Savage Mystery Contest ~ Second Place
Janet Innes

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Alice shoved open the front door enough to peer inside. “Oh no.”

She shoved harder. Boxes and bags rustled in its wake. She stepped inside, stumbling on a pile of junk as her brother entered their grandmother’s house behind her.

They stood in silence for a minute, taking in the room. Gram hadn’t always been a hoarder, just since their mom, Gram’s daughter, had died from breast cancer eight years ago. Plenty of time to fill what had been a homey cottage to bursting. Gram had slipped at home and broken her leg last week, dying in the hospital a few days later. The city subsequently condemned the house. Alice and Paul had the weekend to clear it out before it was torn down.

“You know,” Alice said, her voice faltering, “we could just walk away. The inspector said they’d just trash anything left.”

The small living room was piled high with furniture, newspapers, boxes, umbrellas, cushions, photo albums, even a baby’s car seat. Unruly stacks threatened to topple over and although a cleared path led through the room to the kitchen and hallway beyond, it was barely wide enough for one person to walk. How had Gram lived like this?

“This is awful,” Paul said. “I had no idea she’d gotten this bad.”

North Kingston, Rhode Island, was a long way from Seattle, where Paul worked in tech, and from Milwaukee, where Alice ran an organic fruit orchard. Losing touch with Gram had come easily as they entered their thirties and settled down. After their mom died, and then their dad, from a heart attack the following year, there was no family hierarchy to enforce visits.

“I visited a year or two after Dad died,” Alice said. “There was a lot of stuff in the guest room, but I didn’t think that much of it.” She paused. “That was the last time I visited. How about you?”

Paul thought. “Marjorie and I visited once after Mom passed.”

Alice nodded. Her brother and his ex had split up five years ago.

They picked their way to the kitchen. The counters were buried under mounds of trash, and crusted plates and cups piled high in the sink.

Somewhere in this disaster lay their inheritance—a Babe Ruth baseball card, back from when he was a rookie player with the Boston Red Sox. One had been sold at auction for more than three million dollars a few years ago. Their grandpa had collected baseball cards all his life, and after he died fifteen years ago, Gram always told them she kept the card safe in the house for them.

“Oh—look!” Gram’s dollhouse, a real antique, sat on the kitchen table. Its front could swing open, allowing free access to the rooms inside. Alice peered through one of the tiny windows, hoping the interior would be spared the damage surrounding them. “It’s still okay!”

She played with this dollhouse until she went to college and decided dollhouses were too childish. Seeing it now broke her heart a little.

Paul snorted. “With all that crap piled in front of it, Gram probably couldn’t open it to shove stuff inside. Come on, let’s see the rest.”

The tiny bathroom was dank and filthy. The guest room didn’t even have a path. Gram’s room did, but clothes and boxes were piled on the floor and littered the bed itself.

The work seemed impossible. But black knot had hit Alice’s plum trees, the majority of her orchard. As a dedicated organic farmer, she couldn’t use fungicide, and all her efforts at controlling its spread by pruning had failed. Last year’s crop hadn’t broken even. She had to replant her entire orchard—an expense in both time and money she couldn’t afford. If they found the baseball card, though, her orchard could survive.

*

They tackled the bedroom first the next day. But Gram’s dresser drawers, closet, and storage boxes were crammed full of clothes, mismatched shoes, scarves, and purses, while the boxes and litter that surrounded the bed like a moat produced nothing but junk.

“Dumpster 1, us, 0,” Paul quipped as they hauled yet another trash bag out the door. He straightened in the fresh air, cracking his back. “Oof. This is why I sit in front of a computer all day.”

They shuddered at the thought of rifling through the disaster of a bathroom, and Alice spent several hours shoveling out the worst of it.

“I can’t keep working in the house knowing Swamp Thing might rise at any time,” she said. Paul, in the kitchen, merely grunted. He was clearing out the cabinets, shaking through old cereal and cracker boxes, sifting through weevils in the flour and rice.

The siblings stood next to the dumpster late Saturday, looking at the sky splashed with pink and indigo.

“This is horrible,” Alice said. “I feel like a vulture.”

“And it’s all trash. We haven’t found any of Grandpa’s collection and even if we did, what are the chances of it being in decent condition? She probably used the baseball card as a coaster and we’ve been sorting through all this for nothing.” Paul kicked the dry grass.

