Mysteries of Holt House - A Mystery

by Marja McGraw

  Now what the heck was that supposed to mean? Was it a warning from a friend or an enemy? It spooked me, no matter who it was from. It was time for the joke to come to an end. I didn’t like receiving anonymous notes, and it really wasn’t funny anyway. Two notes in one night were a bit much. The door opened once more, this time startling me, and I flinched.

  “You sure are jumpy,” Mike said.

  “Yeah. You took me by surprise.”

  He took hold of my hand. “Let’s go for a walk. It’s really nice out tonight, and besides, it’s a lot cooler outside than it is in here.”

  One more reminder about installing air conditioning. Thankfully, the tenants hadn’t complained – yet.

  “Okay, but don’t be surprised if we run into Lucy and Josh.” I nonchalantly stuffed the note into my pocket, deciding not to mention it to Mike.

  “Lucy and Josh? What are you talking about?”

  “Oh! So Lucy doesn’t tell you everything, huh?” For once I had the inside scoop, not that it really mattered.

  “Apparently not. But I would assume from this conversation that there’s something to tell.”

  “Yeah. Ain’t life grand?” I said, feigning happiness. I didn’t want Mike to see something had shaken me. He was upset enough about the first note.

  “Good for her. It’s about time she got involved with someone. She needs the companionship. And so do I, so let’s go for that walk.”

  This time I smiled a genuine smile. For at least the next few minutes all would be right with the world.

  It was another gorgeous night with a partial moon and a sky full of stars. We strolled, hand in hand, toward the garden. A cloud passed over the moon and it was dark for a few moments before the cloud moved on.

  “Now isn’t this better than being stuck in that stuffy house?” I asked.

  “Sure. That’s why I suggested the walk. Let’s go sit on the bench in the garden.”

  I didn’t say anything, but continued to walk with him. He picked a rose for me as we neared the bench.

  “The owner probably wouldn’t like you picking the flowers, but I love it myself.” Walking with Mike made me feel safe and content. Sitting on the bench, I sniffed the rose.

  “I like this one rose more than the whole arrangement you brought me.” The single flower didn’t represent a threat to me and there was no note attached. It made sense to me, and I hoped Mike understood.

  He smiled.

  My gaze drifted toward the gazebo where I saw Lucy and Josh sitting close to each other, talking in quiet voices. I pointed them out to Mike.

  “I feel like I’m eavesdropping,” I whispered.

  “Then don’t listen to them.” Mike took hold of my shoulders and turned me so I was directly facing him. I looked at him questioningly. “This way you won’t be tempted to watch them either.”

  I thought he meant I wouldn’t be able to see them because his wide shoulders would block my view, but he bent down and kissed me. At that moment I didn’t care who watched who.

  “Lucy and Josh? Are they around?” The realization that I’d been waiting for this first kiss surprised me.

  “I don’t know,” he said, kissing me again, this time more passionately. “You know, if it hadn’t been for Lucy I never would have come out to have you sign those contracts. I would have sent someone else. That’s what I usually do.”

  “What did Lucy have to do with it?” I asked.

  “She called me after our representative gave you the estimate and said she’d put in a good word for the company if I’d make a point of coming out here in person. You know how she is. She didn’t really ask me, she told me. At the time, I thought she just wanted to see me.”

  “I know how she can be. Pushy is a good word. I’m always kidding her about being too pushy, but in this case I’m glad she was.”

  “Me, too.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders and we sat for a few minutes without saying a word.

  “Let’s go for a swim.” Mike stood up and held his hand out to me.

  “Okay, but let’s wait until everyone goes in the house. Right now they’re all out on the patio. In the meantime, could we go to your room?”

  “What?” His eyebrows shot up and the surprised expression on his face was comical.

  “No, no, no. I want to see your dresser.”

  “My what? My dresser? Why would you want to see my dresser, of all things?” Poor guy. He probably thought I had a screw loose.

  After a moment of hesitation, I explained about the doors being left open, the three dressers being moved and the seams in the wall. I also told him about the small things that were missing.

  “Let’s go. Between that and the note you received, I’d like to find out what’s going on around here. I’ll pull out the dresser and we’ll see if there’s anything there.”

  “Oh, yeah, one more thing.” Since I was blabbing, I might as well jump in with both feet.

  “Uh oh. What else?”

  “Well, a few months ago, when I was checking out one of the bedrooms, someone threw a pillow case over my head.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me before? This is sounding worse by the minute. What else haven’t you told me?”

  “Josh knew about the pillow case incident, but I swore him to secrecy,” I replied, ignoring his question. I wasn’t ready to tell him about the second note yet.

  “I’ll be having a talk with him,” Mike said.

  “No, don’t. Believe it or not, at the time it didn’t seem that important. I thought I’d surprised a burglar or something, and it was a few months before anything else happened. Of course, Josh doesn’t know about any of the other things that have been going on or he probably wouldn’t have kept quiet.”

  “Huh! Let’s go.” He took hold of my hand and pulled me up.

