“Thanks,” Michael said.
“Meg! You can play a part! Maybe you could be Mrs. Van der Lynden.” Dad beamed at me.
A young woman in a Marie Antoinette costume looked stricken.
“No, Meg is my assistant director,” Michael said. “I need her eyes. And also her hands. For note taking.” He handed me a pen and a yellow legal pad. “Places, everyone! Get ready for a run-through.”
Everyone scurried about. Actors playing party guests swarmed into the living room—including Josh, Jamie, Adam, and Mason, who looked very serious and pretended not to notice me. “In the Mood” started up again. Actors with serving trays marshaled in the hallway. I spotted one of them filling her champagne flutes at the sink in the powder room off the foyer. The hors d’oeuvres trays each contained about a dozen neatly arranged individual Doritos. Michael and I and a few other uncostumed people—presumably representing the various tech services—clustered along one wall of the foyer.
“Action!” Michael shouted.
Laughter and chitchat rang out in the living room. The servants trooped in and began proffering Doritos and flutes of tap water to the guests.
Hollow laughter echoed through the foyer. I was the only one who started. Of course—Ragnar’s doorbell. The rest of them had gotten used to it. An actor in a butler’s outfit opened the door and admitted two more revelers.
“Cue Times Square,” Michael called.
From the living room “In the Mood” vanished, replaced by the sound of televised cheering and the voice of Dick Clark.
Two men in black tuxedos slipped out of the living room into the foyer. They looked around furtively. Seeing no one, they reached into their pockets, took out black velvet eye masks, and donned them. Then they tiptoed up the broad main stairs to the second-floor hallway and disappeared.
For a minute or so we heard nothing except for Dick Clark and the Times Square crowd. Then we heard shouting coming from upstairs.
“Bang!” someone shouted.
“Bang bang!” another voice replied.
The various robbers appeared in the upstairs hallway—the two gentlemen robbers in tuxedos and black velvet masks, the three real robbers in black sweats and ski masks, and all waving bananas, salamis, or sub rolls in a menacing manner. The real robbers were holding black pillowcases stuffed full of something. The party guests crowded in to the archway between the living room and the foyer but wisely stayed out of the action.
A gentleman robber tussled with the real robber played by Evan. “Bang!” Evan shouted, and the gentleman robber slumped to the floor. But he managed to get off a parting shot with his sub roll, and Evan collapsed much more dramatically, allowing his salami to fall from his dying grasp right at the foot of the stairs. I wondered how he was going to react when Michael broke the news that he wasn’t the one who got to do the death scene.
One of the remaining real robbers—Roddy, I think—picked up his fallen comrade’s pillowcase. Then he and Jared raced out of the main door and could be heard thudding down the marble steps. The surviving gentleman robber had flattened himself against the wall at the top of the stairs and was looking down in horror at the casualties below. Probably not too far from what the real Paul Blair had done.
Several actors—representing doctors or guests with first-aid training—rushed to the side of the fallen gentleman robber. One of them, almost as an afterthought, made a cursory examination of the dead real robber. The rest of the guests reacted variously. Several men stood in the archway and ordered the others to stay in the living room. Several people ignored them and slipped out. A few women screamed.
The actor in the butler’s uniform strode matter-of-factly across the foyer, opened the door to the closet that housed the telephone and security equipment, and mimed pushing 9-1-1 on the wall phone.
We heard a car start down in the parking lot.
“What happens when they get to the gate?” I asked Michael softly.
“They will wave their bananas at the actor playing James Washington, and he will open the gate for them,” he replied, also softly. “I think we’ve gone far enough with this rendition.” He stepped toward the center of the foyer and yelled “Cut! Everyone to the living room for notes.”
The actors swarmed back into the living room, chattering animatedly. Evan picked himself up from the parquet floor and retrieved his salami.
“I think I was a little flat in my scene,” he said. “Can we take it again?”
Michael either didn’t hear him or pretended not to.
