I didn’t doubt that he lay stunned on the cellar’s floor, that he lost his grip on the gun when he lost his balance, but still I was driven to add another layer of protection. A bolted door would slow him. It would increase my chances of escaping the house.
I forced myself to emerge from my matchbox-sized sanctuary. Numbly, I stumbled out of the mudroom and across the faded flooring. My breaths came in sharp exhales. My cheeks were wet with tears.
No amount of concentration or fear could prevent my eyes from tracking the stair steps when they came into view. The first one held. The next two, receiving his full weight, snapped. Only remnants of jagged lumber remained. Age had done its damage. Halfway down, two more steps were missing. Barton’s body lay crumpled in a dim shaft of light at the bottom of the stairs. He came to rest in front of two pairs of shoes: loafers and work boots. The man wearing the loafers bent down. Clay felt for a pulse in Barton’s neck. The work boots were rooted to the spot as were Gideon’s terror-filled eyes to me.
Tears welled again. I hugged my sides and shook at the top of the stairs.
He suffered, too, knowing he could not get to me.
New Beginnings
Midnight approached, and Gideon’s arm draped my bare shoulders. As the years pass, I will remember these moments on the cottage’s balconyette, sipping wine after the Baxter’s debut, and Gideon as handsome as ever. He did wear a tuxedo well.
When Rosemont was declared a crime scene for the second time, I couldn’t imagine attending the opening. Barton Reed died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Emergency personnel had difficulty extracting him from the cellar. Neither the hidden fireplace stairs, nor the ladder to the gardener’s shack were options. Finally, a litter was fashioned. With ropes, he was pulled over the broken steps and up into the kitchen.
The subsequent investigation matched the two bullets in the doorframe upstairs to the slugs removed from Trey’s body, making Barton’s gun the murder weapon. The two keys from the master suite’s cubbyhole led back to Eastwood’s theft. As I suspected, Bill Mackey’s blood drenched the blue jacket.
I admit Gina Frawley stayed on my mind, although we were never properly introduced. Barton insisted she was safe, but was she? Maybe the better question was, given her criminal ambitions, were we safe from her? I thought she should consider herself lucky and keep her distance from Havens. Neither Trey, nor Barton, nor the coveted antiquities made it out and back to Ulrich Closson and Chicago. If she was alive, she ought not to risk the providence she currently enjoyed.
The recovery of the Theban funeral mask and the Egyptian jewelry mitigated Eastwood’s insurance claim while the question of fraud charges against Adam Porter hung in the balance. After two days of deliberation, he was allowed to vanish into the night. He would not be prosecuted; neither would he teach again. With the collection whole, Adam terminated, and the suggestion of collusion floating in the air, the Collegiate Foundation ruled that Eastwood’s archeology students and Gideon should ready the collection for the upcoming conference and public display as originally planned.
Amid the turmoil that followed Barton’s death, I finished my Piedmont Alley piece on time. It appeared in the Messenger’s community section the next Sunday. The same day I filed it electronically, Bentley Westchester Rosemont, III, was buried in his family’s plot at Avondale Cemetery. We were a small group for the graveside services, and Ruby Griswold borrowed Clay’s handkerchief a second time. The day before, Clay gave Gideon and me the Jimmy Kushmaul story. The Schaumburg PD knew the man always on the periphery of criminal activity, skirting arrest time and again. The word was, if he’d been associated with Ulrich Closson, he was the very best safe-man in the business.
Which brings me back to Adam because the model number of Eastwood’s safe was at the heart of his disastrous journey. The National Archeological Museum provided a list of approved safes for storage or temporary storage of the artifacts. Adam learned that Eastwood’s safe, a Cardell 5342, was not on the list, but a Cardell 5432 was. The model numbers were so close. Not to be unjustly stripped of the Eastwood limelight he craved, Adam purposely transposed the numbers on the application, thus certifying that Eastwood’s safe was fully adequate and approved. He couldn’t let Gideon sign the paperwork. Gideon might double check. So, he forged Gideon’s signature. Why not? What could possibly go wrong?
