Trap Door

by Sarah Graves

  Dip, smooth, scrape; I kept on until I got into a rhythm, the soft material sliding into the ragged holes and the excess coming off cleanly and satisfyingly. It was tranquilizing to work in silence this way, almost hypnotic. The lavender lady looked as if she had been expensive, that being another thing about old wallpaper layers; like the rings in tree trunks, they mark growth periods, because people only redecorate when they have money.

  After a while of dipping and scraping I almost forgot where I was. But eventually my present difficulties crept back into my thoughts: the awareness, for instance, that if I didn’t find a way to solve Jemmy’s problem, it would become my own.

  That in fact it already had done so. If Jemmy couldn’t get rid of Walt Henderson and the threat he posed, he had decided to become a federal witness. He’d practically said as much; that if he had to he would enter what in the past he’d always scorned by calling it “Witless Protection,” try to salvage what he could of a life.

  But going in meant testifying, not only about yourself but against other people. Such as, for instance, me. I’d taught quite a few career criminals how to invest their money legally. But the way they’d gotten it wasn’t legal, not even a little bit.

  And I’d known it. What a federal prosecutor might make of that I didn’t know in detail, but I was certain that it wouldn’t be good; in short, the past was in serious danger of swinging around and biting me in the tail big-time.

  And the only way to stop it was to get Walter Henderson out of the equation, preferably by involving him so deeply in his own legal troubles that he wouldn’t be able to threaten Jemmy anymore.

  Now, though, however much I was convinced of Henderson’s guilt in Cory Trow’s death, I knew that to anyone else his motive would seem no stronger than that of Cory’s rival for Trish Bogan’s affections, the puppeteer Fred Mudge. And once Henderson’s legal beagles got done demonstrating that, he would be exonerated and freed as fast as a jury of his peers could pronounce the phrase “reasonable doubt.”

  As a result, I thought unhappily, the two situations—Cory Trow’s death and the Jemmy/Walt Henderson problem—were rapidly turning into what Sam would’ve called a fuster-cluck.

  “Jake.”

  I gasped, nearly dropping the putty knife. The third-floor room with its falling plaster, bare overhead bulb, and unfinished plank floor was empty except for me. “Jake…”

  Like a syllable spoken through water. It was a real sound, not merely in my head; audible in the sense that I felt certain I’d heard it with my physical ears.

  Whether or not it was physically spoken was another matter. An image of Victor as he had been in life popped into my mind: dark curly hair, long jaw, clever fingers, and intelligent eyes.

  Outside, dawn brightened, turning the bay to pewter. Birds began twittering, racketing around in the gutters where they built nests every spring no matter how we tried stopping them. Our most recent effort was a life-sized plaster owl Sam had named Raoul; the birds had pecked it to bits.

  I waited a little longer, heart thudding, but when nothing else happened I closed the plaster bucket. Then, carrying my coffee cup and the putty knife to clean at the kitchen sink, I went downstairs to begin my day.

  Or started to. Because on the stairway it suddenly occurred to me—

  This, you see, is yet another benefit of emptying your mind via doing your own home repairs, for Nature abhors a vacuum and as a result something useful or at least clarifying may pop in.

  —that maybe they weren’t.

  Two different situations, I mean.

  Maybe there was only one.

  To: hlrb@mainetel.net

  From: ddimaio@miskatonic.edu

  Subj: Eastport book again

  Horace

  In my excitement over the lab results, I neglected to reply to your point re what we ought to tell the book’s owner. Though I think "finder" might be a better term since I believe it’s safe to say original ownership probably has not been relinquished…

  Anyway of course you’re right. Tangled webs and so on. Besides, her own name’s in the damned thing and considering the context how else could we explain that?

  Winding down the spring term’s obligations here, so will be able to devote more time to this whole matter soon. Kids today! Though it seems just moments ago that our own professors were saying the same about us, no doubt as despairingly.

  Best!

  Dave

  What if Cory Trow knew what Henderson was up to?” I asked Ellie when she arrived at my house later that morning. “Maybe not specifically about Jemmy,” I added, “but enough about Henderson’s past so people would look at him funny if Jemmy showed up dead. That is, people other than me.”

