I shot Ruth a look, and hurried back to the kitchen to root out a vase for Priscilla. Ruth followed slowly, thumping her cane a bit more than usual.
I found a crystal vase that would fit the lilacs, and placed it on the table for Priscilla. She made an attempt, and then held out the bouquet to me. “Would you do it, my dear?”
I laid down my bundle of laundry, and eased the lilacs into the vase. I turned to wash my hands in the sink, but the sink was no longer there. I gave a sharp sigh and wiped my hands on my skirt. I turned back to the two sisters to see Priscilla holding the folded-up note from the murderer.
She read it before Ruth or I could snatch it away. She dropped it on the floor and clasped both hands together, almost in an attitude of prayer. “It’s Robby!” she cried. “Robby is alive again. I knew he would come back to us some day. Didn’t I tell you, Ruth?”
Ruth and I just stared at her, mystified. I picked up the paper and read it again, aloud. “Meet me in the basement if you want to see your son alive again. Come alone.” Priscilla had spent years wishing to see her nephew alive again. In her own vague way she was misinterpreting the words to mean what she hoped it could mean.
Ruth leaned on the table again. She passed a gnarled hand across her face. “Daria is going to go down and see him, Priscilla. She’ll tell us how he’s doing. Let’s go sit down in the living room and wait for her to come back.” She led the way out of the kitchen. “Come with me.”
I waited long enough to be sure that Priscilla was going with Ruth, and then I gathered up my laundry and walked toward the basement stairs. My heart was pounding, but I held my head high. As long as I didn’t make a mistake, I would be fine. I would put in my laundry, see what was going on, and get out of there. Nothing bad was going to happen to me.
My phone dinged right at the top of the stairs. I shifted the sheets to one arm and snatched my phone out of my pocket. The text from Sterling said, “Can’t find Webster. Waiting for police to come and search.”
Police. I didn’t know if Ruth was still planning to call the police. I texted Sterling, “Tell police to come to Compton Hall. Now.” But I couldn’t wait any longer. I opened the door to the basement and turned on the light.
I half expected the light to not work, but it came on with no problem. A quick glance showed nothing amiss in the basement. I clutched my sheets in one hand and the railing in the other, and made my way down the stairs. It wasn’t until I got to the bottom that I saw him.
He stood in the corner at the bottom of the stairs, out of sight of the upper doorway. At first glance I thought he was John, but he wasn’t. He was a big man, clean-shaven, with his bald head uncovered. He’d left his fedora in the van, and the hat with the earflaps lay on the floor at his feet. Now that I could see his ears for the first time, I noticed the distinctive long earlobes that distinguished the Compton family. I didn’t know how he could have shaved off his beard so quickly, since I’d just seen him talking in front of the camera in the garden. It was Jamison Royce, only it wasn’t. I’d never met him, but I knew I was looking at Robert Ellis. Robby was alive again.
Chapter Twenty-One
I tried my best to play it off. “Oh, my goodness, you scared me! I wasn’t expecting anyone to be down here.” I paused to stare at him a moment, for form’s sake. “It’s Jamison, isn’t it? You look so different without your beard. I wasn’t expecting you to shave it off so quickly.” I brushed past him on the way to the washing machine. “I just need to get this laundry into the washer.”
If I had dropped my sheets and run up the stairs, I might have been okay. But in the moment it took me to load up the washer, Robert sprang into action. He grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him. “You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, dearie. I’m expecting someone else to come down for a little chat. Now you’re going to have to wait until I’m done with my business.” He pushed me down and grabbed a sheet to wrap around me.
I screamed and kicked out at him from the floor. If he thought I was going to be an easy victim, he had another think coming! I scurried away from him and fumbled in my pocket for the mini sewing kit I’d brought along to deal with any emergencies during the filming. When I’d said “emergencies,” I was thinking split seams, not murderers in the basement. I pulled out the tape measure and flung it around his ankles and pulled tight. He fell heavily to the floor.
