I waited a few minutes, then wandered about the floor where a number of cars had been stored. The whole building seemed devoid of life, save that of a mouse which scampered across my toes and nearly caused me to jump out of my skin.
When I’d regained my composure after my brush with the local fauna, I took advantage of the lack of witnesses to open the doors into the room where I had observed Seth Bates loading crates into the car on my previous visit to the garage. One wall was stacked high with large wooden boxes bearing labels declaring them to contain various varieties of pears.
I thumped one of the boxes with my knuckles. It gave off a hollow, empty sound. I tried another box with no better luck. Some of the big crates had been opened. They contained nothing except bits of straw.
I turned away disappointed, but as I moved toward the exit, I saw a large box, nearly head high, which had previously escaped my attention. The boards were loose at one end and hinged back on their nails like a door.
Intrigued, I crossed to the large crate. As I pulled on one of the boards, the whole thing swung back as a unit.
I gazed into the box, amazed. There was no back wall. Instead, a long, empty tunnel formed by several crates piled one in front of the other stretched out before me. At the very end stood a real door.
I pulled the boards into place behind me, then stooped and made my way through the tunnel of crates to the door.
It was locked.
I had just reached to my head in search of a hairpin with the intention of picking the lock when I was alarmed to hear a low murmur of voices. Someone was approaching the storage room from the main part of the garage.
I spent precious seconds searching my head for a hairpin only to recall I hadn’t used any that morning. Too late, I remembered that my handbag—containing any number of things which might be adapted into burglars’ tools— remained on the back seat of Joe’s taxi.
I was loath to admit it, but unless I wished to be trapped in the tunnel of boxes, I would have to abandon the investigation.
I hurried toward the opening, but before I could get through the tunnel, the big double doors squeaked open, and I heard heavy footsteps in the room. Through a knothole in one of the boxes, I saw Matilda Mortimer and her partner, Seth.
“Guess you didn’t look for me back quite so soon, Seth,” Matilda reprimanded her partner. “When I went off in the tow truck you figured I’d be gone a long time. Thought it would give you a good chance to fiddle with the books.”
“That’s not so. I was marking up some expenses like I always do.”
“I’ve been aiming to have a straight talk with you for a long time, Seth,” the woman resumed. “That’s why I asked you to step back here in the storage room. No use having the customers know about our differences.”
“I don’t see what you’ve got to squawk about,” Seth retorted. “Ain’t you made more money since I teamed up with you than you ever did before?”
“Yes, but I’m at a loss to explain how.”
“But you’re always afraid I’ll cheat you out of a cent. Why are you complaining that we’re finally running at a profit?”
“I’ve caught you in some dishonest tricks. About those—”
The insistent tooting of an automobile horn broke up the conversation. Abandoning the argument, Matilda and Seth went to serve the impatient customer.
I did not tarry. I crawled from the tunnel and took the outside exit. I made it back to the waiting taxi, without seeing either Seth or Matilda again.
“Police station,” I told Joe.
“How do you want to go?” the cab driver asked. “This road or No. 32?”
“Let’s drive past the Oaklands Estate house.”
“Sure.” Joe grinned. “Maybe we’ll see that spook again.”
The cab bumped along the frozen road, and we soon came within view of the hillside estate. Joe slowed down without a word from me.
“I was tellin’ the boys about that place last night,” he told me. “They tell me this Deming who owns the place is a big, fat, bald-headed man.”
“Our ghost was a thin person.”
“Yeah, I was thinking that,” agreed Joe. “Maybe Deming’s got a sick relative or something, or maybe he’s been taking one of those reducing potions they advertise in the back of magazines.”
Theories involving sick relatives and reducing potions did not satisfy me. By daylight, the rambling old house looked deserted. No smoke curled from the chimneys. Had it not been for a trail of footprints along the fence, I could easily have convinced myself that I had imagined the events of the previous night.
“Say, who’s that trackin’ through the fields?” Joe said.
I followed the pointing finger of the cabman. A woman in a long black coat, market basket on her arm, was hurrying toward the rear door of the estate house.
“Stop the cab, Joe!”
The car came to a halt with a little sideways skid. Leaping out, I plunged through the drifts and was able to confront the woman at the rear gate of the grounds.
“How do you do,” I greeted her.
The woman was so startled that she nearly dropped her market basket. She stammered an inaudible reply and hastily fumbled with the lock on the gate.
“Just a moment, please,” I persisted. “May I come inside and talk to you?”
“About what?”
“My father’s disappearance. You made an appointment to meet me at the cemetery. Why did you run away?”
The woman gasped and frantically tried to fit the key into the padlock.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protested shakily.
“Unless you tell me everything you know regarding my father’s disappearance, I’ll call the police.”
“The police—”
“Yes, this is a very grave matter. It will do you no good to bluff.”
The woman gave up trying to unlock the gate. She set her basket down in the snow and said weakly: “You advertised a reward—”
“I’ll still be glad to pay it for worthwhile information. What do you know about my father?”
The woman drew a deep breath. “Well, I picked him up in my car after the accident.”
“You did? Where is he now?”
