Lady Justice and the Mystery Mansion

by Robert Thornhill

  Jeremy composed himself. “When her father found out, he was furious. He never approved of our seeing each other. I wasn’t worthy. My father was a common laborer and my mother was a seamstress. It was no secret that Theodore Weston and his bank were a part of Tom Pendergast’s organization which had ties to the Kansas City mob. Theodore told me that if I ever saw Julia again, he would have Pendergast’s goons take care of my parents. I had no choice. I was just a twenty-year-old kid. There was no way I could fight the mob. As much as I loved Julia, I couldn’t put my parents lives in danger.” He sobbed again. “I never saw Julia again after that day. I read about her accident and her death in the paper. I never knew what happened to my child.”

  “We’re not sure whether the baby was stillborn or whether Theodore Weston was responsible for his death. All we know is that he was buried in the basement of the Gladstone house.”

  “Why have you come to me?”

  “We’re going to have a burial service for your son,” Maggie said. “We thought you might want to be there to say goodbye.”

  He grabbed Maggie and held her tight. “I would indeed.”

  I had called Pastor Bob, an old friend, explained the situation, and asked him to officiate little Jeremy’s service.

  As we gathered around the open grave, the first thing Cline noticed was the headstone with the inscription, ‘Baby Jeremy.’

  “It was in her diary,” Maggie said. “She wanted to name her son after his father.”

  “I --- I didn’t know.”

  “There’s a lot more you should know,” Maggie said, handing the diary to Cline. “Here, I want you to have this. She loved you very much.”

  He held the book to his chest. “Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

  Pastor Bob had a short, but beautiful service.

  He finished with the scripture from the New Testament. “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

  “This child was never given the opportunity in this life to know a mother’s love and be held to her breast. Be comforted in the knowledge that little Jeremy will be united once again with the woman who gave him life and they shall dwell in the house of the Lord for eternity. Amen”

  I called Chris Wheeler, told him everything that had transpired, and scheduled another séance.

  I was surprised. It was actually a very pleasant evening. No wind, no rain, just a beautiful golden sunset followed by a full moon rising in the eastern sky.

  We set up the card table and chairs at the foot of the staircase just as we’d done previously. Chris lit the candles and we sat peacefully, hoping to make contact with the spirit of Julia Weston.

  About twenty minutes later, Chris said, “I feel a presence.”

  The next voice I heard was that of Julia Weston.

  “Walt, thank you for what you have done. You have set free the spirit of my child which you promised. After all these years we are now reunited and may go to our final resting place in peace. Good bye.”

  The moment her last words faded away, I saw a bright light at the head of the stairs. Three figures walked hand in hand into the light and disappeared. Then the light faded away.

  “Chris! Did you see that?” I mumbled, not sure exactly what had taken place.

  “I did,” he replied in a hushed voice. “In all my years contacting spirits beyond the vail, I’ve never encountered anything like that. It was magnificent.”

  On the way home, I tried to make sense of what I’d seen. There had been two large figures and one small one.

  Two days later, I understood.

  In the obituary column was the notice that eighty-six-year-old Jeremy Cline had passed away.

  CHAPTER 12

  A few days later, I received a call from Don Duran.

  “Walt, you’d better come over. There’s something you should see.”

  My first thought was that he’d discovered something that was going to cost me more money.

  “What’s broken now?”

  “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t find another dead body.”

  “No, thank goodness. Just come over. You’ll want to see this in person.”

  My curiosity piqued, I hopped in the car and headed to Gladstone Boulevard.

  “Okay, what’s so all-fired important that I had to drive all the way over here?” I asked as Don met me at the front door.

  “This!” he replied, handing me a plastic bag with an envelope inside.

  The envelope had an inscription on the front in a language I’d never seen before.

  совершенно секретно

  “Where did you find this?”

  “In the master bedroom. Come upstairs. I’ll show you.”

  Once in the bedroom, he pointed to a cavity at the base of the wall.

  “The men were removing the baseboards to start the refinishing process and repair the plaster wall. When they removed that one they discovered the cavity behind it. The envelope was inside.”

  “Any idea what it is?”

  “Not a clue. I didn’t try to open it. I just bagged it up and called you.”

  “You did the right thing. Thanks.”

  Although I had no idea what was written on the envelope, I knew someone who might, my old tenant, the Professor.

  I returned home, parked and knocked on his door.

  “Good morning, Walt. What may I do for you this fine day?”

  I handed him the envelope. “Do you recognize this language?”

  He studied it for a moment. “I believe it’s Russian. I can’t be certain but I know someone who can tell you exactly what it is.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Professor Franken at the university. Would you like me to give him a call?”

  “Absolutely!”

  Forty-five minutes later, I was in the office of Professor Hans Franken on the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus.

