Chapter 8 #2
The leather upholstery on the back and seat was faded and cracked, and the wood arms, sides, and legs were carved with a repeating flower and vine pattern.
Maybe a tulip, Casey wasn’t certain. The arm supports were boxy enough that Casey figured they were hollow and meant for storage.
As far as he could discern, this was the original E-Z chair.
A man—because honestly, who else would design or want something so uncomfortable looking—could have everything he needed within arm’s reach.
Elton had taken off his coat and draped it over the back of one of Gabe’s mismatched chairs.
Gabe had picked them up from the hardware-slash-secondhand store in Irondale.
Supposedly, there was a plan for a table, but it hadn’t materialized yet.
Elton moved to sit on one end of the couch, his coffee in one hand, clearly planning to stick around for the unboxing.
“Not to be brutally honest or anything, but that thing is fucking ugly,” Gabe repeated before sipping at his double espresso—black, no sugar.
Casey could tell he was amused by ordering coffee drinks from Elton as if the old man had trained as a barista.
Even better, Elton had risen to the challenge.
Gabe glared at the offending containers for a solid minute.
“The one time I want a laser glare to really do its thing, and I get nothing. Fine.” He set his mug on the counter.
“I might as well get this over with.” With that bold statement, he stepped across the floor, chose one of the boxes, and plopped it onto the battered coffee table.
None of the boxes were labeled except for having Heidi scrawled in thick permanent marker followed by a sloppy K, like the writer’s hand had slipped or been bumped.
If they hadn’t known better, the K could’ve been an R, possibly a P.
Maybe an H? When they’d been loading them into his car, Casey had noted that the boxes were of varying weights, leading him to speculate that perhaps some had paperwork and others held books or similar heavier objects.
There’d been no clinking sounds either, so any breakables were well wrapped or there were none.
They were about to find out what Heidi had thought important enough to store for her entire life and make sure her son got it.
“There should be music for this,” Gabe commented. “I bet there is. Maybe some depressing synth-pop from the late nineties, like Belle and Sebastian.”
“Gabe,” Casey said.
“Fine.”
The contents of the first box seemed innocuous.
It contained a few spiral notebooks and an unorganized slew of paperbacks.
Casey spotted copies of Interview with a Vampire and All Creatures Great and Small, but he’d never seen those particular covers before, so they were older, maybe even originals.
Gabe flipped through the notebooks, finding the pages filled with flowy but faded cursive writing.
Were they journals or schoolwork? At the bottom was a wooden cigar box that held what appeared to be gaudy costume jewelry: several bejeweled pins in the shape of birds—a peacock, a swan, and a swallow—a few rings, a wide beaded bracelet.
“God, this shit is ugly. I think the cigar box is worth more than the jewelry inside it.” Gabe tossed the pieces back into the cigar box and carefully placed it back inside the larger container.
The next two boxes were equally mundane except they did learn that Heidi had been a reader, judging from all the paperbacks she’d saved.
Otherwise, the containers were packed with the detritus of a young woman barely out of her teens.
Gabe had snorted when he found a dried-up tube of Lip Smackers sparkly strawberry lip gloss.
“I cannot even imagine Heidi using this,” he said, flinging the tube back into the box before he reached for the next one.
Casey realized he was holding his breath, as if this last box of the six they’d found in Lynn’s basement might contain the Answer to Everything. He slowly released it and forced himself to relax.
“I feel like what’s-his-name from the eighties,” Gabe said as he scraped at the adhesive tape with a fingernail. “Cue ominous music. What’s in the box? Have we discovered Capone’s secret lair?”
“I wasn’t born in the eighties,” Casey pointed out.
“Don’t remind me, you’ll make me feel old.”
Casey coughed into his fist. As if. Most of the time, Casey felt a million years older than Gabriel.
“Fuck you,” Gabe said with a grin. “Not that I remember much before I was eight or so, to be honest.”
“Geraldo Rivera?” Elton interjected. “Is that who you mean?”
