Deadly Homecoming at Rosemont

by Chappell,Connie

  I dropped back to his left, the weaponless side. “Why didn’t you take off as soon as you had the artifacts? Why come out here and hide them? Why hang around?”

  His eyes widened. He quickly interpreted my words. “You know about the hidden passages. Trey said no one knew.”

  “I know they exist, but I don’t know how to access them.”

  “It would’ve been too suspicious to disappear the next day when all I had to do was finish out the play as planned. After a few weeks, when things died down some, and the play ran its course, I’d retrieve the antiquities and collect my paycheck. It was a perfect setup.”

  “Paycheck? Who’s paying you?” When he balked, I said, “Then let me guess. Ulrich Closson.”

  He was thunderstruck. His mouth gaped. “Where’d you hear that name?”

  “He’s been mentioned as a possible financier. There were two others. But since you all hail from Chicago, I thought he made the most sense.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Wasn’t it risky, leaving the artifacts stashed here? What if Clay moved in? Why not get them out of town with Gina when she took off.”

  “First of all, Closson doesn’t trust women.”

  “Smart man,” I said, glancing up to Barton for the sidelong look I knew was coming.

  “Secondly,” Barton continued, his eyes on the path again, “I’ve been paying attention. Clay’s repairs are going at an agonizingly slow pace. And, besides, he could be easily lured away long enough for me to get back inside.”

  I cast him a look. The point being, he had me now and the same scenario would work in a few weeks. He could draw Clay away with the flick of a finger to rescue me from kidnappers. And no wonder Trey didn’t show for a homecoming at Rosemont, which both Clay and Elmore expected. He couldn’t chance being recognized.

  Pure Evil

  The path through Rosemont Woods forked, and without a word, Barton and I both veered right. I let the crayon rendering from Ruby’s table be my guide. Left would take us to the carriage house. Our destination, of course, was the stone mansion.

  “What if Clay found the artifacts and turned them in?”

  He laughed merrily. “In this town? He’d be accused of the theft.”

  That rankled. I wanted to whittle his mirth down to size. “You should know the police have Closson’s name. They’ll make the connection if they haven’t already. You should just give yourself up. I bet they’d cut you a deal for evidence against him.”

  “Nice try, but I don’t think so. It couldn’t have been a better setup.” He smiled then, as if at the fond memory. “Closson followed the National Archeological Museum’s involvement with the traveling collection. He knew Eastwood University was in the mix. Since Trey knew the town, he suggested hiding the pieces Closson wanted in the old house.”

  “Wasn’t it a problem when you found out the house wasn’t Trey’s anymore? That Clay owned it?”

  “Yes, but we knew that going in.”

  That baffled me. “Trey kept up on his family’s possessions?”

  “No. I told him.”

  “You?” I stopped to drill the word.

  “Think about it, Wrenn.” He nudged me back into motion. “The house had already been auctioned when I visited in April. I knew Clay Addison purchased it, and its condition. I wasn’t here that day just to scope out the theater. Of course, everything hinged on Eastwood being selected. I’m not sure, but Closson may have peddled a little influence there—a backdoor effort—so Eastwood would get the nod.”

  “Collusion within the Collegiate Foundation?” Why not, I thought.

  “Murder. Theft. Collusion. You’re just full of nasty words today.” He ducked a low-hanging branch. “Within days of the announcement, I read Adam Porter’s online newspaper interview about the collection and, like a gift from heaven, your story about the opera house ran as a companion piece. The idea to mount a production and offer my services as director was just the cover we needed. The rest, you know. End of story.”

  With the finality of his words, Rosemont Woods dimmed around me, like the house lights going down. Spinsters was not the only play in production here. We’d all been on stage. Closson, I’m sure, was appreciative of our duped performances. If Barton spoke the truth, the auction invoked no panic—just a mere blue-page rewrite of another script. With its backstory in the Messenger, Act One easily played Adam Porter opposite Gina Frawley.

