Mortar and Murder

by Jennie Bentley

  “Looks like there’s another opening of some kind in there. Or maybe I’m just crazy.” He backed out, his hair gray with cobwebs and dust. “Have a look.”

  I took a step back. “I don’t think so. Where there are cobwebs, there are probably spiders.”

  “There are cobwebs?” Derek said, brushing at his hair. “Oh yeah. Didn’t notice. But I’m a lot taller than you are, Tink. If I’ve already brushed all the cobwebs away with my head, there won’t be any way down on your level.”

  This was true. Squaring my shoulders, I took a step toward the dark opening. “Go on,” Derek said, a hand on my back nudging me forward. “Here. Take the flashlight. You’ll need it.”

  I took it and—ducking my head—passed into the dark.

  “Wow,” I said after I had waved the flashlight around, “that is weird.”

  Derek was crowding in behind me, pushing me toward a slim opening in the far back wall of the closet, just at the edge of the fireplace. I shone the flashlight beam in that direction. “Looks like that piece of wood right there—one of the shelves, I guess—must have gotten caught and kept the panel from closing. Otherwise, we’d never have noticed that there was anything back here.”

  “Definitely built to stay hidden,” Derek’s voice said behind me. I could feel the heat off his body behind me, and his breath stirring the hair on the top of my head.

  I glanced back at him. “A secret room?”

  “Most likely. Mr. van Duren probably built it. Betcha he stored some of his goods here.”

  “Or maybe he wanted his daughter’s family to have a panic room in case the British came back to fight again?”

  “That’s possible, too. Here—” He squeezed by me to go and grab the edge of the panel with both hands in an attempt to open it farther. It didn’t budge.

  “There’s probably a lever somewhere, don’t you think?” I started shining the light around the closet, looking for one.

  “Try that hook over there,” Derek wheezed, still trying to force the panel to move. “It doesn’t look like it has another function.”

  I reached out and jiggled it. Up, down, up again. Derek staggered when the panel moved, sliding back into the wall with the grating sound of wood on brick. I shone the light into a square room, no more than six feet by six, half of it taken up by a mattress with a couple of dingy blankets thrown across it. The kitten was blinking at me from the tangle of blankets. As soon as it saw me coming, it ran, straight past us and out. We didn’t try to catch it. Too busy looking around. The walls were brick in here, the ceiling was brick, and the floor was the same wide planks as in the rest of the house.

  “Mr. van Duren’s storage room,” Derek breathed. He was leaning over my shoulder, peering into the dark space.

  I nodded, directing the flashlight. “Must be. What’s with the mattress, though?” I focused the light beam on it. “That’s not Colonial.”

  It looked old, but not that old. Faded nylon, blue with ugly kidney-colored flowers. No mattress pad or sheet. And the blankets were mass-produced in the last ten or twenty years, probably in China. They were thin, gray—either from dirt or poor washing—and frayed along the edges. The single pillow looked lumpy.

  “This is creepy,” I said.

  Derek’s hands settled on my waist. I guess he was trying to give comfort, but it made me jump.

  “Sorry.”

  “No problem.” I got my breath back. “What do you think this is?”

  “Originally? Mr. van Duren probably thought it’d be a good idea to put a secret room into the house when he built it. Either because he thought he might want a place to store contraband, or because he was afraid that the British were coming back and Daisy’s family might want somewhere to hide. This is built between the chimneys, obviously. There’s a space behind each chimney and behind the runaround stairs. Just big enough for this room.”

  I nodded. Made sense. “What about now, though? This stuff hasn’t been here since Daisy’s time.”

  “Nope.” Derek hesitated for a second. “The old guy who lived here might have gotten a little paranoid in his old age. He was almost a hundred when he died. By then, he was tucked away in a nursing home in Boothbay Harbor. Refused to sell the place, though. Kept saying he was going to move back home.” He shrugged.

