Completely out of character, Teagan and I left the trunk untouched while we set out lunch. Nothing fancy. The guys dug in, ate well, and took off before we opened the trunk. They teased us a bit about the whole fairytale aspect of found treasure and Mom’s warnings about being careful what you wish for, something about Prince Charming and toads, and, of course, Pandora’s box, but they didn’t stick around to see what was in it.

  Saying that I have a fondness for lingerie is like saying that Jay Leno has a fondness for cars. I’ve never met a peignoir I didn’t like. I think Teagan and I have already pretty much decided that Bernie was collecting lingerie for me. Since I’m tall, and wasn’t when she started collecting all of this, I’m hopeful that she either bought short or planned ahead.

  At first, the thought of a woman collecting lingerie for a young girl seemed kind of creepy, but Bernie comes from another generation, when hope chests and dowries were in vogue, and being one of eight siblings I can see where she might think a little help in that direction would be a good thing. Women used to plan these things, putting aside a bit whenever they could, be it their trousseau or a lovely piece of china and other household items.

  I’m confident that Bernie, who, to my knowledge, had never been married, was building a hope chest for me. Or maybe she figured that since I wasn’t the most beautiful of my mother’s daughters, we would need a bigger dowry to marry me off.

  When I suggested that possibility to Teagan, she smacked me.

  I know I’m not ugly. I have my stunning moments; they just aren’t as frequent as my sister’s. I’m okay with that. I have better lingerie than she does. Besides, I think it says more good things about you if you can be honest about your flaws. Just because I’m not as pretty as Teagan, doesn’t mean I don’t have as much value as Teagan. It took me a while to figure that one out, but I get it now, and I’m good with it.

  I took the key off the desk, where my brother left it on his way out, and unlocked the trunk. I took a deep breath, and opened the lid.

  A lovely citrus scent wafted out before I could see inside. I smiled. It would be just like Bernie to know I’m not a roses and vanilla kind of girl; I’m a citrus and sage kind of girl. Actually, lemon all by itself would work for me, but it’s hard to find, other than in an old-fashioned bottle of Mr. Clean, which could explain my slightly compulsive approach to cleaning.

  So now we have the chicken or the egg problem. Do I love the smell of citrus because I was introduced to it by Bernie, or did Bernie know me well enough to know that citrus pleases me? Or did citrus please her, and that’s just one of the things that made her think she and I were alike? Her wee little house did smell citrusy all the time. I’d have to think about that.

  Those are the kinds of things that get my attention. I know. It’s a little strange, but the whole thing about looking at life a little sideways has served me well. At least it did until very recently, but that’s a whole other issue to pursue at another time.

  The lid creaked as I opened it all the way. It had leather straps that held the lid straight up. Beautiful. The inside had the feeling of a very traditional old-time trunk, although when we’d seen only the outside, it seemed rather modern, and, thinking about it, informal but precise. Kind of like me I guess. I wonder if Bernie planned that or if it was just a happy accident.

  The trunk looked like a horizontal version of a vertical trunk. You know those trunks they have in the old movies that you have to stand on end to access drawers and a hanging rod. Basically a rolling closet. Probably when every mode of transportation took longer, and life was a little more formal, a trunk was your rolling closet. Older houses often don’t have closets at all. Anyway, this trunk didn’t need to be turned up on end, but it was full of little compartments along the edges and still had plenty of storage in the middle. Everything in the trunk was either sequestered in a drawer or wrapped in tissue paper with a beautiful ribbon around it. I couldn’t tell what anything was.

  Teagan reached in to open a drawer, and I instantly blocked her move. Teagan and I share everything, but for some reason, I didn’t want to share this.

  When you come from a large family with limited funds, virtually nothing is your own. You share food and clothing and space. That has just been a fact of my life, all my life. I never give it any thought; it doesn’t bother me, except that once Teagan borrows my clothes they’re gone to me forever. Even if she doesn’t leave bumps in them where I have no bumps, they look so much better on her that I don’t want them back. But that’s only slightly annoying. This sudden urge to keep the trunk, and everything in it, to myself — this is confusing.

