“I don’t think so. It wouldn’t be much of a secret hiding place if you had to leave a stack of shelves on the floor outside.” Hesitantly, knowing she was likely to come in contact with spider webs or mouse droppings, Liss raised her arm and felt with her fingertips along the back of the top shelf. Nothing happened.
Sherri examined the narrow strip of wall between door and shelves. “No levers. No indentations. No button marked PUSH ME TO GET IN.”
“Oh, for a wall sconce on the wall outside the door. Something with a candle in it.” Liss couldn’t help smiling as she recalled the classic scene from Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein.
“ ‘Put the candle back,’ ” Sherri quoted, sharing the memory. “Oh! Wait. I’ve got an idea. I saw this on a TV show.”
Easing Liss aside, she stepped up close to the shelves and, one by one, lifted each by gripping the front and raising it slightly. She worked from top to bottom. The lowest shelf was the key. As soon as she pulled up on it, the entire back wall started to swivel.
It stopped when she let go.
“All right, Sherri!” Liss stooped to take hold of the edge of the shelf. When she lifted it high enough, a distinct click sounded, loud as a pistol shot.
The entire back wall of the closet swung toward them, forcing Liss and Sherri to step smartly out of the way. It stopped moving on its own. At a right angle to its former position, was an opening on the back side of the shelving wide enough for a slender person to slip through.
“This is almost as good as the fireplace in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” Sherri marveled.
“I was thinking Nancy Drew and The Hidden Staircase ,” Liss replied, but neither of them moved any closer to the opening. The room beyond was shrouded in darkness.
“Are we going in?” Sherri asked.
“Sure. Of course. This is what we came for, right?”
Liss switched on the flashlight she’d brought with her and stepped through the opening. Sherri followed with her Maglite, but Liss felt a tremendous surge of relief when she found a light switch, flicked it, and was rewarded with additional illumination from an overhead fixture.
The hidden chamber was smaller than the other second floor bedrooms. It was furnished with a twin bed, a nightstand with a lamp, and a dresser with a mirror. A rag rug covered the wooden floor beside the bed. A brand new electric space heater was plugged into a wall outlet.
“Why did I assume the room would be empty?” Liss asked of no one in particular.
“Maybe because Gordon implied that they didn’t find anything in here except Ned’s duffle bag?” Sherri headed for the dresser and started going through the drawers.
“And why am I not surprised that he wanted us to jump to that conclusion?”
“The state boys hate to share information with anyone, even other police departments.” The drawers were all empty, but to be thorough, Sherri took each one out, flipped it over, then felt in the empty space in case anything had been hidden there.
Liss opened a door and discovered a closet. Two wire coat hangers dangled from the clothes rod. She wondered if Ned had hung her lightweight fall jacket on one of them, and if the police had it now. Except for that, all the other missing items were accounted for.
She searched the nightstand with as much care as Sherri had used on the dresser and with as little to show for it.
Sherri checked under the bed. “Nothing but dust bunnies,” she reported.
Liss crossed to the small room’s one window. Heavy fabric had been nailed in front of it.
“A makeshift blackout curtain,” Sherri observed.
“Well, at least that gives us one answer. This is why Ned borrowed Dan’s hammer and my three-step stepladder—so he could block off the window. He wanted to be able to turn on the overhead light in this room without having to worry about it being seen from outside.”
“That doesn’t explain what he wanted with the other stuff that went missing.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Liss sat down on the bed and surveyed the room from that angle, but nothing new popped out at her. “Ned must have been responsible for the thump I heard the day Jason Graye gave me such a scare. He was living here even then. But he can’t have been trying to frighten me away.”
“If he had been,” Sherri agreed, “he’d have done a better job of it.”
“It makes more sense to assume that he meant to stay hidden until after Halloween. Once we were out of his hair, he’d have the place to himself.”
“But why was he hiding out?” Sherri asked.
