Текст книги "A Fright to the Death"

Автор книги: Dawn Eastman

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

26

The walk didn’t last long due to the weather, which had turned nasty again. The earlier sense that maybe we had seen the worst of it faded and I moved on to that sense of stoic tolerance that was necessary to get through a Michigan winter. Tuffy had been carried most of the way home. Even when Seth shoveled an area for him to walk in, he didn’t like the snow or the cold feel of ice on his feet. He walked along shaking each foot as if he could brush off the cold and finally started limping on all four feet. Not easy to do. Even Baxter seemed to roll his eyes at the dramatic display.

The wind had picked up again and the temperature had dropped. I couldn’t believe we would get even more snow. We brought the dogs back to the cottage and brushed as much of the cold stuff as possible off of them before letting them inside. I grabbed the door as it flew inward with a gust of frosty air. We hurried inside and unclipped the leashes.

Tuffy sat and shivered, glowering at both of us from under his fringe. He tended to blame me for almost everything, but this time he included Seth in his disgruntlement.

A walk in the winter weather, on the other hand, had rejuvenated Baxter. He raced through the cottage on a continuous loop while Seth chased behind him with a towel. Baxter sideswiped me a couple of times, which was his way of inviting me to chase him.

Tuffy sighed, lay down on the front door carpet, and watched. Baxter calmed down a bit and then took up sentinel duty at the door to Seth’s room and barked. When we ignored him, he barked again, a bit more sharply. Baxter usually left the barking to Tuffy, so I approached him to see what was bothering him. He backed away from me, moving farther into the room, threw himself on the floor, and moaned.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked Seth.

“I’m not sure.” Seth knelt next to Baxter and rubbed his ears. “He’s not really giving me much to go on. He just feels uncomfortable.” Seth felt along Baxter’s legs to see if he had hurt himself during his mad dash through the cottage.

Seth stood up quickly and backed away.

“What is it?”

Seth shook his head and crossed his arms.

“He thinks there’s something under the floor.”

“What?” I moved toward Baxter and sat next to him. “What does that mean?”

Baxter dropped his heavy head onto my legs and crawled forward as if he thought he would fit in my lap.

“I don’t know. Like I said before, he acted funny in here last night. He kept skirting around that area, but now he’s planted himself right on it.”

The cottage had wood floors with large throw rugs in each room. I managed to stand up again even with Baxter pressing his chin into my knees and he quickly jumped up as well and stood looking at me with a big doggy smile.

I knelt back down and felt the floor where Baxter had been sitting. I hadn’t been trying to sense anything but an image of a dim tunnel popped into my mind. I saw a wooden door at the end and pulled my hands away before I saw any more. I felt slightly nauseated.

Seth knelt next to me.

“Are you okay?”

Baxter pushed his forehead into my shoulder.

“Just dizzy for a second,” I said. “I think Baxter might be onto something.”

I pushed myself up to stand and patted Baxter’s head. “Let’s pull this carpet back and see what’s bothering him,” I said, fearful of what we might find.

Seth and I shifted the bed to the far edge of the room and rolled the carpet toward the bed.

The floor underneath the rug was slightly darker, and less scratched, but otherwise looked the same. I didn’t understand—the tunnel had seemed so clear. I still had a lot of work to do before I could rely on any other senses. I started to push the roll of carpet away from the bed and back toward the wall, when Seth stuck his foot out to block it.

“What’s that?” He pointed to a spot on the floor that seemed to coincide with where Baxter had been sitting when the rug was flat.

I pushed the bed a little more and we both rolled the thick carpet farther.

We revealed a square cutout with a recessed ring in the middle. It was perfectly flat. Seth pushed on a tab near the ring and it raised just enough to be able to grip it and pull it out.

“Wicked,” Seth breathed. “I think this is a trapdoor.”

We wrestled the carpet all the way off the door and stood looking down at a metal ring that was right in the middle of a square cut in the floor.

Baxter barked and wagged his tail. Tuffy came in cautiously and lurked in the doorway, whining.

Before I could stop him, Seth grabbed the ring and pulled. Nothing happened.

I told Seth to stand back and grabbed the ring and pulled. Still nothing. I couldn’t see any hinges and wasn’t sure which way to pull. When I tried pulling in a different direction, I felt the ring swivel.

Seth must have seen it move. He pushed my hand away, gripped the ring, and twisted. We heard a loud squeak of metal on metal and then a click like a lock tumbling into place.

