Ornaments of Death

by Jane K. Cleland

  “Now what?” Ellis asked.

  I did a slow survey, considering the options. Ellis was right: Since the furniture matched, it was a good bet that whoever built it added secret cubbyholes to each piece.

  “The tallboy.”

  I began taking measurements. The tallboy wasn’t, actually, all that tall, only five and a half feet. The body stood on the same tapered legs as the desk and bed. There were five large drawers topped by a pair of small drawers, all featuring round wooden pulls. Side braces added a bit of visual interest to the otherwise plain design.

  “The bottom drawer is filled with papers,” Ellis said, pointing at it. “Receipts and so on. We didn’t see anything relating to the paintings.”

  “Ian said there was an old appraisal.”

  “We didn’t find it.”

  “Maybe she took the paperwork with her. Being able to confirm provenance would help her get top dollar. Having an appraisal, no matter how old, gives you a starting place to negotiate price.”

  I pulled it open. It was, as Ellis had said, stuffed with receipts and letters.

  “I would have expected her to be more organized,” Ellis said, his eyes on the papers.

  “I suspect she’s super-organized about clams but not about much else.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “I know.”

  The other drawers contained clothing: jeans and khakis, sweaters and T-shirts, workout gear, socks, all-white cotton underwear, standard-issue floral-patterned nightgowns, and pajamas. Becca was not a clotheshorse.

  “Would you like us to issue a call for sightings on the miniatures? If I ask people to contact me, they’ll think I have a buyer, not that it’s a police matter.”

  “Good idea. Let’s do it right away in case selling them tops Becca’s to-do list.”

  I called work, asked Cara to put me on with Sasha, and explained what I wanted her to do.

  “Got it,” she said.

  “Thanks, Sasha.” I ended the call and turned toward Ellis. “We subscribe to proprietary Web sites and forums, where we’ll post the notice. We’ll also send out a general alert to all antiques dealers in the country.”

  “Good deal.” Ellis looked around. “Now what?”

  “Now I continue working.”

  I turned back to the tallboy and began pushing on things, seeking out another spring lock.

  After a minute, Ellis said, “Nothing personal, Joz, but watching you work is like watching tomatoes ripen. Can I do anything to help?”

  I laughed. “Watch many tomatoes ripen, do you? No, there’s nothing you can do. It’s a process.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to it.” He handed me a small zip-close bag containing some plastic gloves. “In case you need a spare pair or three. Call me if you find the paintings, or need me, and when you’re done.”

  I promised I would. He left, and I heard the door latch catch behind him.

  I continued my meticulous examination, moving methodically across each surface, seeking out anomalies or latches that would reveal another hidden cubbyhole. I pushed a spot toward the bottom of the rear left brace, and a narrow drawer popped open.

  Inside was a pair of dazzlingly beautiful diamond drop earrings resting on a miniature black velvet pillow. If I moved my head slightly to the left, I could get the overhead light to spark a prism, sending cascades of radiating rainbows out and over the small pillow. It was a miracle of light and color.

  I lifted the pillow out, and saw the same oval-shaped logo burned into the bottom. It also read MV. I took photos of the logo, replaced the pillow and diamonds, and took more photos before closing the drawer. I notated where to push to pop the latch and continued my examination. Just because I found one secret drawer didn’t mean there weren’t others. I pushed and prodded every inch of wood, front, back, bottom, and sides, without finding a second cubbyhole.

  I turned my attention to the bed. I tapped and jabbed along the bed’s headboard. Nothing. I moved to the sideboards. Nothing. Given that the desk, tallboy, and bed matched, and that I found cubbyholes in two of them, I felt a high degree of confidence that there must be a hidden compartment in the bed as well. Lying on the rug, flashlight in hand, I performed an inch-by-inch inspection without success. I stood up and stretched.

  “It’s here,” I said aloud. “I just can’t find it.”

