The Secret Cellar

by Michael D. Beil

“Oh my gosh, it’s perfect!” I say, throwing my arms around her. “I love it!”

  “The pen isn’t an antique,” she says, “but it writes beautifully. The guy at the store let us try a bunch of them. This was our favorite.”

  “Okay, enough about Sophie. Leigh Ann is next,” says Becca.

  “Yay!” cries Leigh Ann. “Gimme, gimme!”

  She tears the wrapping from the custom-made, one-of-a-kind scrapbook that Becca has been working on for weeks. The cover, cut from a thin sheet of plywood, is painted with images of the four of us: Margaret playing the violin, Becca behind an easel, me with my guitar, and, in the center, Leigh Ann in an elegant ballet pose.

  “You made this? Becca, it’s amazing!”

  “Look inside,” I say.

  Leigh Ann turns back the cover. Inside are four pages, front and back, covered with pictures and mementos from her first four months at St. Veronica’s, followed by a couple of dozen more blank pages waiting for her to fill them in.

  “Remember what Frodo told Sam at the end of The Lord of the Rings?” Becca says. “The last pages are for you.”

  Leigh Ann’s eyes well up with tears and she practically tackles Becca. “Thank you so much. I’m going to fill it up and keep it forever. Here, Margaret, open this. I can’t be the only one crying.”

  “Uh-oh,” says Margaret, shaking the small box. “I don’t want to open it if it’s going to make me cry.”

  “Tough,” says Becca. “Open it.”

  Margaret removes the paper without tearing it, folds it, and sets it aside. She takes a deep breath and lifts the lid from a small wooden box, revealing a pair of simple, yet elegant men’s cuff links, made of gold and onyx. Her brow wrinkles as she ponders them silently for a few seconds.

  “Look underneath,” says Leigh Ann.

  Margaret pulls up the velvet divider and removes a wrinkled black-and-white photograph. It is a picture of her grandparents on their wedding day.

  “Now look really close,” I say.

  Margaret bites the first knuckle of her right hand to prevent herself from crying, but it’s a battle she’s going to lose. Once she realizes the significance of the cuff links, she can’t take her eyes off them.

  “Are they really …? But how?”

  “When your grandmother was here, we asked her if there was anything of your grandfather’s that you could have,” Leigh Ann explains. “She told us about these, but said that one was broken. We got her to send them, and then I got the broken one fixed. So, I guess they’re kind of from your babcia and me.”

  “Well, thank you … both. I love them. Now that I see them, I remember him wearing them … to my birthday party. It was the first time I ever saw anyone wear a shirt with cuff links.”

  I hold up Becca’s gift. “Last again, Becca.”

  “Just hand it over, St. Pierre.” She grabs it from me and rips the wrapping off in one swipe. She stares at it for a second, speechless.

  “No way,” she says, finally.

  “Let me see,” says Leigh Ann. “I’ve heard about it, but I never got to see it.”

  Becca holds up an antique silver picture frame containing a beautiful photograph of her father. He’s standing amid the machinery of his print shop—so young and handsome that it’s impossible to believe that he’s been gone for five years.

  “I’ve never even seen this picture before,” she says. “Where did you get it?”

  “Well, your mom helped us out a little,” I admit. “It was kind of dumb luck. I asked her about pictures, and she found a few, but then she found a roll of film from your dad’s camera that had never been developed. She’d completely forgotten that he had asked her to take some pictures of him: they were going to be for an ad in one of the Chinatown papers. She couldn’t believe it when she got them developed. We liked this one best, so we took the negatives to a photo lab, and they made us this print. And the frame came from Mr. Winterbottom’s shop. I saw it the first time we were in there. It’s silver, so Lindsay said you’re going to have to keep it polished. Do you like it?”

  “It’s …”

  And then … well, I think you can guess what happens next. And that way, Becca can’t get mad at me for divulging her deepest, darkest secret.

  • • •

  The wrapping paper and ribbons have been thrown out and the tears wiped away when Livvy joins us at our table and opens her laptop.

  “Is … everything all right?” she asks as she takes in our red eyes and runny noses. “Did something bad happen?”