I scrambled to my feet and backed away from him. “Where’s John?” I scanned the basement but couldn’t see anyone else down there.
Robert laughed and pulled himself up. “Johnny’s not here. He’s off somewhere, buying sandwiches for his mommy.” Then he stopped, staring at me. “So. You saw the note. You came down looking for John. My mother sent you in her place.”
I held myself straight, heart thudding. He didn’t have any weapons that I could see. “Ruth didn’t send me. I chose to come.”
“To do laundry? Or to be a hero?”
I didn’t have an answer for that one. “Did you kill Professor Burbridge to keep his research from coming out?”
He edged toward me, cutting me off from the stairs. “I asked him nicely to reconsider, but he refused. If my mother hadn’t already chewed him out, I might have been able to persuade him. But she had to take him to task and put him on the defensive.” He bent down and picked up a hammer that was lying on the floor. Hefting it in one hand, he pounded the head into his other palm.
Now he was armed, and certainly dangerous. I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of him. With the flick of a finger I sent the picture to whoever was on my text message at the moment. “I just sent a picture of you to the police department. No matter what you do to me down here, they’ll know it was you. I caught a good image of the hammer, just so you know.”
Robert paused, clearly rattled by this statement. McCarthy would be proud of me, using photography to save my life.
McCarthy! I gasped out loud and flashed my phone a dozen times in his face. “What have you done with McCarthy?” If I kept moving in a circle, keeping him at a distance, I could work my way back to the stairs.
He blinked the light out of his eyes. “That mouthy photographer? I shut him up.”
“No!” I screamed. I almost threw my phone at him, but I knew I might need it. I shot a frantic glance behind me, looking for something, anything, to hit him with. What had he done to McCarthy? Tears streamed down my face. I didn’t even think about the very real danger to my own life. McCarthy!
Robert came slowly toward me, hammer twitching. “I picked up your nerdy friend too. He’s doing a job for me. When the job’s done, they’ll both be reunited with the late professor.”
Noah. Noah was still alive, held somewhere by Robert. Again I glanced around the basement, but there was no one there. No one but Robert Ellis, bent on shutting me up too.
I took another step backward, trying not to let him back me into a corner. I stumbled over something on the floor and almost fell. I reached down to grab it, whatever it was, so I would have something to throw at him. It was the kitty litter box.
I snatched it up and flung it full in his face. It smelled terrible. With all the renovations going on, Louise must have neglected to clean up after the cat. I blessed her for her negligence.
Robert cried out and scrabbled at his face, dropping the hammer in the process. I caught it up, but restrained myself from hitting him with it. Instead I pushed past him and ran for the stairs. He made a grab at me, but missed. I clutched my skirt in one hand and the railing in the other, and darted up those stairs faster than I’d ever run in my life. I almost knocked Ruth over at the top.
She stood there, leaning on her cane, with a couple of policemen right behind her. They had obviously just arrived. Another minute with Robert down in the basement, and I would have been rescued.
She caught my arm to keep me from crashing right into her. The cops pushed past us both and proceeded
down the stairs, weapons drawn and at the ready.
“Are you all right? I heard you scream.” She looked frightened, more vulnerable than I’d ever seen her before.
Priscilla came into the narrow hallway behind her. “Was it Robby down there, my dear?”
I took Ruth’s arm and led her out to the front porch, away from the clamor in the basement. She didn’t pull away from my hand. “Let’s sit down on the porch. You too, Miss Priscilla.”
When they were both settled and I stood before them, I said, “Yes, it was Robby. He’s not dead.” I paused while disbelief swept over one sister’s face, and pure joy over the other’s. “He was masquerading as Jamison Royce. He must have used a fake beard, so you wouldn’t recognize him.”
“I haven’t seen him in thirty years.” Ruth made no attempt to hide the quiver in her voice.
“He looks a lot like John,” I said.
At that moment, John himself came up the drive, a fast-food bag clutched in his fist. “What’s going on, Mother?”
