by Misty Simon
He bit his lip again, and I wanted to prod him, ask him if I could go with him, and demand that we go right now. But I waited, and then I congratulated myself on my restraint when he said, “Let’s go find this thing and figure out what it’s hiding.”
Chapter Ten
I was in! I was so in, and I loved that he was going to let me go along on the search. I would, of course, let him take the lead, so he didn’t think I was being too assertive or trying to take over his investigation. But I couldn’t wait to see where this wall that looked all wrong was and find out if there was anything hidden behind it. I only hoped we could actually find the wall, since I knew I had not seen it in any of the rooms, which I’d toured numerous times now.
Burton opened the front door with his own key, then removed some leftover crime-scene tape from inside the doorway as we entered the house. Every footfall seemed to echo in the quiet.
I couldn’t help myself as I catalogued the furniture and where it might have to go. It was sometimes a hazard of cleaning houses that I knew were going to be sold. I had a lot of relatives in town that did a lot of different things so I was always on the lookout for opportunities for those relatives. I doubted Mrs. Petrovski was going to sell the house furnished and if I could offer her a solution, then maybe she would look more kindly on me for being so helpful. I could call a moving company. Mrs. Petroski might think to sell the pieces individually, but if she needed the money fast, then she might want to consider doing an auction. I had a cousin in Carlisle who could make that happen for her, and quickly, if she was so inclined. I made a mental note and then jogged to catch up with Burton, who had already moved to the wide staircase leading to the second floor.
“Since the pictures were taken at night, and some of the rooms are poorly lit, I can’t tell which rooms they are, other than by keeping an eye out for hideous wallpaper and decrepit furniture. Since every room seems to be an eyesore and there are so many of them, I’m not sure which is which. They all seem to blur together after awhile. We can’t tell the direction, since the sun wasn’t out, just the moon.”
“The furniture isn’t decrepit,” I said, affronted. “That’s some serious antique merchandise here that people would pay a pretty penny for.”
“Whatever. I prefer my furniture to be made in this century, and by machine, if possible.”
“Well, now, Burton, I had no idea you were so modern.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Tallie, but that’s for another day. Let’s get moving on this room.”
I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching us as we moved from room to room. So far none of the rooms we’d toured contained the wallpaper and the furniture featured in the photo with the half wall. The mansion was huge, and I was afraid I was going to miss my friend and my boyfriend time if we didn’t find this half wall fast.
A car horn honked out front. I took the opportunity to look out the window and was so thankful it was finally Letty, and not some other person who wasn’t supposed to be here. Glancing at my watch, I realized she was early and I had about ten minutes to call Mrs. Petrovski back before my hour was up.
“I’m going to run down and talk with Letty about how things have changed. I’ll be right back. Don’t find it without me,” I said.
He harrumphed. I chose to take that as an indication that he agreed to this.
Running down the stairs was not my best option, but I wanted to get back to the hunt as soon as possible. I was out of breath when I hit the foyer. After pulling open the door, I stood there, huffing and puffing.
Letty laughed at me, with one hand on her petite hip and her other hand carrying her ever-present caddy of supplies. “Should I even ask what you were doing?”
“Ha, ha, ha. Burton and I are here checking out a few things, but I’m actually going to need you to move on to a different house. If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll call Mrs. Petrovski to see which house she chose and confirm the address. I’m sure she’d love to have us clean now, instead of waiting until tomorrow morning. She’s being hypercritical of my scheduling abilities.” Plus, I had to offer something because this conversation had now put me over the one-hour call time and I was going to be in trouble.
Letty put her caddy down on the floor as she stepped in and then pulled the door closed behind her. “Wait, are you saying that Burton’s actually going to let you help this time? You don’t have to do all that behind-the-back stuff and sneaking around? I could have sworn he would have changed his mind when the time actually came to start moving on the clue finding and the investigation beyond what they’ve done so far, which looks like a lot of nothing to me.”
“Letty! I do not sneak around or do anything behind anyone’s back. And keep your voice down. Burton is just upstairs.”
“Really? Come on. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily.” But she ruined her words by snickering. “Hey, at least this time you won’t have to explain yourself.”
“I already did that,” I grumbled.
“Seriously, though, Tallie. I appreciate this. I need to know what happened to Audra, and I need justice. I’m afraid they’re going to pull Caleb back in if they can’t figure out who did it, and that kid has had a hard life. He needs a break, not more troubles. I’m not as brave as you are, so I’m going to have to wait to see what you find out.”
“I’ve been told to be a concerned citizen, not a vigilante.”
“And are you going to listen?”
“Of course I’m going to listen. Now you listen, Letty. I’m glad we called everyone in, though I feel bad that they have to go to another house. But when they all get here, just have them wait a minute, while I get Mrs. Petrovski on the phone. We don’t need to worry about cleaning here just yet, because we have other things going on. Burton is going to want to do some more investigating. I need to call the owner and find out if she has another Dumpster on the way. I’m late with that call as it is.”
“It would be better if she did.” Letty could be so very practical.
