A Likely Story: A Library Lover's Mystery

by Jenn McKinlay

  She felt an ornately carved wooden leg, followed it up and discovered it was a table. She crawled under it, shoving aside small boxes as she went. The space wasn’t as filled in with odds and ends as she had expected, and she wondered how far back she could go.

  She heard the heavy tread of the killer pause at the picture frames, and she wondered if he had seen her and would try to come after her. Damn it. Suddenly the confined space seemed claustrophobic instead of cocoon like.

  “You can’t escape,” the man’s deep voice hissed after her. “I know every bit of this house. I’ll catch you before you find your way out.”

  She didn’t recognize the voice. It was dark and menacing and made her teeth chatter even as she tried not to make a sound. She scooted farther under the table. Instead of being hemmed in, however, there was an opening that went on through the collection of stuff almost as if it was an intentionally constructed tunnel.

  Lindsey didn’t hesitate. She moved forward on her hands and knees. Something squished beneath her fingers, and she had to press her lips together to keep from crying out. It was too dark to see what it was, which was probably for the best. She wiped her hand on the side of a box and moved forward.

  She heard a rustle and a bang behind her and realized the man was coming after her. She crawled faster, but her coat got caught under her knee, and she fell forward onto her face with a thump. The ancient carpet beneath her nose was rough and gritty and smelled of mold. She felt a sneeze build, but she pinched it off. Yanking her coat up around her waist, she hurried forward. Deeper and deeper into the recesses of the broken and rusty piles of refuse she wound her way.

  Clearly, this was most definitely a deliberate tunnel built no doubt to give access to the items in the far corners of the house. Lindsey felt like a mouse in a maze looking for a piece of cheese. She heard a knock behind her followed by a curse and suspected that her pursuer had whacked his head on one of the table legs.

  Where were Sully and Kirkland? Had this man already killed them? The thought made her sick with dread. She pushed forward, feeling her way in the darkness. Her fingers traced the edge of a box, and she realized the tunnel was turning. She reached out and felt the floor in the opposite direction in an effort to get her bearings, but it was wide open. It appeared the path split in two directions, but which way should she go? What if one of them was a dead end, which would be a lot more literal if the stranger caught her?

  A crash sounded behind her, and she scurried forward, going automatically to the left, as she assumed it led back into the house, whereas the right would lead to the outer wall of the room, which could be a death trap.

  The tunnel was a little bit wider. She debated pulling items down behind her, but the noise would alert the man to which direction she had taken and might possibly cause an avalanche. She wasn’t positive how the items overhead were held up, but when she reached out she felt thick boards above her every few feet, so she suspected that she was in the equivalent of a hoarder’s mine shaft. The thought of being crushed to death by the weight of the stuff overhead made her move almost as fast as the sound of the labored breathing behind her.

  The tunnel turned again. Lindsey tried to move as quietly as possible, hunching her shoulders in tight to avoid brushing against anything that would make noise. She had gone several yards when she heard the man reach the point where the tunnel split. She froze. She could hear him feeling his way in the pitch black. The sound of his hands as they ran over the boxes scraped across her frayed nerves. She was cold and dirty and scared. She closed her eyes and tried to shrink into herself to make herself as small as possible.

  In moments she heard him working his way down the tunnel away from her. She silently expelled the breath she’d been holding. She had no idea how far his path would lead, but she resisted the urge to race forward. She didn’t want him to hear her moving in a blind panic.

  She inched her way forward. Her throat closed up and she gagged when the stink of something dead lingered on the air in its own malignant fog. She wondered if it was a mouse or a rat, maybe even a snake. She refused to picture anything larger, like a body. She shook her head, forcing the image of Peter Rosen’s dead body out of her mind. She knew he had been taken to the medical examiner’s office. He was not here in this tunnel with her. Still, her skin recoiled at the thought that wouldn’t go away.

  Lindsey could feel the dirt caked on the palms of her hands, and her nose was running, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or if it was her body’s natural defense to block the foul smells that filled the cramped space. Tears were stinging her eyes, but she didn’t know if it was in reaction to the smell or a bit of panic-induced hysteria. She had a feeling it was the latter.

  She pinched herself on the back of her wrist. It was quieter than slapping herself, which she was pretty sure was what she needed. There was no time for a freak-out. She had to keep moving.

  As she crawled forward, the opening started to get narrower and narrower, and she had to get down on her belly and scoot forward. She was afraid she was approaching a dead end, but so long as there was a path of any kind, she was determined to follow it.

  The going was slow, and she didn’t know if the man chasing her had turned around and come back after her. Her only hope was that he was too big to fit in this narrow of a space. She was working her way past an old refrigerator and heap of model trains when she felt a hand grab her ankle.

  “Gotcha!”

  It was the man’s voice. His grip was firm on her leg, and he began to pull her back toward him. Lindsey reached out and grabbed the edge of the freezer, stopping him. With her other leg bent, he wasn’t able to grab it, so she began to kick out, making sure he didn’t catch her.