“I can’t tell you that. Mr. Carter asked me to take him to Mercy Hospital. I let him off at the entrance to the grounds. That’s the last I saw of him.”
“My father entered the hospital?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t remain to watch.”
The story was disappointing. If true, my father’s disappearance remained as mysterious as ever. I remained silent a moment and then asked the woman why she had fled from the cemetery.
“Because I saw a police car parked behind the bushes. Those detectives chased me. I only intended to be helpful and maybe win a reward. Now I want nothing to do with the case. I’ve told you everything I know.”
The woman finally managed to unlock the gate and swung it open.
“You’re not Mrs. Deming?”
“Who I am is my own business.”
“I suppose the ghost is your own affair, too?”
“Ghost? What ghost?”
“You live here, yet you haven’t learned that the grounds are haunted?” I said. “Nearly every night, a man in white wanders back and forth in the garden.”
“I don’t know anything about that, and I’ll not answer any more questions.”
Plainly frightened, the woman snapped shut the padlock of the gate and fled into the house.
Chapter Seventeen
For a moment I remained where I stood, gazing at the blank windows of the Oaklands Estate house. I considered climbing the iron fence and banging on the door until someone answered but then decided nothing would be achieved by harassing the frightened woman within.
I returned to the waiting taxi.
“Where to?” Joe asked.
“It’s still the police station. I now have twice as much to report.”
; As the cab pulled away, I noticed a movement of curtains at the front of the estate house. Evidently the woman who had fled indoors had been watching me.
Joe made a quick trip to Greenville, depositing me at the doorstep of Central Police Station.
“Will you need me anymore?” he asked.
“I may.”
“Okay,” said Joe, slamming the cab door. “I’ll stick around. You know, I kinda like this job.”
Once inside the police station, I asked for Chief Johanson. He was out, so I asked to speak to either of the two detectives who had been assigned to my father’s case, but both Dalton and Sanderson were also away from the building.
“Why not talk to Officer Burns?” suggested the desk sergeant. “He’s familiar with the case.”
I was ushered in to see a heavyset policeman who warmed himself by a steaming radiator. Evidently he had spent several hours in an unheated police car, for he stamped his feet to restore circulation.
“Officer Burns?”
The man turned and stared at me. I returned his stare. I had seen the officer before, and the recollection was not entirely pleasant. He was the police officer I had met near Matilda’s garage on the night of the blizzard when Flo and I were poking around the truck supposedly delivering crates of pears.
“What may I do for you?” he asked.
I was uncomfortably aware of the officer’s scrutiny. I was sure he remembered me.
I began to tell the officer about my recent visit to the Mortimer garage, but I could see my story was getting far from an enthusiastic reception.
“You say you saw some big boxes at the garage,” Officer Burns demanded. “What’s so suspicious about that?”
I explained about the tunnel of boxes which led to a hidden storage room. Even to my own ears, the story had a fantastical sound.
“What you think or surmise doesn’t fly in police work,” the officer said rather rudely. “Did you actually see any contraband liquor?”
“Well, no, I didn’t,” I admitted. “The door was locked.”
“Are you willing to swear out a warrant charging Matilda Mortimer and her partner with dealing in bootleg spirits?”
“I don’t suppose I’d dare do that. I thought if the police would investigate—”
“We don’t open investigations based on the flimsy suspicions of every impressionable and overwrought female who comes into the police station claiming this or that person or business is engaged in illegal activities, Mrs. Carter. We act only on sound evidence.”
I deeply resented being described as an impressionable and overwrought female, but even to my own ears, I sounded on the verge of hysteria.
“Well, it doesn’t matter so much about the liquor,” I said desperately. “I have another clue—a really important one. I’ve found the woman who eluded Detectives Sanderson and Dalton at the cemetery.”
“Now we may get somewhere,” replied the officer. “Who is the woman? Where did you see her?”
I told everything I knew about the woman who had taken my father to Mercy Hospital. Word for word, I repeated our recent conversation.
“I’ll turn this evidence over to Detective Dalton,” the policeman promised. “He’ll probably want to question the woman himself.”
“I hope he does it right away,” I said. “She may take it into her head to skip out of town.”
Officer Burns sighed heavily. “Don’t you worry your little head about a thing. Just trust us to handle the case,” he said. “We know our business.”
I left the station feeling none too satisfied. Although I had no concrete complaint against Officer Burns, it was obvious that he held some prejudice against me, and the antipathy was mutual.
I wondered if I could depend on him to repeat my story as I had told it. If the Oaklands Estate house wasn’t investigated within 24 hours, I decided, I’d take matters into my own hands even if it involved breaking and entering.
Joe, the cabman, still waited. I regretfully explained that I would have no further use for his services.
“Well, if you change your mind and want to do some more ghost huntin’ tonight, just give me a ring,” Joe grinned. “My number’s 20476.”
I wrote the number down. I then walked to the Examiner building, where many matters awaited my attention. There I worked without interruption until late afternoon, taking only enough time to call the police station. Detective Dalton was not available. So far as I could determine, no investigation had been made of the Oaklands Estate.
