Spider Lines by Terry Trafton

Author:Terry Trafton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-26T20:05:42+00:00

Chapter 29

A few days after Thanksgiving it happened again. Jenna saw them as soon as they came into the library, another vase of flowers on the table, the entire room filled with sweet fragrances. On the table beside the vase was a small yellow envelope addressed in ink to Mr. Ben Manning. Jenna handed it to Ben who hesitated to take it.

“Go ahead, Ben,” she urged. “Read it.”

Ben slipped a finger into the envelope and opened it easily. Folded inside was a note neatly penned on yellow paper. He read it silently to himself before reading it again out loud.

“‘Dear Sir,

Winter jasmine were my husband’s favorite and were set each Christmas holiday in this corner of the room.

Yours, Anna’”

“Can you imagine that?” Jenna’s tone was slightly contentious.

“What?”

“Seems a little audacious, don’t you think?”

“Not at all. She’s only being polite.”

“Yours, Anna is more than polite. It sounds like she’s got a crush on you.”

“Come on, Jenna,” he smiled. “It’s nothing.”

“She could have said, Yours Truly or Happy Holidays, something more formal.”

He put his arm around her waist and kissed her lightly on the forehead, but drew back suddenly, “Better be careful, we don’t want to make her jealous.”

“Ben Manning,” she shouted. “You do think she’s flirting with you.”

“Maybe a little, but it really doesn’t matter, does it?”

“It does matter. She comes and goes whenever she pleases.”

“But she doesn’t come to see me. She wants the brooch returned.”

Jenna went across to the fireplace, got on her hands and knees, and immediately began to search for something.

“What’re you doing?”

“I found the brooch here in this niche,” and as she spoke, she pushed her fingers into a sunken space on the left side of the fireplace. “There’s something here, a small gap . . . an impression, and it looks like it was put there deliberately.”

“It’s probably a crack in the mortar?”

“She wants that brooch for a specific reason. It’s more than a sentimental gift from her husband. I would bet on that.” Kneeling at one side of the fireplace, Jenna looked thoughtfully at a space in the buildout just above the cantilevered hearth. There was an indention in a section of the masonry. “Look at this, Ben. Look closely, and you’ll see what I mean.”

Kneeling beside her to get a better look, he saw it at once. It was stone, not brick as he expected, and cut into it was a space about three inches wide, “It does look like this was intentionally done.” He scraped a fingernail across the surface only to see paint flaking off the stone. “This section has been deliberately painted to look like brick, but it isn’t really brick.”

“That’s right, and not easily noticed—deliberately concealed.”

“It sure looks that way.”

“I think the brooch fell out of this space.”

He observed the indention closely before suggesting that there would be no reason at all to keep an expensive piece of jewelry embedded in such an unusual place as a fireplace chase. Shaking his head to show his confusion, “It makes no sense.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.