Proof of Murder

by Lauren Elliott

  “Sounds great.” Addie shrugged. “And since I’m acquainted with how she has the books categorized, I can give them a hand if they’re not quite done.”

  “There’s no excuse if they’re not. After all, you completed all the last-minute appraisals yesterday, and she and Robert stayed late finishing up the paperwork. Since we haven’t seen either of them this morning and their cars are here, I expect they either came in very early or stayed the night to finish the setup and then fell asleep. Make sure you knock loudly. The room has to be ready to go in just over an hour.”

  “Okay, see you soon.” Addie ambled to the dining room. She hoped that when the time came, she wouldn’t have to wake Charlotte, who was sharp-tongued enough when awake. Addie couldn’t imagine what she’d be like when roused from sleep.

  Addie stepped through the double-wide pocket sliding doors. This room was one she had missed on her tour yesterday and was surprised to see the massiveness of it. This house was similar in style to hers but had all the square footage hers lacked. On the other hand, how often have I used my formal dining room? She could probably count on one hand the number of dinner parties she’d hosted these past two years, so this would be wasted space for her.

  A dark cherry – finished dining table had been placed along the far wall to use as a display center for this room’s auction items. There was, by a quick count, a complete twenty-plate dinner setting of Hutschen-reuther cobalt-and-gold dinner plates. They looked to be in excellent condition. Addie knew that set alone would bring in some fairly high bids, as would the Victorian Bohemian crystal stemware. But she wasn’t here to shop for more collectables. Her late aunt had left her more than enough porcelain and crystal, most of which was still stored in the attic and garage. She certainly didn’t need any more. Refocusing on the room setup, she angled the folding chairs just right toward the auctioneer’s podium. She moved on to the next room Blake had tasked her with.

  Aside from a few vintage pottery mixing bowls and some copper cookware, there wasn’t much to see in the kitchen. Blake obviously didn’t expect much interest in this room from the brokers, as there were only half a dozen chairs set up. Most of what was here, he probably expected would go at the public auction or yard sale. Brokers weren’t usually as interested in these finds unless the cooking containers or tools dated back to the 1700s or earlier.

  Next stop on her to-do list was the library. She knocked on the closed door and waited. She knocked again. “Charlotte, it’s me, Addie. I’m here to help with the setup.” Still no reply.

  Addie pressed her ear to the wood paneling and strained to hear any sign of movement behind the doors. The design of this room’s entrance was different from the other rooms’. Although it was still in the Victorian double-wide fashion, they opened inward, contrary to the other rooms where the pocket doors slide out of the way between the walls on either side of the entry. She suspected this room was designed as such so that the occupant could lock these doors for privacy or security whereas the pocket doors had no locks.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No.” She met Blake’s gaze. “But there doesn’t seem to be anyone in there, and the doors are locked. Do you have the key?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He retrieved a set of keys from a trouser pocket.

  “Perfect.”

  “This is the master. It opens all the rooms.” Blake jiggled it in the lock.

  When she heard a click, she turned the door handles and pushed. They didn’t move. She pushed again.

  “Let me try.” Blake stepped in front of her. “Sometimes these old doors stick.” He heaved against the doors. “That’s odd.”

  “Maybe there’s something blocking it?”

  “No, it feels like it’s catching at the top. It seems to be bolted from the inside.” He pounded his fist against the door. “Charlotte? Robert? Open up. We need to get in there.”

  Addie pressed one ear to the door, sticking a finger in the other to block out background noise.

  “Well?”

  “Nothing.” She met Blake’s look of concern with one of her own. “Is there a key for the top latch?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s a sliding bolt on the inside.” Blake caught the attention of a young man carrying a folding chair under each arm. “Jeff.”

  “Yes, Mr. Edwards.”

  “Is that handyman still around?”

  “Yeah, I saw him in the backyard fixing that bent tent pole we need for the yard sale.”

  “Could you go and get him? Tell him to bring his tools.”

  “No problem.” Jeff dashed off.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that the two of them have fallen asleep in there.”

  “Then they must be pretty sound sleepers.”

  A few moments later Brian, the town handyman, appeared with a toolkit in hand. Blake explained the issue, and Brian set to work. He drew a flashlight from his tool belt, clenched it between his teeth, and pointed the beam to the top of the doorframe. He shoved hard against the door, inserting a screwdriver between the door and the frame. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to jimmy the bolt, and if I take a pry bar to it, it’s going to damage the entire frame.”

  “I don’t care.” Blake snorted. “The real-estate agent, what’s his name that works for Maggie Hollingsworth, can worry about that. I just need the door opened now.”

  “Okay, if you say so. Addie, can you hand me the pry bar?”

  “Exactly what am I looking for in here?” Addie rifled through the various tools.

  “It’s the one that looks like a small crowbar.”

  “Okay, got it.” Addie grabbed it with both hands. “It’s heavier than it looks.”

  “It should be. It’s made of carbon steel. Another name for them is a wrecking bar so they have to be made strong,” Brian said as he shoved the flat end into the crevice flanked by the door and frame and pried at it to the tune of cracking wood. “Got it!” He handed the bar back to Addie, who dropped it back in his tool bag as he swung the door open.

