“Oh, that won’t do,” she said. “Didn’t I say? My aunt doesn’t live around here. I need it wrapped carefully and boxed up. You do that as well, don’t you?”

  “Of course, for a slight additional fee,” I said. She hadn’t started haggling yet, and maybe she was one of those blessed folks who took a price tag as a final statement rather than a place to start negotiations. There were more of her kind in the world than I ever would have expected before becoming involved in Memories and Dreams, and I was thankful for every last one of them I met.

  “Of course,” she said. “How much extra would it be?”

  I quoted her a flat fee, and happily, she agreed without hesitation. “That would be perfect. I have just one more request,” she said, and I wondered what it could be. I didn’t have long to wait. “I noticed those nice packing boxes you picked up at the Bentley farm auction. Since I’m paying full price for the rooster, would you mind using one of those boxes for the gift?”

  “I can probably do that, if I can sort them out,” I said, wondering why she was making such an odd request.

  “It’s important to me, so if you can’t find one in particular, I’m afraid that there’s not going to be a sale after all.”

  “Which one did you want?” I asked, trying not to show that I was growing more and more suspicious by the second. I was beginning to doubt the existence of her aunt, and instead, I was wondering if this was all a ruse just to get the box. If it was, Lucy couldn’t be far away from the scheme.

  “While I was at the Bentley place, I noticed that one of the boxes had a small red X marked on the back of it,” she said. “That’s the one that I want.”

  “If I can find it, it’s all yours,” I said. “This might take a few minutes. Would you like to come back in ten minutes and pick it up after you pay for it?”

  “No, I’m happy to wait right here for it,” she said.

  “Okay. Let’s take care of the paperwork, and then I’ll wrap it for you.”

  “Excellent,” she said, clearly relieved that I didn’t seem suspicious. I wanted to get this woman into a poker game. She would be terrible at bluffing.

  After I collected her money, happy for the infusion of cash into the business, I handed her a receipt and told her, “I’ll be as quick as I can. Feel free to look around some more in the meantime. Maybe you’ll even find something that you’re interested in for yourself.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, and I moved in back to hunt that box down.

  One thing was certain; there was no way that Myra was getting the box in question before I had a chance to look at it myself.

  I thought I’d found it in my pile of boxes, but when I searched the exterior of the box, there were no red Xs present, at least not any that I could find. After digging a little deeper though, I found the one that I was looking for. The only difference between it and its twin was the small red X, so I knew that I had a winner. I picked it up and studied it as closely as I could, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find anything that made it extraordinary. Why would Myra, or most likely Lucy, want a box from the auction and not its contents? I’d been under the impression that Lucy had been after the engagement ring hidden in the wrapping paper, but this made me wonder if she’d even known about it.

  I probably should have packed that rooster in the box she wanted. Myra was certainly paying me for the privilege. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I put the box in question beside its near twin, and then I grabbed a red marker I kept for special sale prices. Matching the X as closely as I could in size, location, and structure, I was quite satisfied with my forged results. I blew on it for a moment to dry the ink, and then I carefully packed the rooster into the fake box before I forgot which was which. Okay, the box wasn’t fake; it was as real as the other one, but the mark on its back was certainly not the genuine article. Instead of using wrapping I’d gotten from the Bentley auction, I grabbed some butcher paper I had on hand and made sure that the rooster could stand any transit, though by now I was certain that the only place this particular white elephant was going was straight into Lucy’s hands. I felt a little bad about the deception as I taped the top securely, but if Lucy had anything to do with the murder, I’d get over that in a heartbeat. And if she hadn’t? Well, she was still getting a box that I’d acquired at the auction.

  Just not the one that she’d been interested in.

  I compared the markings one last time after I finished my wrap job, and they were so close that I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart myself if I hadn’t shoved the rooster into the wrong box before the marker ink could thoroughly dry.

  Putting on my happiest expression as I walked out of the back with the wrapped barnyard animal in hand, I gave it to Myra. “Here you go, guaranteed to make just about any journey in one piece. Did you find anything else while you were waiting?”

  “No, but I must say, you’ve got quite an eclectic collection here for sale, don’t you?”

  “That’s what we specialize in,” I said. “Tell your neighbors and friends.”

  Myra clearly didn’t get me, but she offered a slight smile, anyway. “Of course,” she said.

  Once she was gone, I wasn’t sure how long I had before she discovered that she had the wrong box, but I was betting that I’d hear from her or Lucy before too long.

  It was time to search the box and see if there was anything that I missed the first time I’d examined it.

  I studied that box again carefully, both inside and out, but I still didn’t find anything at all remarkable about it, except for the thickness of the cardboard at the bottom. There was nothing else to do but take a razor knife to it to see if there was something that I was missing. Extending the blade, I slid it through the tape and opened all of the edges of the box up to the light of day.

