by Audrey Keown
No, a shaft. What was this? A laundry shoot? Only someone in impeccable shape could scale this. A barefoot Bruce Willis came to mind.
I leaned forward with my light again and shined it into the box. Maybe the killer had stored something here … the murder weapon, perhaps?
The light caught on a thick rope that ran vertically along the left wall of the shaft down into the darkness. I reached out and plucked at it with a hand. It was sturdy and tight.
I sat back a second, puzzled. The blueprint had marked the hole D.
And it came to me. It was the dumbwaiter. The same one George used in the kitchen to get crates of vegetables up from the cellar.
There must be some kind of control here. In the kitchen, it was a button in the frame. I felt around the trim and found it, pushed it, and the ropes began to move. Somewhere up above was a pulley, but I wasn’t sticking my head in this hole to see it.
Could Clyde have known this was here? Could he have seen this room when he visited the Morrows so many years ago?
The box of the dumbwaiter stopped in front of me with a click.
A person could fit inside it if they curled up. But could it be operated that way?
Getting in was too dangerous. I’d seen George load it up pretty full with vegetables from the cellar, but how many onions did it take to equal the weight of a person, even a smallish person like me?
Well, I didn’t feel like endangering myself to prove it would hold my weight. A theoretical knowledge of the killer’s method of entry was enough for me, thank you very much.
But who would have been clever enough to use this method of entering the room? Who had returned to find me hiding here? I was sitting in the same spot where I’d been found, and I let myself trace over the memory. As the panic had taken over, I’d searched for sensory details to ground myself, and there’d been no particular smell in the air. Clyde and Selena were both smokers, so that seemed to rule them out, and Deena’s perfume was heavy, so surely I’d have known if it had been her.
I traced my steps back to the door, still pondering, and turned the key to unlock it, but a heavy thudding on the stairs stopped my hand.
Tom’s moose-ish footsteps?
“Shh,” said a voice from the gallery on the other side.
“What?” said another.
I was right. It was Tom on the landing, accompanied by his wife, back from dinner.
“I heard something,” said Autumn.
“You’re just being paranoid again,” said Tom.
His speech was even more mumbly than before. I could hardly make out what he said.
“Clyde’s paranoid. I’m not,” she said, like a slap across the face. “Not now or at the restaurant when you kept sneaking off. I know something’s going on with you.”
“I wasn’t sneaking,” he said.
I heard the rattle of a plastic bag and realized he was snacking again and talking with his mouth full.
“I saw you from the balcony,” Autumn said.
“What?” he said.
“Talking to Renee again. The day she died.”
He paused. “I was just … hassling her about the money.”
“You still think she knew who’s stealing from me?” Autumn said.
“She was the office manager—sure she did.”
“Clyde saw you talking to her too,” she said.
“So?”
“So what if he made something of it? You know how jealous he gets.”
“Den he’s an idiot,” Tom said. “Anyway, listen, don’t worry about the money. We’ll figure it out when we all get home.”
She took a long pause. “Maybe Clyde shouldn’t get home.”
“Darlin’, it’s just money. We’ll figure it out n’at. C’mon, let’s go to bed. I’m beat.”
“I’m not talking about the money.” Her voice shook. “I’m talking about Renee. Whoever killed her is going to answer to me.”
“You be careful.”
Their voices were moving off in the direction of the staircase.
“And why are you so tired?” Autumn said. “You slept half the morning.”
Tom’s unexplained sleepiness and constant snacking sounded like side effects of something.
I stepped closer to hear his answer, and the floor squealed.
“Tom—someone’s in there.”
“Prob’ly a maid—”
“Who would be in there with the lights off, Tom? I’m going to find a key at the desk. I’m getting in there.”
Her quick footfalls backed up her words.
I had one key to the room, but she was right that there was another at the desk.
I couldn’t let them find me in here. Now suddenly seemed like as good a time as any to see if that dumbwaiter would function as an elevator.
I went back through the armoire and shuddered. This would either be a joyride or the Tower of Terror.
From inside the dumbwaiter box, I reached my hand around to push the button.
The thing was surprisingly quiet as it began to glide down, except for a squeak here and there that might have sounded a bit like a rat to Mr. Wollstone.
I watched the brick wall slide upward in front of me and released the breath I’d been holding.
A moment too soon.
The small box creaked to a halt, and the hole wasn’t aligned with another door. I only saw wood studs and more brick in front of me.
I tried pulling the rope that ran vertically along the inside of the box, put it was too tight and wouldn’t give at all.
There had to be a way to start this thing moving again.
My heart began banging in my chest.
I was sitting and crouched as it was, but I managed to lift most of my weight from the floor of the box and drop myself down hard again.
The box shook but didn’t move.
This was terrifying, and I didn’t even suffer from claustrophobia. The walls were just inches from my skin. If I couldn’t get myself out of here …
I lifted my weight again and slammed my body into the floor below me.
Something snapped overhead.
The box began dropping again. It moved slowly at first, then picked up speed.
Too much speed.
