“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “I wouldn’t believe it for even one second. Because I know her.”
“See?” she said. “I know Thom.”
I heard the tavern door open and the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs. It was Pete, and he was alone. “Where are the others?” I asked. “Where’s Primrose?”
“Mr. Friedrich is going to give her a ride back to the school.” Pete looked across the table. “He said you can come along, too, Kelly. They’re waiting out front. I need to talk to Lee for a minute.”
“You sure it’s okay?” she asked. “Where’s Pa? Did he say I could go?”
“Yes, he said it would be all right. He’s still down at the station, helping the chief out with a few details.”
“Oh, good,” she said. “He’ll tell the chief Thom couldn’t have done it.”
He caught my eye, and his expression was serious.
Kelly picked up her coat and started downstairs. “You’re coming back to school, too, aren’t you, Lee?”
“I’ll be right behind you,” I told her, then waited until I heard the tavern door close. “What’s going on?” I asked Pete. “Are they talking to Joe because of what Kelly told me?”
He nodded. “That was really important, Lee. Looks like Joe and Thom are the ones who dragged Bill down the street to the park.”
“I thought so. But that would mean Bill was in the bomb shelter that night. How can that be?”
“Sit down,” he said. “This might take a while. Remember when I told you the city engineer said parts of the tunnel are still being used? Like the guy who used part of it as a wine cellar for his steak house?” I nodded. “Well, more than one family thought about using a piece of it as a bomb shelter.”
“So the bomb shelter is an entrance to the tunnel, and that’s how Bill got there,” I said. “And Thom was in on it, too?” Puzzle pieces were slamming together.
“Maybe. But we know for sure that Joe was. He’s admitted to causing the pile of rubble blocking the thing.”
“Of course.” I slapped my forehead with the heel of my hand. “He was a miner. He’d know exactly how to do it.”
“He was more than just a miner,” he said. “Joe was what they call a blaster, and that means just what it sounds like.”
“Kelly said he had a specialty,” I said, recalling her words. “That must be what she meant. But wouldn’t people around here have heard an explosion like that? Reported it?”
Pete shrugged. “He seems quite proud of that part. Says it didn’t make any more noise on the surface than a door slamming.”
“Did he tell you what he was doing down there on Christmas night? How he found Bill in the first place?”
“That’s the strange part. Said he was looking for the gold that his grandmother left him when he heard Bill fall.”
“The grandmother who left him this house?”
“Right. I found the deed at city hall this morning. Place belonged to an M. A. Greene.”
“M. A.,” I repeated, an imaginary lightbulb flashing over my head. “Not Ma, as in Mother, but M. A., as in Mary Alice.”
Naturally, Pete didn’t know what I was talking about. I told him about the birthday cards Aunt Ibby had found, the ones signed Ma, in the Trumbull files. “It means that Mary Alice didn’t commit suicide,” I said excitedly. “And Tabitha knew it. Kept it a secret all those years.”
“Mary Alice? The kid who got pregnant and jumped overboard back in the fifties?”
“But they never found a body, did they?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I could look it up.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “She didn’t drown. She got to West Virginia somehow and had her baby. That would have been Joe’s father. And Tabitha knew all about it.” The thought made me happy. “Good for her.”
“In that case,” Pete said, reaching for his notebook, “I’m thinking that the baby’s daddy could have been part of the crew on one of the coal barges that used to dock down the street. The ones from West Virginia.”
“And he smuggled her aboard somehow!” I exclaimed, adding to Pete’s story. “And before she left, she told her mother where she was going.”
He put the notebook down on the table. “But what does that have to do with gold?”
“It’s the gold Primrose and Friedrich and Jonathan Wilson have been looking for. Tabitha hid it so she could give it back to President Roosevelt.”
“She hid it somewhere in the tunnel,” he said.
“Right. And she gave the keys to Mary Alice. Joe probably has them now.”
“The keys? To what?”