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting to find when I opened it, but I dropped the knife when I saw what was tucked under one of the taped flaps of the box’s bottom.

  Chapter 10

  An envelope, sealed and a little dirty, fell to the floor as I slit the tape. Could it be anything but what I assumed that it held? The envelope was thick, as though some great missive was tucked inside, but I had a good hunch that it wasn’t holding a letter. My hands shook a little as I cut the envelope open to see if I was right.

  When I looked inside, my suspicions were confirmed.

  There were twenty-five well-used hundred-dollar bills there. Why would anyone hide two thousand five hundred dollars in the taped bottom of a moving box? I could have just as easily thrown the box away or given it to Myra without digging further. This must have been Ginny’s hiding place for her savings, and who better to know where she stashed her money than her former best friend? It suddenly all made sense. Lucy had wanted to buy that box at auction not because of any sentimental reason, but because of what her dead friend had kept hidden inside. As I fanned the bills, I wondered who it belonged to now that Silas and Summer were gone. Was it Jan’s, the sole remaining heir? No, I’d bought that box at auction fair and square, so whatever was inside it legally and rightfully belonged to me. I had no compunctions about keeping it, especially since I’d come so close to just handing it over to Myra and Lucy. I ditched the envelope and put the cash in my safe, an old unit Cora bought that still worked just fine. After that, I cut out the portion with the red X and shredded it before I disposed of the rest of the box in the trash. Let Lucy prove that I kept her from stealing it from me in the first place.

  I have to give them both credit. Lucy must have been waiting somewhere close by, because Myra was back not two minutes after I’d finished covering up my discovery.

  She had something with her, too.

  “This isn’t the right box,” she said as she placed it on the counter.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, doing my best to keep a straight face. “It has the X you asked for and everything.”

  “There must be more than one box with an X on it.”

  “Myra, what possible difference could that make? I did as you asked. I used a box from the Bentley estate sale that had a red X on it. What more can I do?”

  “You can show me the other boxes,” she demanded.

  “I could, but I’m not going to,” I said.

  “Why not? What do you have to hide, Christy?”

  She was right. At this point there was no reason not to show her the remaining boxes I’d gotten at Silas’s place. “Fine. Come on back with me.” My anger was only a little feigned. After all, she and her friend had just tried to steal something that was rightfully mine, hadn’t they?

  I led her to the back, happy that I’d been so quick to destroy the evidence of what I’d found. “Help yourself. That’s where I keep all of the boxes that I bring in.”

  I was expecting a cursory glance, but to my surprise, she sorted through the boxes with a vengeance, no doubt hoping to find the duplicate X box.

  Of course she didn’t find it. As she started to go through my trash where she’d find the remnants of the real box, I stepped in. “That’s about enough of that. I did as you asked. What exactly were you hoping to find? Was it gone when you looked?”

  “Never mind,” she said, and she seemed to be satisfied at last that the moneybox wasn’t there.

  As she started to walk out, I said, “Hang on one second. Where do you think you’re going?”

  Myra looked surprised by my question. “I’m leaving, of course.”

  “Not until you clean up your mess,” I said as I pointed to the scattered boxes all over the floor. “Don’t you think that it’s the least you can do to make things as good as they were when you got here?”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” she said as she started throwing boxes into the corner. They weren’t nearly as neatly stacked as they had been, but I decided not to push her any more than I had. I wanted Lucy and Myra to think that Ginny had changed hiding places, or perhaps that Silas had discovered the stash himself somewhere along the line. The last thing I wanted was for those ladies to learn that I’d just found the hidden treasure myself.

  “That’s good enough,” I said. “I hope your aunt still enjoys her rooster.”

  “I’m sure that she will,” Myra said as she started to walk out.

  “Don’t forget him,” I said as I grabbed the box and put it into her hands.

  “Of course,” she said.

  I watched as she left the shop, and just before she vanished around the corner, Lucy evidently couldn’t wait to ask her about the box, because she stepped out from between two buildings while they were both still in my sight. Myra delivered the news, and after a brief snit, Lucy shrugged and the two of them walked away. Evidently they both came to the same conclusion that I’d wanted. That money, for all intents and purposes, was long gone, at least for them. They’d done everything in their power to get it, but I’d trumped them without them even being aware of it. The money itself would be nice, but thwarting their plan to steal it from me was even sweeter. At least I had a small victory that I could claim, and not only that, it allowed me to strike two suspects from my list. It was pretty clear that Myra and Lucy had been after the money, but it wasn’t enough of a motive to kill Summer and Silas to get it. They were opportunists, there was no doubt about that, but that didn’t make them murderers.

  I still had a healthy list of potential killers, though. Cousin Jan had to be on it, and Stick Oakhurst as well. Jack Baron and Bud Lake were included, too, given their desire to buy the land Silas and his family had farmed for generations. That left me with four suspects, which wasn’t a perfect number, but it was still a whole lot better than six had been.

