Paige’s mutinied silence evaporated in a laugh. “You know her well.”
Addie followed Paige’s directions and pulled up in front of Martha’s white-with-green-trim Dutch Colonial. She was impressed by her old nemesis’ home. The house itself and the pristine landscaping with cultivated flower beds and wide sweeping lawn didn’t reflect the owner’s sometimes prickly exterior. Until recently, she had envisioned Martha’s house looking more like . . . well, the exterior of Hill Road House—something more in fitting with the tetchy behavior she had previously exhibited toward Addie.
Addie clicked the child locks on and made Paige swear to adhere to Addie’s strict terms of returning to work, to not step foot in the store until Wednesday, to leave her daughter, Emma, at the daycare for the remainder of the day, and to send her again tomorrow. When Paige agreed to all, Addie, satisfied, unlocked the doors, releasing her captive.
When she pulled up to the corner stop sign, she was surprised to see that the cross street was none other than Hill Road. She had no idea that Martha lived this close to it. If she turned left, it would take her right past number 555.
She glanced at the clock on her dashboard. Her foot wavered between the brake and the gas pedal. For the sake of time, she should make a U-turn here and go back down the way they’d come up. The meandering route that Hill Road took would add at least five more minutes to her trip, and she still had a business to run. She recalled what she had discovered about Beatrice Gallagher’s death. Her thoughts jumped to her own sighting of an apparition at the top of the stairs. Addie shivered, and her skin prickled in memory of the uncanny cold.
Then, of course, there was the concealed chamber behind the library fireplace leading to not one but two hidden stairways. Her foot pressed down hard on the brake as images of the names on her blackboard clicked through her mind like the flashes on the microfilm she’d viewed. Blake, Philip, Robert, Kalea, Nolan, Garret. All followed by the one image Addie knew she’d never be able to un-see—the haunted look in Charlotte’s eyes. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. So far, all she’d done was dump the contents of the puzzle box on the table and turn them over to check shape and color. She still had no idea how they fit together.
A car horn beeped behind her. She glanced in the rearview mirror and waved at a man in the car behind her, angrily shaking his fist. She clicked on her signal light, stepped on the gas, and made a left turn.
A few minutes later, she slid into a parking space across the street from Hill Road House. A moving van was parked in front of the gate. What to do, what to do? She should get back to her shop, but on the other hand, Blake said they’d be finished up in the house today. This might be the last opportunity she’d have to get inside to test out a few of her theories. Surely being away from the shop for a few more minutes couldn’t hurt, could it?
She groaned and rapped her forehead on the steering wheel. She had better give Marc a call and tell him everything she’d discovered so far and what she’d overheard between Blake and Philip. He was always lecturing her about staying out of investigations and letting the police do their job. This time she’d do just that. She fished her phone out of her tote and started to dial his number—but stopped, toying with her phone in her hand.
If this had been before he left town in February, she would have called him. He would have told her she had no proof, that they were only guesses and suspicions. Yadda-yaddaing on about how theories can’t convict anyone of a crime, only evidence could. She would have mocked him back and, when all the pieces fell into place, he would have been grateful for her contribution. But now, with Ryley here . . . Will he even hear me out? She tapped her phone on the steering wheel. Nope, she’d first have to find the evidence he always went on about, and then maybe he’d listen to her. Exactly how she was going to do that, she had no idea, but it was now or never.
Chapter 31
Addie shoved her phone into the front pocket of her cropped jeans and put one foot on the pavement, only to snatch it back and slam the door shut. If she ran into Blake, she’d need an excuse for returning today. There was something about coming right out and asking Blake if he and Philip were running an insurance scam, and if by taking care of Duane McAdams they meant they killed him and/or his sister, that didn’t seem like a good plan. Her legs bounced. Her pulse raced. She had always been able to think fast on her feet. She only hoped that knack wouldn’t let her down today. She jumped out and hurried across the street to Hill Road House.
