“Do you think they’re real?” Libby asked Bernie.
“I don’t know,” Bernie said, studying them.
Libby pointed to the Monet. “I didn’t know you could rent stuff like this.”
“Me either,” Bernie replied. “But you probably can. After all, you can rent a Prada bag.”
“This is a little different.”
“Just in scale.”
“I wonder what it would be like to own a Monet?” Libby mused.
“Somehow, I don’t think we’re ever going to find out,” Bernie said. Then she walked over and opened the closet door. “Jeez,” she muttered as she took in the size. “I’ve slept in bedrooms in Chelsea that were smaller than this.”
She stepped inside. Zalinsky’s clothes were arranged according to season, color, and function. There was a shelving system for his shirts, sweaters, underwear, and socks.
“Well, this stuff isn’t rented,” Libby observed as she joined her sister in the closet. “I guess he really cared about his clothes.”
Bernie looked at the suit labels. “And paid a lot for them. I’ll tell you one thing, Ludvoc would have made Imelda proud,” Bernie said as she studied the rows of custom-made shoes neatly lined up in racks.
She was thinking about how boring men’s shoes were when she noticed a very thin line starting at the floor and going about a quarter of the way up the wall. It was probably a crack in the wallboard. Probably. But still. Bernie bent down to get a better look.
“What are you doing?” Libby asked.
Bernie tapped on the wall beside the crack. One side sounded different than the other.
“Do you hear that?” she asked Libby.
Libby nodded.
“I think there might be a door here or something,” Bernie said as she moved the shoes away and lightly ran her fingers over the wall. She could feel some sort of seam. She stepped back and took another look. The seam seemed to be a square. “There’s definitely something here,” she noted, moving out of the way so Libby could see what she was talking about.
“You’re right—there is,” Libby acceded, after she’d knelt down and traced the crack like her sister had. She sat back on her heels. “Probably some sort of safe.”
“A very large safe,” Bernie said. She could fit her shoulders in there. Then she recalled something. “Or a passageway out. Remember, this house was on the Underground Railroad.”
“But I thought Endicott gutted the farmhouse and rebuilt it,” Libby objected.
“He did. But he could have rebuilt the tunnel as well.”
“Why would he do that?”
Bernie shrugged. “I don’t know. Because it pleased his fancy?”
“Maybe that’s why Zalinsky bought the house in the first place,” Libby suggested.
“Could be,” Bernie said. “It’s something that might appeal, especially if you thought you were going to have to make a quick getaway. Have you noticed there’s no personal stuff in this house? No picture albums, no books, nothing.”
“Yes, I noticed. And your point is?”
“Maybe what we’re looking for is in the tunnel.”
“What are we looking for?” Libby asked.
“I don’t know,” Bernie admitted. “Something.”
Libby massaged her calf muscle. “Okay, let’s suppose you’re right,” she told her sister. “How do we get into it? There’s no opening for a key, so I’m guessing the door to the tunnel has to open with some sort of hidden spring or lever.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too,” Bernie said.
She and Libby stood up and began looking around the closet. They moved the clothes and the shoes and studied the walls and the floor. Nothing. Then they ran their hands underneath the shelving. They didn’t feel anything except wallboard.
“Maybe the lever is outside,” Bernie suggested after she and her sister had explored every last inch of the closet.
“Maybe,” Libby agreed as they trooped into the bedroom.
After ten minutes of fruitless searching over, under, and behind the bed, tapping on the headboard, looking behind the dresser, moving the chair, lifting up the rug, feeling behind the curtains, and peeking under the paintings on the wall, Bernie and Libby conceded defeat. They plopped themselves down at the foot of Zalinsky’s bed.
“Maybe the story about the tunnel isn’t true,” Libby said. “Maybe those cracks are just signs of the house settling or a bad wallboard job.”
