The Douglas Farm
Oliver and Eb had been sitting on the bed rummaging through Joseph's things for almost twenty minutes now and managed to turn up with nothing. After carefully scanning through the items that neatly lay before him once more, Oliver sighed in resignation.
"Do you want to look through his stuff once more, Mr. Douglas," Eb asked with a concerned look on his face.
Oliver sighed once more. "No, it's no use now. Joseph will be back any moment and discover that we were going through his personal effects. We should put everything away before he gets back."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Douglas," Eb said sadly.
"It's alright, Eb. I was just so sure that…." Oliver's voice trailed off as tears of disappointment and frustration brimmed in his eyes. Instead of finishing his sentence, Oliver just shook his head sadly.
And with that, Oliver and Eb began returning Joseph's things back to his suitcase, being careful to put everything exactly the way they found it. As they did, Oliver was on the verge of tears as he thought of how he failed Lisa. How will I ever get her back now, he questioned himself, his fear and anxiety rising by the second.
But just as that thought entered his mind, Oliver noticed something strange about Joseph's suitcase. The plastic that lined the bottom of the inside of it seemed to be loose.
"Hold on just a second, Eb," he said, putting his hand in front of Eb's to prevent him from putting in another item. Once again, Oliver carefully removed what they had repacked from the suitcase and laid them aside.
Once all the items were out of the suitcase, Oliver began to remove the lining. He expected to have to peel it off, but instead it all came off in one single piece, as if it was designed that way.
Of course, he exclaimed in his head. A false bottom!
Oliver put the lining aside and stared at the contents hidden in the suitcase with excitement. To any other person, it would have looked like just a bunch of scrap papers kept as sort of personal mementos, but he knew it was more, much more.
"What's all this," Eb asked, echoing the question in Oliver' head.
"I don't know," Oliver replied, half-distractedly. He picked up one of the scraps of paper and began to read it, and eventually Eb did the same.
"This doesn't make sense," Oliver said more to himself after reading the paper.
"What doesn't," Eb asked as he looked up from his reading.
"All there is on this paper is a love poem," Oliver said as he furrowed his brows in a confused manner.
"Really? Same here," Eb replied in an equally confused tone.
"As a matter of fact," Oliver said as he picked up more scraps of paper and began to read them, "it looks like that's all there is to these papers." He scooped up more papers and began reading bits of them out loud one by one.
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, I love thee to the depths and breathes and heights my soul can reach….She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright, meet in the aspect and her eyes….Ah, when to the heart of man was it ever less than a treason to go with the drift of things, to yield with a grace to reason, and bow and accept the end of a love or a season," Oliver read, finally coming to a stop once he was convinced that there was all that there was to the papers.
"This doesn't make any sense," Oliver repeated.
"I know," Eb agreed. "Why would Joseph be keeping all these love poems?"
"I don't know," Oliver replied as he continued his search. He froze when he stumbled upon something that sent chills up and down his spine. In Joseph's suitcase lay a wallet-sized picture of his wife that he had thought he had lost months ago.
"I thought that you had lost that picture months ago," Eb said, remembering the frantic search they had conducted throughout the house. Oliver had finally concluded that it must have fallen out of his wallet while he was in Pixley.
"I don't know, but if he has this picture, that means whatever he has planned with my wife, he started planning it even before the fire," Oliver said, the anger rising in his voice.
How dare he do this to us, his head screamed. What makes him think he could just single us out like that! Oliver stuffed the picture into his pocket and arose from the bed.
"Eb, where's your motor scooter," he demanded to know.
"Parked out back. Why," Eb asked.
"Come on," he said as he began to storm off towards the kitchen and out the back door. "We have to get into Drucker's before Joseph leaves. He has some explaining to do, and I'll be damned if I'm going to wait around for him to return to find out!"