Stolen Secrets: A Collection Of Riveting Mysteries

by J. S. Donovan

An elderly woman with spotted skin and ears drooping under the weight of her opal earrings winked at Ellie and Peaches as they adjusted their attire. Ellie turned to Peaches, who was smiling like an idiot. She noticed the glint of a badge under the hallway light. “Hide that.”

  Peaches moved it and the pistol to the back of his belt, straightened out his jacket, and strolled with Ellie into the lounge. There was a billiards table, a fine hickory bar loaded with top-shelf brands, and a number of stone statues standing sentry against the walls. Most had heavy Greek influences and were naked apart from a small leaf chiseled around their private parts. There were a few older gentlemen relaxing on the leather recliners and enjoying the fireplace.

  Ellie approached them. They seemed to lick her with their eyes.

  “My, my,” one said.

  Ellie felt her skin crawl. She had forgotten that some of Andrew’s friends were wealthy, lecherous pigs who collected art with the sole purpose to lure in the opposite sex with their facade of elegance.

  “I’m looking for Andrew Maneau,” Ellie said.

  “You just missed him,” one of the men replied. “He was giving a speech in the main hall. Too boring for our taste. Say, why don’t you join us? We’re a lot more entertaining than that pretentious twit.”

  “Lovely offer, but I must be going,” Ellie said. On speedy feet, she weaved through the maze of hallways.

  Before they could reach the main hall, a dispersing crowd of people flooded them. Ellie and Peaches pressed their way through the mass of bodies that were talking, laughing, drinking, and smoking cigars. When Ellie got to the other side of crowd, she found the live band playing jazz at the corner of the room while more of the party goers enjoyed hors d oeuvres and gossiped about the evening’s events.

  “... Maneau’s doing well to hide his grief,” one lady said.

  “He must,” another replied. “That deal he was striking was a bit hush-hush. I can’t say that I’m upset that it fell through...”

  Peaches asked the ladies about Maneau’s whereabouts.

  “He’s retired for the evening,” the woman said. “Though he’s lent the estate to his guests until the morning hours.”

  The other nodded eagerly. “With the champagne he’s serving, they’ll be here for a long time.” The woman laughed.

  Ellie and Peaches headed for the double set of curving stairs that ended at an internal balcony. They passed by more extravagantly dressed men and ladies and different artistic structures. There were oil paintings on the walls alongside a few canvas pieces that were created by Ellie. As they marched the steps to the third floor, they met resistance in the form of a security guard guarding a red velvet rope across the top of the steps. Like the others, he was wearing a tux and politely told Ellie and Peaches to turn back.

  “Is Andrew up there?” Ellie asked.

  “He is,” the man replied. “But he has decided to retire for the evening. He’ll be available tomorrow. In the meanwhile, enjoy the festivities. He has spared no expense.”

  “Kind of odd for a Friday night party to be this lavish,” Peaches pointed out. “Did he ever say why tonight is such a big deal?”

  The man in the tux face turned sober. “Mr. Maneau had big plans tonight. Unfortunately, fate worked against him. If that’s all, I’m going to ask the two of you to return to the party. The third floor and gallery are closed for the remainder of the evening.”

  Ellie looked at her feet, thinking of a way to change the man’s mind. Peaches flashed his badge. “Police department. Mr. Maneau is expecting us.”

  The guard looked highly alarmed. “He never said--”

  Peaches cut him off. “--If he didn’t want us here, we’d still be out in the parking lot.”

  The guard took a moment to observe the badge before handing it back to the detective.

  The man glanced at Ellie. “Then who is she?”

  “My partner,” Peaches replied. “Mr. Maneau has allowed her access as well.”

  Hesitant, the man lifted the rope and allowed the two to pass through. The muffled sound of the music echoed through the upstairs hall, but there were no other people except for Peaches and Ellie. They followed the corridor, passing by the master bedroom and taking a moment to peek inside. Ellie flipped the light switch and called out Andrew’s name. The bed was perfectly made and the bathroom door was opened with the lights off. No one was there.

