Can the victim be Helen Adabner after all? She, too, has short, dark hair. Maybe Lieutenant Grange interpreted heavyset to mean something more drastic. Helen Adabner isn’t morbidly obese; she’s just . . . pleasingly plump.
Or maybe the woman at the lake isn’t someone who’s even currently staying here.
“We’ll leave you to your packing, ma’am,” Lieutenant Grange tells Eleanor Pierson. “Have a safe trip.”
“Thank you.” She closes the door.
As Bella and the police officer step away, she hears, after a moment, the distinct click of the lock being turned.
Pushing back her growing trepidation and trying not to think of the starving newborn kitten, she leads the police officer up another flight to the third-floor room Helen and Karl Adabner share. There’s no answer to their knock on the door.
After a lengthy wait, just in case, Lieutenant Grange inserts the key into the lock.
It doesn’t turn.
Bella exhales, again relieved.
“I can’t think of any other guest who fits your description,” she says.
“But the key is all I have to go on. It must fit one of the doors in this guesthouse. Let’s find out which one,” the police officer decides.
They work their way from the third floor back to the second, knocking on every door. The afternoon sessions are under way. No one is here. The house feels empty.
Lieutenant Grange inserts the key into one lock after another, but it won’t turn.
Bella is now certain she knows which door it opens—and it isn’t any of the three they have yet to try on the second floor.
The Teacup Room. The Train Room. The Rose Room.
As Lieutenant Grange inserts his key into the first of the final three locks, Bella wants to tell him not to bother. She has to take him back downstairs. And when that key opens the lock to Leona’s study, it might also open the door to more trouble than she can possibly handle.
“Lieutenant Grange . . .”
She breaks off.
The key turns in the lock.
The door opens.
The pink-and-white-wallpapered room is hushed and empty. And the first thing she sees, beside the bone china cup collection on the white bureau, is a Styrofoam wig form.
It had entirely slipped her mind amid the exhaustion and confusion.
Bonnie Barrington, she realizes, might have short, dark hair after all. And Kelly Tookler had been worried about her this morning.
As she tells Lieutenant Grange about that, she finds herself wondering whether the blond wig was some kind of disguise. She doesn’t mention that, though. She just volunteers to see if Bonnie left any photo ID behind in the room.
Finding her driver’s license in her purse, Bella sees that the photo is indeed of a brunette—but with long hair, not cropped, as the officer described.
Still, the moment he glances at the photo, he offers a grim nod. “That’s her. I’ll need to take this with me. The wallet, too.”
Is he supposed to have some kind of search warrant? Or are they lax about such things around here?
As she hands it over, she realizes that she never even looked closely at his badge when he flashed it. Walking him back downstairs to the door, she wonders if she should ask to see it again.
Then she notices Max and Jiffy hovering in the archway.
“Is that a real gun?” Jiffy asks, pointing at the officer’s holster.
He doesn’t answer the question, just thanks Bella and tells her that he’ll be in touch shortly.
“Thank you. And tell Bonnie . . . tell her we’ll all be thinking good thoughts for her.”
“I will,” he says, but something in his expression tells her that he doesn’t expect to be having a conversation with Bonnie Barrington anytime soon.
As he steps out onto the porch, she notices that the sun has slid behind a cloud and the air feels cooler.
He gives a wave and is gone, leaving her to deal with two curious little boys.
“Why was the policeman here?” Max asks worriedly.
Jiffy answers before Bella can come up with a reasonable explanation. “Because he’s looking for the bad guy.”
That gives her pause. “Which bad guy?”
“The bad guy. You know.”
“I’m not sure who you mean.” She holds her breath, waiting for him to say it.
When he merely shrugs, she hears herself ask, “Do you mean the pirate? Was there a pirate?”
“I guess. By the way, can we have more cookies?”
“You forgot to say please,” Max hisses into his ear. “Remember? I said she doesn’t give things to people unless they say please.”
“Can we please have more cookies?” Jiffy amends.
“Guests need extra treats sometimes,” Max tells her.
She can’t help but smile at their little cookie conspiracy as she tells them that unfortunately, there aren’t any left.
“Odelia has a lot more. We can go get some.”
“No!” Bella says, a little too sharply.
“But—”
“Max, no means no,” she tells him.
“I can go.” Jiffy takes a step toward the door.
Her first thought is that she can’t very well stop him. Her next is that she has to. It isn’t a good idea to let him wander, given what’s going on down by the water . . .
Or overall.
“I’ll tell you what, boys. We’ll borrow Odelia’s car and go to the store and buy lots of treats.”
“Can Jiffy come?”
“If his mom lets him.”
“She’ll let me.”
“We’ll have to check.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
“First, I have to feed the kitten.”
“You already did that,” Max says.
No, she didn’t. She was about to, but she was delayed trying to communicate with her dead husband after he sent her the bluebell. Then she found Pandora Feeney’s hair scrunchy in her pocket. Then the cop showed up.
Never a dull moment.
