“Oh, ick.” Lil shuddered. “I hated that show.”
“Yeah, well. There’s the difference between us.”
“I wondered why they replaced this manikin. Doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with it,” Lil said.
“Unless…” Max said. “Nobody from the crew went into the dining room the night of the murder, did they?”
Lil looked around the rest of the shed. A high shelf to the left of the door held containers of chemicals, clay pots, and a bag of potting soil. “Terry shined his light in there but it looked like there wasn’t any disturbance.” She lifted a tattered jacket off a hook below the shelf. Underneath, a long-handled lopper and a ring of old keys hung on the same hook. A coiled extension cord hung on the next hook and an old apron on the next.
“And we went through the dining room later to get the lanterns, but I didn’t look around,” Max continued. She noticed a pair of rubber boots and galvanized bucket sitting below the hooks. There didn’t seem to be much else in the shed.
“I didn’t either.”
“So when we left, the police were there, but the house hasn’t been left unlocked since. No coming and going except the investigators, correct?”
Lil looked at her sister, puzzled. “What are you saying?”
“Maybe the killer hid the manikin from the bedroom in plain sight. None of the people who know what’s supposed to be where have been back in there. Let’s go do some window-peeping.” She led the way out of the shed, leaving Lil to close up the shed in the dark.
“Dammit, Max, wait up!”
She did so reluctantly, and they returned to the side of the house. “These would be in the dining room, right?” She pointed at a pair of long windows in the middle of the side wall, two dark rectangles, barely distinguishable from the only slightly lighter siding, once white but now a weathered gray.
“Should be,” Lil said. “Actually, maybe someone could have gotten into the house. There was a ring of keys hanging in the shed under that old jacket.” Max didn’t answer.
Lil followed her through the weeds, cringing as she felt burrs sticking to her good slacks. Max stood on her toes and aimed the flashlight in one of the windows. The dusty velvet drapes were tied back with heavy gold cords but the sheers behind them still made visibility difficult.
“I can’t tell for sure.” Max strained with the effort of standing on her toes and holding the flashlight over her head. “I think there’s one maybe that has blood on the face. They must have redressed it and used the wig from the one in the tool shed. But it’s facing away from the door and toward the windows so we wouldn’t have noticed it from inside.”
A gruff male voice came from behind them. “Aren’t you the clever old biddy?”
Max yelped, dropped the flashlight, and ran along the house. Lil screamed and tried to follow but strong hands grabbed her arms.
Chapter Eleven
Max
Max crawled behind a brambly bush and peered back at the spot she had left. Her flashlight was half buried in the leaves and pointed toward the back of the house. The obstructed beam was no help. She could hear Lil whimpering and scuffling. Without thinking beyond the next moment, she heaved herself to her feet, wincing at the pain in her knees, and charged toward the sounds.
She crashed into the bodies.
“Lil! Grab my hand!” Fumbling in the dark, she was able to see Lil’s pale hand close to her face and clutched it. At the same time, she stiff-armed the dark shape behind Lil. She and her sister started tumbling back.
“Hey!” the voice yelled. Max just managed to stay upright and pulled Lil toward what she thought was the front of the house and her car. As they got close, a flashlight wielded by their pursuer lit up the red Studebaker ahead of them. It stood out against the dead trees like a beacon.
Max searched her coat pocket for her keys. No luck. Fear clutched at her heart. As she found the keys in her other pocket, she noticed the driver’s side front tire was flat and totally slashed to shreds.
Lil’s voice shook behind her: “He’s coming, Max!”
“We aren’t going to get out with the car,” Max growled. “Follow me.” She took off around the other side of the house, but listened to make sure her sister was still behind her.
On the opposite of the house, Max headed for a large rectangular shape along the side of the house. She felt around in the middle, grabbed a handle, and jerked the wooden basement door open.
“Quick!” She said to Lil. “Down the steps.”