We pulled together on the ring and watched as the trapdoor opened. Baxter rushed forward and stuck his nose in the crack, breathing deeply. Tuffy’s whining got louder.

I peered into the opening and caught a whiff of damp air. Seth and I leaned over the opening and saw a rope ladder hanging into the darkness below. The mid-afternoon light, a faded gray due to the impending storm, had crept in through the small window and cast a weak silver-blue patina on everything in the room. It only penetrated a foot or two into the opening.

Seth went to his duffel bag and pulled out a flashlight and a headlamp.

I looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

“What?” he asked.

“Do you always carry flashlights in your duffel?”

He flashed the Boy Scout hand signal. “Be prepared—that’s my motto. Especially if Papa is involved.” He switched on the light. “What are we waiting for?”

I grabbed Seth’s arm to stop him from climbing down the ladder.

“No. You stay here. We don’t know what’s down there. And someone has to watch them.” I jerked my head in the direction of the dogs. No surprise that Tuffy cowered in the corner, but Baxter was right next to him. A low growl emanated from Baxter’s large chest.

Seth rolled his eyes and leaned into the opening to shine the light into the gloom.

“They’re just overreacting,” Seth said. His voice sounded hollow as he hung his head into the opening. “It looks like there’s a tunnel down there.”

I knelt next to Seth and Baxter whined.

I started to wonder just how many secrets there were in this castle. Realizing that if Vi had discovered the trapdoor, she would already be down there, I finally convinced myself to climb down the ladder. She’d be harassing us for “dillydallying.”

“Okay, I’ll go check it out,” I said.

“What about the dogs?” he asked.

“What about them?” I put one foot on the ladder and gently eased my weight onto it. It held.

“They might fall in if we’re down there.”

My left foot was below my right, feeling for the next rung. I stopped.

“That’s why you’re staying here,” I said. “It might be dangerous and you need to watch the dogs.”

“Awww, man,” Seth said.

“Hold the flashlight on the ladder so I can see what I’m doing—then you can toss it down to me.”

He held the flashlight as I asked. When I reached the bottom, I heard scrabbling and squeaking and figured I had disturbed some rodent in his daily rounds. Mice don’t bother me much. Rats are another matter. And I knew there would be spiders. There are always spiders.

“Okay, toss the light,” I said. My voice echoed off the sides of the tunnel.

He dropped it down to me. “What’s down there?”

I shone the light in one direction and found a wall about three feet from where I stood. The other direction, which led toward the castle, did indeed have a dim gray tunnel that disappeared into the gloom at the edge of my flashlight beam.

“There’s a tunnel, and I think it leads to the castle,” I said.

“Wicked,” Seth said. His voice sounded very close and I looked up to see him hanging his head into the opening again.

“I’ll be back in a couple minutes—stay there,” I said.

Seth sighed dramatically.

I was in a tunnel under the ground between the cottage and the hotel. I remembered Vi asking Jessica about Prohibition and rumrunners. Maybe the rumors were true and there was a secret hiding place. I walked slowly, shining the light along both sides of the tunnel to be sure there weren’t any doors or off-shoots. I had been counting steps and when I got to fifty the tunnel ended in a wooden door. There was a heavy metal ring where a doorknob should be. I pulled on the ring and the door didn’t budge. I heard a scrape on the floor behind me. It sounded bigger than a rat. I spun around, raised the flashlight to strike if necessary, and saw Seth.

“I told you to stay there,” I said. I put one hand on my hip and used the other to shine the light in his face. “You never listen to me.”

He put his hands up like he was under arrest. “I listen all the time,” he said. “I’ll bet my percentage is better than ninety percent—that’s an ‘A’ in listening.” He grinned.

“What did you do with the dogs?” I lowered the light.

“I put them in the living room and closed the door so they wouldn’t fall in.”

“All right,” I sighed. “I think this is the end anyway.” I gestured at the door. “It won’t open.”

Seth reached out and pulled on the ring. The door didn’t move. I grabbed hold and we both pulled. Then we pulled and leaned all of our combined weight into the job. A scraping sound of stone on metal accompanied the slow movement of the door.

We opened it just far enough to squeeze through and found ourselves in the basement of the hotel. It didn’t look like it was a well-used area. Cast-off furniture and household items lined the narrow hall. There was a gap in the junk just ahead of us.

