Page 22 of Skin Game
“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, waswrongfully 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 forliteral yearswith 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 Ticketled 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—appearanceyesterday 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 morningbeforethe locket incident?”