by John Sullins
Keith stretched his arm up, put a finger into a metal ring on the end of the chain, and pulled. As expected, a wood steps unfolded to the floor.
Ed Roy asked, “Do you want me to check the attic?”
“No, I want to do it myself.”
“Do you want me to wait here or go look around?”
Keith took the flashlight from his jacket pocket and started up the steps. He looked over his shoulder, “Go ahead and look around the rest of the house. Holler at me if you find anything strange.”
“I’ll look around, maybe I can find some loose boards in the floors or a hidden safe in the wall behind a picture frame.”
There was a muffled “Ok” as Keith disappeared into the attic.
Chapter 59
The rafters in the ceiling were only six feet above the cross joists under Keith’s feet. Being six four, he had to stay hunched over as he stepped from one joist to the next shinning the flashlight over the thick insulation.
He spotted a large cardboard box sitting on two long boards sitting at right angles on the floor joists. He kept each foot on a joist and lifted up box’s folded lid spilling the dust that had been on the lid for years into the air.
He breathed in some of the dust and coughed. He waved his hands in front of his face in an effort to move the dust away from his mouth and nose but the move helped very little. He carefully moved back towards the attic steps and bent low trying to suck in clean air from the hallway.
After waiting three or four minutes for the dust to settle he returned to the box and shinned the beam inside. What he saw was a neatly stacked pile of old camouflage hunting clothing. He pushed his hand down into the clothing and felt around for anything other than more clothing. He lifted up one of the shirts and dug his hand deeper until he felt the bottom of the box.
He did not bother to close the top of the box and moved deeper into the attic. He swung the flashlight beam slowly from left to right until he saw three more cardboard boxes, one stacked on top of the other. He heard creaking as he stepped from one joist to the next as he neared the boxes.
The top box was also covered dust so he lifted it gently off the middle box and lowered it to the insulation. He opened the four top flaps very slowly, one at a time, to keep the dust from spreading any more than possible. The box was filled with archery trophies. He picked one up shined the flashlight beam on the engraving, “Third Place, Men’s Recurve class, Cedar Lake Bow Club, 1973.” He put it back and picked up two others. One was engraved, “Second Place, Men’s Senior Class, Cedar Lake Bow Club.” The other read, “First Place, Men’s Recurve class, Cedar Lake bow Club, 1975.”
The math was easy, the trophies were over a hundred years old.
He looked in the middle box and found the remains of old men’s shoes and boots. The leather was rotten and cracked and smelled horrible. He closed that box and sat it aside.
The bottom box contained three plastic boxes designed to look like tree bark. Each had a hinged door and what appeared to be a tiny viewing hole near the center bottom. He picked up one of the boxes and swung open the door. He moved the flashlight beam close to the inside of the box and saw an on/off flip switch and a small LCD screen which was blank. He turned the box around so he could see the back side and read the words “Trail Camera.”
He guessed they were used by hunters to monitor activity on animal trails. But whatever they were, he had no immediate use for them so he put it back into the cardboard box and stacked the boxes back into the same position where they had been for so many years.
His back was starting to get stiff from being hunched over so he moved the flashlight beam around to see if there was anything else before he climbed out of the attic.
Chapter 60
Ed Roy walked through each room tapping on the walls with his knuckles and using the end of his pocket knife to tap on the floor boards listening for the sound of hollow spots or loose boards. He checked the inside of the closets, under every throw rug, behind every picture on the walls but found nothing unusual.
He went to the door to the basement and flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs but no lights came on. He got a couple of the new light bulbs from Keith’s bag and carried them down the steps. But when he reached the basement floor, he found an overhead light fixture, but he had no way to reach it to replace the bulbs. He moved slowly away from the steps using the light coming through the door at the top of the stairs to see his way.