“That’s the question, isn’t it? And I have no idea what the answer is.” Convinced that there was nothing left to see in the hidden room, Liss rose from her perch on the bed. “Ready to go?”
Sherri turned off the lights, Liss closed the hidden door behind them, and they stepped back into the upstairs hall.
“Anything else you want to see before we leave?” Sherri asked.
Liss shook her head. “I’ve spent enough time in this haunted house to last me a lifetime. Today’s visit was a waste of time. The state police took everything that might have been of interest.” She started down the stairs, once again averting her eyes as she passed the door to the parlor.
“If no one knows what Ned was doing here, how would they know what’s important and what isn’t?” Sherri frowned. “Did what I just said make any sense at all?”
“It made as much sense as anything about this situation. Ned must have come to this house for a reason. Even though he hid from his family, he didn’t try to keep his presence here a complete secret. He gave this address to his probation officer.”
“It looks to me as if he didn’t want anyone in town to know he was here,” Sherri said as they entered the kitchen once more, “but he didn’t care otherwise. That’s very peculiar, and not just because the Ned I remember would have gone straight home to mama so he could mooch off her.”
“That part troubles me, too. Even though Ned refused to see any visitors while he was locked up, he knew Margaret still loved him and that she’d welcome him home. She was horrified by what he’d done, but she helped pay for his lawyer. And I know she wrote to him all the while he was in prison, even though he refused to let her visit. Since the letters didn’t come back, he must have received them.”
“What about you?” Sherri asked. “Would you have welcomed him home with open arms?”
“I’m a lot less forgiving than my aunt. Aside from the reason he was in jail in the first place, and a few other things he did that I did not share with the police, I saw how badly his actions hurt Margaret. It took her the best part of a year to come to terms with what happened and begin to rebuild her life. It wasn’t until after she went to work at The Spruces that she really got over the shock of what Ned did. Now his murder has shattered her peace of mind all over again.”
Liss had her hand on the light switch, ready to plunge the kitchen into semidarkness, lock up, and go home when she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that the cellar door was slightly ajar. She froze.
“What?” Instantly, Sherri went on alert.
For a moment, Liss wished her friend was in uniform . . . and armed. “It’s probably nothing, but shouldn’t the door to the basement be closed and locked?”
Sherri stared at it. “No one’s supposed to have been inside this house since the state police left.”
“Maybe they were the ones who left the door open.” Liss did not want to investigate.
“And maybe someone has opened the tunnel entrance again.”
“What if they’re down there right this minute?”
With a resigned sigh, Sherri took the lead, Maglite at the ready. “Trained police officer,” she snapped when Liss started to object.
“Fine! You go first.” Liss flipped the stairwell light switch. One low-wattage bulb illuminated the way down. Below, she remembered, more bare bulbs hung at intervals throughout the cellar, but the corners were in deep shadow.
Cautiously, the
two women descended the steep wooden steps, Liss following close on Sherri’s heels. The air temperature dropped as they went down, making Liss shiver, but spooked or not, she wasn’t about to let her friend face danger alone.
Liss shone her flashlight beam over the furnace and oil tank, searching for the remains of the old coal bin. Even from the foot of the stairwell she could see that the boards Dan had nailed across the door to the tunnel were still in place. At once, she breathed a little easier. “False alarm.”
“Maybe not.” Sherri had her Maglite trained on the dirt floor. “Someone has been digging holes down here.”
The police took over the Chadwick mansion. Again. This time, the local PD had jurisdiction.
“There’s no need to call in the state boys,” Sherri informed Liss when she stopped by Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium at mid-afternoon the next day. “We can handle a vandalism case on our own.”
“Find any clues?” The clipboard Liss carried held a printout listing every item in her inventory. She put a check mark next to “pewter piper figurine, 2” and set the clipboard down on the shelf so she could give Sherri her full attention.
“There was a broken window in the room with all the stuffed birds. That’s how they got in.”
“What were they digging for?”