Another wooden door greeted us. Seth and I repeated our earlier exercise and almost fell on top of each other when the door swung easily.

“Wicked,” Seth said when he saw what was inside.

The room was about ten by ten feet. It contained a table and one chair, and at least ten boxes of cell phones. They seemed to be organized by type. Several boxes of iPhones sat next to Android versions. There was even a small box of BlackBerries. VERTEX WHOLESALE was stamped in large block letters on the side of each box.

“Whoa!” said Seth. “Are these all stolen?”

“I think so,” I whispered.

It had been all over the news just before Christmas. Vertex Wholesale had been busted for purchasing stolen cell phones. According to reports, the storefront was known in the Detroit neighborhood as a place to get cash for phones, no questions asked. Police had raided the store and there were rumors that there was a connection to Kalamazoo. Seth and I had just stumbled onto the connection.

Seth stepped forward with his hand out toward a box. I grabbed him by the hood of his sweatshirt and stopped him.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said.

I shrugged off Vi’s sweater and used it to pick up one of the phones. I chose a BlackBerry since it had buttons and carefully turned on one of the phones. It had been wiped clean of data.

Seth pointed to a printed stack of papers on the table. They listed cell phone brands, number of units, and prices. There was another column listing possible destinations. “Looks like your murder mystery just got a lot more complicated,” he said.

I nodded absently, trying to fit this piece of the puzzle into everything else we knew. The dollar amounts were big enough to be a motive for all sorts of crimes.

“I’ve heard it’s a big deal,” he continued. “They sell for way more overseas than here. The gangs steal them from Americans and ship them to Japan or Europe, where they can get hundreds of dollars for each one.”

I turned to him. “How do you know about all this?”

He lifted one shoulder. “I grew up in New York City. I’ve seen black-market dealers—usually the stuff is fake, though. Plus, I looked it up online after that police bust in December.”

“We better get out of here, Seth,” I said, and placed the phone back in the box.

Just as we turned to head out of the room, the door slowly swung inward and clicked shut. Seth and I ran to the door and pounded on it.

“Hey, let us out!” Seth shouted.

I wasn’t sure our pounding could even be heard on the other side of the heavy door, much less Seth’s pleas for release.

“Now what?” Seth said as he gave up on his hammering of the door.

“For one thing, I think I’ll listen to Baxter a bit more,” I said. “He really didn’t want us to come down here.”

Seth’s face was white and his brows were scrunched together.

I put an arm over his shoulder. “Someone will find us.”

I just hoped it was a friend and not the person who had put these phones here.

27

The room had been quite cold when we walked in and an hour later, it felt like the temperature had dropped even further. We’d shut off Seth’s headlamp to conserve batteries and because every time he swung his head the wild dance of light on the walls made me dizzy. About an hour into our stay, my flashlight died. Seth quickly clicked his on and I made my fiftieth trip around the room to check for a way out. I had it in my head that with all the secret passages and stairways, maybe there was another way out of this secret room. Unfortunately, it had been designed to hide things. There were no windows, no heating vents, not even an electrical outlet or a pipe to bang on in the hopes that someone would hear us.

Neila’s prediction about my mother attending a child’s funeral flashed unbidden into my mind. Panic wouldn’t help anyone. I knew that Mac would search until he found us and with our canine guards outside the room, it couldn’t be much longer now.

Seth sat on the floor and shivered.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“We haven’t been here that long. We just had lunch.”

He shrugged and chewed on his thumb.

I held my watch in the beam of Seth’s headlamp.

“Someone will notice we’re missing and they’ll find us. Baxter will be sure to show people the trapdoor.”

“Yeah, but when? How long is the workshop today? What if they go straight in to dinner and we miss it?”

“I’m so glad you have your priorities straight,” I said.

“I wish Vi was better at understanding the animals. Baxter would tell her right away where we went.”

“They’ll find us, don’t worry,” I said as much to Seth as to myself.

The headlamp flickered and went out.

Seth’s disembodied voice said, “Great.”

I took a step in the direction I thought the iPhones were boxed up.

With my hand covered by my sweater, I reached in and grabbed a phone. It took me four tries to find one that still had some power, but I was able to at least find Seth on the floor and sit next to him using the dim light of the iPhone screen.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to touch those,” Seth said.

“I’m only using the one so we can keep checking the time and avoid losing our minds.”

I clicked the phone off and sighed.

