Dying to Be Murdererd

by Judy Fitzwater

  They moved forward as quickly as they could, not daring to speak another word. She could only hope their courage would outlast the distance.

  A solid wall of dirt loomed in front of them, and she stopped dead, Leigh Ann bumping into her from behind. A brief sweat of panic washed over Jennifer. Leigh Ann wasn’t the only one on the edge of a claustrophobic fit.

  “What’s wrong?” she heard Teri ask.

  “Nothing,” she assured her, flashing her light to the right.

  Thank God. A small opening. Filling it was a framed-in wooden platform. They must be at the house.

  Jennifer shone her light upward. It was immediately joined by the beams from Teri and Leigh Ann’s lights. The shaft seemed to go up forever, at least four floors. They could see some of the interior structure of the walls.

  “Why’d they have to make this house so darn tall?” Leigh Ann asked. “And what the heck is that thing?” Her light outlined the platform, flecks of dark red here and there.

  “It’s a dumbwaiter,” Teri said.

  “Not exactly,” Jennifer corrected, stepping onto it. “More like an open elevator.”

  “You’re not getting me on that thing,” Leigh Ann declared.

  “No one’s asking you to go,” Jennifer assured her, tugging against the frame. It seemed solid enough. A switch was attached to one of the wooden supports. She flipped it and the platform started to move upward. She grabbed at one side and hastily flipped it off. The elevator shuddered to a stop about a foot off the ground. She pushed a lever, and when she flipped the switch once more, it went back down.

  “Electric motor,” Teri pointed out, “a quiet one at that.”

  “Obviously not original,” Jennifer observed. “I’ll bet the first one was muscle-powered with ropes and pulleys.”

  “Who cares?” Leigh Ann sighed. “I just want to go home.”

  “Okay,” Jennifer told them, “there are two ways out of here: back the way we came or up.”

  “That’s a choice?” Leigh Ann asked, close to tears.

  “Up is faster,” Teri declared, stepping aboard, “and less closed in.”

  “Did I mention I’m afraid of heights, too?” Leigh Ann added.

  So was Jennifer, but up got her vote. She hadn’t come that far to go back now, and, at least in the dark, they wouldn’t see how far down they could fall.

  “Come on.” Teri offered Leigh Ann a hand onto the platform.

  “It doesn’t have any sides on it,” she wailed.

  “Right. Ralph Nader hadn’t been born when it was built,” Teri pointed out.

  Leigh Ann curled up in the middle. “They’ll find us if we die in here, won’t they?”

  “Yep,” Jennifer assured her. “They’ll even pull our bodies out for a decent burial.”

  “Not if Eileen—” Teri began.

  “Teri,” Jennifer warned.

  “What?”

  “If you get her started, I’m leaving you both in the tunnel.”

  “No more about...you know,” Teri promised. She held out her hand to take Jennifer’s light, freeing her to operate the controls. They swung upward in a surprisingly free and easy ride. Only a quiet whir could be heard.

  “Amazing,” Teri noted. “How high do we go?”

  “All the way,” Jennifer told her as she heard Leigh Ann groan.

  When they stopped on the third floor, they could easily see the frames for the fireplaces. The flues from below came up through the platform between the walls and joined with the flues on that floor. Then they headed up through the attic and, no doubt, on through the roof.

  Jennifer took back her light, stepped off, and offered a hand to Teri. They both helped Leigh Ann up to find her way onto more solid ground.

  “Geez. You’d think someone would clean around here once in a while,” Leigh Ann griped.

  “Secret passages,” Teri reminded her. “Secret as in nobody knows they’re here. You can’t exactly send the maid in to do a little tidying up.”

  Indeed dust was everywhere, sitting inches thick on the studs and on the sides of the flooring. It made Jennifer cringe wondering what insect life thrived there. But the center of the boards showed evidence that someone had moved through there not all that long ago. The dust was thinner where something had scuffed it aside.

