by Lynn Bohart
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, using her fingers to sort through the metal caps. “He keeps bottle caps in this beautiful jewelry box?”
“Wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “Let me check something.”
I grabbed the box. It was large, maybe a foot and a half long by ten inches wide and six to seven inches deep. The top was ornately inlaid with different colors of mother of pearl in the shapes of roses and stems. I turned the box over and dumped the caps out and studied the bottom. There were four brass shell-shaped feet at the corners.
“Don’t you remember how Miller said his grandfather knew how to hide things?” I said. “He had the secret compartment at the bottom of a traveling chest and the trap door under the floor of the brothel.” I fingered a small brass crank in the center of the bottom. “It’s a music box,” I said.
“But there could be a secret compartment, right?” Jake said excitedly.
“Yes,” I said. “A lot of old boxes have them. Now I just have to find it.” I pushed and prodded the four feet at the corners, turning the box in my hands as I did so. Nothing happened. I placed it back on the desk with the lid up and studied it for a moment. “I’ve seen a lot of furniture with secret compartments. There’s usually a spring or a lever of some kind.” I pressed the lever that would trigger the music. Nothing. I searched the inside of the box, but there was nothing to press. I turned it over and twisted the music crank. Nothing. Finally, I pressed my finger sideways against the crank mechanism and the bottom of the box popped open.
“Whoohoo!” Jake yelled.
Inside, there were two tattered old journals - a red one and a gold one. There were also some loose papers, a stack of yellowed envelopes, a ring of ancient keys, and some jewelry.
“These seem like things old Gramley Miller might have saved, except the jewelry,” Blair said.
“Yeah, I wonder who it all belongs to.” I picked up a delicate gold necklace with evenly spaced pearls and a gold cross pendant. “This one is quite unique, and it would have been a spendy item back in the day.” As I fingered the chain, a warm rush of energy flowed up my arm.
Meanwhile, Blair picked up one of the journals. “This must be what Miller’s sister was talking about,” she said, flipping pages in a small faded red notebook. “Look here.”
I pulled my attention away from the necklace. “What is it?”
Blair was pointing to what looked like a ledger page. “He’s recorded a name at the top of each page. This one is Betsy Cannon. He’s listed her age as nineteen. She was from Alberta, Canada. Then it looks like he recorded money she’d earned.”
I grimaced in distaste. “God, how callous.”
Blair shrugged. “Well, whether you like it or not, he was a businessman. It looks like he also noted when he spent money on them.”
“You mean like for clothes and stuff?” Jake asked.
Blair was studying the book, skimming various pages. I suspected she was filing away all the information in the book for later reference.
“Yeah. Clothes, personal items,” she said, turning pages. “Oh, wait a minute.” She glanced at me, and I could see her blanch. She turned the book around. “Here’s the page for Lollie Gates. But notice the big red mark half way down the page.”
Lollie Gates’ page listed her as nineteen years old, from Vancouver, Canada. But the page was only half filled out. As Blair said, in the column where Gramley Miller had totaled how much each girl was making for him, Lollie’s ended abruptly with a red slash mark across the page. There was nothing after it.
“Probably when she died,” I said sadly.
A feather light breeze fluttered past my ear, making me spin around.
“What?” Blair asked.
My eyes darted around the room, looking for the source as my heart thumped. “I don’t know. I just felt…”
Jake had picked up the other book. “This one looks like people who worked for him,” he said, skimming pages. “Here’s someone he paid to haul trash.” He flipped a page. “Um…here’s someone who delivered the liquor. And here are two bartenders.” He flipped more pages and then stopped. “Uh, oh. Here’s someone named LaRue. The last date on Lollie Gates’ page was August 23, right?” he asked Blair. She nodded, and he said, “Look at this.” He pointed to a date half-way down the page.
“Whoa,” I said.
The entry was dated August 24th in the same year and read, “Gates - $200.”
“Remember what Rudy said? The old guy she talked to in Canada said Jack LaRue was paid $200 to bury Lollie,” I said, astonished. “But why would Miller record it?”
“Like I said, he was a businessman,” Blair said. “And he didn’t say what the entry meant. He could always say that he just paid LaRue to transport Lollie back to Canada. Look, there’s another entry for $200 next to the name Bourbonaise.”
“Damn!” I exclaimed. “So he must’ve killed Bourbonaise, too.”
“I wonder if there’s any proof that Lollie never actually left the island,” Jake said.
My water glass suddenly slid to the end of the table and flipped off onto the floor.
Jake’s eyes flew open, and he jumped halfway out of his seat. “What?”
Blair and I sat there, staring down at the glass that had rolled a few feet away on the floor.
“I take it that means yes,” Blair said, as a waitress hurried over to clean up the mess.
As she left to get a towel, I replied, “Um…yeah.”
Jake was watching us, his face expressing full-blown shock as he sat slowly back down.
“What was that?” he asked. “No one was anywhere near that glass, and yet it…it just flew off the table.”
Blair and I shared a cautious look. “The inn is haunted,” I said matter-of-factly. “And sometimes ghosts kind of follow me around. That was either Elizabeth St. Claire, her daughter, Chloe, or it might have been Lollie.”