“You and I know that, but maybe not Mrs. Petrovski. I’ll ask Burton when I go back upstairs,” I said. “I hope it can be here this afternoon. I don’t know if she called him to see if it was okay to bring one in or if we should just pile debris outside, to be sifted through.”
What a mess that would be, especially because wallpaper didn’t always come off in strips.
“Well, that’s something at least. Okay, then we’ll get people moving with the cleaning, and we’ll go from there.” Letty’s forehead crinkled, which made me worry that this might be too much for her.
“I know you don’t like being in charge, but I need you to do that this time. Sorry for putting you in this position.”
“Oh, Tallie, it’s not that I don’t like being in charge. It’s that I don’t want to have to handle the money aspect.” She smiled and turned away to open the front door. I didn’t know how she knew someone was standing there, but sure enough, two of my other ladies were hovering on the front porch, armed to the teeth with vacuums and caddies that matched Letty’s. Maybe I should have some custom made with our logo. Of course, first, I’d have to come up with a name for my motley crew, but that would come to me soon enough.
Right now, I had to call Mrs. Petrovski, then find out if Burton had found the hidden half wall, and if I’d missed the big reveal, I couldn’t allow myself to get angry.
I dialed Mrs. Petrovski and then ended up having to leave a message. Either she was in the middle of something else, or she was angry enough at my tardiness that she refused to pick up. Either way, I left her a nice message about getting in touch with me so that we could meet up to get the keys for the other house and discuss what she wanted done.
Despite the fact that I wanted to run back up the stairs after I hung up, I took them one at a time and carefully. No use landing on my face on the landing.
“Yoo-hoo! Burton!” I called from the top of the stairs. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling a few feet away fro
m the second-floor landing, and it illuminated the foyer below.
He peeked his head out of a room on my left, looking slightly disgruntled. Okay, then, he hadn’t found the hidden wall yet, or he wouldn’t look that unhappy.
“Trouble?” I asked.
“You took your phone with you, and I have no idea what room matches which picture. I have no eye for room details. Which do you think it is?”
I felt a blush run up my neck and face. While I hadn’t intended to take the phone, he also hadn’t asked for it. I’d just have to brush off his brusque comment and soldier on.
After taking the phone from my back pocket, I thumbed on the screen, then went hunting for the pictures again. I’d gotten a new phone recently, and the thing was trying my patience at every turn. But at least the picture quality was stellar when I finally found the pictures I was looking for.
“We’re looking for animal-print wallpaper and a shaggy rug in brown.” I didn’t remember seeing a room like that, and I’d looked through a lot of the rooms more than once.
It occurred to me that these could be the wrong pictures, or that Bethany had accidentally sent me pictures of something else, like an old apartment she was looking at downtown above the chocolatier. A ripple of panic went through me. What if I had sent us on a wild-goose chase and made a big deal out of nothing? Man! I should have kept these things to myself, until I’d checked it out alone, and then given it to Burton as a done deal. Now I was going to look like an idiot. I hated looking like an idiot!
“Um . . . ,” I began, but I couldn’t find the right words to say I might be mistaken.
“Yes, Tallie? I don’t have all day. I have background checks to run and a bunch of evidence to process. Spit out whatever you’re going to say.”
Biting my lip, I looked at the floor and didn’t look up again. “I’m sorry, but I think this was a mistake. Bethany might have sent me extra pictures. I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t remember seeing a room decorated like this, even though I’ve been through the house a number of times.”
He sighed instead of harrumphing. I considered that much better than yelling. He ruined it by pinching the bridge of his nose, like he did when he was truly irritated. “I have things to do. Go ahead and go, then, we’ll come back another time.”
“I am sorry. I’ll be out of your hair. Mrs. Petrovski wants us to clean another house in town until the police investigation is wrapped up here,” I offered.
He sighed again. I so wished we could have found that wall!
“Fine.” He clamped his hand to the back of his neck. “Go clean to your little heart’s content in the other house for Mrs. Petrovski. If you think of anything, please call the station as a concerned citizen instead of going after it like that vigilante we talked about earlier. And call Bethany while you’re at it, to make sure those pictures are all of this house, not of somewhere else.”
I still didn’t look up. “Sure thing.”
I listened to him walk out of the room and then let my shoulders finally drop from where they’d been hovering at my ears.
Someone knocked on the doorjamb less than a minute later. I glanced up just to check out who it was, then looked back at the phone in my hands.
“What was that all about?” Letty hooked her thumb over her shoulder in Burton’s direction. “On his way out to his car, Burton was grumbling about people wasting his precious time and about how trying to do something nice always bites him in the rear. I thought you guys were looking for something in particular. Did you find it?”
I gave one of those mirthless laughs that sometimes accompanied defeat. “I thought I had a break in the case and a wonky extra room in the house that I needed to find. Turns out that it’s possible I was completely wrong. And now Burton is angry with me.”
Letty put her arm around my shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Besides, it doesn’t hurt Burton to get out of the station every once in a while. Plenty of people call in tips that don’t lead anywhere. If it had been anyone else, he would still have had to check it out.”