  “I know. Irina told me. Maybe he was afraid they’d come and take him away while he was sleeping, and he didn’t want to go. So he’d hide in here. That way they couldn’t sneak up on him.” Poor old guy.

  “I think I see a lamp,” Derek said. “Shine the flashlight over in the corner behind the mattress, would you?”

  I did as he asked, and he left me to walk, crablike, around the mattress. A second after he bent, the room lit up. I closed my eyes against the brightness, and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to so much light again.

  “Nothing else here,” Derek said, hands on his hips, master of all he surveyed.

  I shook my head. “I guess we need to get this stuff out of here. Don’t want any mice to get in and build nests in the mattress. How do you suppose he got it in?”

  “Very carefully,” Derek said. “It’s just a twin, though, so with some brute force, it would bend enough to go through the closet.”

  I looked around in the now fully illuminated room. “There may be nothing else here now, but something was here recently. Look at the marks in the dust.”

  Along the whole of one wall, the dust on the floor had been scuffed, as if something had been put there and then picked up again. Several somethings, by the looks of it.

  “This looks like a footprint,” Derek said, putting his own size eleven construction boot next to it. “Smaller than mine.”

  I went to join him. “Bigger than mine, but not by a whole lot. Either a woman or a young boy, probably.” I suppressed a shudder at the thought. “You don’t think this is one of those horrible situations where someone kidnapped a boy and kept him hidden for years, do you? Like that creepy guy in Missouri a couple of years ago?”

  Derek shook his head. “I think we would have heard something. This is down east Maine; boys don’t disappear without a trace around here. At least not for very long.”

  Maybe not. It was still creepy, though. But maybe the former owner had just had exceptionally small feet.

  “I’ll just get this stuff out of here right now,” Derek said, watching the emotions chase one another across my face. “You’ll feel better once it’s all gone.” He bent and grabbed the mattress, setting it on its side and dragging it toward the low door.

  “I don’t know . . .” I said.

  He glanced at me. “Why?”

  “What if this is a crime scene? Shouldn’t we leave it alone and let Wayne see it?”

  Derek stopped. “Do you have any reason to think it’s a crime scene?”

  I had to admit I didn’t. “It’s just creepy. I want to get out of here.”

  Derek leaned the mattress up against the wall. “We can leave it for another day,” he said. “You’re right. We should concentrate on finding the cat, and then get back to the ferry. I forgot all about it.”

  “Me, too.” I turned to look at the small brick room one more time before we exited, and stopped. “What’s that?”

  Derek turned, too. “What’s what?”

  “On the floor right there, where the mattress was. Looks like a little sliver of paper?”

  Derek walked over to it and bent. After a moment he straightened, though, pulled a knife out of his pocket, and squatted.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s a piece of paper. Bigger than it looks. Someone tried to shove it out of sight into a crack between the planks and didn’t quite get it all in.”

  “Or maybe they just used it to stop a draft,” I suggested.

  Derek grunted. “Looks like a piece of newsprint. I’ve got it. Almost . . . there.”

  He put the knife away first and then brought the paper to me, carefully unrolling it as he went. It was brittle an
d a little discolored but otherwise not in bad shape.

  “Comics?” Derek said, eyebrows arching.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Damn. I guess they were just trying to block a draft.”

  “Maybe. Look at the date, though.” I pointed. “Two weeks ago, just before we started working on the house. After we bought the place, and long after Mr. What’s-his-name left.”

  “Huh. That’s interesting.” He turned it over in his hands. We noticed the writing at the same time; a faint scribble along one edge, written in pencil so light that we both squinted.

  “I can’t make it out,” I said.

  Derek shook his head. “Looks like chicken scratches. Let’s get out of here and take a look in natural light. You go first.” He put a hand at the small of my back and pushed me toward the door. I ducked through, into the closet and from there out into the kitchen. There was no sign of the kitten, but the sunlight flooding through the windows was nice.

