Being the Steel Drummer - a Maggie Gale Mystery

by Liz Bradbury

  Kathryn texted back, < 3rd fl. Someone else in house. I think it’s X.>

  I stood up, reached in my holster for my gun and listened. No sounds.

  I took two steps through the mudroom and pushed open the door to Suzanne’s office. I peered through the other office door for a better view into the living room. Everywhere seemed empty.

  If there was anyone else in the former home of Evangeline Lavender Fen and Victoria Willomere Snow, they were either hiding on the upper floors or had headed into the basement via the steps under the main

  staircase. I scanned the floor in the little hallway between the office and the living room and found a clue that I didn’t even need a big magnifying glass to see. Dusty footprints headed from the basement door into the downstairs powder room and back. Kathryn was right. The dust clinched it. X was probably in the house.

  I moved silently up the steps to the second floor. It had a large bedroom toward the front of the house and a smaller room at the back.

  No sign of anyone on that floor save muddy snowshoe-sized paw prints on the hallway rug leading to the third floor staircase. Buster howled again. I could hear Kathryn shushing him. I ran quietly up the stairs.

  There was a large open bedroom on the top floor. It had one window on the right, facing the street and two windows facing the back. All three windows were covered by thick curtains. The room was dark.

  There was no one in there, but I could smell Kathryn’s perfume. I crept up to a large oak closet door, taking those big toe-pointing steps that should have been punctuated by sneaking around music.

  When I got near, I heard Buster scratch the door, shake his dog tags, and then woof softly. Kathryn shushed him again.

  I cupped my hands to a crack and said, “Kathryn.” I tried to open the door, but it was locked.

  I heard the key turn inside. It was a large walk-in. A front window overlooking the street allowed in sunlight. It picked up Buster’s white spots and the rich shine of Kathryn’s hair.

  “Fancy you hiding in the closet,” I whispered.

  “It doesn’t suit me,” Kathryn whispered back.

  Buster flipped his ears. He was listening.

  “Am I about to be fired or is this something Dr. Watson always does?” said Kathryn.

  “Where’s Nora?”

  “I left her outside. Did she come in too?”

  “Wait...” I was listening along with Buster and I heard what he heard. There was someone moving around on the first floor again. I heard a door creak and some steps heading toward the kitchen.

  “Maybe it’s just Nora?” said Kathryn.

  “If it’s Nora, then why doesn’t she call out? I’m guessing she’s hiding from who’s walking around down there, making dusty footprints.”

  Kathryn nodded.

  Suddenly Buster jumped up, barked, and ran full speed past me,

  nearly knocking me over. He rocketed down the steps, crash-landing on the ground floor.

  Kathryn tried to call him back, but he wasn’t interested.

  “What the hell,” the killer mumbled downstairs. I heard a scuffle and then a gunshot, a yelp, a strangled scream. And Buster rapidly padding two flights back to us with something in his mouth and a few dots of blood on his ear. He’d been grazed, but not deterred. He was very happy with himself.

  “Bring that back, you fucking mutt!” grunted the voice.

  “Uh oh,” whispered Kathryn.

  I nodded, clicking the safety off my gun.

  We could hear footsteps coming up the stairs.

  Buster said, “Woof.” In full voice this time.

  We all backed up. Buster turned to face the stairs. The silhouette of an angry figure with a scarf wrapped to the eyes burst into the dark room. We couldn’t see a face clearly but I was pretty sure it was the person I’d suspected since the first moment I saw the wound in Suzanne’s neck. And somehow even before that.

  Buster tinkled his dog tags, just as the killer flashed a small silver gun in our direction.

  “Stand back,” I said to Kathryn, waving her deeper into the walk-in. I took a deep breath, bent my knees to make a smaller target and raised my gun, holding my other hand under it to steady it.

  Buster leapt up and charged the enemy’s weapon, and his tree-branch tail whipped my gun and sent it flying across the room, under a low couch against the wall.