  And for it all, I felt somehow accountable. Unwittingly, I orchestrated the whole chain of events with my Baxter Opera House story. I wore a wardrobe of guilt as surely as if my finger pulled the trigger killing Trey. Not knowing my motivation, I asked, “Why did Trey have to die? What happened there? You had to know a murder would attract a lot of attention.”

  “Disposing of him had always been part of my plan, but solely from a business standpoint, you understand. To reduce the division of profits,” said the man whose sights never drifted far from the bottom line. “I had discretion in those matters. Closson wouldn’t care as long as he got his playthings. And honestly, I hadn’t planned on doing the deed so soon, but he came at me in the house. He possessed a temper he didn’t try to control. In the eyes of the law, it was self-defense.”

  “That’s going to be hard to prove.”

  “I’m not planning on sticking around to prove it. Anyway,” he said with a dismissive wave of the gun, “it was his own fault. He demanded a bigger cut. He wanted his money that night. When I told him no, he lost it. I was tired of pampering him at that point. I needed him to open the safe. That’s all I needed him for. I knew the way into the place, so I took care of him a little early. It caused a bit of unease, I admit, but it’s all going to work out.” He punctuated this with a look intended to remind me of my upcoming demise.

  The look did its job.

  Nervously abrupt, I said, “People know I went to the theater.”

  “I’m going to call you on that, Wrenn. All along, you’ve been a one-woman show. But even if it’s true, they don’t know where you are now. An exclusive. Isn’t that the term in the newspaper business?”

  I stopped on the path and started to protest, but he talked over me.

  “Is that what you’ve been hoping for? Your name on page one. Sorry to disappoint.” The actor sighed, seeming genuinely saddened. “Your name will appear on page one, all right, but it won’t be your byline.”

  The intimation became clear. It brought the drone of insects, hauntingly intense in the woods around me. Even as I considered my death, I wanted him to know he wouldn’t get away with it. Any of it, for that matter. I strained for a believable lie. I wanted to plant a seed that would grow doubt in his mind. Perhaps it would bloom into a false move or mental error, and I’d get a chance to escape.

  “So you haven’t said, how did you figure this out?” Barton inquired companionably, reverting to the charming playwright.

  “You slipped up,” I replied curtly, “like the amateur you are.”

  His face hardened. “You know, I’m beginning to like you less and less.” He waved me ahead with the pistol.

  I heaved a casual shrug and set out at a slow pace, my eyes on the dirt path. “Let’s change the subject. Since your neighbor saw Gina leave your house Thursday morning alive and well, I guess she was deemed trustworthy and gets her share of the profits?” I turned my face up to his.

  He pinned me with a glare. “You should know, I don’t hold Closson’s opinion, present company excepted. Jimmy, however, was just here for the main event. In a short few days, he managed to get in a fight when I told him to keep a low profile. I have no regrets about killing him.”

  The path narrowed to single-file, and I edged into the lead. Barton’s regression, his reference to “Jimmy,” not Trey, did spark one last glimmer of hope. The report from Schaumburg PD on Jimmy Kushmaul might prompt Elmore and Baines to give the crime scene one last look before releasing the department’s claim on the mansion. If that happened and their arrival was well ti
med, it might compel Barton to ransom me for his safe escape from Havens with his stash. It pained me to think Bully Baines might be responsible for saving my life, but given the gravity of the situation, I guess I’d force myself to be grateful.

  My reverie was interrupted when I passed through shafts of sunlight, warming the trail. A few steps more and the footpath would empty out onto a sunny clearing. I picked up my pace, eager to escape the woods at least.

  In a hissed tone, Barton said, “No. Wait.” He grabbed my arm, holding me stationary while he eased past to the wood’s edge. Cautious eyes raked the landscape, then he ventured out with me in tow.

  At a slow jog, we covered the distance between the woods and the ramshackle gardener’s cottage. A grassy knoll splayed out to our left, encompassing the carriage house. On our right, a crescent of trees bordered a stubby cul-de-sac.