All the way up the sidewalk, Addie played out different scenarios on finding the evidence proving that Charlotte had been murdered, and that her death and the timing of the book thefts weren’t a coincidence. Simon had confirmed it was possible to scare someone to death. What Addie had to do now was prove what or who had brought on Charlotte’s heart attack.
Addie’s foot alighted on the first porch stair. Every groan of the wooden boards whispered the ghostly rumors, the horrid events in the house swirling under her feet. She swallowed. But she knew one thing now she didn’t know the first time her feet touched these steps: five people may have met their untimely demise here, but today she wasn’t hunting for ghosts. She was hunting for a flesh-and-blood thief and killer.
She stared blankly at the weather-worn mahogany door. She still needed an excuse to be back in the house today. Breathe, Addie, just breathe. Her lamp! She’d forgotten all about it. A sense of relief swept through her as she stepped into the wide foyer. The lamp was gone.
“Can I help you?” Two burly men, one redheaded, the other dark-haired, stood at the top of the staircase, an 1820s—by Addie’s quick appraisal of the color and shape of it—Biedermeier dresser, suspended between them.
“I was looking for the lamp I purchased. It was supposed to be here by the door for me to pick up.”
“Sorry, can’t help you.” The dark-haired man began a backward decent down the stairs.
This was her opening. “Did you happen to see if someone moved it up to one of the bedrooms?”
“Nope.” The ginger-haired man stepped down, balancing the upper end of the dresser. “Everyone’s out back. You can ask someone out there.”
When the men and the dresser reached the foyer, Addie ran her hand over the smooth marble top. “This is a beautiful piece. Is it going to the auction house in Boston?”
Ginger pulled a shipping slip from under his rolled T-shirt sleeve. “Nope, some antique store in Concord. All the bedroom furniture’s going there.”
“And you didn’t see a lamp about yea-high”—Addie measured in the air to her chin—“heavy marble base, wine-colored, fringed lamp shade up there? Maybe you already took it out to the truck?”
“Nah, would have remembered that ’cause everything else left upstairs is big, heavy—”
“Yeah, we’re going to be asking double for this job.” Ginger grunted as he picked up the back end of the dresser.
The dark-haired man followed his lead. “Can ya hold the door open for us? Thanks.” He nodded as they slipped past Addie and out the door.
The movers had said everyone was out back, probably busy packing up the tents and tables, and what, if anything, was left over from the weekend sale. She could ask about her lamp, or she could go searching for it herself. She sucked air between her front teeth as she grappled with the decision in her mind. There was still the matter of the hidden staircase leading up to the third floor. The one she hadn’t had time to explore yesterday. If her hunch was right about it, there was more than likely the only access to the windowed room she’d seen from the backyard, because there was no evidence of an entry from the attic side.
She bit on her lip and glanced down the hall toward the kitchen, and then back up to the top of the stairs. Oh, what the heck. She raced up the stairs and into the bedroom with the sliding wall panel she’d stumbled on yesterday. Someone had gone to a lot of work to keep that third-floor room hidden and there had to be a reason why.
She surveyed the room, figured out exactly
where she’d been hiding, and began pushing on the center panel. She measured her head height and turned with her back against it and pressed back. No luck. She edged farther down the panel to the molding where two pieces joined, gave it a shove in the center. Click. A rush of cool, dank air engulfed her.
Addie stepped inside the hidden corridor, tugged her phone out, and flicked the flashlight app. As her eyes adjusted to the glaring light, she took a deep breath to steady her nerves and made her way down the narrow corridor. At the crossroads of stairs, the toe of her shoe rolled over a bump she didn’t recall being there yesterday. She froze. The hairs on her neck and arms prickled as visions of Indiana Jones in a booby-trapped cave flashed through her mind. Hand shaking, Addie aimed the beam of light down to her feet. An orange extension cord. Her heart hammering against her chest wall, she traced the trail across the passageway landing and down the stairs as far as the light would illuminate it. She retraced it back toward her and up the stairs to her left. Addie warily lifted her foot. Nothing happened. There was no explosion or, from what she could see, no poisoned darts flying out of the walls.