  Teagan took my rudeness well. Probably not the first time she’d experienced it. She smiled and asked, “So, how are you going to do this?”

  “I’m going to close the lid. I’m going to the store to buy some flowers, and I am going to bring them out to Bernie. She put a lot of thought and effort into this gift, and I’m not going to tear through it.”

  “Sounds very mature.”

  “Shut up!”

  “That was meant as a compliment, Cara.”

  “Oh, well, thanks.”

  “I’m assuming that you want to be alone when you actually go through this stuff?”

  “I don’t know yet. I haven’t decided. When I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “I used to be the first to know. Now I’m the second. A.J.’s the first.”

  “Not always.”

  “Yeah, sometimes I happen to be in the room.”

  We laughed.

  “Cara, I have a question. You said that Joe-the-cop called and said he wanted to spend some time with you. Have you heard from him?”

  Joe-the-cop is the ex-partner of Louis, who I was told died in a car accident. As a favor to my family priest, in an effort to earn a little money, I’d taken on the task of emptying out Louis’s condo for his jerk brother who is next of kin, but couldn’t be bothered coming to town, even to bury his own brother.

  Things got really convoluted and complicated, but basically I’m pretty sure that Louis was investigating a series of murders, although depending on my mood, my opinion might be that his involvement might not be that benign. Joe-the-cop is weird by any standard, and again, depending on my mood, he’s a cop who’s trying to find out what happened to his ex-partner and he’s bad with boundaries, or he’s just a dangerous ass with permission to carry and use a gun. Of late, I’ve tried to keep my distance.

  Joe-the-cop is one of those chameleon guys. Everyone I’ve talked to sees him in a completely different way. It’s starting to make me nervous.

  Besides, the fact that Teagan and I accidentally beat him up in Louis’s condo, and then he almost ran my butt over, means that Joe and I have a little bit of history, and all of it seems to be pretty violent. I’m not a violent person, so either Joe-the-cop is a violence magnet, or he brings out the worst in me, or he is a bad guy wearing a good guy uniform. None of the possibilities are good ones, so until I figure out what is reality and what is paranoia, I don’t want him around me.

  I told Teagan, “Haven’t heard a word, but now that you have put it out there in the cosmos, I’m sure I’ll hear from him soon. You always do that, Teagan. You need to filter what you put out there.”

  “Just because you think about something doesn’t make it happen, Cara. The more I think about it, the more I don’t believe in that crap.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If you chose not to believe in blue, blue would still be out there. Unless I missed the memo, it isn’t just your reality that we are living in.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “I’m not starting anything. All I’m saying is that if you’re going to manifest something for me, make it winning the lottery, not some whacked-out cop looking for me.”

  “I’m gonna get out of here. I have a bunch of errands to run. I haven’t been at work for a while, and I need to get back into going-to-work-every-day mode. I’m going to do a full afternoon at the salon. You want to come?”

  “No, thanks. They wouldn’t know where to start. I’m more a home-based beauty person. I prefer to do my own pedicure and stuff.”

  “You can’t give yourself a proper facial. My treat.”

  “I appreciate it, but I’m gonna pass. I’m going to take flowers out to the cemetery, do some grocery shopping, fix a nice dinner, and hang out here with A.J. tonight.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Teagan, I really appreciate all the help you’ve given me trying to get me started on a new career, but I ate up all your vacation time. I’m sorry about that part, although having you around has been a good thing. Is there anything I can do for you to help you get back to work, make that whole thing easier?”

  “Nope, I’m good. It was nice to get away from the office. If you hadn’t kept me busy, I’d probably have gone back to work a week ago. That would have been a bad thing, on several levels. As it is, I still have lots more time coming to me, so I might be back to play sooner than you think.”

