked black as night. The storm was nearly here.

Angie went over to the locked door leading to the second floor, got out the ring of keys and found the one she needed. She hesitated a moment before turning the key in the lock. Should she turn on the alarm first?

 No, better not.  She had no idea what, or who, she might encounter; nor by which door she might have to escape. But she did flick the switch that barely illuminated the back hallway, and then all was dark.

            Angie opened her tote bag, felt around for her cell phone to confirm it was still there, and she drew out the flashlight, switched it on and transferred it to her left hand. With her right hand, she turned the key in the lock and opened the door and slowly climbed the musty, humid stairwell, training her flashlight on each riser as she ascended.

           

            The second floor hallway was stiflingly hot and a dense, almost tangible, gray. The air felt like something between a gas and a liquid. Angie wished she were outside on Wickenden Street, standing in the freshening wind and the cleansing rain of the descending thunderstorm.

            Anywhere but this creepy place.

            But she was on a mission; to find her mirror or a clue to where it had gone. So she went directly to the apartment door, and knocked.

             

 

Chapter Twenty-nine.

 

            The afternoon dragged for Angie; only two customers came in, together, looked around for no more than a minute or two, then politely said “Thank you!” and left.

Sometimes, usually when she first walked in on a Saturday morning after a week away from the shop, Angie was able to see this place through the eyes of the customers: the antique hunters and decorators and tourists who wandered in. What did they see? What she saw: dirt, dust and disorder; clutter and chaos; and absolutely no attempt to showcase the elegance of its beautiful, aging things.

For a man with an apparently sterling reputation in the antique business, Paul Tillinghast had let Lost and Found deteriorate into an insultingly overpriced junk shop, a tourist trap, an endless indoor yard sale.

Angie couldn’t, but desperately wanted, to go poke around in the records room to look at the ledgers again, and search for the keys. She had already pawed through Paul’s antique desk a dozen times with no success. 

Either Paul kept his keys on his person (and the idea of sartorial Paul carrying around a janitorial sized cluster of keys in his tailored slacks was ludicrous) or he left his keys at home. That didn’t seem logical to Angie. Would Paul want to run home if he needed to lock or unlock any door on any floor in an emergency? No. The keys, or at least their duplicates, were here somewhere.

            After her initial frenzied search of the downstairs rooms for sneaky Susan Novak, she had grabbed another chair, this time a cane-backed dining room side chair, and propped open the front door with it. Maybe Susan Novak would come by again. She sat in the chair, half out in the humidity and half in the marginally cooler air which periodically gasped from the ancient air conditioning system. In the late afternoon, Angie gazed up with dismay at an increasingly darkening sky. Thunderclouds were forming; at a distance, but their destination was clearly Providence.

That figures, Angie thought. On top of everything else, it will be a dark and stormy night.

She waved to Mario, who was back on his end table in front of the futon shop.

            “Still a BOLO for Courtney Cox?” he called out.

            It took Angie a few seconds to realize what BOLO meant.

 Be On the Lookout…

            “Yes,” she said, “faded jeans and a red tank top.”

            “Lady in Red,” Mario said, nodding vigorously. “I’m on her. I mean, I’m on it…”

 

            Angie spent most of her downtime taking mental inventory of what she knew for sure, what she strongly suspected, and what could plausibly but improbably have happened to her “Tom and Angie” mirror, as she had come to think of it.

She knew the mirror had been stolen. Not lost, misplaced or sucked into another dimension. Somebody had taken it, but why?

Because it had value. Monetary, sentimental, or both.

Somebody had taken it, but who?

Her list of suspects had originally included Callie Price, Paul Tillinghast, Susan Novak, and running a distant fourth and fifth: the mother and daughter owners of the antique shop in Newport.

She had eliminated Callie. She didn’t seriously suspect the mother and daughter shop owners, although she planned to drive to Newport tomorrow with Wes and check out both the owners and the inventory in their shop.

She thought it entirely possible that Paul Tillinghast was involved in the theft. But her number one suspect was Susan Novak/Slater.

What else did she know?

She knew she heard music, at random times, playing from somewhere above. “You don’t Know Me…”

She knew that on one dark evening she had touched the shoulder of a living human being standing motionless, hiding in plain sight, in the shadows of the dark and cluttered shop. And she also knew that on another evening, not so long ago, she had glimpsed a reflection in the crazed and clouded glass of a distant mirror; a frightening image with lifeless expression and soulless eyes.

           

By closing time, the wind was snapping at the fringes of the shop’s tattered awning and the sky had turned a bruised purple. Not a soul had come in for hours. Angie pulled in the chair and went out the front door, locked it behind her and pocketed her key. Wickenden Street was deserted. Mario was gone. Angie made her way up the street, against the wind, to her car, which was parked near Adler’s Hardware. She pressed the auto unlock on her keychain; and her taillights, like faithful servants, signaled back.

            Angie got into her car, started it, made a reckless u-turn and drove slowly back down the street; past Brook, left onto Hope Street, and then crawled along until she found a new parking space near the French restaurant Rue de L’Espoir. (Angie had just recently, to her private embarrassment, realized that the name of the restaurant basically translated to “Hope Street.”)

She left her car, and rounded the corner back up Wickenden towards the shop. As she went, she scrutinized the drivers of the cars passing by. She checked out the few pedestrians on both sides of the street and recognized nobody. No Paul, no Susan, no strangers with paste-white skin and bottomless black eyes.

It was just after five o’clock. It was time to lock up, and find out a thing or two.

 

            Angie wanted it to appear as if she had locked and left the shop and gone home. That was why she’d moved her car. Paul knew her car, and so did Susan Novak.

But before she turned off the lights in the shop she needed to find the keys.

            She gathered together the cash and checks and credit card receipts, a sadly skimpy packet for a Saturday in summer, and went back to the safe and pushed them far to the back of the shelf. She felt around the nooks and crannies of the safe for a key or keys, but she didn’t expect to find anything.

She didn’t. She shut the door to the safe, and twirled the combination lock.

            So, not in his desk. Not in the safe.