Sherri laughed. “Buried loot, I suppose. What else? Everyone in town has heard those old rumors.”
“You don’t believe it exists?”
“I might, if all the stories were the same. But no one agrees on just what Blackie O’Hare is supposed to have hidden. In some versions it’s bank loot. In others it’s gold. Or jewels. Or uncut gems. Or rare stamps.” Her grin widened. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I’ve always preferred the cache of cash. It has such a nice ring to it. So, you’re telling me that you’re not going to search the rest of the cellar?”
“You mean dig the whole thing up? Not a chance. That dirt is packed solid as a rock. You have to admire the industry of whoever took a crack at it, even if he didn’t show much common sense.”
“If you excavated and found nothing, it would put an end to the treasure hunting.”
Sherri was shaking her head. “There would always be some damn fool who was sure we missed the mother lode by inches. No, the best thing we can do is put the boards back over the windows in the conservatory, make sure all the doors stay locked, and keep that tunnel entrance blocked off. Selling the place would be even better. Then it wouldn’t be the town’s responsibility any longer.”
“I’m surprised the selectmen don’t just accept Jason Graye’s offer and be done with it.”
Sherri glanced around to make sure no one else was in the shop. “You know my mother-in-law is still on the board of selectmen, right?”
Liss nodded. Thea Campbell had served in that capacity for years.
“Let’s just say she really doesn’t want to do Jason Graye any favors, even if it means cutting off her nose to spite her face.”
“Don’t you just love small town feuds?” Liss murmured. “So who do you think broke into the Chadwick mansion?”
Sherri’s hesitation spoke volumes. So did the way she avoided meeting Liss’s eyes. “Kids. Probably.”
Liss’s fingers tightened on the pencil she still held. “Any particular kid?”
“Look, Liss, I know you like the boy, but Boxer Snipes comes from a long line of troublemakers. You remember the Snipes boys we went to school with. Rodney and Norman were bad enough, but those teenaged cousins of Boxer’s are even worse. They’re almost certainly the culprits who were using the mansion as a place to drink and smoke.”
“But you can’t tar Boxer with the same brush. And may I just point out that the kids who were partying out there before we started planning for Halloween were not looking for Blackie O’Hare’s loot.”
“That’s probably because they hadn’t heard about it yet. They aren’t the brightest bulbs.”
“Wait a minute. I thought those cousins were currently enjoying the hospitality of the state at the youth center.”
“They are,” Sherri admitted, “but that still leaves us with Boxer.”
“Do you have any proof he’s involved?”
“You put two and two together and you get four. There are all sorts of small, portable antiques in the Chadwick house. It’s hard to tell if anything’s gone missing, but Boxer’s mother just bought herself a new supersize flat screen HD TV.” Sherri rolled her eyes. “That raises questions about her common sense as well as her honesty. Hilary and Boxer live in a beat up old trailer out on the Owl Road. She drives a rust bucket that’s older than she is. If I were in her shoes and came into some extra cash, I could find much better uses for the money.”
Liss seized her clipboard and started counting ceramic Loch Ness monsters. She didn’t like what she was thinking, but a new TV was the kind of thing a twelve year old might buy as a present for his mother, if he suddenly came into some money. Blackie’s loot? Or cash from fencing stolen goods? She didn’t care for either possibility.
Aloud she said only, “I won’t condemn someone simply because he has some bad apples on his family tree. If you’re going to use that logic, then I should be a suspect, too. After all, Ned was my cousin.”
“Now, Liss, you know that’s not what—”
“Yes, it is.”
“Why are you so sure he’s innocent?” Sherri kept her expression bland, but Liss heard the annoyance in her friend’s voice.
She answered without thinking. “Because I like the kid. Beth likes him, too,” she added, and knew she sounded way too defensive.
“And we all know what good judges of character eleven-year-old girls with crushes are!”
