by Bell, Cindy
“Do I?” Aunt Ida asked in a testy tone of voice. “If everyone believes he's guilty, and I'm the only one who thinks he is innocent, then how do I know that?”
Vicky hugged her aunt and nodded. She looked directly into her eyes. “Then we'll make sure he has all the information that he needs to discover the truth. Okay?”
“You must think I'm very silly,” Aunt Ida fretted as she glanced away from Vicky.
“I don't,” Vicky insisted, but her aunt was not convinced.
“I know that I've just met him, and I should trust Mitchell's judgement, but this man, there's just so much honesty in him. He even told me about his late wife. I just don't think he has the heart of a cold blooded killer, and for an innocent man to spend the rest of his life in jail is a horrible thought.”
“I understand,” Vicky murmured as Ida's words settled in. She hadn't really looked at things from Nicholas' perspective. If he really was innocent, then he had to be terrified. “Let's go take a look at the crime scene,” Vicky said as she stood up and headed for the door. Ida followed after her. The pair walked quietly through the lobby. Vicky was hoping to avoid the security guard and the police officers that Mitchell had asked to stay the night. She pushed the button and hoped the elevator would move quickly. As soon as the doors opened she guided Ida inside and pushed the button for the third floor. When Vicky noticed Aunt Ida's determined stare in the reflection of the metal doors she frowned.
“Aunt Ida, I don't want you to get your hopes up,” Vicky warned. “The police did a thorough search, there may be nothing new to find.”
“We'll find something,” Aunt Ida said with confidence. “It's just a matter of looking in the right places.”
Vicky gritted her teeth and nodded. When the elevator doors slid open she checked the hall to make sure no one was there. Then she and Ida made their way into Charleston's room. Once they had slipped in Vicky flipped on her flashlight. She didn't want to turn on the light in the room as it might draw too much attention.
“Look at this mess,” Aunt Ida fussed as there was fingerprint dust all over the room.
Vicky decided to search the room. She started at one corner and made her way across the back wall, looking closely for any small trace of evidence. When she reached the windowsill, she remembered what Mitchell had said about the possibility that the murderer had gone out the window.
Vicky studied the windowsill. The windowsill wasn't splintered or damaged in any way. It seemed very odd to her to think that someone might have climbed out of the window without leaving behind even the slightest scuff mark and where would they have gone, the room was three floors up. But that had to be the case, didn't it? When she had opened the door to the room, she was forced to shove Charleston's body in order to do so. So how could anyone have walked out of the room without disturbing the body laying in front of the door?
“It just doesn't make any sense,” Vicky pointed out. As she swept her gaze over the scene for what felt like the thousandth time, she was beginning to feel like Mitchell. “There is no way that someone could kill Charleston and then climb over him to get out the door,” Vicky was completely puzzled.
“Maybe he was still alive,” Aunt Ida suggested thoughtfully. “Maybe he crawled to the door after the murderer left.”
Vicky considered this for a moment as she looked at the pattern of the bloodstains on the floor.
“But there's no trail leading to the door,” she pointed out. “Everything is pooled right around and under the door,” Vicky walked towards the door, inspecting the carpet as she did. She tried to imagine what had happened inside the room. Had he known his assailant? The door hadn't been forced open, so he must have opened the door for the person to enter. It was impossible to tell for sure since there was very little physical evidence. The room was not tossed, there was nothing missing, and it was clear that the main target was Charleston himself.
“This is so frustrating,” Aunt Ida growled as she looked around the room. “There must be something here! Maybe we are missing something because this room is so big.”
“That’s it!” Vicky gasped as a childhood memory returned.
“What?” Aunt Ida questioned with confusion.
But Vicky didn’t reply, she just started searching the wall.
“What are you doing?” Aunt Ida asked again with a quizzical look. But, before Vicky could answer she noticed a piece of moulding at the base of the wall missing. She pushed at the section and the wall dipped inward. Aunt Ida and Vicky stared in shock.
