Secrets in a Bottle Read online

  Whodunit Antiques

  — Book 1 —

  Secrets in a Bottle

  By Shelly West

  Copyright 2019

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Newsletter

  Chapter 1

  “Arooooo!” came a lamenting moan. Abigail Lane cracked open an eye, wondering if an old man was being murdered nearby. Just when she thought it was safe to pretend that she heard nothing, it happened again: “Ohhrooooo!”

  Abigail groaned, turning over in hopes of falling back asleep. Faintly, she could hear angelic singing: “Friday night and the lights are—”

  Then came another, “Oohhroooooooooo!”

  Finally, Abigail sat up to see Thor, her tan Great Dane, howling at the ceiling. On the nightstand, Abigail’s phone played a tinny rendition of Dancing Queen.

  “What do you have against ABBA, huh?” she demanded, to which Thor simply whimpered. She sighed and stretched over his massive body to reach for her phone.

  Thor made no effort to make this stretch any easier, remaining still on his side of the bed. By the time Abigail retrieved her phone, the caller had already hung up.

  The first thing Abigail noticed when her screen lit up was the time. “You gotta be kidding me,” she mumbled. “5 a.m.?” It quickly crossed her mind that somebody might’ve died. But then again, the only family she knew was her mother, and it couldn’t have been her since she was the one who had called.

  Abigail was just about to return the call when a voicemail notification popped up on-screen. She played that instead.

  “Abi,” the message began. Abigail immediately recognized the deep voice of her mother. “Your grandmother is in the hospital. Would you check up on her and see if she needs anything? I can’t go because I… Well, I just can’t. She’s at the hospital in Wallace Point in Delaware. Ask for a Mrs. Lane. Okay hun, talk to you later. Beep. If you’d like to replay this message, press—”

  Abigail turned her phone off and stared at Thor. He blinked at her with his big doofy eyes then gave her chin a lick, sensing that something troubled her.

  He had more sense than her mother, that was for sure.

  A couple of things were wrong with that message: First, Abigail’s mother never let her ask questions about her grandparents, so she had just assumed they were gone. Second, she only learned her grandmother was still kicking after the woman was in the hospital!

  It was just like her mother to drop a bomb like that over voicemail. Abigail turned her screen back on and forcefully dialed back her mother. Her grip on the poor device was strong enough to strangle a person.

  No answer. She tried again, and again, then tried texting, then tried calling one last time, only for her mother’s phone to go directly to voicemail. Abigail let out a groan, realizing that her mother was purposely avoiding the conversation.

  Abigail had no idea if her grandmother might die any minute, or if the woman was in perfectly fine health, and just had a little mishap. Either way, Abigail wasn’t going to risk missing out on a chance to finally meet a member of her family outside of her mother. Maybe then she’d get an answer about her family’s past, because it had been a hopeless endeavor getting her mother to open up about it.

  Abigail pulled up her phone’s map application and looked up Wallace Point, seeing it wasn’t too far from Boston. Well, it was seven hours away, but that wasn’t far enough to keep her from going. She would go halfway across the globe if it meant finally meeting a relative outside of her mother.

  In all her excitement, she nearly forgot she had a job, and that her boss wasn’t very generous with vacation time.

  Abigail groaned again, causing Thor to tilt his head in concern. She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Screw it,” she said, and Thor sat up, sensing adventure on the horizon. “I’ll just do as Mother does—leave a voicemail, then become suddenly unreachable.”

  Abigail called the office, left a message saying she was taking a week vacation due to a family emergency, then hung up before she could ramble and make a fool out of herself. It wasn’t like she’d be putting anyone out anyhow, considering much of her job was done on commission.

  Abigail then triumphantly looked at Thor. “You ready for an adventure, boy?”

  Thor gave a low woof, knowing by her tone that he was in for some excitement, though what exactly, he couldn’t know.

  As Abigail dug through her closet, she wondered what her grandmother would be like. Would her grandmother want to see her? Did her grandmother even know she existed?

  Well, Abigail would know soon enough. She just hoped the excitement would be mutual.

  Chapter 2

  Abigail groaned as she rolled down the window in her VW Beetle. Traffic moved at a dead snail’s pace. She should have expected it, considering this highway never went an hour without an accident.

  She had made the mistake of listening to her boss’s response to her vacation time request moments before. Naturally, he wasn’t pleased. But who did he think he was, anyway? She hadn’t taken so much as a sick day off in years—not to mention the grandmother she never knew was in the hospital! Abigail had already decided anyhow. He’d have to come down to Wallace Point and drag her back if he wouldn’t give her the time off.

  Abigail worked for a big-time insurance company as a claims investigator. Though it paid well, she couldn’t help but feel like the bad guy sometimes. She tried not to be. She would often go easy on customers who seemed like they were on hard times. Sure, that meant she got less commission and a poor performance report, but so what? She did try to make up for it when she knew she had a scammer on her hands, making sure they didn’t get away with a single penny.