I left them then to try to make sense of their bizarre family reunion.
I went upstairs to the bathroom, thankful to find that Carl Harper had not touched this little room. I washed the stink of kitty litter off my hands and splashed my face, removing the traces of my recent tears. I dried my hands in a daze. I didn’t know what to do, or what to feel. “McCarthy,” I whispered to my reflection.
My phone dinged.
I snatched it up, hoping against hope that it would be him. It wasn’t.
“Are you okay?” ran the text from Sterling. “What’s with the guy with the hammer?”
It must have been Sterling who had received my photo of Robert. I texted him back, “It’s all good now. Any luck?”
He responded, “Cops came but then left in a hurry. No progress.”
I sighed, and stowed my phone in my pocket. I stepped out of the bathroom, and dragged down the hall, past the library. I stopped and stood in the doorway, staring at the carpet where Professor Burbridge had lain. His research had caused all this trouble. I hoped it never, ever got published.
I caught my breath. That was Robert’s ultimate goal, to keep the professor’s research from becoming public. But the professor’s death didn’t kill the research. How could Robert ensure that Burbridge’s research would never come to light?
He would have to erase the professor’s work from any place that it was stored. Robert had said Noah was doing a job for him, and when the job was finished Noah would die. Had he set Noah the task of removing all traces of the professor’s research from his files, both physical and digital? If so, where would Noah be doing that job?
I started to run, running right out the door and down the driveway to the sidewalk. Oliphant University was only a few blocks away. I couldn’t keep up the pace the whole way, but I got there in record time. I panted up two flights of stairs in Old Main to get to the history department.
Professor Burbridge’s office was still roped off with police tape. I didn’t care. I grasped the doorknob and pulled with all my might. The door was locked.
I rattled the knob until I thought it should fall off in my hand, but it didn’t. I heard thumps and muffled sounds coming from inside. I burst into an empty classroom and ripped through the teacher’s desk, coming up with a manila envelope and a fancy bookmark as the best possibilities. The envelope was too big to fit between the door and the doorjamb, and the bookmark was too flimsy to budge the lock. Finally I folded the bookmark in two to give it greater heft, and thrust down with all my strength. The bookmark buckled, and the lock released at the same moment. I threw the bookmark on the floor and flung open the door.
Noah sat at the desk, tied to the desk chair with a necktie shoved in his mouth as a gag. I scarcely gave him a thought. In a metal chair next to him, tied and gagged in a similar fashion, sat McCarthy. He wasn’t dead! Robert had shut him up with a gag.
I flew to McCarthy and untied the necktie and pulled it out of his mouth. The tears were flowing again as I held his face in both hands, drinking in the sight of him. “I am so sorry, Sean! I never should have said I didn’t trust you. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, to have the chance to take it back.”
He worked his jaw a few times, and then said, “Hey. Hey. It’s okay. You’re here to save the day, right? I knew I could trust you to find us in the end.”
I laughed and cried and pulled at the knots holding him until they finally came loose. He rubbed his wrists and flexed his ankles while I struggled to untie Noah. When Noah was finally freed I turned back to McCarthy. He caught me in his arms and pulled me into a close embrace. I held him tight and laid my head on his shoulder. “You got here in the nick of time,” he whispered into my tousled hair. “I really have to go to the bathroom.”
I left McCarthy and Noah to sort themselves out while I called Sterling to tell him all was well. He arrived a few minutes later. I saw the relief wash over his face when he laid eyes on McCarthy. He slapped McCarthy’s shoulders, and then the two men embraced.
“Hiding out behind the police tape, were you?”
McCarthy sat down on the edge of Professor Burbridge’s desk, his leg dangling down. “Noah brought me back here to show me the professor’s research.”
Noah’s face reddened. “I know I wasn’t supposed to cross the police tape, but I didn’t want to let Burbridge’s work go to waste. I hope the police don’t charge me for trespassing or something.”
