Primrose answered the question. “Lots of holes in it, but it’s beginning to make sense.”
“Primrose is good at this,” Therese said. “It sounds like she’s telling a story.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” I said. “Telling a story.”
“I mean the way she’s doing it. It’s, like, from Mr. and Mrs. Trumbull’s point of view. As though they were still alive now and have seen everything that’s happened since they opened the store on the first day.”
I was impressed. “Nice going, Primrose,” I said. “An excellent way to frame it.”
I meant it, and I was pretty sure the overseers of the grant would like it, too. Now, if I could only get my own puzzling storyboard to make as much sense as the one my students were creating. We worked until five o’clock, when the six students grabbed coats and hats and said hasty good-byes, leaving me alone with Therese’s neat stack of printouts and my own meager, not so neat pile of index cards.
My phone buzzed. I smiled when I read the caller ID.
“Hi, Pete,” I said. “What’s up?”
“It’s five o’clock,” came the warm, familiar voice. “You get rid of all those little darlin’s yet?”
“All gone,” I said. “I’m alone and was just thinking of heading out into the cold for the walk home. You know, I’ve got to get serious about buying a car.”
“How about I come over there now and drive you home, and then maybe later we can catch a movie or something? I’ve got the night off.”
“You have no idea how good that sounds, Pete. It’s been a strange day.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Meet me out front?”
I wanted to say, “Make it five,” but didn’t. I dialed Mr. Pennington’s number, dreading what I had to tell him about my students’ unauthorized basement investigation, and was relieved when the voice message said he’d be out of the office until tomorrow. After scribbling “Tell Pennington” on a fresh index card and “Cat in the tunnel?” on another, I stuffed the printouts and cards into a manila envelope, made a quick trip to the restroom to freshen my makeup, then pulled on my jacket. I was standing outside the glass doors when Pete’s car pulled up to the curb.
He leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door for me. “Hop in. It’s cold out there.”
“Dark too,” I said. “Not even five thirty and it looks like midnight.”
“Welcome to New England winter.”
“I know. I thought I missed it a little when I lived in Florida—the pretty snowfall, the skaters on the pond, chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . . you know, all the Norman Rockwell stuff.”
“And now?”
“Hmm. Not so much. I’m ready for an early spring.”
“Aw, come on. It’s not so bad here.” He frowned. “You’re not thinking about leaving? Going back to Florida?”
“Not for a minute. I’m home to stay.”
“Good.” He smiled as we rounded the corner to Winter Street and parked in front of the house. “Shall I come back and pick you up around seven? We can catch an early movie and maybe stop in at your friend’s tavern later.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said. “See you at seven.” I waved, dashed up the stairs, and stepped into the welcoming warmth of home, complete with purring cat weaving in and out between my feet.
“Hello, Maralee,” my aunt called from the den. “You’re early. I thought you might phone me for a ride home.”
“Pete picked me up. I was all prepared for a nice brisk walk, though. I don’t like to keep depending on you for transportation.”
“It’s no bother.”
“I was just telling Pete, it’s time for me to start looking for a car of my own.”
“Whatever pleases you, dear. Are you ready for a bite of supper?”
“Just a tiny bite,” I said. “Pete will be back at seven. We’re going to the movies.”
“I have a nice pea soup in the freezer. I was thinking of having that with some fresh hot johnnycake.”
“Perfect. Need any help?”
“Not a bit. You run upstairs and get yourself prettied up for your date.” She was already heading for the kitchen. “While we eat, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned so far about the Trumbulls.”
“Really? Anything juicy?”
“I think you’ll be surprised. Hurry along now.”
A quick shower, a change into black jeans and a white turtleneck, and I hurried back downstairs. Steaming pea soup in a white ironstone tureen and hot-from-the-oven johnnycake were already on the kitchen table. The meal, as usual, was delicious, but I could hardly wait for Aunt Ibby’s report on what she’d learned about the Trumbulls.
