The Old Blue Line: A Joanna Brady Novella (Joanna Brady Mysteries) by J. A. Jance
Authors: J. A. Jance
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for cover.
Selma had always been a chain-smoker. Underlying everything else was the stench of decades’worth of unfiltered Camels, but that was only in the background. In the foreground were the unmistakable odors of rotting garbage and of death. Liza chalked up the latter to some dead varmint—a rat or mouse perhaps—or maybe a whole crew of them whose decaying corpses were buried somewhere under the mounds of trash.
Leaving the back door open, Liza stepped gingerly into the room, sticking to a narrow path that meandered through the almost unrecognizable kitchen between unstable cliffs of what looked to her like nothing but refuse. The mountains of garbage were tall enough that they obscured the windows, leaving the room in a hazy gloom. Although Liza knew this to be the kitchen, there was no longer any sign of either a stove or a sink. If her great-grandmother’s hand pump still existed, it was invisible, completely buried under masses of debris. The refrigerator was hidden behind another evil-smelling mound. Standing on tiptoe, Liza saw that the door to the freezer compartment was propped open, revealing a collection of long-abandoned contents, their labels indecipherable behind a thick layer of mold. Next to the fridge was the tall stand-alone bookcase that held her mother’s cookbooks. She could see the books, their titles completely obscured behind a thick curtain of undisturbed spiderwebs.
There were few things in life that Liza hated more than spiders and their sticky webs. These were clotted with the desiccated corpses of countless insects who had mistakenly ventured into the forest of silky threads and died for their trouble. Liza knew that hidden behind the layer of webs was the book she was charged with retrieving. If she squinted, she could almost make out the bright red letters of the title through the scrim of fibers.
Gritting her teeth, Liza pushed the webs aside far enough to reach the book. She had the cover in her hand when a spider glided down a web and landed on her arm. Screaming and leaping backward, Liza dropped the book and, with a desperate whack from the back of her hand, sent the startled spider sailing across the room. When Liza looked down, she saw that the book had landed spine up on the floor, sitting like a little tent pitched on the dirty floor among an accumulation of mouse turds. And scattered across the filthy floor around the half-opened book were what appeared to be five one-hundred-dollar bills.
For a moment, Liza could barely believe what she was seeing. Squatting down, she picked them up one at a time. The unaccustomed gloves on her hands made for clumsy fingers, and it didn’t help that her hands were shaking. She examined the bills. They looked real enough, but where had they come from, and what were they doing in Selma’s copy of Joy of Cooking ?
Stuffing the bills in the pocket of her jeans, Liza picked up the book itself. Holding it by the spine, she flapped the pages in the air. As she did so, two more bills fluttered out from between the pages and drifted to the floor.
Liza was amazed. Seven hundred dollars had been hidden in one of her mother’s cookbooks! Where had the money come from? How long had it been there? Had her mother kept the bills squirreled away the whole time Liza had been growing up—the whole time she was struggling to fit in at school while wearing thrift shop clothing and buying her school lunches with money she had earned by doing sports teams’ laundry? Had there been money hiding in her mother’s cookbook even then? And if there were seven hundred dollars in this one book, what about the others? Was money concealed in those as well?
Using the book in her hand, Liza swept away the remaining spiderwebs and reached for another book. The two mammoth volumes next to the empty spot left behind by the absent Joy turned out to be Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes 1 and 2. A quick shuffle through the 652 pages of Volume
Selma had always been a chain-smoker. Underlying everything else was the stench of decades’worth of unfiltered Camels, but that was only in the background. In the foreground were the unmistakable odors of rotting garbage and of death. Liza chalked up the latter to some dead varmint—a rat or mouse perhaps—or maybe a whole crew of them whose decaying corpses were buried somewhere under the mounds of trash.
Leaving the back door open, Liza stepped gingerly into the room, sticking to a narrow path that meandered through the almost unrecognizable kitchen between unstable cliffs of what looked to her like nothing but refuse. The mountains of garbage were tall enough that they obscured the windows, leaving the room in a hazy gloom. Although Liza knew this to be the kitchen, there was no longer any sign of either a stove or a sink. If her great-grandmother’s hand pump still existed, it was invisible, completely buried under masses of debris. The refrigerator was hidden behind another evil-smelling mound. Standing on tiptoe, Liza saw that the door to the freezer compartment was propped open, revealing a collection of long-abandoned contents, their labels indecipherable behind a thick layer of mold. Next to the fridge was the tall stand-alone bookcase that held her mother’s cookbooks. She could see the books, their titles completely obscured behind a thick curtain of undisturbed spiderwebs.
There were few things in life that Liza hated more than spiders and their sticky webs. These were clotted with the desiccated corpses of countless insects who had mistakenly ventured into the forest of silky threads and died for their trouble. Liza knew that hidden behind the layer of webs was the book she was charged with retrieving. If she squinted, she could almost make out the bright red letters of the title through the scrim of fibers.
Gritting her teeth, Liza pushed the webs aside far enough to reach the book. She had the cover in her hand when a spider glided down a web and landed on her arm. Screaming and leaping backward, Liza dropped the book and, with a desperate whack from the back of her hand, sent the startled spider sailing across the room. When Liza looked down, she saw that the book had landed spine up on the floor, sitting like a little tent pitched on the dirty floor among an accumulation of mouse turds. And scattered across the filthy floor around the half-opened book were what appeared to be five one-hundred-dollar bills.
For a moment, Liza could barely believe what she was seeing. Squatting down, she picked them up one at a time. The unaccustomed gloves on her hands made for clumsy fingers, and it didn’t help that her hands were shaking. She examined the bills. They looked real enough, but where had they come from, and what were they doing in Selma’s copy of Joy of Cooking ?
Stuffing the bills in the pocket of her jeans, Liza picked up the book itself. Holding it by the spine, she flapped the pages in the air. As she did so, two more bills fluttered out from between the pages and drifted to the floor.
Liza was amazed. Seven hundred dollars had been hidden in one of her mother’s cookbooks! Where had the money come from? How long had it been there? Had her mother kept the bills squirreled away the whole time Liza had been growing up—the whole time she was struggling to fit in at school while wearing thrift shop clothing and buying her school lunches with money she had earned by doing sports teams’ laundry? Had there been money hiding in her mother’s cookbook even then? And if there were seven hundred dollars in this one book, what about the others? Was money concealed in those as well?
Using the book in her hand, Liza swept away the remaining spiderwebs and reached for another book. The two mammoth volumes next to the empty spot left behind by the absent Joy turned out to be Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes 1 and 2. A quick shuffle through the 652 pages of Volume
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