Chapter 9 #2
“Ergh, fine. You have a point. Although Heidi Karne? I always thought our surname was a riff on carny, like our forbearers worked the circus circuit. Who knows.” He sucked in a breath, blowing it back out almost immediately.
“I might as well finish going through this stuff. AC/DC though? Who would’ve figured Mom to have a wild side?
Aside from being a professional grifter. ”
Casey stood from his spot on the arm of the couch.
“What I’m wondering is, did Heidi make those tapes or did someone make them for her?
And could that person still be in the area?
If she grew up in Westfort, or at least went to school there, it’s highly likely someone may still be around who knew her.
I suppose it depends on just how much you want to know about your mom and any blood relatives you may have in the area. ”
“Ugh, this is literally the worst.” Gabe set the yearbook down and plucked one of the cassettes off the table again, examining the handwriting.
Heidi had distinctive, odd, loopy handwriting.
“This doesn’t look much like her handwriting to me.
But it evolves, doesn’t it? Maybe she purposely changed it.
” Dammit, he wished that first letter hadn’t been destroyed when the Ticket mostly sank.
“How about we see if anything is up with that chair?” Casey suggested. “From the thickness of the arms, I’d say there’s a possibility of hidden compartments.”
Oh, hidden compartments could be fun. “Fine, but if we’re poisoned by a secret poison-powder blower, it’s not my fault.”
Dropping the cassette back onto the coffee table, Gabe rose to his feet again and moved across the room to where the chair waited for him.
Them. Not for the first time that day, Gabe was very glad that Casey Lundin hadn’t been scared off.
Not yet anyway. And from the expression on his face, Elton was getting a kick out of this.
At least one of them was enjoying himself.
Stepping in front of the massive piece of furniture, Gabe set his hands on his hips and stared at it. “That thing is begging for a name. Alfred, something like that.”
“You need to get a move on,” Elton groused again. “Pull it out more so I can see better.”
“Give me a hand?” Gabe said to Casey.
Together, they dragged the weighty piece closer to the center of the room. Casey was probably right about the arms being hollow, but it still was a huge monstrosity and heavy as fuck. Gabe spotted small but ornate hinges along the outside edges of the rests.
“Yep, this monster’s absolutely an Alfred.” Gabe circled the chair now, taking in every angle. Then, with a sigh, he crouched down and started to poke and prod Alfred as if it were a recalcitrant patient and he was a doctor checking its internals.
“Hey, check this out.”
He pried one of the armrests upward. Years of sitting in a damp Seattle basement had not done the piece of furniture much good, and the hinges were a bit rusty, but they still moved. At least the chair had been stored on a raised concrete pad.
“Anything inside?” asked Elton, who then heaved himself up and stepped closer to supervise.
Gabe peered into the cavity. “Nothing that I can see. Who has a flashlight? I’m not sticking my hand in there.”
It was Elton who handed him a small pocket light he had stashed in his coat pocket.
“Always prepared.” Switching it on, Gabe shone it into the hidden recess. “There doesn’t seem to be anything in this one.”
Casey had opened up the other arm while Gabe and Elton checked out the first one, so Gabe moved to shine the light into it.
“Nothing here either. Check this out though. There’s a chessboard on the side. It flips up and out like an airplane tray. I wonder if there were pieces that went with it?” Dammit, now he was curious in spite of himself.
“Do you even play chess?” Casey asked, his tone laced with skepticism.
“Hell no, I do not have that kind of patience. But it would be cool to have them.”
He fiddled with the seat cushion and discovered it also lifted. They all leaned forward, and Gabe ended up breathing in some of Casey’s hair. Gross. But he still smelled good.
“One at a time, one at a time.”
Nothing in that hidden space either.
“Well, this was a fun mystery while it lasted,” Gabe said, brushing his hands together to get the invisible grime off them.
“I guess the thing to do now is take some pictures of it and see if the thing is worth anything as is or if refinishing it would be a better decision. One of those folks at Pick Me might have an idea.”
“Anything is possible, I suppose,” said Casey.
Gabe smirked and sent him a wink. Casey, he suspected, was wrongfully jealous of the owner of Pick Me, although he refused to admit it.