  “What’s this all about?” Jan Billings asked me a little after eleven as she came into Memories and Dreams waving my note around in the air. She was painfully thin, at least in my eyes, and I wondered when she’d eaten her last carb. “What’s suddenly so important about Silas Bentley?”

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “I’m sorry that I missed you last night.”

  Jan frowned at me before she spoke again. “I’m a busy woman. Dealing with the estate has been more time consuming than you could imagine.”

  “Plus, I heard that you’re leaving the area as soon as it’s all settled.”

  Jan clearly wasn’t pleased that I’d garnered that particular bit of information. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Word gets around,” I said, not wanting to tell her that one of her neighbors had shared it with me.

  “Do you want to know something? I don’t really care. What’s this about Silas?”

  “Are you aware that his death and Summer’s might not have been accidents?” I watched her carefully for some kind of reaction as I said it.

  She gave me one, in spades. “What are you talking about? The police said that it was all just a tragic accident. If they’ve changed their minds, they haven’t said anything to me about it.”

  “Their official position hasn’t changed. At least not yet,” I said, “but I know for a fact that some folks are suspicious about the way Silas and Summer died.”

  “Then they have overactive imaginations,” she said. “Unless someone has any facts to back up what they’re saying, I’d appreciate it if they’d all just drop it.”

  “Don’t you want to know what really happened to them?” I asked.

  Jan shook her head sadly. “I already know. Like I said, it was an accident.”

  “But what if it wasn’t?”

  “Christy, you don’t know me very well, but I’m not a woman who deals with a lot of ‘what ifs’ in my life. I believe in facts, not rumors.”

  “Even if some of them center around you?” I asked her.

  Jan looked as though she wanted to say something, but for a second I thought she was going to keep quiet. Finally though, she said, “I don’t know why I’m surprised that someone’s out there taking jabs at me. I was never all that close with Silas or Summer, but I didn’t want to see either one of them dead. If someone did this deliberately, I hope the police catch them, but it’s not my job; it’s theirs.”

  “I just thought that you might like to know what was going on,” I said. Working on sudden inspiration, I added, “I could use your help, as a matter of fact.”

  “Me?” she asked, looking surprised by my request. “What could I possibly do to help you?”

  “Jan, you’ve been privy to all of Silas’s papers. Have you stumbled across anything that might make you suspect anyone of foul play?”

  Jan frowned. “This is getting a little too weird for my taste. How could you possibly have known about that?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you find something?”

  Jan nodded as she dug into her purse. “I’ve been carrying this around with me ever since I found it this morning. I thought about showing it the police, but I had no idea what it might mean.”

  “May I see it?” I asked as she pulled a grocery store receipt from her bag.

  “I don’t see what it could hurt,” she said.

  Jan handed the receipt over to me, and I noticed right away that it was dated the day of the two deaths. On the back, someone had scribbled out in capital letters “GIVE ME WHAT I WANT.”

  I looked up and found Jan watching me. “What does it mean, Christy?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, and then, as I handed it back to her, I added a little reluctantly, “You need to show this to Sheriff Kent. It might be important.”

  “Then again, it could be something else entirely not related to what happened to Silas and Summer in any way.”

  “Jan, if you’re reluctant to show it to him, let me do it. I don’t mind being involved.”

  “No, they were my family. I’ll do it myself.”

  She started to leave when I put a hand on her shoulder. “Aren’t you going to do it right now?”

  “No, but I’ll take care of it before I leave town for good,” she said. “I promise.”

  I wouldn’t let go of her. “I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. You need to call the sheriff right now while you’re standing here with me in my shop.”

  She jerked her shoulder out from my grip. “Christy, I haven’t taken an order from anyone since I was in grade school, and I’m not about to start now.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said as I got out my cellphone and started to dial.

  “Who exactly are you calling?” she asked me.

  “Sheriff Kent,” I said.

  “I forbid you from doing that,” she snapped, clearly agitated with me.

  “Would you like to know something? I’m not so good at taking orders myself,” I said with the hint of a smile. “If you push me, I always push back,” I said.

  “Kent,” the sheriff said as Jan looked on, her mouth still a little open.

  “If you’re close to my shop, you need to get over here right now. I might have an important clue for you.”

  “I’m on my way,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” Jan asked.

  “He’s coming over here right now.”

  Jan looked at her watch. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this right now.”

  “I think you’d better make time,” I said as the front door opened.

  It was reassuring seeing the sheriff come in. “What have you got, Christy?”

  “It’s not me. Ask her,” I said as I pointed at Jan.

  “Here, take it,” she said as she shoved the receipt at him. “I found this in Silas’s papers.”

  He studied the receipt, and then the sheriff flipped it over. He frowned as he read the printed note, and then he looked hard at Jan. “When exactly did you find this?”