by Marja McGraw
She looked around the living room. “I love this house. Look at all the antiques. This is my kinda house.”
I glanced around, too. We’d been so busy that I hadn’t taken stock of the home. It was spotless, and filled with the antiques that Felicity mentioned.
Eloise joined us. “Maybe I’ve overdone it, but these are all family heirlooms. I can’t bring myself to sell them and update the décor.”
Felicity held out her hand. “Hi. I’m Felicity Hawks, Stan’s wife.”
Eloise took her delicate little hand and gently shook it. “I’m Eloise Neuchase. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too. I’m sorry, but did you say Eloise Nutcase?”
Eloise laughed. “Neuchase. I guess I don’t pronounce it clearly enough.”
I noticed that my friend took a step back and nonchalantly pulled a tissue out of her purse. I had a feeling she’d just been sprayed.
Eloise turned and walked toward the dining room. “Come this way, people.”
Felicity daintily dabbed at her cheek.
We all pitched in and brought glasses, plates and silverware to the table, and over dinner we told her about the case we were working on.
“Would it be okay if I take a peek at the hidden room? This is interesting, to put it mildly.”
“Certainly,” Eloise said. “I’ll give you the short grand tour.”
“And you say Horace was mummified?”
“Harley,” I corrected. “Yes. That room seemed to be airtight and dry, thus mummifying the body, until we opened it. Tomorrow, if it’s okay with Eloise, we’ll go to the Gin Mill Grill and start searching it for anything pertinent to the case.”
“I love the name of that place.” Felicity smiled. “It’s catchy. And to think it’s still standing after all these years.”
“It had quite a reputation,” Eloise said.
“And the feds never shut it down? No Eliot Ness on the case? Well, I know he was a Prohibition agent, but I don’t know if that was actually federal or not.”
“It was part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.” Stanley always seemed to have the answers.
“How did you know that, Stan?” I asked.
“Eliot Ness was my hero.”
“Ah.”
We finished eating, Felicity got her look at the secret room, and we all headed home, with the desire to start fresh in the morning. Eloise said she’d meet us at the Gin Mill Grill around eight o’clock.
She’d given me a cardboard box to carry some of Harley’s books home in.
Pete sighed and shoved the box in the back of the Jeep, mumbling to himself. He was not a book person and he didn’t quite get my interest in them.
~ * ~
Eloise called early the next morning. “I’ve been thinking about something. Be sure to bring some tools with you, including a sledge hammer.”
“A sledge hammer?” I asked.
“Yes. I’ll explain when we meet at the diner.”
I told Pete about her call and we loaded the back of the Jeep with everything we thought might come in handy, including the sledge hammer.
“Maybe she wants us to tear the place apart,” he said. “I can’t imagine that, though. She’ll probably get the place leased out again, sooner or later.”
“Who knows? She’s an interesting woman, to say the least. I have this insane desire to do something about her eyebrows, though. Have you ever seen such thick brows on a woman before?”
“Women!” Pete laughed at the very idea of me worrying about her appearance.
We met Stanley and Felicity at the grill just before eight o’clock. Eloise was already there and had the front door propped open.
The building was brick and definitely looked like something from the 1920s or 30s.
The renovations inside had been kept true to the time period. The floors were tiled with black and white checkered flooring. There was a counter with stools and a few booths, all done in red. The wall décor was made up of photos and antiques from the thirties. It would have been a very small diner in its day, but when the speakeasy had been opened up, it enlarged the room quite a bit.
Of course, the old oak bar still stood by one of the walls in what would have been the back room, and there were old scratched and worn wooden stools lined up in front of it.
Eloise sat on one of the stools at the counter, drinking a cup of coffee.
Felicity stood in the middle of the diner and turned in a slow circle, taking everything in, studying the pictures and antiques. “This is amazing. I feel like I’ve stepped back in time.”
Our client smiled at her. “Just wait until I tell you what I’ve been thinking about. This building has actually been renovated twice, but the work was more cosmetic than anything else. I mean, most of the electrical system was redone, and it’s got new plumbing, but basically new walls were set in over the old walls instead of tearing everything down. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I’d like to completely redo the place from the ground up. Maybe give it a new look and a new purpose, although I’m not sure what that purpose would be.”
“It sounds like you have big plans,” I said.
“I do. Since I want to do a real renovation, not just cosmetic, I want you to feel free to tear into the walls, the floors and whatever else you might want to look behind or under. You remember the old saying, if these walls could talk. Maybe they can. Let’s find out.”
Pete and Stanley looked excited. What fun they could have tearing the place apart. Men were just like little boys sometimes, and they’d been given the green light.
“Okay,” I said. “Before we start tearing things up, let’s give this a little thought. If there’s anything to be found here, it would probably be in the back room, or the gin mill. Let’s start there and be systematic about what we do.”
Pete and Stanley looked like I’d just thrown water in their faces.
I smiled at them. “You can tear down walls later.”
They looked excited again.
“But let’s do it with purpose. For instance, let’s check things out first, like that old oak bar. You never know what could have been left on one of the shelves.”