Thoroughly annoyed, I tramped home to dinner. Only a cold meal awaited me. Mrs. Timms, ill with a headache, had set out a few dishes on the kitchen table and gone to bed.
“It’s nothing,” the housekeeper insisted when I brought her a hot cup of chamomile. “I’ve just worried too much the past few days.”
“Let me call Doctor Barnell.”
“Indeed not,” Mrs. Timms remonstrated. “I’ll be all right tomorrow.”
I made Mrs. Timms as comfortable as I could. By the time I had eaten and washed the dishes, it was nearly eight o’clock. I went to the telephone and summoned a cab.
“Number 20476,” I requested.
I was zipping on my galoshes when the doorbell rang. Without giving me time to answer it, Florence marched into the kitchen bearing a freshly baked lemon pie.
“Mother sent this over,” she explained. “Actually, I was the one who baked it—I needed a break from hemming costumes—but I’m sure Mother expects credit for it. It’s not a thing of beauty, I’m afraid. I slipped on the ice coming over and nearly had a catastrophe.”
Carefully Florence deposited the pie on the kitchen table. Cutting short my insistence that it didn’t really look that bad, it was the taste that mattered, she asked: “Going somewhere?”
I explained that I intended to motor out to the Oaklands Estate.
“Not alone?” Florence demanded.
“No, Jack’s driving me in his car. Bouncing Betsy is still out of commission.”
“You could invite me,” Florence said. “I could do with a bit of adventure after hemming thirty-seven baby angel costumes and a dozen shepherd’s robes.”
“I thought you were also in charge of providing rich raiment for the three wise men?”
“Never mind the wise men,” Flo huffed. “If I make even one more stitch, I think I’ll scream. If this year’s wise men aren’t the same height as last year’s wise men, they can just pick up their skirts like a trio of Victorian ladies and get on with it.”
“What about the bearing gifts part? Won’t holding up their robes get in the way of bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh?”
“They have two hands each,” Flo said darkly, “which is more than I will have if I work my fingers down to the bone.”
I let it go. It’s not like Florence to defy her mother. I should be congratulating Flo on her pluck and courage, not worried about how a trio of middle-aged men in garishly embellished bathrobes were going to make it onto the makeshift stage at St. Luke’s without falling on their faces and flinging their foil-covered jewelry box, jar of fancy bath salts, and velvet bag full of fishing sinkers all over the place.
Twenty minutes later, Flo and I were speeding away in Jack’s car.
The night was a more pleasant one than on my previous nighttime visit to the Oaklands Estate. It was still cold, but still, and the moon shone brightly.
“Park before you get to the estate,” I told Jack. “We don’t want to be seen. It might defeat our purpose.”
Jack drew up in a clump of trees some distance from the grounds of the Oaklands Estate house. Then all three of us walked up to the spiked fence. There was no sign of activity.
Two hours elapsed during which nothing happened. No lights went on inside the house. The ghostly figure did not appear to pace the grounds. Even I began to lose heart.
“This is getting pretty boring,” I said as I stamped my feet in a bid to get the circulation to return. “I don’t believe the ghost is going to s
how up tonight.”
“We may have been observed,” suggested Florence. “One can see very plainly tonight.”
After another half hour had elapsed, I was ready to return to the car. We started away from the fence, but just then, a door slammed. Instantly, we froze against the screen of bushes, waiting.
“There’s the ghost,” whispered Florence.
A figure had appeared in the garden beyond the gate. But the one who walked alone did not resemble a ghost. He was wearing a heavy overcoat over a dark suit and a snap-brimmed hat pulled low on his forehead.
I could not see the man’s face, but the silhouette was strangely familiar.
“That looks just like Dad,” I whispered, clutching Jack’s arm with one hand and tugging at the sleeve of Flo’s coat with the other. “I’m sure it’s him.”
“Oh, Jane, it can’t be—” Florence protested, but I paid her no heed. I broke away from Jack and Flo and ran toward the gate.
The man in the garden heard my approaching footsteps and looked in my direction. Upon seeing me, he started to retreat.
“Wait!” I called out frantically. “Don’t you know me, Dad? It’s Jane!”
The words seemed to convey nothing to the man. He shook his head in bafflement and hurried back toward the house.
I ran on to the gate. It was locked, but I vaulted over, landing in a heap on the other side. By the time I had picked myself up, the man had vanished into the house.
“Jane, be careful!” Jack protested, too late.
“Are you hurt?” Florence cried out, hurrying to the gate.
I brushed the snow from my coat and did not answer.
“That man couldn’t have been your father,” Florence said through the bars of the fence. “Do come back over, Jane.”
“But it was Dad,” I insisted. “I’m sure of it.”
“I think not,” Jack said.
“You called to him,” Florence argued. “If it had been your father, he couldn’t have failed to recognize your voice.”
“It was Dad,” I insisted stubbornly. “He’s being held a prisoner here.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” Flo persisted. “Whoever that man is, he could escape from the grounds just as easily as you climbed the gate.”
The Jane Carter Historical Cozies Box Set 2 Page 55