“Maybe.” Bernie sighed and looked out the window. She had been so sure too. From where she was sitting, she could see the tops of the oak trees as well as the neighbor’s perennial garden, which was bordered by a small stream that meandered down the hill. For a moment, she watched two robins on the branch of a crab apple tree. Then her gaze shifted to the window. “It’s a nice view,” she commented. “But the window treatment really detracts from it.”
“What would you do?” Libby asked.
“Well, for openers, I’d get rid of those curtain rods.” Bernie sat up straighter, warming to her topic. “Those curtain rods are truly awful. Could they be any bigger? Your eye goes right to them. They’re completely out of character with the room. And those supports! Dragons? Seriously, why would anyone do that?”
“Why indeed,” Libby said. Suddenly she had an idea. “Unless . . .”
Bernie turned to look at her sister. “Unless what?”
“Look how big the dragons are.”
Bernie’s eyes opened wider. She put her hands up to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she cried.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Libby asked.
Bernie gave a snort of a laugh. “All this time we were poking around, and the answer was right in front of us.”
“Maybe,” Libby said.
“Why else would the thingees . . .”
“Thingees?”
Bernie waved her hand impatiently. “The whatever you call the supports for the curtain rods . . . why else would they be so large?”
“Bad design?” Libby replied.
Bernie didn’t answer. Instead she and Libby got up off the bed and rushed over to the window. Now that they were looking carefully, Libby and Bernie could see that the support on the left was slightly bigger than the support on the right. Bernie walked over to the left side. She stood on tiptoe and raised her hand. Nope. She was too short. She couldn’t reach it.
“I need something to stand on,” Bernie said, looking around the room. The armchair. She pushed it across the floor and hopped up on it. “Here goes nothing,” she said as she reached up, grasped the dragon’s tail with both hands, and yanked down on it.
Bernie and Libby heard a creak and felt motion. She pulled down harder. This time the dragon moved. Bernie instinctively held up her hand to catch the curtain rod in case it fell, but it stayed in place. “We have game,” she said as she jumped off the chair.
She and Libby rushed back inside the closet. There was a small, visible space where the crack in the wall had been.
“It is a door,” Bernie said as she bent down, grabbed hold of the edge, and pulled.
The door opened a little wider.
Libby looked at the opening. “I don’t know,” she said. “This opening would be a pretty tight fit for Zalinsky.”
“He could still wiggle his way through,” Bernie said as she peeked inside.
She couldn’t see anything. It was all blackness. She took out her phone and opened the flashlight app. Suddenly the tunnel came into view. She moved her phone up and down. The ceiling was low. She wouldn’t be able to stand upright, but she could get down on on her hands and knees, and she’d been right, it was wide enough to get her shoulders through with a couple of inches to spare on either side.
She crawled in a little way and played the light over the walls. A couple of feet down, she spotted a box sitting on the floor. Books were piled on top of it. She crawled in a couple more feet, removed the books, and dragged the box out. It was your standard brown cardboard car
ton, the kind one sent packages in, and it was sealed with packing tape.
“It’s heavy,” Bernie noted as she lifted the carton up and put it on Zalinsky’s bed.
Then she got her keys out and slit the tape with the key to the van. Libby looked over her shoulder as Bernie opened the flaps. There was a dark green backpack smushed inside. Bernie lifted out the backpack and unzipped it.
She let out a low whistle. “Wow,” she said as she shook out the contents.
“For sure,” Libby agreed.
Chapter 10
Libby studied the backpack’s contents lying on Zalinsky’s bed. There was a small notebook with nothing inside, twenty thousand dollars in cash, a small envelope containing five one-carat diamonds, probably one hundred gold Krugerrands, a Glock .9mm, two boxes of ammo, and an American passport sporting Zalinsky’s picture and the name Louis Zebb.
“Interesting that Zalinsky kept the same initials,” Libby commented as she picked up the passport and thumbed through it. It gave no evidence of being used.