I joined the crowd in the living room, curious to see what kind of notes Michael would be giving. But I quickly realized that the session was less about critiquing the performance than about brainstorming, under Dad’s direction, about what could have happened to Mrs. Van der Lynden’s jewels.
“Okay,” Dad said, to kick things off. “First let’s consider the theory that the robbers actually made off with the jewels. So where are they?”
As various cast members proposed increasingly more convoluted and improbable theories, everyone seemed to be enjoying the session—Dad, in particular.
But I’d already spent way too much time thinking about the jewel robbery over the last couple of days. Had already tested and rejected those few theories that seemed even halfway plausible. I felt like standing up and saying, “Wake me when you start discussing how either Archie or his mother managed to hide the jewels.”
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. My eyelids were drooping.
“Is there someplace I could catch forty winks?” I asked Ragnar. “I’ve had a really long day. And I want to be fresh for the next run-through.”
“Of course!”
He showed me upstairs and down the long hall to one of the guest rooms. He lingered long enough to fuss over me, offering tea or aspirin, and pointing out that the attached bathroom had an excellent soaking tub. Then, reassured that all I wanted was a horizontal surface to become unconscious on, he hurried back to the living room.
I locked the door, nodded with satisfaction at the lock’s no-nonsense click, and fell into bed.
I woke with a start, and it took a few moments to remember where I was.
I glanced at the clock. Ten o’clock. A pity I had no idea when I’d gone to sleep, so I could know how long a nap I’d taken.
Time to take the boys home and put them to bed. I stumbled into the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. Then I left the guest room and paused for a moment to remember which way led back to the foyer.
I heard voices in distance, so I headed down the corridor toward them.
As I approached the upstairs hallway, the one that looked down over the foyer, I saw a figure just inside my corridor. It was a man, standing there with his eyes closed, doing what looked like some kind of anxiety-relieving breathing exercise.
I didn’t want to startle him, so I shuffled my feet a little as I got closer to him. He didn’t seem to notice, even when I could almost touch him.
“Good evening,” I said, keeping my tone calm and soothing.
It didn’t help. His eyes flew open and an expression of horror crossed his face.
“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. Then he ran inside shouting, “Ragnar! Meg’s awake! Meg’s awake!”
He didn’t sound the least bit happy to see me. He sounded scared. And guilty.
Usually the only people who fled like that upon my arrival were the boys, and only when they’d been up to something they knew was going to get them into big trouble.
Chapter 37
I followed the man downstairs. But I didn’t have to ask what the problem was. Hosmer, the book alphabetizer, was standing in the middle of the foyer, holding the tattered remnants of what I deduced was a bejeweled dog collar. Ragnar had been patting him on the shoulder, but both of them were now staring at me with wide, anxious eyes. Behind them in the living room, people were looking under and behind furniture, all the while calling “Here, Spike! Good boy!” From the farther reaches of the hou
se I could hear footsteps, accompanied by other voices also calling for Spike.
“Meg! Good to see you!” Ragnar said. “Except that we seem to have a little problem.”
“Spike is usually more of a medium-to-large problem,” I said. “Especially when he’s allowed to run loose. I gather you tried to put that flimsy little collar on him.”
“We did get it on him,” Ragnar said. “Believe me, it wasn’t easy. He has the soul of a Viking warrior, that one.”
“And the teeth of a small demon.” I noticed that both Hosmer and Ragnar had acquired a collection of bandages since last I’d seen them.
“Then I turned my back for a few minutes, and he did this.” Hosmer held up the collar.
“There’s a reason we put that heavy leather collar on him,” I said. “Slows down his escapes.”
“Don’t worry,” Ragnar said. “We will find him.”
“Good,” I said.
“I’m glad to see you’re taking this so calmly,” said a burly bearded guest.