“I vote Lollie,” Blair said with a shrug. “So, what do we do now?”
“Wait a minute…seriously?” Jake said. “That was a ghost?”
My initial surprise had dissipated, as it always did, so I said, “Most likely. I’ll loan you the book, The Most Haunted Hotels in the Northwest. We’re in it. And I’ve felt Lollie’s presence several times recently.” I glanced down at the necklace laced through my fingers. “I’m with Blair. I think that was her, and she was telling us she’s still on the property.” The necklace grew warm in my hands again.
“Damn,” Jake said. “I need to hang out with you guys more often.”
“We’re just a couple of old broads,” Blair said with a smile.
“Who believe in ghosts and hunt down murderers. I’ll take you any day over some of my lame friends.”
“Wait, look at this,” Blair said, pulling a stack of old black and white photos out of one of the yellowed envelopes.
“Look at the backs,” I said, noticing that there was writing on the back of each photo as she shuffled through them.
Blair turned them over one by one. “They’re pictures of the girls,” she said. “Oh, my…here’s Lollie!” She stopped to study the photo. “She was beautiful.”
She handed over the photo of a young girl with long, curly, raven black hair. The girl leaned against the wall with her bare feet crossed at the ankles, wearing only a full slip that came to mid-thigh. Bruises showed on one arm, and her lips were pressed together in an awkward, forced smile. My heart ached. But the biggest surprise was the necklace around her neck. It was the same one I now held in my hand.
“Look at this,” I said. “She’s wearing this necklace.”
They both leaned in to study the photograph.
“The bastard killed her and then stole her necklace,” Jake said.
“Yes, so what do we do next?” I said.
Jake shrugged. “I talked to Mary Haley this morning. She said we can hold onto everything inside the box for now. But she’d like the box back, so I’m going to drive up to Leavenworth this aftern
oon to return it to her.”
I closed the secret compartment and handed the box back to Jake. “I think that’s a good idea. Drive carefully,” I said, thinking I’d grown fond of young Jake Dooley.
He grinned. “Don’t worry about me. My granddad says I drive like a little old lady.” He stopped and looked at us, his facial expression frozen. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean…”
I burst out with a laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. We’re not offended.”
Blair just leaned back and smiled. “Maybe I should drive you up there so you’ll get back before bedtime.”
I chuckled. Leavenworth was a good two-hour drive each way. “More like before dinner.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Three hours later, Blair and Doe and I were sitting in my living room with David and Sean, ready to talk about everything we’d learned during our research and how it might be connected to the fire. Doe had cancelled a meeting in order to be with us, but Rudy was playing golf and so would be late.
The mood was glum.
“Okay,” Sean said. “Time to fill us in.”
“It’s hard to know where to begin,” I said. I had my laptop on the ottoman in front of me and had pulled up my notes. “There’s just so much.”
“Let’s break it down,” Doe said. “There are two murders for sure that have popped up as we’ve been researching the inn. The baby you already know about, and then there’s the death of a prostitute named Lollie Gates.”
“Don’t forget potential murders,” I reminded her. “The death of Rose Foster and her boyfriend, Chris Stephens, are both suspicious.”
“And then there’s what Emily Foster said,” Blair added. “She said that none of the murders have been solved.”
“Then there’s Frank Miller, who stole the Kettle sisters’ diamond necklace,” I said.
“Yes, and the disappearance of the detective from Canada,” Doe quickly added.
Sean put up a hand. “Stop! Are you serious? This all came out while you were researching the history of this place?” His chiseled features were crimped with skepticism.
“Yes,” I replied. “So get ready to take notes. It’s complicated.”
David already had a pad of paper out, and Sean pulled a small notepad from his pocket. “Okay, where do you want to start?”
“Let’s start with Emily Foster,” Doe said.
“What about Emily Foster?” Sean asked. “I was told that Judge Wendell Foster once lived here. How is she related to him?”
“She’s his extremely strange and nutty daughter,” Doe said
I glanced at Blair, but she just sat back and folded her hands in her lap.
“She’s mentally ill,” I said. “She was once hospitalized, but has been living up on Camano Island, taking care of her ailing father for the past ten years or so.”
“So I take it she’s the potential suspect for the fire and not her father,” Sean said.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve been to see her twice. We also met with her brother once – Mansfield.”
The handsome detective’s eyes lit up. “Judge Mansfield Foster?”
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“I’ve run across him a few times. He’s a mean son-of-a-bitch.”
“That’s what we’ve heard. Blair and I went to meet with him. He wasn’t nasty to us, but…”
“He’s a misogynist pig,” Blair interjected.
Both men chuckled. “Okay, thanks,” Sean said. “Go on. Why do you think Emily Foster might have been the one to start the fire?”
“Her sister Rose had a baby when the family lived here and died shortly after that. She was only sixteen. Her death was reported as an accidental drowning, but we were told by someone who knew Rose’s mother that her mother thought it might have been murder.” I paused a moment, building up the courage to say what had to come next. “And we think the baby Mr. Piper found in the attic was hers.”