Liss grimaced. “I know. The bad boy is always more appealing. But I don’t think she’d hang out with him if she suspected he was doing something illegal. Angie brought her up right.”
Sherri’s snort told Liss what she thought of that.
Liss glared at her. She hesitated, then asked, “Has he been in trouble with the law in the past?”
“Not as far as I know,” Sherri admitted. “Juvenile records are more tightly guarded than those of adults. I haven’t been able to find out for sure. Kids even have their own probation officers, separate from adult caseworkers. Layers upon layers of protection, whether they deserve it or not.”
“Why don’t you just ask Boxer?”
“I can’t do that, either. Not officially. Because, again, he’s a juvenile.” Sherri’s exasperation was showing, warning Liss to tread carefully. “I’d need more than speculation to interrogate a kid and you’re right. I have no proof—only theories based on the fact that in a small town people talk about their neighbors.”
After Sherri left, Liss continued taking inventory, but her heart wasn’t in it. What if she had been wrong about young Boxer? Worse, what if he’d involved Beth in criminal activity? Or Samantha?
Liss remembered what she had been like at their age. She’d been enough of a daredevil that the idea of sneaking into a deserted mansion to hunt for treasure would have appealed to her. She might even have been tempted to appropriate a knickknack or two that had seemingly been abandoned, especially if there had been peer pressure involved.
She paused, her fingers clenched hard on the edge of her clipboard. Her gaze was fixed on what was visible of the town square through the display window, but she saw nothing of what was there. If Sherri’s suspicions were correct, then she, Liss, was responsible. She was the one who’d brought those three young people together. Even though Beth and Samantha had already known Boxer from school, she had made it possible for those two innocent young girls to spend a great deal of time in his company, much of it unsupervised. She’d often seen the three of them with their heads together. She’d assumed they were debating new ideas for the Halloween committee. But what if they’d been plotting something less innocuous? What if those two little girls had been lured into committing a crime because they’d been eager to im
press Boxer Snipes?
Liss blinked and came back to reality. She was jumping to conclusions. It was too early to shoulder blame. How could she feel guilty when she didn’t even know if anything untoward had happened? She needed to find out more—much more—before she condemned anyone, even herself.
Sam and June Ruskin weren’t any happier than Angie had been at the revelation that their daughter had been fraternizing with a member of the Snipes family.
“Really, Liss, what were you thinking?” Lips pursed in disapproval, June nervously twined one long lock of honey-blond hair through her fingers.
Next to her on the couch, Sam looked uncomfortable. Dan stood, propping up a wall with one shoulder and watching his brother, sister-in-law, and wife through narrowed eyes.
“Honestly? I was thinking I’d give the kid a chance. That’s what I’m still trying to do. Do you actually know anything about the boy, good or bad? All I’ve heard so far are stories about his cousins, his uncles, and his mother.”
“Don’t forget his Great Grandpa Harry, the bootlegger,” Sam said.
They all turned to stare at him.
Sam shrugged. “Cracker Snipes used to brag about old Harry when he’d had a few beers.”
“Any connection to Blackie O’Hare?” Liss asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“Good. Now, the reason I came to you at all, and will speak with Angie next, is because I want to give Boxer a chance to refute this suspicion and I think it would help to have Beth and Samantha there when I talk to him about it.”
“What?” The volume of June’s shriek made Liss wince.
“Why?” Sam demanded. “My daughter has nothing to do with digging up the cellar at the old Chadwick place.”
“But she may know something about it.” Liss managed to keep her own voice level, but it was not easy. “Assuming there’s anything to know.”
Sam pounced. “So you do think Boxer is guilty.”
“I think he may be a legitimate suspect for some of the pranks played before Halloween and for the digging after. But so is just about any other Moosetookalook kid with a bike and enough endurance to pedal out to the mansion. Beth and Samantha are bright girls. At the very least, they may have heard rumors that haven’t made it to the adult grapevine.”
Vampires, Bones and Treacle Scones Page 12