            If I were Paul, where would I hide my keys? Not up front anywhere, inside a vase or in the drawer of desk or bureau: a customer might find them. Somewhere in the glass cabinets where he kept the more valuable jewelry and his rare first edition books? She had the keys to most of those cases, so she unlocked them one by one and searched; even riffled the pages of the books in case a key was hidden there.    

Then she considered: what if there is not just one key, but a series of keys, each of which opens in turn a box, a drawer, a cabinet, a closet…until finally the master key is found: The One Key that opens every door on the mysterious second floor?

Too Tolkien, Angie!. But for some reason it inspired her to go back up front and run her hand underneath Paul’s antique desk; in case a key was taped to the underside.

Uh-uh.

Angie suddenly recalled a long ago wedding anniversary when she had become convinced, nay, obsessed, with the notion that Tom had bought her diamond earrings. She could not wait until he presented them to her; and she had to find them now, wherever he had hidden them. She did not embark on a search. She simply stood stock still in the middle of their bedroom and pondered the question: If I were Tom, where would I hide an expensive present for my wife?

She went directly into his closet, as if led by a spirit guide, and in the pocket of the second suit jacket she touched, she found the velvet box.

With that incident in mind, Angie went out into the hall and down to the very back of the building, where a collection of foul weather and emergency gear was stored in a small utility closet. Inside were a couple of pairs of galoshes, a broom, a snow shovel, a fire extinguisher, a big bottle of antifreeze; plus two rain slickers and two wool hats with ear flaps, hanging on pegs.

Twos by twos. One for Peter, one for Paul?

She scooped her hand into the left pocket of one slicker and came up empty. Inside the right pocket she fished out a fat ring of keys.

Despite her triumph, she felt slightly ashamed. I’m a big fat snoop! This is not an attractive quality, Angie Russo! Where did this come from?

From her childhood, of course, when she had doggedly unearthed pretty much every hidden gift her parents had bought her for her birthdays, her graduations, and of course, for Christmas. She unfailingly found the boxes; she shook and rattled them, she analyzed their shapes and sizes; and occasionally, tormented by the need to absolutely know what was within; she would peel back a flap of gift wrap to make a solid ID, then clumsily tape the box back up again.

“Oh, my!” her sweet, unsuspecting mother would sing out on Christmas morning, kneeling beside the Christmas tree. “This one’s for Angie…and look at the tag, it’s from Santa! I wonder what it could be?”

Little Angie said to herself: It’s an Easy Bake Oven, and it’s not from Santa, it’s from the top shelf of the cedar closet in the front hall, behind Daddy’s box of old opera records…

 

OK, now she had keys, but to what? Angie had one more impossible task to accomplish before she went upstairs, but first she needed to know if one of these keys actually opened the door to the second floor.

Some keys could be eliminated immediately. She recognized the key to the front door. Two were car keys; to a Ford and a Lincoln. A couple looked like padlock keys; a couple were likely strong box keys. Some were post-office box keys; interesting…

There were even two old skeleton keys. But an obvious few were door keys, and these she tried in the lock to the second floor door one by one: some would not go into the lock; a couple would slip into the lock but refuse to turn, and then finally!...she found the key that fit the lock and also smoothly turned aside the tumbler.

She opened the door as silently and slowly as she could, just the merest crack; just to make sure this was indeed the right key.

After all, Susan Novak might be upstairs, hiding, biding her time; listening intently for any sound: the beep of the alarm, the slamming of the front door, that would let her know that she was finally alone in the shop…or perhaps, that she was about to have some company…

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-eight.               

 

            Susan Novak was headed in the direction of the shop, walking on the right side of the crowded sidewalk. Angie was gazing idly down over the rail, eating pie and people watching. Susan Novak just happened to look up and to her right as she passed the deck of the Coffee Exchange deck, and their eyes locked, first casually, and then in eyes-wide, mutual shock. The look on Susan Novak’s face was definitely deer-caught-in-the-headlights, while Angie looked as if she’d suddenly sighted a unicorn. It took a couple of seconds for both of them to do anything; Novak was the first to recover and broke into a fast walk. Then Angie did a crazy thing; she yelled “Hey! Hey!” and jumped up, grabbed her tote bag, not by its handles, unfortunately and as a result, spilled most of its contents on the deck floor.

            “Oh, damn, damn!” she exclaimed, as she got down on all fours to grab her cell phone, her flashlight and her water bottle.  By the time she picked up everything she could find and made a quick urgent inventory of the contents of her bag, Susan Novak was long gone. Angie scrambled down the stairs from the deck and followed in the direction the young woman had gone, towards the shop.

            What if she is at the shop now? What if she is using her key to get inside?

Angie hurried, hyperventilating in frustration as she tried to maneuver around knots of strolling tourists, obviously in no hurry on this lovely summer day.  She did not see Susan Novak, but then again: Wickenden Street had plenty of side streets, alleys and narrow driveways she could have ducked into.

            When Angie finally reached the door of Lost and Found, she immediately twisted the door knob to make sure the shop was still locked.

            “Hey, gorgeous!”

            Angie turned in the direction of the voice and saw Mario, the gorgeously handsome salesman from the futon shop next door, sitting on a particle board end table, head back against the front wall of his shop.

            “Mario!” Angie walked over to him and said urgently: “Did you by any chance see an attractive young woman here at the shop? Just a few seconds ago?”

            “Scarlett Johannson or Halley Berry?”

            Angie had to laugh. “More like Courtney Cox.”

            “Absolutely not,” Mario shook his head definitively. “I saw Paris Hilton, Jessica Alba and Salma Hayek. That’s all. It’s been a slow day.”

            “You call that a slow day?” Angie said.

            Mario shrugged and grinned. “But I saw you today, beautiful Angie. Now my day is complete…”

            Angie kissed him lightly on the cheek, and walked the few steps next door to Lost and Found, turned the key and went in, waving at Mario as she entered the dark, damp maw of the shop on Wickenden Street.

When Angie got inside the shop, she closed the door firmly, turned the sign in the window from Closed to Open, and went directly to the alarm panel and disarmed it. Then she went to the cash register to make sure the morning’s receipts: cash, checks and credit card slips, were still there.

 They were.