“I’ll deal with them,” McCarthy said. “So we were deep into it when the door flew open and Jamison Royce came in. He pulled a gun on us and had me tied up before I knew what was happening to me. He held the gun on Noah and told him to delete all of Professor Burbridge’s research from his computer, and anyplace else it might be online.”
He rubbed the stubble covering his normally clean-shaven chin. “I could tell that I was expendable—there was no reason for Royce to keep me alive. I just kept telling him that he needed me to keep Noah calm so he could perform his tasks, that if he killed me Noah would be so freaked out that he wouldn’t be able to delete the professor’s research.”
“That was actually true.” Noah’s face was red again. “I was freaked out by the whole thing. If it wasn’t for McCarthy, I would have been a total mess.”
“After a while Royce got tired of listening to me and shoved that horrible necktie into my mouth.”
I went to stand beside him, putting my arms around his neck. “He told me that he shut you up. I thought he’d killed you.” I hid my face in his shoulder.
McCarthy stroked my hair very gently. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He cleared his throat, and then said nothing at all.
Noah took up the tale. “I worked on it all day and into the night. It went really slow because my hands were shaking so much that I kept making mistakes. It’s hard to be efficient with a gun pointed at your head. Of course, I had no incentive to work quickly, since I knew Royce wasn’t planning on letting us go.” He sat back down in the desk chair. “I’ve pulled a lot of all-nighters in my academic career, but this was the absolute worst. Generally you’re trying to finish a project on time to get a good grade. When I finished this project, I was going to get a bullet to the head. Even worse, I was erasing the work of a man I admired and respected, work that got him killed. It was awful.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and then he shook it off. “Of course, what Royce didn’t know is that Burbridge, being the suspicious person that he was, had all his work backed up on a hard drive that he kept in a locker at the pool. He swam laps every day after work, and had a faculty locker assigned to him. I haven’t had a chance to check, but I’m pretty sure it’s still there, untouched. Even if he’d killed us, Royce wouldn’t have succeeded in killing Burbridge’s research. You can’t kill knowledge.”
Suddenly McCarthy jumped up from the desk, jerking free from my embrace. “Where’s Royce now, Daria?�
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“As far as I know, the police have him. He’s not really Jamison Royce, by the way. He’s really Robert Ellis, oldest son of Ruth and Thurman Ellis. He disappeared after high school and just reappeared. He was trying to preserve his family’s fortunes, with the goal of inheriting them, I suppose.”
I didn’t get any further. My phone rang. It was Aileen.
“I can’t believe you did it again. You’ve got a client at the door and you’re not here.”
“Who is it?” I couldn’t figure out who I’d scheduled to come during the final day of filming. Although, that day was supposed to be yesterday. “Today’s Saturday, right?”
Aileen snorted. “Get it together, Daria. It’s the bride from the other day. She says she’s come to pick up her wedding dress. You want to just tell me where it is and I’ll hand it to her?”
That was the first time Aileen had ever offered to help me out with my sewing business. It felt like a momentous occasion. “Thanks, but I need to see her. She needs to try it on one more time, and she needs to pay me.” I checked the time. I could catch the bus home in about ten minutes. “Could you ask her if she’ll wait?”
She groaned, and hung up. I’d take that as a yes.
I turned back to McCarthy. “I gotta go. Catch you later?”
He took both my hands and squeezed them tightly. “Want me to take you home?”
I returned the squeeze. “You probably have to talk to the police. You’re a missing person, remember? Call me when it’s all over.”
I hurried out the door in time to catch the bus home.
Fiona was waiting in my fitting room when I got home. I was thankful that she was alone. I summoned up as much cheeriness as I could. “I’m sorry I’m always late when you get here. But your gown’s all done and your wedding’s not till next Saturday, so it’s all good.”
She smiled and held out both hands to receive the gown I handed her.
“Go put it on, and I’ll button you up the back.”
Historically Dead Page 25