by Morgan James
Paul and Daniel fell in line behind me and we retraced our steps back to the prickly lean-to on the side of the house. Daniel and I lifted the cover and swung it back against the rock face of the house. “Wait,” I told them, “Paul, shine the flashlight down the steps.” He dutifully obliged and I examined the concrete steps for recent footprints. It was useless. The rain had mucked everything together into a mass of squishy sodden leaves. “All right, let’s go down and try the door into the basement.”
Daniel switched his flashlight on and took a step down into the welled opening. I followed tentatively. Paul didn’t budge. “Listen, uh, Dr. McNeal.” He began slowly.
“Promise, remember, call me Promise.”
“Right. Promise. I trust you have a very good reason for needing to get into my house, and I’d love to hear all about it, but I am not going down in that dungeon. I’ve not been farther than the bottom step since I moved into the house, and I don’t intend to start now. It is nasty and probably has more spiders that I ever want to know about. If you will excuse me, I’ll just go sit on the front stoop and wait for you to unlock the front door. Or better yet, let me borrow your cell phone and I’ll call a locksmith and he’ll get us in the front door.”
“Paul,” I said patiently, “even if you had your keys we would need to try and find the other entrance into the basement from out here. That’s what I needed to talk to you about. I think there is a hidden room down there, in the basement, one you’ve never seen. That’s why Mitchell Sanders was here last night. He wanted something stored in that room. I think he got in the same way we are getting in now.” I paused to give Paul a chance to digest what I was saying. “Think about it. You made Mitchell give you his house key the day you told him to leave. I was standing there in the foyer with you. I remember him acting like a spoiled brat and slapping the key in your palm. So he couldn’t have used that key to let himself into the house last night. And you said the front door was locked when you got home this morning, right?”
Paul took a few moments to think. “Well, yes, you may be right. I think I did get his key. Hell, I don’t remember. This day has been so terrible. It seems like five days since this morning when I found Mitchell. I don’t know how he got into the house, and I don’t have any idea what he could have stored in some hidden room in the basement. However, none of that is interesting enough to make me go down there. And who cares if there is a room? The police don’t seem to be concerned about how Mitchell got back into the house, or what he was after. What difference does it make anyway?”
Daniel spoke up. “Look, Promise, why don’t you go around front and wait with Paul. I’ll poke around down here and call you if I can find anything.”
I was not about to let Daniel do my dirty work for me. This was my idea and I was determined to follow it through, spiders or no spiders. “Paul, go ahead and stay on the front stoop, out of sight from the driveway, and come get us if you see anybody coming.”
“Gotcha,” he replied, only too happy to oblige, and returned my flashlight as he hurried off towards the front of the house.
“Well, I guess it’s just you and me, babe.” Daniel was much too cheerful for this serious business.
“Do you want to be Cher or Sonny Bono?” I asked, and heard him chuckle as we descended the stairs to push at the rotted basement door below. As it turned out, two people were not needed to open the door; it gave with such ease I could swear someone kept the rusted hinges well oiled. From where we stood in the basement, I judged we were beneath the main living room in a space about the size of my utility room, probably no more than eight feet deep by ten feet wide. It smelled of damp cement and was empty save for a couple of old ladders tossed on the floor. The walls were concrete block to my left, right, and behind, where we entered, with early stages of black mold creeping from two corners. Some sort of stucco finish divided into a grid pattern roughly three times the size of the concrete blocks, covered the wall ahead of us. We both scanned the grid wall with our lights. Even though it looked solid, there had to be a way from this side into another part of the basement. Daniel’s light moved slowly vertically, then horizontally. I stepped against the wall and pushed at intervals. Nothing moved. “What do you think?” I asked Daniel.