  “Come in,” he said. “Have a seat. Tell me, how is my old friend, Professor Skinner?”

  “He seems to be doing just fine. Still sharp as a tack for a guy in his nineties.”

  He laughed. “That’s Leo all right. He tells me you have something for me to interpret.”

  I handed him the envelope. “The Professor thinks this might be Russian.”

  He took the envelope and examined the inscription on the front. “It is indeed Russian.”

  “Can you read it?”

  “Of course. It says, ‘Top Secret.’ Have you looked inside?”

  “Not yet. Maybe we should, but we should handle it carefully. We don’t want to destroy any evidence.”

  “I concur,” he replied, taking a pair of tweezers out of the drawer. “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  I watched him remove the letter from the plastic bag and open the flap with the tweezers. He reached inside and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded the paper and we were looking at a map.

  The inscription read, “Minuteman Missile sites in western Missouri.”

  “Holy crap!” I muttered. “What else is in there?”

  He removed another piece of paper. “It seems to be numbers and cyphers,” he said. “I have no idea what they mean.”

  He removed the last piece of paper. “This seems to be information about the Whiteman Air Force Base just south of Knob Noster, Missouri.”

  He gave me a look of concern. “All this seems to be proprietary information. What do you plan to do with it?”

  I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. “I know someone in Homeland Security. I’ll give him a call.”

  I thanked the professor and headed back home with the mysterious envelope in the plastic bag.

  I found Maggie in our office.

  “How are you coming with your scrapbook of previous owner
s?” I asked.

  “I’ve been busy with clients,” she replied, “so I’m just getting back to it. Why do you ask?”

  I showed her the bag with the envelope and told her what I knew about it thus far.

  “Someone in that house hid this. We need to find out who it was. See what you can dig up on the Internet while I call Mark.”

  My half-brother, Mark Davenport, is an agent in the Department of Homeland Security. While still an officer in the police department, I worked several cases with him. Just recently, a mysterious box had come into my possession which had been coveted by four different countries including Homeland Security.

  When it was all said and done, Mark was not happy with my disposition of the box. I wasn’t sure how he would receive my call.

  “Mark, Walt here.”

  “What can I do for you, Walt?” he replied, somewhat icily.

  I told him about the discovery of the envelope and what Professor Franken found inside.

  When I’d finished, there was a long pause.

  “Walt, hang onto that envelope. I’ll catch the next plane to Kansas City.”

  When I hung up, I turned to Maggie. “Have you found anything yet?”

  “According to the abstract, the next owners were Gerald and Sophia Baldwin. They owned the property from 1960 until 1975.”

  She hit a few keys and an old article in the Kansas City Star popped onto the screen.

  “Oh, my goodness!” she gasped. “It’s says here that the Baldwin’s maid found Gerald in the master bedroom and Sophia and a man wearing a mask in the study. All three of them were shot to death. The police surmised that the carnage was the result of a robbery gone bad.”

  “Unbelievable!” I muttered. “First, Matthew Matson, the man who built the house, sold it because his two sons were killed in World War One. Then the second owners, the Rossi’s, were gunned down by the mob. Then Julia Weston dies falling down the stairs and her new-born son is buried in the basement. Now you’re telling me the next owners, the Baldwins were shot to death by an intruder?”

  Maggie grimaced and nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Doesn’t it make you a bit squeamish that we’re now the owners of record of mystery mansion?”

  She grimaced again. “Yeah, it kinda does.”

  The next day, Mark knocked on the door.

  After a cool greeting, he got right down to business.

  “Let’s take a look at that envelope.”

  After carefully removing the contents and examining it thoroughly, he said, “I need to see where this was found.”

  He followed me to the Gladstone Boulevard house and I showed him the cavity in the wall.

  “So nothing else was found? Just the envelope?”

  “That’s all so far.”

  “Tell your foreman to let you know if he finds anything else. I’ll take this to our Kansas City office and have it analyzed.”

  “Will you let me know what you find?”

  He gave me a disgusted look. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Are you still pissed about that box? I did what I thought was best.”

  He sighed. “I know you did, but you have no idea how much explaining I had to do in Washington.”

  “Sorry about that. Anyway, I’d really like to know what you find out.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it, but I’m still pissed.”

  On the way to his car, he turned and looked at the old house. “I can’t believe you bought this place. What were you thinking?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. I just shrugged and walked away.

  Two days later, Mark showed up at our apartment again.

  “I’m catching a plane back to Washington this afternoon, but I promised I’d tell you what we found.”

  I called to Maggie and the three of us settled in the living room.