She braced her wobbly knees and ascended to the third floor. She pressed her ear against the door at the top and listened for sounds of movement. Satisfied it was unoccupied, hand trembling, Addie turned the brass doorknob and stepped up the last step into the room. She strained to see exactly what it was she’d walked into. The muted light of the morning sun through the closed curtains on the two small windows provided just enough light for her to see a makeshift switch box on the wall beside the door. She flipped it on and a bare, overhead lightbulb dangling from a hook on the wooden ceiling illuminated the room in a harsh white blaze. With a small yelp Addie’s hand flew to her chest to steady her heart’s erratic beat. The room wasn’t large, but it was functional as a hideaway for someone, right down to the bed in the corner. The sheets were unmade but they appeared clean, so this wasn’t a room that had been uninhabited for seventy years. It was clear by the hotplate and dirty dishes sitting on a table that somebody lived here. She peered into a coffee cup. Dark liquid covered the bottom of it. And lived here recently. The ring on the cup’s bottom hadn’t set yet.
Addie’s gaze lingered, scanning the shelves along the walls filled with antiques and knickknacks. The same ones Blake had reported stolen from the estate. It was all here: the record player, the music box, everything that had been on the list he’d given to the police. She eyed the Georgian Irish decanter she’d coveted on her first visit.
Addie dialed Marc’s number. The line was dead. She checked the reception bars. No service. “Crap,” she muttered, digging around in her tote bag until she found her travel pack of tissues. Careful not to touch the crystal decanter, she wrapped it in tissues and placed it into her bag. Since she couldn’t bring Marc to her, she’d have to take proof to him. The way things were now, he wouldn’t simply take her word for it and launch an investigation based on her word alone. When she stepped back, her butt bumped the table behind her, sending a stack of books tumbling to the floor, the clatter echoing like cymbals in the small room.
What the heck? The first-edition set of the Holmes books lay butterflied open on the dusty floor. Trembling, she wrapped her last tissue around her hand and restacked them. They were all here. When she picked up A Study in Scarlet, a cold chill raced across her shoulders. The binding had a clean slice from the heel of the spine to the top and flapped open. She examined the cut line. Between the front and back sections of the bound cover was the corner of a yellowed piece of paper.
With the tip of her pinkie nail, she managed to get a hold of the corner and slide it out. It was a birth certificate for a child named Tobias Gallagher born in 1945. This baby must have been the great-grandson of the earlier Tobias Gallagher, the builder of this house with its many secrets. Addie searched between the binding pieces to see if a death certificate was also tucked inside, but all she could find was a small plastic bag with a lock of brown hair wrapped in a blue ribbon.
She stared at the plastic bag, her mind racing. If he was born in 1945, that means this person would be approximately seventy-five years old now. She ran through a mental list of the suspects on her board, figuring out which one might be the right age. Blake, Philip, Duane McAdams, Robert. No, they were all too young. Not one of them came close to being the right age. Whoever this Tobias was, living or dead. He was important enough for someone to have damaged a valuable book to get at this certificate. Not to mention continue with the charade of making the house seem haunted and even murdering someone to get his hands on this book.
Chills skittered up Addie’s back. She dropped the book into her tote bag, one more piece to add to the sizable puzzle growing on her blackboard. She took one more visual sweep of the table. Her heart constricted in her chest when she caught sight of Charlotte’s laptop and a piece of paper with the Greyborne Harbor town seal sticking out from underneath it. She snatched a pen from her bag and, using it as a barrier to fingerprints, released the paper from under the laptop. It was the 1950 missing documents from the town clerk’s office. “Wow, here’re the architect plans for the house, too.” She snagged another page from under a pile of papers. There definitely was more than enough evidence here to convict whoever was behind these thefts, and if she could prove it with the hidden chamber and staircase, also Charlotte’s murder.