“Umm,” he answered and continued to scan the room. “I can’t see a break in the wall, or any sign on the floor that a door has been opened out into this space. The floor would probably be scraped clean if the wall pivoted out this way.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“Still,” Daniel said, more to himself than to me, “there is no logical reason a builder wouldn’t open this small room into the larger basement space.” He stepped back and shined his flashlight upward. “Look up, the ceiling is only about seven feet. No wonder I feel like I’m in a shoe box.” I added my light to his, looked up, and agreed. The grid ceiling was indeed low. “Here, hold my light,” he said and handed me his flashlight. Then he up righted one of the ladders from the floor, climbed about half way up, and began to push up on ceiling grid sections along the far wall until he found one that moved. Another shifted up, exposing a hole in the ceiling about three feet deep and five feet wide. “Hand me my flashlight.” I climbed to the second rung of the ladder and hoisted the light up. “Well, now,” he mused, obviously satisfied with himself, “Isn’t this clever?” He backed down the ladder to me, a wide smile covering his face. “Go on up there and take a look. You’re going to love it.”
I did, and he was right: I did love it. When I stood up, my head poking through the hole left by Daniel moving the ceiling grid panel, I could see it was framed down from the true height, leaving a space between the grids and the true ceiling framing. As I scanned down, on the other side of the wall, my light illuminated the darkness of another room beyond. Steep wooden stairs rose from the floor on the other side to meet the top of the wall on this side. “I see what they did, “I called down to Daniel, “they climbed over the wall from this side from the ladder and took out what they wanted by going up the stairs and back to the ladder. One person could easily hand off something to another and then climb back through.” My smile was even bigger than Daniel’s when I climbed down to him. It all made sense. Once a person got back over the wall and down into this side, with the ladder dropped to the floor, who would think of looking up? The ladder became just an old castoff thing stored away in a dusty room. More importantly, Mitchell knew Paul wouldn’t snoop around in the dank spidery basement. “Daniel, you are wonderful! I probably would never have looked up.”
“Sure you would. It may have taken you another five minutes, but my guess is you wouldn’t have left until you found what you were looking for.”
“If you mean I’m bull-headed, you are probably right. Listen, I hear a kind of shushing sound coming from the other side. Sounds like a small motor.” I climbed up the ladder again and flooded the room with light. “Good Lord, there is a dehumidifier sitting on the floor in there with a plastic line going into a drain in the floor. I bet they used that to keep mildew down. I’m going to climb over.” Remembering I was wearing a long skirt, I considered how to hike my legs up and over the wall in a somewhat ladylike manner. I couldn’t come up with anything so I reached down and pulled the rear of my hem up in front and tucked it into my waistband.”
“Good going, girl,” Daniel called up to me. “I’ve seen MaMa Allen do that lots of times out in the fields when she picks vegetables.”
If he meant to embarrass me, he succeeded. “Daniel,” I called down, “If you ever describe my assent up and over this wall in any way or fashion whatsoever, to any living soul, you are a dead man. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he called back with a laugh. “Get on over. I’m right behind you.”
My foolishness was vindicated when we stood in the inner room. This space was more than twice the size of the first, with smooth concrete floors and walls. The dehumidifier hummed dutifully in the far corner, and two glass chimney hurricane lamps sat
waiting on a rectangular metal table placed towards the center of the room. A single gray metal folding chair, showing signs of aged rust up and down the legs, sat akimbo at the table, as though someone had just risen from the table and left the room. Neither of us had matches to light the lanterns so we were left with only our flashlights. Daniel surveyed one side of the darkened room. I took the other side where I found a wooden crate about the size of a television box sitting against one wall. In the dim light the box appeared to be about half full. All I could make out were the shapes of what seemed to be silver table wear and a few china pieces. It all looked non-descript, and certainly didn’t date from Charlemagne’s time. My heart sank. If this box was all that remained of a fortune in stolen art and treasures from France during World War II, Angel probably would not come back.
Daniel called from his side of the room. “Come look at this.” I left the box against the wall and joined him. “I think I know what this is. Humor me though, since you’ve read the book.”