“If we hadn’t been so wrapped up in our own lives, maybe we could have helped her clear some of this out earlier,” Alice said with a catch in her voice. “We’re bitching about this now, but this was how she lived.”

“It’s not like we knew that. And Gramma had Opinions.”

Alice could hear the capital letter in her brother’s voice.

“You think she really would have let us clear this out?”

“I don’t know. But we could have tried. We should have tried.”

The pink melted away overhead, leaving a wash of blues.

“She never said she wanted us to visit! Whenever I talked to her, she sounded fine, said everything was great,” Paul said. But everything clearly had not been great, and Gram had not been fine. And how often had he talked to her, really? Maybe a couple times a year. It was easy to let things slide if they didn’t demand attention, like his job, and his son. And now Marjorie was getting remarried to someone who made way more money than he did and Alex was going to have a stepfather. As it was, he only saw his son a couple of weekends a month. How long until Alex shuffled him down his list of priorities the way he’d dropped his relationship with his grandmother?

Alice knocked her shoulder against his.

“We’re both at fault. I could have visited in the winters.” Except she hadn’t wanted to. She loved her farm, loved her home, sitting in front of the wood stove with Tiffany, talking about their plans for the new season. She’d bought the orchard four years ago and it still felt precarious. She hadn’t wanted to leave it to come to Rhode Island. Hadn’t wanted to leave the nest she’d created—and might lose.

She sighed. “We’re here now. Want to do the guest room tonight? Then we’ll only have the living room to tackle tomorrow.”

“Only.” Paul laughed without humor.

Armed with headlamps and a generator-powered work light, Alice was wearily sifting through the millionth stack of magazines when Paul let out a shout.

“Allie, look!” He triumphantly held up a clear plastic bag, with a familiar album inside.

Hearts pounding, they slid it out of the bag.

Covered in plain brown vinyl, the album’s pages crackled from disuse as Paul and Alice turned them, first reverently, then with increasing concern.

“These are all Topps baseball cards,” Paul finally said. “I gave Grandpa this one.” He pointed to Nomar Garciaparra. “Thought it was hot shit as a kid, but it’s not worth more than five bucks.”

Alice nodded. “We both gave him baseball cards for Christmas that year. Here’s mine, Roger Clemens. It’s sweet he kept them, but…”

“None of these are valuable,” Paul said, flipping through the album. “The whole album’s worth a couple thousand dollars max. Better than nothing…”

But not enough. Not nearly enough.

Alice rummaged under the bed, retreating with a squeal as something rustled back at her.

“Some critter’s under there,” she said, retreating to the protective shine of the work light. “Let’s head back to the hotel for the night. We make sure nothing’s tucked behind these cards, and then we can come back first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good to me,” Paul said. He brightened. “Maybe we won’t have to deal with the living room at all!”

*

But further exploration revealed nothing beyond an unmistakable odor of mildew and decay.

“I don’t know if these cards are even salable,” Alice said, wrinkling her nose.

Paul tucked the final baseball card back into its plastic pocket. “They reek, that’s for sure. I don’t want this stinking up my room overnight. I’m gonna go put it in the rental car’s trunk.”

“Good idea,” Alice said as Paul’s cell phone rang.

“Actually, Marjorie’s on the phone. Can you stick this in the car?”

She nodded as he picked up the call.

“Everything okay?” Marjorie and he only spoke when it was about Alex.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” said his ex-wife. “Listen, I found an awesome summer camp for Alex that I think he’d really like. It’s a day camp, but it runs for all of July. They do STEM stuff, and hiking and archery and art.”

Paul rubbed one hand over his face. “Marjorie, Alex is seven. Why does he need camp? Little kids should be able to hang out in the summer. Plus, it’s March. Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself a bit?”

Her voice sharpened, as it usually did when they spoke about their son. “Since Ron and I are getting married at the end of June and we’re going away for a week’s honeymoon and then moving in to our new place, we need a plan. Who’s Alex going to stay home with?” Not you went unsaid. “And yes, it’s March. If we wait until May all the spaces will be filled and you’re going to have to find a babysitter. Last time I checked you didn’t have one lined up, so good luck with that.”

“Okay. But do we have to do this right now? I’m flying home on Monday. Can we talk about this then, please?”

“Applications just opened and I want to put one in a.s.a.p. I’m calling now because we need to put down a fifty-percent deposit.” She named the sum.

“Jesus!”

“Well, that’s why I’m calling. Can you swing the price?”

