Stipulations and Complications

by Becki Willis

  “What sorts of things did he say to you?”

  “I don’t exactly remember, not after all these years. To be honest, Hugh Redmond and his bunch were making more noise than Hank, insisting the estate belonged to them. But Hank did say something about past deeds. He insinuated that I had something on Miss Juliet, and bribed her into leaving her estate to me. I had no idea what he was talking about, and he refused to elaborate. For the first couple of years, it seemed Hank did everything he could to undermine your grandfather and me. So, yes, I would say that he could be a vindictive man, but his anger only lasted a couple of years. He cooled down, apologized, and we picked up our friendship right where it left off. You might recall, he was a pall bearer at your grandpa’s funeral, and if he outlives me, I want him as one at mine.” She winked as she added, “Honorary, of course. He’s getting too old and feeble to carry even a box of bones. Don’t want him dropping the casket and causing a scene.”

  “Speaking of bones… Have you thought of any possible explanation for Miss Juliet having a secret staircase in her room? Particularly one that led down to a secret room in the basement?”

  “Sybille and I have been chewing on that one. We’ve wracked our brains, but we can’t come up with a plausible reason for any of the hidden passages. In fact, we were thinking of talking to Hank, to see if he had any notions on the matter. Other than me, he probably knows the Big House better than anyone.”

  “Hmm, that’s a thought.”

  “I also know that Miss Juliet kept a journal, but I’ve never come across any of them. Of course, I haven’t looked through all her books. She was a voracious reader and had a huge library. Which is now yours, by the way, to do with as you may.”

  “But some of those books are quite valuable!”

  Her grandmother shrugged. “So sell them and collect the money. When I sold you the house, I sold you the contents, as well.”

  There was censure in Madison’s stern, “Granny.”

  The old woman was having none of it. “Get that tone out of your voice. And stop making that face. It might freeze that way.” It had been a favorite saying of hers when her boys were young, and it had worked while raising her granddaughter, as well. She waved her wrinkled hand around the crowded room. “I have a house full of my own junk, what do I need with someone else’s?”

  Knowing she fought a losing battle, Madison sighed and dropped the subject. Her mind was already backtracking. “Miss Juliet kept a journal, huh?”

  “For as long as I can remember. I’m sure there must be several volumes, stuffed somewhere in that behemoth of a house. I’d start looking in the bedroom, if I was you. Tell that boyfriend of yours you need in there.”

  Forgetting to keep her voice low, Madison’s outburst held a tad too much protest. “Brash is not my boyfriend!”

  Granny Bert gave her a knowing look, but her words were scoffing. “Then you’re not half as smart as I gave you credit for.”

  Chapter Six

  Brash gave one last perusal to the primitive room buried deep beneath Juliet Randolph Blakely’s historic old home. It offered few clues to its origins, even fewer as to its purpose.

  If he had to guess, he thought the room was created after the original structure. Certainly, the materials used were much cruder, suggesting they may have been smuggled in. How, exactly, an eight by ten-foot pit could be dug without anyone noticing was beyond him, but stranger things had been known to happen.

  Things like allowing a body to rot away in such a pit.

  It had been four days since the gruesome discovery, and still they had no answers. The remains were shipped off to Austin for analysis and DNA testing, but Brash had little hope of getting a hit. It was only bones, after all. Bones of an unknown person from an unknown time period. Where did you even begin on a case like this?

  At this point, he had far more questions than he did answers. Whom did the skeleton belong to? A vagrant? Theoretically, someone could have sneaked their way into the underground room anytime within the past hundred years and died there without anyone having known. They could have been sick… injured… bitten by a spider… died of starvation or suffocation…

  But if that were the case, wouldn’t there have been an odor? Wouldn’t it have wafted up the secret staircase into Miss Juliet’s room, or out into the upper rooms of the cellar?

  So perhaps the skeleton had been a victim. He or she could have been held captive in the tiny room… moved there postmortem… murdered on sight… abandoned and left to die…

  If any of those scenarios was correct, this was a case of murder. At the very least, negligent homicide.

  But who was the murderer? The victim? They might never know.

  The meager clues from the room had all been bagged, tagged, and taken off site. Not that there had been much. The handmade bed was nothing more than four posts topped by a wooden platform. There were remnants of a single bed cover, the last remains of a patchwork quilt long since rotted away. What time had not destroyed, rodents had.

  The clothes from the skeleton were in similar condition. Only tatters remained. Much of those had disintegrated upon touch, leaving questions about whether the gray fabric had once been a skirt or a pair of pants. Judging from the boots discovered tucked beneath the bed and the fact that the skeleton was barefoot, it was customary to assume the body was male. But Brash knew better than to jump to conclusions until the facts proved otherwise.