“Left since the 1930s?” Pete asked, sounding skeptical.
“I know it’s unlikely, but let’s not let anything get past us.”
While we were talking, Felicity had hunkered down behind the bar. “Are you looking for something like this?”
She held out her hand.
Chapter Seven
Felicity held a silver dime in her hand with a 1930s date on it. “If this has sat at the back of the shelf all these years, we might find other things, too.”
It took all of three seconds for me to join her behind the bar. We searched each shelf and every corner, but nothing else came to light other than some dust, a couple of bar towels and a few dead bugs.
“I keep meaning to come in here and clean up,” Eloise said, “but the time just seems to get away from me.”
Felicity grabbed one of the bar towels, shook it out, and started dusting.
Pete walked around the room, knocking on the walls. I wasn’t sure what he thought he might find. Maybe he was hoping to hear a hollow sound. I was sure there were probably a lot of those areas because of a new wall being placed over an old one.
“By the way,” Stanley said, “I did a little research on Edgar Barrow last night.”
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
“Not much, but I may have a lead. I didn’t find an obituary on him, but I did find a few newspaper articles from a local paper. Apparently he was quite an artist, and he was well-known in the area. The articles mentioned a son and daughter, and I found a listing for the son. I’ll contact him this evening or tomorrow.”
Pete glanced at Eloise. “Are you sure about us tearing out some of these walls?”
“Yes. When this is all over, I’ll call in a contractor to rebuild the interior.”
He turned to Stanley. �
�Okay, let’s go out to the Jeep and bring in the tools.”
Once again, I could see excitement on the faces of the two friends. They were eager to start hammering and sledging (is that a word?) the walls.
They walked outside and Felicity started to laugh. “Stan can’t wait to swing a hammer. I can see it in his expression. He’s never done anything like this before. I wonder why destroying something like this makes men feel manly.” She shook her head in wonder.
Pete returned carrying the sledge hammer in one hand and a bucket with regular hammers and an ax in it. Good grief! I hadn’t realized he’d loaded an ax in the back, too.
Stanley carried a tool box with screwdrivers and other implements. It was a bit lighter, and Stanley wasn’t a big man. He’s about five foot eight, and he’s very slender, with thinning brown hair and a tendency to be a klutz. He’s led a more sedentary life than Pete.
The klutz part of my thoughts made me hope he wouldn’t hurt himself. I could just picture him slamming his thumb with the hammer. Of course, he wouldn’t be hammering nails into the wall. He’d be tearing it apart.
He dropped the tool box on his foot and yelped.
“Are you okay, pookie pie?” Felicity asked.
Their use of pet names sometimes made me want to gag, and yet it was funny at the same time.
“I’m fine, snookums,” he said, picking up the tool box and limping away.
Pete was tapping on the wall again. He stopped, tapped to the left of the spot, and knocked on the place on the right again.
“Is that where you’re going to start?” I asked.
“Yeah. It sounds almost more hollow here.” He picked up the sledge hammer and I backed away, not wanting to get hit with the hammer.
More hollow? Wishful thinking on his part.
“One…,” Felicity said.
Eloise and I caught on and in unison we said, “Two…”
And all three of us yelled, “Three!”
Pete swung with all his might and we had a hole in the wall. He turned around and took a bow.
“Let me try that,” Stanley said.
Pete handed him the sledge hammer and Stanley’s arms took a sudden dive. He’d forgotten how heavy a sledge hammer could be, although at one time he’d known – long story. He hefted it up and slightly behind his body so he could get in a good swing. Arms shaking and feet firmly planted on the floor, he swung.
The initial hole grew.
While all this was going on, Felicity went back to cleaning the bar. “I don’t want to watch.” Since she was clumsy, too, she knew all the dangers involved in her husband wielding a sledge hammer.
“I left some cleaning supplies in the restroom,” Eloise said. “I’ll go get them and help you.”
“Thanks.”
All of a sudden I had an uncontrollable urge to swing the hammer. “Let me see that, Stan.” I held out my hand.
“It’s quite heavy, Sandi. Are you sure you want to try it?”
“Gimme the sledge hammer.”
He handed it to me and, yes, I’d forgotten how heavy it would be, too. So I did it my own way. I turned sideways and let it hang down, swung it back and forth a couple of times, and finally swung it like a heavy golf club.
Boom! A dead mouse fell out of the wall, or at least its skeleton did.
“What’s going on here?” The voice came from behind us.
Eloise smiled. “Hello, Helen. We’re having a Tear it Down party.”
“A what? Oh. Eloise. I didn’t see you. I was afraid someone had broken in to steal that beautiful old bar.”
Our client turned to us. “This is Helen. She owns a gift shop a couple of doors down the way.”
The two women walked outside with Eloise explaining that she was going to completely rebuild the inside of the building.
Pete took the tool from me and swung the sledge hammer a few more times before standing back to admire his destruction. He nodded, satisfied with his work.
“Sandi, would you get me the flashlight out of the tool box?”
I found it and handed it to him. “Now what?”
“I’m going to look inside the wall.” And he did.
