It was still early, and Pete and I were in the process of discussing what else we might do with the rest of our evening when my phone buzzed. Caller ID identified my aunt.
“Maralee, I just opened Tatiana’s box and there’s something quite disturbing in it.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a note from Stasia. She’s gone away to join her husband.”
“I don’t understand. Stasia isn’t married. What does the note say?”
“Is Pete still there?” she asked. “Maybe you two ought to come over here and look at this.”
Pete had moved close enough to me to overhear part of the conversation. He motioned for me to hand him the cell. “We’ll be right there, Miss Russell,” he told my aunt. “Don’t touch anything else in that box.” He handed back my phone. “Come on.”
I washed my hands and grabbed my jacket. I’d deal with the mess in the kitchen later. Pete was already on his way downstairs and O’Ryan had returned to his windowsill perch.
When we got to the library, the brown packing box containing Tatiana and her wardrobe was on one of the pastry carts. The glass door of the display case was open, a blowup copy of the photo of the grand duchess wearing the blue dress from the Anastasia’s Album book posted on the background.
“I haven’t touched anything but the note,” she said, waving a piece of lined paper. “Here it is.”
Pete reached for the note and, holding it by the edges, read it aloud.
Dear Miss Russell and Lee,
Here’s Tatiana. I can’t take her with me and I know you’ll find a safe place for her. My husband has come for me and we are going home to Russia. Don’t worry about me. We have more money than you’ve ever dreamed of and will live in a great house where no one will find us. My husband broke the clock. I’m sorry. Sometimes he has a bad temper.
Stasia Novikova Ivanov
“Ivanov! My God,” Pete said. “She’s married to Boris Medvedev.”
“Medvedev is really Ivanov?” my aunt asked.
“Your friend St. John gave us that information last week,” Pete said. “Boris took Medvedev as his professional wrestling name. We didn’t know about the wife though. We traced the private jet, so we know exactly where Medvedev went last night. She’s probably gone to meet him. I’d better get back to the station and follow through on this. I don’t like it one damned bit.” He put the note on top of the doll and picked up the box. “Sorry. I’m going to have to ask your permission to take”—he looked down at the doll—“Tatiana here with me.”
“Of course if you must. But please be careful with her.” My aunt gave a long sigh.
“They must have figured out how to hack into Dillon’s laptop,” I said. “The location of the other horse . . . the one with the egg in it—it must be in his manuscript.”
“She’s gone to meet him in Colorado,” my aunt said. “Are we right?”
But Pete was already on his way out the door. “See that Lee gets home, will you?”
We finished setting up a table with a map of Russia on an easel, along with the carved matryoshkas and the chess pieces, and we closed the display cabinet, sans Tatiana. I rode back to Winter Street with Aunt Ibby.
“Rupert is going to pick me up shortly, dear, if you don’t mind. It’s still early enough for us to go to dinner. It’ll help to get my mind off Karl. I do hope he isn’t involved in any of Boris’s shenanigans.”
“I hope not,” I said, but I said it without much hope. After all, Karl Smith was the one who’d driven Boris Medvedev—or Ivanov—to the getaway plane.
I’d barely climbed the stairs to my apartment when my phone buzzed. It was Pete.
“Sorry to race off like that, but we have to move fast on this. You don’t happen to have a recent picture of Stasia, do you? I’m on my way to Logan Airport. Guessing she’s gone to Colorado. Got to see if Homeland Security there can tell us what flight she was on. They track everything and everybody.”
“I do. I’ll send it to your phone right now. I hope you can stop her before they do anything . . . foolish.”
“I hope so. Love you. Bye.”
I had to break my promise to Stasia, but I sent Pete the photo of her with Tatiana. It was a beautiful picture. I hoped she’d get to see it someday. I loaded the dishwasher and swept the kitchen floor. The little brown bird was still on the counter, slightly dusted with cinnamon. I couldn’t bring myself to throw her away, so I tucked her into one of the secret compartments in my bureau. She was in there, next to a lucky quarter Pete gave me once, and a white satin-covered button from an old wedding dress. I save the darnedest things. I polished the countertop and re-read the directions to the food processor, trying to take my mind off everything that was going on. Maybe it would be fun to try the other blades someday.