How fast was I falling? And how far down?
The rhythmic squeak of the mechanism overhead picked up its tempo.
I stomped the rope against the side wall, using my foot as a brake. The friction made a horrible, droning sound.
My makeshift brake seemed to be working, but in a second I felt the rope burning the sole of my shoe. I kept pressing and cried out from the pain and the effort.
The dumbwaiter crashed to a stop. The jolt of the impact shot through my tailbone and up my spine. I was thrown off-balance. My back smashed into the wall behind me.
From where I sat, the noise was deafening, and I hoped I hadn’t woken the whole house.
I took a breath and checked the bottom of my shoe. The rope had worn clean through my thin Chucks and my sock, leaving a nasty strawberry on my skin. I’d need to treat it with the first-aid kit at the desk.
I slid open the door panel and found myself in total darkness, except for the light my phone gave off. I shifted my legs out and felt the cold, stone floor through the hole in my shoe.
The air smelled of earth and spice.
I’d hoped to land in the kitchen, but this was the cellar, one floor down.
I shined my phone flashlight briefly around. I was sure I was alone, and yet the deep, total darkness of the windowless room freaked me out.
My light caught inside the dumbwaiter box on a patch of color, a piece of deep-green-and-blue plaid caught on a nail. I pocketed it and headed for the door to the servant hall.
As soon as I laid my hand on the knob, I remembered that it would be locked. The cellar was always locked. The knob didn’t turn at all.
Perfect.
Thank God Clarista had allowed me to start carrying my phone. Otherwise, George might’ve foun
d another corpse next time he came down to restock the kitchen.
I called Dad first. “Hello?” he said.
“Dad,” I answered.
“Hello?” His voice came through spottily. “Ivy?”
“Can you hear me?”
“Ivy, are you there?” His voice faded.
We circled through the dance a couple more times before the sound died completely. I stomped, then reeled and sat down. I’d used my sore foot.
I sent a text to Dad, hoping to ease his mind but not knowing if it would get through on the poor signal. I tried calling George next, but the connection was even worse.
I stared at the heavy door in front of me. There was supposed to be some way to open a door with a credit card, but I didn’t have a credit card handy.
Thankfully my turn-of-the-century hairdo meant I had a wealth of bobby pins at my command.
I had two bars of Wi-Fi signal. I did a little Googling and figured out this old lock was a mortise style, so picking it was different than the technique featured in nearly every spy movie ever, although it still involved a couple of hairpins. I found an instructional YouTube video, but it wouldn’t play at all. I finally pulled up a locksmith’s blog that loaded onto the page in fits and starts. Holding the light and working the lock together turned out to be too difficult, though.
I tossed the warped pins aside and sat back, half exhausted and frustrated with my lack of skills, my lack of progress on this case. I touched my foot and winced.
When I had time after all this was over, I would practice lock-picking and all manner of spy abilities. But calls for help didn’t come when you were prepared for them. I hadn’t known I’d be taking this on.
Anyway, the most immediate thing in my way was this massive, ancient door. I glared at it.
The hinges were on my side. I did a little more research, located a mallet and screwdriver that George used for opening and closing barrels, and wedged my phone between two heads of hanging garlic to give me light.
Hammering away in the darkness, I couldn’t see how much damage I was doing to the old door. Mr. Fig would be appalled when he made it back here.
My phone battery died halfway through the process, but I was able to finish beating the pin out of the top hinge by feel.
As I hobbled up the stairs, I processed Autumn and Tom’s conversation. Clyde had been pressuring Autumn for money at his cottage on the mountain. She’d said someone was stealing from her. And Tom had been hassling Renee in the conservatory because he thought she knew something about it?
I wondered along with Autumn what Clyde would have made of seeing Tom alone with his girlfriend. According to more than one source now, Clyde was a jealous man.
Back in the entry hall, I took off my holey shoe and sock and grabbed a Band-Aid from the first-aid kit. I heard the door from the morning room to the conservatory, a very particular creak that I’d hardly notice at any other time of day. I tiptoed, one foot bare, to the dark morning room. All was quiet here, but I could see a flash of movement in the barely lit conservatory through the windows.
I focused in on a head of blond hair. Selena was crouching at the foot of the bougainvillea vine. She stuffed something in the purse she carried, shot up, looked around, and dashed out the nearest exit.
Was she stealing from us? But what and why? I didn’t take her for a botanist trading rare plants on the black market, and it wasn’t as if we had garden gnomes nestled around the conservatory that she might nab as some college prank.
She’d come across to me as a kid with a bad attitude and daddy issues, but like her father, she had secrets.
She wasn’t going to like me digging around in them.
XIII
Second Fig
I had a restless night’s sleep with the throbbing pain in my foot, all too familiar after what I’d done to my arm. I woke repeatedly from nightmares that my feet were being crushed by an elevator with prehistoric-looking teeth lining its sliding doors.
But unlike the burn on my arm, this injury had been acquired while I was up to something good. Clearly, I was maturing by the hour.
