Time Thieves Read online

  He felt her startled pause, heard her gasp. He turned to face her, a melancholic smile on his face. “Leaving like you did hurt more than just you.”

  The smile in her eyes shone at him, but the serious look on her face agreed. “If I’d been anything but a kid, caught by the decisions of adults, I’d have stayed. And I’d have gone to the prom with you.”

  They smiled, a rekindling, a reconnection, a resolve firming between them.

  “Then I suggest we pick up where we left off.” His grin was contagious.

  She laughed. “As I recall, I’d just beaten you at the spelling bee.”

  At least that had been the last highlight, the last normal day she remembered. After that her life had been a blur.

  He laughed. “Actually, you tromped me.”

  “Another round?”

  “So not. Once was enough for me. But how about a cup of coffee to catch up on old times?”

  Damn. That’s the best offer she’d had in a long time. Her heart swelled with the sense of reconnection. “Sounds good.”

  Chapter 5

  By the time Ward left, Sari actually felt like another piece of her had come home. A piece she hadn’t been fully aware had been lost in limbo. She’d been devastated by all the changes that had happened so fast in her life. Crushed. Losing her best friend at the time had been just another blow she’d struggled to deal with.

  To know he’d missed her as much as she missed him made her all warm and fuzzy inside. Yes, they had stayed in contact at first only, but it had a distance to it. Some of that distance had remained after their first visit. Not now. The distance was gone in an instant as if it hadn’t ever existed. Now…she felt like she’d fully come home.

  That attic was yet another homecoming. Her mother couldn’t remember there being an attic and said it wouldn’t have mattered since she’d never go inside the damn thing anyways. And Sari had better stay out too. The floorboards were probably rotten. Sari had explained about the roof, and her mother told her she’d send over some money to help with the repairs.

  “If I can’t get you to come home where you belong, then I’d damn well better make sure you’re safe over there. That house is a ruin. Sitting empty for all this time. The stove is liable to blow up the first time you use it.”

  Sari hadn’t had the strength to tell her mother that she hadn’t turned it on yet. In the back of her mind, she had wondered if all the electrical wiring was safe. She’d liked to have done this alone without her mother’s financial aid, but there was no doubt this house could eat away all her savings at the rate it was disappearing. And how sad was that? She needed to leave again soon too. She had a trip to Washington DC in a week. There was much to do first, including laundry from her last trip.

  At least she’d put out the money for a washer and dryer when she’d first moved in. Those units worked, so in theory the electrical system was just fine. That didn’t mean she’d trust all the wiring. She’d have that checked as soon as she got back. Tomorrow was the window and the roof.

  Then the rest.

  First, sleep.

  She tried, but it was difficult to sleep that night. She couldn’t get the little room out of her mind. She’d taken a quick glance through some of the boxes up there and had Ward haul a couple down before he left, but nothing had given a clear indication of why the room had been left as is. Storage? Then why not put a door into the upstairs where it was more accessible? Sure there’d been the weird attic door, but there could have been so much more.

  Then again, maybe money or speed had been a factor with intentions to make changes down the road.

  After Ward had left, she’d gone through the first box, only it had contained nothing but old clothes, relatively all the same size. As if one woman had cleaned out her closets and found it easier to throw the unwanted clothing in the attic instead of giving it away to Goodwill. Then again, from the age of the clothing, maybe being frugal was the sign of the times and they were the ones in need of Goodwill. Sari was no clothing specialist, but these articles didn’t appear to be of great quality.

  She’d tossed and turned before finally falling into a troubled sleep.

  Somewhere in the middle of the night, she woke and bolted upright. Something moved in the house. She’d planned on getting a cat to keep her company eventually. And that’s what it sounded like; a soft, gentle padding across the floor.

  She scooted to the edge of the bed, grabbed up her housecoat, and walked silently to her open bedroom door. Peering down the hallway, she realized that for all the odd sound, there was no sense of an intruder like last time. She wasn’t afraid – she was curious.

  Intrigued.

  And that was just plain dumb. She’d already gone through a terrible break-in, so why this time was different she didn’t know.

  She walked down the hallway to the top of the stairs and listened intently.

  Silent. No voices, no footsteps, no sound at all. She straightened and looked around. The attic was behind the wall to her left. She laid her head against the plaster and thought she heard something. She frowned. Could an animal have gotten into the attic? With the window due to be installed in the morning, the hole in the roof, while tarped, was relatively open to an animal. Squirrels came to mind. She laughed lightly. That’s exactly what it would be. She’d seen many big gray squirrels outside. One had probably come inside to investigate.

  Nothing to worry about.

  She returned to her bed, content.

  *

  In the morning, Sari didn’t have a chance to look if a squirrel had gotten in. If he had, he wouldn’t have stayed as the window guy, Jimmy, arrived before seven with a beautiful unit that had small panes and lots of small wooden dividers. It was old looking and matched the house perfectly. She grinned. The roofers were back, and John was helping Jimmy put the window in. They’d been delighted at the drop down stair system.

