Chapter 4: Discoveries

The next morning, they opted out of a morning run, feeling like they'd more than made up for it with their overnight calisthenics. As they sat across the table from each other crunching their granola, Adam asked if she'd had a chance to inspect the contents of the trunk, knowing she hadn't.

"Oh, gosh! You know, I completely forgot about that. I guess I must have been distracted. What do you think is in there?"

A shoulder shrug. "I wouldn't have a clue. She was your grandmother."

"Yeah, but I hardly knew her. Tell ya what, I'll bet you a thirty minute full-body massage that my guess will be closer than your guess."

He smiled and said, "Hell yeah, I'll take that bet! I win either way."

"No, I win either way."

"No, I win either way."

"Okay, wait!" she said, rolling her eyes, "Let's sweeten the pot. Let's say if I win, you have to serve me breakfast in bed for a week."

"Works for me. What if I win? What do I get?"

"What do you want?"

"Mmm, how about some new underwear? All of mine's about shot."

She broke up laughing. "Jesus, Adam, where's you sense of adventure? Underwear?"

"Hey, I'm easy to please."

"I guess! Okay, underwear it is, but I get to pick it out."

"Okay, but plain cotton boxer briefs only; no imported silk drawers for this kid!"

She reached over and shook his hand. "Deal, but like I said, you've got no spirit of adventure. Mister Vanilla."

As Adam got down on his hands and knees and looked more closely at the trunk and padlock, he could see neither was cheap or flimsy. The body of the trunk was made of a heavy, dense wood, held together with brass straps and corners. The padlock was an old Central Union Railroad lock with a half inch hasp. They both looked like an antiques, and he had no intention of damaging them with a heavy-handed approach.

He looked up at Willie and said, "I don't suppose you saw an old iron key lying in a drawer anywhere, did you?"

She shook her head. "No, but I haven't gone through all the drawers yet. Can't you just bust it open?"

"I'd rather not. I think the lock and the trunk are both antiques and they might be valuable. Let's go on a little treasure hunt. The key should be two or three inches long and it'll look kind of like an old skeleton key. Besides, we can't open it until you've said what you think is inside. I'm gonna guess old family papers and a million dollars in Confederate money."

"Yeah? Well if you're gonna guess stupid stuff, I'll say it's a fortune in jewels stolen from the Tower of London."

They shook on it. "You want the upstairs or the downstairs?" Adam asked.

"I'll stay up here. You take the downstairs and the garage."

It took a while, but Adam finally found what looked like the right key in the garage. It was on a ring with about twenty other keys hanging from a nail over the workbench. He took the ring and a can of WD-40 oil with him.

"I think I found it!" he called out as he climbed the stairs.

He got down on his knees and carefully sprayed a shot of oil into the keyhole and around both sides of the hasp, then inserted the key and worked it around to loosen up the tumblers. He turned it, pushed against some resistance, then clicked it home. The thick hasp snapped out of the hole.

Willie lifted the trunk lid. On top was a folded patchwork quilt. Under the quilt was a collection of carefully wrapped porcelain figurines. As she unwrapped the first one, Adam cautioned, "Careful with that! Look on the bottom and see if it's stamped with a Dresden crown. If it is, you might be looking at a valuable antique collection."

"You think? How would you know about antique figurines?"

"Um, my mother never had much to call her own, but Dresden figurines were her one indulgence. Sometimes she'd save up for months to buy one. After she died, I donated her collection to our local art museum. I think they were originally made in Meissen, a town a few miles from Dresden. Anyhow, nowadays, some of them go for hundreds of dollars each, even thousands for some of the rarer ones. You should probably have them appraised."

"Why, you're just a real treasure trove of information, aren't you? I wish I could have met your mother."

After they unwrapped four of the exquisite pieces, Adam suggested, "Why don't we leave them wrapped up. It looks like there must be at least fifty of them, so we should put them in a box and unwrap them downstairs where there's better light and more room. There's that glassed-in cabinet in the living room where they can be displayed."

"Yeah, good idea. I'll go find a box to put them in."

She left the room and was back in a few minutes with a sturdy carton. They carefully placed the wrapped pieces in the box and set it aside. Under the figurines was another quilt covering a lot of photos and printed material. It looked like several scrapbooks and some loose files of some sort. The photos were very old, many of them antique sepias.

"Here," Willie said, handing him a stack of bound files, "you go through these and I'll go through the pictures."

"Are you sure you don't want to do this the other way around? I mean, these files and papers might be private family business. I doubt your grannie would have wanted a stranger rummaging through them."

"Well Granny's dead, isn't she. You're always so darn considerate! Your mama obviously raised you well."

"She did her best. But okay, if you insist. I'm gonna take these downstairs and use the dining room table."

"Right! I'll sit here and see if I can recognize anybody in these pictures. Looks like neither one of us wins the bet."

Adam objected, "How do you figure? The bet was which one of us guessed closest to what was inside, not what it was exactly. I guessed family papers, so I win."

