“Yeah, I have to agree with you. I don’t want anything that valuable in the house.” She sighed.
“No. It’s not safe. Anyway, it’s virtually impossible to tell the originals from the reproductions. Old Macbeth might have been a crook, but he was one talented artist,” Walt said.
“I know. When I look at them, I forget they’re fakes.”
“What made you change your mind? They’ve been sitting in the closet for days. Why do you miss them now?” Walt asked.
Danielle shrugged. “I think it hit me when I was giving our guests a tour of the house. It was the first time the portraits weren’t there. I didn’t realize how those paintings were such a big part of this place. I missed talking about them when telling about Marlow House’s history.”
“Then keep them,” Walt said.
“I know, I’ll buy them from you!”
Walt laughed.
After dinner Walt went to the parlor to start looking through the papers he had removed from the apple boxes. He had been sorting through them for about ten minutes when Danielle joined him.
“Did you find anything interesting?” Danielle asked as she sat down on the sofa and turned to face Walt, who sat on the desk chair that he had rolled next to the file cabinet.
“I’ve only been through one drawer. But it looks like a bunch of old newspaper articles,” Walt said. “I think I’ve read some of these already.”
“When?”
Walt turned to Danielle and smiled. “Before I was murdered.”
“Oh.”
“Hmm…what’s this?” Walt muttered as he pulled out a small ledger book tucked under the news clippings. He opened it and then started flipping through the pages.
“What is it?” Danielle asked.
“Looks like a diary…I think you might be interested in it.” Walt held the book out toward Danielle.
She stood up and retrieved the diary from Walt and opened it. On the inside of the cover a name was scrawled in faded ink: Katherine O’Malley.
“This belonged to Aunt Brianna’s mother!” Danielle said excitedly.
“Looks that way.” Walt closed the file drawer and turned to face Danielle.
“Why did Steve have this?” Danielle asked as she flipped through the pages.
“That’s a good question.”
Danielle closed the book and looked up to Walt. “Remember a while back when someone donated those old letters and journals to the museum? They were about the people who had died aboard your yacht?”
“You mean when the chief started wondering if I was a murderer?”
Danielle nodded. “Yes. Maybe these boxes contain newspaper clippings and photos someone donated, and Steve took them home to go through, and he just forgot about them. Maybe he didn’t even know he had this. I can’t imagine he would keep the journal from me.”
“I thought Beverly told you those boxes had been up there a long time. A few years before he died.”
Danielle shrugged. “True. But considering Steve’s extracurricular bedroom activities, maybe he got distracted.” She opened the book again. “Maybe we can finally learn why Katherine married your brother-in-law.”
“I just figured that palooka seduced her. Like sister, like brother.” Walt stood up from the chair and started hopping toward a more comfortable one.
Danielle glanced up from the book. “You’re saying Angela seduced you into marriage?”
“I’ve been asking myself why I married her in the first place. That’s the most logical explanation.”
Danielle flipped through the book and then paused and looked up to Walt. “It’s not going to be an easy read—her handwriting is not that legible. But she has dated some of the pages.”
“Anything around the time of my death?”
“Let me see…here’s one.” Danielle started to read—the words coming out slowly as she tried to decipher Katherine’s distinctive script.
“I still can’t believe Mr. Marlow left it all to me. Mr. Calvert is so angry. I can’t really blame him. But Mr. Martin tells me this is what Mr. Marlow wanted and not to worry. He says he is taking care of everything.”
Danielle looked up from the ledger. “Mr. Martin? Wasn’t that your attorney?”
Walt nodded. “Yes, James Martin. Good man.”
“That was the attorney in Portland, the one Angela visited before she was hit by the car?”
“Yes.”
Danielle looked back to the book. “It looks like Katherine was reluctant to fight for the inheritance. Almost like she felt guilty about it.” She turned the page and began to read aloud.
“Luiy visited me again. He says the Klan is not happy. He scares me.”
Danielle looked up. “Who is Luiy?”
Walt shrugged. “I have no idea. That name’s not familiar. But the Klan—that’s all too familiar. I can’t imagine they were happy about someone like Katherine inheriting that much money. Money was power. Power is what the Klan wanted. That, and keeping people like Katherine down.”
Twenty-Three
After leaving Beverly’s house, Police Chief MacDonald decided to swing by the Seahorse Motel and see if he could talk to Sam. He didn’t think Sam had anything to do with the attack on Beverly, but he was hoping he might have seen something.
The moment he pulled into the parking lot of the motel, he spied Sam loading what looked to be paint cans into the back of his pickup truck. He pulled up alongside the truck and parked.
“Afternoon, Chief,” Sam greeted him when MacDonald got out of his vehicle. “What brings you over here today?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Beverly Klein.”
Turning to MacDonald, Sam brushed his hands off on the sides of his denim jeans. “Beverly Klein? I heard she got home from the hospital today.”
“So you heard what happened to her?”
Sam shrugged. “Me and the rest of Frederickport.”
