Pineapple Gingerbread Men: A Pineapple Port Mystery: Book Seven (Pineapple Port Mysteries 7) by Amy Vansant

Author:Amy Vansant [Vansant, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Charlotte pulled a drawer from the ornate bureau. It slid out without resistance and she squatted to peer in the hole left behind. There were no tracks; the drawer was just a wooden box that slid into a wooden hole.

“I guess you emptied all of these?” she asked glancing into the drawer to be sure it was empty.

“Yep.”

“Did you see the underneath?”

“Of the drawer?”

“Of the whole bureau.”

Declan shook his head. “It was on its side for a bit but I don’t remember seeing the bottom, no. If I did, I wasn’t really looking.”

She stepped back. “Can you tip it?”

Declan stood behind the bureau and gave it a heave to tilt it towards him. Charlotte dropped to her knees to peer underneath. She saw nothing but the wooden underbelly.

“Nothing.”

She stood and he lowered it back down.

Charlotte pulled another drawer and peered in behind it.

Nothing.

She set the drawer on top of the bureau and paused before adjusting the drawer so the edge hung just over the front lip. She cocked her head.

The drawer was a good three inches shorter than the depth of the bureau.

“They’re short,” she said. She peered back into the slot where she’d removed the drawer. “I can see the back but there has to be unaccounted for space.”

“False back you think? Hold on.” Declan jogged to the back of the shop and returned with an open-top canvas toolbox full of shiny metal tools.

He eyeballed the back of the bureau. “It looks like I can pull off this backing, but I want to do it carefully in the off chance I ever do get the chance to deliver this to the lady in Tampa.”

The four corners of the plywood sheet covering the back were held tight by screws. Declan pulled a handheld drill with a Phillips head attachment from his bag and zipped them out, one after the next. Charlotte helped slide away the backing when he finished, leaning it against the store wall.

Like the front, the back of the chest had thirty one drawers, but instead of knobs, each had a shaped indentation carved into its face. Charlotte’s focus immediately dropped to number thirty one, where she found the indented shape of a pineapple.

“It’s the knobs,” she said, circling back to the front of the piece. She unscrewed the flat pineapple knob and brought it to the back to press it into the corresponding pineapple indentation. It fitted like a puzzle piece. She pushed it in and turned it.

Nothing happened.

Declan put his hands on his hips. “I thought for sure we’d hear the sound of grinding gears when you did that.”

“Oh, wait...” Charlotte realized that with the pineapple twisted and secured, unable to slip back out now that it had been turned, the shaft of the knob had become a knob of its own.

She pulled it towards her to reveal a short, shallow drawer.

A ring adorned with a large green stone encircled by smaller red gems sat inside.

She gasped. “It’s Jimmy the Jeweler’s ring. He gave it to Kris to use in the raffle.

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