  “This is truly creepy,” Leigh Ann declared, flashing her light over a huge spider web and getting as close to Jennifer as possible. “Ugh. What is crawling on me?” She swatted at her neck.

  “Nothing,” Teri insisted, flashing her light over Leigh Ann and then directing it at the fireplace. “Look there.”

  A burlap sack was pushed against the far wall. Jennifer bent down and shook off the dust. Bad idea. It caught in her throat and, for a moment, she choked on it. Thankful for her gloves, she opened the bag and shone her light inside. There appeared to be a stack of papers, some candles, and several books. One was larger than the others. It looked like a ledger. She pulled it out and carefully opened it. Written in faded ink were apparently the minutes from some sort of meetings. George Washington Ashton must indeed have held secret gatherings. Names, dates, and times were also listed. Members must have used the passage to come and go unseen.

  She reached back into the sack and retrieved a paper from the stack. Letters printed in an old style called for the South to break from the North. It crumbled in her hand.

  “If someone was in and out of these tunnels, why was that sack never brought out?” Leigh Ann asked over her shoulder.

  “If it had been,” Jennifer said, marveling over what she was holding, “whoever produced it would have to tell where they got it. Better to leave it here and keep the passages their secret.”

  “I found it,” Teri called out. Almost immediately, a portion of the wall swung out and straight into Juliet’s room. Teri disappeared after it and then came right back. “The trip is concealed in the molding. It’s completely hidden from the other side.”

  “They’ll be worried about us,” Leigh Ann suggested. “That is, assuming Monique isn’t dead and Eileen isn’t planning our deaths.”

  Jennifer nodded. She’d had more than enough dark and cramped spaces to last her for some time. She returned the old volume to the sack and left it in place. She had one more thing she had to do.

  “I really don’t feel well.” Leigh Ann again, only this time she put a hand over her mouth.

  “Okay, let’s get you out of here,” Jennifer said. “Teri, take her into Juliet’s room.”

  “But there’s a ghost in there,” Leigh Ann whined.

  “Choose your poison: ghost or tunnel. I have no intentions of going back underground,” Jennifer assured her.

  “Besides, I figure a ghost can glide right into that tunnel every bit as easily as she can into that room,” Teri pointed out. “They do pass through walls, don’t they?”

  “Just move it,” Jennifer ordered. She climbed back onto the platform, threw the switch, and it began to descend back into the pit.

  “Where are you going?” Leigh Ann called franticly. “I thought you weren’t going back out that way.”

  “I’m not.” She hit the switch and the elevator jerked to an abrupt stop one floor down. Two more voices had joined Leigh Ann’s and Teri’s above her. Good. Monique and Eileen had come around and into the house. Just in time to help Teri calm down Leigh Ann.

  Reluctantly, she flashed her light across the landing. She had to know if there was an opening into Mary’s room. At first the area seemed clear, but then the beam caught something shoved back between the two fireplaces. It was a thick roll with fringe dangling from the coiled edge, covered with telltale dark splotches. The rug from Mary’s bedroom.

  She put a hand over her nose and mouth. A putrid odor wafted in her direction.

  Chapter 36

  Now that she knew exactly what had happened to Mary, she had to prove it. And Luther, whether he liked it or not, was going to have to play a part.

  “I understand how you feel,�
� Jennifer insisted, perched on the same slip-covered chair she’d fought with exactly one week ago.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Luther puffed on his pipe and looked most disapprovingly at her. He sat in the recliner he’d been in when she visited him. It gave the illusion that he hadn’t moved since.

  He was irritated, not just with the questions she was asking, but also because she’d interrupted the televangelist’s sermon he’d been watching. He turned the TV down low, but she could still hear the amens that rang up from the studio audience. He stared past her with a deep frown between his eyes.

  “Most inappropriate having someone who works for you meddling in your personal affairs,” he said. “When you work in a private home it becomes a delicate balance, but you wouldn’t know that, would you, girl?” He looked her dead in the eye.

  Again, smoke puffed around the pipe stem in silent rebuke.