  In that way, she felt like she was dishing out a bit of justice. She had a sixth sense when it came to those trying to abuse the system. She ought to have, considering her mother was a real piece of work and had abused many systems during Abigail’s childhood.

  Would Mrs. Lane be the same way? Did Mother learn it from her? Abigail tried her best not to let such thoughts cross her mind. She hoped that she was related to somebody she could be proud of.

  Abigail felt Thor’s eyes on her. She looked down at her lap to see him looking up impatiently. He couldn’t have been comfy, crammed into this tiny car. “Sorry, boy,” she said, scratching behind Thor’s floppy ears with one hand, her other hand on the steering wheel.

  She had tried to get Thor to lay in the backseat earlier but had failed spectacularly. Instead, Thor insisted on sprawling on
the passenger seat, his butt hanging over the cushion edge, his right leg touching the floor, and his head on her lap. Not the safest position for him, but there wasn’t an easy way to cram a Great Dane inside an old Volkswagen. To make up for it, she drove as carefully as possible.

  It might not have been the most practical idea to bring Thor with her on this mystery trip. Abigail could’ve booked him at a kennel, but the truth was, Thor had been her best and most loyal friend ever since she rescued him from the pound a few years ago. She couldn’t imagine taking this journey without him.

  Abigail had always wondered if there was more to her family history. It wasn’t common for someone to cut off their entire family and past, was it? And yet that was what her mother had done—for the most part.

  All her mother had from the past was a box full of childhood pictures. She had kept it hidden in the basement. Curious little kid that Abigail was, she had stumbled across that box, and would periodically return to it in hopes of finding a hint about her mother’s past, or to uncover who her father was. The latter was a pointless endeavor, but she did at least find some answers about her mother’s childhood. The pictures she had found depicted a happy family, a nice small town, something that was worth holding onto.

  Abigail had always wondered why her mother chose to abandon such a cozy life, but alas, her mother never told her anything about what had happened.

  Maybe Mrs. Lane could fill Abigail in… Abigail shook her head at herself. Mrs. Lane. That sounded so formal. Abigail decided right then to stop thinking of her grandmother as ‘Mrs. Lane.’

  She was going to be ‘Grandma.’ Yeah, she liked the sound of that.

  Chapter 3

  The sun started setting when Abigail passed the ‘Entering Wallace Point’ sign. All the traffic and pit stops she had made added up to a few extra hours, and now she could hardly get a good look at the town.

  Abigail quickly checked into the cheap motel she had booked that morning, then dropped off Thor in the room after having walked him. She filled his bowls and patted him on the head. “Sorry, boy. You be good now,” she said before heading straight for the hospital, not even bothering to unpack her car.

  It wasn’t long before she walked up to the reception desk and informed the nurse, “I’m here to see Grandma—I mean, Mrs. Lane.”

  The plump nurse gave Abigail an odd, almost judgmental look. “Granddaughter?”

  “Yes. Abigail Lane.”

  “I have Sarah Lane as Mrs. Lane’s emergency contact.”

  “Yeah, that’s my mom. Can I give you my number as a secondary emergency contact? My mother… She can’t be counted on.”

  The nurse sighed and handed Abigail a form. “Fill this out, then.”

  Abigail wrote in her contact information and handed it back to the nurse. “So… Can I see Grandma?”

  “Yes. You’ll find her in room 105,” the nurse said, eyeing her.

  Abigail eyed her back before heading off down the hall. Perhaps such looks were normal for unfamiliar faces. This was a small town, after all. Everyone was probably all up in everyone else’s business, so Abigail figured she’d be on the receiving end of many odd looks until everyone got used to the fact that Mrs. Lane had a granddaughter.

  The closer Abigail got to the room, the harder her heart pounded. Was it nerves? No, that wasn’t quite it. Excitement? Maybe.

  She stopped at the door to room 105 and took in a deep breath. This was it.

  Abigail opened the door.

  There in the bed rested an elderly woman. Her soft and beautiful features were surrounded by silver hair that delicately flowed down to her shoulders.

  Abigail had been so mesmerized by the sleeping woman that she hadn’t noticed she wasn’t alone. That was, until a chirpy voice said, “Hi!”

  Abigail jumped and backed up against the wall, seeing a perky young woman standing in the corner. Was this yet another long-lost relative?

  “Sally Kent,” continued the bright-eyed stranger as she crossed the room and thrust her hand forward. Her blonde ponytail swayed back and forth, as bouncy as its owner. “You must be Abigail. Your mother told me you were coming.”

  Abigail paused, then awkwardly shook the woman’s hand. “Are we related…?”

  Sally’s big blue eyes fluttered. Now that Abigail thought about it, it was a dumb question. Sally’s height and hair color didn’t seem like something that would run in the family. “Related? Not to my knowledge,” Sally said, sounding amused. “I guess you could say I’m a business associate of Granny’s. Though I’ve known her since I was a little girl, so that’s why I’ve been keeping an eye on her.”