“That guy!” Gabe pointed at Elton. “You win the grand prize, a superbly dreadful chair. It will be delivered Monday.”
“The vault was empty. What a disappointment.” Elton shook his head, probably re-experiencing his disgust from 1986 or whenever that had occurred. “National TV and everything. Complete waste of time.”
Chuckling, Gabe ripped the tape off the box and pressed back the flaps. Casey edged closer so he could peer inside it too. A manila-style envelope sat at the top, and Gabe slowly extended his hand and picked it up.
He looked at them. “I also now hate envelopes. What if Pandora’s box was an envelope?”
“I read that it was actually a jar,” mused Elton, “but why couldn’t it be an envelope?”
“Since when are you reading about Pandora?” Gabe asked, obviously willing to be distracted from his task.
“Since I’m retired and can do what I want with my time. Open the damn envelope.”
Gabe blew out a gust of air but turned the envelope over and unbent the metal brackets so he could lift the flap.
He bowed his head and peered inside it, then tilted it and let the contents slide out onto the coffee table.
Several black-and-white snapshot-sized photos slipped onto the table’s pitted surface.
Casey and Elton let Gabe look through them first, but it didn’t take him long. He shook his head after a minute or so.
“I don’t recognize anyone in these. Do you, Elton?” He handed the pictures over.
Elton took his glasses off so he could peer at the photographs Gabe thrust into his hand, his nose almost touching the photo paper.
Casey felt like they were all holding their breath and the various ambient background sounds became loud, almost too much.
The tick of the fridge. The click of an old antenna wire against the roof.
He swore he could hear Keith and Bowie breathing.
“Nope,” Elton finally said, handing them back to Gabriel. “I don’t recognize any of them right off the bat. Not sure why I would. That last one seems familiar, but I can’t place it. These look like maybe they were taken in the late forties or fifties if that car is anything to go by.”
Impatient to see, Casey tugged the photos from Gabe’s grip and stared down at the black-and-white shots, like he, the youngest of them all, would be able to discern something Elton and Gabe could not.
The top one showed a young man and woman standing close together in front of what was now a collector’s automobile.
An Edsel or Oldsmobile, some kind of massive American car with fins, maybe a Chrysler.
The background was out of focus, but there were a few trees and an indistinct building off to one side.
Were they married? Were they setting off on a honeymoon or just celebrating a special day?
The next was of a baby, old enough to crawl through grass toward the photographer.
Boy or girl, they had a bonnet on their head, the strings tied under their chin to keep it from falling off.
The child grinned toothlessly at the camera.
Again, the background was indeterminate—grass and tree shapes, nothing identifiable.
Last was a forested landscape with a body of water in the foreground. Casey narrowed his eyes; something about the shot made him think he did know where this had been taken. Unfortunately, the Olympic Peninsula had changed so much over the decades—and not in all good ways—that he wasn’t positive.
Stooping, Casey dropped the pictures on top of the table and tapped the landscape. “This last one feels familiar, like Elton said, but I can’t place it. Maybe the baby is your mom?”
“Might as well see what else is here,” said Gabe, ignoring Casey’s baby comment.
A few minutes later, he’d reached the bottom of the box and had haphazardly laid the contents out on the coffee table.
“Mixtapes!” Gabe picked one of the cassette tapes, turning it over in his hand to read the handwritten playlist and nodding while he perused it. “Nothing earth-shattering here. The Beatles, Elvis, Joni Mitchell—Heidi always did like her—Donna Summer, Patti Smith. Oh, Velvet Underground. Wow.”
“What’s that?” Elton pointed to a slim volume.
It looked to Casey like a product manual or a catalog, but the title was obscured.
Gabe set down the cassette he’d been holding.
Casey knew he’d seen the booklet when he’d first reached in but had decided to ignore it.
The cassettes were probably more interesting to him, more of an insight into Heidi as a young person.
With reluctance, he pushed the other papers aside so they could all read the title.
“Oh, lookie here, a yearbook. Mom was sentimental after all.”