Page 11 of Trouble Comes in Threes

She glanced over at Bruce Wayne and the three other workers. “I’ll tell you over lunch because, fair warning, I’m not working out here this afternoon. I’m not a fan of perspiring.”

I laughed. “There’s a chance of snow tomorrow afternoon and evening, so I suspect it will be getting cooler, not warmer. And besides, no one told you to come out and dig with me.”

“The office was too quiet.”

Any other day, I would have accepted that statement at face value. Neely Kate was the most extraverted extravert I’d ever met, but I could see that something was bothering her. Had she and Jed had a fight? They didn’t have them very often, but when they did, they were usually doozies. Still, she’d never been shy about telling me about their arguments, so it made me think it was something else.

I started digging with her, and within another minute, we’d uncovered more of the wood. Now that it was more exposed, it was obviously not a piece of construction wood. It appeared to be carved.

“It’s a box,” Neely Kate exclaimed in excitement.

I got down on my knees and started digging out dirt with my hands as I tried to uncover the sides. It was at least six inches tall, and once I exposed the bottom edge, I had Neely Kate pry it up with her shovel. Once one side was lifted, I reached in and tugged it out.

We both sat on the ground as I set the box in front of Neely Kate. She brushed loose dirt from the carvings. An intricate tree was carved on top of the lid, and the sides were engraved with vines and flowers. There were curved wooden feet at the base, but one of them had broken off. The wood was damp, and it stunk a little, but the scent wasn’t overpowering.

“What do you think it is?” she asked, holding it up to examine the sides.

“It looks like a jewelry box.” I tried to open the top, but it didn’t budge. I wiped some of the caked mud off the sides, looking for a keyhole, and finally found a small hole on one long side. “It needs a key. Do you see one in the hole?”

Neely Kate leaned over and scanned the small pit we’d just made. We both rummaged through the loose soil, but a couple of minutes of searching turned up nothing.

“What do we do with it?” Neely Kate asked.

“I don’t think it belongs to the homeowners. They’ve owned the house only a few years.” I grabbed my phone out of my back pocket and pulled up my camera app. “I’ll take a photo and send it to them.”

Still sitting on the ground with Neely Kate, I sent the photo in a text, telling them we’d dug it out of the spot where their retaining wall was going. Jill, the homeowner, called me right away, and I put her on speaker phone.

“What is it?” she asked in excitement.

“It looks like a jewelry box,” I said, “but it’s locked. Did you guys happen to bury it or know who might have?”

“Never seen it,” she said, then hesitated. “But I don’t feel right about taking it when it clearly belongs to someone else. The question is, who?”

“We can find out,” Neely Kate offered enthusiastically.

I glanced up at her with wide eyes.

“You can?” Jill asked.

“Don’t you want to know what’s in it?” I asked.

“No,” Jill said. “I’d rather return it to its rightful owner.” She paused. “Do you really think you can find them?”

“Of course,” Neely Kate said before I could stop her. “Piece of cake.”

“Thank you,” Jill said breathlessly. “Whatever it is, it looks important. I really want the true owner to have it. Of course,” she added, “I wouldn’t mind knowing what they found in it.”

I started to ask her if she knew who had owned her house before she’d purchased it, but she said, “Oh, I’ve got to go. My client just walked in.”

She hung up, and I put my phone in my lap, looking Neely Kate in the eyes. “What have you done?”

Her eyes shone with excitement. “I found us a case. I put it out into the universe, and it answered.” She shook her head in amazement. “How crazy is that?”

“We don’t do that anymore, Neely Kate,” I protested. “We’re landscapers. We have kids.”

The sparkle in her eyes dimmed. “You have kids, Rose. I have one.”

I reached over and took her hand. “You are an amazing mom, Neely Kate. That has nothing to do with the number of kids you have.”

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