  She continued onward to the gallery sealed up by two wooden doors. Walking a pace faster than the detective, Ellie gave the door handle a try. It was unlocked. She stepped into Andrew Maneau’s private museum. The floors were elegant marble with tall geometric structures bent, folded, and expertly welded together standing on either sides of the room. Between them were centuries-old paintings worth tens of thousands of dollars. Their frames were polished of all dust. Their canvas was perfectly maintained.

  The section quickly branched into a “T” shaped hallway. To one side were historical relics, to the other side were modern masterpieces. Peaches gestured for the two of them to split up. Ellie silently agreed. She went to the historical art section while he went for the modern exhibit.

  Ellie rounded the bend and walked by various glass work, vases, and wooden furnishings from bygone eras: Victorian, antebellum, etc. There were also massive oil color paintings of French vistas and a number of authentic Japanese armor set on racks. She continued farther in, passing by historical firearms and other weapons wielded by famous figures throughout history. Eventually, Ellie reached the back of the room where the hallway elbowed into the final section.

  It was there Ellie found what she was looking for. Amidst a collection of odds and ends artifacts with high price tags and extreme sentimental value, Andrew Maneau stood before a shelf of vases at the back of the room with his head down low. He wore a white, eight-thousand-dollar cashmere blazer with slacks to match, just as Ellie’s painting had predicted.

  “Andrew?” Ellie’s voice bounced off the walls.

  He wiped his face with his hands and turned back to Ellie. His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks were puffy. He sniffled. “Ellie? When did you arrive?”

  Ellie approached cautiously. Unlike the other parts of the private gallery, this section was the largest and cast the darkest shadows. Her heart raced at every blind spot she passed by, expecting a hooded figure to leap out and butcher her.

  “Ellie?” Andrew asked again. “Is something wrong?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Ellie replied. “You look like you’re in a tough spot.”

  “Lost some friends is all,” he smiled sadly. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  Detective Peaches approached, keeping his hand on his holstered weapon and scanning the gallery. “Those friends wouldn’t happen to be Kimberly Jannis and Pamela Cornish by any chance?”

  Andrew’s face went stark white. “Who are you?”

  “Detective Peaches.” Peaches said with casual kindness.

  Andrew’s sorrow turned to anger. “Ellie, what is the meaning of this? How did you get in here?”

  “It’s a long story, Andrew. One I’ll gladly tell you when you’re out of harm’s way,” Ellie said, watching the shadows move in the corner of her eye. It was nothing but an illusion. Her skin crawled. She felt eyes on her but couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  “I think you should tell me now,” Andrew crossed his arms and turned his attention to Peaches. “And you, what business do you have bringing up Kimberly and Pamela?”

  “The man that killed them is coming after you tonight,” Peaches explained. “He knows about whatever art gallery deal you and the women had, and I guess he sees it as a chance to settle a score.”

  “Yes, we were going to combine our works and start our own gallery, but to kill over something like that...” Andrew said.

  Ellie took Andrew’s hand. “We can discuss the killer’s motive when you’re safe.”

  “How are you involved in any of this, Ellie?” Andrew asked.
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br />   “Not here, Andrew.” Ellie saw something in the corner of her eye. It was the Aztec mask she had seen in Pamela’s blood. Tucked in the back of the room was the marble sculpture of the nude woman bathing under a vase. Ellie’s heart raced. She took a step back. Is Andrew the killer, or…

  Before she could finish her thought, a crow took flight across the room. Its body twisted. Its wings flapped madly. Blood gushed from its freshly slit throat and splatted the floor as the bird whirled and nosedived behind a pedestal with a gut-wrenching crunch.

  The three of them stopped everything and looked at the dead crow.

  Ellie whispered. “He’s here.”

  9

  THE FINAL PORTRAIT

  It happened quickly, right after the bird fell.

  Something blurred by in the hallway.

  Detective Peaches whipped out his pistol and fired off a single roaring bullet that missed the hooded target and fragmented the face of the marble woman. The hooded figure sidestepped, weaving through the various pedestals and sculptures as fast as a fleeting shadow. Peaches followed him with his pistol but couldn’t get a clear shot. He lost sight of him, cursed under his breath, and reached for his cellphone when the figure leapt from the darkness and pinned him to the ground.