“Rose’s?” David said.
“Yes.”
The men were quiet for a moment. Then David asked, “What makes you think that?”
I took a deep breath. This was where I had to have faith that David cared enough for me that he wouldn’t write me off as a kook.
“Because we believe that Rose’s baby was a Down’s Syndrome baby, and that’s why it was locked up in the attic. From what we’ve learned about Judge Foster, he probably would have seen a baby like that as an abomination. And we think that perhaps Emily was locked up there with her.”
“We haven’t heard anything back from the ME yet. How do you know the baby was female and a Down’s baby?”
There was a long silence.
“Because Chloe and Elizabeth told us,” I finally said. “Elizabeth told us her name was Marigold, and Chloe told the little girl across the street about her…her…”
“I get it,” David said. He sat back against the sofa with a frown. “Messages from the beyond. Not exactly something we can include in our notes.”
“But we can ask for a rush from the ME,” Sean said. “And maybe that will corroborate what you say.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“Do you think Emily killed the baby?” David asked.
“Yes,” Doe said. “She got very nervous when she found out that Julia had found the hidden room, and she’s the one who let it slip that Rose had even had a baby. And that got us kicked out in a hurry. She kept saying that her father would punish her if he knew we’d found the room. She became unhinged at that point.”
“But why burn down the barn?” Sean asked.
“We never told her that we’d already found the diaper bag with the baby inside, so she might have been trying to burn up the evidence,” Doe speculated.
The detective nodded. “We’ll have to take a run out there and talk to her.”
“Good luck with that,” Doe murmured.
“What else?” David asked.
“Well, then there’s the whole thing with Frank Miller,” I said with some trepidation.
David turned and gave me a curious look. “What whole thing with Frank Miller?”
“It starts all the way back when this was a brothel,” Blair said. “And a prostitute named Lollie Gates was kept here.”
Both men looked at her with clenched brows.
“A prostitute?” Sean asked.
“Yes, we found out about her because we decided to research the entire history of the property, not just the inn,” I said. “And the property goes all the way back to the turn of the last century. That’s actually when the barn was built. There was a hotel here then.”
“Which burned down in 1920,” Rudy said from where she stood in the hallway. She was still dressed in her Bermuda shorts, magenta shirt and golf cap. “And a guy named Gramley Miller bought the property and built a brothel during Prohibition. He moved his family here.” She came into the room, dropped her purse on the floor and sat on the piano bench. “But when he started abducting young women from Canada to force them to work in the brothel, his wife took their daughter and left him. She moved to Leavenworth, where their granddaughter still lives.”
“The granddaughter’s name is Mary Haley and her brother is Frank Miller,” I said. “He owns a bar down in Puyallup.” I shut up at that point. I didn’t want to recount the confrontation with Gold Tooth and his buddy in the bar.
“How do you know this Gramley Miller was abducting women from Canada?” David asked Rudy.
“I drove to Canada and interviewed Lollie Gates’ grandniece,” she said. “The story about how Lollie had been lured away from her home had been passed down in the family. Along with how her parents had hired a private detective named George Bourbonaise to find her. He found her right here at the brothel.”
“Here,” I said, producing the letter from Lollie’s mother. “April found this in the drawer of an old chest up in our attic. It’s from Lollie’s mother.”
Sean took the letter and scanned it quickly, handing it over to David. “So the p
arents knew she was here and were going to rescue her. What happened?”
The three of us shared sad looks. I was the one to speak up.
“We also have her diary, in which she talked about being pregnant. She might have been murdered because of her pregnancy, but more likely because Gramley Miller found out about Bourbonaise snooping around.”
“What makes you think she was murdered?” David asked.
“Again, my trip to Canada,” Rudy replied. “I met an old guy up there who used to hang out at a bar in the area where a man named Jack LaRue had come from. LaRue was Gramley Miller’s employee at the brothel. As the story goes, after the brothel burned down, LaRue returned to Canada and told people that Miller had killed Lollie and then forced him to bury her…somewhere on this property.”
“Jeez, this is better than a soap opera,” David said.
“But there’s more,” I said. “Miller knew about Bourbonaise coming to find Lollie because of the man who used to run the ferry back then. He was paid to let Miller know when police were coming over to bust him or anything else that might threaten his business.”
“So the ferryman let Miller know about Bourbonaise,” David said.
“Yes. Bourbonaise asked him about Lollie when he took the ferry to the island. The story is included in the great-grandson’s diary.” I had Aria’s memoir sitting right next to me and handed it to Detective Abrams.
“The memoir also says that Aria’s great-grandfather heard voices from the bottom of a trunk that Gramley Miller used to travel back and forth with,” Blair said.
David looked up. “What does that mean?”
“Frank Miller told us that’s how his grandfather moved his product,” I said with distaste.
“So Frank Miller might be the guy who torched your barn?” Sean asked.
“Maybe,” I replied. I couldn’t help but glance again at Blair. “Blair and I went to see him last week. We told him we were writing a book about the history of the property and wondered if he had any stories about the brothel passed down through the family. And that’s when he mentioned that someone else had been out to talk to him about the same thing.”