“Spidey’s still pretty hungry,” she tells the boys. “Maybe he needs some dessert. I’ll go give it to him, and then we’ll go. You two can watch TV until I’m ready.”
They nod agreeably and head into the next room as she goes back upstairs.
Stepping back into the Rose Room, she hears the litter’s familiar pipsqueak sounds. Bending over the crate, she’s reassured to find that pipsqueak Spidey is mewing heartily along with his siblings.
“I’m so sorry, little fellow,” she says as she inserts the tube and begins feeding him right there on the floor, not wanting to waste time getting situated on the chair. “I didn’t mean to make you wait so long. I promise it won’t happen again.”
As he ingests the kitten formula drop by painstaking drop, she looks over at the closet. Again, she wonders how Pandora Feeney’s hair scrunchy wound up there.
She did live in this house at one time.
But she hasn’t in years. Her belongings shouldn’t be lying around here as if she still comes and goes freely . . .
Unless she does.
The door is open, the light still on. From this angle, she can see all the way to the back wall of the closet, beneath the row of hanging garments that are neatly arranged in order of length.
There, beneath the hems of Leona Gatto’s skirts and dresses, she can see a crack in the closet wall. Not a snaking fissure in the plaster like the one that runs along the ceiling above the bed and elsewhere in this house—in all old houses.
This is a perfect straight edge, perpendicular to the floor.
Somehow, Bella refrains from jumping up and jarring the swaddled, still-feeding kitten on her knees. Somehow, under Chance the Cat’s maternal gaze, she manages to carry on as if nothing has happened. She croons patiently to Spidey and strokes his head with her fingertip, hoping he doesn’t pick up on her tension as she gapes at the closet wall.
“Take your time, little guy. You deserve it. I
sure took my time getting back here to you, didn’t I?”
At last, he’s ingested two milliliters of formula. She removes the tube and settles him back into the nest with the others. Chance the Cat gives her a slow, appreciative blink before busying herself grooming Spidey as his siblings continue to nurse and knead at her.
Bella pauses to pet Chance’s head as she dutifully licks her kitten’s fur. “After all you’ve been through, you’re such a good mommy.”
Everyone needs to hear that once in a while.
Sam used to say it, and often.
You’re such a good mommy . . .
She doesn’t suppose she’s ever going to hear those words again. Certainly not from her mother-in-law.
Again, she feels a prickle of dread when she thinks about leaving for Chicago. Again, she warns herself to focus on the moment at hand. Max and Jiffy must be growing restless downstairs.
She quickly goes over to the nightstand and opens the drawer where Max stashed Luther’s flashlight.
She takes it out, turns it on, and hesitates before going over to lock the Rose Room door from the inside. Just in case.
Then she hurries back over to the closet. Crouched down beneath the row of hanging clothes, she trains the beam along the geometric crack in the wall.
It’s definitely not due to a settling foundation. It isn’t a crack. And the back wall isn’t made of plaster. When she reaches out to knock on it, she hears a hollow sound.
For the second time today, her trembling fingers feel their way to a hidden latch. Yes, there it is, a raised ridge in the corner where the hollow wall meets the plaster one. She presses it and gasps as a piece of the back wall swings away from the back of the closet.
Okay.
Okay.
What now?
She leans out of the closet, listening for Max and Jiffy.
Instead, she hears the faint sound of the front door opening and closing downstairs, signaling the return of one or more of the guests.
Maybe it’s Steve Pierson. She wants to see him and Eleanor before they leave. She needs to know whether their daughter really is in labor or if they’re frightened, fleeing.
She thinks of Pandora and again looks into the closet.
She has to know. Before she does anything else, before anything else happens, she has to find out what’s hidden behind that wall.
She reaches past the hanging clothes and pulls the door open until it brushes against them. Then she crawls in and shines the flashlight into the wedge of opening.
The rectangular space that lies beyond isn’t a storage niche like the ones downstairs beneath the window seats.
Strips of loosely peeling floral wallpaper in shades of peach and gold cover the back and one sidewall, indicating that they must once have been part of the bedroom itself. Shining the light upward to where those walls meet the ceiling, she sees a carved right angle of wood that matches the painted crown molding in the room. Eerily shrouded in spun webbing, a curved metal bracket extends from the wall to a frosted glass shade with a gaslight key. The fixture is identical to the electric-converted sconce on the bedroom wall just outside the closet door.
This nook, and possibly the closet, too, must have been added long after the house was built. Angling the beam downward, she sees that the hardwood floors, which extend seamlessly from the bedroom into the closet, are abruptly curtailed at the edge of a yawning chasm.
So then, this isn’t a secret hiding place.
It’s a secret . . .
Portal.
Chapter Eighteen
Bella leans further into the secret doorway, shining the flashlight’s beam down into the hole in the floor, into a vertical tunnel. A crude wooden ladder is built into wall, appearing to extend well beyond fifteen, maybe twenty feet—down past the first floor and into the bowels of the house.
She reaches into her pocket and feels around for the change from the ice cream cones. The key ring is there, and her phone, and Pandora’s scrunchy, and—
Some coins. She pulls one out, not caring whether it’s a penny or a quarter. She drops it into the hole and then listens for a sound.