“I suppose it’s easier to remember your new name that way,” Bernie observed. She pointed to the issuing date. “He got this in April. Maybe he knew trouble was coming.”
“Or maybe he was just covering all his bases,” Libby said as she picked up a large, square leather case that had been inside the backpack and opened it. It was full of jewelry, each piece wrapped in purple tissue paper.
“Could be,” Bernie said. “I guess if you’re someone like Zalinsky, you’ve got to have all your bases covered.”
“Not bad,” Libby commented, lifting out a tennis bracelet and a pair of two-carat diamond earrings. “Not bad at all.” She went through the rest of the jewelry. There were two Cartier watches, several more diamond bracelets, four sets of diamond earrings, two diamond pins with stones set in a flower design, and a number of necklaces. Seven of the pieces had women’s names attached to them, none of which, Libby noted, were Erin’s. “He was quite the ladies’ man,” Libby observed.
Bernie picked up a pair of earrings and held them up to the light. “I wonder if they’re real?”
“You think they’re phony?” Libby asked.
“Yeah, I do,” Bernie said after studying them for a minute. “Good phonies, but phonies nevertheless.”
“What makes you say that?” Libby asked.
“The clarity of the stones in these earrings looks off. Either that or they’re low-grade diamonds.”
Libby took a pair of earrings and held them up to the light. “They look fine to me.”
“That’s because you never worked in a jewelry store,” Bernie told her sister.
“Give me a break,” Libby retorted. “You worked there for a week before you got fired.”
Bernie put her hands on her hips. “First of all, I quit; and second of all, I learned a lot during that week.”
“Like what? You were doing computer stuff in the office and running errands.”
Bernie ignored her sister. “Well,” she said, tapping the fingers of her left hand on her chin, “there’s only one way to tell.”
“Get them appraised?”
“That would take time.”
“What are you doing?” Libby cried as she watched Bernie place the earrings she was holding on the floor.
“Finding out,” Bernie said, bringing her foot up and stamping down on the earrings as hard as she could. When she picked her foot up there was a mound of white powder on the floor. “Paste. If they had been real they would be intact,” she went on to explain.
Libby gestured toward the jewelry case. “So all of these are fake?”
Bernie nodded. “That’s probably a good bet.”
“Even the watches?”
“I don’t see why they should be real when everything else is fake, do you?”
“No.” Libby started to chew on her cuticle, realized what she was doing, and stopped herself. “But the money and the unset diamonds and the gold coins are real?”
“They look real to me.”
“And Zalinsky’s passport? Real or fake?”
Bernie thought about that for a minute. Then she said, “Fake. I don’t see why he would be using a false name in his day-to-day dealings. Too complicated.”
“Then how come the jewelry . . .” Libby began.
“Is fake?” Bernie said, finishing her sister’s sentence for her.
Libby nodded.
“Like you said, Zalinsky was quite the ladies’ man. I’m guessing the jewelry was for his girlfriends,” Bernie answered. “Of which, judging by the names on the pieces, he had a fair number besides Erin.”
“Well, he was definitely economical,” Libby said. “Why spend money on the real stuff when the fake stuff will get you what you want?”
That got Bernie thinking about the diamond earrings and bracelet she’d seen Erin wearing. They looked just like the ones in Zalinsky’s leather case. Then Bernie remembered overhearing Erin bragging to Magda about all the jewelry Zalinsky was giving her. “I wonder if the stuff Zalinsky was giving Erin was real, and if it wasn’t, I wonder if Erin found that out?” Bernie mused.
“It’s certainly the type of thing that would get a girl upset,” Libby commented. “Really upset. Especially if one were going out with said guy for monetary reasons alone.”
“What other kind of reasons would there be for going out with Zalinsky?” Bernie asked.
“None, as far as I can see,” Libby responded promptly. “I mean you wouldn’t be going out with him for his looks or personality. Maybe he’s good in bed.”