  “Oh crap,” I said, wildly calculating plan B, as the intruder who had murdered three people skirmished with Buster to regain hold of a shiny little automatic. Kathryn came to the closet door.

  “Back up!” I shouted to Kathryn. “Get back in there! Buster, come!”

  “Buster rolled over and cantered into the closet with us. I slammed the door and turned the key. The gun looked like a Stuhtline .25 ACP. A peashooter like that could kill you but probably couldn’t pass a bullet through a thick oak door.

  “I thought you said Buster didn’t know about guns,” said Kathryn as we ducked to the back of the closet.

  “He learned when he saw Gabe get shot,” I said as I pushed past the hanging clothes to unlock the double window and swung both panes in. “Kathryn, go. Now!”

  She hesitated. “Maggie, remember when I told you about my irrational fear of heights? Aren’t we safer in here?”

  “Only until the realization that any key in the house will open that door. Then we’ll be fish in a barrel.”

  Kathryn took a deep breath when she heard the doorknob rattle. She hurried through the window onto the roof. Her feet slid over the cold slate shingles, but one of the metal snow birds stopped her and she was able to half-stand, half-crawl toward the next house.

  I reached in my pocket to pull on my gloves, hoping they’d help me climb down off the roof.

  Outside the closet, the lock held. I heard a shot thud into the door but the bullet didn’t go through. Another slug came after, but nothing made it to the other side. Here’s to the mighty oak.

  I whistled at Buster to jump out and dove after him, holding onto the sill to keep from flying out into space.

  On the street, Farrel and Jessie looked up at us. They were supposed to have called the cops but as yet I couldn’t hear any sirens. A second later I heard Farrel yelling into her cell that shots were being fired. That would get them here in a hurry.

  Buster scrambled on the shingles, then slid down the roof and right off the edge. I heard Jessie cry out. I stared transfixed as Buster plopped down onto the second floor roof, stood up, and gracefully leapt toward the yew tree next to the front door. He landed on a big branch that dipped under his weight and swung him lightly to the street, where he calmly stepped off and trotted up to Farrel. He dropped what he had in his mouth at her feet. It made a metallic ring when it hit the pavement.

  I didn’t have time to shake off my disbelief at Buster’s Disney-style escape, because the killer was yanking open the other front bedroom window.

  Kathryn was two houses along, inching her way north over the steep roofs. I followed, wishing she would hurry up. Kathryn’s foot slipped but she grabbed the sill of the dormer on the next house and righted herself.

  I looked back and saw an arm reach out the window and begin to level a gun at us, trying to rub out the witnesses.

  Just ahead, the dormer window Kathryn was steadying herself on swung in. Arms reached out, grabbed Kathryn by the collar, and hauled her out of sight.

  A shot rang out. It skittled over the dormer’s roof, sending shards of slate into the air.

  With Kathryn now out of the way, I crouched and ran along the roofs at top speed past two more houses. A moving target is very hard to hit with a small gun like a .25 ACP.

  When I got to the last house, there was nothing but a three-story drop to the sidewalk. I looked back. The killer, with scarf wrapped high to avoid identification, was taking aim again.

  There was a telephone pole about four feet from the roof corner with a streetlight a yard below. The pole had a heavy guy wire angling down to the sidewalk. In moments l
ike this, it’s best not to spend too much time thinking. The pitch of the roof was too steep to walk to the edge, so I gauged the distance, took two giant steps and jumped. A shot whizzed over my head.

  I caught the arm of the streetlight with both hands, then swung over and slid down the guy wire to the street, ripping the palms out of my gloves as I went.

  I ran to the front and looked up, but now there was no one brandishing a gun in the window.

  Amanda Knightbridge had scooped Kathryn into her third floor window. I realized that it was her house we’d been climbing over.

  Amanda and Kathryn came out of the house together. Before I was conscious of moving, I was holding Kathryn in my arms and she was hugging me as though the pressure itself would wipe the last fearful moments away. I looked over Kathryn’s shoulder into Amanda’s eyes. She nodded once, then turned and focused on the door of Fen house.