  We returned to the house and sneaked up to Mike’s room. I insisted we sneak because I didn’t want the other boarders to get the wrong idea. Fortunately, they were all outside when we entered the house.

  “Okay, let’s see if there’s anything here,” Mike said, pulling out the dresser.

  I watched his face closely while he examined the wall. His expression rapidly changed from doubt to surprise.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said, running his finger down a seam. “It does look like a door.”

  “I wonder how it opens,” I said. “There’s no handle or anything.”

  “There are doors that open by putting pressure against the side. If you push, they just pop open.”

  “Try it.”

  “I was about to.” Of course, he was.

  “Sorry.”

  He pushed on the right side and nothing happened. Nothing happened when he pushed on the left side either. He ran his hand slowly up and down the right side again, then stopped and punched the door right in the middle. It opened with a quiet whoosh and Mike looked at me in astonishment.

  “I didn’t really expect that to work,” he said.

  I was a little startled myself. “What is it? Have you got a flashlight?”

  “I don’t know what it is, and no, I don’t have a flashlight.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  We stood and stared at the opening in the wall for a moment.

  “I’ll get the oil lamp,” I said.” I’d placed a decorative oil lamp in each of the rooms in case the electricity ever went out, so I retrieved the one from Mike’s nightstand.

  Mike lit the lamp while I stood by the opening.

  “You know,” he said, thoughtfully, “this is an old house, built around the time of the Civil War. Some of the houses from that time period have been known to contain hidden passages. Slaves were able to hide in them.”

  “But there wasn’t any slave activity in this area.”

  “Maybe they wanted to be prepared in case things got hot out here.”

  “Well, whatever the reason, this is definitely a secret passage,” I said. “I wonder if this leads to someplace in particular or if the hou
se is riddled with passages. There have been a couple of times I thought I heard noises, but I thought it was just the house settling.”

  “Looks like you were wrong,” Mike said.

  We only walked a short distance into the passageway and we couldn’t tell how far it went. I was about to walk further into the space when Mike put a restraining hand on my arm.

  “Wait,” Mike said, “Let’s not explore this until Monday. Obviously someone’s been using it, and I think we should wait until everyone is at work to see what this is. Don’t forget the note you found. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

  I knew it was time to ‘fess up. “Mike, I got another note tonight,” I said, grimacing. “And how can we do this on Monday when you have to work?”

  “I’m the boss and rank has its privileges. I can get away from the project if I want to. But that’s beside the point. Why didn’t you tell me you got another note?”

  “I figured you were upset enough about the first one. I didn’t want to make things worse, but suddenly it seems very important.”

  “I want to see the note. Where is it?”

  I patted my pocket. “Let’s get out of here first. I don’t want anyone to find us.”

  We backtracked out of the passage and closed the door, and Mike pushed the dresser back into place. I pulled the crumpled note out of my pocket and handed it to him. He read it and put it in his own pocket.

  “Monday morning,” he said through tight lips. “We’ll explore it Monday morning. Something is really wrong here.”

  “Let’s get back downstairs before we’re missed.”

  We’d just sat down on the couch when J.T. and Richard came in. They were ribbing each other about their earlier tennis match and didn’t pay much attention to us.

  “Well, I’ve had it for tonight,” Richard said. “This heat really takes it out of a person. It’s drained me. I’d like to find some little hole in the wall where it’s cool.”

  Mike and I looked at each other. Did Richard know something, or was his reference just a figure of speech? If he knew something, he certainly wouldn’t expect anyone else to know what he was referring to.

  Before long the rest of the group wandered in, one or two at a time. The only one we didn’t see was Josh, and we knew where he was.

  Mike stood and held his hand out to me. “Let’s go for that swim. I’ll go put on my trunks.”

  “I’ll go put on my suit and meet you out by the pool.” I knew after everything that had happened we needed some time for relaxation. Maybe if we slowed down for a while we’d be able to see more clearly.

  We hung out around the pool for about an hour. We swam, and played a little, too. Of course we dunked and splashed each other, all the while trying to keep the noise down. We hung onto the edge of the pool while we whispered and laughed. I had a great time, and he appeared to be enjoying himself, too.

  Lucy and Josh strolled by and waved at us.

  “Getting a bit too windy for us,” Josh said. “Goin’ inside.”

  I hadn’t noticed the wind come up, but it had. It looked like it might build to a major blow. Northern Nevada had some pretty wild windstorms, although people from other parts of the country didn’t know that.

  “I guess it’s about time for us to go in, too,” I said, reluctantly.

  Mike put his arm around me, one arm still holding onto the edge of the pool, and held me close, kissing me. Was it the cooling wind against my wet skin or his kiss that gave me goose bumps?

  “Let’s go in,” he said.

  We climbed out of the pool and I bent over to pick up my towel. Mike flicked my backside with his own towel.

  “Hey, that stung,” I said, laughing.

  “It was supposed to.”

