An Uncollected Death Read online

hydrogen peroxide in a couple small places where it was the worst. I was worried it would take the dye out, but it didn’t. Now it just needs to dry real good.”

  “You are quite domestic!” said Charlotte. “You’re a gourmet cook, and you know how to get bloodstains out of oriental rugs!”

  Mitchell shrugged and chuckled. “It’s nothing, really. I just like nice things, good food, and delightful women.” The boyish smile returned. He was one of those men, thought Charlotte, who seemed to laugh at his own flirtatiousness, to keep things from feeling anything other than fun and in the moment. Couldn’t hurt to enjoy it while it lasted.

  They talked about the house and its collections, in particular the Eiffel Tower figurines on the kitchen shelves, and then heard the front door open and close and footsteps coming toward the kitchen. Mitchell looked through the doorway and spoke. “There you are, Van! Charlotte’s here.” He stepped back as Donovan came in with a grocery bag.

  Charlotte smiled and said hello. “Your friend here makes good coffee.”

  Donovan smiled weakly, and handed Mitchell the bag, then stood with his hands in his jeans pockets. The mood, thought Charlotte, had suddenly become awkward. Mitchell seemed to sense it, too, and patted Donovan on the back.

  “Van has understandably had a hard time dealing with all of this.” Mitchell looked over to Charlotte, his eyes sad and sympathetic. “It’s so hard to know what to think, what to do, to make sense of it, and not know enough about what really happened here.” He rummaged in the bag and pulled out a bottle of wine. “Ah, a Chianti! Perfect. Let’s have a glass right now.”

  Donovan seemed to collect himself. “Um, I’m not sure where the wine glasses are. Dad drank beer and Mom drank bourbon.”

  “No worries,” said Mitchell, fishing in his jeans pocket and pulling out a Swiss Army knife with a corkscrew. “We’ll just use those jelly jar glasses on the windowsill. They look clean enough.” He opened the wine with practiced ease. “I’ve invited Charlotte to join us for lunch.”

  Charlotte raised her hands to protest. “Oh, thank you but I couldn’t possibly impose and should really get on with the work. The coffee was wonderful.”

  Donovan turned, suddenly, from the windowsill where he had gathered the glasses. “Please, Charlotte, please join us. I know it’s a little weird,” he stammered, “but I would be grateful if you did. We can sit out on the front porch. What can it hurt?” His expression was almost pleading, and Charlotte couldn’t continue to say no.

  “Okay, then. Thanks.”

  During this exchange, Charlotte wondered about the nature of Mitchell’s relationship to Donovan. Mitchell seemed to know his way around Olivia’s kitchen better than Donovan did, but she sensed that Donovan wasn’t any more familiar with Mitchell than he was with the kitchen. She had known people like that, though, usually males who would stand around awkwardly while the womenfolk would move quickly and efficiently to put together a big holiday dinner or lay out a potluck buffet. But she also had a strong sense that Donovan really wanted her to stay—as an ally, almost.

  They grabbed plates and forks and Mitchell served big squares of lasagna, which they took out to the front porch along with the bottle of wine and the glasses. Donovan sat on the swing, Charlotte on the top step, and Mitchell lowered himself into a cross-legged position on a sunny spot on the grass. Then Donovan mumbled that the swing was too wobbly for eating, and moved to the bottom step.

  Mitchell poured the wine and generated most of the conversation, friendly social chit-chat about the weather, the neighborhood, the school, the town, and life in general, nothing which referred back to crime or Olivia’s death. Charlotte felt he was trying a little too hard to be sensitive, but then nothing was likely to make anyone completely forget what happened here.

  “I haven’t eaten outdoors like this in ages,” said Charlotte, finishing her last bite. “It was delicious, and thank you.”

  Donovan nodded. “I think the last time I did was eating an ice cream bar when I was like, ten or something. There used to be an ice cream truck that made the rounds.”

  Charlotte nodded. “There still is. My daughter used to complain that it would go by too fast to catch up with.”

  “That’s awful!” said Mitchell. “What’s the point of an ice cream truck going too fast for the little kids?”

  “The stuff they sell is expensive, too, especially for what you get,” said Charlotte.

  “Everything is, these days,” murmured Donovan.

  Charlotte looked up at him, and noted that he seemed lost in thought again. She tried to think of a topic of conversation that he seemed enthusiastic about.