The man’s voice yelled again. “Hey!” Max didn’t think he had rounded the corner of the house yet. Max followed Lil down into the black hole. Both of them slipped and stumbled down the rickety wood stairs. Max was suddenly blinded by the smallest of flames. Lil held a cigarette lighter up so Max could see to reach up and close the door.
Once that was done, Max turned on her sister. “I thought you quit,” she hissed.
“I did. But I’m not going to throw out a perfectly good lighter.” She flicked the lighter again and pointed at the side of the door. “There’s a bar there that goes through those brackets. If we put that in, he won’t be able to get the doors open. Here hold this.” She thrust the lighter at Max. “I’ll do it. Just hold that still.”
She grabbed the bar at the side and worked it through the brackets just as they heard their pursuer pounding on the door.
The two women ducked into the basement and realized there was another door, standing open, at the bottom of the steps. Lil pushed it shut. Max searched the area with the lighter held high and spotted an old dresser.
“Quick, help me drag this over in front of the door.”
The uneven brick and dirt floor made pushing much harder, but they managed to get the door at least partially blocked.
“Do you have your phone?” Max asked. “I left mine in my purse in the car. So stupid!”
Lil felt her jacket pockets. “I do!” She pulled it out.
“Call 911. And then we can use it for a flashlight.”
Lil dialed. The basement echoed with a wrenching screech. An axe blade split the door above the dresser. Just barely but enough for the edge of the blade to glimmer in the dim light.
“C’mon! We need to find the stairs!” Max grabbed the phone from Lil and aimed it toward the back of the basement. “Gotta be back here—I think the stairs are off the kitchen.”
A voice from the phone saying, “What is your emergency?” was punctuated with another hit to the door.
The light from the phone revealed rickety wooden steps toward the back. As they stumbled toward the stairs, Max gave the 911 operator their situation and location. “Help please! We’re at the—Kell house, on Cranberry Road and being chased!”
“Chased?”
“Yes, by a man with an axe!” She shoved the phone in her pocket.
Lil whispered, “He’s stopped pounding.”
They climbed the steps, Max first, both of them panting. Three steps from the top, noises on the other side of the door brought Max to a halt.
“He’s in the house! Quick back down!”
But Lil wasn’t fast enough for her sister. In her fear, Max tried to go around her, and when she put her weight on the same step, the wood cracked deafeningly. They tumbled and screamed. Max grabbed the handrail, but Lil plummeted to the bottom.
“Ohmigod, Lil—I’m so sorry—” Using the rail, she hurried down to the heap at the bottom.
Max got down on her knees, ignoring the shooting pain from her arthritis, and shined the phone toward Lil’s face. Her eyes were closed, and she breathed in rasps.
“What have I done? Lil—Lil! Sweetie, speak to me.”
“Sweetie?” Lil croaked. “You’ve lost it. Ohh, my leg!”
Max glanced up the steps but couldn’t hear or see anything. Did their pursuer leave?
“We need to hide. Maybe behind the furnace. I know it hurts but we have to hide somewhere if we want to stay alive.” Using the light on the phone again, she looked around the
basement. Near the furnace a few pieces of coal laid scattered on the floor by an old coal chute and under the chute—a wheelbarrow!
She hobbled over to drag the wheelbarrow back. “I’m going to try and get you in here, okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer but pulled Lil’s left arm over her shoulders and gently as she could, lifted her toward the wheelbarrow. The injured leg was partially supported by the sloping front of the barrow.
Lil gripped the sides, but let go to wipe some of the tears streaming down her face. In the dim light of the phone, Max could see streaks across Lil’s face from the coal dust. Best not to mention that.
“It must be broken,” Lil sobbed.
Max grimaced. “I wouldn’t make you do this if the alternative wasn’t so much worse. Can you hold the phone? Literally.”
“Funny,” Lil gasped and took the phone in her right hand. She aimed the light in the general direction of the furnace but was unable to hold it very steady. Their progress was slow and wobbly, accompanied by grunts and groans. Something brushed Max’s face. She shrieked and almost dropped the wheelbarrow handle.