  “No, we’re fine,” I say. “We just exchanged gifts and it got a little—”

  “Oh, right,” she says. “Well, that’s good timing. I have something for you guys.”

  Panicky looks zigzag around the table, and Livvy holds up a hand. “Don’t worry,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t expect you to get me anything. And this is just a little … thank-you, for helping me get my … act together.” She spins the laptop so the screen is facing us.

  Bright red letters pop up on the screen:

  LIVE! FROM PERKATORY

  IN NEW YORK CITY …

  THE BLAZERS!

  What follows is a remarkably professional-looking music video of us, pieced together from some of our Friday-night performances. We’re playing the “hit song” that I wrote—“The Apostrophe Song”—inspired by Mr. Eliot’s lesson and group project on apostrophes. (That was also, ironically, the project in which Livvy burned us to the ground when she “accidentally” told us the wrong day for our class presentation. When Mr. Eliot called on us, she was the only one prepared. What followed was not pretty.)

  “How did you do this?” I ask as I watch myself play the song’s final chord. “I never saw you at Perkatory, and definitely not with a camera.”

  Livvy smiles. “It wasn’t me. I got your friend Malcolm Chance to do it. He filmed it two weeks in a row, and then I put it all together. Do you like it?”

  “It’s great,” says Leigh Ann. “We look—and sound—like a real band.”

  “You are a real band,” says Livvy. “And I was, um, kind of hoping you would let me try out. I’ve been playing piano for six years. I’m not great, but I learn new stuff pretty quickly. You don’t have to answer now; just think about it, and maybe after vacation I can show you what I can do.”

  “We have been thinking about adding a keyboard,” says Becca. “You know, to give us more sound. We’d have to get an electric piano, though—there’s no room for a real one at Perkatory.”

  “So … you guys will think about it? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, absolutely,” I say.

  “That is awesome!” Livvy says, beaming. “I’m gonna practice all your songs over the break. I can’t wait!”

  In which my dad gets a glimpse of his version of heaven

  The bell rings—Christmas vacation has officially begun! We all have something else on our minds, though, as we pack up our bags and exit the building for a two-week break: today we learn the truth about Mr. Dedmann’s secret cellar. The codes have been broken, and the walking stick has been duplicated. All that remains is for us to enter the combination—and hope.

  We’ve invited Livvy and Raf to join us for the great unveiling, and after a quick hot dog at the Papaya King on Eighty-Sixth, we walk back down to Dedmann’s house on Eighty-Second. Shelley lets us in, and as I kneel down to pet Bertie, she introduces us to a middle-aged man in a camel hair overcoat.

  “This is Mr. Garrison Applewood, Mr. Dedmann’s lawyer,” she says. “And these are the girls—and some friends—I was telling you about. They’ve been a huge help.”

  Margaret holds up her right hand, her fingers crossed. “Let’s just hope that we’ve been right about everything.”

  “Nice to meet you girls … and boy,” Mr. Applewood says. “I understand that you have been working on this day and night. I’m sure you realize by now that Mr. Dedmann was a bit of a character. I knew him for thirty years, but I can’t say I know anything about him. He
had all this, but I can’t tell you how he got it. Never had a job that I knew of. Lived incredibly simply—he didn’t travel, didn’t eat out. When Shelley told me what you’d discovered—that he was actually someone named Kaspar Neuner, who was a notorious World War II spy—I was shocked. I had no idea.”

  “Well, I suppose everybody has some secrets,” Shelley says. “His were just … bigger than most.”

  The doorbell rings; Bertie barks once, and everybody jumps. We’re all a little on edge.

  Shelley looks out the peephole in the door. “It’s a man.… I don’t recognize him.”

  “Let me see,” I say. “It’s probably my dad.” A quick peek confirms it, and I open the door. “Hey, Dad!”

  Dad comes in, and when Bertie finally leaves him alone, I introduce him to Shelley and Mr. Applewood. “I thought it might be nice to have someone here who knows something about wine,” I say. “Dad’s kind of an expert—he’s a chef, and he’s from France. He’s the one who told us about that bottle that Shelley found.”

  Dad shakes his head at the memory. “Château Latour, 1949. Fantastique.”