“See anything?”
He sighed. “Yeah. There’s about a foot between the new wall and the old one. We’ll have to take out more of the new wall to get to the old one. Whoever did this job sure wasted a lot of space.”
He and Stanley used tools to start tearing down more of that part of the wall.
Pete was finally able to step into the space and take a better look. “There’s nothing between the walls, but I didn’t expect there would be. At least now we can start breaking down the old wall.”
While the men worked, Felicity and I cleaned the bar.
Eloise returned shortly, glancing around the restaurant. “It just dawned on me. Where are the dogs? You didn’t bring them? They’re not in the car, are they?”
“I left them with my neighbor today. With all the excitement, they would have been into everything,” I said. “Besides, I couldn’t keep an eye on them here.”
Pete and Stanley decided to take a break.
Eloise had brought a cooler with her and she pulled out some bottled water, passing it out. “I have sandwiches for later, too.”
“Pete,” I said, “you said that spot sounded hollow. But if there’s a foot of space between the two walls, wouldn’t everywhere you knocked sound hollow?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “Yeah. It just seemed like a good place to start.”
I let it go, not meaning to embarrass him. Okay, sometimes he was easy to tease. Of course, he did his share of teasing, too.
“Hey, Sandi,” Felicity said. “Come look at this.” She was studying the top of the bar, near the end.
“What is it?”
“The cousins must have had a fit. Someone carved a date and initials into the bar. It must have been a slow night and someone was bored.”
I walked to the end of the bar and took a look. The carving was deep, and it probably couldn’t have been repaired in those days, but what did I know? Maybe it could have been sanded and stained.
“1931, E.B.,” I read. “I’ll be darned. This must have been done by Edgar Barrow. He left his mark, that’s for sure.”
“Who’s Edgar Barrow,” my friend asked.
“I think we told you about him. When he was young, he was a bartender here. He quit, and we think it was probably around the time Horace was murdered.”
“Oh, yeah. Edgar. Stanley’s been doing some research on him.”
“I hope he’s still alive. He might know something about what happened, or at least about the twins – if he still remembers those days.” I truly hoped he was still living, but my guess would be he’d be around ninety-eight or so by now.
Felicity started scrubbing again. “Maybe the brothers never noticed his handy work.”
“Then again,” I said, “maybe he got into trouble because of it and that’s why he quit.” I thought for a moment. “No, because from what we can tell, he quit in 1932.”
I sighed.
“Right now a lot of what we’re thinking is just guesswork. I hope we can come up with something definitive.”
Pete was ready to get back to work. “I’ll see what I can find.”
Stanley rubbed his arms. “This is hard work, but I think it’s probably good for me to be a bit more active.”
The two men enlarged the hole in the wall until they had room to start tearing into the original wall.
The pounding was giving me a headache and I took an aspirin.
Felicity held out her hand, asking for one, but changed her mind and pulled her hand back.
Eloise had no problem taking an aspirin. In fact, she took two.
“Hey,” Pete called, stepping out of the space and turning to us. “I might have something here. There’s a door in the old wall. It’s kind of like the one we found at the house, and this was a speakeasy, so maybe they used to hide things he
re.”
“You people amaze me,” Eloise said.
Chapter Eight
Pete seemed to feel the need to explain. “Eloise, honestly, I found the sliding door at the house almost by accident. The whole wall had been painted over, but between time, the house settling and maybe earthquakes, the seams had been uncovered.”
“Still,” she replied, “the fact is that you found it. That’s aces in my book. I wonder if Harley built that wall with the one here in mind. I’m sure it wasn’t what you call a safe room, but maybe the door here inspired him to build the one at home. You know, so he could have a private space to read and relax.” She chuckled. “And maybe to hide from the cops.”
I sighed and, I’m not sure, but I may have rolled my eyes. “Can we just open the door and see what’s behind it? Or are we going to stand here and talk about hidden doors all day?”
“Sandi?” Felicity gave me an odd look. “Are you okay?”
“It’s just the headache. Maybe we’ll find something that will take my mind off of it.”
“She’s right,” Pete said. “Let’s get busy and get it open.”
“I hope it’s not stuck,” Stanley said.
Eloise smiled. “It doesn’t matter. In this case, if it’s stuck, just break it down.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Stanley was looking enthusiastic again. Maybe joyful.
His joy seemed to make me forget the headache for a moment.
Pete tried to slide the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “You know, there may have been a way for them to lock this.” He studied it as though looking for a hidden lock or device.
Stanley wouldn’t have any part of it. He picked up the sledge hammer and approached the door.
Pete laughed. “Let me get out of the way before you swing that thing.” He stepped out of the opening and into the restaurant.
“Go for it,” Felicity said.
Her husband swung with all his might, and the sledge hammer bounced off the wall. He dropped the hammer and grabbed his shoulder.
“Huh,” Pete said. Typical Pete, he traded places with Stanley and began tapping on the wall.
I joined him.
He snapped his fingers. “Can you believe this? They lined the wall with metal on the inside. There must be something in there that they really wanted to protect.”