Free Home For the Homicide (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) by Jennie Bentley Page B

to the top, and squirmed through the hole into the ceiling. “You want to come, too?”
    “No,” Derek said. “I want to get back to my coupling.”
    “We’re a couple.”
    He chuckled. “I stuck my head up there the first time Darren brought us here, and from what I remember, it doesn’t look like a place where any coupling should take place.”
    It didn’t, actually. I was kneeling on a rough plank floor, guaranteed to give splinters. Not a romantic setting whatsoever.
    “Have fun exploring, Tink. Let me know when you’re coming down.”
    He walked away. I heard the sound of his steps echoing up to me, and then I pulled my head back into the attic and looked around.
    In addition to the rough plank floors, there was a rough plank ceiling: the stuff underneath the shingles and decking. The points of long nails stuck through here and there, from the roofers. Like in the cubbies in the bedrooms, the plank floors only went partway to the eaves: Beyond that was old insulation, like cotton batting. There was a lot of dust—decades of it—over everything, and I could see the exposed brick of the chimney where it cut through from the living room fireplace up through the roof. It was visible on the outside of the house, too, but the interior side was visible here.
    The plank floor was only about five feet wide, running the width of the house from side to side. There were a few boxes up here, within easy reach of the hole in the floor. I could stay where I was to investigate them, so I did. One contained old china, human-sized this time and carefully packed with newspapers for cushioning. It wasn’t particularly nice china, so they had probably replaced it with something newer and prettier, sometime in—I checked the date on one of the newspapers—1947, and had stuffed it up here out of the way.
    Several of the boxes were empty—kept for packing purposes maybe, in case whatever had arrived in them needed to be repackaged at some point? I had a few of those myself, up in Aunt Inga’s attic. I hadn’t brought a lot of stuff with me when I came, though, so although Aunt Inga’s attic was filled with stuff, it was mostly her stuff, not mine.
    There was nothing else to see really. But it was only a few minutes since Derek had tossed me up here, and he’d probably be annoyed if I called for him to come help me down so soon. So I got up on my hands and knees—there was no way to walk, even bent over—and crawled over to the chimney for a closer look at the mortar. The outside bricks could do with some tuck-pointing, and I knew Derek planned to take care of it. Since I was up here, I might as well take a look and see whether he’d need to crawl up here, too, while he was at it.
    The mortar didn’t look too bad, although it was a little crumbly in places. Nowhere near as bad as the outside, though. I guess it stayed together better inside, away from wind and rain and snow. Although I was able to pick out loose pieces here and there, when I rubbed my finger across the joints. It might not be a bad idea to get him up here to take a look. He was better at this kind of thing than I was.
    I was just about to turn away and crawl back when I noticed, tucked into the shadowy corner of the chimney and the wall, another box.
    Not a cardboard one this time. More of a crate. It was made of battered wood, with a board and batten lid—three planks side by side, two across to keep them together—and both crate and lid were printed with a faded logo in red and black. I squinted, but couldn’t make it out in the dusk. There were no light fixtures up here, and no illumination other than the faint streaks of sunlight that pushed through the gaps in the ceiling at intervals.
    I pulled out my cell phone and turned the flashlight app on the crate. The stamped logo became almost possible to read. “Dr . . . k MOXIE,” it said in big letters, and below, in tiny ones, “TR . . E M . RK REG U . PAT OFF.”
    Moxie Soda. One of the