  With blurred strikes, almost like brief brushes of black paint, the figure swatted his billy club on the detective’s handsome head a quarter dozen times. The back of Peaches’s skull bounced on the cold unforgiving marble with each blow and his body, tense when the pounding started, went slack and still. Like some jungle predator, the hooded figure slowly turned its shrouded face to Ellie and Andrew and began to rise from Peaches’s body.

  Their faces ghost-white and their jaws slack, Ellie and Andrew took a step backward, involuntarily putting them deeper into the gallery.

  Ellie hadn’t noticed it during her encounter in apartment 42A, but the figure wore a thin, black sheer cloth over the entirety of his hooded head. The fabric was clear enough to spot the bump of the figure’s nose and the slightly damp area around his partially parted lips. However, the eyes were indistinguishable even with the two small circles that had been expertly cut from the fabric and were about the size of dimes. His hoodie was loosely fitted and zipped all the way to the top. He had three weapons: the Beretta pistol that had likely shot Peaches’s hand days ago, the long, sheathed knife used to butcher Kimberly and Pamela, and the hollow small casing for the club he currently held and pointed at Ellie.

  Fear made her skin crawl as she looked down the point of the club. The figure flicked it to the side, his way of warning Ellie to back away from Andrew. She glanced at her terrified friend. His body trembled and his eyes were wide with fright. His voice was quiet and wavering, and would not have been heard if not for the heavy silence that hung in the room. “What is this?”

  The killer remained still and calm. Ellie knew at once that her adversary was in complete control of the situation and of his emotions. She thought back to the first kill, Kimberly, whom he stabbed sixteen times, and then to Pamela, whom he’d stabbed a half a dozen less, and then Peaches, who may still be breathing, that he took down with four blows. He’s getting better at this, Ellie realized.

  He flicked the baton to the right a second time. Ellie’s mouth made a line on her face. She stepped left, opposite of what the man had commanded, and put herself as a wall between Andrew and the club. Slowly, she lifted her hands and was about to say something that might’ve calmed the man down when he reached for his pistol.

  Ellie took Andrew’s hand. “Run! Now!”

  They dashed behind the pricey artifacts, sculptures, and other baubles of Andrew’s private collection. The hooded man drew out his pistol and started his rain of fire. Ellie and Andrew ran with their heads hunched and their eyes forward as vases shattered, the Aztec mask blew apart, and oil paintings on old easels were punched by bullets. The racket of the gunfire thundered in the room and rattled Ellie’s ears. Andrew wailed as his lifelong collection was being reduced to fodder. They twisted around the corner, into the modern art section, with the hooded man in pursuit.

  Ellie pushed Andrew in front of her as they zigzagged around twirling stairs held up by nearly invisible Plexiglas beams, tall abstract geometric structures with no beginning or end, and an assortment of multicolored “people” whose bodies were made of odd metal, wood, or other malleable material that was used to make them look purposefully deformed and twisted. The hooded man ran and shot at the same time, killing his accuracy. Bullets shot haphazardly across the room and by Ellie’s head. As they neared the midway point to this part of the gallery, Andrew tripped on his own heel and stumbled onto the marble floor. Was he shot or just clumsy? Ellie couldn’t leave him behind. She doubled back and crouched down to pick him up. Andrew extended his hand and took Ellie by the wrist. He attempted to scramble to his feet. The toe of his fine shoes scuffed the pristine marble. He looked at Ellie with his horror-struck eyes and then back at the hooded figure still in a full sprint a few yards away.

  The unforgiving eye of the pistol barrel trained on the downed man, so gripped by terror that he could only suck air instead of letting out a proper scream.

  Flashes of Ellie’s latest painting resonated in her mind. The crow, neck sliced and crashed behind a pedestal, had died in the way that it needed to fit the prophecy, but Andrew was a different story. His throat was supposed to be cut in the back portion of the gallery, so if the killer shot him in the modern art exhibit, the painting would prove false, meaning that Andrew couldn’t die right here. Ellie took a small measure of confidence in that until she realized that the pistol barrel was aimed at her.