“I think I told you,” she began, “that I could access the vertical files where paper items, like notebooks and correspondence and records and such, are kept.”
“You did,” I said. “There’d be things there in their own handwriting, wouldn’t there?”
“Absolutely. And there was plenty to look at, I’ll tell you. I haven’t had time yet to really study anywhere near all of it, but I did glean a few interesting tidbits.”
“Tell me.”
“Back in the late nineteen eighties there was a big to-do around here about a Salem commercial fishing boat running guns to Ireland for the IRA.”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember that.”
“Well, you were very young. Anyway, the boat’s captain and a couple of crew members went to jail after they got caught.” She dropped her voice. “The papers said that they were exchanging the guns for cocaine. The boat belonged to one of the Trumbull boys. Oliver Jr.”
“Did he go to jail, too?”
“He was never charged with anything. A Captain Gable took the whole blame. He was sentenced to twenty years in a prison in Connecticut.”
“Twenty years. He must be out by now,” I said.
She shook her head. “Died in jail, poor soul. But what I found today was a small packet of letters he wrote. To Tabitha Trumbull.”
CHAPTER 14
For a moment I didn’t say anything, doing some fast calculations in my head.
“Wait a minute. If that was in the late eighties and Tabitha died in the early nineties, she must have been pretty old by then and, well, pretty crazy. How could she carry on a correspondence?”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Aunt Ibby said. “But apparently, Tabitha was in the habit of sending small sums of money to the captain’s wife.”
“Maybe she wasn’t so crazy, after all,” I said. “River says that her witch friend, Megan, used to visit Tabitha regularly, and that the old woman could carry on intelligent conversations. And, Aunt Ibby, you won’t believe this, but Tabitha lived in her room up over the store until just before she died.”
“No! How could that be?”
“Megan says it’s true. A nurse stayed with her, and I suppose her family visited her, but she lived up in that room all that time. She must have been sending the money from there.”
“The notes from the captain were all brief thank-yous. Things like ‘Thank you for your letter and for the twenty dollars you sent to my wife. We appreciate your help.’”
“So she wrote letters to the captain and sent money to his wife. That was kind of her,” I said.
“It was,” my aunt agreed, “but one of the notes was a bit confusing.”
“How so?”
“The captain wrote the usual thanks for the twenty dollars. It was always the same amount, by the way.” She paused and leaned forward. “He said that the money made it possible for her to buy brand-new bicycles for all four of the kids.”
“With twenty dollars?”
“I know.” She frowned. “Even at nineteen eighty prices, you couldn’t buy much for five bucks, let alone a brand-new bike.”
“Strange,” I said, mentally adding five-dollar bicycles to my puzzle pile. “I’ll clean up these dishes and feed O’Ryan. Pete should be along in a few minutes. Thanks for the y
ummy supper.”
O’Ryan heard his name in connection with food and strolled into the kitchen, looking up at me expectantly. I opened a can of baby shrimp, added a sprinkle of bacon bits, and placed the red bowl on his personalized place mat.
“There you go, spoiled cat,” I said as I loaded the dishwasher. “You and I have lucked into a good deal here, haven’t we?”
“I’m the lucky one,” said Aunt Ibby. “It’s my great pleasure to have you both with me. I’ve been thinking of Tabitha and how lonely she must have been up there in that sad place.” She sighed. “But I haven’t even asked about your day.” She looked at the kitchen clock. “Maybe later?”
I’d been thinking about how and what and how much to tell her about my day.
“Definitely,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it. River and I went up to the top floor this morning and spent some time in Tabitha’s room.”
“Really? I’ll wait up for you. I want to hear every detail.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, knowing that she would, anyway.
O’Ryan looked up suddenly from his bowl and streaked for the front door. The cat, as usual, was right. I caught up with him and peeked from the tall windows next to the door. Pete’s headlights shone as he rounded the corner of Winter Street, and seconds later the Crown Vic pulled to a stop at the curb.
