A Vintage Death

by Mary Ellen Hughes

  She heard rattling noises coming from the kitchen and had just decided to go speak to the woman soothingly, to try to get to the bottom of her agitation, when Paula reappeared.

  “I was here,” she said, “if you have to know. You have to know everything, don’t you? Well, here’s some information for you. I saw Cliff and Jane talking outside. And I opened the window so I could hear them. You don’t know what they said, do you? I’ll bet Jane never told you. Well, she was begging Cliff to keep her secret!”

  “Secret?” Callie didn’t like the dark look in Paula’s eyes. Or the raised pitch of her voice. She was also blocking the only way out of the office as she talked.

  “Yes, secret!” Paula spat the word. “And I heard enough to figure out what it was. Cliff had been up to his ways with her some time ago.”

  “Up to his ways. You mean as with—”

  “He used her. Probably against her will, because that’s the kind of beast he was! I knew that when I took this job, but I needed it. Badly. I told myself what happened was a long time ago, and I should get over it.”

  “So, the same thing had happened to you? Paula, I’m so sorry—”

  “He didn’t remember me,” Paula said, waving away Callie’s interruption. “I could see that right away, and I wasn’t young and pretty anymore, so it wouldn’t happen again. He was old, I told myself, and not the same person anymore. So I took the job. And it was okay. I cooked. I got paid. And I could pay my rent and keep my old car. But then I saw he hadn’t changed. Oh, not with me. It was the maid, Kelsey. I saw him watch her. And I heard him stop her to talk, over and over, and I knew where it was leading.”

  “Paula, can we talk about this in the kitch—” Callie began. Then she saw the knife. Paula had been holding it behind her back, but now she let it show.

  “I couldn’t let it happen again. He had to be stopped.”

  “Do you mean you … ?”

  “He told Dorothy’s cousin to meet him in the park. He said he couldn’t talk here. That they could come to an agreement. There was a child involved! Did you know that? That woman had a child she had to give up. And he expected money to keep her secret from her family. When it was his fault!”

  Callie was beginning to see it now. How had she missed it? “So you went to the park that night?”

  “I followed him. I waited on the side of the road a short ways down from here. When he drove by, I slipped in behind. I lost him for a while after I parked. But then I heard their voices. She was pleading with him to leave her alone. He’d contacted her after her husband died. Said he was sure she didn’t want her children to know about their ‘love child.’ That’s what he called it. I wanted to throw up. She said she didn’t have as much money as he thought. That her husband’s medical bills had gobbled up a lot. He laughed and said she’d have to get it some other way. That’s when she pulled out the scissors.”

  Callie gasped. “So Jane stabbed him?”

  “No!” Paula looked confused for a moment. “She didn’t stab him! He took the scissors away from her like they were nothing and tossed them aside. Then she ran off.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “I had this with me.” Paula held up the long knife she’d probably used countless times in the kitchen. “I brought it for protection. I had to, didn’t I? I didn’t know what might happen. But when I heard the things he said and how he laughed … ” Her eyes hardened. “I knew what I had to do. He was an evil man. He had to be stopped.” She paused, holding the knife in front of her now with both hands. “He didn’t know I was there. When I rushed at him there was nothing he could do.”

  Callie remembered that day she’d first met Paula. She’d been kneading her bread dough, a task she did almost daily and that surely had built up strength. That plus the anger coursing through her that night could have done the job. But something was wrong. “Paula, the police named the scissors as the murder weapon, not a knife.”

  “It was both. He deserved to die more than once, didn’t he? For all the women he’d hurt. After I stabbed him with my knife, I did it again with the scissors, over and over. I did it for Jane. And for all the others.”

  And hadn’t been concerned that Dorothy or Jane might go to prison for the murder as a result, Callie thought. But she knew the truth, now, and could keep that from happening. If only she could get out of there alive. She had to calm Paula down somehow. Could she gain her trust?