  Considering this, she wrinkled her forehead and winced at the result. The edges of the cut had stayed together all right, but they looked red. “I like it,” she said of my idea as I handed her a tube of bacitracin.

  “Here, smear this on,” I told her over the snarl of a power saw. My father was on the roof again, cutting out the rotted part of the old sheathing.

  “I like it because it’s an actual practical motive,” Ellie continued, gingerly applying ointment. “And to me that’s been a problem all along.”

  To me, also. Because Henderson was a professional killer. And no matter how I tried, I couldn’t quite accept the idea that he’d killed Cory for personal reasons, any more than a dentist would perform root canals for fun.

  Ellie took a blueberry scone from the bag she’d brought over and sliced it in half. “Because Henderson wants to kill Jemmy.” She popped the two halves into the toaster. “That, according to Jemmy, is Henderson’s whole reason for being here.”

  “Yup.” The aroma of toasting scone floated through the kitchen. “He’s spent a lot of time, money, energy…all so he can do a job no one else has been able to do.”

  The scone halves popped up. She buttered them and handed one to me. “So what if Cory found out what Henderson really is?”

  I bit in, the wild blueberries exploding on contact with my teeth. “Precisely,” I mumbled. I want hot buttered scones served at my funeral, and I want some put in my mouth, too, just in case they really are good enough to raise the dead.

  “Jen could’ve told him,” I reasoned. “And then…”

  Ellie nodded wisely. “Then came the stalking accusation, and the guilty verdict, and she might’ve said, ‘Daddy, maybe it’s not a such good idea to make Cory mad. Because I know I shouldn’t have, but I told him you’re a…’”

  “She wouldn’t want to confess her indiscretion to her father right away. She’d put it off for a while, hoping she wouldn’t have to.” But once it started looking as if Cory really might see the inside of the slammer…“Then Cory might say, ‘You’d better do something about this, or I’m going to tell something about you,” I theorized. “And Henderson would.”

  The power saw my father was using on the roof took on a high, unpleasant whine, as if it were biting into something more substantial than sheathing material.

  Another roof beam, for instance. “Okay, let’s ask Jen about it,” Ellie said, and I agreed if only to escape the house, which seemed to be getting demolished.

  “Where’s Lee?” I asked when we were in Ellie’s car. Up and down Key Street springtime chores were bursting out as exuberantly as the buds on the lilac bushes, with flower beds being neatened and windows being washed and small damp leaf piles smoldering sweetly at the edges of the driveways.

  Ellie buckled her seat belt. “George signed her up for baby swimming lessons at the pool in Calais. He says it’s a safety thing, living by water the way we do. He’s there with her now.”

  The mental picture of George in a pool full of moms and babies made me giggle; Ellie too, and I’m afraid we made some good-natured fun of George over it. But our laughter stopped when we reached the iron gates guarding the entry to the Henderson compound.

  Suddenly our errand was real again, ou
r enthusiasm for sleuthing fizzling palpably. “What if he answers the buzzer?” Ellie asked.

  The wall still bristled with tall spikes. I estimated you could hang a dozen door-to-door salesmen, political activists, and/or religious proselytizers up there without even crowding them.

  Or two snoops. “He won’t,” I said more confidently than I felt. “Look at this place—” I swung my arm wide at the enormous parcel of shorefront real estate. “He’s got people to answer gates for him,” I said. “And anyway for all we know he isn’t even home.”

  I got out, pressed the buzzer on the box by the gate, and spoke into the microphone. A woman—probably the housekeeper—answered and after a pause the gates unlocked with a loud click.

  “What’d you say?” Ellie asked breathlessly as we drove in. Going up the paved drive was easier than bushwhacking around the back way along the cliffs. Near the house the fenced pastures gave way to manicured lawn studded with topiary shrubbery.