It was after eleven when O’Ryan and I went to bed. I hadn’t heard Aunt Ibby come in yet, but she and Mr. Pennington often stayed out quite late. I turned on the news, wondering if there’d be anything new on Karl Smith’s arrest. It was pretty much the same as the earlier broadcast, with the addition of some interviews with some of the Russian Tea Experience staff who all spoke highly of their employer—and publicly worried about their jobs.
I usually manage to stay awake long enough to catch the beginning of River’s show, but I felt myself dozing off when her theme music, Danse macabre, Opus 40, began. I noticed that Marty had used my doll photo, with a caption announcing the Library Bookmobile Benefit High Tea, in the bumper. I smiled in the darkness as I clicked the TV off. “Good night, cat,” I said, “and thanks for sending your little gray friend to see me today.”
“Meh,” he said, which I took as an acknowledgment that I was right.
O’Ryan wasn’t as ready for sleep as I was and he made that clear by nibbling on my ear. I pushed him away. “Go to sleep, fur ball,” I said, “or go back in the kitchen and look out the window.”
He obeyed that time. I watched in the tilted mirror as he stalked across the room and hopped up onto the windowsill. He didn’t stretch out and gaze at the moon though. He sat there on the sill and meowed. Loudly.
I pulled a pillow over my head, but it didn’t drown out the increasingly piteous wails coming from the kitchen. I began to feel guilty. Suppose he was in pain? Maybe he had a splinter in his paw or a toothache. I climbed out of bed, put the kitchen light on and sat in the chair beside the cat. I stroked his back, then scratched beneath his chin—two activities he likes very much. The meows immediately changed to purrs.
“Okay, now that you’ve got me wide-awake,” I said as he leaned into the stroking hand, “what do you want?”
He moved from the windowsill to my lap, and from there to the floor. He started across the room toward the hall. He looked back at me in a way that clearly meant to follow him.
“All right. Here I come.” I padded along behind him, thinking it was a good thing nobody could see me—playing follow the leader with a cat in the middle of the night. He led me to the living room and stood immobile in the middle of the room, facing the horse.
The room was dark, but there was enough light from streetlights and a brilliant half-moon to give a luminous glow to the horse’s white mane and the polished leaves of philodendron and bird’s-nest fern.
“Lovely,” I said. “Thanks for sharing this with me. Can I go back to bed now?”
He didn’t move, but fixed those golden eyes on a spot above the horse. It was, of course, just a spot on plain, old, ordinary window glass. I followed his gaze. The pinpoints of light and the swirling colors began.
I saw a room, one I was sure I’d never seen before. It was an ordinary living room—a couch with throw pillows, two chairs, a coffee table, with a bowl of candy on it. There was a large suitcase next to the door. The view shifted, exactly the way a TV camera pans around a set. Close-up of the throw pillows. Both pink. Close-up of the candy bowl. Not candy, but wrapped oblongs of bubblegum.
Stasia’s house!
There was a swi
rl of colors and I saw another room. A bedroom this time. A small night-light glowed pink. There was a figure on the bed.
Is it Stasia? I have to get closer.
In an instant it was as though I was hovering over her. It was Stasia—blood streaming from a cut on her forehead, eyes swollen shut, mouth covered with gray tape. Her legs were bound together with that same gray tape, arms behind her back.
Is she alive?
A tiny flicker of the bruised eyelids answered my unspoken question. The scene began to fade.
Don’t go away! What am I supposed to do?
I was looking at plain window glass in my own dark living room. Is this vision real? River says they can show the past, the present or the future. Which is this? Dear God, what if it’s the present?
