Madeline and the Necklace

My great-aunt Patricia had gone the way she would have wanted – falling asleep to reruns of The Twilight Zone after slinging back a number of daiquiris – but something felt wrong. Other than her being dead, obviously. I don’t mean to sound like I wasn’t cut up about it. I spent the ensuing days in her apartment, ostensibly cleaning up and getting things ready to donate, while actually listening to her Don McLean albums in the dark, glugging her shiraz, and eating Froot Loops straight out of the box.

She hadn’t told me – or any of the family – about her last doctor appointment.

But it wasn’t until we came face-to-face again (open casket) that I – mid-nose-blow – realized which frantic squirrel had been scratching at the back of my mind.

“Her necklace!” I exclaimed. The priest cast me a quelling glance; my mother gave me a look (from the third pew) promising Game of Thrones-level vengeance.

Great-Aunt Patricia hadn’t been wearing it when I’d found her, when…

She was… well… a legend in our family. She’d gone to our nation’s capital to join the Foreign Service – before the State Department allowed female diplomats to marry. She’d resigned to marry my great-Uncle Harvey (“a career and a life mistake. They’ll never put anyone in a museum for that,” she harrumphed. Then she uncorked a bottle of Riesling and “Time Enough at Last”.). But after her divorce she’d commissioned a necklace – the world in gold filigree. She’d pointed out the rubies marking her foreign postings: Paris, Beirut, Saigon.

“We can’t bury her without it!” I whispered, once back in the pew.

“You-are-making-a-scene,” Mom hissed.

“But –”

“Shut up,” advised my elder sister, Rebecca. I didn’t mind her when she wasn’t being insufferable. Today was not that day.

But I shut up. Largely to prevent myself from devolving into uncontrolled sobbing, but also to try to remember the last time I’d seen the necklace. I pinched Rebecca – an old soothing habit – but it didn’t help.

A lawyer resembling every rule-loving stiff in a film noir – who I decided to call Mr. Chalmers – read the will. Grandma had passed last year, unfortunately, but the attendees included Great-Aunt Patricia’s surviving siblings, whom she termed Nathaniel-the-Dramatic and Rose-the-Pedantic; Nathaniel’s children, Geoffrey-the-podiatrist and Jeanette-the-failed-singer; and Rose’s children, Laura-the-lawyer, Jason-the-realtor, and Kimberly-the-salon-owner. And their offspring – my second cousins – a troop of rapacious twenty-somethings with large chins and no imagination.

Plus Mom (Angie-the-Angry), Rebecca (Becky-the-Better-Than-You) – and me.

If we’d gotten along less well, I suppose Great-Aunt Patricia would have called me Madeline-the-mediocre. Or Madeline-the-mess. Failure to launch after multiple expensive degrees and cardiac-event-inducing student debt. No boyfriend, no goals, crashing in my great-aunt’s second bedroom after a roommate dispute. Just hired as an assistant manager at a tween-queen clothing store.

Madeline-the-meh.

Mr. Chalmers coughed discreetly. “Ms. Patricia Wright’s will is fairly simple. Each grandniece and grandnephew will receive $20,000.”

A help, really. When I was evicted in two weeks’ time, I wouldn’t have to crash in my storage unit.

“But –” began Geoffrey.

We all knew why. She lived modestly, but the family grapevine had it that Great-Aunt Patricia had made a killing somewhere (The dot-com bubble? The real estate bubble? Pointy end of a pyramid scheme? No one knew.) But we could all multiply. Twelve times $20,000 came to $240,000, and the house alone would fetch much more than that. (Once I’d been evicted, of course.) But the relatives had other concerns.

“Was she… in debt?” asked a nonentity cousin.

Mr. Chalmers said, “The remainder of the estate will remain in trust.”

“How much?”

“Until when?”

“For who?”

“Whom,” said Rebecca.

“The one who finds the necklace,” said Mr. Chalmers.

Everyone turned to look at me.

“I don’t know where it is,” I said.