Yet again, I had stumbled into trouble and dragged Seth along with me. If his mother had even an inkling of my guardianship track record, she’d have him home immediately. I had had plenty of time to think while we sat in this room. It seemed the more we discovered, the more complicated the mystery became. Clarissa had alienated her family and most of the staff. Several of the knitters had a grudge against her. And now we had a room full of stolen cell phones. Was that connected to Clarissa, or had we stumbled onto a whole different crime? There were too many possibilities and it seemed almost everyone we interviewed had kept something from us.

But, I knew Seth and Vi were right. I did love to solve puzzles. And my work with Neila Whittle had improved my ability to interpret the messages I received. I’d always been good at finding lost items. Maybe Vi’s idea would work. But could I work with Vi?

Seth sighed. Every sound was amplified in the close, dark space.

Seth’s breathing, my stomach, and then, as faint as possible but still audible, I heard what might have been footsteps outside the door.

I clicked the phone back on and looked at Seth. He had heard it, too. We stood up and started pounding on the door again.

We continued to pound even after the door began to swing open.

“I knew it!” said Vi.

She rushed forward to hug Seth, while Mac took me roughly into his arms as if he wasn’t sure whether he was mad or glad to see me. I held on to him tightly and felt the scratchy wool of his snowman sweater against my cheek. At that moment, nothing could have been better.

“How did you get in here?” Mac’s voice was low and gravelly against my hair.

“Did you figure out the murder?” Vi tapped me on the shoulder.

“Did we miss dinner?” Seth said.

I reluctantly pushed away from Mac and we all laughed in relief. I brushed past Mac and Vi to get out of the room and into the no-less-spooky passageway.

Mac stepped farther into the room and shone his light into the boxes of cell phones. He whistled low and long.

“Somebody’s been busy,” he said.

Mac took about twenty pictures with his phone before he would let us leave.

We all trooped in the direction of the inn. Mac wanted to be sure the tunnel connected to the hotel. We passed through the hallway that held over a century’s worth of cast-off junk. Old baby cribs and strollers sat next to chairs with broken legs and assorted sporting equipment. It seemed that the members of the Carlisle family didn’t like to throw anything away.

We finally got to the area where the staff rooms had been built. The paint was clean and new looking and there was a small room with a freezer and a large refrigerator. Next to that room, we peeked into the utility room, where the generator hummed next to the furnace.

Satisfied that the tunnel did connect all the way from the cottage to the hotel, we went back the way we had come to get to the cottage trapdoor.

When I reached the top of the ladder I was almost knocked back down into the passageway by an exuberant Baxter. Fortunately, Seth was already at the top and pulled him away from the opening. Baxter was so excited to see me that he ran rings around me while hopping up and down. Tuffy shivered in Seth’s arms.

I helped Vi climb out of the hole. Mac was the last one up and he and Seth closed the trapdoor.

Mom and Dad were waiting for us.

“We were so worried about you two,” Mom said. She rushed forward to hug Seth and me.

“That was amazing!” Vi said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I love this castle.”

“I could do with a few less secrets,” I said.

“What do you think they used that room for?” Seth asked.

“It has to be where they kept the alcohol during Prohibition,” Vi said. She slung an arm over Seth’s shoulder and they walked into the living room chatting about gangsters and bootleggers.

“I’d better go call off the outdoor search party,” Mac said. He walked to the front door, turned, and pointed at us. “No one goes anywhere.”

“He’s kind of bossy,” Vi said after he was gone.

“He was really worried, Vi,” Mom said. “You saw him. I thought he was going to tear the place apart, stone by stone.”

We had settled in the small living room of the cottage to await Mac’s return.

“I would have helped him,” Dad said. He’d been left behind with Mom to coordinate with the other searchers.

“I knew you were fine,” Vi said. She waved her hand dismissively, and put her feet up on the coffee table.

“You did not.” Dad swiveled in his chair to look at her. “You were just as frantic as the rest of us.”

Vi scowled at him and crossed her arms.

Mom paced in front of the window, watching for Mac, I assumed.

“Is there anything to eat in this place?” Seth asked.

“I’ll check the cupboards, Seth,” Mom said. “There’s probably some snacks in there.”

Mom and Seth went into the small kitchenette together and we heard doors opening and closing. Then we heard bags rustling.

Mom returned with a plate of cookies and set it on the coffee table. She sat next to Dad and he slipped an arm over her shoulders.