I had to make a fast decision. Aunt Ibby wasn’t home. Pete was on his way to Boston. River was on live TV. Even Nigel was probably on a plane. No one to call—no one to help me decide. I couldn’t call 911. What would I say? I have visions and I think there’s a woman tied up in her house across town? I had to find out if what I saw in the window was happening now, or like so many other visions, something that happened in the past.
I dressed and grabbed my purse, phone, flashlight and keys. Telling myself I was crazy, all the way down the stairs, I broke into a dead run to the garage, backed my car out and took off.
CHAPTER 40
Stasia’s street was deadly quiet. No traffic, very few lights. I parked in front of the house and walked up to the porch. It was so quiet my footsteps on the wooden floorboards sounded like firecrackers. I knocked, much as I had earlier that same day, and called, “Stasia?” There was no reply. Had I really expected one? I walked all the way around the house again, deliberately not looking at the trash can. I knocked on the back door and thought I heard something. A moan? A cry? Or just the wind?
I returned to the front of the house with a feeling of panic beginning to build. I wasn’t sure I should break into the house, not sure I’d even know how. A gentle “meow” sounded from behind me and I stopped to pat the gray cat.
“I’m glad to see you,” I said. “Do you know how to get in here?”
I’m turning into a crazy, old cat lady—talking to every cat I see.
The cat turned abruptly away from me and walked to a flowerpot on the top step, where a scraggly pink geranium leaned to one side. The small gray paw snaked out, scratching at the saucer beneath the clay pot. It took about two seconds to figure out what she was showing me. The old key-under-the-flowerpot trick. Everybody does it. I used to hide one under a bird-of-paradise on my patio in Florida. I moved the pot, picked up the key and opened Stasia’s pink front door.
It’s not breaking and entering if you have a key, is it?
Closing the door behind me, I switched on the flashlight. I was in the right place. The couch, the pink pillows, it was all the same as the room in my vision. I heard a sound from the next room and this time I was sure it was a moan.
Stasia was on the bed, just as I’d seen her. Her mouth was covered with tape; blood streaked her forehead, matting the orange hair. Her arms and legs were tightly bound with tape.
“Stasia,” I whispered her name; then again, more loudly. “Stasia! It’s me. Lee.” The eyes opened in the battered face and she moaned again. I peeled the tape back from her mouth as gently as I could, knowing it must hurt. Her lips were swollen, one gold tooth broken. I hit 911 on my phone and, at the same time, tried to free her arms. “You’re going to be okay,” I said, over and over again. “You’re going to be okay.”
I gave the 911 operator the address and told her we needed an ambulance and the police. “They’re on the way,” she said. “Are you safe where you are?”
I hadn’t thought about that. Suppose whoever did this to Stasia came back? “I don’t know,” I said. “Please tell them to hurry.”
“On the way,” she said. “I’ll stay on the line with you.”
I turned Stasia onto her side and worked one of her arms free. The pink chenille bedspread was soiled where’d she’d been lying. “My God, Stasia, how long have you been here like this? Who did this to you?”
Her voice was a cracked whisper. “My husband. Boris. He . . . he hit me.” Tears mixed with the blood on her face. “I didn’t know. I thought we were going away together. All these years. All these plans.”
I heard sirens and saw the flashing lights. “Thank God, they’re here, Operator. Thank you.” I hung up, ran to open the front door and hit Pete’s number.
“Pete. I’m at Stasia’s. She’s here. She’s hurt. She never went to the airport. Boris beat her, Pete. She’s been right here since Thursday night.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine. The police and the ambulance are here now. Come as soon as you can. Will you call Aunt Ibby for me and tell her what’s going on—and that I’m okay?”
I hung up and led the men with a stretcher to Stasia’s room.
* * *
Everything moved quickly after that. Stasia was wheeled into the waiting ambulance. They let me ride with her, holding her hand as one EMT monitored her blood pressure and another administered oxygen. With the police car leading the way, we headed for the Salem Hospital emergency room.