My light caught the deep gold before I saw the whole piece, and I moved closer to be sure I was correct. Maybe Angel would rise to the bait after all! “That, my dear, is called a triptych.” I was delighted; my voice no doubt danced like an ugly dog rescued from the pound. “To be precise: a three panel altarpiece, Christian, about thirty inches tall, gold polychrome with various brilliantly colored enamels of reds, blues and amber, possibly made in Limoges, France, in the eleventh century.” I ran my light from left to right; the human faces of the panels reached out from the darkness with an eerie glow, eyes watching us with stoic concentration. “On the left we have St. John the Baptist, kneeling, facing the center figures. The gold cup he’s raising up contained holy water used to baptize Jesus. As you know, that’s the Madonna cradling the Christ child in the center. To our right would be Saint Anne, Mary’s mother, looking on with sadness. And you’re right. I know this only because I read about it in Paul Tournay’s book on Carolingian art.”
Daniel let out a low whistle. “Boy! Susan is never going to forgive me for leaving her behind. I will pay for this for the rest of my natural born life.”
“Well. The night isn’t over. This alter piece is a treasure some would kill for. We need to get out of here as soon as we can.” I took a couple of steps forward and began to search the stucco wall with my flashlight for a way to get into the basement proper, and up into the main house. “Daniel, what is that metal thing on the floor?” He came closer and stood above a dark gray iron rod—which looked to be about two feet long—lying on the floor. “Don’t touch it. There may be fingerprints.”
Squatting down, he ran his light around the floor area and up the wall. “It’s a piece of iron rebar. It’s used in poured concrete walls and footings to give the cement extra strength. I think somebody used the rebar to lock hinges made into the seam of this stucco panel. Look at this.”
I studied the area he spotlighted. There were two interlocking hinges protruding from the wall, each with hollow tracks about the right size for the rebar to slide through. With the rebar in place the wall would be rigid. Without the bar…Daniel grasped one of the metal hinges, pulling it towards us in the darkness. A portion of the wall pivoted and light poured through from the other side. I recognized the section of the basement I’d seen from upstairs. The place Mitchell Sanders had tumbled to his death. We eased sideways through the opening. Barnes’ crime scene crew had left the overhead light burning, casting a garish glow on the chalk outline where Mitchell Sanders’ body had fallen.
I stopped short of the yellow crime scene tape. “Well, looks like part of the mystery is solved. You can get to the inner room either from the upstairs by going through here, or from the outside. My guess is that after Angel Turner learned about the stolen artifacts from her grandfather, she was sneaking in here at night and carrying out what Tournay hadn’t sold. In the beginning Paul thought she was his grandmother’s ghost, then good old Mitchell must have caught her one night and struck a deal with her. He convinced Paul there was no ghost, and he and Angel hauled off the remaining stuff when Paul wasn’t home. Papa Tournay must have died before he realized someone was stealing from him. The partners had a good plan, until Mitchell began to play both sides against the middle. What I don’t understand is why last night, of all nights, would Mitchell come through to the house side of the basement and go up the stairs? Why not just come and go from the outside, like usual?”
“I don’t know why, Promise. I’m still in shock we found anything at all down here. Truth be told, I was sure your theory was about as tall a tale as I’ve ever heard. I would’ve put it right up there with the one about Uncle Corny hunting coon with a pistol toting monkey.”
I was not going to ask. “Daniel, we don’t have time for coon stories.” We edged around the crime scene and looked up the basement stairs to the foyer above. Shadows of Sanders’ last seconds of life drifted across the fringes of my mind. I could not quite identify the figures but knew one thing for sure. “You know Daniel, I think Sanders was determined to get upstairs when Angel killed him. What would he want upstairs?” I shut my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose to clear the horror of Sanders’ free falling: the sound and the pain as his head hit the concrete floor. “Daniel, where’s your backpack with the tracking device?”
He immediately turned back towards the inner room. “I’ll go back and get it.”
I reached for his arm to stop him. “No, let me go up through the house. There’s no point in you climbing back over the wall yet. I’ll bring you the backpack.” Gingerly, I climbed the basement steps, focusing on getting to the front door to let Paul in, and retrieving the backpack. Daniel would wait for me inside the storage room. As I passed into the foyer light, I checked my watch. Eight-thirty. Briar Patch Antiques closed at nine. We had to hurry.
“Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed.”
…Bhagavad Gita
16.
Fifteen minutes later, the tracker was glued in place to the back of the Madonna panels and Daniel was set up at Paul’s kitchen table with his laptop. From there we could see the back yard and crumbling causeway connecting Paul’s yard to the other side of Howell Creek. So long as the kitchen remained dark, we hoped anyone approaching from the woods would be too focused on getting in the house and getting out to look up and spot us. During the next two hours Paul and Daniel exchanged small talk and played name that tune in whispers. When they moved beyond Roy Orbison’s greatest hits and into tunes from The Pirates of Penzance, I was way out of my league and stood by the window to watch the night. “I can’t believe you got that one,” Paul whined from behind me, “you are just pretending you aren’t musically educated. You are sandbagging me. That isn’t fair.”
Daniel whispered back, amused, “Man, I never said I was ignorant. I just said I played fiddle in a Bluegrass band. You filled in the rest. Don’t whine. You’re just being snobby.” Even in the dark, I knew he was smiling. It was a joy to hear the two men banter back and forth like old friends.
I yawned and wished I were home in bed. Time for a cup of tea from my thermos. The guys declined so I poured mine and resumed my place at the window, losing the thread of their conversation and falling deep into my own thoughts about Paul’s reaction to what we’d found in the basement. He wasn’t so much surprised as puzzled, and said several times he couldn’t believe Mitchell could pull off such a sneaky trick. He seemed much more invested in Mitchell Sanders’ part in the drama than his grandfather’s, and asked a lot of questions about Angel Turner that I couldn’t answer.
When I told him my theory of the Turner-Sanders connection, I omitted the blackmailing. I didn’t think it my place to tell him what is mother was doing, and I didn’t want to get into a discussion about his grandmother’s death. I’d left him the partially opened box and stacks of coins on his dresser to connect the dots and complete the picture of Stella’s death; that would have to be enough. I chose to tell him my story around the business arrangement between Boo
Turner and his grandfather. When I told him I thought the three-part panel was only part of a large cache his grandfather and Boo Turner looted and then shipped out of France after the war, he didn’t seem shocked, or disappointed, that his grandfather would systematically sell stolen art and artifacts. He said he was amazed that his grandfather and Turner hid their secret for over fifty years. To Paul the thievery seemed neither moral nor immoral, just an interesting story he said he wished his grandfather had shared with him. An edge to Daniel’s raised voice brought me back to the kitchen.
“Well, bull-crap. Sounds like more whining to me. You think your generation invented crappy wars? Vietnam wasn’t a walk in the park.”
“I didn’t say that. I only meant…never mind. Let’s don’t talk politics, Daniel, please. We were just getting to be friends.”
I turned from the window. “Susan hasn’t mentioned you were in Vietnam.”
Daniel sighed and met my eyes through the darkness. “Yeah, well, Susan and I don’t talk about it. I finally found some peace after she was born and I don’t usually dredge it up. Paul hit a raw nerve, that’s all. I’m sorry, Paul. Let’s just forget I brought it up.”
“No, now that you brought it up, tell us something you remember. Not the politics. Personally.”
In the half-light of the kitchen I could see Daniel’s eyes darting back and forth between Paul and I. Talk, don’t talk, talk. Perhaps memory and adrenaline pushed him out of his silence. “Mostly you want to forget what you did in the war, any war. You just want to concentrate on being grateful you survived, and not feeling guilty so many other boys didn’t. I will tell you I had a friend. Him and me, we both got to Nam in time for the Tet Offensive in 1968. Like most soldiers over there, we were just kids, not even twenty yet. The worst experience most of us had lived through was loosing a ball game, or wrecking our dad’s truck. You tell a lot of personal stuff when you’re hiding in a ditch, ass deep in mud, pig shit, and bloody body parts. All you got is time, waiting for the enemy to wander out of the jungle.”