Maggie lay awake for a long time thinking about the secret room, trying to decide whether to tell Scott and let him deal with it (probably should) or enlist Hannah to go with her to check it out instead (probably would).
Chapter Six - Wednesday
Maggie woke up Wednesday morning right before the alarm rang at 6:00, and thought about what had happened the night before. She pictured Scott and Sarah lying entwined in tangled sheets and an actual pain shot through her chest, propelling her out of bed. Convinced Scott was seeing Sarah romantically, she decided she would not immediately tell him about the secret room in Theo’s lodge home. She would wait until she saw Hannah this morning, tell her about the room, and then they would decide what to do about it.
It turned out she didn’t have long to wait. Hannah called her right after the bookstore opened to see if she was free to go out for breakfast.
“A big one,” Hannah said. “I want everything fried and covered in gravy.”
“We won’t have time,” Maggie said. “Come pick me up and I’ll bring you something. We’re going on a treasure hunt.”
Maggie made Hannah an extra-large latte with caramel syrup and whipped cream, and filled a bag with day-old baked goods before going out back to wait for her. As soon as she climbed into the cab of the truck, she gave Hannah the cup and bag of food.
“Yummy,” Hannah said.
“Caroline called me last night,” Maggie said. “After you insulted me and I hung up on you.”
Hannah had already latched onto a cheese danish, so she could only say, “Mmm, hmmm?”
“Our Miss Caroline is on a missionary trip in Paraguay–she told me the name of the city but I can't remember it now–and just found out about her bastard brother getting himself murdered,” Maggie said. “She’s flying back in a few weeks, as soon as she wraps up what she's doing down there and can get flights booked.”
Hannah asked, “Where's whatsit-guay?” with a mouth full of pastry.
“South America,” Maggie told her. “Anyway, she said the lodge has a secret room you can get to through the closet in the study. She said her great granddad used to hide booze in it during prohibition.”
Hannah put the truck in reverse and backed into the alley so fast they slid.
“How do we get in?” she asked, and Maggie grinned.
After an interminable crawl up Pine Mountain Road behind a slow moving eighteen-wheeler, they went on a four-wheel drive adventure up the lodge driveway. The state road crew was plowing it a couple times per day for Hannah, as a favor, so she could get to Theo’s dogs, but they hadn’t done it yet this morning. Hannah’s truck slid to rest almost against the porch of the large house and they waded through three-foot high drifts to get to the front door. Up here on the ridgetop there was a clear blue sky, while down in Rose Hill it had been overcast and gray; they had climbed above the bad weather.
Maggie fumbled behind one of the big lanterns that flanked the door and found a key on a long, frozen leather shoelace, right where Caroline said it would be. She carefully lifted the yellow police tape that was draped across the doorframe from lantern to lantern and Hannah held it up for her. When the key turned the lock in the massive door, they more or less tumbled into the foyer of the big house, bringing a lot of snow in with them.
Hannah whistled low and said, “Wow, I forgot how big it is.”
They shed their coats, hats, gloves, and boots on the rug right inside the door, and Maggie handed Hannah some big yellow rubber gloves and one of the flashlights she brought from the bookstore. Hannah laughed, making a queenly wave with one of her gloved hands.
“Some cat burglars we make with our big yellow hands,” she said.
“It was all I had,” Maggie told her.
They went through the library to the billiard room, where they stopped long enough for Maggie to pull the sheet off the development model on the pool table and take a good look at Eldridge Point. They studied it from several angles, pointing out different features.
“This must be Theo's house,” Maggie said, pointing to an elaborate mansion at the end of a cul de sac, the largest home featured, with a view of the mountains, lake, and golf course behind it.
“Isn’t all of this property protected land?” Hannah asked, noting the miniature wind farm on several of the mountain ridges.
Maggie was glowering at the development, looking like she might destroy it with one swipe of her huge yellow hand. Hannah reminded her cousin what their intentions were, saying, “Let's go see what the bastard has hidden in the ceiling.”