“Did Karl bring Tatiana to you?” She strained to get the words through swollen lips.
Karl?
“Yes, Stasia. Tatiana is fine. We have her.”
“Good.” She tried to smile. “We were going to Russia, Lee. To live like the czars, he said.” Tears, mixed with the drying blood on her cheek, stained the white sheet. “He lied. Always lied. Now he’s gone to get it. The last one.”
“Where is it, Stasia? Where did he go?”
No reply. The ambulance rolled to a stop and everything moved quickly, efficiently. Stasia disappeared on a rolling gurney through automatic doors.
“May I come with her? She’s very frightened.”
“The police will want to talk to you, miss. Just go to the waiting room.”
There were about a dozen people in the large, bleak room. Some of them looked as though they’d been waiting for a long time. Curious stares followed me as a uniformed officer motioned me to the far end of the room.
“Sit down, miss. I’ll be recording your statement. What’s your name?”
Name, address, occupation—these are easy. How am I going to explain why I was there? A cat sent me, and another cat showed me how to get in?
“Why were you there?”
“I was very worried about her. She’s involved in an event at the library tomorrow—today. I couldn’t get in touch with her. So I went to her house.”
True.
“Was the door unlocked?”
“No. She kept the key under a flowerpot.”
True.
He shook his head. “Wish people wouldn’t do that. Okay. Was she able to tell you anything? Who did this to her?”
“She said it was her husband.”
Another headshake, but no comment. “You know him?”
“I’ve never met him.”
True. Pete, hurry up and help me out here.
Aunt Ibby and Pete arrived at the same time. Pete had called her on his way back to Salem. My aunt swooped into the room, rushing past interested onlookers to embrace me. “Excuse me, George,” she said to the officer. “This is my niece.”
“Miss Russell.” He tipped his hat, then turned to Pete. “Detective, this lady discovered the victim. She called 911.”
“It’s okay,” Pete said. “I know her. I’ll take over here. Chief Whaley’s been informed.”
Pete turned to me. He didn’t look pleased. Extreme cop face in place. “What were you thinking, going over there alone in the middle of the night? I guess you know the chief isn’t happy about this.”
“I . . . I knew something was wrong. You were gone. Aunt Ibby wasn’t home. Stasia needed help. Right away.”
His expression softened. “You ‘saw’ something.”
“I did.” I looked around the room at questioning faces. “I can’t talk about it here.”
“I know. You two go along home and I’ll come by when I finish up here.”
My aunt took my hand. “Come along, Maralee. Dear Rupert has gone to stay with your car to be sure it doesn’t come to any harm. I’ll drive you there. Then we’ll go home and wait for Pete.”
* * *
There’s something so comforting about having someone in control, someone who knows how to take charge in a bad situation. I’m blessed to have Aunt Ibby.
At her direction Mr. Pennington, indeed, had gone to stand guard over my precious car. When we arrived, there he stood in the middle of the street, smiling, directing traffic around it—with dramatic Shakespearean bows and flourishes. Then, with Aunt Ibby’s Buick, Mr. Pennington’s Lincoln, and my Corvette, we formed a convoy of sorts and headed back to Winter Street.
Once at home, my aunt sent me upstairs to retrieve the three chilled bowls of cookie dough and handed out aprons. Within fifteen minutes, she’d organized the three of us into an assembly line of cookie makers. (Never mind that I had visions of Lucy and Ethel at that point.)
By the time Pete arrived, both ovens were producing perfectly browned circles, braids and mounds. Cooling racks, upstairs and down, held hundreds of examples of authentic-looking tearoom treats and the whole house smelled wonderful. At any other time this might have been fun, but the sad and strange events of that long day cast a pall of gloom over it all.
I was still watching over the oven in my kitchen, setting the timer with each batch. Pete came upstairs to help me, leaving my aunt and Mr. Pennington to finish their cooking and to tend to the packaging of the cooled finished products.
Murder Go Round Page 27