He looked for a ladder or something solid to stand on but found nothing other than an old book case with its back against the wall. He considered pushing the bookcase from the wall to under the light fixture but it looked to be heavy. He discarded that idea and continued to ease his way around the basement looking for any other light fixture or lamp he could reach.
He found nothing so he returned to the bookcase and pushed on one end, using about half his strength to test its weight. It moved much easier than he expected and slid six inches across the wall. He smiled and leaned his shoulder against the end and pushed hard. The bookcase moved so far he lost his balance and fell onto the floor, his chin hit the concrete hard and he laid there a long minute facing the stairs.
He sat up and gently moved his hands along the side of his chin, he felt blood. He moved his tongue along the inside of his right cheek and tasted blood. He moved his tongue along the teeth on the right side of his mouth expecting to find one or two loose, but the teeth were still solid in his jaw.
He stood up and put out his right hand to lean against the wall as he regained his balance. As he stood with his head down thinking about how he was going to explain this to Keith, he discovered that there was no wall behind the bookcase. What should have been a concrete block wall was some type of doorway. He leaned his head into the darkness but saw only black.
Keith was about to come down the attic steps when he heard Ed Roy running up the stairs and shouting, “I’ve found it. I think I’ve found it. We need the flashlight!”
Keith reached the hallway floor as Ed Roy reached the top of the stairs. He saw blood on the right side of the little guy’s face.
“What happened to your face? Are you ok?”
In an excited voice Ed Roy said “Yea, yea, I’m fine. You gotta see this, bring the flashlight,” as he grabbed Keith’s wrist and pulled him towards the stairs.
Chapter 61
Ed Roy’s little legs were moving in fast short steps as Keith followed him down the stairs, across the living room, into the kitchen, and then down the basement stairs. His words were fast and he was speaking as if he was out of breath.
“I was moving the old book case, to stand on it so I could reach the light, to put in new bulbs. The damn thing was hiding the entrance to a short set of steps and another room. It’s too dark to see inside, but you want something unusual, you’ve got it now.” He stopped at the bottom step and pointed to his right.
“Turn on your flashlight, shine it in there.”
Keith pushed the button on his flashlight and aimed the bean at the black hole in the wall. He moved it around the perimeter of the hole. He guessed it was about six feet wide and maybe seven feet high. The edges of the hole were straight and square, obviously a well-designed doorway. He moved the light to the center of the hole and lowered it to illuminate the four steps leading down into the darkness.
He looked at Ed Roy, “You really are good at puzzles and mysteries.” He moved forward down the steps.
Ed Roy leaned to his right trying to see around Keith.
“What’s down here? What is it?”
Keith stayed silent and moved the light to his right and immediately spotted a wall light switch only three feet to his right. He took one step that direction and flipped the switch.
They were both surprised when several lights, mounted in a suspended ceiling came on. Directly ahead of them was a long narrow tunnel with a single light blinking dimly about thirty or forty yards down the tunnel. Keith squinted his eyes straining to see what
was inside the tunnel but it was far too dark to see past the blinking light.
Keith said, “What the hell?”
Ed Roy stepped to his left and forward so he was directly beside Keith.
“It looks like a gun range. Those are shooting benches.” He moved forward towards the benches.
Keith turned off the flashlight and looked around.
“Look at the size of that safe! Is it a gun safe?”
Ed Roy moved to the safe which was standing along the left wall. “That thing could hold dozens of guns. It’s six feet wide. We need to open it.”
Keith shook his head, “There is no way short of dynamite to get that thing open.”
Ed Roy gripped a short silver colored handle on the door of the safe and tried to move it.
“It’s locked.” He examined the handle and the knob beside it.
“It has a combination and a key slot. Do you think any of the keys on your key ring will fit it?”
Keith took the big key ring from his pocket, his hands began shaking. He thought about the one paragraph in the Will and if he wanted Ed Roy to see what was in the safe. His first reaction was to ask him to go upstairs, but that seemed extremely unfair. He may have never found this room without Ed Roy’s help. It boiled down to trust, could Ed Roy be trusted? He knew the answer to that question, of course he could.
