Bath Bombs & Beyond by Violet Patton

Author:Violet Patton [Patton, Violet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Violet Patton
Published: 2018-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

Two Picassos

At the building department, I recognized the girl manning the front counter.

“Hey, Patti. How are you?” My desk nameplate at the sheriff’s department had Patti engraved on it, instead of Pattianna. Everyone who met me through the department called me Patti.

Huffing, I set my purse upon the counter. “Hey, Jeanine. Fine. Fine.”

Hot Springs is a hilly little town. After parking two blocks away downhill, the uphill trek left me breathless. My whims had gotten me into trouble before, hopefully, this lark wouldn’t give me a coronary.

“How are those boys?”

"Still in the military.” Jeanine grinned. She looked ten years younger than when I last saw her. “What can I do you for you?”

Jeanine had two unruly teenage sons who thought spray paint turned them into a pair of Picassos. Twice, she visited her sweet darlin’s at the county jail. Judge Mayhew did Jeanine the biggest favor, giving those boys an option. After one imaginative night, the judge offered the darlin’ artists either jail for vandalism or the military. Since they were still in the service, they had put their creative juices to better use elsewhere.

“I’m searching for building records. Old ones, maybe 1920s.”

Jeanine cocked her heading thinking. “Hmm. Turn of the century, huh? Those records are in ledgers. Basement. Third door on the right. Door’s sticky; you might need to shove it open.”

“Ledgers?” Sounds dull and dusty.

“Records that old haven’t been digitized. No funds.” Jeanine shrugged, reaching underneath the counter.

I unclasped my purse. I could pay to snoop. “I see. How much?”

“There’s no fee to poke around.” She laid a rusty keyring on the counter. Fingering the keys, she said, “This is it. I think. You might need to try more than one. I haven’t opened that door in a couple’a years.”

She set a dusty tissue box in front of me. “Here. Take some tissues. You’ll need them.”

“Okay, thanks.” I pulled tissues until I found the less dusty ones and crammed them into my pocket.

As I took the two flights of stairs down, I listened to my cell phone ping messages. I didn’t read them.

I was on a mission to clear up the mystery of who rented space in the Dugan-Stuart Building. Whether Fanny was a figment of my brain damage or a real ghost wanting answers, I wanted to help her. I needed resolution as well. When I go to prison, not if, and appointed a state psychiatrist, it’d help me to understand how to explain my associating hallucinations. I’d have plenty to talk about.

In the basement, I walked the dimly lit hallway, tiled with green asbestos flooring. The third door on the right had a peeling number three decal pasted onto the frosted glass. The rusty key went into the lock well enough, and I turned the lock, but like Jeanine predicted, the door stuck. I put a hip into it and the door scraped across the tiles emitting an annoying squeaking sound. If climbing the hills in Hot Springs didn’t kill me, the old asbestos floors might.

The

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