Chapter 13 The Call
THE CALL
I swam out of sleep Wednesday morning, bleary-eyed and still tired, to what appeared to be a day struggling to be sunny in England, with Snowball, Gingerface and Prue’s (but really Chassie’s) long-haired, white and gray tiger-striped cat, Floofy, hanging with me.
I’d met Floofy last night while I was teaching the girls how to play euchre in the games room.
Tempie was vicious, gloating with every trick she took.
Chassie, my partner, was surprisingly sly.
So much so, she and I won the best of ten we were playing.
It was a blast.
And Floofy was seriously…floofy.
“This book is going to kill me,” I told the cats.
I rolled to my back and looked to the smart screen to see it was six fifty-eight.
I then stared at the canopy, stroking cats if they were in reach, and going over the last two days.
Battle left Monday morning, very early.
He didn’t say goodbye, as such.
But I did wake up to a text from an unknown number that said, Didn’t want to wake you. I’ll see you Thursday. The girls will be on the return train. You’ll be riding back with me.
So I guessed Battle had my number, and it was clear he could be bossy in texts too.
Sexy bossy with that whole “riding back with me” bit.
I didn’t even think he knew how teasy he was being with some of it. It was just him, like his brown eyes or his hot guy height.
It was crazy awesome.
And it was doing my head in.
I programmed him in, replied, Righty ho, Your Grace. Be safe out there, then set about my plan of alternately cramming on Talyn history and figuring out how to get the girls to London.
With Prue, I would find, it was easy.
When the topic was addressed by Tempie over cocktails Monday evening, Prue simply clapped and cried, “Oh yes! I can finally meet Francois!” She turned to me and shared, “He makes most of my clothes. I’ve always wanted to meet him, and he works out of his boutique in London.”
For her part, Chassie was watching Prue’s excitement with eyes that I could tell, behind them, her brain was working hard to come up with an excuse not to go.
Thus, I chimed in, “I always wanted to go to Kew Gardens. It’s one place I’ve never had the time to see when I’ve been over here. I know it’s a bit out of the way of all the good shopping and stuff, but I’d love to visit. Do you think we could fit that in?”
“Of course,” Tempie drawled smugly while Chassie made a scrunch face of frustration.
Prue clapped again and said to Chassie, “Oh, you get to go to Kew. You love the botanical gardens!”
And with that, Chassie was apparently foiled for an excuse, though I didn’t think the battle was won. There were still two days she could dream up reasons not to go.
“I’ll ask Fitzy to book our tickets on the train,” Tempie said, and finalized, “Sorted.”
At least it was for then.
In order to make up for lost time, I told them I was on a roll, so after dinner, I headed back out to the studio, read and took notes, enhanced my outline and jotted down ideas until almost midnight, when I trudged back to the house, cleaned my face, brushed my teeth and fell into bed.
The same thing happened yesterday after we finished euchre. Though, last night, I got into it, so it was after one in the morning before I came back to the house.
But I was making progress.
Though, it would appear I’d have to dream up even more of Harmony and Charlie’s story than I thought I would, because I’d definitely hit the WWII time period, and I wasn’t finding anything.
And in the now, I had to make more progress.
Doing it missing Battle, as I had for the last two days.
What could I say?
The guy had gotten to me.
Seriously.
I had to admit, I’d looked forward to seeing him at cocktails and eating dinner at his side, and it sucked he wasn’t around.
God help me.
“Are we ready to rumble, babies?” I asked.
None of the felines answered.
Since none of them was lying on me, I rolled out anyway.
But they followed me.
* * *
I was in the studio with Snowball and Gingerface.
Yes, I had Prue’s permission to bring them with me. I had to seek it out because they’d taken to following me, which made it nigh on impossible to get out the door with them trying to escape with me.
But since I didn’t know if they were indoor or outdoor, and I didn’t want to introduce the outdoors if they were in, I had to find Prue.
She was in the attic.
I sensed she sensed I needed to work, so she hadn’t pressed my visit to this space.
But once me and the cats got there, I was thrown.
“Holy crap,” I exclaimed.
Her head popped out from behind a massive, broken chandelier deep within the bowels of a huge mess. “Vivi!”
“Hey,” I called, wending my way through bureaus and boxes and armoires and ancient ice skates. “It’s like the room of requirement in here.”