“No,” agreed Mr. Chalmers. “It’s not in the house. She put it – elsewhere.”

Everyone fidgeted.

“I’ll email you all a photo, so you’ll know what you’re searching for,” he added. Then waited for us to leave.

The family held a communal grief luncheon/recrimination parade at the Chinese restaurant near the cemetery. So much for not speaking ill of the dead. The boomers bewailed their non-inheritances and the proximate horrors of insufficient retirement accounts and skyrocketing insurance premiums. The sandwich generation inhaled cocktails. The younger folks broke off into grim-faced twos and threes, gearing up for a treasure hunt. I glanced toward my sister.

Rebecca said, “I suppose you have some idea.”

“Not a one.”

She huffed, “Right.”

I’d briefly considered teaming up with her. She had brains, and she’d prevented the cousins from picking on me during every histrionic family reunion. “Think what you want,” I said.

I returned to the house, fortunately toting some Chinese leftovers. I dug out a small black Moleskine notebook – an undeservedly elegant birthday present from Great-Aunt Patricia – to think about where she might have hidden her treasure.

Where Could It Be?

• Not at the house

Realizing this line of inquiry had collapsed, I tried again:

Where Isn’t It?

• At the house

Nope.

I sighed. Take three. Put yourself in her place, I told myself. She would have put that necklace somewhere meaningful to her…

Great-Aunt Patricia Loved…

• The Twilight Zone

• Cocktails, wine

• Her necklace (gold, rubies)

• Travel (Paris, Beirut, Saigon)

• Not Uncle Harvey, later

• Don McLean

• Records

• Me?

Well, at least this list felt more productive.

I biked over to our local library, where I Indiana-Jonesed through the dusty Twilight Zone DVDs. No necklace. (No kidding.) I asked the librarian if she’d seen Great-Aunt Patricia lately. “Only at the liquor store,” she huffed.

That sounded like a fine idea. Great-Aunt Patricia supported small business, so I rode to the local booze-o-rama, That’s the Spirit. No dice.

I crossed off the first two list items, and purchased a $6 bottle to drink to Great-Aunt Patricia.

She’d have taken it the right way.

When I returned to the house, I found two dozen relatives swarming, riffling through papers to the tune of “Flight of the Bumblebee”. I couldn’t fathom their purpose until Rebecca screeched in triumph. She held aloft the receipt for the necklace, with the name of the custom jeweler on it.

I probably should have started with that.

Pretty stupid of me, really.

Eluding our suddenly bloodthirsty kin, Rebecca vaulted over an ottoman, and a safe – then bolted out the front door to her car, parked on the next block. Probably to inherit the entire estate and also claim the state record for the 100-meter hurdles.

It figured. Perfect Rebecca, perfect solution. Perfectly annoying.

I called my job to inform them I was still in mourning. Using her best manager voice, Carolyn explained that the company did not offer bereavement leave for expired aunts, great or otherwise: “You’d better be in tomorrow.”

I opened the wine – a glass seemed like a lot of trouble – and listened to Rod Serling introduce “Static”.

I clocked in on time at the store (almost) – and I’d remembered to wear waterproof mascara (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). While attempting to wipe tearstains off the sequined hoodies, I caught a glimpse of a familiar face – one looking fifty percent less smug than usual.

“Rebecca?” I called, as she flounced within hailing distance.

She frowned. “The jeweler was useless.”

Setting aside Rebecca’s casual dismissal of the jeweler’s robust humanity – “Really?”

“Yeah. She said she’s an ‘artist’ and can’t be expected to track the spectacular life-cycle of her masterpieces.”

“Huh,” I said, accepting the tissue Rebecca offered. And the hug. And the murmurs of consolation: I’m so sorry. I know you must miss her, Maddie.

Then, to be equitable, I told her about my library and liquor store failures.

“Pretty clever ideas, though,” she said.

“Thanks.”

She flashed her phone’s brilliant face at me. “I’ve got some other thoughts…”

“Me too,” I added cautiously, then we both said:

“Well?”

“Tonight,” I said, shooing her away as Carolyn swooped toward us.