“What is it?” Lil whispered.
“Spider webs.”
“I don’t know how…someone as tough as you…can be so scared of spiders,” Lil said between clenched teeth. “Do you hear that guy?”
“No. Not since we came back down the steps. Hold the light up.”
All the while, Max listened for any sounds from upstairs but didn’t hear any. When they finally were obscured by the furnace from either of the entrances, Max lowered the wheelbarrow gently.
“Yeow!” Lil cried. Apparently not gently enough. Then for a few moments, the only sound was their own heavy breathing.
Max stood up. She took the phone and used it to look around. “I guess this didn’t gain us much. We’re not very well hidden.”
“Help should be here soon, right?” Lil’s voice was getting weak.
“Sure,” Max said with more confidence than she felt. Lil began to shake. “I’m freezing.”
“Here—it’s not much but might help some.” Max struggled out of her fleece jacket and tucked it around Lil.
A door opened above them. Max switched off the light on the phone. Heavy footsteps sounded as well as some other unidentifiable sounds. Someone began to pry the basement door open.
Max held her breath as she tried to determine how she would know if it was friend or foe.
A voice from the top of the wrecked stairs called: “Hello?”
Before they could reply, loud crashes came from the step area and a furry freight train barreled into Max.
“Rosie!”
“Mom? Aunt Max?” Terry’s voice called again. “What happened to the steps?”
Max used the phone light again to find her way back into the other room. “We had a little accident. There’s an outside stairway.” She pointed to that side of the house. “But we barricaded it.”
Terry bent over and peered toward where she pointed. “Can you pull that chest away? I’ll send the police around that way.” He started to straighten up and then said, “Where’s Mother?”
“Back behind the furnace.” Max paused. “She may have a broken leg.”
“What—? Never mind. We’ll get her out of there as soon as we can.” He raised his voice. “Help is coming, Mom!” He left.
Max tried to move the dresser out far enough to get the door open. Rosie alternated between dancing around her mistress with joy and sniffing out the wonderfully intriguing corners of the basement. Max heard no sound from Lil.
When she got the door open, she could see the destruction of the bulkhead doors their assailant had wreaked with the axe. Boards had been chopped out leaving only the frames. Two police officers pulled broken boards away to clear the steps. One paused and looked down at Max. “This guy was serious.”
Max gulped. “Yes, he was. Did you catch him?”
“There was no one around when we got here.”
She moved back and tugged more on the dresser but gave up and returned to check on Lil. Her sister was barely conscious.
“They’re almost here, Lil. Hold on, sweetie.’
The sound of the dresser crashing to its side signaled the police breaching the entrance. Terry was right behind them.
“Max? Mom?”
“In here,” Max called back. Flashlight beams bounced off the dirty stone walls as the police led Terry to the furnace room. Max felt doubly guilty for getting her sister into this when she saw the worry on Terry’s face.
EMTs arrived and carried Lil out on a stretcher. As they loaded her, Max caught a glimpse of black coal dust smeared all over the back of Lil’s clothes. Another strike against her. Terry ran alongside holding his mother’s hand.
The police chief arranged to have Max’s car towed to a tire shop in town. He helped her back out the bulkhead stairs, around the house to the back door and into the kitchen. Rosie stayed right at her heels. In spite of the lack of heat, the protection from the wind made the house warmer than the outside.
Mansell pulled out a chair at the table and helped Max sit.
“I want to go to the hospital with my sister.”
“Can you tell me what happened? Then I’ll give you a ride to the clinic.”
Max told her story in fits and starts, keeping her eyes down so she didn’t have to see the disbelief and accusation on his face.
“What possessed you to come here by yourselves at night?”
Max shrugged. “Just thought we’d take a look around. We did find some clues.”
“Really?” Mansell’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “And what would those clues be?”