She giggled. “I know. I’m about to ask Scotty and Harry to help me lug some stuff out into the hall so I have more room to move around.” She frowned. “I found more papers for you, but not anything from Harmony.”
“I’ll take all I can get,” I said, gazing at a pair of large, elaborate gilt torchères balanced on top of something covered with a heavy, quilted mover’s blanket. “Jesus, honey, I think these are Chippendale.”
She picked one up and examined it. “You think?”
“Babe, if they are, those alone might be worth a million pounds.”
Her gaze flew to me. “Really?”
“Totally.”
She looked back at the candlestick. “How do we know?”
“Chippendale didn’t put a maker’s mark on his pieces,” I told her. “They have to be authenticated by an expert. Unless you have some documentation somewhere.”
She glanced through the room. “We probably do, it’s just finding it.”
I glanced through the room too, saying, “Prue, I had no idea, but I don’t think this is a project you can handle on your own.
You need to call Christie’s, or Sotheby’s, or Criterion and ask them to send someone out here.
Though, they’ll be salivating to get this stuff on the auction block, so maybe contact the National Trust or the British Museum or the Victoria and Albert.
I mean,”—I did a full circle—“it appears to be at least three centuries worth of a lot of stuff. They needed a bigger boat in Jaws to take on the great white. You’re gonna need a fleet of coast guard to handle this white whale. ”
Prue grinned at me.
I touched the torchère with the reverence a possible Chippendale piece deserved, saying, “But man, I’d kill to dig through this mess.”
“First things first, Vivi,” Prue advised. “I promise not to do anything with this stuff until you have a look at all of it. But you keep at your book.”
Ah, my Prue.
I just knew she’d been guarding my book time.
She continued, “In the meantime, I’ll make a few calls.
And I’ll definitely ask Scotty and Harry to help me move some things out so anyone who wants to look at it can get around better.
But I have this crazy feeling there’s something in this house somewhere that you need.
I just can’t seem to find it, and since I can’t get to half this stuff because the other half is piled on or in the way, I can’t get my hands on it. ”
“Not that you won’t, but please, you and Harry and Scotty need to handle all of this with the utmost care. I think this may be a treasure trove, honey.”
She beamed. “I thought so too. And since we probably won’t keep most of it, we can auction it off and augment The Fund!”
Again with The Fund.
I didn’t ask.
I said, “Listen, I came to find you because Gingerface and Snowball want to come out to the studio with me. Can they come?”
“Oh, sure,” she replied breezily. “They aren’t outdoor cats, but they won’t do anything but follow you. Sometimes Floofy gardens with Chassie. She never leaves her side. But she does like to snooze in the sun.”
And that was my conversation with Prue and my introduction to the attics before Snowball, Gingerface and I went to the studio and got to work.
She was right.
They pranced through the turf and along the walkways right behind me all the way there.
And now I was studying the butler’s ledgers from 1946.
Primarily, two weird entries for two footmen.
Okay, we’ll begin with the fact that The Downs still had footmen in 1946, which, for that time, was very rare.
Sure, they had Scotty and Harry now, and even though they served dinner, like a footman would, I still thought they were around more to look after the occupants of the house than to serve food and tend fires.
But that wasn’t the weird part.
Bonuses, the line item in the ledgers denoted them. But when I kept going back and forth, there were no other bonuses listed for any staff that I could find.
Ever.
And they each got three hundred pounds, and once I adjusted that number for inflation, it made it over ten thousand pounds in today’s currency.
That was a massive bonus.
Especially since the footmen made the whopping amount of forty pounds per year.
And if that wasn’t enough, it was dated the day after Marie’s entry about something dire happening at The Downs.
“Bribes to be quiet? Or bribes because they were asked to do something they shouldn’t have to do, and they also had to be quiet about it?” I whispered to the ledger as my phone vibrated on the desk beside me.
I knew the number, it was my soon-to-be future landlord, so, feeling despondent at this reminder I was shortly going to leave this studio, the house, and the people I cared about in it, I took the call.
“Hello, Mr. Atkins.”
“Miss Dupree, how are you?”
“Great, and ready to move in on Monday,” I lied.
“Uh, luv, about that.”
I stilled at his tone.
“The old tenants moved out, and we moved in to do a tidy up for you, and I’m afraid they were a bit careless about a few things.”
Oh no.
“What things?”
“Well, there are several repairs that have to be done. However, sadly, we can’t get to them because we discovered black mold.”
Holy shit!