“Smarty-pants cat,” I muttered, taking my jacket from a hook on the hall tree. “Aunt Ibby,” I called. “Pete’s here.”
“Have a nice evening, dear,” came the reply. “Talk to you later.”
By the time I opened the door, Pete had already started up the steps. “Wait a sec. I’m coming.” He slipped an arm around my waist. “Might be icy. Can’t have you breaking anything.”
I had to laugh. “I’m fine, Pete. I’ve been running up and down these stairs since I was a baby.”
“I know.” His eyes sparkled in the glow from the overhead lamp as he pulled me closer. “I just like holding you.”
“I like it, too,” I said, realizing how very much I liked it.
We headed toward East India Square and lucked out with a metered parking space just a few doors down from CinemaSalem.
“What’ll it be?” Pete asked, looking at the titles on the marquee. “There’s a new Bruce Willis flick. How about that?”
“Look,” I said. “They have one of my old favorites. Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
“We’ll toss a coin,” he said. “Want to call it?”
“Okay,” I said. “Heads, it’s new Bruce Willis. Tails, it’s vintage Harrison Ford.”
“Fair enough,” he said and reached into his pocket for a quarter and tossed it.
“Tails,” I said. “You lose.”
He handed me the coin. “Keep it for luck.”
“I will,” I said, slipping it into my pocket. “I’ll try to remember not to spend it.”
“At today’s prices, there’s not much you can buy for twenty-five cents.”
We bought a tub of popcorn and settled down in our seats as the title rolled and Indiana Jones began his race through a Peruvian jungle in search of a gold idol.
There, in the darkened theater, a couple of my puzzle pieces slid neatly together.
On-screen, Indy searched for a lost medallion. A gold, coin-shaped medallion. Pete’s words came back to me, and I reached into my pocket and rubbed my new lucky coin. What if the twenty-dollar gifts were in the form of gold coins?
“Pete.” I shook his arm. “Pete,” I whispered, “what’s a twenty-dollar gold piece worth?”
“Huh? I don’t know. Probably around a thousand dollars, I guess. Why?”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll tell you later.”
I settled back in my seat, reached for a handful of buttery popcorn, and relaxed. I could almost hear Nancy telling her father, “I’m going to keep working on this case until all the pieces in the puzzle can be made to fit together . . .”
Me too, Nancy. Me too.
The movie was every bit as good as I remembered it. Pete and I watched, holding hands like teenagers, as Indy wandered the snake pits of the Well of Souls and survived the pyrotechnic unearthing of the sacred ark.
“Okay,” he said as we walked back to the car when the movie was over. “What was all that about a twenty-dollar gold piece?”
“I don’t know if it makes a lot of sense yet,” I said, “but maybe gold coins have something to do with the documentary we’re making about the Trumbulls.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“I know.” I sighed. “It’s still in the preproduction stage.”
“Anything I can help with?” He held the door open for me, taking my elbow as I slid into the passenger seat.
“I need to mull it over in my head for a while,” I admitted. “As soon as I can come up with a logical question, I’ll tell you.”
“Sounds mysterious,” he said.
“It does? Great. I love a good mystery.”
He laughed. “And I love your girl detective side.”
Did I just hear the L word again?
“About the girl detective thing . . . ,” I began. “Something came up today that I think I need to tell you about.”
“You sound concerned. What happened?”
“I guess Chief Whaley must have told you about the two students they discovered wandering around in the basement.”
He nodded. “Sure. Trout and Martin. I heard.”
“They weren’t just walking around, Pete. Sammy and Duke actually opened the panel that leads to the tunnel, and Duke went in a little way.”
“We know about that. We’re on it. Got ’em on video.”
I was surprised. “There’s a camera down there? Then that means . . . ?”