Then she went over to the right side wall of mirrors, and opened the double doors (quickly!) to the huge wardrobe she had inspected before.

It was empty.

Angie walked again to the back, past the alarm panel and to the little break room where she stashed her personal items. She put her tote bag in the cabinet under the sink, out of sight.  As she passed back through the back rooms to the front of the shop, she jiggled the knob of the door that led to the second floor.

It was locked.

So far, so good.

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-seven.

           The wardrobe was empty, of course. If this was indeed the hiding place, then the culprit had left nothing behind: not a button or a butt or a crumpled gas receipt, the way they always do in detective novels. The armoire, or chifferobe or wardrobe, whatever you wanted to call it, was a huge piece; maybe seven feet tall on the outside, counting the decorative pediment. Inside was such a large open space Angie would not have been surprised to find the entrance to Narnia on the other side. The interior was about six feet in height, perhaps a foot and a half in depth. A shelf and hanging bar at the top made it too short to stand up in, but it was certainly roomy and solid enough to hold a crouching person; Angie got inside herself to be sure. She fit in very neatly and could even sit down sideways; albeit with her knees drawn uncomfortably up against her chest. She left the doors open. With her luck, if she pulled the doors shut, she wouldn’t be able to open them again and be forced to spend the night folded inside this walnut sarcophagus. Try explaining that to Paul Tillinghast when (and if) he returned to the shop tomorrow to catch up on his paperwork!

            This wardrobe was the logical hiding place, cattycorner as it was to the mirror in which she had glimpsed that hideous white face. Angie felt it was more likely that the person had come down from the second floor for two reasons. If the intruder was Susan Slater/Novak, she couldn’t masquerade as a customer because she would be recognized. Even more telling: the door to the upper floors had been ajar. But if Susan Novak had come down those stairs, then how had she gotten up there to begin with? Front door or second floor, either way she’d need a key. Which was why Angie had to assume that Paul was involved. Even though, for the life of her, she could not figure out why he needed an accomplice to invade his own shop.

            But wait a minute! Suddenly it occurred to Angie that maybe Susan Novak didn’t need Paul to give her keys. She had once worked here. She could have made copies of the keys back then without Paul’s knowledge. And not knowing, he would have no reason to change the locks after she left. Perhaps he never changed the alarm code either, in all this time. So maybe she knows that, too. This was a very clever and resourceful young woman; after all, hadn’t she wormed her way into Angie’s house and Westerly’s affections; memorized the alarm code and stolen her housekey to boot? Then brazenly returned to bribe Wes with a forbidden bone and steal the mirror? This could be her M.O!

            Angie was anxious to search the second floor apartment again; although she didn’t really believe her mirror was hidden there. Yet she was convinced something was hiding there, and knowing what and why might lead her to her mirror. Paul wasn’t off the hook, yet.

Angie had to wait until closing to get started. This time she had prepared for the worst. She had asked Dr. Mike, who would be home all day, if he would please walk Westerly around 11 and again at 6 if she still wasn’t back. Her cell phone, fully charged, was in her tote bag along with a flashlight, a granola bar and a bottle of water. Now all she had to do was remember to take the tote bag.

            But planning or no, without the keys to the stairway and the apartment (if Paul had replaced the broken lock) the search was off.

            Business was brisk throughout the morning, the beautiful weather and inviting open door lured dozens of passersby. During the few lulls when the shop was empty, Angie sat down in the wicker chair propping open the door, and savored the sunshine and the fresh air. She waved at the other merchants she had come to know; some by their shops and some by their names: the male couple who ran the Shagdeli, Brian and Shawn, whose affectionate nicknames on the street were Brains and Brawn, were two of her favorites. Angie never saw hide nor hair of the owner of Exhale, the head shop, but she knew the manager Allie well; a blonde wisp of a girl who looked sixteen but was almost thirty and a single mom. Angie's granddaughter Shea and Allie's daughter were the same age, so they usually made toddler talk and pulled out their latest pics. Angie had wandered into Exhale one day out of sheer curiosity, after all, she was a child of the sixties! The shop was tiny, smaller than Angie’s kitchen, and every shelf and glass case was filled to overflowing with bongs, pipes, waterpipes, hookahs and old school items like Bambu rolling papers and roach clips. Angie wondered at first how marijuana could still be illegal but the obvious means to smoke it could be sold with impunity. But after a few visits to the shop she realized how it worked: you could buy as many pipes and bongs as you could carry, but you better not utter one reference, however oblique, to illicit drugs or little Allie, tougher than she looked, gave you the bum’s rush out the door.

            She would miss all the unique denizens of Wickenden, along with its artsy counterculture and the laid-back ambiance of the street itself. She had the distinct feeling that her days working at the shop on Wickenden Street were numbered, and she was sorry for that.

 

            At about noon, somebody literally bought the wicker chair out from under her, so Angie figured this was the perfect time to close the shop for lunch. The one flaw in the protocol for those days when she was working alone in the shop, was that the morning’s receipts had to remain relatively unprotected in the cash drawer since Paul had not made her privy to the combination of the safe. She had brought the issue up with him long ago, but he seemed to believe that nobody would dare rob the shop in broad daylight, so long as it was properly locked and alarmed. Nevertheless, when Angie closed up the shop for lunch, she still worried. She knew if somebody did break in while she was gone, no matter what Paul said he would still somehow blame her for it. 

Her intention was to search for the keys during the lunch hour, but she craved just a little more sunshine, so she set the alarm, went out the front door and locked it behind her, pocketing the keys, and walked up Wickenden to the landmark coffee house The Coffee Exchange. She went inside and bought a single espresso and a slice of mile-high apple pie, and went outside to enjoy them at an outdoor table next to the front rail, the perfect spot to watch the world go by.

Halfway through her pie, she watched Susan Novak go by.

           

           

             

 Chapter Twenty-six.

 

            Friday after work Angie hurried home, fed and walked Westerly, and rushed upstairs to take a quick shower and change into something semi-dressy for Callie’s farewell party. Marian didn’t believe in casual dress gatherings except for maybe clambakes or backyard barbeques, neither of which Marian would ever dream of hosting anyway. She spent several minutes deciding what to wear and finally put on a yellow cotton dress with an empire waist and spaghetti straps, which she thought successfully hid the ten or so surplus pounds she still hadn’t managed to shed.