“Doubtful. He’s too selfish and in too much of a hurry.” Bernie put her hands above her head and stretched. “You know what they say about hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? In this case I’d say, hell hath no fury like a woman scammed.”
“You think Erin rigged the teakettle?” Libby asked.
Bernie thought over her sister’s question for a moment. “Why not?”
“It just doesn’t seem like her.”
“Totally disagree. Did you see the look on Erin’s face when Zalinsky threw her roses on the floor? If she had had a gun, she would have shot him. No. I think she’s capable of lots of things if she gets pissed enough, and finding out that her jewelry was fake would definitely be something that would piss her off.”
“Yeah. But is she capable of rigging the teakettle? I see her more as someone who would slip antifreeze into someone’s coffee.”
“I don’t know. She could have looked up how to do it on the Internet, and even if she didn’t, she could have gotten someone to do it for her.”
“Now that,” Libby told her sister, “I could totally see her doing. Well, one thing is for sure,” Libby continued, changing the subject, “Zalinsky was definitely prepared to get out of town.”
“Evidently,” Bernie agreed. “Maybe that’s why he bought the teapot. Because it was small and portable, and he could sell it. If anyone would know an interested buyer, he would.”
“Or,” Libby said, another explanation having occurred to her, “maybe Zalinsky was a prepper. Maybe he was one of those guys who believed in being prepared for Armageddon.”
“A prepper?” Bernie replied. “No. Preppers have supplies of food, water, batteries, and medical supplies.” She pointed to the backpack. “This is a go bag. This is for when something bad happens and all you have time to do is grab the bag and get out of town.”
“Well, he didn’t get out fast enough,” Libby observed. “Obviously, he didn’t see whatever . . .”
“Whoever,” Bernie corrected.
“Fine. He didn’t see whoever coming. He thought he still had time.” Libby was just about to ask Bernie how much the Krugerrands were worth when she heard a car pulling into the driveway.
Bernie cursed under her breath.
“Now what?” Libby asked.
Chapter 11
Bernie didn’t answer her sister. She was too busy listening to the sounds below. A moment later, she and Libby heard foots
teps crunching on gravel, then footsteps on the veranda, then the front door to the house opening, and the sound of the alarm beeping as someone punched in the code. Libby and Bernie looked at each other.
“Lucky we went in through the office,” Libby whispered.
“I figured it was a two–tiered security system,” Bernie whispered back.
“No, you didn’t.”
Bernie put her finger to her lips. Now Libby could hear it too. There were footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Damn,” Bernie cursed as she shoved the money, jewelry, and gun lying on the bed back into the backpack, while Libby returned the chair under the curtain rod back to where it had been and grabbed the carton the backpack had come in. Then they both ran for the closet. They were trapped. There was nowhere else to go.
“Please, don’t come in the bedroom,” Libby prayed.
“I wouldn’t count on that if I were you,” Bernie told her. Then she added, “It could be worse. At least our van is parked in the back.”
Libby didn’t reply. Her body was rigid as she contemplated the footsteps in the hallway. There were two sets. One tread was heavy, while the other was light. Then she heard voices. They sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place them.
“I think it has to be in his majesty’s bedroom,” a woman said.
“Are you sure?” a man’s voice asked.
“No, I’m not. But I’ve looked everywhere else.”
“Glad you have the code,” the man says. “It saves us the trouble of breaking in.”
The woman laughed. “Not because he wanted me to have it.”
“Now, that I can believe. He was a control freak,” the man said.
“That’s a nice way of putting it,” the woman replied.
“Okay,” the man replied. “He was an asshole.”
“Exactly. He thought I was just a dumb blonde.” The woman sniggered. “Boy, did he make a mistake.” There was a pause, then she added, “I just want what’s mine . . .”
“Ours,” the man said.
The woman corrected herself. “Yes. Of course. Ours. He owes us. He owes us big-time.”
A Catered Tea Party Page 6