  “Don’t see many of those units around town.”

  “They probably wouldn’t pass inspection,” John said. He seemed the more dour of the two, but both men were friendly and appeared competent. That was all she cared about. Still, having the window in was glorious. Beautiful daylight shone into the room.

  “Are you going to put a door from the hallway into here?” Jimmy asked.

  “You probably should. Better for safety. Just in case, you know.”

  “That means finding someone who can do the job though.” Sari glanced over at the two brothers, a grin on her face, “Don’t suppose you have third brother who does renovations like this, do you?”

  They laughed. “Nope, just the two of us.”

  John pulled out his notepad. “This is a guy who does this stuff. I’ve seen a bunch of his work. Looks good. And even better, he doesn’t chintz on the job. He’s a craftsman.”

  “Does that make him expensive?”

  “Nah. Not for something this small. A door is a hundred or so, the labor another hundred maybe. I’m sure it wouldn’t cost much more than that. Of course, some painting might be required after the work is all done, but likely just touch ups.”

  “I need to do a bit of painting anyway, so I’ll see what he says.” She accepted the piece of paper and tucked it into her pocket. “Thanks.” Leaving them to their work, she went downstairs and finished doing her laundry.

  They came back after a couple of hours for her to see the finished job.

  She loved it. Ten minutes later Jimmy had been paid and he left, leaving her alone. Now she could go and inspect the small room. She refilled her coffee, slipped her cell phone into her pocket, grabbed a notebook, and headed to her shop. She struggled to get the stairs down but once the movement started, it slid down nicely. She carefully climbed with the coffee cup in her hand and the notebook between her teeth. At the top, she stood clear of the opening and turned to look at her new window. Stunning. Sunlight streamed into the small room, lighting up all the shadowy places. Now she could easily see the contents of the room. The electric light helped, but it was not anywhere near as effective as natural light.

  She placed her coffee cup down on top of a small worn table, figuring it wasn’t valuable, then turned to see where she could start. The room had piles as if different items belonged to different people, each claiming a different corner in the storage room. There appeared to be five separate piles, at least five that she could see. Who knew if more were underneath? A smallish heap sat on her left. That looked like a good place to start. She sat down on the floor and started going through the small stack. In her notebook she kept track of what she was doing, how she was proceeding and what she found.

  The first box held more clothes belonging to a tall male, judging from the length of the pant leg. And a different era, from the pinstriped look and winged shoes as well. She frowned. She’d need to do more research if she planned on finding out who these people were. Had this house even been built when these shoes were in fashion?

  She kept digging. The pockets were all empty, and the first box held no other treasures. She reached for the second box. This appeared to be more personal items like socks and underclothes. She went through everything carefully, writing a list of what she found before moving onto the next. It was weird. It was as if these people were gone and this was all their belongings. Of course that was all too possible. She knew almost nothing of her father’s family history. Maybe these people had died, and someone not wanting to get rid of their belongings put it all in here. Not that it made any sense for generations to repeat this system.

  She shrugged and kept going. There were all kinds of little items like a knife, a small bell, an old book. She flicked through the book, wondering at the spidery writing. It didn’t look like a man’s script, but could have been his mother’s or girlfriend’s for that matter. She could barely make out the words, but it appeared to be a diary of some sort. Interesting. She put that in a different pile to take downstairs and continued.

  By the time she finished the small pile of boxes and glanced at her watch, she realized it was almost lunchtime. Her coffee cup had long been empty. Straightening, she walked back downstairs with the journal.

  She’d yet to eat. In the kitchen she made herself a small chef’s salad, using up the fresh ingredients in her fridge. With a trip coming up in a couple of days, she needed to keep an eye on waste. She hated throwing food out. Unlike her mother, who was so picky she’d get up and walk away from a dinner party if she didn’t like the food. She really was a trial.

  Not to mention rude.

  Sari smiled at the thought. She did love her mother, but she was such a perfectionist. She couldn’t imagine how her crumpled-looking father had hooked up with her never-a-hair-out-of-place mother.

  Still, they’d done well together.

  Until her father’s disappearance.

  Her glance fell on the journal she’d brought down. She opened it up in her hand and started flicking through the pages. No dates, no months, no year mentioned. Some pages appeared to have a formula on them as if the owner had been a budding chemist. Other pages appeared to be rants of temper. It was worth reading, but she had so much to do she’d have to put it off for later. She had to get to work. The real work. The one that paid the bills.

  In her shop, she opened her safe and pulled out the couple of items she had picked up on her last trip.

  The first one was an antique necklace she hadn’t been able to leave behind. Deep amber stones laced a neck collar piece connected to an older-looking chain. It was probably not the original combination and not likely worth anything, but it was beautiful nonetheless. She busied herself cleaning it up, testing the closures, and double-checking the settings. It was a wonderful piece and ready to go.

  She had a buyer in mind for this one. Charlotte Donste was a diehard for the necklace collar style. Living in the South, she bought items from anywhere, but they had to be collars. Sari took several pictures of the necklace in different lights and angles then set up to email the pictures off to Charlotte.