  I moved my search to the moldings, an unlikely option in a rental apartment, but not impossible. I found a stepstool in the kitchen pantry and used it to check every seam in the crown molding. Nothing. I tapped every inch, without luck. The hardwood flooring reaped no reward either, nor did the closet. Becca had two dresses, both black, four pairs of nice wool slacks, four blazers in various colors, and eight silk blouses. To my surprise, she also had a pair of black leather pants and a color-coordinated zip-up leather jacket. She had only one pair of high heels, and they were red and very high—four-inch stilettos. If she wore those with the leather, she’d be making quite a statement. I tapped the walls and tried prying up drawer bottoms.

  The phone rang. I went into the great room, thinking maybe Becca would leave a message for Ethan, perhaps revealing her location. Five rings in, the answering machine clicked on, and the caller hung up. I was five paces short of Becca’s room when the phone rang again. I stood where I was, watching the machine. The red light meant it was ready to record, but again, as soon as the message clicked on, the caller hung up. A wrong number, perhaps, or a sales call, or someone who simply didn’t want to leave a message. I went back to work.

  I opened the bottom drawer in the tallboy, the one filled with paperwork. I sat cross-legged on the floor and began going through things. Ten minutes after I started, I found what I was looking for: a receipt for all three pieces of furniture and the box, from a company in Franklin, New Hampshire, called Meadow’s Village. The logo on the top of the receipt matched the ones I’d found in the secret drawers. I wrote the name down in my notebook and took a photo of the receipt.

  Wanting a change of scenery, I took Ethan’s photographs down in the great room and examined the walls where they’d hung. No hidden safe. I repeated the process I’d used in the bedroom, tapping walls, prodding and prying, to see if I could find a hidden compartment. I examined the ice cube container in the freezer and checked whether anything, from a pint of frozen yogurt to a can of free-range chicken soup, had a false bottom. I didn’t find anything, but I learned a lot about Becca and Ethan.

  They stocked mostly organic products, used Spode bone china as their everyday dishes, and kept a store of four different kinds of loose tea in airtight containers. I checked, but there was nothing in the containers except tea.

  I examined the powder room carefully. I looked in the toilet tank, medicine cabinet, and vanity, but if Becca had fabricated a hidden compartment behind the tiles, the police would have to find it.

  Back in Becca’s bathroom, I looked in all the same places, then pushed aside the burgundy and forest green tartan shower curtain. The tub looked like a tub, except jetted. I scanned the burgundy walls, examined the pewter light fixture, and lifted the shaggy cotton dark green rugs. Nothing.

  I heard a knock, then another, soft taps. I started for the door, thinking it might be Officer O’Keefe. I paused midstep and gently lowered my foot to the floor. Those taps weren’t knocks. Another tap sounded, a sharp rap, the kind of noise a glazier makes when he’s removing glass from a windowpane. Another tap, much louder, reverberated through the bathroom, followed immediately by tinkling glass. Someone was breaking in.

  I gasped and covered my mouth with my hands to stop myself from making any noise. I stood in petrified rigor, unable to move, barely able to breathe. I could picture the glass piling up under the window. It went on and on and on, ending with a final cataclysmic crash. My mouth went dry and I fought the urge to cough. Standing with my mouth agape, my heart pounding, and my pulse throbbing, I stared at the bathroom door. It was mostly closed. I risked a gentle push and the door swung closer to the
jamb, leaving only a sliver of clearance. Footsteps grew louder, moving closer, and my heart jumped into my throat before plunging to my knees. I felt dizzy. I thought I might be ill. I exhaled slowly, breathed in consciously, purposefully. Get a grip, I told myself.

  It didn’t work.

  Panic-fueled blood raced through my veins. Terror made my skin crawl, as if spiders were running up and down my arms and legs. I looked up and over and around. There was nowhere to go. I was trapped.

  Oh, no, I mouthed. My tote bag.

  I’d left it under the desk. It wasn’t out in the open, but to someone searching, it would be apparent.

  Thrashing and cracking sounds thundered outside the door. Remembering what I’d seen at the institute, I could easily imagine what was happening here. The attacker was dumping Becca’s clothing, hurling drawers against walls or smashing them against the floor, and shredding the mattress. No one spoke. Either it was a well-organized team or one person was working alone.

