Sixth Grave on the Edge

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing. I was going to a yard sale. I’m in need of a new yard and—look! There’s one for sale.”

He looked across the street straight at the Fosters’ house. “Okay,” he said, and I felt a tinge of anger rise in him. “So, what are you waiting for?”

“I’m scoping out the situation,” I said, hoping he’d believe me but knowing deep down inside I’d lost the game before it ever began. With my plans foiled, I decided to go to the yard sale anyway. I’d show him.

I climbed down from Misery and shut her door, leaving my nigh fiancé in there to simmer and stew.

Three women who’d been arguing were still arguing when I walked up. Their disagreements seemed to center around the items in the yard sale. Two were dressed to the nines in mid-twentieth-century apparel. I guessed them to have died in the 1950s or ’60s. The third one, and the smallest, was in a fluffy pink robe with a V embroidered on the chest and tiny house slippers.

“Oh, I remember that music box,” she said, looking on as a young girl picked it up and opened the lid. “Daddy made it. He gave it to you, Maddy, on your sixteenth birthday.”

“No, he didn’t, Vera,” the tallest of the three said. “He gave it to Tilda on her twelfth birthday.” She gestured to the third woman, who nodded in agreement.

The first one, Vera, was having none of that. “Madison Grace, I remember that box, and I remember the day he gave it to you.”

“He gave Maddy a picture frame on her sixteenth birthday,” Tilda said.

“No, he gave me a picture frame on my fifteenth birthday.”

“Was it your fifteenth?” she asked, looking skyward in thought. “I thought that was the year you were sent to your room for sneaking a kiss with Bradford Kingsley in the broom closet.”

“I never kissed Bradford Kingsley,” Maddy said, appalled. “We were just talking. And besides, he liked Sarah Steed.”

All three heads dropped in unison, apparently remembering their friend fondly.

“Poor girl,” Vera said. “She had such bad breath.”

They all nodded sadly before Tilda added, “If only she could’ve outrun that rooster, she and Bradford may have eventually married.”

I watched the three reminisce with no one the wiser. The tiny one, Vera, seemed to be the oldest, with Tilda second and Maddy bringing up the rear. Watching them was kind of like watching a sitcom. And since I rarely had time for TV anymore, I stood back and took complete advantage of the entertainment.

They started arguing again about a paint set as the little girl took the box she’d found to her mother. The woman’s eyes sparkled with interest. “How much is this?” she asked a man sitting in a lawn chair.

“I’ll take two and a quarter.”

“Two and a quarter?” Vera yelled, rocketing out of her melancholy. She shook a fist at the man. “I’ll give you an even five square in the jaw. How’s that?”

“Don’t get your hackles up,” Maddy said, eyeing her elder sister.

Vera cupped her ear and leaned forward. “What?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Vera Dawn, you can hear me just fine, now. We’re dead.”

“What?”

Tilda shook her head and looked over at me. “She does that to annoy us.”

I laughed softly and scanned the small crowd to make sure no one was paying too close attention. “Would you like to cross?” I asked them.

“Goodness, no,” Maddy said. “We’re waiting for our sister. We all want to cross together.”

That was new.

“That sounds nice. You know where I’ll be when you’re ready.”

“Sure do,” Vera said. “You’re kind of hard to miss.”

I spotted an old piece of equipment sitting lopsided on a card table. “What is that?” I asked, my eyes glossing over in fascination.

“Not really sure,” the man in the lawn chair said.

“Maddy, your grandson always was a dirty scoundrel.” She looked at me. “His poor mother hasn’t been in the nursing home a week, and he’s selling everything she ever owned.”

“Everything any of us ever owned,” Tilda said. “And that’s a lie detector. Our father worked for Hoover, don’t cha know.”

“That Hoover was an odd man,” Vera said, her nose crinkling in distaste.

Maddy frowned at her. “How come you can suddenly hear?”

Vera cupped her ear again. “What?”

I stifled a giggle. “A polygraph machine? For real?”

“What?” This time it was the dirty scoundrel of a grandson who’d asked.

“Does it work?”

“No idea,” he said before lifting a beer.

“Does it work?” Maddy asked as though I’d offended her. “It works like a dream. I used it on Tilda once when she went out with my boyfriend behind my back.”

“That wasn’t me, Maddy. That was Esther. And because you had no clue what you were doing, the results were inconclusive.”

“How much?” I asked the man.

He shrugged. “I’ll take twenty for it.”

“Sold.”

“Twenty? Twenty dollars? That should be in a museum, not in a yard sale. That boy needs his hide tanned something fierce.”

I paid the guy, then walked back over to them. “I agree. If this is original FBI equipment, I bet I can get it to the right people.”