He took a close look at the keyway and began searching the key ring for a key that might fit. The keyway was wide, the key would be one of the larger ones.
It took only a few seconds to find the key, it was a thick solid one, round head, and silver in color. He slid the key into the slot and turned. The key rotated and the lock made a solid click. He lifted the silver handle and when the handle rotated Keith pulled the door open.
Both he and Ed Roy stepped backwards when they saw what was inside. Along the backside of the safe, sitting on a shelf about four feet from the bottom was a row of long guns. Several were AR15s, there was one Uzi, two MAC 10s, a bullpup rifle Keith did not recognize, another that looked like some type of military sniper rifle, and two short barrel shotgun with pistol grips.
Hanging on pegs mounted on the left side of the safe was nearly a dozen handguns. Keith recognized the Colt 1911 .45s the 9mm Glocks, but the four hanging on the end of the row were something he had never seen. He picked one up, pushed the button to eject the magazine and slid back the slid to be sure the chamber was empty. He held it close to his eyes and looked at the writing on the left side. FN 57.
Ed Roy moved closer, “Damn! Look at that, look at that!”
Under the long guns, stacked on the left end of a metal table shelf across the entire width of the safe, sitting on wide thick six inch legs, was an open top plastic storage box about two feet long, a foot and a half wide and over a foot tall. But it was not the plastic box that had ED Roy’s attention. It was what was in the box. It contained rows of tamper proof packages which were about two and a half inches by three and three quarters of an inch long. Each package contained an assay card and a one ounce gold bar which was about the size of a military dog tag.
Before Keith could say anything Ed Roy shouted, “Is that gold? Is that real gold?”
Keith hesitated for two seconds as he picked up two of the packages and studied them.
“These are one ounce gold bars. Look, they have serial numbers on them.”
“Oh my GOD Keith, you are rich, really rich. How many are there?”
Keith did not respond, instead he moved the index finger of his right hand along the top of the stacks and began counting.
“Fifteen bars in each stack, five stacks in each row, ten rows. That’s fifty stacks times fifteen.”
He closed his eyes to help him concentrate.
Before he could give the total, Ed Roy said, “That is seven hundred and fifty bars."
Keith opened his eyes and smiled. “I have no idea what an ounce of gold is worth these days, do you?”
Ed Roy shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again several times.
“I’m not sure, but I know it goes up all the time. I think I remember seeing something on the news about gold selling for $3000 an ounce, but I might be wrong.”
Keith softly said, “$3000 an ounce, seven hundred and fifty ounces is……………”
Ed Roy answered instantly, two million two hundred and twenty five!”
Chapter 62
Keith had not known Ed Roy for very long and had never seen him or anyone get as excited as Ed Roy was at that moment. The best way to describe his movements was like that of a butterfly on drugs. One second he was moving to his right, the next he was skipping to his left, then he’d take a step or two backwards and then go forward, talking every second.
“Look at this stuff. I can’t believe what we found. Who was the Hamlet woman? Why did she have all this gold and all these guns here? Why did she have this hidden underground shooting range? Was she some type of criminal?”
Keith reached out and took a firm grip on his shoulder. He smiled and said, “Ed Roy, slow down buddy. Take a deep breath or two. You are going to have a stroke if you don’t calm down.”
Ed Roy stopped dead in his tracks and looked up into Keith’s eyes.
“Ok…………..Ok………….gimme a minute.” He drew in a very long and slow breath, let it out and did it again.
Keith let go of his grip. He pointed to two sets of double doors on the wall to their left. “Let’s see what else is here. We’ll start with those big doors. They look like closet doors to me.” He pointed to two sets of double doors on the wall to their left.