  We drew up to the cottage’s sidewall first. Barton fired me a look before peering around the corner to the front. I clamped my mouth shut while his fingers sunk deeper into my elbow. We scooted around the corner in four quick steps, then stopped, facing the door. It was bracketed by two large mullioned windows, grimy and streaked with years of neglect. Bewildered, I looked from Barton to the door, down to the gashed sapling, then over to the withered daylily, where the light of understanding dawned. Clay’s oafishness had not caused the daylily’s demise. Instead, the blame belonged to two hasty thieves who couldn’t see on a moonless and stormy night.

  Releasing my arm, he said, “Pull it open. Use both hands.”

  I stepped forward and gave it a yank. It cleared the little maple with a jolt. The gun barrel opened it the rest of the way. He shoved me inside. The air within was stale, humid, and thick with dust particles floating in the angular beams of sunlight bearing down through the glass. The afternoon light fell on clay pots, rusty hand tools, long-handled rakes and hoes leaning in the corner, and a sturdy wooden workbench that occupied the side of the shack closest to the house.

  He came through behind me, barking out an order to close the door. I obeyed, then watched him scuff quickly into the corner behind the bench. There, he kicked over an upended wicker bushel basket and dropped to his knees.

  I scanned the meager building. It consisted of four thin walls and a sagging roof. I eyed a shovel resting in the far corner. I wondered if I could wield it in these small quarters as a weapon against the kneeling Barton. I inched that direction. He read my thoughts again and sprang to his feet, making a guttural sound. He reached out his long, gun-toting arm and swept three clay pots off the bench. They exploded in shards at my feet. I jumped and shrieked. I guess our madcap fun from the woods was behind us. My gaze leaped from the floor to him. The eyes that drilled mine were round pools of darkness.

  “Don’t even think about getting any ideas. Come over here,” he snarled.

  I stared back at him. My heart pounded in my chest. My mouth dried to earthen dust.

  “I said, come over here.”

  From a strength I didn’t know I had, I found the gumption to be indignant. With exaggerated care, I stepped over the rubble. I marched two more steps, angled myself his direction, laced my fingers together in front of me, and raised a defiant chin, only to find him studying me strangely.

  “Those pants have belt loops?”

  “What?” I asked, baffled.

  “Are there belt loops on those pants?” He spoke with marked impatience.

  “Yes.” The sweater I wore overlapped the slacks.

  “Hook that flashlight on one of them. But first, give me the gloves.” Attached to his command was a head-jerk toward the floor. Apparently, before he fled the grounds the night of the murder, he stored a few items under the basket, where they awaited his impending return. “Do it today, Wrenn.” His growl pulled me forward.

  I looked from the pearly white latex back to him. “So that’s why I’ve been doing all the grunt work, opening and closing doors. You’re worried about fingerprints.”

  “Not the amateur you thought I was, huh?”

  “Yeah, right,” I said sarcastically, holding out the gloves. I bent down again, not only to retrieve the high-powered, lantern-style flashlight, but to conceal an irrepressible smile. I felt reasonably confident that a decent set of his prints could be lifted from the TST mug, now bagged in my car.

  I rose, hefting the light. He laid the gun on the bench and immediately began working his hands into the surgical gloves. He snapped one glove into place, then the other, while I labored with the flashlight and its attached D-ring. I thumbed a belt loop through the one-way passage of the ring.

  “I get the gloves, but why the flashlight?” I released it by degrees to hang from my right hip.

  “Keep your pants on.” He grabbed the gun and tucked it in his waistband.

  “Easier said than done,” I mumbled, hitching up my slacks. The light was the size of a lunchbox with the weight of a brick.

  Unhampered by the gloves, which hugged his hands like a second skin, he checked my work and the workings of the light. On, then off. Satisfied, he stepped back. “You and I are the only two people alive who know about this little secret. Before too long,” he said, with a dramatic pause, “it’ll just be one.”

  Reeling from the pure evil that accompanied his delivery left me completely unprepared for what he did next.

  He put his strength into pushing the heavy workbench toward the door. The table legs scraped across the wooden floor, making tracks in the accumulation of dirt. Another set of tracks ran out ahead of them. These, of course, were made Wednesday, sometime after midnight, the first time the bench was moved. Like skid marks on a lonely stretch of highway, these tracks were the only indication someone had come inside in over a decade.