The fact that I left Rosemont alive meant I had many people to thank. The noise Gideon and Clay made stumbling around in the cellar drew Barton away from the mud porch. They were there because Clay, born and bred a cop, paid a second visit on Augusta Vanderhoff while I skulked around at the Whitney, whining about unanswered cell phones. Sympathetic Ruby rushed Clay away too quickly during their first visit, when they learned Augusta’s son, David, had been killed in a friendly fire incident. Augusta hadn’t forgotten one detail about the tunnel in from the gardener’s cottage to the cellar, and the cellar’s hidden staircase entrance up to the house. Young David had been full of the tales. I met her at Trey’s funeral and expressed my sincere appreciation.
Lastly, a debt of gratitude goes to Mr. Bubbly. When the yodeling reached full pitch, he decided to step out for a smoke. He saw Barton’s car turning out of the alley. He, too, knew this was out-of-place behavior for the director and came forward with it while the anxiety-ridden pair of Clay and Gideon observed the disarray of Barton’s office and were perplexed over my absence. Either on a hunch, policeman’s instinct, or the desire to play in his secret passageways, Clay put his nose to the ground and was led to Rosemont.
The rest is history.
I shivered in my spaghetti-strapped gown.
“You ready to go in?” Gideon asked.
“In a minute. You know, I’ve had a lot to think about lately. I’ve resolved many things, but…”
“But not all?”
I shook my head.
Softly, he said, “How can I help?”
“Accept my apology.”
“What for?”
I reminded him of the two notes he wrote nearly six years ago, that were now stored in my desk drawer at City Hall. “I confess I thought you were arrogant enough to use the GOD thing with all your lady friends, but you didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked them. The ones who came up and introduced themselves. Sherrie included.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “You’re the oddest combination of brashness and insecurity.”
“I am not,” I exclaimed, then paused while he kissed the top of my head. “Tell me, Gideon. Why did you use the GOD thing with me?”
He stood, quiet for a moment, regarding me, then tipped his head to one side. “Because I wanted a miracle, little girl. And I got one.”
With that, he walked me into our bedroom. I didn’t stop him, although another question weighed on my mind. Perhaps Gideon was right. I was too insecure to ask.
By the end of July, the writing gods and I were in cahoots again. My idea to retell the story of Colonel Zebediah Rosemont and Ohio Second Infantry Road received approval. This time, I requested column inches for two pictures only: Zeb in his Civil War uniform and the street sign—if I could find it out in the carriage house.
The day I searched, the doorknob came off in my hand. Over its repair, Clay brought Wilkey Summer and Norb Engle together again. Kindhearted Clay took Wilkey on as his helper two weeks before. I watched the reunion from the portico. In the end, the estate was minus one hired hand who forfeited his lock picks to Chief Montague and had been sentenced to thirty days to find an assertiveness training class. The chief said he should learn how to say no to women.
It was close to six when I sat on City Hall’s steps in the hot August sun, pinching the stem of a leafy weed and easing it from where it grew between sidewalk and step. Next to me sat a gift bag with a sleeping baby lamb on its front. I picked it up at lunchtime in Piedmont Alley. Yesterday, my Zeb Rosemont story ran in the Messenger, Janice Jankowski’s granddaughter was born, and Cla
y made me a gift of the old hickory street sign. The instant he laid it in my hands, I knew what I would do.
Summer was drawing to a close in Havens. The Egyptian exhibit was trucked away today after many well-attended weeks on display. Soon, school would start again for Gideon. I was quite willing to put this summer behind me, but I knew only too well that one’s past is an adversary difficult to conquer. Memories, by their very nature, have a habit of rekindling.
I decided I would face the memories of this summer every time I entered my office and hung the hickory plank on the wall in plain sight. The sign, so meaningful to Zeb and all the Rosemonts who followed, now held meaning for me. When others asked though, it would be Zeb’s story I’d tell, not mine. His story deserved the breath of new life into an old memory.
Speaking of new life and an old memory, Gideon and I were ordered to appear at the hospital this evening to see the newborn. And the question I was afraid to ask on the balcony after the play dogged me again.
Next month, Gideon and I would celebrate our sixth anniversary. At the outset, after our love fully bloomed, we carefully mapped out our future while yielding to our broken pasts. Gideon didn’t want to go down the marriage road again, and I wanted the abandonment trait that plagued my family to end with me. It skips generations. It passed over Grams and me, but was slated to prey on my children as it preyed on Grams’ father before my mother. I considered the risk too great. I could not watch any child of mine abandon theirs. The simple solution was no marriage and no children.