            Beatrice and Marian lived in Westerly, in a 50’s era redwood house with a steeply pitched roof and huge windows that framed stunning views of wetlands and Block Island Sound. Angie had expected that Marian would hold the party on their huge herringbone brick patio, which was surrounded by a marvelous garden designed to be both elegantly disciplined and boisterously abloom with every color of the rainbow. But as she drove up to the house and looked for a place to park amid the dozen or so cars already lining the street; she could see guests out on the curving cantilevered outdoor deck off the living room.

            She rang the front door bell and waited but nobody came to the door, so she turned the knob and finding it unlocked, pushed it open, barely missing Grace, Beatrice and Marian’s longtime housekeeper, who was standing right there.

            “Sorry, Ms. Angie,” Grace said.

            “I’m sorry, Grace,” Angie said, hugging her with one arm, she had Callie’s gift in the other. “I nearly knocked you down!”

            “Everybody is out on the deck, Ms. Angie.”

            “Thanks, Grace.” Angie walked through the foyer into the living room, minimally but exquisitely furnished with museum quality pieces in red, black and ivory, including a Mies van der Rohe daybed and two Donghia chairs.       She noticed the vase she had given them as a wedding gift centered on the glass and metal coffee table, filled with blood-red bromeliads, just as she had pictured it.

            Although the house faced east, the deck was bathed in the light of a beautiful pink and lavender summer sunset. She stepped out into a group of mellowed guests, none of whom she recognized, who had drinks in hands, and were laughing and chatting softly, standing at the balcony rail, admiring the views.  It was definitely an eclectic mix of arty types; the younger contingent predictably studded and tattooed; hair streaked with colors not found in nature. The art establishment was divided into elegant fashionistas and hippies with long silvered hair, male and female.

Angie spotted Callie and Marian at a table, deep in conversation. They looked up as she approached, and Callie smiled and Marian jumped up and hugged her. Marian was wearing a long gauzy white skirt, gold sandals and a mint green silk boat-necked top trimmed in thin gold cord. Her hair was swept back at the temples with little gold combs, and she looked not a day over twenty-five.

            “Callie,” Angie said, “I was so sorry to hear that you’re leaving Providence, but I’ve heard you were offered a wonderful opportunity.”

            “Thanks, Angie,” Callie said. “It was an offer, as they say, I couldn’t refuse! But I am going to miss this lively little town, and all my good friends,” and she turned and took Marian’s hand.

            “I brought you something to remember us by,” Angie said, and handed her a good sized gift-wrapped box.

            “Oh, Angie, how sweet of you!” Callie said. “Shall I open it now?”

            “Yes, open it,” Angie told her. “It’s just a little something…”

            “It’s a heavy little something!” Callie laughed. She unwrapped the box and opened it. Inside, under layers of tissue paper, was a bottle of Autocrat Coffee syrup, a container of Del’s Lemonade dry mix, and a bottle of champagne from Rhode Island’s Sakonnet vineyards.

            “A Rhode Island beverage for morning, noon and night!” Angie said.

            Ohhh,” Callie laughed, “how very Rhody! Thank you, Angie!”

            “Where is Beatrice?” Angie asked Marian.

            “Oh, she’s holed up in her den, working on something or another,” Marian told her. “Go say hello and see if you have better luck than I did prying her out of there. She keeps saying she’s coming and then she never does.”

“Sure,” Angie said.
            “But darling, first get yourself a glass of wine and try some of my yummy hors d'oeuvres."
            
            Angie knocked lightly at Beatrice’s den door, da-da-da-da-da, da-dum: “shave and a haircut, two bits!”
            “Yes?” came Beatrice’s testy reply.
            “It’s me, Angie."
            “Oh, come in,” Beatrice answered grudgingly.
            Angie did, and went over and sat in the chair in front of Beatrice’s desk. 
            Beatrice was sitting with her feet up on the desk, fiddling with a Rubix cube.
            “You’re not working, you fibber!” Angie exclaimed. “Why aren’t you out socializing with your guests?”
            “They are not my guests.”
            “You’re sulking.”
            “I am not!”
            “Yes, you are, Beeze,” Angie said, “and I don’t know why because this is really your victory party.”
            "And how so?”
            “You know what I’m talking about,” Angie told her. “I don’t know how you did it…”
            “Did what?” Beatrice said innocently.
            “Managed to separate Callie and Marian by a whole continent and an entire ocean,” Angie said.
            Beatrice grinned broadly, and Angie could almost see the canary feathers in her teeth. 
            “You overestimate my powers.”
            “Beeze, you won. Come on out and do your victory lap.”
            “I’m coming.”
            “You are hurting Marian’s feelings.”
            “I said I’m coming!”
            “Yes, you are,” Angie said. ‘You’re coming with me. Now.”