  “Now you’re going to fire me?” asked Kathryn, softly.

  “Ow,” I squeaked.

  She held me at arm’s length. “Are you hurt?”

  “Only because you’re squeezing all the toothpaste out of me.”

  Jessie said to me, “Now you know how I feel when Farrell is on one of those stakeouts with you.”

  Jessie spied Buster as he ambled his big waggie-dog body up to her. She stooped down to hug him like a giant Teddy bear.

  “How did he get down to the ground?” asked Kathryn.

  “Well, you may not believe this...” began Farrel. As she described Buster’s flight, I looked around the ground to find the coin he’d dropped, then picked it up.

  It was a 1910 Morgan silver dollar in average condition. Not particularly rare, but not something you get in everyday change.

  Kathryn was looking around the group.

  She and I said in unison, “Did Nora come out?”

  “I believe she is still inside, with the killer,” said Amanda Knightbridge in a measured voice.

  Buster woofed quietly.

  “We should wait for the police. They’ll be here in a minute,” insisted Jessie. “It’s a small house; there’s nowhere to go. Who is it anyway? I thought Gabe was the killer. Whoever it is probably doesn’t have any more bullets..”

  “The gun was a .25. From the shape, it was probably a Stuhtline. They have six shots and...”

  “And five shots have been fired,” said Kathryn. “Once at Buster when he went downstairs, twice into the door, twice out the window at us... So that’s five. There’s probably one bullet left.”

  I nodded. “We can’t wait for the police, because there’s a passage out of the basement.

  “Passage?” said Jessie and Farrel.

  Kathryn was nodding her head. “Of course! That’s how Victoria got to her private studio. Not through the cemetery, through her own house!”

  “If Nora’s been taken hostage, I have to go after her now. There are miles of passages and we’re talking about someone who’s killed three people already,”

  “I’m going with you,” said Kathryn, following me into the backyard.

  “We don’t have time to argue,” I said firmly.

  “Then don’t. I got Nora into this and I feel responsible. I have to help you. And we’re a team.” She said the last part softly, but she meant it. It was a pivotal moment.

  I turned to face her with the furious look of a warrior. She stepped back in surprise. Her eyes widened. She’d never seen me so much like a virago before. I reached out and held her shoulders at arms length. I said evenly but with a tone that was flint and steel, “We’re up against someone who is desperate and armed, who might have one shot, or could have a dozen more magazines. I have a gun and a bulletproof vest. You won’t be helping me if you’re down there. There is no further discussion.”

  Kathryn nodded.

  I said seriously, “Look, I need you to convince the police that a murderer is running around somewhere under the streets of Fenchester with a hostage. And I need you to try to figure out where they might surface.”

  She nodded again, fully understanding the situation. We hugged fiercely for less than a second, and she ran off.

  Chapter 21

  I crouched through the dog door. The house was still. I ran upstairs, dragged the couch away from the wall, found my gun in a dark corner and came back downstairs.

  The door to the basement was wide open.

  I held my gun in front of me in cop search fashion, snapped on the light switch, and moved slowly down the old cellar steps. They were steep and a little uneven. Each one was fastened securely to the oak handrail that was attached to a row of four floor-to-ceiling upright posts the size of telephone poles.

  There was nothing down there but some empty stone shelves built into the wall, a straw broom leaning in one corner, and some clay flowerpots on the floor. One of the pots was broken.

  A light film of white dust had been brushed into a small pile in one corner. The sweeping had obliterated any footprints.

  I centered myself by chanting, Think fast. Think Fast. Think Fast.

  I considered the scene as though it was a puzzle. Question: Why are the pots on the floor when there are empty shelves? I went over to the wall of slate shelves. They were inset in the whitewashed stone foundation. I tapped on the wall under the middle shelf. It felt like solid rock but it had to move back somehow.

  If it was anything like the coffin that moved in the crypt, there would have to be some kind of heavy counterbalance.