“Aunt Ida, do you see what I'm seeing?” Vicky asked as she shone her flashlight into the dark space beyond the hidden door.
“I think so,” Aunt Ida tilted her head to the side. “But I don't know what we're looking at exactly.”
“I think it used to be the passageway that led form the storeroom to the old laundry,” Vicky gasped and poked her head inside. She had a faint memory of running along a corridor with Sarah when they were kids. It led from an old storeroom upstairs to the old laundry room downstairs. It was designed to be a quick way to get the heavy laundry from the upstairs rooms to the laundry room but when her parents did a small renovation and installed lifts they closed off the passageway and made the storeroom join the adjacent room to make a big guest room. They also moved the laundry room indoors.
“I thought it was completely closed off years ago!” Aunt Ida exclaimed.
As Vicky looked closer, she played the flashlight beam along the floor. She noticed right away a pattern of shoeprints in the thick layer of dust.
“Someone has been here,” she said breathlessly. Her heart began to race as she suddenly realized that the person who had left those shoeprints behind, had probably been Charleston's murderer.
“We should follow them,” Aunt Ida stated.
Vicky hesitated for a moment before entering the tunnel. She knew that she should tell Mitchell about what they had found. He would want to investigate it, and have the techs check for any evidence left behind. But it was so tempting to head down the passageway. If they didn't look now, then whoever the murderer was might decide to clean up his or her tracks, and in that case all the evidence would be lost.
“Wait, let me take a few pictures,” Vicky said quickly and pulled out her phone. She snapped photographs of the shoeprints, and the surrounding walls. The passageway wasn’t very wide, it was just big enough for a long, narrow, trolley. She and Ida would have to walk single file. There was nothing she could see on the walls themselves, but Vicky knew that crime scene techs could find things that were invisible to the naked eye.
Vicky stepped in first. She did her best not to disturb the shoeprints that were in the dust, but she knew she was creating new ones of her own. Then Aunt Ida followed after her. Vicky held her flashlight out in front of her and shone it down the passageway.
“I can't believe you can still access this,” she muttered as she shook her head. “Stay close to me, I have no idea how strong these floors are or how many spiders...” she realized her mistakes the moment she said the word.
“Spiders?” Aunt Ida gasped and Vicky glanced over her shoulder sharply.
“Shh,” she warned her aunt, as she knew that Aunt Ida could begin shrieking very loudly when spiders were involved. “I'm sure if there were any, they were scared off by whoever walked through here,” as she turned back around she cringed, hoping that her words would turn out to be true. In the beam of light that the flashlight cast she noticed that the shoeprints seemed to be even and large. She assumed that they would have come from a man. But who? She wasn't certain of that. At least they didn't have heel marks, indicating that the criminal they were seeking was not likely Amanda. The passageway abruptly curved and sloped downwards.
“Where does this come out?” Aunt Ida asked.
“I don’t know, I thought they closed this off. The outside laundry room no longer exists,” Vicky whispered back. She had tried to keep her bearings as to where they would be in the inn, but she had lost
track when the corridor began to slope. She shone her flashlight ahead of her and saw that the passageway came to an abrupt end. All that was in front of her were stones, maybe they only blocked off this end.
“We should go back,” Vicky suddenly said, her breath catching in her throat. But as she started to turn back, she caught a flash along the corridor wall. Someone carrying a flashlight was coming. “Aunt Ida,” she gasped out as quietly as she could. “Come close to me,” she said quickly and flicked off her flashlight.
Aunt Ida huddled close to Vicky and the two women held their breath as they heard footsteps slowly approaching. Vicky leaned her shoulder against the side wall as the passageway was still very narrow. She felt her shoulder strike something protruding from the wall. Suddenly she was falling through the wall, and pulling Aunt Ida down with her. She landed hard on the floor, and Aunt Ida landed rather softly right on top of her. Vicky helped her aunt up to her feet and fearfully looked in the direction of the tunnel. The hidden door that had swung open when she depressed the lever for it, had swung back closed.