But that decision came six years ago. Lives change. Expectations change. Wants change.
A small pile of greenery littered the ground around my feet. I plucked at one of the scalloped leaves fanned around another weed’s stem, and the vision of Gideon playing with Little Carlson in the park, chasing him and laughing, returned. His words, “We gotta get us one of those,” tested the covenant between us.
Given his belief that I shut him out of my life during tough times—the anniversary of Grams’ death, the example he gave—I can understand why he took my silence that day as his answer to what might’ve been a roundabout proposal and had not broached the subject again. On the other hand, it might just as well have been a momentary fancy on his part, to be quickly forgotten. Either way, I couldn’t go through this every time he looked at a toddler or a baby was born. If it wasn’t an offhanded comment, it remained too important to let ride.
Head down, I peeled off the last leaf and let it fall, the stem down to a nub. “My dear sweet Gideon,” I asked myself, “do you want a child?”
A swirling wind lifted and shuffled the shredded leaves. With the emergence of a different pattern, I realized for the first time that asking the question was not what I feared, but his inevitable reply: “What do you want, Wrenn?”
As if I conjured his presence, his voice invaded my thoughts.
“Better get a move on. Jan-Jan’s command performance awaits.” The Crossfire’s window was down. He called out through it.
I collected the baby gift.
“Something on your mind there, little girl?” he asked once I sunk into the bucket seat.
I studied his smiling eyes. My thoughts vacillated rapidly. My heart beat as quickly as a bird’s. Could I truthfully answer his question, or would I drift safely to the mundane? If I found the courage, if he wanted children, would I cling to him or to my past? “Gideon, the day of the baseball tournament, when you played with Little Carlson, you said that we should get us one of those.”
His repeated words hit him with a bit of force that showed. “I did say that. And that’s been bothering you?”
“Have you changed your mind about things?”
“Honestly, I said that without a moment’s thought.”
“Some truths are said in jest.”
“Wrenn,” he said, taking my hand, “I would never use an aside to communicate a change for our lives that both of us should make together.”
Now that was absolutely Gideon. “Is it time we discuss it again?”
He smiled. “Perhaps. But after we see the baby. Then we’ll have a sweet, cuddly point of reference. Agreed?”
The window floated up beside me.
“You’re just afraid of being late to the command performance,” I said, putting a light spin on his rationale for delay.
“You’re right. Jan-Jan. The grandmother. Scares me.”
He steered the car away from the curb.
Oh, my dear sweet Gideon, don’t worry. I will protect you.
The thought made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Also By Connie Chappell
Wild Raspberries
When Callie MacCallum sews her first quilt after the death of her lover Jack Sebring, she doesn’t realize she’ll be drawn into a Sebring family battle between wife and daughter-in-law. She simply wants to fulfill her promise to Jack to visit their cabin in the West Virginia mountains, where their long love affair was safely hidden.
Instead, her emotionally reminiscent trip becomes crowded with the two Sebring women, a grief counselor, and the massive role Callie assumes. She must speak for Jack in order to protect his four-year old grandson Chad from his stubbornly manipulative and blame-passing grandmother and his recently widowed and power-usurping mother. Callie understands both women grieve the loss of Chad’s father. He died when a raging storm split the tree that crushed him.
Grief isn’t the only common thread running between the four women. One by one, their secrets are revealed on the West Virginia mountaintop.
The train depot mentioned in Deadly Homecoming at Rosemont, A Wrenn Grayson Mystery is patterned after the Big Four passenger depot constructed in my hometown of Springfield, Ohio. The town celebrated the opening of the depot on June 6, 1911. By 1928, Springfield boasted 26 through passenger trains daily. Sadly, the depot was demolished in 1969 to make way for an overpass to carry vehicles over those very railroad tracks for which the depot existed.
I was inside the station once as a young teenager. I possess a hazy memory of the vastness and wooden bench-style seating with high backs. An artist’s rendering of the station hangs over the desk in my home, making its fabulous description easily implantable into the history of the fictitious town of Havens, Ohio, created for Wrenn Grayson mysteries.
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