  The crowd of staff that had gathered in the hallway breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  “Back to work, everyone.” Blake clapped his hands together. “We’re live in less than an hour.” The group scurried off, leaving the three of them alone. “Thank you, Brian. You can add this little mishap to my bill.”

  “Nah,” Brian said, closing his toolkit. “It was nothing, and I’ll come back later to see what I can do about that damage up there.” He tapped on the splintered doorframe.

  Addie stepped past him, stuck her head inside, and took a hasty glance around. “There’s no one in here.”

  “There has to be.” Blake came to her side. “The door was bolted from the inside.”

  “Take a look.” She waved her hand. “Do you see anyone? Oh, wait. What’s that?” She pointed to the desk chair turned away from them. “Is that Charlotte’s hand on the arm?”

  “See? I told you she was probably in here sleeping.”

  “Charlotte?” Addie called hesitantly as she moved toward the desk. With no reaction from the woman, Addie’s gut tightened. She reached for the chair and swiveled it toward her. Bile rose to the back of her throat. The ghastly look on Charlotte’s face shook her to the core, and she clasped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  Addie took a sharp breath and winced as she placed two fingers on Charlotte’s neck to check for a pulse. “She’s dead.” Addie stood as upright as her quaking legs would allow. “Judging by how cold her skin is, I’d say she has been for a while.”

  “I’ll call nine-one-one.”

  “Tell the operator what we found so they can dispatch the appropriate response teams.”

  Chapter 6

  Hands on her knees, Addie gulped in deep breaths. No matter how many dead bodies she stumbled across, she’d never get used to it.

  “What do you think it was, a stroke, a heart attack, or
what?” Blake’s voice resonated like cymbals in her ears.

  Addie stood upright and tried to focus on his question. “I don’t know. Probably. She was alone in here by the look of it, and the door was locked from the inside. I can’t see any wounds or marks to make me think otherwise. But we’ll have to see what the coroner says.”

  “You’re right.” Blake wavered when he stood up from the chair beside the desk. Addie could tell that in spite of the animosity that appeared to exist between him and Charlotte, this shook him. “I guess I’d better go let the staff know there’s been an incident, and not to panic when the authorities show up.”

  Addie nodded. “I’d better stay here, though, until the police arrive. They might be upset if we left the body unattended.”

  “I hope for your sake it’s not too long, but I’ll try and come back to keep you company after I deliver the news.” On unsteady legs, Blake made his way to the door. “Not sure what I’m going to say to them, though.” His voice faltered as the door clicked softly closed behind him.

  This was a first for Addie—not finding a dead body but being trapped in a room with one, especially one that had such a haunted look in its eyes.

  For no other reason than to hold on to her last shred of sanity this house threatened to take away from her, she knew she’d need to avoid glimpsing the body in the chair at all costs. When she and Blake arrived, she’d turned the desk chair toward her from the fireplace direction it had been facing. Not wanting to leave more contaminating prints at the scene, she’d left it in the position it was at the moment, facing the window. By her mental calculations, in front of the fireplace and behind the chair, where Blake had been sitting, and directly in front of the desk or by the door, appeared to be the only areas in the room where Addie could escape that ghastly look in Charlotte’s eyes, an image that would take her years to un-see—if she ever could.

  Right now, she needed to focus on something else. The room, look at the room. What do you see? The fireplace, a beautifully carved marble mantel with matching pillars framing each side. Something like this could only have been created by a skilled stonemason. She wondered if it had been a local artisan or if the piece had been shipped over from Europe, a common practice of the more affluent in the early nineteenth century. She examined the deep-set inglenook firebox with wrought-iron log burner. If it were just a touch deeper, it would have made the perfect colonial cooking hearth.

  She took a step back to admire the craftsmanship of the built-in bookcases on either side of the fireplace and heard a crunch under her foot. She glanced downward. It appeared she was tracking ash bits across the hearth as another wood charcoal piece crumbled under her step. She assumed they had been sparked embers from the fire that Charlotte must have ignited last night judging by the fresh, half-burned logs in the grate. Burned pits dotted the floor in front of the fireplace, and ash was now spread across the wooden floorboard onto the area carpet the desk sat on. It was a shame that Charlotte had been so careless as to burn a fire without the protection of a fire screen. The entire house could have caught on fire or at least the books on the floor.

  Books on the floor. In the excitement of discovering the body, she’d completely missed seeing them earlier and reached to pick up the one closest to her foot. Then she stopped—don’t contaminate the crime scene. The words of Marc Chandler, the chief of police, echoed in her mind. This was hardly a crime scene, but if she touched anything else, he would no doubt reprimand her. She was already going to have to explain her prints on the chair back. She pulled her hand away and left the books where they lay.

  Then a thought struck her. If she hadn’t turned the chair, the book would have been directly at Charlotte’s feet, as would the other one poking out from under the desk. Addie squinted to try to see if there was actually a dark spot on the cover of the second book, or if it was just a trick of the lighting. Her gaze traveled upward, and she spotted something else she’d missed in the heat of the moment. A tipped-over teacup. The contents had obviously dripped down the side of the desk onto the book below it. Charlotte must have been working on these books when . . . when, what? She clutched at her chest, knocked the cup over, allowing the books on her lap, on the desk, in her hands, to slide to the floor?