In the study there was a closet, right where Caroline said it would be, back in the corner. The closet was three feet deep and wide, and full of boxes of Eldridge Point logo merchandise. They laughed at the stupid looking logo before moving all the boxes into the study. Maggie used a flashlight to look at the ceiling of the closet. The cedar-paneled enclosure had a cedar plank ceiling, and looking carefully, they could just make out how it was not flush against the molding where it met the walls. They borrowed the rolling ladder from the library and pushed it into the closet as far as it would go.
Maggie went up first, and found the ceiling panel was hinged on one side, which allowed it to swing upward into a dark space above the closet. With the upper half of her body through the opening, Maggie shone the flashlight on all four walls of the space, roughly the same size in circumference as the closet.
“If I see one spider this mission is aborted,” Maggie told Hannah.
“You’re such a big sissy,” Hannah said. “Spiders wouldn’t stop Miss Marple. Spiders wouldn’t stop Harriet Vane. Spiders wouldn’t stop Kinsey Milhone. Spiders wouldn’t stop Cordelia Gray…”
“Alright, shut up,” Maggie said.
Maggie was momentarily disappointed to think this was the secret room itself. Then the beam from the flashlight revealed a series of iron rungs attached to one wall. Maggie pointed them out to Hannah, who was steadying the ladder beneath her. After testing the strength of the rungs first, she climbed up into the dark, empty shaft above the closet. It was hard to climb and shine the flashlight up at the same time, so she went slowly, pausing every so often to shine the light above and around her. The walls were cedar lined, just like the closet beneath it, and the rungs were made of thick iron pipes bolted to the wall. It was dusty and cobwebby in the corners, but to Maggie’s relief they seemed to be dust webs and not the spidery kind.
After she climbed what seemed like ten or twelve feet, she discerned a door on the wall behind her. She calculated she must be at the second floor level looking toward the back of one of the bedrooms, but she felt a little disoriented. Up another eight feet the shaft ended in a cedar plank ceiling that seemed to be firmly fastened to the walls all the way around.
Maggie turned and shone the light on the door in the wall behind her, a yard away. She reached out and turned the old iron doorknob, which had no locking mechanism, and pushed the door inward. She pointed the light into the room and frightened herself by shining it into a mirror on a far wall, and seeing herself looking back. She told Hannah, close behind her, what she was doing, then turned and leaped into the room.
She stumbled over something, and had just righted herself as Hannah got high enough on the iron rungs to point her flashlight and look in.
“That was graceful,” Hannah said.
Maggie stood up in the middle of the room and flinched as something swung against her cheek. She batted frantically at what she thought was probably a giant spider, much to Hannah’s amusement. It turned out to be the pull chain to a light bulb in the ceiling. She pulled it, and the light came on, throwing everything in the room into dim relief by its low wattage light. Hannah leaped into the room, avoiding the ottoman Maggie had stumbled over.
Maggie estimated the room was ten feet square at most. There was an old velvet armchair next to the ottoman with a fringed floor lamp behind it. The mechanism on the lamp showed its age, but when Maggie pulled the short chain it worked, helping to light
the small room even more. On the other side of the chair and ottoman was an old iron safe, about two feet cubed, with an old fashioned dial and handle, and on top of it was a half empty bottle of whiskey and a glass with some whiskey residue in it. The bottle was new and not dusty. Theo, or someone, had been up there recently.
Hannah meanwhile, was studying the wall across from the chair and ottoman, most of which was covered in photographs.
She turned a grim face to Maggie and said, “Come look at this.”
They were all photographs of Maggie’s sister-in-law Ava. There were black and white shots of her as a toddler, yellowed color photos of her in grade school, and blown up color photos of her posing as Prom Queen, Winter Festival Queen, and Miss Firecracker. There was even a blurry wedding photo with Brian cut out of it. There were photos representing all the intervening years from her childhood to the present, even some that seemed recent. The almost surgical precision of the cuts revealed Theo had removed anyone who appeared in a photo with Ava, even her children. The recent photos seemed surreptitiously taken, and Maggie wondered who had taken them.
