Think, woman, think.
Katy squatted next to the bed and spread the photocopied letters in front of her. She stared at them, as if willing them to speak to her.
“I don’t think the Internet and the phones going down was a coincidence,” I said, “or that it had anything to do with the storm.”
“We’ll find out pretty quickly when we head back to town,” said Katy.
I nodded. “I think it’s time to talk to that cop. He knows something. He was warning us to stay away.”
“No one’s talked about murder yet though,” said Katy, “except for Nancy.”
“Barry’s a world-class jerk, but I can’t see him murdering anyone in a cold and calculated way.”
“If you ask me, I don’t think he’s fully there,” said Katy, tapping her head.
“There were no stab wounds, choke marks, or bullet holes on Mrs. Robinson. She looked like she had a stroke or a heart attack. The doctor should tell us soon enough.”
I kept pacing, my eyes on the floor, my brain revving like a beat-up car, working hard but going nowhere.
“They’ll suspect us, you know?” I said, giving my friend a sober look.
“Why?” said Katy.
“We’re the only ones to gain here,” I replied. “Maybe Mrs. Robinson’s death had something to do with Madame Bouchard’s will. Maybe not. But we can’t deny that we got here just in time to see her die and we inherit the house. There’ll be lots of questions.”
“But we inherit the house from Madame Bouchard, not Mrs. Robinson.”
I nodded. There were many threads that still needed to be unraveled, and I hated the thought of being kicked out before we figured them all out.
“We need to get through to Peace. He’ll clear this codicil for us.”
“What I want to know is why did Mrs. Robinson go to the trouble of copying the letters?” said Katy, picking up one photocopy. “Where are the real ones? I can’t help but feel they contain the answers to her death.”
I turned to my friend.
“You’re right, Katy. We need to find the originals.”
“How do we do that?” she said glumly “If you haven’t noticed, we’re being kicked out.”
“We need to think of something fast.”
“Would they seriously chase us out like this in the middle of the night?” Katy asked.
“They’d want us gone by the morning for sure,” I said, turning back to my friend. “Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“We slash our spare tire.”
“That sounds dangerous,” said Katy.
“Desperate times...” I said, trying to get my foggy brain to work. “We could also pretend you’re sick. Too sick to move. A bad cramp or something. Can you handle that?”
“There’s a doctor in the house, remember?” said Katy. “I can pretend all right, but if he’s any good, he might see right through me.”
“You’ve done it before.”
“True, but—”
“Or, one of us could disappear.”
Katy frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We could pretend one of us walked into the woods and got lost. But in reality they’re here, in this room. Unless someone comes barging in, no one will know.”
“Are you planning to lock me inside again?” said Katy.
“It’s for a good cause.”
“I hate this room. It’s lifeless. Full of dead stuff.”
With a sigh, I turned to the window to look for Tetyana, but she was no longer on the driveway. I leaned out to scan the grounds.
Where did she go?
Other than a few branches that had been moved to the side, she’d hardly cleared the driveway.
“Asha?”
Katy’s voice was guarded.
I whirled around.
“What?”
She was on her knees, half inside the small closet, staring at her open suitcase. Her clothes, makeup and undies were jumbled together in a disheveled mess, like they always were.
“Someone’s been through my stuff,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I said, walking over. Katy wasn’t the neatest person on the planet. “How do you know?”
“I know, okay? There’s a method to my mess. I’d know if someone went through my bag, and someone has.”
Katy fished out her wallet from the jumble and opened it. She pulled out the picture of her and Chantelle and pushed it into a different slot. Then she checked her money.
“Everything’s mixed up, but they didn’t take anything, thank goodness,” she said, with a relieved sigh. She turned to me. “Do you think it’s that creepy pastor?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” I said.
My own clothes were neatly tucked inside my closed suitcase. I bent down and flipped the cover open.
Katy gasped.
“Oh, no.”
Someone had rifled through all my stuff and then thrown it all back in a heap.
I kneeled on the floor and rummaged through my clothes to see what was missing. My purse was still there, but there was something more important I was looking for.
There.
I grabbed the small pill bottle and clutched it against my chest.
“Your sleeping pills?” said Katy, making a face.
I nodded mutely. They were a lifesaver. It was the only way sleep came to me—the kind of sleep without nightmares.
“What about your wallet?” said Katy. “Check that.”
I plucked it out and opened it. My money was still there, but my credit cards and driver’s license had been pulled out and pushed back in halfway, like whoever did this had been in a hurry.
“All there?” asked Katy.
“Everything is here, but they were checking my ID.”
“Same here,” said Katy. “They pulled out my cards too. Nothing’s in the right place anymore.”
I leaned over to Tetyana’s backpack and flipped the cover. Her neatness level was several echelons higher than both of ours, but now her things looked in as awful shape as Katy’s.
I sat back to think.
“If it was the pastor, he didn’t do this to just check out our lingerie. Whoever came in here wanted to find out who we are.”
