At that moment, a white Land Rover came racing up.
Here’s the cheating bastard now.
Angus got out of the truck first, opened an umbrella, and came around to my side. It wasn’t raining hard, just the type of rain that clung to my hair and turned it into a frizzy mess.
Birch Kunes hurried up to us. He was tall, with dark blond hair, and still tanned, even though summer was over. Sort of what the all-American college preppie should look like a couple of decades after graduation.
“God, sorry I’m late. You know how it goes.”
The gorgeous effect was spoiled however by his rumpled shirt, and a stain of what looked like spaghetti sauce on his tie.
At least, I hoped it was.
“I’m not sure how much help I’ll be to you. I don’t know that much about dolls, but I’ll do my best.”
I couldn’t smile back. I could barely look at him. The boyish charm is wasted on me, pal.
Angus and I followed him into the house. The arched window above the front door that spilled light into the foyer was matched by one at the top of the grand curving staircases. I glanced over at Angus, seeing the same startled reaction in his eyes as I’d had when I first saw the dolls lining every step.
“Right. Well, let me show you around.” Birch coughed. “Um, sorry, I guess you were already here once, right Daisy?”
A faint flush colored his face under the tan. “Let’s start with the garage.” He walked to the right of the foyer and opened a white six-paneled door.
The cavernous space that could have held three cars was completely filled. Stacked from floor to ceiling with a mountain of cardboard boxes and totes. Through the clear plastic sides of the totes, I glimpsed dolls in their original boxes and hundreds of doll accessories and pieces of dollhouse furniture.
I sucked in a breath. So that’s why Harriet didn’t park inside the garage.
Birch hung back in the house, while Angus and I maneuvered our way into the narrow passageway that led to the garage doors.
“Holy smokes, Angus,” I whispered. “Harriet was a hoarder!”
He stared at me. “Hell, yeah.” He opened a few of the nearby crates. “This is crazy. We’re going to have to move all this stuff to the auction house before we can even begin to catalog any of—”
A phone rang and Birch appeared on the threshold. “Would you both excuse me for a moment?”
He strode off down the hallway toward the kitchen, his voice a soothing murmur to whomever was on the other end of the line.
Angus and I did our best in the garage, but it was only a guess as we couldn’t get to most of it. We then itemized everything in the living room and dining room while Angus scribbled furiously on his pad, and Birch was still missing in action.
Finally we moved over to the study.
I swallowed hard, seeing the space on the rug where Harriet had lain. The display table was empty now, the Tudor mansion taken away to the police station for evidence.
“You okay, Daisy?”
Poor Harriet.
Not even dead for a week, and already the rapacious widower, the one who’d been desperate to be her ex-husband, was getting rid of her prized possessions. Not just getting rid of them, but about to make a very nice windfall.
I gritted my teeth. “Yes. Let’s get on with it.”
Angus had filled five sheets on his legal pad, and we’d nearly reached the top of the stairs, counting dolls all the way, when Birch caught up to us.