“Yep. Got you, too, when you came down the stairs. Chief had the camera installed right after Sullivan disappeared. He wasn’t too happy to see you.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t. I wasn’t thrilled to see him, either. Does Mr. Pennington know, then? About those two opening the panel? I didn’t want to be the one who had to tell him what they’d done.”
“He knows. Don’t worry. We’ve got it handled.”
“They were just playing investigative reporters,” I said. “I hope it doesn’t get them expelled.”
“Don’t worry about that. Pennington thinks they were just being curious.”
“One more thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Thom was the lookout. He kept the security guard occupied.”
“Didn’t know that. We’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip. Guess you’re picking up a lot in that criminology course.”
“I’m just getting into the chapter on criminogenic traits, and it got me wondering.”
“You’re thinking the Trumbulls might have a criminal streak in the bloodline?” He glanced over at me, his expression serious.
“Aunt Ibby thinks so. She found a few things. One was that there were bootleggers using the old tunnel back during Prohibition. They were connected to the Trumbulls,” I said. “Apparently, a lot of people know about that.”
Pete nodded. “Right. You can even see the tracks in the old tunnel where they moved the booze on carts right up to the store’s basement. It must have been quite a sophisticated operation for those days.”
We had left downtown Salem and were headed toward Derby Street. Pete waved a hand in the direction of the harbor. “Of course, there are lots of cave-ins down there. And just to make it more confusing, whoever built the new tunnel just dug underneath the old one whenever they came to it, so the damn thing goes up and down like a roller coaster, part of it old and part of it new.”
“So Bill must have fallen into part of the new tunnel,” I said.
“Right. And they dug so deep in that spot that they needed a ladder to get up to the store’s basement. That would have been around the nineteen eighties, and it looks like whatever they were moving then had to be smaller and lighter than carts full of whis
key bottles.”
“Do you know what it was?” I asked.
“We have a few ideas. Nothing for sure.”
“The old tunnel sounds more interesting,” I said, thinking of the brick archway and the underground path the dark-haired woman had shown to me.
“Yeah. But both tunnels branch out all over town, and we keep coming to dead ends. We haven’t explored all of them yet. There is probably a bunch of them that lead to where the boats used to tie up. That’s where most of the smuggled stuff came from. Somewhere around here, I’d guess.”
As we drove along the darkened street, I tried to imagine what that long-ago waterfront must have looked like. By looking between buildings as we passed, I could catch brief glimpses of the ocean and even see distant flashes from the lighthouse on Baker’s Island.
“River told me that a woman named Megan was friends with Tabitha when they were little kids,” I said. “Tabitha’s family lived somewhere around here. Megan remembers an entrance to the tunnel right near a house where they played together.”
“That might be a good lead,” Pete said. “Any idea where that house was?”
“Somewhere near a coal yard, I think she said. Maybe you could check the old maps and deeds at city hall and figure it out.”
“Nice going, Lee,” he said. “Maybe I should talk to your friend River. She might remember even more details.”
“Sure. And you can probably talk to Megan. She’s a witch.” I paused to see what his reaction might be. He didn’t say anything or change his expression, so I continued. “She’s over a hundred years old.”
“Really? Mind still pretty good?”
“River says Megan never forgets anything.”
“Great. Know how I can get in touch with her?” he asked.
“Who? River or Megan?”
“Both. Either.” He smiled. “Nice going, Lee,” he said again.
I felt proud of myself. “Thanks,” I said. “I haven’t met Megan yet, but I’ll ask River to call you.”
“I’ll be interested to hear what else you and your aunt have dug up about the Trumbulls, too,” he said as we pulled up in front of Greene’s Tavern.
The good smell of a wood fire greeted us even before we climbed the few steps onto a narrow porch and opened the door. The retro jukebox, complete with bubble lights, played a Carrie Underwood tune. The clinking of glasses and the hum of conversation punctuated with bursts of laughter completed the picture of a friendly neighborhood bar. My puzzle could wait until later.
Tails, You Lose (A Witch City Mystery Book 2) Page 11