  She felt a thunk under her heel, and the man cursed. She struck out again and again. Still, his grip on her ankle was strong, and he was pulling her out of the narrow space. Lindsey felt her fingers slipping off the corner of the freezer. Terror motivated her to keep kicking. She struck out three more times, and the third one rang true with a crunch of bone. She was pretty sure she had smashed his hand.

  “Uff!” a grunt sounded.

  Her ankle was released, and now she burrowed into the narrow space, hoping like hell there was no way he could follow her. The sound of muttering and cursing filled the air behind her, but Lindsey was wriggling forward too fast to listen.

  A faint light began to form up ahead, and she realized she was nearing an opening. She moved faster. The sound of items being shoved aside told her that the man was too big to fit into the tight squeeze and he had to move the piles of junk to get to her. She knew she only had seconds to get out before he doubled back and caught her at the exit.

  Her breath was ragged, and tears blurred her vision. She wrenched her shoulder, trying to get around an old sewing machine. Lindsey could feel a sob burn in her throat. She choked it down, pushing herself to reach the light before the man caught her again.

  The tunnel widened, and she launched herself up to her knees. She crawled under a desk and found herself at an opening into a wider path. She peeked out, looking both ways trying to figure out which direction would get her back to the front of the house, where she hoped to find Sully. She crawled forward, stood and turned to the right. She took three steps when she was grabbed from behind.

  A strong arm looped around her middle and picked her up off of her feet. Thinking it was her pursuer, Lindsey kicked and thrashed with all of the adrenaline coursing through her body like rocket fuel.

  “Whoa! Lindsey, stop, it’s me.” She recognized Sully’s voice and whipped her head around to confirm that it was him. It was. She stopped fighting. Relief hit her hard, and she sagged against him.

  “He’s right behind me,” she said.

  “Excellent!” he said. He looked as if he was spoiling for a fight.

  The sound of something scraping and a grunt came from the opening Lin
dsey had just squeezed through. Sully dropped his arm from around her middle and crouched in front of the opening. He looked like he was going to dive in, but Lindsey grabbed his arm and held him back.

  “You can’t fit,” she said. “I was barely able to get out. He is probably trapped in there and will have to work his way back.”

  Sully glanced around them and then grabbed a huge framed mirror. He dragged it in front of the small hole and then braced a table between it and the piles of garbage behind it, making it impossible to be moved.

  “Now he’ll have no choice but to go back,” he said. “Show me the entrance.”

  Lindsey glanced around the path they stood in. She had no idea where she was or how she’d gotten here. She was completely turned around by her time in the tunnel.

  “I have to get back to the stairs,” she said.

  “This way.” Sully grabbed her hand and led her to the left.

  He didn’t pick his way through the paths, so Lindsey figured he’d already been this way and knew it was clear of traps.

  They wound their way through two rooms packed with boxes and bags and broken furniture. Lindsey couldn’t be happier to put some distance between her and the man who had been chasing her.

  “Did you recognize him?” Sully asked as they made their way around the corner and back to the front room.

  “No, I only saw him for a second while I was running away, but I’m sure I’ve never seen him before.”

  They stopped in front of the stairs. Lindsey glanced at the steps and remembered being terrified and jumping off the steps at a run.

  “This way,” she said.

  She followed the path she had taken with Sully right behind her. They stopped at the stack of picture frames, and she pointed to the hole.

  “My leg got stuck, so I climbed in there,” she said. “I didn’t realize it, but it forms a sort of tunnel.”

  “Intentional?” Sully asked.

  Lindsey nodded. “I think it was built deliberately to give access to the far corners of the stuff.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Sully said. He hunched low and studied the opening. “No traps?”

  “I was moving too fast to stop and check,” Lindsey said. “The path forks. I don’t know where the other one leads.”

  “So, he may not come out this way,” Sully said. He began to climb into the tunnel, and Lindsey felt her breath catch.

  “Sully, don’t go,” she said. She grabbed the back of his jacket, holding him in place.

  He glanced around at her. His blue eyes were kind when he said, “Don’t worry. I’m just going in to listen and see if I can figure out if he’s headed this way. I’ll return right away.”

  Lindsey let his jacket slide out of her fingers. It took all of her faith in his ability to handle himself not to grab hold and forcibly yank him out. The thought of anything bad happening to Sully wrecked her. She just didn’t think she could bear it.

  He disappeared from sight, and Lindsey began to pace in a tight little circle. Listening did not take that long, and when he was gone for more than a few minutes, she knelt down and began to climb in after him.

  She had just cleared the picture frames when she bumped into Sully’s back. His lack of surprise let her know he had probably either heard her or expected her.

  In the faint light, she saw him put his finger to his lips. She nodded. They sat together in the silence. Lindsey felt as if her nerves had been scraped raw. She could hear the rush of blood in her ears, and she really had to pee.

  Then they heard it. A muted click that sounded like a door closing, coming from the opposite direction that Lindsey had taken earlier. The intruder was getting away.