A tiny frown flitted across Marian’s face when she saw Beatrice in her plaid Bermuda shorts and golf shirt, but she said nothing except, “Darling, you’re finally here!” as she gave Beatrice a big hug. “Let me introduce you to our guests, Angie, will you come, too?”
            Among the guests were a curator from the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design and professors of textiles and costume design. The exotic young man and woman with the tats and nose rings were RISD grad students in textiles and jewelry and metalsmithing, respectively. The beautiful fashionistas turned out to be not from the world of art and fashion; but two real estate brokers. And they were all delightful people; smart and witty and sophisticated and fun to talk to. Beatrice spent a lot of time speaking with the real estate brokers, and Angie saw them all exchange business cards.
            The gray pony-tailed man latched onto Angie, and tried to monopolize her for the rest of the evening. Each time she tried to extricate herself to go talk to someone else, he never got the hint; and simply tagged along. He was fascinated by the fact that she was the producer of the Gene James show; he himself was affiliated with the Rhode Island Council of the Arts in their film and TV office. He told her about several movies and TV series that were filming in Rhode Island in the near future. He invited her to dinner sometime so they could continue their interesting conversation. It wasn’t until Angie was driving home that night that she realized that she’d been asked out on a date. It had been more than thirty years since anybody besides Tom had asked her out on a date. 
            Before Angie left the party, she managed to break away from ponytail man and get Callie alone.
            “Lovely party, Callie,” she said. “You have such interesting friends.”
            “Thank you, Angie,” Callie said. She looked tired, and a little sad. “I am going to miss everybody so much! I hope I’m making the right decision…leaving everything and everyone I care about…”
            Angie suddenly felt sorry for her, and angry at Beatrice for having engineered this whole thing.  
            “But it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Callie added.
            “It is,” Angie agreed. “You’ll become rich and famous, and forget all about us little Rhodies!”
            “Never!” Callie said, but she smiled and seemed to cheer up a little.
            “Callie,” Angie said, “Beatrice let me borrow the book you gave her for her birthday…”
            “Oh, the book on Jackie Kennedy.”
            “Yes. I was especially intrigued by one photograph in the book--"
            “The one with John-John pulling on her pearls? That’s my favorite—“
            “No, it was a picture of her sitting at her vanity table holding a little carved mirror.”
            “Mmm. I don’t remember that one.”
            Angie looked at Callie closely. She showed absolutely no alarm or surprise at the mention of the mirror. 
            I’m no better than Beatrice, Angie thought. Here I am trying to catch Callie out as a thief.
            But she continued, “Yes, the oddest thing, the mirror in the picture looks just like the little picture mirror I bought a while back. The shape, the size, the carving, is identical.”
            “Really!” Callie said. “What if it was the same mirror, can you imagine? I guess the odds are against it, but wouldn’t that be cool? I wonder how you could find out.” She smiled at Angie guilelessly.
            Angie immediately crossed Callie off her list. The list was now down to just two names.
            The next morning Angie arrived at the shop at 8:30. The door was propped wide open with a pretty little wicker chair. On the seat of the chair was a sign which read: “Summer Sale! 10% Off Anything and Everything!”
            Angie didn’t know quite what to expect and being fired was a definite possibility. She would not really have minded, after all that had happened, but she desperately wanted one last opportunity to snoop and find something that would lead her to her missing mirror.
            It was a sunny day and the sunshine always transformed the shop into a brighter place; if not exactly light and airy.  With the door open it was just bright enough to see the coating of dust on the furniture and the film of grime on the mirrors, and the dull and scuffed old wooden floor. Angie had always done some light housekeeping, but waxing floors and standing on ladders polishing mirrors was not part of her job description.
            Paul Tillinghast was seated at his desk as usual, wearing his customary turtleneck sweater and blazer; the only concession he made for the season was the color and weight of the fabrics. Today’s turtleneck was pale yellow made of some thin stuff; and his blazer was double breasted navy linen with brass buttons. He looked rather like a ship’s captain. When he saw her he smiled broadly. He seemed to be a grand mood. “Top of the mornin’ to you, Angie! Isn’t it a beautiful day? I am so glad you’re here early, I have to leave for an estate sale,” he looked at his watch, “ten minutes ago!”
            Well, apparently she wasn’t getting fired today.
            “I guess you saw the sign. I just thought it might drum up a little business for us. Keep the door open as long as possible, but if the heat gets too oppressive, you can close it and put the air conditioners on if you wish. Put the sign in the window.”
            “Sure,” Angie said. 
            Paul closed the ledger book in front of him, tucked it into a desk drawer and stood up. 
            “Well, I’ll be off, then,” he said brightly. “Will you be all right? You have my cell.” Then he paused, looked meaningfully at her and repeated emphatically, “you will be all right, won’t you?”
            “I’ll be fine,” Angie assured him. Go, already, she said to herself.

As soon as Paul left, Angie walked to the other side of the shop and stood at the wall of hanging mirrors, trying to decide which mirror had framed the ghostly face of the intruder. Was it the gilt oval mirror, the rectangular mirror with the ornate gold frame, the square mirror, the round mirror? She had seen it across the room, between an aisle of furniture. 
            She needed to orient herself, so she crossed the room and stood at the threshold leading to the back of the shop. She walked slowly down the center aisle toward the front door. Where had she been standing when she saw the face? The shop had been dark. Now it was bright daylight, but she still felt a chill at the back of her neck.  
            She stopped walking. I’ve gone too far. She backed up. She looked to her right down a narrow aisle of furniture. No, not this aisle. She backed up again. The arrangement of the furniture in the shop was willy-nilly; no real attempt at order, just a maze of lamps, desks, dressers and tables; things piled upon things stacked upon other things. Some openings that looked like aisles simply dead-ended; other paths looked blocked but then suddenly a space opened up and you could get through to the side aisles after all and make your way to the front of the shop.
            How did the intruder get into the shop? There were two possibilities: through the front door posing as a customer, or they had been waiting on the upper floor for the shop to close and for Angie to leave.
            Angie stopped and peered down a narrow aisle to her right. This was the aisle. It was a less cluttered aisle than she remembered, and she could clearly see the rectangular gold mirror on the opposite wall. That must have been the mirror that held the reflection of the face. A shocking white mask with black holes for features.
            Angie suddenly realized that whether the man (or woman) in the mirror entered the shop through the front door or down the stairs from the second floor, they would have needed a place in the shop to hide. Angie walked down the aisle towards the righthand wall where the rectangular mirror hung. It was a more open aisle than some others, and offered fewer large pieces behind which to stand or crouch and not be seen.
            When she reached the end of the aisle, she stood for a moment, gazing into the very mirror that had held that fearful image. This time, she saw only herself. Still, she never wanted to look into this mirror after dark.
            The stranger must have been standing here. But where had he hid himself? Angie turned around and looked at the pieces nearby. A small rolltop desk. A floor lamp, an oak credenza, a leather trunk, and an old Victrola phonograph sitting on a small table. No hiding place here.
            Then Angie spotted a tall walnut wardrobe standing off the left side of the aisle. Tall and wide enough to hide a person. She hesitated, and then reached out and grasped the brass pulls and opened the double doors wide.

 

 Chapter Twenty-five.

 

 

The first thing Angie did on when she got into work on Monday morning was to show Carole the Google photo she’d printed out the night before, featuring Paul Tillinghast standing next to “Sue Slater” aka Susan Novak.