“Well, a clue I should say. There’s a manikin in a shed out back that I think used to be at the dining room table. I think the one in the dining room with the blood on its face is the one that was in the bedroom.”
Mansell got up, smacked the swinging door with one hand, and walked into the dining room. He was back in a moment.
“I see what you mean. But what’s the significance? What kind of ‘clue’ is that?”
“I don’t know. But the murderer went to a lot of work to stage a scene. What was he trying to accomplish?”
“Let’s work at this from a more concrete angle instead of your ‘pie in the sky’ ideas. Who was chasing you? Did you recognize a voice? What did he say?”
Max tried to reconstruct events after they found the manikin in the shed. “When he came up behind us, he said something like ‘Pretty smart for an old biddy.’ I know he called us old biddies. Then he yelled ‘Hey!’—twice, I think—when he was chasing us. I think that’s all we heard him say. And we don’t know that many people around here so I don’t know how we could identify him from that.” She paused. “Although his voice did sound a little familiar.”
“Think! Who have you met while you were here?”
“Hmmm. Art Carnel. But I don’t think it was his voice. Oh—I forgot to tell you! We had pizza with two of the women from the bus tour tonight. While we were eating, Art came in and one of the women said she was sure it was the same guy who Barbara had shown her a photo of—Al Carson.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s the murderer, but we’ll check it out. Who else have you met?”
“Of course, quite a few men came through the haunted house, but I don’t know that I would remember any of their voices. A couple of the volunteers. There’s a guy named Bert who works at the bank with Terry and a science teacher—Vince something? I can’t think of any other men that we’ve actually visited with. Oh, the guy that owns the Inn—Wendell—and a couple of men on the bus tour.”
Mansell folded his arms. “Let’s head in to the clinic. We can continue this discussion on the way.”
Max stood. “What about my dog?”
“She won’t be the first dog to ride in that cruiser. I don’t know if I can lock the house. Terry had a key and I forgot to have him leave it. Maybe there’s a deadbolt I can lock before we go out.”
M
ax snapped her fingers. “Lil said she saw a ring of keys in the shed under a jacket. She wondered if that’s how the murderer got in to the house.”
“Let’s go. We’ll check it out quick before we leave.”
Max led him through the garden to the tool shed. She shivered with the evening chill and the lack of her jacket. It would be just her luck to come down with pneumonia. Or maybe she deserved it for dragging Lil into this. The thought of Lil's severe pain made Max's stomach clench.
Mansell opened the shed and shone the light around.
“There’s the old jacket.” Max pointed to the row of hooks.
Chief Mansell lifted the jacket. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and picked up the ring of keys. “Some of these look old enough to be the keys to the house.” They headed back to the house, while he examined the keys with the flashlight. He separated out a couple and stumbled twice. When they got to the back door, he tried them both and the second one worked.
“Okay.” He aimed the flashlight at the steps and the ground beyond. “We’ll have to go around the side. My cruiser’s out front.”
They passed the crippled Studebaker on their way. “The tow truck should be here any time. I’ll check with them when we get to town.”
Max nodded, but her feelings of guilt threatened to lay her out flat. If she hadn’t followed her wild hair idea, neither her sister nor her car would be lame.
Chapter Twelve
Max
Chief Mansell seemed to run out of questions, and they rode in silence in to town. He had placed the ring of keys in an evidence bag on the console between them, and Max picked them up to look at them in the light of the passing streetlights.
“One of these keys is very different,” she commented, holding up a small brass key. “It looks a lot newer.” The old Sesame Street ditty, “One of these things is not like the others,” started to run through her head.
“I noticed that,” Mansell said, without looking.
“Kind of looks like a safe deposit key.”
Mansell nodded.
Max turned toward him. “I know you probably can’t talk about it to me, but this whole thing makes no sense. Why put the body on display? The only reason I can think of is exactly what happened: shut down the haunted house and keep people away from it.”
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