I shrugged, but not so hard that I removed her arm. “Do you know this room?” I showed her the picture on my phone, thinking maybe I just hadn’t remembered it in the thirty-five-room mansion. I didn’t know why I thought she would, since she hadn’t been in the house before now, but I was out of ideas.
Surprisingly, she nodded. “Sure, that’s on the first floor, next to the laundry room.”
I sputtered, “But how do you know that? I sent Bethany to take the pictures so we would know what the place looks like. Did you go with her?”
Letty shook her head at me. “No, I didn’t go with Bethany. Darla loaned me out to the Petrovskis a little over a year ago. And I still have nightmares about this whole house and can visualize the rooms like they’re chasing me, with their yucky wallpaper and funky carpets. That carpet was a pain in the rear end to clean. I’ll never forget it. I guess I could have told you that, but I really wanted Bethany to get signed on to help us, and I didn’t know if the house had changed.”
After being stunned into silence, I tore out of the room and down the staircase, and then threw open the front door, hoping to catch Burton, but he’d already gone. I wasn’t going to call him until I knew for certain what was behind door number one.
I heard Letty hit the steps behind me and waited in the foyer for her to catch up.
“What are we looking for?” she asked, out of breath. She was much tinier than I was, so it soothed me just a little that she also was running short on breath after those stairs.
“This room. Can you show me where it is?”
“Of course.”
I followed her down the hall to the left and around several corners, until I felt like I was in a maze. Doors appeared along the hall in intervals, and I wondered how on earth we were going to clean this monstrosity, even if we had all the time in the world.
She opened a door on the right and stepped back. “Voilà!”
But it wasn’t voilà; nothing in the room matched anything in the picture. The carpet was burgundy and had a flat weave, like an industrial carpet, with no shag in sight. The wallpaper was a subtle muted cream and gold, with a fleur-de-lis design and white trim. The floor was speckled around the edges of the carpet. I couldn’t tell if it was paint or bits of paper, but I ignored it for the moment in my excitement to find out if this was the right room.
I showed her the picture again, and she bit her lip. “I could have sworn this was the right room. I remember thinking that the carpet was going to be a pain to clean, and I hoped we would just be allowed to throw the thing out. In fact, I don’t remember any room looking this nice. They’re all decorated outlandishly, and this one is almost tasteful.”
She looked around, and I did the same thing. I, of course, wasn’t sure what I was looking for, since I didn’t remember being in this room before at all, but there had to be something. I scuffed my feet along the floor through the scraps of paper and dirt. Nothing was making sense and normally things at least made a little sense.
“I don’t know what the deal is, but we’d better get ready to clean at that other house for Mrs. Petrovski. We’re running out of time for today, and I don’t want everyone thinking that we’re skipping out on helping by just walking through rooms. Why don’t you go check on everyone while I try to get Mrs. Petrovski on the phone again to see where she is? I thought she’d be here by now.”
Really, I wanted to tackle the bathrooms here, which hadn’t been used in heaven knew how long. I did some of my best thinking while I was elbow deep in tub scrubbing.
As I headed back to the foyer, I was greeted by two smiling faces along the way and a ton of empty rooms. I really should have looked more thoroughly into this job before I took it sight unseen. I sighed and headed out the front door and down the porch stairs. For such a huge house, there were few bathrooms, but the ones that were here were dirty, not just dirty, but totally neglected, with soap scum and black marks everyw
here. Thankfully, the marks weren’t mold and rust. I was going to clean one of those bathrooms just to get the juices flowing, after I spoke with Mrs. Petrovski and cleared it with Burton.
I placed both calls. I cleared it with Burton, and even though he still wanted to see about evidence, he had no problem with my cleaning a bathroom, thankfully. He even offered to let me come over and clean his two bathrooms if that would help me. Funny guy, that Burton. I also got a grudging okay from Mrs. Petrovski to clean one of the bathrooms, at least until she could get here with the keys to the other houses.
And then I selected a bathroom, got down on my knees, sprayed the interior of the tub with one of those industrial cleaners, and got to work. Scrubbing the black muck around the rim first, I ran through everything that had happened so far. Audra was dead, rolled up in a carpet and moved out of the house. So how did it get out to the Dumpster? And why had she been killed?
As far as I knew, she was a nice woman who had just been starting out in life, getting engaged to her boyfriend and cleaning for a big commercial company. She had done a great job at the few places I’d heard about, and she’d always shown up on time. We’d not yet achieved official friend status, we hadn’t talked on the phone or shot each other texts throughout the day, and we hadn’t gone out for drinks. But we’d been getting to know each other, and I had a feeling that we would have done all those things if she’d lived longer. It was sad that her life was now over.
Then we had the actual killing. I still didn’t know how exactly she had been killed. Strangled? That was what Burton thought, but he couldn’t confirm it until the coroner gave him his report. Shot? But if she’d been shot, then wouldn’t there be blood somewhere? The floors themselves appeared to be clean, and the walls, though weirdly decorated, didn’t have any signs of blood spatter on them.