"Maralee, come here. You won't believe this!"

I hurried from my sparsely furnished bedroom to the kitchen, where Aunt Ibby sat on an unpainted and slightly wobbly wooden stool. She pointed to the new TV, which was propped against a carton of books on the granite countertop.

"Look," she said. "It's exactly the same, isn't it?"

I pulled up a faded folding beach chair and peered at the screen. "You're right," I said, watching as a tall, gray-haired woman opened and closed the top drawer of an oak bureau. "It looks just like mine. What show is this?"

"Shopping Salem," she said. "It's new. The WICH-TV reporter goes around the city, interviewing shop owners. You should go right over there and buy that bureau before somebody else grabs it. Lord knows, you need furniture. Sitting out there on the new fire escape would be more comfortable than this thing." She rocked back and forth on the wobbly stool.

I sighed. "I know."

My sixty-something, ball-of-fire aunt had recently turned the third floor of the old family home on Salem's historic Winter Street into an apartment for me. I was delighted to have the private space, but selecting furnishings had become an unexpected challenge. Who knew that deciding between red and blue, modern and traditional, oak and walnut could be so bewildering?

So far all I'd bought for my spacious new digs was a king-size bed, the television set, a coffeemaker, and a scratching post for our resident cat, O'Ryan — supplemented with assorted temporary seating brought up from the cellar.

I'm Lee Barrett, née Maralee Kowalski, aged thirty-one, red-haired, and Salem born. I was orphaned early, married once, and widowed young. I was raised by my librarian aunt, Isobel Russell, in this house, and I returned home, to my roots, nearly a year ago.

"You'd better get going," Aunt Ibby said. "A handsome bureau like that will get snapped up in no time. The shop's called Tolliver's Antiques and Uniques. It's on Bridge Street. Won't take you but a minute to drive over there." She tossed her paper coffee cup into the recycling bag next to the sink. "And you might pick up some proper coffee cups while you're there."

I had a special reason — besides my obvious dearth of furnishings — to want this particular piece. An identical one had long ago adorned my childhood bedroom and had later been relegated to the attic. Sadly, it had been destroyed by a fire that pretty much ruined the top two floors of our house. The damage to the structure had been nicely repaired, but the contents of the rooms, including my bureau, had proven pretty much irreplaceable.

"Do you suppose hers has little secret compartments like mine did?" I wondered aloud.

"It does," she said. "The shop owner said that it has six and that she'll give whoever buys it directions on how to open them."

"It's been a while, but I think I can remember all of them," I said. "But maybe that one is different."

"Only one way to find out," she said, and within minutes I was driving along Bridge Street, convertible top down, enjoying the bright June morning and looking forward to adding one more piece of furniture to my apartment, and reclaiming a happy childhood memory at the same time.

Tolliver's Antiques and Uniques wasn't hard to find. The shop's weathered silvery-gray exterior featured a purple door. Bright pink petunias in purple window boxes added more color, and the lavender shield-shaped sign suspended over the doorway spelled out the name of the place in black Olde En