Read Online Children in the Morning by Anne Emery - Free Book Online Page A

tea party. I have a tea set, but it’s only a kids’ set. We’re not supposed to use the real dishes, the old-fashioned ones, because they’re from France and they’re antiques. A man was here to look at them one time, and he said they are worth a fortune! But it’s really only the little kids who might break them. We won’t. So we’ll sneak them out and play with them, then put them back. They’re in an old trunk with some other stuff.
    There’s a huge set of knives and forks and teapots made of silver. And that’s out of bounds too because it’s really expensive. They’re not breakable, though, so we’ll get them out.”
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    We went to a separate room in the basement, where a whole bunch of stuff was stored: skis, skateboards, bicycle tires, and old cameras in leather cases that had the shape of the cameras.
    “It’s in this closet.” Jenny got up on her tiptoes and reached up for something by the door. “Oh, this is good! Now I’m big enough to reach . . . the hidden key! I haven’t been in here since before last year, and I was too short. The key is for the lock on the trunk.”
    She fumbled around a bit more till she said: “Got it!” She had a big grin on her face. “I’ll be able to play with this stuff any time I want to now!” She yanked the closet door open, and pulled a chain that made a light come on. There was a big blue trunk made of metal. Jenny knelt down and put the key into the brass lock on the trunk. She turned it, and then asked me to help lift the top up. I grabbed one end of it and she got the other, and we yanked it up.
    “What?” Jenny screeched. “It’s gone! The stuff ’s all gone!
    Somebody stole it!”
    So we didn’t get to play dishes. Or hockey.
    (Monty)
    I had a long talk with Beau over the phone about his whereabouts the night of Peggy’s death. He told me again that he had been in Annapolis Royal for a three-day trial. I had already confirmed his presence at the grand old courthouse. But the proceeding had ended, in an acquittal for Beau’s client, at four thirty on the afternoon of January 15. He told me he had been planning to spend a third night because of the impending snowstorm, so he didn’t have dinner till mid-evening. Before that, he took his time walking and driving around admiring the town’s beautiful eighteenth-century buildings.
    Where did he stay? At the Bailey House. Where did he eat dinner on the fifteenth? The Garrison. Did he have a receipt for his meal? Of course. He was on his client’s expense account. But the client was not made of money, so when the storm still hadn’t begun by the time he finished his dinner of poached Atlantic salmon — poached as in method of cooking, not illegally fished, ha ha — he decided to cancel his room reservation and drive back to Halifax. It’s about a two-hour 39

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    trip. The restaurant receipt gave a time of eight-oh-five when he paid for his meal. So this didn’t help us. If he had driven straight home, he could have been at the house before ten thirty, well within the medical examiner’s estimate of the time of death. But, wait, there was something else. He had stopped for gas on the way into Halifax that night. He would dig out the receipt if he still had it; otherwise, I could check with the service station.
    Now, to the matter of expert evidence. Who did he like as a pathologist — not for his or her post-workday bar chat, but for an opinion on an accidental fall? Preferably someone local, so it wouldn’t look as if our theory was so off-base we had to search far and wide for someone to back it up. He suggested Ralph Godwin or Andrea Mertens. I would check them out.
    In the meantime, we had arranged for Beau to have an escorted visit with his children at the family home.
    Bright and early on Friday morning, we pulled up in front of the Delaneys’ house. We could see