  With that done, she pulled out the small jade statue she’d found on her last trip as well. It appeared to be a fertility statue; only it had diamonds for eyes – another unusual combination. She loved the unique. It always gave her a thrill.

  She went through the same process with the statue, but instead of emailing them off to a buyer, she uploaded the best of the pictures to her website and inserted another copy to her catalog in progress.

  She sat back with a sense of satisfaction. Now she could pull out the timepiece. She could never resist buying them when she found ones like the one her father had. They always were a disappointment in that they were never exactly what she was looking for, but like a moth to a flame, she kept picking them up.

  Carefully, she unwrapped this one. It had a soft cleaning cloth around it when she’d first seen it; that alone had made her want to snatch it up. Peeling back the soft cloth, she turned on her special lamp and took a careful look at the markings on the outside of the timepiece. Excitement churned inside her stomach. It had similar markings to her father’s piece. Or rather, the piece her father had been working on when he’d disappeared.

  She snatched up her camera and snapped several photos of the exterior of the watch. She’d compare the images to the ones her father had taken years ago of his watch.

  Then she opened it up.

  A plain clock face, a simple design, but…it had the same markings inside as her father’s old piece. Excitement clawed at her. This was the first one she’d seen since. She swallowed hard and took more photos. She hadn’t really imagined that there’d be a double of the same watch. She’d hoped there would be, she’d dreamt there would be, but inside after all this time she hadn’t really believed it would be possible.

  Now she couldn’t contain her excitement. It was so great she had to get up and walk around a bit and calm down. On impulse, she returned to the safe and pulled out the old notes and photos her father had made of the watch he’d vanished with and spread them out gently on her second table. She studied the two watches, comparing the similarities and the differences.

  According to the notes and what she could see, both were made of silver, both with aged patina. Both were found wrapped in soft cleaning cloths from a more modern era. She hadn’t been able to locate the artist’s name of her father’s watch listed anywhere; however, it appeared similar to this second watch. So they were likely from the same watchmaker or an apprentice.

  The interiors were similar but not identical. The hands on the new timepiece had sharp points off the side as if showing some artistic license. The one her father had been working on had straight, no-nonsense points.

  A minor difference showed the second watch was intended for a different class of client. The first was meant for a working man, and the second for a businessman or a wealthy man who needed something a little more special. Typical.

  She wondered if the original watchmaker had any idea where his watches would end up or the amount of trouble the first one would cause.

  She shook her head at the fanciful thought. These pieces were old; now if only she could figure out how old. There were these inconsistencies about them that had kept her and the specialists she’d consulted guessing. And that didn’t make her happy.

  It should be possible to say it was made in the early 1800s, for instance. And true enough, it might have been, but she couldn’t prove it.

  She walked back to her new piece. It appeared to be just an updated model of her father’s, yet just as old. She pulled out her tools and sat down in front of it. Her hand trembled so badly she was forced to put the tools back down again.

  “Nuts!” She sat back and took a deep breath. “It shouldn’t be this hard.” But it was. She hadn’t been able to shake what she’d seen happen to her father all these years, and the memory sat beside her every day since.

  That the same fate might happen to her wasn’t an issue; it was the hope of finding out what had happened to her father. To know for sure. To put that ghost to rest.

  To be able to move on in life.

  To move forward.

  She picked up her tools and deliberately took the face off the timepiece. Lifting it away carefully, she placed it on top of the soft cleaning cloth then tilted the light so she could look at the insides of the machine.

  Unlike the others she’d seen in the last fifteen years, this one looked…different. She sat back, puzzled. It was busier. But how? Then she saw it. There were markings on the casing underneath the working pieces similar to the outside of the timepiece.

  Odd. She walked over to her father’s notes and studied the photos again. She should have them remembered by heart by now.

  Disappointment made her stomach clench. No, wait. She bent to study the interior closer. She still couldn’t see. She tilted the lamp slightly and moved her big magnifying glass closer over the image and gasped. There, when the light hit it just right…it had the same markings as the new timepiece. Only fainter, softer, or more worn away. She couldn’t quite tell.

  Fascinating. Exciting and terrifying.

  She’d finally found a watch similar to the one her father had all those years ago. Similar, but not the same. And she had no idea what to do with it now. She didn’t know how similar either – or rather, how different.

  She got up and walked to the window of the shop. Her hands shook so badly she wanted to stuff them into her mouth to hold back the building scream threatening to pour forth. Was this the moment she’d been waiting for? Since her father’s disappearance, every moment in time had come down to this one. She’d searched, planned, tried to find a matching unit to her father’s piece.

  But why? Did she really feel like she could bring him back? Or that a matching one would give her a matching experience – and take her to wherever the first one had taken her father?

  All of it was ludicrous. She loved her father, but he was gone.

  And she wasn’t going to be able to get him back.

  She spun around, narrowing her gaze at the new timepiece. She shuddered. Or was she?