Page 18 of Skin Game

Elton, wisely, did not respond. Bowie bounded inside ahead of him.

“This is all of it,”Casey told Elton a few minutes later. He accepted the hot espresso held out to him and wrapped his hands around the mug.

“That’s quite a chair,” Elton commented, eyeing the oak monstrosity.

Black with age and grime, the piece of furniture took up a significant amount of floor space in Gabe’s front room. They’d done their best to place it out of the way, but Casey suspected that soon enough one of them would stub their toe on the damn thing when the lights were out. Bowie was certainly eyeing it with distrust.

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—becausehonestly, 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 havingHeidiscrawled in thick permanent marker followed by a sloppyK, like the writer’s hand had slipped or been bumped. If they hadn’t known better, theKcould’ve been anR, possibly aP. Maybe anH? 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 betthere 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 ofInterview with a VampireandAll 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.