  With that, Teagan was out the door.

  TWO

  I DECIDED TO drive over to Bernie’s house and pick some of her flowers instead of buying them at the store. I think Bernie would like that. My sister Troya is living in the house now, so I didn’t need to call for permission or anything.

  I drove up to the little house, my sister’s car nowhere to be found. Knowing Troya, she wouldn’t have it in the garage, because the garage would be full of stuff she hasn’t unpacked yet. Troya is a staging person, and it has only gotten worse since she started nursing school. I’m pretty sure she’s using the garage as a triage zone, sorting through her belongings, deciding which should be attended to first.

  I leaned over to grab my scissors out of the glove box. What does it say about me that I carry a pair of scissors in my glove box? I guess it says I have a history of needing scissors in my car. Mostly for wrapping last-second gifts on the way to a party. Being that I am normally very organized, the whole last-minute gift thing is an exception, not an eccentricity.

  I understand it would appear to most people who know me that I’d be the kind of person who would have the gift shopping and wrapping done well in advance of the actual gift-giving event. I’ve had this conversation with Teagan, more than once. The reason I end up wrapping gifts at the last second is that I enjoy finding very personalized gifts for the people I care about, and there are times those gifts come to your attention when they are least expected.

  One example? A stuffed church mouse for my nephew. You can always tell a church mouse from a regular mouse. Their arms are slightly longer, so they can fold their hands in prayer, and they have teeny tiny calluses on their knees from kneeling a lot. That was a well-planned gift and sat in my house for a while.

  Another time it was a hooker for a sixteen-year-old male friend of the family. You should have seen the look on his mother’s face when I told the kid that I’d paid for a hooker since he was officially on his way to man-dom. I guess it says something about me that his mother panicked for just a second. A hooker is fishing tackle in this case. I saw the package, thought it was the perfect gift, and wrapped it up in a bigger box, along with a savings bond, because if you have something as exciting as a hooker to brag about, you should also have something a little more conservative to balance it out.

  Then there are the gifts you get just because. Not for a birthday or an occasion, but because you see the perfect thing for someone, so you grab it, and sometimes that means you wrap it up last second in the car. I have an all-weather mat in my trunk; I keep several different sheets of beautiful wrapping paper laying flat under it, so that I have appropriate paper for just about any spontaneous gift-giving need, out of the way, and protected by the mat.

  I have tape in the storage thingy between the seats for two reasons — wrapping gifts, and if you ever get a ding on your windshield from a flying rock, as long as the damage is smaller than a dollar bill, they can fix it without replacing your whole windshield. I know a guy who does this for a living, and he told me that, especially if it’s a little chip, if you put a piece of tape over the ding right away, it will keep dirt out of it and the repair will be more invisible. I’ve never actually gotten a ding in my windshield, but I’ve got the tape ready if I ever do. My primary tape need is gift giving.

  I think the best no-reason gift I’ve ever given was something I happened across for my mom. Mom has this really old picture of her grandmother and great-aunt. I’ve only seen it a few times. In the picture, on the table between the two of them, there was a beautiful teacup and saucer. The cup looked very dark, with flowers on it. I asked my mom about it, as I’d never seen a dark teacup before. She said it used to sit on her grandmother’s sideboard; that the cup was black, with gold painted around the rim; that it was fluted, had exotic looking flowers painted on it, was fine bone china; and that she was pretty sure that it was English, not Irish, which knowing my family, was a whole big story I knew nothing about.

  One day I was driving down the street, and I saw this huge garage sale. I’m not really a garage sale kind of person, which is a good thing, because if I’d been paying attention to the stuff on the lawn instead of watching where I was going, I might have run over the little kid who flew out from between two cars. I stopped, waited for a second, expecting a parent to come flying out behind the kid, but he just stood there.