  “I’m so sorry for all you’ve gone through, Paula. It must have been terrible having to work for a man like him, day after day, knowing what he was.”

  Paula cocked her head, seeming to appreciate the sympathy. Perhaps it was the first time she’d heard it. “It was,” she said. “But I had an advantage, didn’t I? I knew who he was, but he didn’t know who I was. That made him careless. I got to see what he was doing.”

  “Other than stalking Kelsey, you mean?”

  “Yes. He was a predator, but he was also a blackmailer. Not just with Jane. He collected things he could use against lots of people. The police never found that. He didn’t keep it in the file cabinet or anywhere you could just stumble on it.” She waved the knife. “He redid this office when he bought the place. You think all that fancy molding on the paneling is just for show? It’s to hide a secret compartment. I’ll show you.”

  Paula stepped closer to Callie and pointed her knife toward the corner of the wall behind the desk. “Go ahead, pull that printer table out,” she said. “It’s on castors. It’ll move easy.”

  Hoping to stall until she had a chance to get away, and also genuinely curious, Callie grabbed hold of the table. It rolled out smoothly but exposed nothing more than dark paneling.

  “Now, take that picture down.”

  Callie had thought on her first visit to the office that the large framed print of sailboats on the Chesapeake was out of proportion to the size of the room. But she’d assumed Ashby chose it for some personal reason. She took hold of each side of the frame and lifted it off its hanger, finding it awkward but manageable.

  “Just lean it against the desk. Now, look close at the molding in the paneling where the picture was. Run your fingers along it. In the center.”

  The paneling had struck Callie as overly elaborate for an office as well, with the molding trim making large squares in the walls from floor to ceiling. But apparently it had a purpose. What had Ashby hidden behind it? She felt along the molding and found the crack. Then another, about six inches away. A section of the molding was a separate piece.

  “That’s it,” Paula said. “Turn it down toward the floor.”

  Callie did. Doing so uncovered a locking bolt. Looking more closely, she also saw a faint vertical crack in the paneling that ran up at least six feet from the floor. The outline of a door?

  “Now, slide the bolt open and pull,” Paula instructed.

  Callie hesitated, not liking how Paula had moved up close behind her.

  “Go ahead!” Paula urged.

  Callie slid the bolt and tugged at it. A door swung toward her, revealing a shallow room, possibly four feet deep. It was paneled the same as the office and had a row of shelves on its back wall.

  “Ashby built this?”

  “It must have been here to begin with. A cubby to hide runaway slaves, maybe. Nothing this fancy, of course. He discovered it and had it redone for his own use. And look! There, on the shelves. Those piles of papers are the dirt he’d been collecting on people.”

  Callie’s eyes swept the mounds of papers along with boxes that might have held even more papers, or photos. She knew that Ashby had worked in the court system. Was all this from records he’d copied and smuggled out? How long had it been going on?

  “So you knew about this?” She was thinking of the anonymous note left at her door that gave Lyssa’s real name and called her a murderer. “You’ve gone through some of it?”
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br />   “Why shouldn’t I? Was I invading his privacy? With what he was doing?”

  “No, I—”

  “I suppose you think I’m just as bad as he is. Because of what I did to him. You should thank me for getting rid of him!”

  Paula had grown agitated again. Callie tried to step back, to face her and talk to her calmly. But Paula quickly blocked her. “See what he was doing?” she cried, pointing her knife at the secret room. “I put an end to it. But you, all you can think about is what I did. If that’s what matters to you, I’ll give you plenty of time to think.”

  Callie instinctively grabbed the edges of the door frame, but Paula was too strong for her and pushed her into the small room and against the shelves. She heard the door slam behind her and the bolt click into place. All was dark except for a sliver of light at the bottom edge of the door.

  She banged her fists on the door. “Paula, don’t do this. Please! Open this door! Paula!” But she heard nothing in response, and in a moment the sliver of light went out.