Although system admins got paid well, the cost of living in Seattle was high, especially after college loans and child support, not to mention the private school Marjorie insisted on. Her soon-to-be husband had offered to chip in after their marriage, but Paul’s pride wouldn’t let him accept financial help from another man for raising his son. No matter how disconnected he might sometimes feel from his own kid.

With a sinking heart, Paul quickly ran through his monthly budget. He’d hoped to take Alex away for a trip this summer, maybe to Disney, just the two of them for a week or something, but there was no way he could do both.

“Listen, I can’t deal with this right now,” he prevaricated. “I just spent all day going through absolute filth, and I gotta wake up and do it all again tomorrow. I’m exhausted and hungry and I gotta take a shower. I’ll be back on Monday. I’ll give you a call Monday night and we can talk then. Okay?”

He hung up and went into the bathroom to turn the shower on to scalding. Please let us find the cards tomorrow. Please, he thought desperately.

*

First thing on Sunday, Alice and Paul headed back to the cottage. The early morning sun shone on the peeling clapboards and highlighted the years of dirt on the windows. The brick chimney leaned crazily to one side, and the low stone steps were cracked and broken.

“She can’t have sold that card,” Paul said. “Wouldn’t she have fixed up the house if she had?”

“Or bought a whole bunch of useless crap?” Alice pointed out. “Think of how much stuff we’ve thrown out! All that money wasted. It makes me so sad. She could have lived so much better.”

“Yup. The whole thing sucks.” He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “Well, let’s get started, and hopefully this will be over soon.”

Alice made her brother search under the bed in the guest room, staying near the door and away from last night’s rustle. But the only exciting thing he uncovered was a mouse nest, as well as some very distressed mice.

The day ground on, unrelenting. First the guest room emptied, and then the living room.

“Bills, magazines, newspapers, cards, recipes, all this shit!” Alice exclaimed, shaking out yet another mildewed paperback, just in case their grandma had tucked the baseball card between its pages. “She probably gave it to the paperboy for a tip one Christmas.”

Paul blanched. “Don’t say that. It’s gotta be here somewhere.”

But as the sun started to set on an empty room, they had to admit theirs was a lost cause.

“This is such a shitty legacy,” Alice said suddenly. “We’re not even sad she’s gone, we’re resentful we spent all weekend cleaning this and have literally nothing to show for it. This doesn’t honor her memory or Grandpa’s or anyone’s.”

She felt her brother nod.

“I feel like a gold digger. And it’s Gram! I loved her, you loved her. We had good times together. Remember we’d always play cards in the summer?”

“She taught me gin rummy and snap.” A smile touched Alice’s lips. “We’d drink cream sodas and she’d let me light her cigarettes for her.”

“Remember that summer…”

Finally, in the dying light and the cleared-out house, they reminisced, trading their favorite stories.

Alice sniffed. “I should have come visit more often.”

“Me, too. Sorry, Gram,” Paul said softly. He stretched his back, groaning. “You ready to get out of here?”

Alice nodded. On Tuesday she’d start calling her bank to see about putting a second mortgage on her orchard. It was risky, but she didn’t have a choice.

She turned. The dollhouse sat in solitary splendor on the kitchen table. “I loved this thing,” she murmured, walking over to gaze at it. “You opened it?”

“Figured I’d see if she hid it under the carpets,” Paul said. “Nope.”

“It’s not in much better shape than the house is.” Dirt streaked the windows and the faded wallpaper, and the peaked Victorian roof had missing tiles. Miniature tables and chairs sat askew where Paul had moved them. “Shall we take this out to the dumpster? I don’t think it’s worth saving.”

They hefted it between them. At the front door, Paul lost his footing on the broken stone steps. The dollhouse smashed on the ground.

“The one nice thing, of course it broke,” mourned Alice, kneeling at the wreckage. A broken wall caught her eye. “Hang on—Paul, is that—?”

The torn wallpaper fluttered in the evening breeze. Beneath it, a sharp white corner, covered in plastic.

Kneeling beside her, Paul gently peeled the wallpaper away. Babe Ruth grinned up at them, his Red Sox rookie card intact. Alice gasped.

“The house—Gram said the card was in the house!”

As the sun set, the sky turned the deep violet of plums.

Janet Innes is a writer and poet based in Rhode Island. Her work has appeared in Guilty and Lucent Dreaming. Twitter: @Janet_Innes_ Email: janet.parkinson[at]cox.net