  “The truth.” A small flock of sheep cropped a hilly pasture; I recognized the breed. They were South African Dorpers: long nosed, sweet faced, and so expensive you might as well just buy a dozen gold-plated lawn mowers. “I said we were here to ask Jen what she’d told Cory Trow about her dad.”

  As we entered the circle drive leading to the house, the pavement gave way to the white pea gravel I’d noticed before. “Because ‘speak truth to power’ is still good advice,” I added.

  We stopped; no sign of giant, slavering monsters…er, I mean dogs. “Although when the power carries a gun, maybe not so much,” Ellie pointed out. “Here goes nothing.”

  “Last one in is a rotten egg,” I agreed, and we dashed for the porch across the wide expanse of gravel just as the enormous animals launched themselves from beneath nearby hedges.

  “Run!” Ellie yelled, which was not the advice I needed just at the moment. Fly! would’ve been better, along with precise, immediately comprehensible instructions on how to do it.

  Liftoff in particular was the maneuver I wanted; I could feel the dog’s kibble-scented breath on my neck. And then…

  Wait a minute. I stopped, turning to face the dog. My heart was still pounding so hard that I could feel my tonsils pulsing at the back of my throat. But even in the face of that big toothy kisser right in front of me, it didn’t add up: attack dogs plus a flock of purebred, fabulously expensive sheep?

  Nuh-uh. “You don’t bite, do you?” I asked the dog. “I mean, not unless somebody tells you to.”

  The dog’s eyes, at first as cold and unfeeling as a pair of ball bearings, softened at my tone. Its tail twitched uncertainly and began wagging.

  “Ellie,” I said, but she’d stopped, too, staring as her own doggy pursuer skidded to a halt. Then, seeing we weren’t going to provide them with further sport, both dogs sauntered back to the hedges and lay down again just as Jen Henderson came out onto the porch.

  Honey-gold hair and long legs in white shorts, a T-shirt on a body that got a regular diet of serious athletic workouts…but from the look on her face I thought we’d have been better off running from the dogs.

  “Get in here,” she ordered, gesturing sharply at us as Ann Radham appeared beside her. Ann’s horn-rims shone in the sunlight and her grin was chipper as usual. But it faded when she recognized me.

  “Move their car,” Jen ordered, “around back.”

  I tossed the keys at Ann, who ambled amiably to the vehicle. Today her earrings were little gold four-leaf clovers and the red filigree pendant at her throat was a Chinese good-luck charm.

  Jen’s angry tone drew my attention back. “My dad will be home any minute and he won’t be happy to see you here,” she said, beckoning us toward the porch.

  Then why, I wondered, are you letting us in? But the answer to that was clear once we got up the carpeted staircase to her room. “What do you two want?” she demanded.

  Which let me know she wanted to know what we were up to. “Did you tell Cory Trow what your dad does for a living?” I asked. “And later did you tell your father that you had?”

  Her face flattened. “What are you talking about?” Her room’s walls held posters of rock bands, snapshots of people at parties, torn concert tickets—all the small trophies of a happy teenage life, plus some large ones. Three gold-plated softballs mounted on teak bases sported inscribed plaques that read All-State Champions.

  So she really was a softball phenom. “Come on, Jen. It’s an easy question. Did you tell him your father’s a hit man? That he kills people for money?”

  Tears sprang to her amazing sapphire-colored eyes. “How dare you say a thing like that?” she demanded quaveringly.

  Ann’s voice came from the hall. “Hey, Jen, you okay?” Her purple-streaked head poked in through the half-open door.

  “Fine,” Jen snapped. Her mirrored dresser was cluttered with gadgets, including a BlackBerry and two cell phones, one of them the pink model whose directory had caused a famous “It girl”—her name rhymed conveniently with heiress—a lot of trouble.

  Ann hesitated, not liking it that we were there hassling her friend. “Why don’t you all come with me?” she tried. “I’m playing at the Bayside tonight, I need to go down there and—”

  “Go on, then,” Jen ordered impatiently. “They’re not staying long.”

  Ann nodded doubtfully. “Here,” she said, thrusting a handwritten poster at me. “For the gig tonight.”