“Oh, wow,” Carole said. “Busted! When are you going to confront him?”

“I am going to wait at least until this weekend,” Angie told her. “I want one last chance to go through the ledgers in the shop, and I’ve got to get back into that apartment.”

“Angie,” Carole said. “You’re dealing with a couple of ruthless thieves. You could be in real danger."

            “I’ll be careful,” Angie told her. “I just need to know a whole lot more than I do now before I make any accusations.”

            “Ange,” Carole lowered her voice and motioned to Angie to lean in close. “Back on the home front: word up is Igor is dissing you to everybody, high and low. He’s saying you screwed up big time on something; he’s not saying what. But honey, watch your back.”

            Angie gave Carole a quick hug and said, “Don’t worry.”

She made a couple of quick detours before she knocked at Wayne’s office door.

The moment he saw her, Wayne exploded: “Where the hell are the goddamned promos?"

            The question must have been rhetorical, because he didn't wait for her reply.
            "Liz says you gave her nothing. I gave you the Rush Limbaugh, the most famous and influential conservative voice in the world; on  a silver platter; willing to be interviewed live on this pissant radio station next week and you’ve done zero promotion! If you'd been even halfway on the ball you could have scored a mention on every local media outlet including our competitors! Plus national coverage! I could have written that press release in my sleep! Instead, you singlehandedly blew the biggest ‘get’ in the history of this flyspeck on the media market map. And besides being in deep shit with me, Bradley is gonna go ballistic when he finds out how much money in ads and publicity you cost this station. Which will be like a walk in the park compared to what James is gonna do to you when he finds out..."

            “Why don’t we tell them now, Wayne?” Angie said calmly.

            As Angie said the words, Joe Bradley walked into Wayne’s office, grim-faced; and Gene James was right behind him.

            “What’s up?” Wayne said to them. In a blink, his eyes turned from sociopathic black to a mild, disingenuous blue.

            None of them answered him. Gene was leaning against the closed door and easy-going Joe Bradley looked angrier than Angie had ever seen him.

            Wayne regarded them all for a beat or two, sizing up the situation.

Then he threw up his hands and said, “It was a goddamned joke! Come on!”

            Nobody responded.

            “Come on, it was a joke! A practical joke! You never heard of a practical joke? It was a test! It was freakin’ funny! Breaking in the new kid! You guys have no goddamned sense of humor! You‘re getting old! You gotta lighten up!”

            Still nothing.

            “Hey, come on. I was gonna pull the plug today.”

            Wayne turned to her.

            “Angie. Swear to god, game over. I was gonna tell you today after work, over a few drinks. I knew you were too smart to fall for the old Rush Limbaugh trick. Good for you! I knew you were good. I told you, you were good!”

            Gene James pushed himself off the wall and opened the door and said over his shoulder:

            “Him or me, Bradley.”

            “Oh, jeeze,” Joe said. He patted his pockets for phantom Marlboros as he went out the door.

            Angie was the last to leave Wayne’s office. They looked at each other. Wayne crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair.

            “So when did you figure it out?” he asked her.

            “I didn’t. Gene did. I actually believed you.”

            “Ah, Gene. He never trusted me,” Wayne said without a trace of irony.

            “No, he didn’t. I believe his exact words to me were: ‘Beware of geeks bearing gifts.’

            "So I did a little checking on my own. And lo and behold: I discovered that Rush Limbaugh wasn’t coming within a thousand miles of New England, much less WRI.

“So then the question became, why? Why would you bother with such an elaborate hoax? Not just to get me fired; I’m an easy target. You could fire me anytime for anything. What you really wanted was to humiliate Gene James on a national scale. You hate him, it’s no secret. But you hate him so much you’d sabotage the station’s reputation?”

            Wayne didn’t bother to answer her questions. 
            “So all the time I thought I was playing you, you were actually playing me!” Wayne mused. “Diabolical.”

            “Joe wanted to see how far you’d go.”

            “Ah, I was just having some fun,” Wayne shrugged. “No harm, no foul.” He laughed and said, “I may have underestimated you, Ms. Angie Russo. May have; it remains to be seen.”

            Angie thought, it remains to be seen, yes. But you won’t remain to see it. You or Gene James? My money's on James.

Wayne flipped open his laptop as if she were already gone.

 

“Angie, darling!”

“Marian! I was going to call you!”

“Don’t brilliant minds think alike?” Marian said to her gaily. “You want to go first?”

“No, you. Mine is no big deal.”

“Well, we’re having a little party Friday night and we’d love for you to come.”

“I would love to! Any special occasion, or just a get together?”

“Well,” Marian told her. “It’s a going away party for Callie.”

“Callie is going away?” Angie said. Even though she had the Tillinghast/Novak photo, she was still reluctant to take anybody off her suspect list. 
            “Yes, it happened out of the blue; she got a terrific offer from a couture house in Japan!”

“Wow, that’s far away,” Angie said. She couldn't wait to ask Beatrice how she pulled this off: putting half a world between Callie and Marian.
            Marian went on blithely, “Yes, it is really an incredible opportunity! Anyway, come at eight—oh and if you want to bring a little gift, just get something silly or funny…and inexpensive!

“So Ange, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Oh, Marian, I just wondered if you remembered when that Tillinghast brothers lawsuit happened. I have been trying to find it on the internet but so far no luck.”

“Angie, I apologize for not getting back to you on this. I am going to think about it right now! Bear with me. I tend to remember things in the context of my relationship with Beatrice.”

So did Angie, remember events in the context of her life with Tom.

After a moment, Marian said, “Okay. We lived in this house, so it couldn’t have been more than fifteen years ago. But I am pretty sure I didn’t have the shop then. So that narrows it down to about twelve years ago; and I'd cut my hair really short because I'd just seen the classic black and white film about Joan of Arc with Jeanne Seberg; oh Beatrice hated it! My hair, not the movie. I don't know why I remember reading the article with short hair, but I do; funny how the mind works, isn't it? But why did I pay special attention to a newspaper article about a brother suing a brother over the family estate? Oh…”

“What?” Angie asked her urgently.