  I watched, mesmerized. He fell to his knees and lifted a well-concealed panel out of the floor. The moment was riddled with mixed emotions. The discovery of the passage brought dread instead of delight. None of my past research, no matter how revealing, could equal this. And I experienced it with the most unlikely company: a cold-blooded murderer. This dampened my spirits. This, and knowing I was next on his list. Death waited at the end of the passage. I pictured a bloodied Trey lying on the floor. It sickened me, and yet the historian in me had to know, had to walk back through history.

  I slowly moved toward the dark yawning cavity.

  Dead Weight

  The size of the opening in the gardener’s cottage’s floorboards was easily large enough for the average person to fit, although K.C., greased in butter, would still find it cramped.

  Barton mopped his forehead with his sleeve. “The tunnel goes straight into the cellar. Sit down on the side, and then swing over to the ladder. It’ll hold you.” He gave me a nudge.

  I squatted to sit on the edge, appraising the depths. The wooden ladder was bolted to the tunnel passage, but the light from the shack only filtered down so far, weakening as it went. Darkness waited below.

  “The dark won’t hurt you.”

  I raised a scornful eyebrow to his taunting grin.

  “Turn on the light, Wrenn.” His manner said he spoke to a mindless child.

  “Oh,” popped out of my mouth. I found and flipped the switch, scolding myself for not keeping my head in the game. Of course, he wanted the lantern hooked on a belt loop. That gave me both hands free for the ladder. I stretched out my feet to the closest rung and swung over. The dangling lantern lodged crossways, caught between me and the rim. I bowed my hips to the left, freed it, and began to descend. The flashlight did its job.

  “Be careful.” His warning came as my head passed beneath the plane of flooring. “I don’t know how I’d get you out if you fell and got hurt.”

  Those words caused an odd foreboding to shudder through me and my hands to tighten their grip on the side rails. Cautiously, I lowered myself until one foot found solid ground, then the other. I released the ladder and turned to face the passageway. My eyes strained to see down its endless length. The daylight from above was nearly
severed when Barton climbed into the hatch, then fully cut off when the overhead panel was reseated, sealing the opening.

  I shone the tethered flashlight along the underground corridor and took in my surroundings. It felt damp and thirty degrees cooler. I gave an involuntary shiver, then set the beam of light to circle the walls, ceiling, and floor. Jonah Rosemont constructed his private passage as he constructed his mansion, with huge blocks of stone. Being underground though, the walls were shiny with moisture. I suspected mold was present. Puddles of water pooled on the floor in places. What would a rainy spell do to the tunnel? I wondered.

  “Let’s go.” Barton pushed his hand into the small of my back. “This would have been the ideal hiding place for the artifacts. Quick in, quick out. But the dampness was too risky. Ohio is not the dessert of Egypt. Below ground was damn well out of the question.”

  We moved forward in unison: me and the light, Barton and his growing anxiety. Every five or six steps, we stooped to clear an overhead arched support. The supports bore the weight of the long expanse of stone. The air we breathed was old and musty. I heard a crunching sound underfoot and assumed the worst. We were following a trail of rodent bones. Equally appalling were the cobwebs clinging about. My flesh prickled. It felt like we were traveling back to 1849, the year Rosemont reached completion and Jonah moved his family in.

  We covered the straight passageway quicker than expected and in silence. At the far end, we were met with a simple door. Barton reached out and turned the knob. It opened toward us. I was surprised and disappointed to find this ordinary door guarded the passage.

  Once opened though, I saw there was nothing ordinary about it. For one, it did not met the floor. More like a hatch on a submarine, it required whoever passed through to clear a short trip-hazard at the threshold. I shone the lantern’s beam through the doorway. It filled a dinky chamber of some kind, smaller than an elevator cubicle. Barton reached into the dark recess and pushed on the back wall. It broke down the middle, and two hinged halves swung away from us.