Joy to the Wolves (Red Wolf #1) - Terry Spear Page 0,12

on the tree, she filled shelves and straightened up her shop. She turned off all the main lights, leaving a few security lights on, and turned off her Christmas music. She was eager and hopeful she’d find some fun, saleable items in the attic next. With all the repairs she’d had to make to the house and the shop and getting ready to open it, she hadn’t had time to see what was in the attic, and that was driving her crazy.

What she loved best was that she didn’t have to drive anywhere to be home. And she could watch over her shop better, though she hadn’t expected to have a young reindeer calf standing on her porch this morning.

During the spring, Brooke planned to fill the yard with garden ornaments to sell. She couldn’t wait to smell the lavender and lilac and see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. Even though she intended to sell the place in three years, she might as well enjoy it as much as she could while she was stuck here.

She wiped down the new stove in the shop. The old one had gone out two days after she moved in, and the heat pump had quit working the day after that. As soon as she had time, she needed to renovate the kitchen in the house before anything else went out. She just hoped nothing more would go wrong. That was the problem with having two Victorian houses to maintain.

Brooke picked up the antique bowl by the Christmas tree that she’d used for a water bowl for the calf, cleaning it and setting it on the kitchen counter to dry. She was glad the little calf had come into her life, especially since she’d been able to meet some wolves from the local pack. She hoped Josh Wilding would seriously look at some other suspect and discover who had done such a thing to make sure it didn’t happen again.

She glanced out the shop’s kitchen window at the courtyard and frowned. How had the little reindeer made its way all the way here from the Wilding ranch?

Finally ready to check out the attic, Brooke climbed the stairs to the second floor, passing the three bedrooms and the bathroom on her way to the attic stairs at the end of the hall. She switched on the light to the attic and climbed the steps.

In the attic, two beautiful vintage steamer trunks sat near the windows along one wall. But they were locked. She’d have to hire someone to unlock them for her without breaking the locks, which could be worth something, too, as old as they looked.

The room had enough height for a full-grown man to stand, and the windows would let in a nice amount of light during the day, if they were cleaned. Another project for when she had more time. The walls sloped down at both the front and back of the room. She noticed it was fully finished, with air-conditioning and heating ducts, unlike the average attic storage space. The attic had a thermostat, and she saw the temperature was the same as for the rest of the house. She assumed the room was also well insulated.

Boxes and crates of stuff filled most of the space, though her great-aunt had left room to walk around some of the crates and the trunks. Everything was covered in dust. Old spiderwebs, broken and dusty, hung from the ceiling. The dust and spiderwebs made the attic look more ready for Halloween than Christmas. It would take Brooke forever to go through all this stuff to see what might be valuable. Though on the two days her shop was closed, she’d make a concerted effort to do just that.

She noticed a shelf behind some of the crates filled with vinyl records—plastic sleeves protecting the records and plastic covers protecting the album covers. Her great-aunt had meticulously cared for the vinyl records, but why store them in the attic?

Brooke found a record player that looked in great shape in a box and carried it down to the second floor. Then she began to haul the vinyl records down the stairs, setting them in the hallway so she could carry them down to the first floor and out to the house. She needed to price each one, and there had to be around two hundred here.

She paused when she found a 1963 record, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and hoped it was one of the album’s mistake