“Beatrice and I were trying to adopt a child.”

Angie was shocked. “Marian, I never knew…! Why didn’t you? You guys would have made the most wonderful parents!”

            “Well,” Marian said softly,  "then the world was a different place. Not that things are much better today; but back then we were practically pioneers! A same sex couple trying to adopt? Most agencies wouldn't even talk to us. Finally we found an agency in Boston...we had our interview, our home study, we were investigated as if we were applying for jobs at the CIA. Then they told us were approved, they even gave us a picture of the little girl who was going to be ours. They told us her name was Maria. It seemed meant to be. Her name was contained in mine. She was two years old; a beautiful brown-eyed child. I used to dance around the house singing that song from West Side Story:

               ‘Maria, I just met a girl named Maria…and suddenly I found how wonderful a sound can be…’  

               Marian’s voice broke a little, and Angie said, “Oh, Marian, I’m sorry I’ve made you remember such a sad time!”
             “Oh, Angie, sometimes it is important to remember."
             “May I ask what happened?”
              "Officially, we were told that her mother wanted her back. We never knew if that was true, or a lie to make us go away. After that, we kind of lost heart..." 
            “Oh, Marian, I am so sorry!”

 

 

 

 

 

Marian spoke in a tone so low Angie couldn’t hear.

“Marian, I can’t hear you, honey.”

“Not a day goes by,” Marian said. “That I don’t think of her, and wonder if she had a happy childhood and was loved and cared for."

“Marian,” Angie said, and then found she didn’t know what else to say.

After a small silence: “Well, my dear Angie,” Marian said, rallying, her tone much brighter, “you asked me a question about the Tillinghast thing. And this is what I remember: besides being a story about adoption, it was like something out of a Hollywood movie.”

“How do you mean?”

“It concerned twin brothers. Born out of wedlock and separated as babies. The father was wealthy, adopted one of the twins and brought him up in the lap of luxury. The other twin stayed with his mother. I remember wondering how he made his choice about which child to take: did he say 'Eenie, meenie, miney, mo?' I don't remember reading anything else about it; so it was probably settled out of court. It's a bizarre story, though, isn't it?"

Chapter Twenty-four.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            As Angie drove home, she could hear a persistent “mmmmzzzt” emanating from her purse. The source of the noise was her cell phone; set on vibrate.

The “mmmmzzzt” let her know that she had missed at least one call; had voicemail or text messages. Angie got very few calls on her cell even on a good day; she assumed this persistent caller was Paul Tillinghast, wanting to hear about the event so traumatic that it justified her abandoning the shop.

When she pulled into her driveway, she checked the phone messages. Sure enough. Paul had called four times.

He was probably mad at her. Fine; that made it even.

            Angie had gotten very adept at ignoring things. She especially ignored those things she couldn’t do anything about. She occasionally ignored those things she could do something about.

When Tom was alive, an unpaid bill would have haunted her sleep. Nowadays if she couldn’t pay, for instance, this month’s cable bill, she threw it away (with all due respect) and waited for next month’s double bill. No worries: her creditors kept track.

She had nobody, nowhere, with whom she could share her burdens and her worries. No one else but herself to save the day; when that day came, as it surely would. Her son Michael had his own life, and his own struggles. Mary Lou was gone; Carole was gravely ill. And Beatrice: Beatrice would make her sell her house and go live in a garden apartment in Woonsocket. Nothing against Woonsocket…

Angie, baseball lover, sometimes thought of herself as a minor league outfielder. Sure, she snagged some flies and grounders here and there; made a few saves; but no game savers, that was for certain. At bat, she watched helplessly as fast balls, change-ups, sinkers (not to mention those sneaky slow curves on the inside corner) whizzed past. Her usual strategy was to wait for the fourth ball and when it came, gratefully take the walk; still alive.

On those rare occasions when she sensed luck and serendipity were on her side: she swung for the fences. Like when she bought her house on Benefit Street. Or took the job as Gene James’ producer.

 

So when Angie got home, she didn’t call Paul right away. She let Westerly out into the yard; fed him, and then walked him along their usual loop from Benefit to North Main and back up again.

 She washed, dried and put away the few dishes in the sink. Checked her emails.  Took a hot bath.

Finally she called Paul Tillinghast.

            “Paul, it’s Angie.”

            “Angie, I’ve been waiting for you to return my call…what in the world happened last night that made you leave without setting the alarm or locking the front door?”

            Mild-mannered Paul was obviously very pissed off.

            Angie said, matter-of-factly, “Paul, somebody was in the shop after closing. I had already turned the thumb lock on the front door, so it was locked if not locked from the outside. I walked to the back to put the day’s receipts into the safe and to get my purse. Coming back towards the front of the shop, I noticed that the door to the second floor was open. I know now it led to the second floor; before that I hadn’t known what was behind that door. I was scared; confused; I didn't know what to think.  I went back into the shop area and called out was anybody there. Nobody answered. I even called your name, thinking you had returned early. I heard nothing; saw nothing...until suddenly I heard a kind of scuffle. Then, between an aisle of furniture I saw a face…man or woman I couldn’t tell, but a face clearly reflected in one of the hanging mirrors.

“I panicked. Plain and simple. I couldn’t think where to go, how to escape. Finally I ran up through the open door to a stairway that led to an upper floor and bolted it behind me.”

            Paul had no response.

            "Finally I decided to come down again, to maybe make a run for the front door. I realized that the door was now locked from the other side. I was trapped.”

            Paul remained silent.

            “At that point, I tried all the doors in the upstairs hall, and all were locked. I was there a long time, Paul. I had no cell phone with me. Finally I decided to force one of the doors, which I thought might lead to the back outside staircase.”

            “You broke down a door?”

            Damages. Is that what this is all about?
            “You broke into the apartment?”

            “In a manner of speaking, Paul,” Angie said in an even tone. “I needed to get out of the building. If there are any damages to the door, of course I will pay for the repairs.”

            “What did you see?” Paul asked her urgently. The question took Angie almost, but not quite, by surprise.

            “Where?” Angie asked innocently. “In the shop? Just a face—“

“In the apartment.”