  The other furniture in the room consisted of a narrow table and a set of shelves propped precariously against one earthen wall. Long ago, the middle shelf had caved in, sending four glass jars crashing down. A dark, slightly fragrant substance — probably molasses, Brash suspected — had dripped onto the bottom shelf before pooling into a dark stain upon the dirt floor. Amid the shattered glass and zinc lids, little of the contents from the other jars remained: a few gnawed corncobs, what might have once been a pickle, a small potato now hard as stone. A tin of peaches and another of canned meat were still intact, their labels faded and worn, their contents decades past expiration. On the top shelf, they had discovered a pewter plate, one fork, one knife, and a porcelain teacup, their elaborate designs and fine craftsmanship at odds in the rudimentary setting.

  The only other things found in the room were an undecipherable piece of cloth adopted by a family of mice, a tattered Bible, a pencil, and a dog-eared novel with half its cover gnawed away. Brash and his team had extricated the meager items with care and sent them to the state lab for analysis.

  There was literally nothing else to see, nothing else to analyze. If someone had, indeed, been living down here, they had existed with minimal comforts and minimal food. Brash shook his head, unable to imagine living in the dark, cramped, windowless space.

  The thought of dying down here was even worse.

  He would send someone in to take down the lights. The fire department had rigged a string of illumination around the room’s perimeter, so that every nook and cranny could be seen and examined. With no more evidence left to gather, Brash saw no reason to leave the lights in place. No one should be down here, anyway. It was still considered an active crime scene, even though an actual crime having been committed was still in question.

  Come to think of it, the ‘active’ part is even more questionable, Brash thought with a grunt. Doesn’t seem to have been any activity down here in decades.

  On a whim, he decided to take the hidden stairway up. The string lighting did little to illuminate the tiny cavern winding its way to the second floor. By only the fourth step, darkness engulfed him. Brash paused in the passageway to listen. At least twelve feet beneath the ground floor of the old mansion, he could hear nothing from above. There was no thump of overhead movement, no echo of voices or machines, not even the sound of air whistling through the man-made shaft. All was silent.

  Secret room aside, how did someone build a secret staircase? In the darkness, Brash put out his hand, feeling the rough planks of wood that lined the narrow chamber. He wa
s still in the sub-cellar, still a few feet below the actual basement. Constructing a secret passage down here was conceivable. Dig a vertical tunnel through the clay, line it with wood to keep it from caving in on itself, add steps. Difficult, but doable.

  But creating a staircase that passed through existing rooms and walls? How could someone manage that in secret? Brash was not convinced it could be done. That meant Miss Juliet was aware of the hidden staircase. Had probably traveled the steep and narrow passage herself. If that were the case, when was the last time she had come down to the cellar? Before the mysterious person had died down there? Or after?

  Brash frowned. Surely, he was not suggesting that the prim and proper esteemed founder of the town was a murderess! Miss Juliet had been dignified and refined, a lady in every sense of the word. Even in the face of public humiliation — her own sister giving birth to her deceased husband’s illegitimate child — Juliet Blakely had held her head high and continued to see to the duties of the town. Nor could he fathom Miss Juliet as an accomplice to murder, not even by way of neglecting to report a crime. Had she known of the body in the sub-basement, he was certain she would have reported it.

  Flipping on his flashlight, Brash continued up the steep and irregular steps. Their very construction suggested they were a retrofit. In a home built with superb craftsmanship, fine materials, and attention to the most minute detail, he was certain that if the staircase had been in the original blueprint, it would have been much more uniform.

  Not only were the stiles irregular, but the walls were not uniform. The higher he climbed, the narrower the passage. The laddered steps turned at random, squeezing into impossible angles. More than once, Brash had to curl his broad shoulders inward to make a tight turn. Forced to duck his head yet again, Brash suspected this segment of the stairwell must pass through the first floor of the home, where retrofitting space for a staircase — even a steep spiral such as this — would have been challenging.

  Having lost his sense of perception in the steep and dark assent, Brash stopped and listened. Unlike in the basement, he could now hear the sounds of the house around him. An electrical saw buzzed. Music played from a worker’s radio. Hammers pounded, battery-operated screwdrivers whirred. Voices drifted in and out. Feet shuffled above him.

  Another frown tugged on the corners of his mouth. Directly above him was the master bedroom, a room he had put under strict quarantine. Hoping to catch the person who dared disobey his order, Brash killed the flashlight and crept his way up the last remaining steps. He paused at the door, listening for voices on the other side.

  “I told you, I have no idea.” A man was speaking, and he sounded irritated.

  Brash strained to hear the reply, but none was forthcoming. When the man spoke again, Brash realized he was talking on the phone.

  “It’s a bit difficult to search the place, when it’s crawling with cameras and workers and the damned fire and police departments,” the man said testily. “I’m doing what I can, but this house is huge … You do it, then! … I’m in the old lady’s bedroom right now. If I get caught, it will cost me my job, so I’ve got to make this quick. She said to look in here.”

  Brash knew the panel hiding the stairwell was disguised as a bookcase. From the bedroom, it opened by pulling a lever. From the inside, that same lever was pushed in reverse. He did so now, but nothing happened. He pushed harder. Still nothing. Thumping the lever with force, he shoved on the entire panel, but the bookcase refused to budge.