It hits solid ground with a clank. So then this isn’t a hidden well. Nor is it a bottomless pit. It sounded like metal on stone—the basement floor?
The coin drop is immediately followed by a rustling sound that makes her skin crawl. As she leans forward, training the beam in search of glittering rodent eyes and wondering whether she can possibly force herself to climb down that ladder, something furry brushes against the back of Bella’s bare leg.
She cries out, nearly toppling into the pit, catching herself on the roughly sawed-off edge of the floor.
It’s only Chance the Cat, who for the first time in two days has left the crate with her babies.
Shaken, Bella watches the cat walk calmly past her and hop onto the ladder’s top rung. For a moment, she peers into the darkness, whiskers twitching. Then she deftly descends into the hole as if she’s done it thousands of times before.
She probably has, Bella realizes. It would explain how she manages to come and go without opening a locked bedroom door. Even a cat’s paw could probably depress the secret latch.
But where does the tunnel lead?
There’s only one way to find out.
Watching Chance stealthily slink into the darkness beyond the flashlight’s glow, Bella tries to convince herself to follow. Only the thought of Max and Jiffy stops her.
Well, not only that.
It would be stupid, perhaps even dangerous, to go down there alone.
This, too, will have to wait for Luther.
She clicks off the flashlight and crawls backward out of the closet, leaving the door ajar for the cat.
“Don’t worry, guys. She’ll be back soon,” she assures the mewing litter.
Having promised the same thing to her own offspring, she returns the flashlight to the nightstand drawer and steps out into the hall, locking the door behind her.
A glance down the hall shows that the door to the Piersons’ room remains closed, indicating that they haven’t left yet.
Sure enough, as she goes downstairs and is about to step into the parlor, she walks right into Steve coming around the corner from the opposite direction.
“Oops, sorry, there,” he says, reaching out to steady her. “Are you okay?”
“Yes—are you?”
“Still a little jumpy, I guess.”
She looks him in the eye. “Is that why you’re leaving?”
He seems taken aback. “Eleanor told you?”
“Yes. She’s upstairs, packing. She said your daughter is in labor back in Boston, but I’m guessing that might not exactly be the case. Did something else happen?” she asks. “To you or to her?”
He looks away and then back at her, and she realizes she’s hit the nail on the head. “You know, running scared isn’t something I’ve ever done in all my years on the job. I’ve had to deal with some tough issues. Unions, the community, state mandates, budget problems—I’ve always prided myself on facing them head on.”
“But now?” she prompts when he stops talking and fidgets.
“But now I’m out of my element. If someone tries to kill me or . . . or hurt my wife, then . . . then I may be tough, but I’m no fool. We’re not going to stick around here like sitting ducks.”
“What happened to Eleanor?”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything at all. Only that you were leaving because of your daughter.”
“And you didn’t believe her.”
“I wasn’t sure. What hap—” she starts to ask again.
And then it hits her.
The house is too still.
She’d left the boys in front of the television, but . . .
But now the TV is off.
And the boys . . .
“Max?” she calls abruptly. “Max!”
“He left,” Steve tells her. “He and his friend.”
“What?”
“They were just leaving when I came in.”
“What?” she says again and rushes toward the front door with Steve hurrying behind her. “Where were they going?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did they say anything about the playground?” she asks. “We were there earlier. They were looking for buried treasure.”
“That must be what they were talking about. I heard one of them mention treasure.”
Darn that Jiffy Arden. He might be a sweet kid, but he’s a terrible influence. Max would never have wandered outside alone before meeting him.
She pushes out onto the porch, hoping she’ll see the boys riding recklessly, perhaps even helmetless, on the street. As long as they’re here and in one piece . . .
But the scooters are right where they left them at the foot of the steps, helmets dangling from the handlebars.
The weather has, indeed, changed. Rain wasn’t in the forecast, but Odelia isn’t the only one around here who pays little attention to meteorologists. When Fritz Dunkle mentioned over breakfast that the newspaper’s weather report was calling for a picture-perfect Fourth of July weekend, several of the regulars shook their heads knowingly.
“The weather around here changes on a dime,” Kelly Tookler said. “There’s really no use trying to predict it.”
At the time, Bella found that ironic, since Kelly had just finished talking about a psychic development seminar she’d attended yesterday.
She darts a worried look up and down the lane, gloomy and deserted beneath the darkening sky.
Down in Friendship Park, the ambulance is gone and so are the paramedics, the bystanders, and the victim. Bonnie.
“Max!” she calls. “Max!”
Silence, and then a smattering of applause from the auditorium where the speaking event is still in progress. Across the way, the parking lot is still jammed with cars. A silver sedan with Massachusetts plates sits parked in front of the house.
She takes it all in, searching, but there’s no sign of Max.
Panic edges in. She turns to Steve.
“How long ago was it?”
How long has it been, she wonders, since she heard the front door open and close? How long was she upstairs poking around in the closet while her son was . . . he was . . .
Nine Lives Page 25