  Thirty-One

  C allie continued to hammer at the door, calling out to Paula. She tried throwing her weight against it, then kicking, but gradually saw it was hopeless. The door and its bolt were too strong for her, plus she could gain no leverage in the shallow room.

  She slid to the floor. What could she do? Was there any hope? Her cell phone was in her purse, sitting on the office desk. The inn was currently empty of guests. George planned to return, according to Paula, but when? Perhaps never if his grandchild’s emergency became too serious. Lyssa, she knew, had left her things behind and would need to return, which lifted Callie’s hopes briefly until she remembered how Lyssa had sped off in tears. After being accused of murder, she might decide to send for her things and never come back. And who could blame her?

  Callie knew she would be missed, but after how long? Who would think to look for her here? Paula could keep the inn to herself by turning away guests until she was sure Callie was dead. And who would know? Was this it? Was she doomed to a slow death in this secret tomb?

  The thought was too much. Callie pulled herself up to pound and kick again at the door. It did nothing toward freeing her, but it burned off some of the panic that had threatened to paralyze her. She needed to rid herself of emotion and stick to rational thought.

  As she calmed, still panting from her efforts, she realized that the small enclosure she was locked in hadn’t grown stuffy, meaning it wasn’t airtight. That was obviously a good thing. But the door she’d opened from the office had fitted snugly into the paneling. It likely wasn’t allowing much air to flow in. So it must be coming in some other way. How?

  Unable to see her hands in front of her face, Callie reached blindly toward the side wall to her right. With no shelves attached to it, it was at least a place to start. She leaned her face close to it as she slid her hands downward over the same paneling and molding that had covered the office walls. When she got to the floor, she felt it. A flow of air coming in where the wall didn’t quite meet the floor. Could it be a way out? Callie’s hopes rose—minimally.

  As she pondered her next move, she caught a whiff of something else that made her freeze. Smoke. It was very faint, but she was certain it was coming from the office. She bent down to press her nose against that slit, confirming her suspicion. She tried at first to convince herself it was cigarette smoke. Or cooking smoke drifting from the kitchen. But it wasn’t that kind of smell. She’d never seen a working fireplace in the inn. She was sure of that. Which left only one thing. The inn was on fire. And she was trapped and would die a much worse death than what she’d imagined!

  Panic threatened to block all thought. Her impulse was to once more kick wildly to try to break through some part of the room. But that hadn’t worked the first time, and it would cost her energy she couldn’t afford to waste. She had to think! There must be a way.

  The creaks. She thought of the creaks George had heard behind his wall and the unaccounted-for space at one end of his closet. Ashby had suddenly appeared in that room while Kelsey was cleaning its bathroom. Was there more to this runaway slave hideaway than this lone cubby? Was there a way to get to other parts of the inn from here? A way that Ashby had discovered, and in the process of restoration had hidden so cleverly that Paula never found it?

  Callie ran her hands over the side wall again, growing desperate as the smell of smoke increased. Nothing, nothing … then she stopped as it came to her. The bolt in the door from the office had been hidden behind the molding. It could be the same here.

  Her fingers inched their way across a row of molding that was about the same height as the office door’s. She tried section after section, but none of it would turn downward. She coughed. More smoke had filled the space. She had to hurry. What if there was nothing to find? If there was no door. No escape? Just as panic threatened to rise again, a piece of the molding moved. She twisted it. There was a bolt underneath. She cried out in relief, but there was no time to celebrate. She had to get out.

  The bolt slid easily. It had obviously been used often. She first pulled it toward her. When that didn’t work, she pushed. The door that had been smoothly fitted into the paneling moved outward. It was just as dark on the outside, but the air was fresher. Callie took one tentative step and found a solid floor. Stretching out one arm, she felt another wall, seemingly an extension of the shelved wall of the hidden room. Had she just moved from one trap to another? But then she touched the opposite wall, the one that she guessed would parallel the inn’s main staircase. There was a ladder attached to it! Where it led she didn’t know, but it was at least a way to escape the coffin of a room she’d been in. She tested the lower rungs and found them solid, then set one foot on a rung, grabbed a higher one, and started to climb.

