The Package Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  The Package

  Copyright © 2010 DRG.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. For information address DRG, 306 East Parr Road, Berne, Indiana 46711-1138.

  The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  _______________________________________

  Library of Congress-in-Publication Data

  The Package / by Sharon Dunn

  p. cm.

  I. Title

  2010905263

  ________________________________________

  AnniesMysteries.com

  800-282-6643

  Annie’s Attic Mysteries

  Series Creator: Stenhouse & Associates, Ridgefield, Connecticut

  Series Editors: Ken and Janice Tate

  1

  “Here’s your problem, Annie” Handyman Wally Carson pointed to exposed electrical wires in Annie’s attic.

  Annie braced her hand on the two-by-four of the wall frame and leaned a little closer. She gasped. “Did somebody cut the wires?”

  Wally ran his fingers through his dark, curly hair. “Nah, I’d say that those wires have been chewed. See the little teeth marks?”

  “Chewed.” Annie repeated, comprehending what Wally was saying. “You mean mice?”

  Wally nodded. “I can replace these wires, but unless you deal with your rodent issues, you’ll have the same problem down the line. Next time, we might not be so lucky. They might work their way downstairs and chew through wires behind the plaster.”

  “That would involve ripping the walls open to do repairs.” The improvements to Grey Gables, the Victorian-period house she had inherited from her grandmother, were coming along nicely. Having to tear out freshly painted walls would be a real setback.

  “I would hate to see it come to that.” Wally adjusted his tool belt.

  “But there is no sign of mice in my kitchen. I haven’t found any droppings or nibbled food.” Annie glanced over at Boots. The gray cat lifted her chin and rubbed against a box as an acknowledgment that she liked being noticed.

  Wally tilted his head. “That means they must be staying up here.”

  “I have mice in my attic.” Annie narrowed her eyes at the cat. Maybe Boots needed to spend a little more time up here.

  “If they are not eating out of your kitchen, there must be something up here they are surviving on.”

  “You mean besides electrical wires.”

  The doorbell rang. Annie excused herself and rushed down the stairs with Boots trailing behind her.

  Alice MacFarlane stood in the doorway, auburn red hair shining in the noonday sun. She handed Annie a brown paper bag, the petals of purple flowers were just visible above the rim. “The silk flower arrangement you ordered from Divine Décor.”

  Annie sighed. The last thing on her mind was a flower arrangement.

  Concern etched across Alice’s usually sunny expression. “Did you change your mind?”

  Annie took the bag. “Oh, my, no. It’s not that.” She stepped to one side so Alice could come in. “I’m sure they are lovely.”

  Annie wandered into the living room and set the bag down on the coffee table, pulling out the flower arrangement. The living room had brightened quite a bit since she and Alice had painted the walls a sea green. She’d thought the flowers would add just the right touch.

  “So what is the deal?” Alice settled in an overstuffed floral print chair. “Why are you upset?”

  Annie touched the silk petals of the flowers. “Wally found out why my electricity has been on the fritz.”

  “And—”

  “It looks like I have a mouse problem,” sighed Annie.

  Alice rose to her feet. “Well, I think that means I’m just in time for a mouse hunt.” She hooked her arm through Annie’s. “Any theories about where the little invaders might be living?”

  One of the nicest things about coming back to Stony Point, Maine, after nearly thirty years had been getting reacquainted with Alice. They had played together as children when Annie spent summers with her grandmother here at Grey Gables. When Annie had returned after Gram’s death, Alice had been the first to welcome her. Annie tilted her head and pointed at the ceiling. “I guess I shouldn’t be so upset. How hard can it be to find a mouse … or two?”

  “Maybe it won’t be so bad. You always find such interesting treasures in Betsy’s attic.” Now, of course, it was Annie’s attic.

  Leave it to Alice to look on the positive side. Annie pressed her lips together. “Somehow, I am having a hard time seeing mice as treasures.”

  On their way back up the stairs, Annie scooped up Boots where she rested on the landing. The door at the bottom of the stairs creaked open. Annie took the final flight back into a room filled with memories and secrets.

  “If I were a mouse, where would I hide?” After setting Boots on the floor, Annie scanned the room, taking note of the dusty furniture, trunks, boxes, and stacks of magazines and books. A little light slipped in through the tiny windows. Gram had accumulated so much in the years that she lived here with Grandpa. Where to start?

  Alice rested a supportive hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Maybe there is a hole somewhere, and we can just block it.”

  “They probably came in on another floor and worked their way up in the walls.” Wally knelt on the floor by the chewed wires.

  Annie shuddered at the thought of unwelcome houseguests creeping around in her walls. “We should look for a food source too.” She placed her hands on her hips. “How about if each one of us takes a corner, and we work our way around the room?”

  “That sounds like a good battle plan.” Alice scooted across the floor toward two trunks stacked on top of each other, pushed against the wall.