  I took him by surprise and pushed him back into the pool. He tried to grab my leg and pull me in, but I was too fast for him. He climbed out and we dried off before returning to the house where we relaxed in the kitchen with a glass of lemonade.

  I didn’t want to break the mood, but I had to. “Well, it’s getting late. I guess I’d better call it a night. I’ve got to get up early tomorrow.”

  “I know. One last kiss and I’ll tell you good-night.” He pulled me into his arms.

  “See you in the morning,” I whispered, reluctantly pulling away from him.

  I strolled to my bedroom and changed for bed. The wind had picked up as I thought it would, and it kept me awake for a while. I was jumpy and kept thinking I heard noises. Soon my thoughts took a turn and I couldn’t quit thinking about Mike. Unfortunately, that added to my temporary insomnia. It took some time, but I finally drifted off.

  A loud noise jolted me out of my sleep. I sat up and listened. It was a shutter banging against the house. I glanced at the clock and saw it was almost two o’clock.

  I groaned before I sighed and sat up. “I don’t want to get up.”

  Dragging myself out of bed, I tripped and groaned as I landed hard on my knees. I pulled myself up and got my robe, sighing and trying to figure out where the banging was coming from. The sound seemed to be coming from upstairs.

  While I climbed up the stairs the cobwebs fell away from my brain and it struck me that the noise would be coming from the third floor. If it was on the second floor, one of the boarders would have taken care of it. So I trudged on up to the third floor. I knew it had to be one of the vacant rooms. As I listened, it seemed the banging was coming from the second room on the left – the room where I discovered the seams in the wall.

  Opening the door, I walked in and opened the window to reach out and pull the shutter in. I leaned out, and as I tried to get hold of the shutter something in my peripheral vision made me glance down. What happened next felt like slow motion.

  Ruth was leaning out of her window. At first I thought she was reaching for her shutter, just as I was doing. Then I saw a pair of hands on her back. I couldn’t tell if they were pushing her or pulling her back in, but I thought it looked like she might be struggling. There was a horrible, panicky scream and I saw Ruth fall, landing on the patio.

  A scream caught in my throat at the sight of her lying there, broken and twisted. All I could feel was disbelief. Then I began to shake violently, my teeth chattering. I hugged myself and turned from the window, nausea welling up in me.

  I got hold of myself, ran out of the room and down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe she could still be helped. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I heard voices, lots of confused and sleepy voices.

  “What was that?” someone asked.

  “I heard a scream.” A scared voice.

  I reached the second floor, practically flying by this time, and Mike was coming out of his room looking as sleepy and confused as everyone else.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, grabbing my arm.

  “It’s Ruth. She fell out of her window,” I said, pulling away from him and continuing down the stairs. He followed me, suddenly wide awake. He passed me on the stairs and reached the patio before I did.

  “Mike?”

  “Stay there! Go call 9-1-1. Tell them there’s been an accident and we need an ambulance and the police.”

  I ran into the house and made the call. I’m not sure I made a lot of sense, but they said they’d get someone out to the house as fast as possible. Slamming down the phone, I ran back to the patio.

  By that time everyone was there. Mike was telling them to keep back. He said she was dead. “Does anyone know what happened?” he asked.

  “I do,” I said, quietly. I had him follow me into the house so I could tell the story without anyone hearing me. Because of the hands I’d seen, it could be murder and I thought it would be best to wait for the police before saying anything in front of the others.

  After about twenty minutes before we heard the wail of the sirens. One of the pitfalls of living so far out of town was it took forever to get help, or so it seemed.

  The police took reports from all of us while their
technicians did their job, and eventually they took her body away. They investigated the area where she fell, and her room, and by early morning determined it had been an accident. Each boarder said, of course, they’d been sleeping. The police reasoned I’d been half asleep and it was dark, and I’d imagined seeing those hands. There was no evidence to the contrary. They said she’d probably been doing exactly the same thing I was, reaching for a shutter to close it, but leaned out too far and lost her balance. I couldn’t convince them otherwise, even though the shutter at her window was held tightly in place. They said someone must have fixed it after her fall. It was frustrating because I knew I’d seen a pair of hands, but they wouldn’t believe me. There was no physical evidence to substantiate my story.

  I made up my mind that when Mike and I went out to dinner I’d discuss it further with him. I didn’t care about the lack of evidence. I was absolutely positive someone had been there. I knew what I’d seen and no one could convince me I was wrong. I knew Mike would listen to me.

  I started shaking again.

  Chapter Twenty

  The police didn’t leave until around six-thirty on the morning Ruth Bell died. Most of the boarders went back to bed to try to get more sleep, but I figured it was a lost cause. As for me, I was too wound up to even try to sleep.

  Mike had gone upstairs to shower. I walked back outside and sat down, unable to take my eyes off the spot where Ruth’s body had lain. The police had taken so many pictures of her body. The blood stain where she’d hit her head was distinct.

  Could I have done anything to prevent her fall? I knew I couldn’t have reached her in time, but it seemed like I should have tried. Maybe if I’d moved quickly I could have at least seen who came out of her room.