by Jenny Kales
April shouted and beat her fists on the door. Holding her breath and saying a prayer, Callie turned around so that she faced the door and pressed against it with all of her body weight. Stretching out her arm to reach the dresser, she saw now that it was a heavier than it had looked. She gritted her teeth and was able to pull it halfway in front of the door.
Unfortunately, Callie’s movements allowed April to make some headway. Muttering threats at Callie the whole time, the young woman pushed at the closet door until it opened about a quarter of the way. Callie was already on the other side, pushing the dresser in front of the door. With one huge shove, the closet door was barricaded, if only temporarily.
Callie heard her own ragged breath. She was really in a pickle now. Effectively all she had accomplished was to box herself into a closet. She grabbed her cell phone and dialed 911 with trembling fingers. The call wouldn’t go through.
She tried again, but it was no use. There was no cell phone reception.
Callie gripped the phone so tightly she felt she could nearly break it. Of course there was no cell phone reception inside the closet of such an old home. Back then, the walls were built to last.
It sounded like April was throwing her body against the door. Why didn’t somebody hear her? Callie used her back to brace the dresser more firmly against the door. It hurt. Her eyes scanned the small space wildly for some small sign of hope.
In the dark, she hadn’t noticed a strange detail when she’d first walked in. One part of the wall looked odd, like it had been painted over. Squinting, she saw a square, raised area.
Recalling Hugh’s words about the old homes with their secret compartments, Callie used one hand to hold onto the dresser, keeping her makeshift barrier in place. With the other hand, she pushed as hard as she could on the strange, square area of the wall. To her surprise, her hand burst through, creating a window-like opening. Without stopping to think, she pushed her body through the smallish space and fell with a thud on the other side.
Callie scrabbled to her feet and replaced the panel. It fit as neatly into place as a puzzle piece. However, if April had sharp eyes, she would be sure to notice it.
April was making progress on the other side of the wall. Breathing hard, Callie scanned her surroundings.
Callie was in what looked like a long, narrow hallway. Could this be one of the “secret compartments” that Hugh had discussed with her? Where did it lead?
First stopping to grab her phone from the dusty floor, Callie raced down the hallway, just as she heard April crash into the closet. There had to be another way out of this secret passage. There had to be!
No such luck. The hallway ended in a brick wall.
Callie pounded on the wall hoping that another secret compartment would magically appear, but to no avail. This wall must be the “hotel” side of The Harris House, and of course, it was sound proof. Panic rushed through Callie.
Her only hope now was the cover of the dark. She heard April stomping around on the other side of the wall. She’d figure out Callie’s hiding place any minute.
In the shadowy corner of the “secret passage” Callie spotted what looked like several dusty glass bottles. She ran over and picked one of them up, coughing as she dislodged what was probably decades of dust. Callie held her breath as she brushed at thick layers of dust and grime. The bottle had no label, only an amber liquid.
Could it be. . .bootleg? Thinking of Jay Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald who had gotten her into this mess in the first place, if you really thought about it, Callie was suddenly grateful for the lawlessness and ingenuity of bootleggers. She held the bottle loosely behind her back and dropped to the ground, as close to the wall as she could. Maybe she could hit April before she noticed her.
There was no time. With a scream of triumph, April was suddenly in the secret hallway and face to face with Callie. “Nowhere to run, now, is there?” she asked. She beamed the light of her phone directly into Callie’s face.
Callie blinked and stood up on shaky legs. She stared in puzzlement at what April held in her left hand: a feather boa, like the one Tammy Heckstrom had worn when she played a flapper.
“I picked this up in the dressing room after the last murder mystery show,” April sneered. “Now you can die looking just like a flapper. Since you seem so interested in that whole time period, it’s fitting don’t you think? What’s more, no one will even find you in here, once I reseal the wall. I know how to make it airtight.”
Adrenaline fueled by anger coursed through Callie. “Don’t be so stupid, April. Don’t you think people saw me come into The Harris House? They’ll wonder where I am.”
“Stupid?” April spat, walking a step closer. She shoved her phone into her front pocket and produced a sharp-looking screwdriver in its stead. She held it loosely in front of her, the point facing Callie. So now April had two weapons. Which one would she use?
None, if I can help it, Callie thought. She felt like she was in a boxing ring, the way that the two of them were circling each other. It was only a matter of time before one of them made the first move.
“Stupid?” April repeated with a wicked gleam in her blue eyes. “The stupid one was Holly. But you know that already.”
“What did Holly do, April? Weren’t you friends? You told me you thought she was smart.” Callie felt sick.
“Friends,” April repeated in a disgusted tone. “That’s what I thought. I found a manuscript in the Linley house and brought it to my good friend Holly because I knew she’d be able to tell me its value. That’s right, a manuscript from F. Scott Fitzgerald. A never-before-seen, never-before-published manuscript. Worth more than you can imagine. And I found it. Me.”
“Why…how…” Callie stammered.
“You’d be surprised what you find in these old houses.”
“Yes, but this is…an unusual discovery,” Callie sputtered, stalling for time. How was she going to get out of here?