  I suppose I should mention that poor Dad knows next to nothing about why I asked him to come. I told him about Curtis Dedmann and Shelley, but I may have left out a few teensy details—like the fact that Dedmann was a German spy, and somehow had enough money to build a huge house with an even bigger wine cellar, which might just be full of expensive wine. That’s all.

  “Sophie didn’t tell us that she invited you,” says Margaret.

  “She is full of secrets, this one,” says Dad, patting me on the head.

  “Shall we go downstairs?” Shelley asks. “For the big moment?”

  Down the spiral stairs we go, Margaret leading the way. When she gets to the cellar, she walks to the other end, running her hand across the top of the round table.

  “Beethoven’s Nine,” she says, smiling. “Kaspar Neuner. Nine chairs. Sophie and I did a little research on German names last night, and guess what we found out? ‘Neun’ is German for ‘nine,’ so ‘Neuner’ means, literally, ‘a niner.’ As in one who is part of a council made up of nine members. All the nines—the tiles, the address, everything—it was his clever little joke on the world. It’s just like the words written in the stars. The secret to his identity was right under everyone’s noses all along.”

  She opens her backpack, takes out a one-foot length of broomstick, and unwraps the paper that has been protecting the epoxy tip that is a perfect copy of the bottom of Mr. Dedmann’s walking stick.

  “Boy, I hope this works,” she says as we gather around her.

  “Julius Caesar is first,” I say. “And you turn him clockwise.”

  Margaret kneels down on the floor directly over Caesar’s medallion. She blows the dust out of the indentation in the center, lines up the grooves and notches of the key, and gently pushes it into place. “So far, so good,” she says. “It fits perfectly.” We hold our breath as she slowly, slowly, slowly turns the key, and listen as the machinery of the lock beneath us and in the walls clicks several times, followed by a whirring sound and one final ker-chunk.

  All nine of us breathe in simultaneously.

  “That’s one,” I say. “Now for our Muse. Well, Leigh Ann’s Muse, anyway. Terpsichore, counterclockwise.”

  Margaret takes the key to the next set of black tiles and settles in over Terpsichore’s medallion.

  Click, click, click, CLICK.

  Whirrrrrr. Errk. Whirrrrrrrrr.

  Ker-chunk. Ker-CHUNK.

  Breathe.

  “All right, Venus, you’re up!” says Becca, racing Margaret to the final block of tiles and rubbing the medallion in the center. “Don’t let us down.”

  The key goes in.

  Silence.

  More silence.

  Then, faintly, the sound of a clock ticking all around us, growing louder and louder: tick​tick​tick​tick​tick​tick​tick​-tick​tick​-tick​tick​TICK​TICK​TICK​TICK … errrrrrr-kkkkKER-CHUNK!

  The wall at the back end of the house shudders for a second, but then the center section starts to move before our eyes, pivoting like a revolving door and leaving two openings, each about three feet wide. As the doors come to a stop, lights turn on automatically, and we all stand in the center of the room, frozen to the marble tiles.

  “Holy crap,” I say.

  “That was amazing,” says Leigh Ann.

  Becca is the first to make a move for the opening. “Let’s check it out!”

  “Don’t touch anything,” Margaret warns.

  “Yeah, Bec,” I say. “You break it, you buy it.”

  “Look at this place,” says Dad, stepping inside. “It is immaculate. Temperature- and humidity-controlled. It must go back twenty-five or thirty feet in that direction, and there’s a passageway all the way around the basement. There must be four or five thousand bottles. Who was this guy?”

  I glance at Margaret, who, from the look on her face, is making mental calculations. Five thousand bottles times ten dollars, times a hundred dollars … Her eyes grow wide as those numbers start to get seriously, well, serious.

  An antique wheeled cart, its sides painted with clusters of grapes, sits just inside the opening in the wall. On it are three wooden cases of wine—one each from Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the Loire Valley—and tucked in between two of the cases, nearly out of sight, is a single manila envelope on which Mr. Dedmann has written: “For Garrison Applewood, in appreciation for his years of service.”

  Shelley hands the envelope to Mr. Applewood, who immediately tears it open and removes a single sheet of stationery with a handwritten message and a small, sealed envelope. The suspense builds to an unbearable level as we watch him read the letter with no sign of emotion.

  Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “What is it? You have to tell us!”

  He smiles, holding up the envelope. “It’s true. He wrote a new will. This is it. It’s been signed and dated and properly witnessed, so it looks perfectly legal to me. Everything he owns, except for these three cases of wine, which are for me, goes to you, Shelley. He says that you will find a journal down here that explains everything in more detail, but you really are his great-granddaughter. At the end of the war, he believed his wife, Venus, and his son, also Kaspar, to have been killed in the bombing of Dresden. He only recently learned that they had survived somehow and emigrated to Canada, thinking that he was dead.”

  Shelley, sobbing, hugs Mr. Applewood. “Why didn’t he just tell me the truth?”

  “Well, we can hope to find an answer to that question,” Mr. Applewood says, “but I wouldn’t count on it. I have a feeling he took a lot of secrets to the grave. Now, let’s have a look around down here, to see what he’s been hiding all these years.”

  We all start to move cautiously around the cellar. Everyone except Dad, that is. He is, pardon the cliché, like a kid in the world’s greatest candy shop, dashing from stack to stack and running his hands through his hair in utter disbelief.

  “Look at this!” he cries. “Two full cases of 1959 Haut-Brion! And one of the ’61. Here’s Bouscaut! And here’s Château Margaux—three cases of the ’66! And the Saint-Émilions—Figeac, and Cheval Blanc, and Pavie!”

  “He’s just making up a bunch of French words, isn’t he?” says Becca.

  Dad doesn’t even hear her; before my very eyes, he drops to his knees and makes the sign of the cross. “Sophie! Come here! Regardez! Château Petrus! There must be fifteen, no, twenty cases! Impossible!”

  “Uh-huh. I’m guessing that’s a good one.” But he’s already moved on to the next stacks, shaking his head and muttering. Now that I’ve gotten him into this cellar, I’m afraid that I’ll never get him out.

  Meanwhile, Margaret has gone to the far wall of the cellar, at the back of the house. “Um, guys, come here!” she says. “But watch where you step.” She points at muddy footprints on the otherwise pristine tile floor. “Those are new.”

  “
Wh-what? How can they be new?” I ask. “Nobody has been in here for months.”

  Raf kneels down to make a close inspection. “Hmm. She’s right. This is new. It’s still wet.”

  My arms break out in goose bumps, and the skin at the back of my neck tingles.

  Leigh Ann latches on to me. “B-but if they’re wet—”

  “—it means they didn’t come in the way we did,” Dad says, finishing her thought.

  “And look!” cries Margaret. “You can see, right here on the floor, where something was dragged. There were cases of wine stacked all along here. A lot of them, and they’re gone!”

  Dad picks up one of the loose bottles from the rack before him, then walks completely around the stack before announcing, “These are all Burgundies: Pommard, Chambertin, Corton, Montrachet … Clos-de-Vougeot, Nuits-Saint-Georges … but nothing in cases.”

  Margaret has her flashlight out, poking it into every crack in the wall and floor. “This is strange,” she says. “There are two different sets of footprints here. And they all end right … here.” She stops in front of the racks that line the back wall, near the corner.

  “There must be another door,” says Livvy.

  Margaret runs her hands along the front of the rack. “I don’t see how there could … Hello! What have we here?”

  “What is it?” Leigh Ann asks as we crowd around Margaret.

  Margaret lifts a hand-printed card (Meursault 1999) that conceals an undecorated brass medallion with the same “keyhole” in the center as those commemorating the nine planets, Muses, and worthies.

  “What are you going to do?” Shelley asks.

  Mr. Applewood takes a step backward.

  “Um, yeah, Margaret,” says Leigh Ann. “How do you know what’s on the other side? I mean, it could be … anything.”

  “We didn’t know for sure what we’d find in here, either,” Margaret replies. “We were pretty sure, maybe, but not positive.”

  “If you ask me, this whole operation has ‘alien invasion’ written all over it,” says Becca. “This opens a door that leads to their mother ship, which has been buried down here for centuries. I’ll bet this Dedmann guy was one of them.”