  She had to assume that Paula had set fire to the inn—that it wasn’t accidental. Was she trying to cover her tracks by erasing all signs of Callie having been there? There was still the problem of her car parked in the drive. What could Paula do about that?

  Callie’s foot slipped on one of the rungs, and she held on tight to keep from falling. Concentrate, she admonished herself. With nothing to distinguish either above or below her, she could only guess she’d gone up about five feet. She kept climbing.

  What would she do if the second floor of the inn was on fire? Don’t think of that, she told herself. Just climb as fast as possible without falling. She worried about finding her way out of this inner passage at the top, but urged herself to keep focused. One thing at a time.

  Her head brushed something. She reached up and felt the edge of a board. Directly above was empty space. She climbed one more rung, then another. The board to the right seemed to be part of a landing. An additional rung upward and she could slide onto it. The ladder had come to an end, so it was all she could do. She did so, carefully, and as she slid over, she realized she was in an enclosed passageway of some kind. But exactly where?

  She crawled forward, taking the time to feel her way as she went, both on the floor in front of her and on each side. It was slow going, and when she thought of the fire that might be spreading, she had to fight the urge to stand and run. That could be just as dangerous. Without any light to guide her, she could fall into another ladder opening. The thought was stomach-clenching.

  She’d grown disoriented as to exactly where she was in relation to the rest of the inn. She hoped it was somewhere behind the upper guest rooms. If George’s room had an entry into the closet, she needed to find it and soon. Her time could be running out. How would she know, though, if she’d reached it or not?

  Then she heard the sound. It was so faint, at first, that she feared she was hallucinating. But as she moved forward it grew loud enough for her to believe what she was hearing. Music. A tune. The Surrey with the Fringe on Top. It was George’s music box! And she was within inches of it. She had found George’s closet!

  Callie ran
her hands over the wooden section on her left, looking for the same bolt-lock arrangement she’d found on the office and cubby­hole doors. Nothing. There must be a way to get in. When she and Lyssa had tapped on that wall from inside the closet, the sound was definitely hollow. She must be on the other side of it now. But how to make it open?

  Then she found it. A small metal button. She pressed and heard a spring release. The door moved slightly toward her, and she could grab the edge with her fingertips and pull it farther. There was enough light on the other side for her to see the outlines of a few hanging garments. George’s closet door had been left open, and moonlight from the window had made its way in. Dim as it was, it was a life-saving beacon to Callie compared to the total darkness she’d just been in.

  She crawled in, her hand touching a shoe, then a fallen belt, until she made it through the closet and into the room. There, on a small table, she saw the package holding George’s music box that Paula had brought up. The music box had been well-wound, she knew, having tested the mechanism herself before packing it up. But what had made it play? She had no time to wonder. She had to keep moving.

  She stood, then, feeling dizzy with the relief of having made it out of the claustrophobic tunnel. But the relief was short-lived as she saw smoke curling under the closed door of George’s room.

  She had to get out, but when she pressed her hand against the hall door, she felt the heat. That way out was closed to her. She rushed into the bathroom and grabbed a bath towel to throw into the tub. She spun the faucet open to soak it, then rolled and jammed the towel against the base of the hallway door. That would give her a little time.

  She looked around frantically for a phone but saw none. With no way to call for help, she ran over to the window. The moonlight allowed her to see the outlines of a tree, some branches stretching close to the window. Were they sturdy enough to hold her? Could she reach them?

  She found the window latch and released it, then paused to look back at the hall door. The wet towel was apparently working, as she saw no smoke making its way through. But that wouldn’t last. Her only way out was through the window. She threw up the sash.