  She was trying to be patient, really she was. “I’m not asking you to betray a confidence. I simply asked if Mr. Ashton would have had reason to hide his will from Mary instead of destroying it like she said he did, and where he might have hidden it if he did.”

  “I heard you. It’s not the question that’s at issue here. It’s whether or not I’m gonna choose to answer it. Just what business is it of yours anyhow?”

  “Mary Ashton made it my business. She hired me to find out who was plotting murder against her. If she were still with us, I might have had to learn about that delicate balance you’re talking about, but she’s not. I realize you weren’t in the Ashtons’ employ when Mr. Ashton died, but you must have been working there when he revised his will. Surely, he did it after Juliet died, and probably at least once more since then.”

  He nodded, still studying her.

  “Did he let Mary see it?” she asked.

  “You say my talking to you will help set everything right?”

  “Yes,” she assured him.

  “Well, Mr. Shelby certainly wouldn’t have advertised it to Miss Mary. I suspect she wouldn’t have cared much for what was in it. But no one in that house could keep secrets from that woman.”

  Finally an answer. So Luther did know about the will.

  “You know Mary testified in court that she watched him destroy it.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “And that’s how she came to be in control of the estate. Because he died intestate.”

  “It was my understanding she was making all that right with her own will. Did I hear that Miss Eileen was her beneficiary?”

  “Yes, which is precisely part of the trouble.”

  Again he nodded and puffed on his pipe. “That might not look too good for her.”

  “No, it doesn’t, but that’s not why I’m here. There were two copies of Shelby’s will, one at the lawyer’s office and one at home. We know the one at the lawyer’s office disappeared sometime after Mr. Lambert’s death and while Shelby was ill. No one at the office seems to remember sending it over to the house, but apparently everything was in a state of confusion. Mr. Lambert died unexpectedly of a heart attack and he was in practice by himself.”

  “He’d left me some money,” Luther said, staring off. “Me and Melba both. He told me. Wasn’t much, but it was something.”

  Wasn’t much could mean a lot to someone like Luther.

  “If Shelby did have a copy at home, where might he put it if he didn’t want Mary to see it? Is there someplace, maybe in his desk, someplace she might not have found it?”

  “Now what good would that do, puttin’ it in some desk? That’s the first place Miss Mary would look, and she wouldn’t be above taking it apart piece by piece to find something if she wanted it bad. No. Don’t go lookin’ at the desk. I’d say try in the study, but not at the desk. And probably not in any of the furniture.”

  “You mean the woodwork? The walls themselves?”

  “I don’t know nothin’. You asked my opinion and I told it to you. What you infer is your own business. Why is this so important, now that they’re both dead, Mr. Shelby and Miss Mary?”

  “You’re going to have to trust me on this one, Luther.”

  “I’ve lived long enough to know not to trust anyone unless I have to.”

  He was a sly old fox.

  “Eileen’s moved into the house,” she told him.

  One of his eyebrows rose. “So she’s been released.”

  “Of course, days ago. On bond. She’s got the best lawyers in the state.”

  “But why take herself back to that place, especially now?”

  “She doesn’t want to leave the house unoccupied. She’s taken the master bedroom as her own.”

  He took the pipe from his mouth and leaned forward. “Where Miss Mary died?”

  “Yep.”

  He shook his head. “Mmmmm, mmmmm! She’s got seven other bedrooms to choose from and she can’t find another that suits her? Couldn’t pay me to do that. You don’t go messin’ where dark things happen, not unless you have to. It’s not good for your spirit. Don’t need no ghosts to tell you that.”

  No, she didn’t.

  “There’s an odor in that room,” she said. “Eileen’s having an architect come in Monday to check it out, find the source.”

  “You’d think she’d have enough sense to leave well enough alone.”

  “Have you seen Arthur lately?” Jennifer asked.

  “Oh, he comes round ’bout once a week. I expect him by tomorrow.”

  “Is he doing okay?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Has he started his business back up? I know Eileen said he could use the kitchen at the mansion. He should call her.”

  “Nope. He’s done with all that.”