Ed Roy moved quickly to the first set of doors and pulled them open. A ceiling light in the closet came on automatically when the doors opened. Inside was a walk in closet which was nearly ten feet wide and six feet deep. Along the entire length of the rear wall was a long clothing rack loaded with women’s clothing of various sizes. On a shelf above the rack were a dozen mannequin heads, each with a different color and style woman’s wig.
Ed Roy moved into the closet and lifted open the lid on a large trunk sitting under the clothing. He reached inside and lifted what appeared to be a woman’s girdle, but the girdle was padded around the hips and buttocks. He held it up for Keith to see.
“What is this?”
Keith studied it a few seconds. “My guess it is some type of padding used to make a thin person look fat, like a disguise. It goes along with the wigs and the different size women’s clothing.
Ed Roy put the girdle back in the trunk, “This is wild.”
On the left wall of the closet were four shelves one above the other. Each was full of women’s shoes and boots of all types.
Ed Roy said, “She must have liked shoes.”
Keith stayed silent stepped out of the closet to the second set of doors which were identical to the first. A light came on when he opened the doors.
This closet was not a closet. It was a room. It was ten feet deep from front to back and twenty feet wide. The wall on the left consisted of four strong metal shelves. Each shelf was packed full of plastic boxes of various sizes. Each box had words printed on the end.
Keith read the words aloud, one box at a time, “Binoculars, night-vision, radios, knives, headlamps, rope, rain gear, camo pants, camo shirts, camo jackets, jump gear, climbing gear.”
He stopped reading the labels and rubbed the right side of his face with the palm of his hand. Ed Roy could tell he was confused. He wanted to say something helpful.
“Maybe she was in the CIA or something.”
Keith had not considered that. He was asking himself what connection Wendy Hamlet had to his great grandmother. He thought about the paragraph in the Will and those four very interesting words. Something inside him was hinting that Wendy Hamlet and his great grandmother may have both worked for the CIA or some other government agency, maybe the DEA. That could explain the four words.
He whispered very softly, softly enough Ed Roy could not hear, “I hope what
she did was legal.”
He then turned his attention to the right side of the room. It had the same type of strong metal shelves except they were closer together and more of them. He stared at hundreds of boxes of ammunition.
Ed Roy looked at the ammo, “Jesus, was she going to fight a war? There are a million rounds in here.”
Keith stepped towards the shelves. “I doubt there is a million rounds, but there are more than a person could ever shoot, a lot of different calibers too.”
Ed Roy said, “I don’t understand any of this. What do you think?”
“I was told my great grandmother was a bounty hunter. If Hamlet was her partner, it would explain some of this, especially the binoculars and night vision gear. But all of the guns and ammo does not fit with being a bounty hunter.”
“Maybe they just like to shoot?”
Keith looked down at his assistant and laughed. “Yea, I think that is obvious. But Jesus, this is a lot of ammo.”
He then pointed towards several foot lockers sitting in the middle of the room.
“Maybe there are rocket launchers in those.”
Ed Roy took a step backwards, his eyes bulging.
“I’m joking Ed Roy. Look at the writing on the top, tent, sleeping bags, canopy, lantern and stove, flashlights and batteries, backpacks, canteens, GPS units, satellite phones, it is all outdoor and gear.”
Keith stepped around the foot lockers to the back wall to three file cabinets which were similar to the ones on the upper floor of the lake house, but these had no lock mechanism. He started to open the top shelf of the first locker and stopped. He turned to Ed Roy who was about to open the bottom shelf of the cabinet to his right.
“Ed Roy, wait a minute. Before we open these I need to tell you something that might be important.”
He slowly looked around the room and put his hand on Ed Roy’s shoulder.
“I have no idea who Wendy Hamlet was or why she left me this house. I honestly have no idea what anyone could have been doing with all of this. But I need to tell you about something that was in my great grandmother’s Will that may be related to all of this. I don’t want to give you all of the details right now, at least until I know more, because there was a paragraph in the Will that was a sort of a warning.”