  “First,” he began, “you have to remember that in 1975 we were still in a cold war with Russia. The threat of a nuclear attack was very real. The United States countered the Russian threat by building up our long-range missile program. This brought about detente. Both countries were afraid to strike knowing that the other would retaliate in kind, basically destroying civilization as we knew it.

  “The map you saw was the location of the underground Minuteman Missile silos in Missouri. Between 1964 and 1997 there were 165 sites in Missouri. 150 of those sites contained Minuteman Missiles, fully activated and on high alert. The other fifteen sites were launch control facilities. The information in that envelope contained not only a detailed map of the sites, but the launch codes for the missiles as well.”

  “Holy crap!”

  “Exactly. If that information had fallen into the hands of the Russians --- well, who knows what might have happened.”

  “Are all those missiles still there?” Maggie asked.

  “Thankfully, no,” Mark replied. The 165 Minuteman II missile sites in Missouri were decommissioned in the 1990's as a result of the international Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The deactivation process at the 150 launch facilities involved removing the missiles, imploding missile silos and covering them with soil and an impermeable barrier limiting groundwater infiltration into the imploded silos.”

  “What was the page that talked about the Air Force base?” I asked.

  “During that time, Whiteman Air Force Base was the home to the 351st Strategic Missile Wing. They were responsible for all the missile silos covering 10,000 square miles.”

  “What else did you find?”

  “Several sets of fingerprints. One set was from Anna Sokolov, a Russian sleeper agent. She was born in Russia, trained by the KGB, then sent to the U.S. to blend into our culture. She was known at that time as Sophia Baldwin.”

  I looked at Maggie in disbelief. One of the owners of the Gladstone mansion was a Russian spy!

  “Who owned the other set of prints?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Sadly, they were the prints of Colonel Maxwell Scott. He was stationed at Whiteman and apparently had been supplying information to the Russians. Our agents found seventy-three-year-old Scott enjoying his retirement in Florida. He’s now in Washington for interrogation. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.”

  “So we did good?” I asked, expectantly.

  He smiled. “Yes, you did good.”

  “Is all forgiven?”

  “Yes, we’re even --- for now. But I have no doubt you’ll be in Dutch at some point in the future.”

  After we’d said our good-byes, I turned to Maggie. “A spy in our house, and except for a botched robbery, who knows what might have happened. What could possibly top this?”

  I was about to find out.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was a Saturday morning.

  Don’s crew had the day off, so I thought it might be a good time to stop by and see how Art was getting along. He had been keeping busy cleaning up the construction debris. No telling how many trips he had made from the mansion to the massive roll-off container. When not hauling trash, he was working on the grounds around the house, cutting grass and trimming shrubs.

  I parked and headed straight to the carriage house. Not finding him there, I started wandering around the grounds. Still not finding him, I called out. “Art! Where are you?”

  I heard a muffled reply. “Help! I’m down here!”

  I walked toward the voice. “Where?”

  “Down here! I’m stuck down here!”

  I walked around the corner of the house and almost fell into a huge open pit.

  I looked into the gaping hole and spotted Art at the bottom.

  “Good grief! Are you hurt?”

  “No broken bones,” he replied, “just a few scrapes and bruises.”

  “Hang on! I’ll find a ladder.”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  I unlocked the door, found an aluminum extension ladder, and carried it to the hole.

  “Watch your head. Here it comes.”

  A moment later, he w
as scrambling out of the pit.

  “How long have you been down there?”

  “Just a couple of hours. I was going to do some yard work, but then I stepped right there and the ground just gave way. I think it might be an old cistern.”

  After a moment’s thought, I figured he was probably right. The house was built in 1903, and very likely before city water was available. Without city water, houses either had to dig a well or have a system of gutters and downspouts directing rainwater into a collection basin, the cistern. I remembered my grandparent’s first farm house had a cistern and an old hand pump to access the water. When no longer needed, some of the cisterns were filled in. Others, like this one, were just covered over.

  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Me too,” he replied “While I was down there I found this.”

  Wrapped in his handkerchief was a knife with what looked like dried blood on the blade.

  “I didn’t want to touch it in case the cops wanted to dust it for prints.”

  “That’s good thinking,” I said, taking the knife. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Then I’d better get this knife to the cops.”

  He pointed to the hole. “What should I do with this?”

  “Oh, right. Uhhh, I think there’s some plywood in the house. Cover the darn thing so no one else falls in. I’ll have Don get some dirt out here Monday to fill it in.”

  More dollars down the money pit, I thought, only this time it’s a real pit!

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “I found this too. I was digging a hole for a new planting and there it was.”

  I looked at the object in his hand. It appeared to be a flint arrowhead.

  “Wow! I wonder how long that’s been here.”

  I didn’t pay much attention to it. My mind was on the blood-soaked knife.

  I got in the car and called Maggie.