“I understand you stopped over at Beverly’s on Wednesday afternoon.”
The chief’s next question was going to be something along the lines of Did you see anything suspicious? Anyone watching the house? But Sam’s next response prompted a different question from the chief.
Sam scowled. “Who told you that?”
“A neighbor saw you. Can you tell me what you were doing there?”
“The neighbor was mistaken.” Sam turned abruptly back to his vehicle and started to rearrange the cans in the truck bed.
“Are you saying it wasn’t you the neighbor saw?”
Still fiddling with the cans, his back to the chief, he said, “Yes. I barely know Beverly Klein. What would I be doing going over there?”
By ten p.m. all the guests had returned to Marlow House and had retired to their rooms. Walt was downstairs, already asleep. Danielle had just finished going through the house, checking to make sure everything was locked. She kept thinking of what had happened to Beverly and the fact whoever had broken into her house and attacked her was still on the loose.
Now standing by the open doorway of her bedroom looking in, Danielle suddenly missed Walt. He was just downstairs, but she missed their evening chats just before falling asleep. Glancing upwards to the ceiling, she thought about their plans to renovate the attic into a bedroom suite. When discussing the project with Ian earlier, he had asked them if they had the original plans to the house. Danielle remembered seeing what looked like house plans when she had looked through the boxes in the attic some time ago.
Not ready to go to sleep, Danielle headed for the attic stairs, taking special care to be quiet when passing the guest rooms in that end of the house. She walked down the narrow hallway and then climbed the stairs. When she walked in a moment later and flipped on the light, she spied Max napping on the sofa bed on the far wall. That would be one piece of furniture to go when the renovations were completed, she told herself.
She quickly found what she was looking for, a long narrow box on the top shelf. With the help of a stepladder, she managed t
o lift it down. Rummaging through it a moment later, she found the house plans and mentally crossed her fingers, hoping they were the plans to Marlow House and not some other property.
Kneeling down, she unrolled the house plans on the floor, using her palms to gently iron out the wrinkles. Glancing over the diagram, she smiled. It was Marlow House. Taking a closer look, she used one finger to chart the course as she mentally toured the one-dimensional view of her home. She paused a moment at the master bedroom—the one on the second floor. Like the bedroom Walt stayed in, it had its own bathroom. However, she had not been able to use the tub after she had first moved in, due to some plumbing issues, which meant she’d had to use one of the other upstairs bathrooms to bathe until repairs were made.
From the master bathroom she looked to her closet and then frowned. It looked out of proportion compared to the closet in the next room.
“I wish my closet was that big,” she muttered under her breath. She then frowned and looked closer. A handwritten notation was scribbled toward the back of her closet, near the wall, and then crossed out. It took her a moment to decipher the pencil scribble. It said staircase. Someone had written staircase on the back portion of her closet and then crossed it out.
Danielle felt a damp nose nudge her arm. She looked up and smiled. It was Max, who had woken up and had jumped down from the sofa bed to see her.
“Hey, Max,” Danielle said softly, scooping him up in her arms.
He began to purr.
She kissed the top of his head and looked back down at the floor plans. “Walt told me about another staircase his grandfather wanted to build from the second floor to the attic. I think I figured out where he planned to build it.”
Danielle returned to her bedroom with Max and the floor plans. In her room, she tossed Max on the bed and set the floor plans on her dresser. After locking her bedroom door, she started to undress. While doing so, she looked over to her bedroom closet. She had never noticed before, but it did seem deeper from the outside than it actually was.
Removing her blouse, she tossed it on the end of her bed and then walked over to the closet. She opened its doors and stepped inside.
“It isn’t as deep as it looks,” she muttered as her hands moved along the back wall for a moment. “Weird.”
A few minutes later she abandoned the closet and headed to the bathroom to take a quick shower. When she returned twenty minutes later, she crawled into her bed. Yet, instead of going to sleep, she picked up Katherine O’Malley’s ledger from her nightstand and began to read.
The next morning Danielle’s guests were anxious to get on with their day. They ate their breakfasts quickly and exchanged only minimal pleasantries before heading out. The single woman left first, having only a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee. Fifteen minutes later, the two couples took off out the front door.
“It doesn’t seem as if this group is interested in making new friends,” Danielle told Walt as she stood at the living room window, looking outside, watching the couples drive off in opposite directions.
“They did seem to be chatting just amongst themselves at the table.”
Turning from the window, Danielle walked to the sofa and took a seat next to Walt. “Actually, I’m sort of glad they left already. I wanted to tell you what I found out last night.”
“Did you go somewhere after I went to bed?” Walt asked.
Danielle leaned back on the sofa and propped her feet up on the coffee table with Walt’s left foot. “I read Katherine’s ledger last night.” She then sat up and turned to Walt. “I also found the floor plans. They were up in the attic like we thought.”
“You were rummaging through the attic last night?”