  Wally rose to his feet, examining the far wall, moving boxes as needed. “They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

  Annie focused on her corner, lifting boxes and checking along the wall. She brushed her hand over an antique dresser. Even though the piece was dusty and in need of refinishing, it was beautiful.

  “Find something?” Alice turned toward her friend.

  Annie’s fingers grazed the brass drawer pulls, in need of a polish but still charming. “Gram used to have this in one of the guest bedrooms. I remember putting my clothes in it when I came up here to visit for the summer.”

  As a child, summers with Grandma had been something to look forward to all year long. Gram had adventures planned, from planting new things in the garden to walking the shoreline gathering treasures from the sea.

  Annie opened the top drawer. “I remember lugging my big suitcase up the stairs. Gram always had the room made up so nice. I’d open the drawers and put my clothes away. She put lavender sachets in there for me.” She breathed in, hoping to recapture some of the wonderful aroma she remember
ed from her youth, but only picked up on a musty smell. Still, the memory of wonderful scent lingered.

  She regretted staying away from Grey Gables for so long. Once she’d grown up and had a family of her own, Annie had always made arrangements for Betsy to visit her in Texas, but it wasn’t the same thing as coming back to the big Victorian that looked out on the ocean.

  When Gram willed the house to her, Annie hadn’t been sure what coming back to Stony Point, Maine, would entail. She had to admit that the short time she had been fixing up Grey Gables had done a great deal to renew her sense of purpose since the death of her husband, Wayne.

  Annie clenched her teeth. And now a little mouse was going to set back all of the work she had done.

  “Do you think maybe we need to move some of this furniture?”

  Wally’s suggestion broke through Annie’s thoughts.

  Annie placed her hands on her hips. The design of the dresser was such that it was flush with the floor, so she couldn’t see the wall behind it. “I suppose we will have to.”

  “Look what I found.” Alice held up a lunch box with cartoon characters on it. “I had one like this when I was a kid.”

  “Yes, but the question is how did Gram end up with one of them in her attic?” Annie asked.

  Alice shook her head. “I think your grandmother must have stored things for other people. I just can’t picture her eating her lunch out of this.”

  Annie laughed at the thought. Her grandmother would have been more likely to put her lunch in a bag with one of her own cross-stitched landscapes on it. Wally moved into place on the opposite side of the dresser.

  Annie hooked her hands on one end of the dresser. “Should we move on three?”

  Wally swiped at the sheen of dust on top of the dresser and leaned a little closer. “This looks like maple, a heavy wood.”

  “I do remember it being very heavy when I got a notion in my head to rearrange the furniture in my room. Ready? One, two, three, lift.” Her arms strained from the weight.

  Something slapped against the wooden floor. Both Annie and Wally leaned around the high dresser to see what had fallen to the floor.

  Annie knelt down beside a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. “This must have been wedged between the wall and the dresser.” She picked up the dusty package, turning it over in her hands. Though faded, the words Thanks Betsy were clearly marked in black pen.

  Annie looked up at Wally who shrugged. “You got me, Annie.”

  She untied the string. Alice’s footsteps padded across the floor. She leaned over Annie’s shoulder. “Don’t tell me you have found another one of your grandmother’s treasures.”

  “I don’t know.” Annie carefully peeled away the tape that held the package together. The time-worn adhesive took very little effort. “Someone left this for Gram.”

  “A gift maybe,” Alice suggested.

  Stranger things had been found in attics, but Betsy had loved getting and giving gifts. Annie couldn’t imagine her setting a gift aside and forgetting about it. She certainly wouldn’t have been the one who brought it up to the attic.

  The weathered paper crackled in her hands as she lifted it. She held her breath. On top was a folded plain piece of paper with a handwritten note. Beneath the note was a stack of papers that Annie thumbed through. They all looked the same. Printed on thick paper, they featured a swirling gold border, and the interior had a picture of a sailboat on a crystal blue ocean with calligraphy beneath it.

  Alice knelt beside Annie. “I know what those are. They are stock certificates. I remember getting one from an aunt when I graduated from high school.”

  The stock was for Ocean Side Partners LLC, and it had been issued to someone named Therese Marie Gilkerson.

  “Maybe the note is from Therese,” Wally suggested.

  Annie unfolded the note. The letters were rounded and precise. She read out loud. “Thanks for holding these for me, Betsy. I’ll be back in a few months.” The date in the corner read March 23, 1997. The note was signed simply “Joan.”

  Annie’s mind raced a hundred miles an hour. Her palm brushed over the note. “There is a story behind this. Somebody left these with my grandmother for safekeeping and never came back for them.”

  “I wonder why she didn’t come back. Who was this Joan person?” Wally straightened his back and adjusted his tool belt. “And why does Joan have Therese’s stock certificates?”

  “You think Joan stole them from Therese?” Alice’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone.

  Annie rose to her feet. “Gram would never knowingly participate in something like that.”