Addie shuffled through the rest of the papers, and her breath caught. Here was the plastic-wrapped first edition of the Beeton’s A Study in Scarlet. She puffed out a sigh of relief. This meant that her cousin hadn’t helped herself to it, right? Or had she? Addie surveyed the room. Was Kalea the person living up here? Is that why she disappeared without a word? Addie closed her eyes and drew in a slow, deep breath and shook her head. No, this area obviously was inhabited by a man. There was definitely the faint, lingering scent of cedarwood and patchouli, with an undertone of cinnamon and woody amber, in the air. When she worked with Kalea, she noted a light, springtime fragrance surrounding her. This room, without doubt had recently been used as a hideout by a man. She sniffed again. Yes, she was certain. And whatever the aftershave was, it was very seductive, and . . . familiar.
She knew she had smelled it recently, but how recent, and on who? The men she had been in close contact with over the past few days paraded like a slide show through her mind. Nolan was dismissed since she had never met him. Then there was Blake—no, he was Old Spice. Philip Atkinson was always a possibility. Both he and Garrett were well-groomed and this scent definitely came from a high-end product. There was also Robert. She cringed. Not a chance. There was more of an old-gym-sock aroma about him, which also eliminated Duane—for the time being—since the only aroma coming off him the day Addie was close to him to detect a scent was the pong of soured gin.
She racked her brain, trying to remember where and who she had smelled the scent on previously. Maybe Marc or Simon would know. As soon as she could get cell reception she’d have to call Marc anyway. This room was something he’d have to see to believe. Perhaps he might even know what the brand of the aftershave was; then maybe she could figure out who in town wore it.
Addie opened the door a crack, listened for any sounds of someone returning to the room. Coast clear, she hustled to the small landing that veered off to the tunnel toward the bedroom access. She hesitated. It would be the quickest way to get cell reception but never having entered the bedroom from this side, she wasn’t sure if the latch would be obvious or not. It might take longer. Better safe than sorry.
One hand on the wall for balance, she scurried down toward the chamber room behind the fireplace. When her hand felt the ventilation shaft indentation, she paused at the sound of a soft sputtering sound emanating from the alcove beside her. She flashed her beam of light into the opening. It was a cool mist humidifier with a jerry-rigged nozzle attached to disperse the vapor precisely into the upper main hallway at the top of the stairs on the other side of the ventilation grate. She scanned the entire area with he
r flashlight. Mounted behind the humidifier on a stone ledge was a small special-effects light projector. She flashed her beam back up the stairs and back down to the shaft opening. This was also where the extension cord ended.
“Apparition my foot. Just wait until I tell Paige and Serena their ghosts are nothing more than a few well-placed humidifiers.”
She chuckled as she made her way to the bottom door, slid the wall lever to the side, and tiptoed into the stone chamber. She scanned the room with the flashlight beam, and her heart sank. It showed her what she’d forgotten. The police had taken the stepladder into evidence and without it, there was no way she could reach the peephole to check if anyone was in the library.
Fingers crossed, like the day before no one would be in there because they were all out back, and her unexpected appearance wouldn’t have the same effect a surprise visitor had on Charlotte. She whispered a little prayer and pressed the lever. When the door slid open, she knew her prayers had been ignored.
Chapter 32
“Hi,” Addie squeaked.
The look in Vera’s eyes reflected the same horror that had been on Charlotte’s dead face. Art, on the other hand, had an entirely different expression. She couldn’t read it, but she didn’t miss the sarcasm of his welcome.
“Addie, how nice it is to see you.”
She swallowed twice. “I suppose you’re here to plan the staging of the house?” A nervous laugh did nothing to shore up her bravery. His ominous tone and eyes foretold a very un-cordial meeting. She needed to stall until she could figure out what was going on. “As you can see,” she said, motioning to the hidden chamber entrance, “here’s a little something you might be able to use in your creation of a haunted house experience for perspective buyers.” She glanced from Vera’s drawn face to Art’s firm set jaw. “I can explain. You see, I was—”
Proof of Murder Page 24