  I went back to the stairs and inspected the railing. One of the posts wasn’t attached to it. I climbed halfway back up the stairs and pushed the post toward the middle of the room. It tipped, tilting a section of the stone floor underneath it. At the same time the whole inset of the shelves lurched back into the wall revealing a very narrow, dark passage at one side. It opened much more quietly than the crypt. No wonder I didn’t hear the killer use it after Gabe was shot. Of course Buster was also howling.

  I had to push an oak lever out of the way to get into the space, which closed the opening behind me. My pocket flashlight showed there were two sets of dusty footprints in the passage. One had been made by sturdy work shoes, and they matched the prints I’d seen in the studio. The other set was irregular and scuffed, and in the shape of Nora’s winter boots.

  “It’s showtime, folks,” I said softly as I plunged into the passage.

  *******

  The narrow, thirty-foot passage descended in a series of shallow steps. No one could have carried anything through it. I had to squeeze through by turning my body sideways, and even at that my front and back brushed both walls. Lucky claustrophobia wasn’t one of my irrational fears.

  The passage ended in a narrow opening into the main tunnel. Its wood door was propped open with a bag marked plaster. The outside of the door had a faux stone texture. It was probably invisible when it was closed.

  I swept light over the floor. There was an empty metal hand truck leaning against the wall and beyond it traces of white dust leading north. I followed the dust to Victoria’s studio under the Majestic. The police lock on the studio stairs had been broken off. A length of pipe with the broken lock still hooked over it lay on the floor. The door was open and the lights were on.

  I moved swiftly and quietly to the top of the stairs, crouching low. There was no one in the studio. I looked up to be sure the police had resealed the wall I’d broken down. A large sheet of plywood was secured over the hole. The light over the steps, where Kathryn and I had found Samson, was also on. I crept down them cautiously. Things were different down there. It was empty of people but the killer had been there recently. Dust was scuffed all over. The door to the clay storage area was open. Someone had pulled one of the bags marked clay to the bottom of the steps. I checked around quickly. No one had been knocked out and been left behind a crock or anything. No Nora anywhere. The whole search of the studio took less than four minutes.

  Back out in the tunnel, I was keenly aware that the person dragging Nora along as insurance
was a rat in a maze who was focused on getting out. If the murderer didn’t know the crypt exit was sealed with the steel plate, I might be able to catch up.

  I remembered what Samson Henshaw had said about waking up at the bottom of the steps. He’d thought he was blind until he saw the faint purple light from the sidewalk prisms when the sun rose the next day.

  I switched off my flashlight and closed my eyes tight for a few seconds to get them used to the dark. I could see dots of light in the tunnel ceiling where the ends of the glass shafts poked between the fitted stones. I started off at a careful trot, touching the tunnel wall as a guide.

  I was almost to the intersection of the tunnel under Fen Street. Just a little way beyond would be the side tunnel to the crypt. I heard someone shout a single word, “Nae!”

  Suddenly a flashlight beam appeared, coming toward me along the side tunnel. I flattened myself against the wall. The beam didn’t even sweep in my direction. It turned left and went west under Fen Street. The sidewalk prisms helped me speed to the tunnel intersection. I stopped and peered around the corner. Far ahead was the bobbing beam. Adrenaline coursed through me as I followed the light, breaking into a jog. Luckily the noise of trucks and buses rumbling along Fen Street above me covered my echoing footsteps.

  I was closing on the light, so I slowed. With each bounce the flashlight took, I heard the distinct jingle of pieces of metal and an occasional grunt of protest from Nora.

  Where are they going? I counted the blocks in my mind. Two more and we’d be under the Irwin College campus. As far as I could tell in the dark, we hadn’t passed any doors or branch tunnels.

  The tunnel got wider and the flashlight beam began to rise. I heard the sound of shoes going up a metal staircase. At the top of the stairs were two illuminated yellow door signs that said Danger Radioactive between black triangles. This was the lowest level of the Irwin Library Archives. The bogus warning signs were to keep people away. Inside those doors were miles of stacks and people who could be causalities. Either the killer was going to keep Nora as a hostage or toss her down the stairs. I ran for the steps.