Callie shuffled her feet, wondering if she could dart around April. “Seriously, how did you stumble on something like that?”
“Ha. This is the best part,” April said proudly. “Hugh gave me the idea. He was like one of the Hardy Boys, always wanting to talk about “secret compartments” and mobsters hiding things. Then, when Holly showed me Allan Browne’s article as part of the research she was doing, things just clicked. I was thrilled to have the chance to look inside the house where you found Holly, the one that used to belong to the Linley family.”
Callie gripped the bottle tightly and shifted her body slightly to the left of April, weighing her options.
April’s eyes glittered with excitement and greed. “I had the perfect explanation for doing it when we were hired to renovate it several weeks ago. We had to wait for the paperwork to go through, but I snuck in before the rest of the workers and found a fake wall behind a built-in bookshelf. No one had ever removed the shelf in any type of renovation, probably because it was beautiful, original wood. Lo and behold, that’s where the manuscript was stashed. It had a note attached, with the author’s signature. That alone will get me big bucks.”
Callie steeled herself. She had to keep April talking until she figured out an escape. “Did you rip that note? I think I found a portion of it.”
“Whatever,” April shrugged. “I still have the part of the note with his signature, plus I have the manuscript and I’m keeping it. That’s the important thing.” She inched closer to Callie and Callie felt her blood run cold.
“What about Lisa Linley?” she stammered. “Didn’t she have some claim to that house?” Callie felt her arm tense as she gripped the bottle, gathering strength for what she was about to do.
“Not a chance. While I was working with her one day, she gave me some sob story about legal battles. The gist of it was that she and her family wound up with nada. However, she felt like owning The Harris House was one way to make up for that. Whatever.”
April narrowed her eyes and stepped closer. “If you must k
now, the new buyers are some rich couple from Minnesota who made the purchase a couple of months ago. I had to act fast, before anyone else got there.” April choked out a laugh. “It turned out to be the best move I ever made.”
“But what about your friend…” Callie blurted out.
“Are you kidding? I could make a fortune selling this manuscript to a collector. Why shouldn’t I make money? Holly didn’t even think about that. She was selfish, self-absorbed. She’d led a privileged life and her parents had helped her pay for everything.”
With a shudder, Callie remembered the day that April had helped her to lug food items to the Beats on the Bay event. April had made a comment about people who had to really work for a living, unlike Allan Browne and his acting troupe. Callie gulped. She hadn’t known the depths of April’s resentments. How could she have?
April narrowed her eyes and Callie was chilled by the animosity in her tone. “I didn’t read them, but Holly said the stories were excellent. She couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t been published before. Holly said the breakup was probably messy. The author was famous for girlfriend troubles, and maybe he wasn’t able to retrieve the manuscript from her. Or maybe he started working on something else and just forgot about it. We’ll never know why or how the manuscript wound up there.”
Callie scanned the room looking for a way around April. She needed to catch her off guard. “So why did Holly need to die? You couldn’t have worked something out?”
“Holly tried to tell me that the manuscript belonged with the author’s estate, or at the very least, in a university library somewhere. But first she wanted to use it for her Master’s Thesis. She said it was ‘the right thing to do for the literary world.’ But she would have become a literary superstar! So where was the money in that for me? The money could be huge! I’d have enough for a nice nest egg to build my own business. You of all people should understand that.”
Callie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Poor Holly. How exciting for her to have access to such a manuscript! So that was the secret research she was doing, and that was why everyone was interested in the article: Tammy and her graduate advisor included. Maybe Holly had told them she was researching this notion, without telling them about the valuable item that her “friend” April had brought to her.
Callie was getting angry. Holly had been a wonderful person, and this woman was only interested in herself. “You were the one who took my cashbox at the music festival, weren’t you. Why?”
April smirked, and Callie couldn’t believe she’d ever believed this woman to be either charming or attractive. “To upset you. To throw you off your game. You kept sniffing around, and I figured you needed something to distract you. Same thing with Tammy. That little ploy had the added bonus of casting suspicion on Allan and the rest of the troupe. I have a strong muscle relaxant prescription for all of my work-related aches and pains. It came in handy.”
“I still don’t get why you killed Holly at the Linley House.” Callie took a cautious step to the side. The hallway was too narrow. She wouldn’t be able to dart past April.
“It was the perfect meeting place.” April took a step closer, and Callie tensed. “Nobody had moved in yet, and the workers hadn’t started the renovation. I asked Holly to meet me at the house to discuss how we were going to deal with the manuscript. She had been keeping it for her research, but now I wanted it back.” April’s eyes narrowed and her voice grew raspy with the memory. “She wouldn’t give it to me and kept saying that we had to share it with her college advisor. I realized then that she wasn’t going to stop being a problem.”
“So you killed her.” Callie said calmly but inside she was frantic. The narrow passageway and darkness seemed to be closing in on her. Time was running out.
A sudden rush of movement made Callie duck. April lunged, holding the ridiculous feather boa taut, trying to lasso it around Callie’s neck. In the commotion, the screwdriver clattered to the floor.
April grabbed Callie around the waist and pushed her towards the wall, but Callie pushed back as hard as she could. In one smooth motion, she whipped the bottle from behind her back and smashed it onto April’s head.