  It was going to be impossible to inspect the cover for damage without leaving a trail of fingerprints behind, and then she glanced back at the ash that had already been tracked onto the area rug. Too late, the scene was already contaminated. Fingers crossed, Marc wasn’t back from his vacation and Sergeant Jerry Fowley would go easy on her. She snatched up the book and turned it over in her hand. The calfskin cover suffered from the teacup mishap, and when she opened the book to inspect it closer, she gasped. It was Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., his collection of thirty-four essays and short stories published in 1819. Irving’s most famous stories included in it were “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”

  She didn’t remember seeing this one yesterday but remembered marking up her version of an auctioneer’s tip card. It was a plain index card on which was noted the book’s publisher, publication date, auction house inventory number, and current market value. Kalea had tucked the card, as instructed by Addie, inside the cover and title page. This particular book was in good condition, not prime, but good. The last few pages didn’t open completely, and the paper was lightly browned along some of the edges. Addie had the same edition in her own collection, and she knew hers was worth about nine thousand dollars. This one, given its wear, would still have gotten Blake about seven thousand at the auction. As it was now, with the tea-stained cover and discoloration, he’d be lucky to get eight hundred to a thousand.

  Addie knew this book had been on the table with the others she and Kalea appraised yesterday. Charlotte must have been checking their work last night when . . . The poor woman. Addie looked at the teacup and tried to paint a picture in her mind of what Charlotte was doing when the incident happened. But there was nothing else on the desk that would indicate what Charlotte was working on.

  Keeping half an eye on where she stood in relation to the body and the chair, Addie stepped around the desk to her right and paused at the door. She strained to listen for sounds of the police having arrived. They might not think this is an emergency, but they aren’t trapped in the room with the body, either. And where is Blake? He’d had plenty of time to inform the staff of an “incident,” as he called it, and to return to keep her company through this. Because it was all getting a little bit too creepy for her liking, what with the dead body, the look on the face of said body, and the fact that no matter how hard Addie tried to stay out of the line of sight—so to speak—she still felt as though she were being watched. The same uneasy feelings she’d had yesterday resurfaced and she kept trying to tell herself it was simply the power of suggestion, the same thing she had mocked Paige for.

  Well, enough was enough. She could only stay calm and levelheaded for so long in this room that seemed to be filled with gaping eyes. She’d call the police directly and tell them to get a move on it. She tugged her phone out of her front skinny-jeans pocket and saw a missed text from Serena.

  Stay out of trouble!

  Too late, my friend, Addie replied. It’s already found me!

  Out of habit, she punched in Marc’s cell number but caught herself. Since he’d been away, Jerry was acting chief of police, but she didn’t have Jerry’s private cell number. If she did call Marc, for all she knew, since he hadn’t contacted her recently, he might answer from a beach on the Riviera, and she wasn’t sure she could handle that right now.

  In an attempt to keep her mind occupied, and not think about Marc’s possible whereabouts or the charge she had been delegated to watch over, she scrolled through her messages and recent calls and growled when there was still no word from Kalea. She tucked her phone back in her pocket, not certain if she should be relieved or concerned that her cousin had ditched her again. But it really wasn’t out
of character for the girl she knew back at college. Although, yesterday Addie had a glimmer of what an actual adult relationship with Kalea could be like. At least she hoped what one would be like, but obviously her cousin hadn’t changed, and it wasn’t meant to be.

  Unless, of course, Kalea had arrived and was out there somewhere and couldn’t get in because Blake had closed off the room until after the police came. Fingers crossed, that was it, and she didn’t need to write off her cousin for another ten years. On the other hand, her cousin could have at least called. Addie cursed her lack of mental capacity the day before after she’d been rattled by whatever it was she’d seen on the stairs. She hadn’t even thought to get Kalea’s number from her. Now she had no way of reaching her to find out what was going on.

  Frustrated with herself, Addie’s eyes darted around the room, and her gaze landed on the table where the individual books set for auction were displayed. She hissed a swear word under her breath. Why did I even bother?

  After all the time she’d spent organizing their placement, either Charlotte or Robert had gone ahead and added their own touch. Robert! Where was he? Blake had told her his car was here, but there had been no sign of him. Was he the reason, not Garrett, that Kalea had a last-minute change of dinner plans? Her stomach pitched at the thought of that one, but with her cousin, one could never tell what attracted her to most of the men she dated. Addie shivered. There was that feeling again. She glanced at the desk chair to make sure she hadn’t wandered into its line of sight and crept to the table to see what havoc Robert or Charlotte had wreaked on her work.

  It was pure chaos. Books were everywhere. The auction tip cards she’d printed and painstakingly tucked into the top of each book had all been removed. There was no system now. There was no way the auctioneer would be able to sort the lesser-valued ones from the higher-priced editions, like the four-book Holmes collection, not to mention the valuable copy of Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Which were now mixed in with—Where are they?