  Alice lowered her voice. “What if she didn’t know they were stolen?”

  Annie waved her free hand. “We can speculate about this until the cows come home. What we need is solid evidence. We have to find out what this Ocean Side Partners is all about and get these stock certificates back to their rightful owner.”

  Wally rolled his eyes. “Whoever that is.”

  A twinge of irritation pinched Annie’s neck as she rose to her feet, still holding the package. Maybe it was fun for Alice and Wally to speculate that there was some kind of crime behind the stock certificates, but she didn’t like the shadow it cast on her grandmother’s good name.

  “Looks like you have another mystery on your hands.” Alice wrapped her arm around Annie and squeezed her friend’s shoulder. “I gotta run. I’m hosting a Princessa jewelry party tonight. See you at the Hook and Needle Club tomorrow. I’ll just meet you there. I’ve got a lot of running around to do ahead of time.” Alice lived in a carriage house that was within walking distance of Grey Gables.

  “You’re not paying me to chitchat. I’ve got to get back to the shelving downstairs in the library. I am going to have to get some supplies to do a more permanent fix on that wiring.” Wally headed down the stairs after Alice.

  Annie stood for a moment. Clouds of dust danced in the light streaming through the tiny windows. She traced the beautiful outline of the border on the stock certificate. “Why did you have these up here, Gram, hidden away?”

  2

  A few minutes before eleven o’clock on Tuesday, Annie placed a selection of crochet hooks and a brand-new skein of yellow yarn into her tote before heading over to A Stitch in Time. She put one of the stock certificates in the bag as well. Maybe the members of the Hook and Needle Club would know something about the stock certificates. She always looked forward to Tuesdays. Being with these women had added so much to her life.

  Annie took the short drive to downtown Stony Point. Alice’s Mustang convertible was already parked outside when she turned off Maple Street onto Main.

  Annie entered the store, her feet brushing against the polished wooden floor. The store was filled to the brim with everything a creative person could desire, from fabric to yarn to scrap-booking supplies. The owner, Mary Beth Brock, was busy helping a customer select the right-sized knitting needles. The older woman offered Annie a tender smile.

  Annie nodded at the other five members of the Hook and Needle Club, all seated at the front of the store. She took her usual chair beside Alice and pulled her crochet hook out of her bag.

  Dressed in her pink waitress uniform, Peggy Carson looked up from the quilt block she was appliquéing and smiled at Annie knowingly. “Wally said he was over at your house doing repairs yesterday.”

  News traveled fast in Stony Point. Between Alice and Wally, the whole town probably knew about Annie’s two mysteries: the mystery of the missing mouse house and the search for the owner of the stock certificates.

  “I’m sure you have all heard by now,” Annie said.

  All five women nodded in unison.

  Kate Stevens held her nearly completed crocheted jacket done in rich shades of burgundy and royal blue. It was nice to see Kate sitting down and relaxing instead of running around the store helping Mary Beth. “What are you going to do about them?”

  Annie opened her mouth to speak
but was interrupted.

  “You could go see John at the bank. My husband knows quite a bit about stocks and investments.” Gwendolyn Palmer sat with a ball of pink yarn in her lap, but there was no sign of her knitting needles yet. “Maybe there is some big database where he could look things up for you.” Gwen’s blue eyes sparkled as she spoke rapidly.

  “That’s an idea.” Annie stared down at the yarn she had chosen to start her new project. It was a beautiful shade of yellow, but lately she had felt uninspired about her crocheting projects. She really needed something to spark her enthusiasm.

  Stella Brickson let out a huff of air. The eighty-three-year-old woman sat with a straight back and slightly lifted chin as her knitting needles clicked. “If you ask me, those stock certificates need to be returned to their owner ASAP.”

  “That is what she intends to do,” Alice said, a little short tempered.

  Stella had a way of getting under people’s skin with her bossy manner, but she was a faithful member of the Hook and Needle Club, and Annie felt that she was owed a degree of respect and as much love as she could offer. The older woman had spent much of her adult life living in New York. Only after the death of her husband had Stella returned to her childhood home in Stony Point.

  “I think the first thing Annie needs to do is find out who this Joan person is,” Peggy asserted.

  Alice drew a strand of embroidery thread through her aida cloth. “Wouldn’t it be easier to find Therese Marie Gilkerson since we know her last name?”

  Stella stopped knitting. “I can tell you right now that there are no Gilkersons living in this area, and there never have been. I know the history of most of the families in this town and a great deal about the surrounding county.”

  “All last night, I was racking my brain trying to remember if Gram ever had a friend named Joan. No one named Joan came to the house when I visited in the summer. She never mentioned someone named Joan when I called her from Texas.” Annie had spent the night going through old photo albums and searching through Gram’s Christmas card list to see if that sparked any memory. So far, she had nothing.

  “Maybe she wasn’t a friend. Maybe she was just an acquaintance,” Alice offered.