“You’d better talk to Megan,” I said. “Come on. She may be at the school now, getting ready for the show.” I picked up my jacket and purse. “She’ll tell you about the treasure chest in the tunnel.”
I reclaimed my Corvette, and Pete took off in the Crown Vic. By the time I got back to the Tabby, the TV mobile unit from WICH-TV was there, along with a utility van full of equipment. TV trucks always attract attention, but the real spectacle was going on inside the Tabby, where a procession of black-robed witches moved slowly, single file, up the main staircase. Each of them wore a hood, and a few had their faces heavily veiled. I spotted River right away as she assisted one of the witches toward the elevator. Wispy snow-white hair escaped from beneath the black hood, and the woman, bent and wizened, leaned on her cane. As tiny and frail as the witch was, she seemed to give off an unmistakable aura of strength and power.
Megan.
I looked around the main floor for Pete, but so many people had gathered there to watch the arrival of the witches, I knew it would be impossible to spot him. I hurried through the crowd, hoping to catch up with River and Megan.
“River,” I called. “Wait for me.”
River and Megan both turned toward me at once. River waved and motioned for me to join them, while Megan smiled, illuminating her wrinkled face.
“I’m so glad to see you both,” I said. “You must be Megan.”
Megan’s voice was soft and almost musical. I leaned forward to hear her.
“You’re River’s friend Maralee,” she said. Her use of my full first name was a surprise.
“I am,” I said, “and I’m so pleased to meet you at last.”
“Ride up with us, Lee,” River said as the elevator doors slid open. “Mr. Pennington said we could use the Trumbulls’ private elevator to go to the top. Look, he gave me the key,” she said, waving a key attached to a brass tag.
Megan wore an old-fashioned gold lorgnette on a chain around her neck. She held the handle with bony fingers, brought the lenses close to her opaque pale blue eyes, and then brought her face close to the directory on the elevator wall. “Ladies’ wear, children’s, hosiery . . . Many times I shopped here with Tabitha,” she said. “That was a long time ago. It’s nice to be back.”
“You must miss her,” I said.
“Every day,” she said. “Every day.” Then her expression brightened. “Tonight I can finally see her again.”
We’d reached the third floor. I held Megan’s arm and helped her out into the corridor, while River opened the ornate door to the Trumbull family’s private elevator. It was about the same size as the ones that served the store, but the similarity ended there. A plush red cushioned bench ran along the back wall, a gilt-framed mirror above it. The other walls held framed oil paintings. There was no dust and no sign of neglect anywhere. It was like riding in an elegant time capsule.
The top floor of Trumbull’s looked much different than it had when River and I last saw it. The open arched doorway revealed a fully furnished formal living room. TV techs moved about efficiently, most of them acknowledging River with a smile, a nod, or a word or two of greeting.
“Wow. Look at that,” River said. “They must have found all the furniture in that ballroom and put it back where it belonged.” She held Megan’s hand. “I wish you could really see this, Megan. I’ll bet it looks just like i
t did when Tabitha lived here.”
“If Tabitha’s ghost comes back tonight,” I said, “she’s going to feel right at home.”
With the electricity turned on, the cobwebs removed, and the furniture in place, the change was startling. The ballroom, with the furniture gone and the floor buffed, looked ready to receive dancers.
“Mr. Pennington must have worked crews around the clock to get this done,” River remarked, marveling at the transformation. “This is going to look fabulous on TV. I can hardly wait to see what they’ve done to Tabitha’s room.”
“I hope they haven’t changed anything,” I said. “It was perfect just the way it was. Without the dust, of course.”
As we moved from room to room, Megan was silent, running a gnarled hand along the edge of a mahogany sideboard, touching the carving on a rosewood chair, gently tapping a cut-glass wine decanter.
The door to Tabitha’s room was partially closed. I hesitated, then—holding my breath—pushed it open. The curtains and the bedding had been laundered, and President Roosevelt smiled benignly through sparkling glass. The piano and bench had been polished, and the rocking chair had a yellow velvet cushion on the seat. A small bouquet of fresh flowers on the dresser was the only change besides the electricity and the cleanliness.