"Okay, okay," she laughed, "You win! I was looking forward to picking out some interesting underwear anyway."

An hour later, she dropped the box of photos on the table. "There are a few pictures of Dad and Mom and Grandmother, but I don't recognize anyone in the older ones. They're pretty interesting though. I think some of the sepias were taken back in the eighteen hundreds. Maybe some of those files and papers go along with the pictures."

He looked up and gave her a strange look. "Yeah, they might. There are certainly some old documents here. And on another note, I might have figured out why your Grandmother left your dad out of her will."

"Really? Tell me."

"Um, it's probably best if you read this stuff yourself. I don't want to color your interpretation with my opinion." He pushed a scrapbook and a stack of documents an inch thick across the table to her.

He stood and said, "I'll make some coffee. Want a cup?"

"Sure. You know how I like it."

A few minutes later, as he set her cup down, she looked up and said, "Jesus, Adam, Dad was a holy terror, wasn't he? I can't imagine how Grandmother put up with him all those years. I think I'd have disowned him and shipped him off to an institution by the time he was ten. What a little shit!"

"A mother's love knows no bounds, I guess. It had to be a full-time job keeping him out of jail and in school at the same time. And all the way through college, at that! Judging from the number of times his arrests showed up in the newspaper, your granny must have known half the police force by their first names. She ought to be considered for sainthood."

She chuckled, "Yeah, and the selfish bastard is still screaming for more. He wants everything she left me, but he'll never see a penny of it, not as long as Margareta Torres is on my side."

"Yeah, she must be a hell of a lawyer. All I can guess is that it must have been something in his genes. Everything I read about your grandmother says she did her absolute damnedest to be a good mother. Too bad your grandfather died so young. Maybe he might have been able to beat a sense of respect into his son, although I guess that's not acceptable any more, is it?"

"Maybe not, but there were times when I'd have gladly taken a baseball bat to his thick skull. He's just a mean, selfish, completely unlikable man. Seems like I spent my whole life avoiding him. You can't tell me some people aren't born that way."

"You may be right. Anyhow, just be thankful he's out of your life now."

She looked up and sighed, "I wish I could believe that. Somehow, I can't see him giving up just because he and his lawyers got their butts handed to them in a courtroom."

"I hope you're wrong about that." He looked out the glass wall and said, "Looks like it's warming up outside. I think I'll wash my car."

That afternoon, Willie and Adam took the Highlander into town on another major shopping run. Adam had no idea what kind of money she had available to her, but he had to assume it was substantial.

Their first stop, at his recommendation, was a Home Depot store where they wound up buying nearly everything they needed. They started by renting a ten-foot utility trailer they'd need to haul everything back to the house. They loaded it with the generator, a snowblower, and a heavy-duty weed cutter. The back of the Highlander was loaded with a dozen other items, including a fairly complete tool kit, a chainsaw, and the wiring necessary to hook the generator up to the house's electrical system. He couldn't imagine why all that stuff wasn't already there at the house, unless it had been stolen. But then, empty houses tended to be an open invitation to theft.

On the way home, Willie made a big deal out of stopping at a men's store to buy him some underwear. She insisted he wait in the car so he wouldn't try to influence her choices. He'd already decided that she would come up with something strange and exotic. He might have to stipulate that he'd wear it for her eyes only, if it was too weird.

October drew to a close and they found that they hadn't done their winter preparation any too soon. On Halloween night, they got hit with a major snowstorm. The ski resorts must have been delighted, but everyone else was unprepared. It was a blizzard, and at its height, the power went out and stayed out until the storm blew over. The power company was overwhelmed, and additional repair crews had to be brought in from out of state.

Adam had had the foresight to store twenty gallons of gasoline in the garage in five-gallon gas cans, so the new generator had enough fuel to run for at least two days. Even though it would have provided enough electrical power for the furnace, they decided to lower the thermostat to fifty-five and rely on the fireplace to do most of the heating since there was a mountain of firewood stacked under a shed on the side of the house.

By the time the storm system moved out to the east, they were under thirty inches of snow. Twice during the storm, Adam used the new snowblower to clear the drive out to the road so that once the county snow plows did their thing, they'd have access to the main highway.

But neither of them had much interest in going anywhere. They weathered the storm content with each other's company, whipping the house into shape, playing board games, and of course, screwing each other's socks off. They closed off all the upstairs rooms to conserve energy, and made a comfortable pallet by the fire in the living room to sleep on. The second day of the storm, Willie had to cry "uncle" because, after four intense sessions between breakfast and bedtime, she was getting sore. Adam kidded her about it, but he was secretly relieved because he was feeling a little raw himself. He couldn't remember ever having sex with a more enthusiastic partner. The girl definitely gave as good as she got.

Well, maybe there was one exception; Valerie, the eighteen year-old slut in Polk, Illinois who stalked him, finally maneuvering him into a rough and tumble ravaging that wound up with him fucking her in the ass. He thought he was punishing her, but she couldn't get enough. He smiled at the memory.