  “So, Costa Rica, huh?” she asked him.

  He didn’t look up but his face flushed in embarrassment. Charlotte reddened, too, feeling that she managed to step in it somehow. Mitchell, however, was ready with a reply.

  “Oh, yeah, our boy wants to live amid the bananas and the señoritas, sipping Dos Equis under a shady palm.” He swallowed his last bite of lasagna. “Problem is, he’s gotta get some money together. It’s cheap, but it’s not free.”

  Donovan just nodded sadly, reminding Charlotte of the donkey Eyeore in Ellis’ Winnie-the-Pooh videos. Then he suddenly got up. “Time to get to work and get that money together, then,” he said, and went back in the house.

  Charlotte looked over at Mitchell, who shrugged and rose. “Touchy subject, I guess. Let me take your plate.”

   

  Back in front of the bookshelves, Charlotte took the four notebooks out of her bag, plus a notepad of her own, to see if she could work out more of Olivia’s clues without Helene’s help. She could hear Donovan and Mitchell cleaning up the kitchen, and then looked up as she heard Donovan approaching. He held two more cups of coffee, one of which he handed her.

  “Gotta keep a clear head, right?”

  “Oh yeah. Wine and pasta for lunch are a good way for me to feel sleepy. Thanks.”

  He nodded at the notebooks, which she had left on the desk. “Found more of them?”

  “Three more. There’s a clue in each one that leads to the previous one. Helene said it reminded her of the scavenger hunt clues your grandmother made for them when they were girls.”

  “Could I see them?”

  Charlotte didn’t see the harm, so showed him the clues and explained how they worked out so far.

  “Good god, that’s complicated. Or at least it is to me.”

  “What’s complicated?” Mitchell came into the room, untying his apron.

  “Mom’s method for hiding her notebooks. I’m only just beginning to learn what sort of person she really was. Never would have guessed.” He looked up at Charlotte. “To me she was just Mom, you know, a housewife. But I’m beginning to understand why she thought college was so important, and why she was bitter that I didn’t go.”

  “I haven’t really started on the transcriptions yet, but her writing is dark and forceful in what little I’ve read. I know Helene promised to have us out of here in a week, but a lot depends on how quickly I can work out her clues. My education is more modest than your mother’s—certainly I’m not as smart as she was—but I can look up a lot of things online, and hopefully that will make up the deficit.”

  Mitchell stepped forward and took a quick look at the notebooks, then spoke to Donovan, his voice quiet but firm. “This better not interfere with the date.”

  Donovan didn’t reply, but stared at the floor. Charlotte sensed that the tension in the room had shot up. “What date?”

  “Mitchell here,” said Donovan, “works for Warren Brothers Estate and Auction. We talked to Aunt Helene earlier today, and she’s contracted them to come in on Friday of next week to start taking everything out of here and over to their auction building. Once they start doing that, any scavenger hunt Mom laid out will probably get messed up.”

  Charlotte’s mood fell from reasonably cheerful to dismayed. So Helene made a week’s time official. How was she going to handle both the search for
the notebooks, which could get complicated, and her own preparations for a sale and moving? She looked around at the room, then directly at Mitchell, “please don’t move anything in the meantime, then. Olivia suggested that not all of the notebooks are on bookshelves. They could be anywhere, and as you can see, any shape, size, and anything from spiral bound to cloth bound.”

  “No problem, Charlotte. Don’t underestimate your own intelligence—I’m sure you’ll find them all in no time,” Mitchell smiled while speaking in an overly soothing tone. “How many notebooks were there, again?”

  Charlotte’s impressions of Mitchell flipped from positive to negative when she heard the fakey compliment, but she kept her temper. “Olivia said there were nine or ten, she couldn’t remember exactly. But they are all in order. Even if one gets found accidentally, I would need to know exactly where it was, because its location might be part of the clue for the next one. This can quickly get more complicated than it already is.”

  Mitchell seemed to realize she was no longer on his side, and he used the same quiet, firm tone with her as he did with Donovan. “Understood. But I know that date is a firm commitment, and Van really needs to do this.”

  Charlotte felt her blood pressure spike. The contents of the house were Helene’s! But she was not privy to the conversation between Mitchell, Donovan, and Helene, and she was, after all, just an employee for the estate. She would have her own