  With my eyes fixed on the narrow crack, I gingerly stepped into the tub. The rupturing and tearing noises continued, one act of destruction followed by another. I lay flat, scrunching my way up toward the faucet, out of sight, I hoped, from someone who might enter looking not for a person hiding but for booty to steal. Grasping the shower curtain hem, I eased it toward the back until I was cocooned. I rolled onto my side, raised my knees toward my chest, and curled my shoulders inward, tucking my head down, trying to make myself as small as possible.

  A big piece of furniture, maybe the tallboy, went down with an earthshaking boom. I winced and closed my eyes. Smaller thumps followed. Fabric tore.

  The silence, when it came, was as stunning as the previous cacophony had been. I held my breath waiting for the next round of destruction to begin. It didn’t come. I felt like a mouse knowing there’s a cat right outside the door. I waited more. A door opened, then closed.

  “Ms. Prescott?” a man called.

  I didn’t recognize the voice and was terrified it was a setup designed to draw me out.

  “Ms. Prescott?” the same voice called again.

  After two more calls, I heard footsteps drawing closer.

  “What the—” A pause. A change in tone, from casual to worried. “Ms. Prescott, this is Officer O’Keefe. Are you all right?”

  I sat up and leaned my head against the cold tiles. “I’m—” I broke off, coughing, and tried again. “I’m in the bathroom.” My eyes filled with tears of relief.

  “Are you okay?” Officer O’Keefe asked again. His eyes were round with concern. He squatted beside me. “Do you need medical attention?”

  “No.” I extended a hand and he helped me up. “Thanks.”

  With his hand on my elbow, he walked me out of the bathroom and into the vortex.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I stood in the center of Becca’s room while Officer O’Keefe called in the burglary. I couldn’t stop shivering, maybe from the cold. The wind whistled through the shattered window. My tote bag had been emptied upside down and tossed aside. He told me not to touch anything. I saw my wallet, my phone, my notebook, and my silver card case. Hard as it was to believe, it looked as if nothing had been stolen.

  From what I could see, no inch of the room had been left unscathed. All the furniture was toppled over; the mattress lay askew from the frame, slashed and torn; clothes were heaped on the bed; papers were strewn across the floor.

  “The detectives are on their way,” Officer O’Keefe told me.

  “Can I borrow your phone?” I asked. “I want to call Chief Hunter.”

  “Sure.” He handed it over. Ellis answered on the first ring.

  “We have a kind of situation down here,” I said. “I think you’re going to want to be on-site for the investigation.”

  As soon as I explained what had happened, he said he’d see me in an hour.

  Officer O’Keefe and I picked our way across the floor and walked into the kitchen. Ethan opened the front door and frowned when he saw us.

  “This is getting to be quite a habit,” he said, his eyes on me. He turned his gaze on Officer O’Keefe. “Not for nothing, but I’d like a little privacy.”

  “Sorry, sir,” O’Keefe said. “This is a crime scene.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you not to touch anything and to join us here in the kitchen.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Officer O’Keefe. And you are?”

  Ethan held up his key. “A tenant.”

  “There’s been a break-in. The detectives will be here shortly.”

  “Josie?” Ethan asked, turning my name into a question.

  “Let’s wait for the detectives,” O’Keefe interjected before I could reply.

  Ethan closed the door, tossed his keys onto the telephone table, and swung his backpack off, wedging it against the wall.

  “It’s cold in here,” he said.

  A rat-a-tat sounded, and two men in suits strode in.

  * * *

  I was stuck in Becca and Ethan’s apartment for an hour recounting what happened, then at the precinct house for two more giving a formal statement. Ellis listened in on my last rendition, the one I delivered to a video camera. His first act was to convince his contact to start the technicians on my tote bag and its contents, so everything could be released to me before I left.

  “Thank you,” I said as he walked me to my car. “Any fingerprints on my stuff?”

  “No. It looks like whoever broke in wore gloves, no surprise.”

  “I figure he found my tote bag, realized I was probably somewhere in the apartment, and tore out of there.”

  “That’s what I think, too. How long did you stay in the bathroom after it got quiet?”

  “I don’t know. A while. I was scared. Why did Officer O’Keefe come in?”