  Derek shut the paneled door behind us and turned to me. “Let’s have a look.” He held the paper into the sunlight. We both bent over it.

  “I still can’t make it out,” he said after a moment.

  My pulse quickened. “I think it’s written in Russian. Cyrillic. Same as the writing on that scrap of paper the girl in the water had in her pocket.”

  He shot me a look. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. It’s the same kind of letters. That word right there”—I pointed to it; it started with a p—“is Irina’s last name, I think.”

  “Really?” He twisted the paper, looking at it from different angles.

  “I’m not sure. But it looks like it. At least what I remember from last time I saw it.”

  “I didn’t see it last time,” Derek said. “Or the time before that. But if you’re right, I think we should give it to Wayne.” He handed the scrap of paper to me. I stuffed it in the pocket of my jacket.

  “If it’s the same handwriting, that would mean there’s a connection between the girl in the water, Irina, and this house.”

  “There’s already a connection between the girl in the water, Irina, and this house,” Derek said. “The girl in the water had Irina’s name and address in her pocket, and Irina helped us buy this house.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He looked at me over his shoulder as he walked through the dining room toward the hallway and the front door. “You mean a direct connection between the girl and this house.”

  I thought about it. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

  “That’s what I thought you meant,” Derek said, holding the front door open for me. I was just about to step through when a streak of gray fur shot between my legs and out through the opening. I staggered.

  “Damn cat,” Derek said, but without heat.

  I found my balance. “It went back under the porch. Let’s leave the box outside, and maybe it’ll investigate once we’re gone.”

  “Doubtful,” Derek said, locking the door behind us.

  I shrugged. “We can try to catch it again tomorrow. Right now, let’s hurry so we don’t miss the ferry. I want to give this piece of paper to Wayne as soon as possible.”

  “You and me both,” Derek said, and took my hand to pull me along behind him as soon as we hit the grass. The last thing I saw before we turned the corner of the house was the gray kitten inching out from under the porch toward the spilled salmon and crunchy bits on the ground.

  16

  By the time we got back to Boothbay Harbor and the truck, it was dinnertime.

  “Where are you going?” I asked Derek when he turned the truck away from the harbor and the road to Waterfield, in the direction of Burns Salvage and the neighborhoods north of town.

  He glanced at me. “Angie is Ukrainian, right? I want to ask her to translate the words on the paper.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t just get it to Wayne as soon as possible? And let him deal with it?”

  “Twenty minutes isn’t gonna make a difference,” Derek said.

  “Ian closed the business, though. Remember? When we left?”

  “I know where he lives,” Derek said, and stepped on the gas. The words had a vaguely threatening sound to them, I thought.

  Ian turned out to live in a saltbox—a big one—a mile or two outside Boothbay Harbor. He had a couple of acres of mostly woods around him, and we had to spend several minutes bumping over a rutted track full of tree roots and big rocks to get there. Only to be met by a sign that read “Trespassers Will Be Shot on Sight.”

  “Surely not?” I said.

  Derek glanced at it. “Probably. Maybe I should call and warn him we’re here. Wouldn’t want him to shoot first and ask questions later.” He pulled out his phone.

  I could tell from Derek’s half of the conversation that Ian was doing everything in his power to say no, he didn’t want to see us, but when Derek reiterated—for the fifth or sixth time—that we were right outside and it would only take a minute or two, Ian relented and came to the door. I stood listening as one, then two, then three locks were unlocked, a chain was unhooked, and a deadbolt was slid aside. Either Ian was seriously paranoid or someone was out to get him.

  “I swear this is only gonna take a minute,” Derek said again when Ian stood in the doorway, outlined by light from behind. It made him look even bigger and more menacing, his beard bristling.

  I snuck a peek past him into the house—I’m a renovator; I like looking at other people’s houses—and saw old wood floors, painted, paneled walls, a set of antlers hanging above what must be the basement door, and what looked like a rifle leaning up against the wall beside the door. I gulped.