Katy turned and gave me a defiant look.
“The more they want to scare us away, the more I want to stay.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
We sat on the floor, staring at our bags.
I’d been so busy giving CPR to Mrs. Robinson I hadn’t noticed who had come to her room or when.
“Katy,” I said, turning to her. “How did you know Mrs. Robinson was dying downstairs?”
“Someone banged on our door. I thought you were in trouble. I know you said not to open, but I did. Then I heard everyone race down the main stairs, thundering like a herd of cattle. I just followed them. I thought the house was on fire, to be honest.”
“Everyone raced down? No one was missing?”
Katy wrinkled her nose.
“Things were going berserk around me and I was more worried about you two... Sorry, I don’t remember.”
“Whoever banged on the door wanted you out so they could come in.”
Katy stared at me.
“We’re the only ones on this wing,” I said. “Wouldn’t you expect everyone to run down from the west wing as soon as they heard the news, not come all the way and knock on this door?” I paused. “Did you see who it was?”
“No one was in the corridor when I came out—”
The room lights flickered, making Katy stop in mid-sentence.
We looked up to see the ceiling light flicker intermittently, like it was about to go out.
“Didn’t Jim say they have an electric generator for this place?” I said.
“If you ask me,” said Katy, “this house is haunted. Look, even the Mickey Mouse clock has stopped working.”
I stared at the clock, an idea slowly forming in the back of my mind. I jumped up and walked over to the d
oor.
“Come on!”
“Where are you off to?” called out Katy.
“I know how to stop them from booting us.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“So what’s your plan?” Katy whispered as she slipped our bedroom key in her pocket.
“The starter relay,” I said. “David showed me how to remove it. We disabled one of the goon’s cars back in Nairobi, once. It’s easy, fast, and we don’t even have to open the bonnet. No one will guess what we’re doing.”
“Why do I feel like the rental company is going to be very unhappy when we return the car?”
After a quick glance around, we slipped through the corridor toward the back stairwell. The fire exit was the fastest way down, and I didn’t want to bump into any of the family members on the main stairway.
“Hard to believe Madame Bouchard owned this house,” I whispered. “Lived in luxury apartments all around the world but ignored her own childhood home.”
“I’m sure this place was impressive at one point,” whispered Katy, eyeing the faded wallpaper along the corridor walls. “Funny how after she got married and had two babies, she scooted off like there was fire on her tail.”
I shook my head. “What would make a mother abandon her own children?”
“What about that Canadian ambassador who swept Madame Bouchard off her feet? Talk about a deadbeat dad.”
“He died a few years after they moved to Toronto, I think. But I don’t think he cared much for this place or his kids either.”
“Some dysfunctional family. No wonder Lisa and Barry are messed up.”
I opened the door to the stairwell, and we climbed down, trying to keep as quiet as we could.
“What now?” whispered Katy when we got to the bottom.
I put a finger to my lips.
We were in the alcove where the fire door led to the grounds outside. To our right was the door that connected the fire stairwell to the kitchen. Next to it was the door to the staff quarters.
I stood still for a few seconds, listening in, with Katy breathing down my neck.
The loud sounds from the kitchen made me glad we had left. Barry was raging again, and this time it sounded like he was bringing the entire kitchen down with him, pots and pans and all. We could hear Lisa, the pastor, and even Nancy imploring him to calm down.
The sound of something crashing against the wall made us jump.
“Why do they tolerate that man?” said Katy with a grimace. She stepped toward the fire exit door that would take us to the grounds.
“Wait,” I said as a new idea formed in my mind. “This is a good thing,” I whispered, “we can look for the letters while they’re preoccupied.”
I motioned her to follow me.
I slipped through the small door to the staff quarters. Katy and I tiptoed through the corridor toward Mrs. Robinson’s room, keeping our ears and eyes alert.
The banging, crashing and yelling from the kitchen was music to my ears. Barry’s tantrum was keeping everyone away from us, and that was all that mattered.
While Katy kept watch behind me, I reached out to turn the doorknob. I felt my heart race as I realized we’d have to answer more than a few questions if Doctor Fulton was inside.
“Quick,” whispered Katy. “Footsteps.”
I yanked the door open, and we stumbled inside. Katy closed the door behind us hurriedly. We stood by the door, staring at each other, listening for any more sounds from the corridor.
“Must have gone to the kitchen,” whispered Katy.
I looked around.
The room was empty. Someone had already removed Mrs. Robinson’s body. I wondered where they had taken her.
They had also attempted to clean up the mess Barry had made earlier. They had placed the broken lamp back on the bedside table. The glass shards had been picked up and thrown in the bin. The bedsheets had been folded and placed back on the bed.
“You take the left side and I’ll take the right,” I whispered as I walked to the bedside table where Tetyana had found the codicil.
For the next fifteen minutes, Katy and I combed through Mrs. Robinson’s room, slowly and methodically, stopping every few minutes to listen in, in case someone had heard us.