“Oh, Megan, it’s perfect,” River said. “I’ll bet it looked just this way when you used to visit Tabitha back when she was, uh, sick.”
The old woman smiled. “You mean back when she started acting crazy?”
Megan and River entered the room, while I still stood in the doorway. River sat on the piano bench, and Megan sat on the edge of the bed. Was I supposed to sit in the rocking chair?
No thanks.
“Scoot over,” I said to River and sat on the piano bench beside her. “Megan,” I said, “I hope you won’t be offended, but I have to ask you a question. It’s about Tabitha.”
“Go ahead, dear,” said the witch. “I’m far too old to be offended by anything anymore.”
I took a deep breath. “You said she was acting crazy. I want to know . . . I need to know . . . Was Tabitha ever really crazy?”
“Who’s to say what’s crazy and what isn’t?” she said. “That’s not for you or me to judge.” She held a finger up to her lips. “But I think I know what you mean. Was she crazy in the way that most people thought she was? No. She never was.”
“Then why did she pretend all those years? She let them keep her prisoner here.” Megan had given me the answer I’d anticipated, but I still couldn’t imagine why anyone would voluntarily do such a thing.
“Perhaps you see what I mean about what’s crazy and what isn’t,” she said. “Dear Tabitha was never crazy the way people believed. She always recognized her own husband and talked gibberish only if she thought someone was listening.”
“So she was acting all that time,” River said. “That’s amazing.”
“Amazing indeed.” The old witch nodded. “She fooled them all.”
“What about the nurse?” I asked. “There was a nurse here all the time.”
Megan shrugged thin shoulders. “Bribed her. With gold coins and good Scotch. She’s dead and gone now. Don’t know what killed her, the alcohol or the money.” She shook her head, and the hood fell to her shoulders. “Too much of either one can do it.”
“Where did the gold come from?” River asked.
“Oliver was hoarding it. Kept it in long blue coin boxes in that safe he had in his office. He was planning to send it out of the country. She tried to talk him out of it. Pleaded with him,” she said. “But when he refused, she took matters into her own hands.” Megan smiled. “Got away with it for a long time, too.”
“How did she do it?” I asked.
“She got them to let her go shopping alone at night. Then they’d put everything back in the morning, except for the player piano rolls. They let her keep those.”
“She loved the piano,” I said.
“She loved the gold,” Megan said. “She knew the combination to that old safe, so she’d sneak in there, take the gold out of the boxes, and put the piano rolls in. The boxes were the same size. They didn’t catch on for a long time. By then she’d put about half of what Oliver was hiding down below and kept a few boxes of gold up here, in the armoire.”
“They didn’t let her go shopping after she came back with dirt on her shoes, right?” River said. “And her husband figured out that she’d been taking the gold and going outside.”
“You’ve been paying attention to my little stories, River. Yes, that’s right.”
“He must have been furious,” I said. “What did he do?”
Megan smiled. “It was Oliver Wendell’s idea to lock her up. Thought it would make her talk about where she hid the gold,” Megan said. “I told her it wasn’t worth it, but she was stubborn, Tabitha was. When she decided to keep a secret, wild horses couldn’t drag it out of her.”
I hesitated for a minute, then blurted out, “Like the secret about Mary Alice?”
Megan looked surprised. She leaned back on Tabitha’s pillows and folded her hands. “You figured that out for yourself? I know I never told anyone.”
“Mary Alice ran away to West Virginia with her baby’s father,” I said.
Megan nodded. “That girl was crazy about a boy named Johnny Greene. Deckhand on a coal boat. Her father would have disowned her. She told her mother she was pregnant and what she was going to do. Tabitha gave her a couple of boxes of gold.”
“She and Mary Alice exchanged letters,” I said.