  Brash had two options. He could bust down the wall, but if it took more than one blow, the noise would forewarn the assailant and he would be gone before Brash kicked his way to freedom. The other option was to retrace his steps down the winding staircase, take the slippery steps from the hidden room up to the main basement, cross through its maze of rooms, circle around to the front of the house, hurry up the main staircase, run down the wing where Miss Juliet’s room was located, and, finally, slip silently into the room marked with crime scene tape. That option would allow the intruder enough time to do a quick search and still make a clean getaway.

  Knowing neither plan was perfect, Brash strained to make out more of the conversation. Perhaps he could identify the man’s voice.

  He could hear the man rifling about the room, opening drawers and pushing furniture aside. He muttered incoherently as he searched, but Brash clearly heard him say, “I don’t find a thing. I don’t think it’s here.”

  Opening up his phone, Brash kept one ear tuned to the conversation on the other side of the wall, even as he sent a text to Nick Vilardi. He instructed the carpenter to find out who was in the master bedroom and to detain them until he got there. He listened for a moment longer, until he got the sense the man was getting nervous about the amount of time elapsed. Brash had to act now. As he hurried down the steep stairway, moving as quickly as his big body allowed in such tight quarters, he gave up texting and dialed Nick’s number.

  The call went to voicemail. He dialed Amanda’s number. When it, too, went to voice mail, he remembered that the crew was filming again today.

  Great. Just what I need today. He saw the low overhead and ducked just in time, but he missed a narrow step wedged awkwardly into a corner. As his foot slipped and he felt himself falling, a few choice words leaked from his angry mouth. He was trying to quit cussing, but damn, if that didn’t hurt! He banged his way down at least five treads, traveling on his backside, until the steps turned again. His outstretched legs were too long to make the corner, effectively stopping his travel. Brash took a moment to gather his wits and settle his breathing.

  Five seconds, and he was up and moving, intent to make it into the main house in record time.

  ***

  It was a valiant effort, but he was too late. By the time he ran through the basement, into the house, directly in front of the filming crew despite their cries of protest and Amanda’s obvious distress, up the grand stairway, and into the master bedroom, the unknown man was gone.

  In fact, nothing seemed to be disturbed. After clearing the room for an intruder, Brash searched the rest of the second floor, finding only a handful of workers in a far bedroom. Covered in drywall dust and each in various stages of taping and floating the walls, the men looked fully engrossed in their work and surprised to see him. Since no trace of white dust led from the room, Brash marked the men off his list of preliminary suspects.

  Back in Miss Juliet’s room, he looked for evidence left by the intruder. Nothing was out of place. There was a slight disturbance in the dust pattern on one dresser; a jewelry box shifted a fraction of an inch. Using the tip of his pen, he flipped the lid open and found it full of costume jewelry. He supposed it was fake, but it looked valuable. It was a wonder no one had stolen it before now. He would make a note to talk to Madison about it.

  He looked around again. Come to think of it, why was anything still in the house? Most of the rooms were as Miss Juliet left them, still cluttered with furniture, curtains, rugs, even nick-knacks. With the mess of construction, and all the different workers wandering in and out, wouldn’t it make more sense to clear the house, putting the contents in storage until the renovation was done? Another thing he should ask Madison.

  He would have to call her. Warn her of the possible security breach. Alert her to the probability of theft. Even though his heart lightened at the thought of seeing her again, he hated to be the bearer of bad news. But he had promised to keep her updated, and Brash was nothing if not a man of his word.

  Even if — no, make that especially since — Maddy had trouble believing it.

  ***

  First, however, he had to contend with the angry Home Again team.

  “What the hell was the meaning of that?” Nick barged into the bedroom, his handsome face flushed with anger.

  Brash turned and gave the television host his imperial look. “That,” he said coolly, “was me doing my job. What I would like to know is, why haven’t you been doing yours?”

  “I
was trying to, when you barged through like a two-ton truck!”

  “Nick,” Amanda murmured, trying to defuse the tension building in the room. She tugged on his arm gently, but her big violet eyes tried to connect with Brash’s.

  “I’m not talking about filming. I’m talking about controlling your workers. Someone has ignored the do-not-cross line and been snooping around in here.”

  Nick’s sharp gaze darted around the room, looking for signs of disturbance. “Nothing appears out of place.”

  “Exactly. Meaning they had ample time to go through things without making a mess. I’ll need to see the camera footage for this room.”

  “There isn’t any.”

  Brash frowned. “I thought you had cameras rigged all over the place.”

  Amanda was the one to answer, drawing the police chief’s gaze her way. “Only in the areas where we’re currently working. We move the cameras as needed.”

  “Is there a camera on the stairs?”

  “Yes, we keep that one running.”

  “Then I’ll need to see it.” Hopefully the intruder took the main staircase and not the one designated for servants, but he wasn’t betting on it.