To her credit, Rebecca went first. “Her computer.”

“No good. Great-Aunt Rose took it, as the executrix of the will. I don’t think it’ll help her much, unless she hires a hacker. Great-Aunt Patricia didn’t keep any of her passwords saved.”

“We’ve got to assume Great-Aunt Rose has enough sense to get a professional, though, and we’ve got to outrun her. So let’s hurry,” she said. “Next: photo albums.”

“Nice,” I said. We looked: some ‘60s and ‘70s fashion hits; a smiling, youthful Great-Aunt Patricia at her wedding, with her colleagues, holding up an envelope and beaming…

Nothing useful.

“Hm… credit card bills?” asked Rebecca.

Without a shredder available, I’d just torn up old statements, and put them in separate recycling piles. We uncovered a fragment with “Expedia” – but without an amount attached.

“So… it’s elsewhere.”

In my gorgeous notebook, a revised list (thanks, Google):

• Binghamton, NY (Bundy Museum, site of a Rod Serling exhibit)

• New Rochelle, NY (Don McLean’s birthplace)

• Paris

• Beirut

• Saigon

“Great,” said Rebecca. “Shouldn’t take us long to search a museum, one town, and three major cities.”

“I feel like I’m missing something,” I sighed, taking another tissue.

“You don’t say.”

I pinched her, and she smacked me, and then we settled down again. “Well… maybe we can cross off Binghamton. They wouldn’t accept a necklace of hers, right?”

“We could call them,” Rebecca said, unenthusiastically.

The house phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello, Madeline,” said Great-Aunt Rose. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to buy Patricia’s house, and I’ll need you out by the end of the week, actually. I should be back by then.”

“Back from where?”

She laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Do you know where it is?” I whispered.

“The city for sure,” she crowed. “My Laura just worked a case with a first-rate digital forensics gal –” Then I heard her call, “Kimberly, I’ll drive the first shift!”

Then she hung up.

Rebecca let loose a most un-Rebecca-like exclamation once I’d briefed her.

“Well, we can cross off the foreign cities,” I said.

“Super,” she snarked. I pinched her again, opened the photo album again.

Great-Aunt Patricia, with her training colleagues… holding up an envelope… beaming…

In Washington.

“Rebecca!” I gasped. “We’ve got to get to DC!”

We barely dozed overnight, then we left for the airport at five a.m. (after I promised to reimburse Rebecca for my ticket). Assuming that Great-Aunt Rose and Kimberly had stopped somewhere for the night, we’d have a couple of hours on them, tops.

“Probably at the State Department,” I said, as we boarded.

“I doubt they’ll let us ferret around in there,” Rebecca said. “And – maybe not. The necklace might be hanging in some café where she and her colleagues got afternoon coffee.”

“I don’t know how to Google that,” I said.

“Think harder,” Rebecca replied.

We landed at Reagan.

We stumbled toward the taxi line, uncertainly. Where would Great-Aunt Patricia have put that necklace? What spot could have been so important to her that she would have wanted us to remember her there?”

What had she said, about her legacy?

“They’ll never put anyone in a museum for that…”

But what if they had?

“Madeline,” said Rebecca, as she heaved me into the taxi.

“Downtown,” I said, my fingers a blur on my phone. Google.com. State Department + museum.

Sure enough: National Museum of American Diplomacy.

“Twenty-first and C,” I clarified, then showed my phone to my sister.

She said, humbly, “Wow.”

We – and our backpacks – went through the screening process. We race-walked through the exhibits, until we saw a banner reading:

Early Foreign Service Women

And there, in the miniature exhibit, hung a picture of Great-Aunt Patricia – with her necklace draped around it. We quickly stationed ourselves on either side of the display case, snapped a selfie, and emailed the lawyer.

Just in time to hear Great-Aunt Rose greet us with profanity.

Then our phones pinged with a message from Mr. Chalmers: “Congratulations, Madeline and Rebecca. You will share equally in the remainder of the estate, totaling two million dollars…”