“You’re a smart one,” Megan said. “Tabitha had a post office box. She wrote letters all the time. She’d get the nurse drunk, then send her out to post the letters and pick up the mail. Oliver never caught on.” She paused and lowered her voice. “Oliver was not the brightest man I ever met.”
“Tabitha wrote to the captain of the gunrunning boat, too,” I said. “And to his wife. Did she send gold to them, too?”
“Captain Gable,” she said. “Yes. She felt bad that her boy had let that man take the blame for everything. Other than paying the nurse and the coins she gave to Mary Alice, that’s the only time she dipped into President Roosevelt’s money.”
“You said Tabitha went ‘down below,’” I said. “Did she hide the gold somewhere in the tunnel?”
“Still there,” said the witch. “It’s in the toy box. Mary Alice has the keys.”
“I think the keys may be here in Salem again,” I told her. “Mary Alice’s grandson and great-granddaughter are here.”
The old woman sat up straight and clasped her hands together. “Joseph Greene is here?”
“You know about Joe?” I asked. “You know his name?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “I remember when Tabitha got the note saying he’d been born. I remember when his daddy, John Junior, was born, too. Just five months after Mary Alice ran away.”
“Did Mr. Trumbull ever know about Mary Alice?” River asked. “That she didn’t drown?”
“He never did.”
One of the soundmen from the TV station appeared at the door. “’Scuse me, ladies,” he said. “We need to run some wires in here.” He looked first at Megan, then at River. “The other, uh, people are in the big, empty room.”
River stood and helped Megan to her feet. “We’ll be out of your way in two seconds,” she said. “Let’s go, Lee.”
“The ballroom, eh?” the old witch said. “It was a grand place for parties, and it’ll be a grand place for a magic circle.”
River held Megan’s arm, and they walked ahead of me into the hall. As I followed them, I wasn’t really surprised to see the rocking chair moving back and forth, even though the soundman was nowhere near it.
CHAPTER 30
The sight of all those black-robed witches standing together in the center of the ballroom floor was an eerie one. Megan and River joined them, and there began a low, melodic chanting sound. It seemed as though they were reciting some sort
of beautiful poetry, but I couldn’t make out the words. I’d never felt more out of place, more the intruder, than I did at that moment. I backed out of there and hurried down a long hall, following the sounds of the voices of the television crew. Mr. Pennington stood in the center of the blue-walled living room, pointing one way, then another with his walking stick, as stagehands moved furniture.
“Ms. Barrett. A delight to see you,” he said. “Do you think the Empire sofa should be here by the window? Or next to the Sheraton table?”
“It looks fine right there,” I said. “I think I’ll go down and see how my class is doing.”
“You may tell your students that they’ll be seated in the balcony of the ballroom. They’ll have a good view of the goings-on from there without being in the way,” he said. “And since it appears unlikely that young Thom will be joining us, I’ve invited your dear aunt to attend.”
“She’ll be delighted,” I told him and then headed for the stairway leading to the third floor. I rang Pete’s number as I walked down to the mezzanine and my classroom.
“You still here?” I asked when he answered. “I’ve been up in the Trumbull suite. It looks amazing. Wait until you see it.”
“I’m in the diner,” he said. “Pennington invited me to hang around tonight. He says I’m an invited guest, but I think he’s counting on me for extra security. Come have a cup of coffee with me.”
“I will,” I said. “I’m going to check on my class first—see who’s coming tonight and who’s not. Wait for me. I have a lot to tell you.”
Since the witches had gone up to the ballroom, and the television crew was out of sight, the crowd of curious onlookers had thinned considerably. Therese had done a good job of keeping the class together. She, Primrose, Kelly, and Duke were in their usual seats, and Sammy sat in my chair, under the giant shoe. Seeing them all together that way made me acutely aware of the missing one. I pictured Thom in a jail cell, alone and frightened.
Therese proudly handed me the stack of notebooks she’d collected from the group. “I think we’re all pretty good reporters.”
Tails, You Lose (A Witch City Mystery Book 2) Page 27