  Abigail felt just a tad bit jealous. Then it struck her how odd Sally’s loud tone was. Wasn’t Grandma trying to rest?

  “So what happened to her? Is she going to be okay?”

  Sally’s face froze. “Wait, nobody told you? Someone bonked her on the noggin, knocked her right out. Can you believe it?”

  Abigail couldn’t find any words as her mouth hung agape. She thought maybe Grandma slipped and fell, but a violent assault? “Are you sure? Why would someone hurt a harmless old lady?”

  Sally tilted her head at Abigail’s choice of words. “I don’t know if I’d call her harmless, but yeah, I have no idea. Whoever it was, they fled the scene, and left the door wide open on their way out. Sheriff Wilson caught little Missy roaming the streets, so he knew something was up. Sure enough, he found Granny knocked out cold right in the middle of her store.”

  Abigail paused a moment to take in all these details. “Okay… Who’s Missy?”

  “Granny’s Shih Tzu.”

  For some reason, it bothered Abigail to hear someone call Mrs. Lane ‘Granny’ with such familiarity. Some envious part of her wanted ‘Granny’ to be hers, and hers alone. She mentally pushed that aside and said, “So what, is she in a coma?”

  “A medically-induced one, yes.”

  “How long are the doctors keeping her out?”

  Sally shrugged. “No clue. They didn’t want to tell me too many details since I’m not part of her family. But she’s a tough cookie, so I doubt she’ll be laid up for long.”

  Speaking of relations, Abigail decided to ask, “So, where’s Grandpa?”

  Sally stuttered. “Uh, y-your grandpa? Well, he passed a while ago. Had nobody told you?”

  Abigail looked away, feeling her eyes start to water. “No. My mother didn’t tell me much. She’d never let me ask about family.”

  “Yeesh. That sucks.”

  “When did he die?”

  Sally thought about it. “Maybe thirty years ago. It was before my time, and yours too, I’m thinking.” She then changed the subject. “Where are you staying, Miss Abigail?”

  Abigail rattled off the name of the shady motel she had booked, and Sally inhaled sharply. “Oh, there’s no way you’re staying in that roach motel for the night!”

  “Oh…?”

  “How about this: I have a key to Granny’s place, and I also have her dog. Let me get you situated with the both of them. It’ll be perfect!”

  “Are you sure she’d be okay with that? She’s never met me—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Granny adores you. I’ve seen the pictures of you on her walls.”

  Abigail wondered if she had an unknown twin sister or something, because she didn’t remember ever sending pictures to anyone. Either her mother sent Grandma pictures of her, or Grandma had been secretly stalking her.

  Sally continued before Abigail could ponder it further, “And besides, as much as I love Missy, my cats are terrorizing the poor thing. It’d be good for her to be back home.”

  “Okay,” Abigail said, seeing that Sally wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer. Not that she didn’t want to see Grandma’s house, but she still felt like she was intruding to some degree. “I guess I’ll head back to the motel and check out early.”

  “Great, let me go grab Missy, and we’ll meet at the store. You know where it is?”
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br />   When Abigail shook her head, Sally gave her brief directions and said, “See you there.”

  “Okay. I’m just going to take a few minutes to be with Grandma, then I’ll head out.”

  Sally said, “Of course,” and left.

  The room fell silent except for the beeping of the heart monitor. Abigail took a seat next to Grandma’s side and stared, studying every contour of the woman’s face. Grandma was a classic beauty, with rosy round cheeks, a button nose, and a full chin. The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth suggested a tendency to smile. Abigail hesitated, then touched Grandma’s hand, finding it to be soft and warm. Her fingers showed signs of arthritis, but she still managed to have perfect nails.

  “I hope you wake up soon, Grandma,” Abigail said, leaning in to kiss her soft cheek before finally standing up to leave.

  Chapter 4

  Everything had happened so suddenly that the reality of the situation only hit Abigail once she pulled into the parking lot of Grandma’s house. A small sign in the parking lot stated: Antique Store Parking. Here Abigail was, volunteering to watch over Grandma’s dog, and apparently her store too.

  Abigail had no idea that Grandma owned a business, yet the directions she followed led her to an old three-story Victorian house. The first floor seemed to be the antique store, with the residence being on the second and third floors.

  Abigail hoped she wouldn’t have to run the place while Grandma was out. She didn’t know where she’d even begin with that.

  She stepped out, called Thor to her side, then craned her head as the old house dwarfed her. Headlights shined behind her, and she glanced back to see Sally pulling up. Despite the late hour, Sally was as chirpy as ever, hopping out of her truck and waving. “Good, you found the place.” Her eyes lit up upon seeing Thor. “Oh, who’s this big guy?” She kneeled and extended a hand out to him, which he greeted with a wet nose.