“I’m very calm,” I said. “I have every confidence that after he gets tired of giving you all the runaround, Spike will graciously allow himself to be captured. Of course, my boys would be inconsolable if anything happened to Spike. So if anything does, I will have to kill the person responsible. But I’ll do it very calmly.”
A pause.
“I think she’s kidding,” the bearded man said.
“You go on thinking that,” I said.
“He can’t have gone far,” Ragnar said.
“Don’t underestimate Spike,” I said. “And besides, finding him’s not the real problem. Getting a leash on him—that will be the challenge.”
“Don’t worry,“Ragnar said. “I’m good with animals.”
He ran off to join the search.
“He responds well to bacon,” I called after him.
“Who doesn’t?” the bearded man said, as he followed in Ragnar’s wake.
“Where are Michael and the boys?” I asked Hosmer, the only one who hadn’t already fled. “Are they running around looking for Spike?”
“Oh, no,” Hosmer said. “Michael took them home before they realized Spike was missing. He told us to wake you when we found him. He told the boys Spike was probably napping with you, and you’d bring him home when you woke up.”
“Good thinking.”
“I’ll just go check the kitchen,” Hosmer said, sidling ever so casually away from me.
“At least Dad is here to patch everyone up when it’s all over,” I said—aloud, but to myself, since everyone else had run away.
I wasn’t really all that worried about the Small Evil One. He was good at taking care of himself. But I couldn’t go off and leave him. If I arrived home without him, the boys would insist on coming back to help find him. And the ruckus going on in the house right now was just the thing to inspire Spike to find a really good hiding place and stay put. He was probably listening to everyone call his name and thinking the kind of thoughts that were the canine equivalent of sardonic, mocking laughter. Did these idiots not understand that?
Evidently not. Or much else about dogs in general or Spike in particular. I went around the living room, shutting French doors that had been standing open, wondering if Spike might have escaped to explore the outdoors. I glanced outside as I did so. No sign of anyone searching the grounds. So I strolled back onto the front terrace and did my own deep breathing—but quietly, so I could listen for sounds that would suggest that Spike had been loosed upon the world. Because if he had, there would be sounds, sooner or later. He’d find something to bark obsessively at. He’d chase some creature that would protest as loudly as it could manage. Or he’d try to attack something that fought back, forcing him to retreat with noisy howls of mingled terror and rage.
And I wouldn’t hear any of it here in the house, with at least a dozen people stomping around and constantly calling Spike’s name. I decided to head down to the gazebo again. It would be a good observation post—far enough from the house that I could hear what was going on around me, and with a sweeping view of that side of the grounds. I doubted anyone would even notice I was gone. And if anyone actually did and came out to look for me, I could suggest arming themselves with bacon and patrolling the grounds.
I was a little surprised Dad hadn’t suggested an outdoor search. I’d have expected him to remember Spike’s long-standing hatred of the swans. More than once we’d had to rescue Spike from militant groups of swans after he’d tried to attack one of their number. Bevies of swans, Dad would insist on calling them. I thought “mobs,” would be a more accurate term when they were angry.
Fortunately, the swans would have gone to bed in their nesting grounds at the far end of the lake. Far away from the gazebo. Even farther from the house, though that wouldn’t stop Spike from heading there.
And as long as I was going down to the gazebo, I could check the damage to the railings a little more closely. See if my traveling bag contained everything I’d need to repair them or if I needed to throw something else into the Twinmobile before my next visit.
I stopped by the Twinmobile, where I kept a bag of bacon treats for occasions when I needed to bribe Spike into good behavior. I stuck a couple of them in my pocket. Then I grabbed a flashlight, locked my tote in the car, and set out for the gazebo.
It was peaceful outside. I could still hear everyone calling Spike’s name, but in the distance. I’d hear the raucous celebration when they found him. Or his imperious barking if they rousted him from whatever hiding place he’d found.
The gazebo was reasonably clean. The guest who took care of it—what had Ragnar called him? Buddy? Yes. Buddy appeared to have been doing a good job.