“Not really.” Danielle shrugged and sat back on the sofa, returning her stockinged feet to the coffee table. “Just that one box. I found it right away.”
“Good. Now tell me about Katherine’s ledger. Did you figure out why she married Roger?”
“I think so. Whoever this Luiy was, he seemed to spend a lot of time harassing and threatening poor Katherine.”
“Threatening how?”
“For one thing, saying he was going to have Brianna taken away from her, that she was not fit to be a mother since she’d gotten pregnant out of wedlock. She was terrified she was going to lose her child.”
“Exactly how was he going to do that?” Walt asked.
“Not sure. But one name came up several times that might explain how he planned to do it—Hal Tucker, Roger’s fishing buddy and cop.”
“And like I mentioned before, a member of the KKK. I know Roger wasn’t a Klan member, but he did hang out with some of those fellas,” Walt reminded her.
“Those jerks were really harassing her. They weren’t happy she inherited your estate.”
“But why did she marry Roger?” Walt asked.
“It wasn’t love—more a bargain. Apparently Roger told her he could protect her from the Klan. Said the Klan wouldn’t bother him. And that if she was married, then he could be a father to Brianna and protect them both. And there was something else.”
“What was that?”
“I think she had a severe case of imposter syndrome.”
Walt frowned. “Imposter syndrome?”
Danielle wrinkled her nose. “Maybe that’s the wrong term—but close. Imposter syndrome is when someone accomplishes something, like writes a bestselling book, but then feels they don’t really deserve the accolades that come with being a bestselling author. They feel like a fraud. It was sort of like that with Katherine. She never could understand why you left her the estate, so she never felt she deserved it, that it had to be some mistake, and that at any minute someone was going to come and give it all to Roger.”
“You think she married him out of some misplaced guilt—or to be able to keep the money if something happened later and Roger got it?”
Danielle shrugged. “Maybe a little of both. In the diary she says she doesn’t love Roger, but that this was better for everyone, and that it would protect Brianna’s future. She writes about all the nice things he has done for her—which she finds especially sweet considering how angry he was when the estate was settled.”
“But then she killed him. Any reason why?”
“No. That’s what I find perplexing. The last entry was the morning of her wedding. She seemed excited—happy to be getting married. She actually wrote she believed she could fall in love with Roger. It’s not the entry of a woman who just hours later shoots her husband.”
“So we know why they married—just not why she killed him.”
“Pretty much.”
After a few moments of silently reflecting on Katherine’s fate, Danielle said, “About those floor plans.”
Walt glanced over to Danielle. “What about them?”
“Remember how you told me your grandfather wanted to build a secret staircase from the second floor to the attic, and how your grandmother didn’t like the idea?”
“Yes.”
“I think he did build the staircase.”
Walt arched his brow at Danielle. “Why do you say that?”
She smiled. “I think it’s behind the wall in my bedroom closet.”
“What makes you think that?”
“For one thing, that’s where someone wrote staircase on the floor plans.”
“I could write swimming pool on the floor plans, yet it wouldn’t mean we have one,” Walt pointed out.
“My closet looks deeper from the outside than what it actually is inside. I never noticed it before because of where the furniture is. Maybe the staircase isn’t actually in there, but the back wall of the closet doesn’t go all the way to the wall between my room and the north bedroom.”
“That used to be my room, but I have to say, I never really gave the closet much thought before.”
“Not even when your grandfather told you about a hidden staircase?”
“I was never sure if it had already been built and he covered it up,
or if he never built it. He was never clear on that, and over the years his story regarding the stairs would change.”
Their conversation was interrupted when Joanne popped her head in the living room and said, “I’m off to the store. Is there anything else you want me to pick up?”
“No. I think everything is on the list,” Danielle replied.
“Okay, see you in a couple of hours!”
“Goodbye, Joanne,” Walt called out.
“Bye!” Danielle added.
Walt sat quietly for a moment, listening. When he heard the front door open and close, he leaned over to the floor to pick up his crutches.
“Where are you going?”
“Upstairs, of course. I want to have a look at your closet.”
“Seriously? You think you can get upstairs on that?” She nodded to the cast.
“It might take me a little longer than you, but I think I can do it. And if I want to have a look, I’d better do it before Joanne comes back.”
Danielle stood up and giggled. “I feel like I’m sneaking a boy up to my bedroom in my parents’ house!”
Twenty-Four
Walt moved up the stairs much quicker than Danielle had imagined possible. One reason, he ignored his cast and used both legs, leaving his crutches on the first-floor landing.
“I don’t think you should do that,” Danielle said as she followed Walt up the stairs.
“Why not?” Holding onto the handrail, he took one step at a time.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to put weight on your broken leg like that.”
“My leg is healed.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
He paused a moment mid-staircase and looked back at her. They both held onto the railing. “I’m certain of it. Just like that scar on my forehead disappeared, I know my leg’s healed. If the doctor wouldn’t think I was crazy, I’d demand he take this thing off. But if he did, he would never understand why the leg healed so quickly.”
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