Yes, Colton Bernard was good-looking, personable, and had a rainbow tattoo on his shoulder.
But Casey was the only plaid-wearing, redheaded lumberjack type in the area that Gabe was interested in.
What was it with plaid anyway? Grunge was dead. Gabe seemed to be one of the few in the region who did not have a closet stuffed with plaid flannel shirts of all colors—mostly shades of red—and all patterns. Even Elton wore plaid.
Setting the plaid issue aside, Gabe’s gaze landed on Alfred again. “Why did she save this hideous thing though? Why store it for literal years with someone I’ve never heard of, then make sure I got it and the rest of the crap after she died?”
Stepping toward the kitchen area—or maybe it was a kitchenette, he hadn’t decided yet—Gabe snatched his no-longer-warm coffee from the counter and swallowed the cold brew down in one nasty gulp.
He wished he could head to Norskland General Store later for a quart of some ridiculously named angsty ice cream from Jewel Creamery.
Damn them for their odd winter hours. After today and yesterday, he deserved it.
Maybe he and Casey could have another ice cream date night.
Elton reclaimed his spot on the couch. “What was she like? The gal who had Heidi’s things?”
Gabe shot a look at Casey, urging him to please field the question. He didn’t feel like the best judge of character today.
“She was—odd,” Casey said slowly, thoughtfully. “Hard to read, not really forthcoming.”
Gabe snorted. Maybe he wasn’t the worst judge of character.
“Odd, how?” Elton asked.
Casey mulled over his answer for a moment, then said, “Like Gabe’s mom, I suspect Lynn wasn’t her given name.
There wasn’t anything specific, she didn’t come out and say, ‘I go by a pseudonym.’ It was more how she shared things—what she did and didn’t say, and the vague reference to how she and Heidi met.
The whole thing was weird. Although we didn’t actually talk with her a whole lot.
Gabe was ready to leave when we arrived. ”
“I was glad to get out of there,” Gabe added, plopping his ass back down on the couch next to Elton.
“Well, what are you going to do now? Have you thought about next steps? Do you want to know more about Heidi?” Elton asked. “You don’t have to follow up on any of this, you know.”
The question was framed with kindness; Gabe knew that Elton would support almost any decision he made regarding Heidi.
And Casey would support him too. The issue was that Gabe didn’t know what he wanted.
He’d brooded about it the entire drive from Seattle to Heartstone and still didn’t have an answer for himself.
Did he want to uncover his mother’s backstory? She’d kept it hidden from him while she’d been alive, after all. Was her history so terrible that she’d made sure he didn’t know anything until after she’d passed away for his safety? Could the truth be so terrible?
“I don’t know,” he said with heartfelt honesty. “I just don’t know.”
“Well, you don’t have to decide anything now. Or ever, for that matter. You can just let sleeping dogs lie and all that.”
“Yeah, no.” Gabe drew the second word out.
Even if he wanted to ignore the boxes and their contents, he couldn’t.
“The Golden Ticket led to my sperm donor. Great, yeehaw. Now she’s made sure I took possession of this haunted Alfred chair, mixtapes, and other stuff she saved.
What does she want me to learn this time?
” He slumped back against the couch cushions.
“She wanted me to know her past but not until she was dead, which cannot be good. This would have been so much easier if she’d just sat me down and told me.
I guess that means I’ll be poking around a bit in Westfort. They have a public library, right?”
And then there was the—as yet undisclosed—appearance yesterday of Juliet Carter. While she was on his mind, Gabe picked up the yearbook again and checked to see if there were any Carters at Westfort High in 1977.
Casey snorted. “Yes, there’s a public library. There’s one here too.”
Gabe did not point out that it was probably in some old lady’s garage and smelled like mothballs. Not finding any student with the surname of Carter, he tossed the yearbook down again.
Straightening quickly enough that his spine snapped and crackled like a xylophone, Gabe looked first at Casey and then Elton. “It’s settled, then. I’ll start at the library in Westfort.”
He slapped his hands together. “Tomorrow. Now, raise a hand if you want to hear what happened yesterday morning before the locket incident?”