“She lived like a nun,” whispered Katy after checking the wardrobe.
“Somebody could have removed some of her stuff too.”
“I think she lived the minimalist lifestyle. She didn’t even own one lipstick.”
“Check for secret places,” I said, flipping the comforter away from the bed and feeling for anything hidden between the sheets or on the mattress. “They have to be hidden somewhere here, like that book in the girl’s room.”
“Do you think someone found them already?” Katy whispered.
I paused to think. “I’ve been wondering about that barn. There’s something going on in there. If we can check it before we—”
That was when I spotted the bible lying on the windowsill. I pounced on it.
“Ah!” said Katy, perking up at the sight of the book. “I’d bet you anything they’re all stuffed in there. I can see her doing that.”
I flipped through the pages rapidly at first, then slowly. I felt the back and front covers and the binding for any hidden pockets and shook it. But there was nothing.
I gave Katy a disappointed look.
She plopped on the bed with a sigh.
“If you were Mrs. Robinson, where would you put the originals?” I asked.
“They could be anywhere in this big house,” said Katy, “It will be like looking for a—”
“The kitchen! Where she spends most of her time.”
“But everyone in the house has access to the kitchen.”
“Maybe she suspected someone would check her room, so she put it in a place no one would guess.”
“Hidden in plain sight?”
“Exactly.”
“How do we search the kitchen without anyone wondering what we’re doing?” said Katy.
“We’ll figure something out,” I said. “But first we need to stop them from kicking us out.”
I put the bible back where I’d found it. That was when I spotted it.
“Look!” I said, reaching over to the windowsill.
“The letters?”
“Keys,” I said, as I pulled out a large set of keys in one giant steel ring. “Hidden behind the bible.”
“What’s it for?”
I held them up to examine them. The keys were in all sizes and shapes, some old, some new.
“She was the caretaker here, wasn’t she? That meant she had access to the whole house. These are probably her master keys.”
I turned to my friend.
“Do you know where I’d like to check next?”
Katy gave me a wary look. “The bedrooms upstairs?”
“I’d like to see where they took Mrs. Robinson’s body. Remember, she put that letter back in her pocket? Maybe she still has the others on her.”
“Unless the person who sent them already removed them.”
“Let’s find out,” I said. “Ready?”
I reached over to pull open the door.
Just as my fingertips touched the handle, a loud boom reverberated throughout the house, shaking the floor beneath us.
Chapter Twenty-eight
I recoiled, pulling my hand back in alarm.
We stood frozen by the door, not breathing.
“Do they have earthquakes in New Hampshire?” whispered Katy, a horrified expression on her face.
We stood still, waiting for another tremor, an aftershock, but the grounds had turned silent again.
“We need to get out,” I said, pulling the door open. “If that was an earthquake, we can’t stay inside.”
Katy and I scrambled through the corridor and back to the fire stairwell. I pulled at the door to the outside.
“Don’t they lock any doors in this house?” I heard Katy mutter from behind me as we ran out. “I
f this was the Bronx...”
The door closed with a soft thud behind us.
The sky had lightened slightly, and a gray mist was swirling through the air. Dawn was on its way, finally.
I scanned the grounds. Tetyana was nowhere to be seen.
Where is she?
I ran to the edge of the wall and peeked out. Our car was still in its original position and intact. Jim’s truck was where he’d parked it halfway down the driveway, when he’d brought the doctor over.
But no one else had run out of the house. Through the kitchen window, I could see they were all still inside.
Didn’t they know basic earthquake safety procedures?
“Who’s that?” said Katy, pointing at someone in the distance.
I peered through the mist.
Someone was near the bottom of the driveway and walking toward the house, carrying something heavy.
The side door to the kitchen banged open.
It was the pastor. He stepped out and swiveled around, a dazed look on his face.
“Come,” I whispered to Katy and stepped away from the wall.
The pastor turned when he saw us appear from the side of the house.
“Did you hear that bang?” I called out. “Was it an earthquake?”
He rubbed his forehead.
At dinner the evening before, Pastor Graham had looked friendly and suave, like someone who had it all together, even acting as the host of the house. But he was clearly no longer in his element.
“Thought it was a car crash or something, but with Barry acting up and all....” He paused. “Where did it come from?”
“Outside, somewhere in the grounds,” I replied.
“Tetyana!” said Katy.
We all turned toward the driveway.
She was right. The figure had come closer now, and it was unmistakably our friend hauling a pile of dead branches in her arms.
“All okay?” she called out.
“All good,” I hollered back.
“What was that blast?” said the pastor when she got closer. “I felt the earth shake there for a minute.”
Tetyana walked up to us and tossed the branches next to the driveway.
“Sounded like lightning struck a tree or something,” she said, looking at the sky.
It was still dark and gray, but a thin light shone in the horizon, where the sun was peeking out. I was sure the storm had already passed.
Merciless Legacy: Merciless Murder - A Thrilling Closed Circle Mystery Series Page 13