  “Shift change. He was going off duty and wanted to introduce you to his replacement,” he said.

  “He’s a good cop.”

  “I’ll pass that along.”

  “Do you think the phone calls were to verify that no one was at home?” I asked.

  “Probably. Or they were from a robo-call telemarketer.”

  “Can you check?”

  “We already have. They came from a disposable phone that was purchased at a small electronics store in New York City five months ago. Someone bought six of them.”

  “That’s fast work!” I said.

  “One of the detectives has a contact at the phone company. No one on staff remembers the buyer.”

  “Any security cameras?”

  “Yup. They only keep the digital recordings for ninety days, though.”

  I looked up but couldn’t see any stars. I wondered if it was cloud cover shrouding the sky or city lights that made the sky look ink black. I was exhausted, the kind of to-your-bones fatigue that weighs you down after a crisis. And, oddly, I was ravenous.

  “Ty texted that he’s waiting dinner for me. By the time I get home, it’ll be ten.”

  Ellis glanced at his watch. “Nine thirty, probably. Call him before you leave, so he’ll have it ready.”

  “Yeah. I will.” I raised my shoulders and lowered them, and turned my head to the left, then to the right. All my muscles were tight. “How about you? When will you eat?”

  “I’ll be fine.” He touched my upper arm. “Are you okay? For real?”

  “Yeah.” I clicked open my driver’s door. As I reached for the handle, I added, “I should have tried to get a look at him. I could have hidden behind the door and peeked out.”

  “Don’t, Josie. Don’t beat yourself up. You did exactly the right thing. You focused on staying safe.”

  “I feel all wussy.”

  “That’s silly,” he said.

  Anger flared. Telling me not to feel what I was feeling was like telling someone with a headache to shake it off.

  “It’s how I feel,” I said.

  “Fair enough. Just know I don’t thin
k you’re wussy.”

  “Thanks.” I stood up straight and stretched, arching my back, working the kinks out.

  “Are you okay to drive? I can get someone to take you home.”

  “I’m fine.” I looked Ellis in the eyes as I opened the car door. “Whoever did this killed Ian.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  I slid behind the wheel and started the engine. Ellis closed the door. I lowered the window.

  “You’re a good friend, Ellis,” I said.

  “You are, too, Josie.”

  I raised the window, put the car in gear, and drove home.

  * * *

  After a hot bath, a cold Prescott’s Punch, and a bowl of leftover pot roast, I leaned back against the pillows at the short end of the L-shaped bench framing my kitchen table and sighed, an exhalation of pleasure.

  “Yum,” I said.

  “I reheat a mean pot roast,” Ty said.

  I smiled and took his hand.

  “I got so scared lying in the tub,” I said. “I felt so powerless. So vulnerable.”

  “Makes sense. You were.”

  We sat for another hour as I recounted what I’d heard and seen and felt. Ty was unwaveringly calm and reassuring, and as I slid off the bench, I thought how lucky I was to have him in my life. Even though I knew it was nothing more than an illusion that things actually got better through talking, I felt better, and that was something.

  * * *

  I hadn’t returned any of Wes’s texts or calls, but when the phone rang at seven thirty Friday morning, I recognized his number and took the call.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t call me back,” he said by way of greeting.

  “I had a hard day.”

  “That’s no excuse, Josie, and you know it.”

  “Give me a break, Wes.”

  “You can make it up to me. Tell me exactly what happened at Becca’s. Let’s meet for breakfast.”

  “I’ve already eaten,” I told him to give myself time to decide whether I felt like dealing with him or not. I adored Wes like a kid brother, but boy oh boy, was he work.

  “Come on, Joz,” he whined. “Meet me for coffee.”

  Wes might think I owed him, and maybe I did, but that didn’t mean I had to pay up now. I wasn’t going to share the photos I took; that was certain. Not when so much was unclear. The last thing I wanted to do was complicate the police investigation. I decided to go, not to give, but to take. I was willing to bet Wes had information he would share. I would even up the tally later. Plus, Ellis wanted me to talk to Wes, to get him to rally the troops.