  With his expression masked behind the black fabric, the hooded man targeted Ellie and pulled the trigger.

  She expected to see a white light or maybe a black void. She expected to feel something punch her chest and send her toppling to the slab of marble. She expected a spark of pain. She felt none of those things, because when the man’s gloved finger squeezed the trigger, no bullets discharged. He was out of ammo. The hooded man made a swift second attempt to fire the weapon. Nothing.

  Ellie didn’t waste time counting her blessings. She pulled Andrew to his feet as the hooded man toss the pistol aside. His other gloved hand went for the knife.

  Ellie put her arm around Andrew’s hunched back. Andrew’s limp evolved into a desperate dash as Ellie ushered him toward the end of the exhibit.

  “Go!” She barked with winded breath and gave him a hearty push. He staggered forward, glanced over his shoulders at her final time, before vanishing around the corner. Slower but still moving forward, Ellie twisted back to the killer. She managed to twist back her torso just long enough to see the man lunge at her with arms outstretched. His head smashed into her ribs and his arm constricted her waist as he tackled her.

  Ellie’s feet flew out from under her while gravity and the man’s weight slammed her onto the ground. She tried to keep her eyes open, but when the back of her head knocked on the marble, she crunched her teeth together and clenched her eyes shut in some involuntary attempt to lessen the pain of the impact. It left her blinded long enough for the killer to direct the gleaming point of his knife at her face.

  She caught a glimpse of the shiny metal and tilted her head to the side, avoiding the quick point of the blade by centimeters. After cutting a few strands of hair, the blade rose into the air a second time as the hooded man corrected his aim. Driven by instinct and little else, Ellie sent the ball of her hand into the man’s nose. His head jerked back and he made a gak sound. Ellie sent her other fist into his throat. Her left hand was weak. Her wrist rolled over on itself when it hit him, and the man was only delayed for a few seconds more. Ellie kicked her legs haphazardly like a kid having a temper tantrum as she tried to shimmy out from under the man’s warm, athletic body. As her attempts failed, she reached for his knife, but the man was already recovering.

  He slashed sideways this time, opening the flesh beneath Ellie’s left
eye. Ellie gasped. Tears streaked out of her eye and mixed with the red crimson leaking from her face. The hooded man went to stab her when she grabbed his knife-wielding hand with both her hands and slammed his wrist to the side. The man’s body tilted with his pinned arm, giving Ellie the second leeway she needed to shimmy out from under him.

  She rolled to her belly and pushed her palms against the floor, lifting herself with a push-up. She scrambled to her knees and then to her feet as the hooded figure stood up and readied a knife strike. He moved behind his blood-stained blade, letting the wet, sharp point be his center.

  In the sides of her vision, Ellie looked for something to fight him with. The exhibit offered nothing. She regretted not moving to the historical exhibit, where there were old weapons and armor. Not that it would’ve helped. She was a painter, too caught up in the deadly struggle to comprehend how she went from being a newlywed lost in love to the next victim of a killer she’d willingly pursued. There was no time for self-reflection, only the most basic instincts of survival. Kill or be killed.

  The hooded man clenched his knife tightly. The cloth over his face was wet at the mouth. Knees slightly bent, he moved closer to Ellie. She stepped back, her left heel hitting the bottom of a sculpture of a glossy, nine-foot man as black as night with a long slender torso, featureless face with a mouthful of mule’s teeth, and noodle arms with knuckles that touched the three-inch granite slab under its glossy noodle legs.

  Ellie tried her best to steady her breathing. She kept her eyes more on the knife than the man. She kept her hands out in front of her, ready to catch it, but not fully confident she could. In her mind, she asked one thing: when he will he strike?

  The hooded man stepped forward again. Ellie stepped back. The knife’s point launched forward. A voice inside shouted now!

  In a motion, Ellie sidestepped the deadly jab, caught the man’s hand with her own, pressed the point below his knuckle that Peaches had showed her, and then twisted. The man’s entire arm rolled as his hand bent back, his fingers lost their steady hold on the knife, and the blade clacked at their feet.