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portable sewing machine, two boxes of Christmas decorations . . . all things I had to check through and decide on, but for now it was enough to shovel them all back in. As I hung up a heavy coat, I noticed the walls in these closets had been treated the same way as the broom closet in the kitchen. The attic stairs pulled down in the little hall that ~ 41 ~
    ~ Charlaine Harris ~
had a bedroom door at each end and the bathroom door in the middle. A broad archway led from this hall back into the living room. This house actually was smaller than my town house by quite a few square feet, I realized. If I moved I would have less room but more independence.
It was going to be hot up in the attic, but it would certainly be much hotter by the afternoon. I gripped the cord and pulled down. I unfolded the stairs and stared at them doubtfully. They didn’t look any too sturdy.
Jane hadn’t liked to use them either, I found, after I’d eased my way up the creaking wooden stairs. There was very little in the attic but dust and dis- turbed insulation; the searcher had been up here, too, and an itchy time he must have had of it. A leftover strip of the living room carpet had been unrolled, a chest had its drawers halfway pulled out. I closed up the attic with some relief and washed my dusty hands and face in the bathroom sink. The bathroom was a good size, with a large linen cabinet below which was a half door that opened onto a wide space suitable for a laundry basket to hold dirty clothes. This half closet had received the same attention as the ones in the kitchen and guest bedroom.
The searcher was trying to find a secret hiding ~ 42 ~
    ~ A Bone to Pick ~
place for something that could be put in a drawer but not hidden behind books . . . something that couldn’t be hidden between sheets and towels but could be hidden in a large pot. I tried to imagine Jane hiding— a suitcase full of money? What else? A box of— documents revealing a terrible secret? I opened the top half of the closet to look at Jane’s neatly folded sheets and towels without actually seeing them. I should be grateful those hadn’t been dumped out, too, I mused with half of my brain, since Jane had been a cham- pion folder; the towels were neater than I’d ever get them, and the sheets appeared to have been ironed, something I hadn’t seen since I was a child. Not money or documents; those could have been divided to fit into the spaces that the searcher had ignored.
The doorbell rang, making me jump a foot. It was only the glass repair people, a husband and wife team I’d called when window problems arose at my mother’s apartments. They accepted me being at this address without any questions, and the woman commented when she saw the back window that lots of houses were getting broken into these days, though it had been a rarity when she’d been “a kid.” “Those people coming out from the city,” she told me seriously, raising her heavily penciled eyebrows. ~ 43 ~
    ~ Charlaine Harris ~
“Reckon so?” I asked, to establish my goodwill. “Oh sure, honey. They come out here to get away from the city, but they bring their city habits with ’em.”
Lawrenceton loved the commuters’ money without actually trusting or loving the commuters. While they tackled removing the broken glass and replacing it, I went into Jane’s front bedroom. Some- how entering it was easier with someone else in the house. I am not superstitious, at least not consciously, but it seemed to me that Jane’s presence was strongest in her bedroom, and having people busy in another room in the house made my entering her room less . . . personal.
It was a large bedroom, and Jane had a queen-sized four-poster with one bed table, a substantial chest of drawers, and a vanity table with a large mirror com- fortably arranged. In the now-familiar way, the dou- ble closet was open and the contents tossed out simply to get them out of the way. There were built-in shelves on either side of