“Nothing. Nobody was home. Does anybody live there? It seemed vacant…”

            “Nobody, now.” Paul spoke without emotion or inflection.

            “Paul, I have to admit, I looked through the rooms for a key to the back door deadbolt. I apologize for intruding, but I have to say that I saw a couple of photographs of you. Both of you, I guess would be the right way to put it. Because in the pictures you were with somebody who looked just like you. Did your brother live there?

            “How do you know about my brother?” he said sharply.

            Angie didn't want to get anybody into trouble, but she admitted, "Maren told me.”

            “Angie, please don’t take this the wrong way—“

“You’re right, Paul,” Angie interrupted. “it is none of my business.”

Paul did not disagree. “The important thing is that you are all right.”

            “Yes,” Angie told him. “Frightened, but I’m okay now.”

            “Well,” Paul told her, “to put your mind at rest, the shop is fine, nothing stolen so far as I can tell.”

            “What about the door to the apartment? I will be glad to—“

            “It was an old lock. High time it was replaced. I’ll take care of it.” 

“Shouldn’t you call the police, Paul?”

After a moment Paul said, “I don’t see why we should involve the police. Nothing is missing. It may well be that someone got accidently locked in after closing. They were probably more frightened of you than you were of them!”

Angie was stunned. “But why wouldn’t they just come forward?”

“Oh, likely they were so surprised, a little scared themselves; and they didn’t know what to do.”

“But when I ran up to the second floor, Paul, somebody locked the door from the other side!”

“As I say, Angie, they were probably frightened, too. But to be fair, we must also consider the possibility that—“

“That what?”

“Angie, that door is so old and warped. It sticks; I can’t count how many times I—“

“Paul,” Angie insisted. “The door was not stuck. It was locked.”

“Angie,” Paul said to her gently but emphatically, “this is still no matter for the police. We would have to drag you into it, wouldn’t we? Whatever the exigent circumstances, the apartment was broken into: think about how it might look to them.”

I’ve been blatantly threatened, Angie thought. First Dick Moss, now this man…

How vulnerable I must seem as a woman on her own. 

“I am talking to the security company,” Paul said soothingly into her silence. “We will be going high-tech from now on so this doesn’t happen again.”

“I’ve got to go, Paul,” Angie told him. She couldn’t bear to hear him utter one more lying, patronizing, condescending word.

“Of course, Angie,” he said. “Oh, but one more thing?”

“Yes?”

“Did you go into the records room last night?”

Of course Angie had been in records room the night before, trying to trace back the ownership of her portrait mirror. But why should she feel guilty about that? Part of her job was keeping the record books current.

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Paul said smoothly, “that explains it then. The ledgers were kind of topsy-turvy, so at least now I know it was you.”

“Good-night, Paul,” Angie said, and hung up.

She had not left the ledgers topsy-turvy. There had been an intruder in the shop. And he or she had deliberately trapped Angie in the stairway leading to the second floor.

Why? Because they were looking for something.

Not the mirror obviously, they already had that. Unless this really was like the Maltese Falcon; and

a slew of suspects were after the same object?

No, that was just nuts, she thought.

Then what were they looking for? Her mind nagged at her.

Paul said nothing had been taken. So what, then?

Suddenly a flash of insight: the intruder was looking through the records to find the identity of the original owner of the portrait mirror. 
            The thief had already stolen the mirror from the present owner, Angie Russo. Now they needed to backtrack; find out who sold the mirror to Lost and Found. As with forensic evidence, they needed to establish the chain of custody. The value of the mirror depended upon ascertaining who had owned it.

Then she considered: didn’t that take Paul out of the picture? Why would he lurk in the dark waiting for a chance to search the records? He could access them anytime he chose.

 That made the scenario of Paul working with an accomplice ridiculous.

Angie decided to make a list of suspects and rate them according to the likelihood that they had stolen her mirror. She found a lined tablet and drew two vertical lines down the page. On the left side, she listed all her suspects, skipping several lines in between.

 

1.       Paul Tillinghast

2.       Susan Novak

3.       Susan Novak and Paul Tillinghast

4.       The Newport antique shop owners

5.       Callie

 

She labeled the headings of the two columns opposite the names “Why” and “Why Not”.

Next to Paul’s name, she wrote in the “Why” column: He sold me the mirror.

Under “Why Not” she wrote: if it was valuable, why did he sell it to me?

            Opposite Susan Novak’s name under “Why?” she wrote: means (my stolen housekey); opportunity (I'm away all day) plus lied about knowing Dr. Mike.

“Why not?” No proof.

            Susan Novak and Paul Tillinghast.

 “Why?” because they are accomplices. He found out the mirror was valuable; couldn’t get it back himself, so he had her do it.

“Why not?” No proof.

            The Newport antique shop owners:

“Why?” The mother wanted to buy the mirror and was angry that Paul wouldn’t sell it to her. Maybe her daughter is Susan Novak!

“Why not?” If she known it was valuable, why did she haggle with Paul about the price? And how would she know that I had the mirror?

            Last and least: Callie.

“Why?” Because a picture of the mirror, or one very similar, was in a book she gave to Beatrice for her birthday.

“Why not?”

Angie hesitated and then finally wrote: because it’s ridiculous!

            She didn’t write her next thought down, but now that she had contemplated the alternatives; far-fetched though they might be; this explanation made the most sense of all:

My missing mirror has nothing to do with the intruder in the shop. Somebody is looking for something else.

Occam’s Razor: the simplest answer is usually the right answer.

Angie put aside her list, but couldn’t help wondering why Paul had been so evasive about the upstairs apartment in his shop on Wickenden Street.

She went online, but instead of googling his name, this time she took a different tack: she googled his image.

In the first few pages of results she found no pictures of him, his store, of him or his brother; nothing.

But on the seventh page up popped a picture of an older man and a pretty young woman. The caption read: Gallery Night, Wickenden Street, Providence, Rhode Island. Owner of Lost and Found” Paul Tillinghast, with RISD intern Sue Slater.

"Hello," Angie said aloud. "How's it going, Ms. Susan Novak?"

Gotcha. Gotcha both!

So much for Occam’s Razor. So much for no proof.