I pulled out my flashlight and shone it on the place where the iron had been damaged. I squatted down to get a better look.
Weird. One of the stone pavers was cracked, several iron bars were bent, and the tips of two bars were broken off completely. Earlier in the day I’d assumed the damage had occurred when something heavy had fallen on this corner of the gazebo. But the more I looked at it, the more it looked as if the damage to the iron had happened from below. Had one of the swans surged out of the water so forcefully that it broke the iron? It would take a remarkably violent surge. And while the swans did everything violently, I didn’t quite think they could pull this off.
I realized that the paver beneath the damaged bars was not only cracked, it was also slightly askew—as if it had come loose from its mortar. If someone pried the stone up—say, with a crowbar—it might strike the iron hard enough and in just the right place to account for the damage.
I tugged at the stone. It felt a little loose. But it was a heavy stone. I’d need both hands to move it. I set the flashlight down on the stone next to it. Annoyingly, the round flashlight rolled off of the stone I’d set it on and onto the one I was about to lift.
Interesting. Was it my imagination or had the rolling flashlight sounded different on the two stones? I tapped them in turn. Not my imagination. The damaged stone sounded hollow.
I set the flashlight down again and looked around for something to wedge it in place with—a stick? A rock? Nothing came to hand, so I took my iPhone out of my pocket and used that. Probably safer not to have the phone in my pocket while I was trying to tug at the stone. I’d fallen into the lake once while replacing the railings. Immersion in the cold, slimy water hadn’t been much fun for me, and my old phone had never recovered. I made sure the new one and the flashlight were a safe distance from the edge. Then I grabbed the damaged stone and lifted.
Something was still holding it down—the tip of one of the undamaged bits of railing—but it was definitely loose. I tried sliding it slightly toward me and then lifting. Bingo! The stone came up easily, revealing a neat stone-lined compartment underneath that was large enough to hold a couple of shoeboxes side by side.
“A secret compartment,” I muttered. “Lacey Shiffley had the right idea after all.”
Unfortunately, the compartment was now empty. But still, I was willing to bet I’d uncovered at least part of the secret of the missing jewels. The gazebo had been here at the time of the robbery—I remembered seeing it on Dad’s copy of the diagram of the estate.
Of course, finding the compartment didn’t answer the question of who might have used it to hide the jewels. Presumably Mrs. Van der Lynden had known about it, and possibly Archie. But unless one of them had possessed carpentry or masonry skills, someone else had to have made it. Someone who had still been working for the Van der Lyndens at the time of the robbery? Mr. Washington, perhaps? Randall Shiffley had said he was a handyman and gopher. Even if the secret compartment predated Mrs. Van der Lynden’s purchase of the estate, whoever had built it could still be in town. Or someone cleaning up after the swans could have found it. It was only sheer luck that I hadn’t stumbled across it while replacing the wooden railings with iron.
As I pondered this, I was running my flashlight along the edges of the secret compartment, studying how it was made. Something glinted in the beam. I reached down to pick it up.
A tiny little bit of gold-colored metal. I wasn’t an expert on precious metals, but I could see nothing to suggest this wasn’t gold. It seemed to be one side of the clasp that would hold an old-fashioned necklace closed.
“Whatever you just picked up, drop it,” a hoarse, nasal voice said. “It’s mine.”
I glanced up to see the bearded, scowling face of Buddy, Ragnar’s shy guest.
The moonlight washed the colors out of the scene, just as it had two nights ago when I’d found Mr. Hagley’s body. It reminded me of those faded black-and-white photos of the Van der Lynden party I’d seen earlier that afternoon.
Buddy wasn’t one of Ragnar’s former bandmates. He was Archie van der Lynden.
And he was holding a gun.
Chapter 38
I was hoping I hadn’t let any sign of recognition cross my face. If I could pretend I didn’t know who he was … and that I didn’t see the gun …
Toucan Keep a Secret Page 24