All together the collection told the story of an obsession which seemed to span most of Theo's adolescent and adult life, and formed a shrine to the beauty of Maggie’s sister-in-law. Hannah pointed at one photo pinned near where she stood, and Maggie leaned over to look. It had been taken through Ava’s second floor bedroom window, could only have been taken from the vantage point of a tree outside, through the space where the lace curtains were parted. Ava was sleeping, one arm thrown over her head and one leg under a sheet. There was a man in the bed with her, but Maggie couldn’t tell who it was. Theo had cut him out of the picture, so only his arm showed.
“I'm taking them down,” Maggie said firmly, and Hannah said, “I’ll help you.”
“You don’t think Ava was ever involved with Theo, do you?” Hannah asked tentatively as they worked.
“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “They dated briefly the summer Brian broke up with her, right after he graduated, but it was probably only a week or two at the most.”
“Didn’t Brian and Ava get married shortly after that?” Hannah asked.
“Yes,” Maggie said. “It was the big scandal of the year. She had just turned sixteen. He had to turn down a baseball scholarship at Wake Forrest to stay here and work for Curtis at the station.”
The air in the room was stuffy, dusty, and stale. Maggie didn’t want to think about what all Theo got up to in here, with this shrine to her sister-in-law on the wall. Once all the pictures were in a pile on the floor Maggie checked the safe.
“It’s locked, of course.”
“What number was it left on?” Hannah asked. “Maybe he forgot to spin it.”
Maggie told her the number.
“That’s the year I was born,” Hannah said.
That gave Maggie an idea.
“Wasn’t Brad your age?”
Hannah nodded.
“Too bad we don’t know Brad’s birth date; that might be it.”
“Or Ava’s,” Hannah said, and gestured at the wall they had just cleared.
Maggie knew her sister-in-law’s birth date, and sure enough, those numbers opened it.
“That was too easy,” Maggie said to Hannah.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hannah said. “If I kept a safe in my secret stalker Ava Fitzpatrick shrine, I might make her birth date the combination.”
“Thanks, wise ass,” said Maggie, and opened the door.
The safe had several manila envelopes and folders in it, plus a handgun, two boxes of ammunition, three thick, bundled stacks of money, a display type coin or jewelry box, a big plastic bag of pot, some small plastic vials of what looked like rocks of brown sugar, and a rectangular shaped object wrapped in brown paper and twine.
“Geez oh wiz, would you look at that! Colombian drug lord Theo Eldridge,” Hannah said.
“I’m not touching those things,” Maggie said, pointing at the gun and drugs.
Maggie left everything in the safe except the manila folders and envelopes. Those she piled on the ottoman before she seated herself in the velvet armchair. Hannah sat down on the floor and watched her open each one, awkwardly, with her big-yellow-gloved hands.
As Maggie and Hannah opened and examined the contents of each envelope, they realized the collection represented enough blackmail dynamite to blow the quiet lives of several prominent Rose Hill citizens to kingdom come.
There were compromising photos of men and women who didn't seem to realize, in their enthusiasm, that they were being photographed. The two recurring players in these photographs were Phyllis Davis, in various color wigs, looking triumphant and smug, and a man who always had his face covered, or turned away, but who had a distinctive snake tattoo down the underside of both his forearms.
The names on the envelopes included several Maggie did not know, but some she did, including Doc Machalvie, former fire chief Eric Estep, Ed's father, and Maggie’s brother Brian.
Hannah was beside herself at first, but eventually could only say, “Ew,” at every photo.
After the first six envelopes Maggie said, “I’m getting sick of looking at naked people, how about you?”
Hannah nodded emphatically, saying, “That Phyllis is like a gymnast at the sex Olympics, isn’t she?”
“We’ll only look in the envelopes of the people we know,” Maggie said.
Maggie handed the envelope with Brian’s name on it to Hannah, saying, “I can’t look.”
Hannah reported, “It’s him and Phyllis, and can I just say, whoa, I know he’s your brother, but I can see why he was so popular.”