“Are we just going to sit here, or are we going to make a plan?” Vi said.

“I think we should wait for Mac,” Mom said. “Besides, I thought you and Clyde had a contest going . . .”

I glanced at Vi. “So everyone knows?” I said to the room.

“I don’t like to root against my own daughter, but you really need a job,” Mom said. “This business with Vi might be just the thing.”

I looked at Dad, who was carefully avoiding my eyes. “You, too, Dad?”

He was saved from having to answer by a blustery gust of wind that blew Mac back into the room.

He stomped on the rug by the door and shed snowflakes.

“It’s getting really bad out there again,” he said. “I’m glad they hadn’t gotten far, it would be horrible if someone got caught outside in this for very long.”

He came and sat next to me and carefully took my hand. I thought it was a nice gesture until he squeezed a little tighter and said, “Tell us why you were stuck in an underground dungeon and hadn’t told anyone where you were going.”

Fortunately, Seth wandered in crunching on potato chips just as Mac asked his question.

“It’s not Clyde’s fault,” he said through a mouthful of chips. “It’s Baxter’s.”

Baxter lifted his head off his paws at the sound of his name. He’d calmed down once everyone had reappeared from the scary hole and lay curled in front of the fire. Tuffy was glued to Seth’s leg and watched every move of his hand from bag to mouth, hoping Seth would miss.

“How was it Baxter’s fault?” Mac asked. “He seemed to be the only sensible one—he stayed here in the cottage, where it was safe.”

Baxter put his head down and closed his eyes. He, like the rest of us, could probably sense that Mac was winding up for a safety lecture. I would have closed my eyes, but Mac’s death grip on my hand kept me vigilant.

Seth, self-appointed as my backup in almost every situation, sat on the floor near Dad. “Baxter had been acting weird since yesterday,” he said. “He didn’t like the room and acted like there was something wrong with the rug. I told Clyde about it and we decided to check it out.”

Vi picked up her knitting and scowled at us. Mom passed a plate of cookies around the room to dispel the tension.

“We didn’t think we needed a whole gang to just check out the trapdoor,” I said. “We got stuck in the room by accident. I didn’t know the door would lock from the outside.”

Mac’s grip was loosening; I hoped that meant he had calmed down.

“I think we should make a pact—nobody goes into unknown secret tunnels without leaving a lookout behind, like we did with Frank,” Vi said.

I cast a “told you so” look in Seth’s direction. He looked away.

“That’s a very good idea, Vi,” Mom said. She smiled at the rest of us to encourage agreement.

“Okay, that’s a good idea,” Mac said. “As much as possible we need to be safe. Something is going on at the castle and now that Seth and Clyde have discovered the cell phones, I’m worried we’ve stumbled onto a bigger problem than a disgruntled employee.”

“What cell phones?” Dad said.

We explained about the boxes of cell phones and how they could be connected to a black-market ring.

Dad whistled. “I read about that happening in Detroit. You think they’re linked? When they said there was a connection, I just figured one of the suspect’s families lived here or something.”

Mac let go of my hand, finally, and I surreptitiously rubbed the sensation back into it. He leaned forward and glowered at everyone. “This information stays here, in this room. If someone at the castle is involved in selling stolen goods, he or she could be dangerous.” He waited until we had all nodded consent.

“I’d been working on the assumption that Clarissa had been killed because she seemed to make enemies everywhere she went; maybe it was simpler than that,” Mac said. “Maybe she knew about the phones or was involved somehow and that put her in danger. Now that we know about the phones, we could be in danger as well. So we all keep quiet, right?”

We murmured agreement. I took a cookie and crunched it quietly.

“This mystery is getting very twisty,” Vi said. “Maybe we should all list our theories and figure out which one is best.”

I was already shaking my head. “No, you said we can’t work together,” I said.

“We shouldn’t put a small wager between solving the mystery and not . . .”

“What wager?” Mac said.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said.

Mac held my gaze for a moment, but backed off. He probably was still feeling guilty for the AAPD file he had stashed in his room. I was not above using his guilt to avoid a full-fledged fight right in front of my family. And I knew the last thing Mac wanted was my family even more involved in our relationship. I was good as long as I stayed near them.

Mac stood up and pulled me to a stand beside him. “Clyde and I are going to go talk through a few things. We’ll see you all at dinner.”

So much for safety in numbers.

Seth gave me a sympathetic smile and then focused on devouring the cookies.