  Sully motioned for Lindsey to back out of their hidey-hole. She stood just outside the pile of frames, and Sully climbed out after her. He stood and glanced around. “Where is Kirkland?”

  “I haven’t seen him since you two went your separate ways,” she said.

  “Speaking of which, weren’t you supposed to stay by the door?”

  “Yes, but I was worried that the stranger would disappear upstairs, so I moved to block the stairs.” She looked at Sully. “But he came down the stairs behind me.”

  “So, either he’s not alone or there are more secret paths that give access to other floors.”

  “If there was someone else here, I would think that they would have come to help him when he discovered me. No, there has to be another way upstairs in addition to the main staircase,” Lindsey said. “They had house staff. There must be a servants’ staircase.”

  “Kitchen,” Sully said. “Back stairs are usually tucked in a back corner of the kitchen or pantry.”

  Sully turned and led the way to the kitchen. It was just as cluttered as it had been when Lindsey had first come in here, but this time there was no body parked in a wheelchair at the kitchen table. She couldn’t help but stare at the empty space and the dark brown stain on the floor beneath it.

  She felt a shudder start at the base of her spine and shimmy up her back to the nape of her neck. Had it only been a few days since they’d discovered Peter Rosen? It seemed ages ago.

  Sully picked his way carefully across the room. The counters were sagging under the weight of dishes and glasses, pots and pans, most of which had a thick coating of dust on them.

  How the brothers had lived in such squalor and not gotten dysentery or meningitis, Lindsey couldn’t imagine. By rights their house should have been condemned, and if they weren’t living on an island all by themselves, it probably would have been. Of course, if they had lived in town, Peter might not have been murdered either. There would have been many more watchful eyes to keep them safe.

  Sully reached the far corner of the kitchen and studied the wall. Copper cooking molds hung on the wall in every shape imaginable from fancy round curlicues to one shaped like a turtle and another like a lion. These items also had a coating of grime on them, and the copper had developed a neglected patina.

  Sully moved past the display to a built-in hutch. It was crammed with odds and ends, cookbooks and other vintage cooking tools such as a meat grinder and several percolators and no less than four toasters.

  “Here,” Sully said. He began to examine the hutch, and Lindsey frowned.

  “Here what?” she asked.

  “This is a secret door,” he said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “There’s nothing piled in front of it like the rest of the wall,” he said. “Also, the floor in front of it has the wear of a door being open and shut.”

  Lindsey glanced at the ground. Sure enough, the arch of a door opening and closing was visible on the old wood floor.

  “Very clever,” she said.

  “If only I could figure out how it opens,” he said.

  He knelt low and ran his fingers around the edges and then did the same with the top. He stood back and shook his head. He then inspected each item on the shelves, as if one of them might hide the door knob.

  Lindsey stepped back as far as the stacks of stuff on the floor would allow. She took the hutch in as a whole, looking for some sign of wear or use. It was then that she saw it.

  She stepped up to the right side of the hutch and put her hand on a small oval copper mold with a fat pear embossed in the center. She put her hands where the copper gleamed the brightest and tried to move the mold. It twisted to the right with a click, and the hutch swung inward into the wall.

  “Well, look at that,” Sully said. He grinned at her. “Nice work. How did you figure it out?”

  “I read a lot of mysteries,” Lindsey said. “And the pear is the only copper mold that isn’t covered in grime and still shines a bit, so I figured it had to be touched pretty frequently, and given that it’s right next to the hutch . . .”

  “It had to be the lever to the secret door,” Sully concluded.
“Nicely done.”

  He peered into the dark space the hutch had opened into with Lindsey glancing in over his shoulder. A narrow staircase was visible, and she looked to see if there were curtains of cobwebs hanging down from the ceiling. There were not, and she tried to take comfort in that, at least.

  “Why don’t you wait—” he began, but Lindsey shook her head.

  “No,” she said.

  He sighed as if he’d known she was going to shake him off all along.

  “Stay close,” he said. “Don’t touch anything. We have no idea if this area is rigged or not.”

  The open door gave them just enough light to find the handrail above the stairs. Sully switched on a small penlight that he had on his key chain and used it to examine each stair tread before they stepped on it.

  The going was slow, and Lindsey found herself listening for any sounds coming from above. They had no idea where the door at the top of the steps would open up to or who might be waiting for them on the other end. She wondered where the man who had been pursuing her had gone, and she fretted about where Kirkland was and if he was okay. Impatience snapped inside of her, and she longed to dash up the stairs, even though she knew it would be a reckless and stupid thing to do. She glanced at the shadows illuminated in Sully’s penlight. They were only halfway up the stairs. She wondered if it was possible to die of curiosity.

  A soft swoosh sounded behind her, and Lindsey turned just in time to see the hutch shut behind them. The sound of the latch clicking shut sounded inordinately loud in the silence, muffled only by the gasp that slipped past Lindsey’s lips. They were locked in.

  “Sully.” Lindsey said his name more for reassurance than for anything else.