The bottle of bootleg whiskey had done its job. April abruptly released her before falling to the ground with a thud. She laid there, motionless, blood trickling from a gash on the back of her head.
Callie didn’t wait to see any more. She hopped over April, pushed out of the secret passageway and back out into The Harris House.
Twenty Seven
“Calliope! What were you possibly thinking?” George wailed as Callie relayed her story for what felt like the hundredth time, several days later. “Going to that house when you knew there could be danger? Going upstairs and snooping around. Secret passageways!” George threw up his hands. “That place always felt like a haunted house to me. Now I know I’m right!”
The two of them were working together in Callie’s Kitchen, the sun streaming brightly through her sparkling glass windows (painstakingly washed by Piper), and the huge breakfast crowd having just left. Truth be told, the crowd was even bigger than usual. Callie had made the news once again, and this time it didn’t have to do with pie or pita making. Her adventures had made front-page news. The splashy article even included a sidebar about her business. “You can’t buy publicity like this!” Sam had exalted. Mrs. DeWitt and Viv had agreed.
True, you couldn’t buy publicity like this, but Callie wouldn’t want to have to relive that frightening evening at The Harris House. She’d been shattered by the knowledge of what had happened to Holly. It had been tough breaking the news to Olivia, and she had kept it as simple and PG as she could. Olivia was going to need a lot of love and support. Thankfully, she had people eager to give her just that.
Surprisingly, Sands wasn’t the first to arrive at The Harris House following her escapades. She’d dealt with several of his colleagues before he finally emerged from a car and began his slow, long-legged walk over to her. For what seemed like a full minute he stood, shaking his head at her. “What are we going to do with you?” he asked.
“Get me out of here?” she’d said, not being facetious. “That’s all I want.”
“You were brave,” he said. “As a friend of Holly’s, we were investigating April.” He sighed, long and gustily. “I guess you just accelerated matters, didn’t you?”
“You could say that.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a job on the force? Then you’d actually have a reason for getting into these kinds of death-defying scrapes, and you’d sure make my life a lot easier. Wait, no. I take that back.”
“No worries, Sands. I’m sticking to food.”
“Right. Pardon me, but you don’t have a very good track record of sticking to food. By the way, did you keep any of that bootleg whiskey?” A smile quirked the corners of his mouth, and his hazel eyes were warm.
“I think it’s my new favorite drink,” she’d replied. Now, as she thought about him and their conversation, she couldn’t help but smile. He wasn’t thrilled with what she’d done, but he couldn’t exactly argue with the outcome, and things could have been worse.
George’s continued barrage of questions brought her back to the present. “What about everyone else involved? Allan Browne. Tammy. Lisa Linley. How do they fit in?”
“Allan Browne, as it turns out, while pompous as all-get-out, was an innocent bystander. He simply enjoys local lore and literature, in addition to theater. The money-making scheme that Josh alluded to was a pipe dream of Allan’s. He wanted to purchase a parcel of land and create an outdoor theater with the money. That’s why he was so anxious to have the murder mystery nights be a success. At first, they gave every indication that they would be a good source of revenue for both him and Lisa Linley. That is, until Holly was found murdered. Tammy being dosed with muscle relaxant didn’t help matters.”
Josh had informed everyone that Allan was writing a play based on the love story between Fitzgerald an
d “Genevieve.” Maybe Allan would finally have the success he’d hoped for.
Callie continued, feelings of sympathy towards his folly outweighing any ill feelings she had for him. “Allan is a dreamer, but not a killer. As far as Tammy, she didn’t know about the manuscript. Holly had hinted she was on the verge of something great, and I think Tammy was a little jealous, but not murderous. Tammy didn’t like Allan, either. She wasn’t sure if he had something to do with Holly’s death, but she figured he was no friend of the actors. She suspected him of something, and was sure he was out to sabotage her performance because he wanted her to quit the troupe.”
“Which brings us to Lisa Linley,” George prompted, his ears all but pricked up. For all his admonitions, he loved to hear how his daughter had helped solve the crime.
“Yes. Lisa Linley was guilty of a crime, so to speak, but not the one we were thinking of. She’s short on money after overspending on her purchase of The Harris House. April offered to cut corners. Instead of getting the necessary city permits, which, of course, requires inspections and possibly more renovations if they find violations in code, April simply went ahead with the work. I guess she figured she could make a quick buck and Lisa would be forced to work with her in the future. She falsified paperwork at Vintage Reno to cover her tracks.”
George started to interrupt, but Callie held up a hand. “There’s more. Apparently, Lisa wanted cosmetic changes only, and didn’t want to know if there were other issues. She simply couldn’t afford to know. Hugh claims April was the project manager, and he was in the dark. I guess I believe him. He was new to the company, after all.”
“Why buy a hotel you can’t afford to maintain? It doesn’t make sense.” George hadn’t heard about Lisa’s family and how they lost claim to the Linley mansion after a family spat, so Callie filled him in on the broad details. Lisa was only trying to recapture a dream along with some of the family honor, and Callie felt for her. When she was finished, he shook his head.