Maggie swatted her friend with a folder, saying, “I could have lived quite happily not knowing that.”
There were several photos of Knox’s wife, Anne Marie, obviously wasted and posing in what she must have thought were provocative ways.
“She looks better with clothes on,” Hannah said. “I know I’m skinny, but she’s scary skinny. You think those boobs are fake?”
“She’s in a coma right now,” Maggie reminded her. “Have some compassion.”
“You’re right. Sorry, Anne Marie,” Hannah said to the ceiling. “I hope you get better soon, so you can get back to whorin’ and snortin’.”
Maggie said, not for the first time, “We are both going straight to hell.”
“Well, if we do I bet it will look a lot like this room,” Hannah said, gesturing around her, “This is the creepiest place I’ve ever been in.”
After they had seen all the photos they could stand Maggie put the envelopes aside. The first folder she looked in held a sheaf of letters to “G” from “S.” Written on lined notebook paper with a blue ballpoint pen, Maggie thought it looked like it was written by an adolescent hand. She didn’t read the letters, but closed the folder and put them aside, intending to examine them more closely later on.
In the next folder was a stack of completed and notarized AKC registration forms with matching medical records representing several different litters of purebred dogs which Maggie now knew didn't exist. Drew's signature did not appear on any of the documentation, but his predecessor's did.
“That’s a relief,” Hannah said. “I really didn’t want to start over with a new vet.”
The next folder revealed documents for a loan made to Brian Fitzpatrick from Eldridge Financial Corporation, Inc. It listed as collateral his home and life insurance policies on both his children and his wife Ava. There were also copies of those policies. On the date the loan was made, baby Timmy was two months old. The amount of the loan and usurious interest rate made Maggie sick at her stomach. A receipt was attached showing the balance had been paid in full, on a date soon after Brian had disappeared. Maggie wondered why Brian needed so much money and how he was able to pay it back so quickly.
There was a file on Knox Rodefeffer that contained a lot of newspaper clippings about some incident that happened when he was in college. Maggie also put that as
ide to examine later.
One file had transcripts of what looked like phone conversations along with tapes, and one had pages and pages of e-mail correspondence print outs between “hotnwild69” and “jailbt4u.” Maggie quickly put those aside as well.
“Why did we think we needed to look at everything?” she asked Hannah. “I feel kind of sick now.”
“You made me do it,” Hannah said. “That’s my story.”
“What should we do now?” Maggie asked. “We can’t just leave it here, and we can’t give it to Scott. It would be inadmissible I think, because of how we found it.”
“If any of this stuff got out, it would hurt a lot of people,” Hannah said.
Maggie chewed her lip while she thought a minute, and then made a decision.
“Okay, we take Ava’s pictures for sure, and Brian’s stuff, the letters, and the file on Knox. I sure don’t want Doris Machalvie to see Doc’s pictures. Anybody you want to protect?”
Hannah chose Ed’s father. “He was really good to Sam when he came home from the war,” she said. “I don’t want Ed to ever see these.”
“What about the fire chief?” Maggie asked.
“Well, now we now know why he blamed your wiring when Theo burned your house down,” Hannah said. “He was being blackmailed.”
“That explains it,” Maggie said. “These photos would devastate his wife. We’ll take them too.”
Hannah frowned.
“Doesn’t it feel like we’re playing God here?” Hannah said. “Maybe we should burn all of it.”
“Technically speaking, this is all evidence,” Maggie said. “We shouldn’t be tampering with any of it. One of these people might have killed Theo.”
“So we can take the dead ones for sure, because we know they didn’t do it,” Hannah reasoned. “That covers Ed’s dad and Chief Estep. Unless Ed killed Theo because of what he had on his dad.”
“I think it’s more likely Ed would expose Theo for being a blackmailer. That seems more his style. I never thought for one moment Ed killed Theo.”
“Oh, me neither,” Hannah said. “I’m wondering what the police would think. He’s already a suspect, and this would give him one more motive if they could prove he knew about it.”
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