In the morning, I sat with my plants on the balcony of our apartment and drank black tea to try to get going. I thought of Mr. Fig. What was his usual morning beverage? And what were they giving him in jail? Water? Anything?
I wished I could smuggle in something good for him.
Knowing how the murderer had accessed the Achilles surely narrowed down my list of suspects. At five feet five inches, I had fit fine into the dumbwaiter, but some on my list would not. Tom was too tall and wide, and Clyde was really pushing it. But I could see him cramming in, if he was flexible. Selena would definitely make the cut.
Then again, there was the possibility that Tom and Autumn were in it together, or that Clyde and Autumn were. I hated to think anyone would do in their own sister. It was easier to believe that of a romantic partner, although I didn’t like admitting that either.
I rubbed the back of my neck and drained my teacup.
I decided to visit Selena Borough. As hotheaded as she was, she might want to dish about her dad. And if I could figure out what she’d taken from the conservatory, that’d be a win too.
Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and students at a Christian school like Covenant would be at chapel at this hour.
A burning dread gnawed at my insides. There was someone else I needed to question who would find himself with nothing in particular to do this morning.
Two parts of me warred against each other. I had to talk to Mr. Fig again in order to get him out of jail. But talking to him required going back there, and seeing him in that place again was the last thing I wanted to do.
I drug my feet up the steps of the county jail as if I were pulling a body behind me.
Once I’d passed security, I made my way down the hall. I smelled the men before I reached the holding cell this time. The acidic odor of vomit and unwashed bodies invaded my nose, and I thought I’d never feel hungry again. I didn’t know if this place was dirtier than before or if I simply felt worse about it.
I found Mr. Fig crowded in with mostly the same group. Neither busy nor resting, they leaned and shifted and lay down tensely. One man was on the phone, yelling. Others talked only to themselves.
Mr. Fig had managed to win a spot on a bench, but he gave it up when he saw me and wove through the other men to stand on the opposite side of the bars from me.
The circles below his eyes had darkened, and his silver stubble had filled in, making him seem older and somehow helpless. And was it possible he’d lost weight, or had his suit simply gone limp?
“I’m still so sorry you’re here,” I said.
“I know. Thank you.” The spark and confidence that were so much a part of his usual expression were completely gone.
I could understand him being depressed, but I still worried.
I swallowed hard and got right to the point. Maybe giving him something else to think about would help. “Someone cut a hole in the Achilles’ armoire to get to the old dumbwaiter opening. That’s how the killer got to Renee without you seeing them.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. “I’m sure there’s not time now, but someday I want to know how you came to this realization.”
“You may not like my methods.”
He smiled—well, something that was almost a smile. “I hadn’t thought of the old opening, since that armoire is too heavy for any one person to move. The dumbwaiter was used often when that suite was your grandparents’, but the bathroom in the suite was expanded during the hotel conversion, so they needed to block the dumbwaiter with the armoire.”
“I figured it was something like that. So anyone working at the house in my grandparents’ day would have known about it?”
“Oh yes.”
“Clyde told me he visited the hotel when he was a student, I mean before it was a hotel. I think that would have been in the eighties, maybe. You worked for my family then,
right?”
He hesitated. “Yes, but I’m afraid I don’t remember him, if that’s what you’re asking. He may have been to one of the student dinners Mr. Morrow liked to host.”
“Okay.” I nodded, making mental notes. “Also, my dad says the leak the other night was probably purposeful. I think someone was trying to get me away from the desk long enough to try out the dumbwaiter from the kitchen without me realizing.”
“Yes, that would have been the easiest way to access the dumbwaiter in the middle of the night. From the kitchen.” Mr. Fig stared through me for what felt like a long moment. “Tell me again about the drawings.”
“The drawings?” What a non sequitur. “The ones I found taped to the walls?”
He nodded.
“Well, the first one had kind of a blue background, a sky, I guess, and some orangy-tan vertical lines and upside-down horseshoes—”
“Could they be arches?” he asked.
“Like doorways? Yeah, I think so.”
“And the second?”
“It had kind of some big, gold rectangles and a blue strip in the center with a wider arch through it.”
“The bridge over the Grand Canal,” he muttered, and looked at me sadly, his mouth a rigid arch too. “I don’t think the leak is related to the dumbwaiter. I think it’s related to the paintings. And if I’m right, there’s someone at the hotel, other than the murderer, who is a danger to us.”
“What? Who? Tell me.”
“I will, but—oh—” He rubbed his stubbly jaw with a hand. “Miss Nichols—it will change everything between us.”
Impossible, I thought.
He folded his hands together in front of him and stared at the floor.
Mr. Fig wasn’t a man of hesitation. Confidence radiated through everything he did, from running a meeting to firing an employee. But he was clearly afraid of something now. What was it?
“I’m sure you know this already, but I have all the respect in the world for you,” I said. “I’ve never had a boss I liked so much. But no, that doesn’t cover it. I like you as a person—”
“Please let me stop you before you give away any more words you’ll want to take back.”