  Derek was still trying to talk his way inside. “One minute, I promise. We just want to ask Angie about a few words on a piece of paper. That’s all.”

  Ian didn’t answer.

  “How is Angie?” I asked. “Is she feeling better?”

  He looked down on me. Way down. “She’s all right. I don’t want her upset any more today.”

  “I don’t think this’ll upset her,” I said. “We just need someone to translate six or seven words on a piece of paper we found. Here.” I pulled it out of my pocket and showed it to him. “See? Right there, along the edge? It won’t even take a minute. Can you at least ask her?”

  Ian hesitated, considering before saying, “Wait here. I’ll ask.” He took the piece of paper with him and disappeared, closing the door in our faces.

  I turned to Derek. “What now? Will he bring it back?”

  “I’m sure he will. He didn’t lock the door.” But the look he shot at it was troubled. “I told you, he’s a little socially backward. I’m surprised he’s letting Angie inside.”

  “Did you see the gun?”

  He shook his head. “But I’m not surprised. Ian likes to hunt.”

  “This looked like a rifle. With a little thingamajiggy that you look through. A scope. And it was sitting right inside the door. Does he like to hunt from the privacy of his own front porch?”

  “I can’t imagine he does,” Derek admitted, “but maybe he has a problem with skunks or coons or something. Getting in the garbage. That happens sometimes around here. Could be just bird shot.”

  I nodded. Could be.

  Ian opened the door again after a few more seconds. Now there were two pieces of paper in his giant hands: the newspaper we’d found in the house on the island and a piece of paper towel with a few words scribbled on it in blue pen. “Here.”

  He thrust them both into my hands.

  “This is the translation?”

  He nodded. “Now please go. And leave Angie alone. She’s delicate.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” Derek added, trying to inject some normalcy into the situation, I guess. “Next time I need something for a project.”

  Ian nodded. Before we were even off the bottom step, the symphony of locks, chains, and bolts had started up again behind us as Ian made his home
secure from intruders.

  “What does it say?” Derek asked when we were back in the truck. It had gotten dark enough now that I had to turn the ceiling light on in the cab to read the scribbled words on the paper towel. My eyes popped.

  “What?” Derek repeated.

  I swallowed. “Assuming Angie is right, they’re names. Three of them. Katya Pushkar, Olga Kovalenko, and . . . um . . . Svetlana Rozhdestvensky.”

  Derek glanced at me. “So you were right.”

  “About what?”

  “About what you thought was Irina’s last name.”

  “Except it doesn’t refer to Irina.”

  He shook his head.

  We rode in silence down the road toward Waterfield, both probably pondering the same question. What do you get when you put three Ukrainian girl names together with a dead woman with no identification wearing Russian jeans, and a dead ICE agent?

  “Smuggling,” Derek said.

  I blinked at him. I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud.

  He continued, “These girls are paying someone to bring them into the U.S. illegally. Somehow they must have made it to Canada, and from there, someone brought them by boat to Rowanberry Island. That someone stored them in our house, in our secret room, and then when we started working on it, he or she moved them somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Who knows,” Derek said. “You didn’t go through Irina’s house when you and Wayne were there last week, did you? What do you want to bet they were there? In the other rooms? The two of them that are still alive, that is. I wonder whether Katya or Olga is the dead one?”

  I was too shocked by what he’d said to even begin to speculate. “Irina? You think Irina is behind this?”

  “Who else?” Derek said with a glance at me. “She was familiar with our house and knew it was empty. The girl—let’s call her Katya; it’s simpler, and she looked like a Katya to me—Katya had Irina’s contact info in her pocket. Just in case they got separated, I guess, so she’d know where to go. And when she fell overboard on the trip from Rowanberry Island to the mainland, and they looked and couldn’t find her, and she never showed up at the house, it wasn’t like they could report her missing. She was illegal and they were breaking the law. If they said anything, they’d all get caught. And probably deported.”