“Where are we?” Aunt Ida asked with some confusion as she looked around the small room. It was familiar, but not one of the guest rooms at the inn. Then Vicky noticed the framed painting hanging on the wall. It was of a vase of carnations that Vicky knew Emily had painted.
Vicky cupped her hand over her mouth to keep from gasping out loud. When she composed herself she whispered to her aunt. “We're in Emily's room.”
“Emily?” Aunt Ida said with surprise. Just then they heard footsteps from the wall. Whoever had been following them had reached the end of the corridor. Vicky waved frantically towards the closet. She and Ida crept as silently as they could into the closet and closed themselves inside. They both waited to see who would come through the opening in the wall. But no one did. Minutes passed by, and nothing happened.
“Maybe the person didn't know the door was there?” Vicky whispered to her aunt.
“But how could he not know, if he's the killer?” Aunt Ida pointed out with mounting frustration. Vicky was just about to open the closet door when the door to Emily's room swung open. Emily walked inside and sat down on the foot of her bed. She looked morose as she stared hard at the floor. She reached up and released her blonde curls. As her hair tumbled around her shoulders, Vicky peered through the slats of the closet.
“There you are,” a voice said from the doorway with annoyance. “I've been looking everywhere for you.”
“What do you want, Henry?” Emily asked brusquely. She didn't usually talk to anyone that way.
“I just wanted to see if you were okay,” Henry explained in a hurt tone. “I heard you two arguing...”
“You didn't hear anything,” Emily snapped and glared at Henry.
“But I did...” Henry began to say again.
“You didn't,” Emily shot back. “We were just role-playing.”
“Role-playing?” Henry replied with a shake of his head. “I don't think so. I heard you crying. Then when I came over, you were gone. Look Emily, I'm not trying to get into your business, but you should know that you don't have to put up with that kind of treatment.”
All of the fire and fury seemed to drain right out of Emily and she began to quietly cry. Vicky had to fight the urge to go to her and comfort her, as she knew that there was no way they could explain hiding in her closet.
Henry sat down beside her and patted her back gently. “It's okay hon, let it all out.”
Emily gulped and shook her head. “It's nothing. I just expected too much, that's all.”
“Shh,” Henry soothed her. “Why don't we go hit up the freezer for some of that gourmet ice cream?”
“But won't Vicky or Sarah be mad?” Emily asked nervously.
“What they don't know won't hurt them,” Henry said conspiratorially. Vicky narrowed her green eyes sharply and bit into her bottom lip to keep from correcting that statement. Instead she felt Aunt Ida squeeze her hand firmly. As Henry and Emily left the room, Vicky let out a sigh of relief. She opened up the closet door so that she and Aunt Ida could have some breathing room. As they stepped out of the closet, Vicky stepped down on something hard. She glanced down to see a pillowcase, wrapped up several times into a small bundle that had been shoved into the bottom of the closet.
“What's this?” she murmured as she crouched down to peer at it.
“Just looks like some dirty laundry,” Aunt Ida shrugged as she glanced nervously around the room. “We should get out of here before they, or the guy from the corridor comes back.”
Vicky nodded, but she was distracted by the pillowcase. “There was something hard inside it when I stepped down,” Vicky said quietly. She reached out and picked up the pillowcase. When she unwound it, she revealed a corkscrew with a long wooden handle.
“Aunt Ida?” she breathed as she turned around to show her the corkscrew. She was careful not to touch anything but the pillowcase.
“Do you think that's it?” Aunt Ida looked at the corkscrew with horror. Vicky immediately began wrapping the corkscrew back up. She tucked it back into the closet where she found it.
“We have to let Mitchell know about this,” she said quickly. “All of this.”
“But first we need to get out of here,” Ida said quickly. “We don't want to be next on the list.” Vicky dialled Mitchell as they left Emily's room. When he answered, she hesitated.
“Vicky?” Mitchell pressed, waiting to hear why she had called.
“Mitchell, Aunt Ida and I found a hidden passage,” Vicky said haltingly.