  I put on my emergency flashers, jumped out of the car, and grabbed the kid — leaving him there to be smooshed would have been rude. I walked him over to the yard sale and tried to figure out which person could have been spending the rest of their day, or life, devastated because their child had been bumped, squished, or kidnapped. I was stunned that it actually took some effort to find the parent.

  Actually, I was pissed beyond words — don’t get me started on the issues of parenting in this society.

  I was walking back to my abandoned car, when I saw two teacups identical to those my mother had described. I didn’t have much cash on me, and the lady wouldn’t come down on the price — at a garage sale, what an idiot. Finally the parent of the kid whose life I’d just saved came up with the difference between what I had and what the garage sale lady insisted on, and I drove off with the cups.

  I didn’t even wrap the cups in the car. I took them home, washed them, went to the store, got a couple of place mats, a basket, some of that straw stuff, a couple of cloth napkins, a couple of different kinds of cookies in tins, and put it all together with the cups.

  Mom still has the cups sitting in the curio in her living room.

  Not sure how I got off on that tangent, but it made me think of the serendipity of life. If that little kid hadn’t walked in front of my car, or if I were the kind of person who just honked the horn, or if the child’s parent was the kind of parent who actually watched their child, I wouldn’t have been able to get those cups for my mom.

  That thought led me to think about all the stuff that had been happening in the last couple of weeks. Me deciding to try and earn a hundred thousand dollar reward for figuring out the truth behind a murder of a woman I’d read about online. That led me to the idea of writing eulogies for a living. Then Bernie died, and I thought Mom was going to ask me to write Bernie’s eulogy, but instead she asked me to clean out Bernie’s house, which led the family priest to ask me to clean out Louis’s condo, which brought to my attention that the lady I’d read about online, Bernie, and Louis all shared three letters of their car tags. The revelation about the tags brought me to the attention of a crazy cop, and hopefully not anyone else, like a serial murderer, if in fact all three of them were murdered by the same person. We weren’t even sure that two of them were murdered at all.

  All those things also led to Teagan looking up a guy from the past. They immediately took up where they’d left off, and then some. My old roommate’s brother moved in when she moved out, and now, well, serendipity is a very good thing.

  All those thoughts reminded me that my talent in life isn’t so much following a logical path, but rather, looking at things sideways. It dawned on me that instead of standing back and letting all the weird and wonderful happenings of the last couple of weeks speak to me, I’d been trying to wrench them into something I could understand. Not smart. When something works for you, it’s just not bright to try to change it all around for no good reason.

  Back to basics.

  For now, I’d collected a bunch of flowers, almost got molested by a rather huge bumblebee, and got bitten by at least a couple of fire ants, which I’m allergic to, so the next few days my feet are going to be miserable. Although I carry wrapping paper and scissors in my car, I don’t carry any of that bug bite stuff, so by the time I get home, my toes are going to look like pigs in a blanket.

  A fire ant doesn’t just bite, it also stings, and when those little buggers sting me, I get a bunch of little white bumps that look like zits, and whatever they bit swells up, and it lasts for a couple of weeks.

  Can I just say that those little suckers do not travel alone? When one of them gets you, all his friends come and join the party, and by the time you feel the first sting, you’re trying to dislodge a bunch of tiny little ants while they are each trying to inflict as much damage as possible.

  I looked it up. It’s a pheromone thing. Amazing all the roles pheromones play in the lives of breathing creatures. Some for good — very good — and some for evil. I guess the fire ant doesn’t see it that way. She is just trying to protect the farm, but that’s a whole other issue.

  I drove out to the cemetery and went directly to Bernie’s spot. When you see something shiny and new, it’s a happy time. A new car or a new wedding ring always brings a smile to your face, but at the cemetery, a shiny new headstone is sad. The cemetery provides a metal cylinder in the ground, just at the bottom of each headstone. They always get stuck, and they are always slimy, but I assumed because Bernie’s was new, it wouldn’t be a problem. I’ve lost enough people in my life to know it was a small miracle that the headstone was already in place.