  “So what’s he doing?”

  “He calls it considering his options. That boy should never have left the Air Force. I told him that when he done it, but he don’t listen to no one but himself. He wanted to cook.”

  “Like you.”

  He gave her another look. “I didn’t have so many choices when I was coming up.”

  Point taken.

  “You give him my regards when you see him, and tell him if he’s interested, that Mrs. McEvoy might be looking for someone to work for her, at least while she stays at the estate.”

  He nodded and turned the TV back up. She let herself out.

  Chapter 37

  McEVOY CLEARED IN ASHTON MURDER

  by Samuel Culpepper

  Charges against Eileen Ashton McEvoy, in the death of Mary Bedford Ashton, have been dropped for lack of evidence. In a press conference held yesterday morning, the District Attorney’s office assured the public that the search for Mrs. Ashton’s murderer will continue, but in other directions.

  A knife found in the McEvoy garden cannot be positively identified as the murder weapon, even though blood and hair on the knife match that which was found at the murder scene. The absence of fingerprints on the knife casts even more doubt on Mrs. McEvoy’s involvement in her sister-in-law’s death.

  In an interview, Mrs. McEvoy told this reporter, “Mary Ashton’s passing has restored control of the Ashton mansion to the proper individuals. Fortunately, the substantial life insurance policy my brother Shelby took out against his wife’s death and later transferred to me just prior to his passing did more than repay any debts incurred by the second Mrs. Ashton. It will close a chapter of Ashton history best forgotten. The historical society is planning a gala celebration to be held this fall at the mansion to commemorate its return to the family. Restorations are expected to begin Monday, starting with the master bedroom on the second floor.”

  When asked about her personal feelings, Mrs. McEvoy stated, “I’m just glad this whole ordeal is over.”

  “Looks like you got it all in there,” Jennifer told Sam.

  “Just doing what I was told.”

  “Well, if anything will do it, I suspect this will. How many copies did you have printed?”

  “Five. Nicholls has one, my editor has one
, I’ve got this one, and the other two got doorstep delivery this morning as though they were the regular edition of the Telegraph.”

  “And the district attorney didn’t have any trouble with it?”

  “After what his forensic guys found? No way. He wasn’t nearly as tough a sell as my editor.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. After all, it’s his paper on the line.”

  “It’s not as if we printed a bogus article and distributed it to the entire population of Macon.”

  “Right. So now all we do is sit back and watch what happens.”

  He nodded. “Closely.”

  “Closely,” she agreed.

  Chapter 38

  The faintest light, cast by the half moon, spread beneath each window where blood had pooled less than two weeks before. The air still held a chill and the eerie feel that this was a place where people not only lived but died.

  Outlined by moonlight and shadow, a form lay still in the four-poster bed as though heavy in sleep, covered in sheet and spread, facing the carved patterns of the fireplace wall. The time: barely three A.M., in what seemed like an endless night.

  Out of the darkness, a ghostly shape appeared at the wall, silhouetted in the glow of an old-fashioned lantern.

  How must it look through the window to a chance passerby? As though Amy Loggins had returned one more time to announce one final victim?

  The lantern found a place on the floor, and the form glided silently toward the bed, the softest glint of metal flashing in the moonlight.

  And then an unearthly screech of rage filled the room as the figure lunged at the form on the bed, tearing at it, driving metal hard with each rise and thrust of the arm, each grunt of primitive fury.

  Instantly light flooded the room from every corner, exposing the figure as a woman. She seemed confused, her eyes blinking against the brightness. Dressed in black from her neck to her gloved hands to her athletic shoes, she held the knife double-fisted high above her head as though to deliver one final death blow.

  “What the hell?” she demanded. Two policemen, also dressed in black, were immediately on her, wrestling the knife from her hands and pulling her away from the bed. She offered no resistance, only a grim look of horror on her aging face as she looked down at a form sewn in muslin and stuffed with batting and realized that there was no blood. Puffs of down floated in the air where the knife had torn into the pillow.