“A what?” Mitchell asked, both surprise and alarm changing his tone.
“I thought my parents had it closed off years ago. It leads from the room where Charleston was killed, to the staff quarters,” she explained, though she was still hesitant. She really liked Emily. She couldn't see her as a killer. Not only that but the shoeprints in the passageway had been very large. She was certain they were not Emily's.
“Vicky, I have to tell you something, I've been calling for ten minutes,” he added with annoyance. Vicky had turned her phone to silent. It was a good thing she had, considering that they had just stepped out of the closet they were hiding in. She was so busy listening to Mitchell, that she didn't notice the person walking up to them, until she heard Aunt Ida gasp.
“Uh,” Vicky stared at Nicholas, who was standing right in front of both of them. “Is it that you released Nicholas Brendan?” Vicky whispered into the phone.
“We had to,” Mitchell replied with a sigh. “He had a very expensive lawyer, and we didn't have any DNA evidence to hold him on. The corkscrew in his room came back clear, but it could have been wiped clean.”
Vicky was holding tightly to her cell phone. Did that mean that it had been Nicholas that followed them down the passageway? But why would he need to sneak into Emily's room? All of a sudden, it all made sense.
“You did this, didn't you?” she asked as she widened her eyes.
“Vicky, who are you talking to?” Mitchell asked.
“Vicky, don't say that,” Aunt Ida insisted.
Nicholas only blinked. “I'm sorry if I startled you. I was looking for the two of you. The security guard said that you were in Charleston's room. But when I went there, you weren't there,” he explained.
“You would know where we were,” Vicky said calmly. “Because, you followed us down the same hidden passageway that you used to plant this evidence in Emily's room.”
“What evidence?” Mitchell asked on the phone. “Vicky, I'm coming over there right now.”
Vicky hung up the phone and continued to glower at Nicholas. He looked as if he was going to attempt to defend himself, but instead he sighed with defeat.
“All right, it's true,” he shook his head.
“What's true?” Aunt Ida asked with apprehension.
“I did follow the two of you down the passageway,” he admitted and ran his fingertips along his forehead, and back over the area that was receding.
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“Oh no Nicholas, it can't be true,” Ida gasped out as she looked at him.
“It is true,” he said grimly. “I did follow the two of you. The door was partially open, and when I looked inside I saw a flashlight beam. I was worried that somehow you'd been hurt. So I followed you.”
Aunt Ida smiled with relief. “So you didn't know the passageway was there before hand?”
“Of course not,” Nicholas insisted with frustration. “I didn't do this. I didn't hurt Charleston, and I didn't plant any evidence,” he added as he looked over at Vicky. “In fact, I don't even know where you two went. When I reached the end of the passageway there was no way out. How did you get out of there?”
Aunt Ida was about to tell him when Vicky laid her hand lightly on her aunt's shoulder.
“Don't,” she warned her. “We need to find out who did know about the passage, it's better if Nicholas knows nothing about it at all.”
“Why do you say that?” Nicholas asked quizzically as he studied her. “Don't you think I'm guilty?”
“No,” Vicky suddenly said and shook her head. “No, I don't Nicholas. I don't think you had anything to do with this. I'm sorry if I made you feel that I did.”
Nicholas studied her, as if he was trying to figure out whether to believe her or not.
“It's okay, Nicholas,” Aunt Ida reassured him. “If Vicky believes your innocent that means she'll do everything in her power to prove it.”
“Yes, I will,” Vicky agreed.
“You will?” Mitchell questioned as he jogged up to the small gathering. “What's going on here?” he demanded as he looked between Aunt Ida, Nicholas, and Vicky.
“How did you get here so fast?” Vicky asked as she looked from him to the parking lot. Mitchell shifted awkwardly and then lowered his voice.
“Once we released Nicholas, I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he murmured. “So I might have been camping out in the parking lot.”
“Might have been?” Vicky arched an eyebrow.
Mitchell drew his lips into a thin line of warning. She knew that he had a job to do, and he needed to focus on it.