  Always the promoter; I supposed the performers got a percentage of the fee charged at the door. I folded the poster without reading it and stuck it into my pocket. A moment later came the sound of the front door closing downstairs.

  “My father is retired,” Jen Henderson said tightly. “What he did for work is none of your business, but it’s not true what you just said. And anyway…”

  Ellie stood by the windows overlooking the long backyard. Through them the barn where we’d found Cory’s body was visible, a sight that still gave me an internal chill.

  I repressed it, concentrating on Jen. “…anyway I wouldn’t have told Cory anything like that even if it was true. It’d be none of his business, either.”

  One of the dresser drawers was open an inch. Inside it a jumble of jewel-toned colors caught my eye. Without asking Jen’s permission I walked over and yanked the drawer open the rest of the way.

  It was full of silk scarves, the faint scent of her exotic perfume wafting from them. “What the hell are you doing?” she protested. “You can’t just—”

  “Hey, you know what? A kid got hung in your barn the other night. A kid you were playing around with like he was another one of your rich-girl toys.”

  Her face flushed. “Hey, you know what?” she shot back. “It wasn’t my fault. I mean I’m sorry. It’s a shame what happened to Cory. What he did. But I told him he’d better not—”

  She stopped abruptly, biting her lip.

  “Told him what, Jen? That if he didn’t scram, your father would take care of him?”

  “He already had,” she grated out angrily. “That’s how my dad took care of things, not the way you think. We made a complaint, he got charged and convicted, and he was probably going to jail.”

  “Right,” I said. “Likely he was, especially after he didn’t show up for his sentencing hearing. And from there, he couldn’t keep coming around trying to get back in your good graces.”

  I couldn’t stop looking at the scarves. Jen stalked past me and slammed the dresser drawer shut. “So what?” she demanded.

  “So I guess his heart was broken,” I answered with all the sarcasm the ridiculous statement deserved. “I guess Cory Trow, a scheming little delinquent so mean his own mother gave up on him, decided to end it all. Over you.”

  I paused to let the foolishness of that notion sink in. Jen was sharp enough to get it, too. “Maybe he just didn’t want to go to jail,” she offered weakly.

  “Maybe. And maybe that’s why he decided to use what you had told him.” Ellie moved from the window, took a few qu
iet steps to the other side of the room.

  “I didn’t,” Jen repeated insistently, but I interrupted her.

  “Up in the barn loft…that’s where you met, right? I mean that love nest in the hay wasn’t from one of the landscapers meeting his favorite sheep up there or something?”

  The crudeness was deliberate, meant to shake her further and distract her, if possible. It did; with her back half-turned she didn’t notice Ellie’s hand moving casually toward the drawer of her bedside table.

  Opening it. “You’re disgusting,” Jen quavered. “Why would anyone want to kill Cory anyway?”

  The last time I’d seen an expression like hers, it was on the face of a deer in the headlights one night when Ellie was driving us home.

  “Sorry,” I said as a tear slid down her cheek. “I guess girls like you don’t enjoy thinking about murder. Living on the proceeds, though, that’s another matter, isn’t it?”

  Yeah, like I should talk. But my own past wasn’t the point. Ellie slid the drawer shut, having had a look inside. “Or maybe you murdered him,” she suggested, out of the blue.

  Jen was a big girl, tall and large-boned, and in good shape. Once she’d gotten him into the loft she could’ve overpowered Cory long enough to get a rope around his neck and shove him.

  My money was still on her dad because this kind of murder—the kind planned in advance—took more than physical strength. Still, might as well follow up on Ellie’s remark. “So where were you the night Cory died?” I asked.

  She stiffened. “Asleep in bed,” she replied promptly; just as Ann had said. “And I think you’d better go. My father will be home soon.”

  Right; we didn’t want to run into him. And I thought we had all we were going to get out of Jen, for now. But at the door I turned.

  “You did tell Cory, though, didn’t you? About your dad, what he does for a living. It must’ve seemed like a good way to get rid of Cory, scare him off with what your dad might do to him if he didn’t beat it.”