Archer nodded. He motioned toward the settee where Dr. Graham was fixedly boring a hole through the opposing wall with his stare, “We have permission to search the house from the owner. We can proceed with that while we wait for the warrant to arrive. As soon as it’s here, we’ll search the rest of the property.” There was no further response from the professor, but Archer could see the strain in his face, and in his posture as his immaculate leather shoe rhythmically tapped the wide floor boards.
Archer spoke to Officer Malone, “If you will take the upstairs, I will search the main floor.” Theresa Malone nodded and exited the room. Archer nodded to the remaining two men who would remain with Dr. Graham, “One of you search this room. Call me when the warrant arrives.”
Passing through the same door Malone had used to escort Dr. Graham to the kitchen, he entered a dining room. He peered through the only other doorway in the room to find it led to the kitchen. There was no hallway, the doorways leading directly from one room into another. There appeared to be only three rooms on the main floor. The sitting room at the front on the eastern end, the dining room at the front on the western end, and the kitchen stretching across the entire back portion.
Archer turned back to the dining room. It was furnished with a highly polished wooden trestle table surrounded by eight darkly stained Windsor chairs, a wide hutch full of china and glassware, a couple of narrow tables against the walls, and a heavy sideboard set with tumblers, tankards, decanters, and a tea service. Pewter dishes and more glassware were displayed in the matching built-in cupboards on either side of the fireplace. Except for the dining table, all the tables had drawers of varying sizes. Archer went through them all but only found silverware and serving utensils, bottle openers, cloth napkins, and a few other gadgets he didn’t recognize.
There was a basket on the floor next to the sideboard containing things that looked like some sort of weaving or knitting tools, he wasn’t sure, but he removed them all and checked beneath them.
Archer next opened the doors of the cupboards and looked behind all the plates, moving the glassware around to prevent tipping over the tall champagne flutes. The only possible hiding place on the fireplace mantle wasn’t really big enough for the knife but he checked it anyway. The hinged box contained cigars and a cigar cutter.
The fireplace was clean, no ashes nor even logs on the wrought iron firedogs. He felt under the edge of the mantle, muttering to himself, ‘I’ve watched too many old movies.’
Archer moved on to the kitchen. Against the outer wall, he noted a flight of stairs going up to the second floor. The planks were concave in the center, worn down by a couple of centuries and more of foot traffic. A wave of tiredness swept over him when he saw all the cupboards and drawers. He decided to examine the fireplace first. It was a huge, open fronted fireplace big enough for him to walk into if he bent over just a little bit. The bricks lining the interior were blackened in spots. The larger, smoother bricks of the floor were blackened in two places where innumerable fires had been stoked for cooking and warmth. A crane was still intact, suspending a metal pot from its hook. The pot looked decorative, having not been used for quite some time if at all. Two beehive-shaped openings in the back wall of the fireplace had once served as ovens.
Archer swung the crane around into the room and stepped past it onto the bricks. He checked both oven cavities, moved a couple of long-handled iron skillets and a bed warmer one at a time, and looked up the chimney. There was no mantle on this monstrous fireplace. Nothing there.
After the fireplace, he examined the modern range, checking inside the oven as well as the drawer below it.
He went through drawers and removed them to look under and behind them, opened cabinets, taking stacks of plates and other serving pieces out, and dug through storage cupboards.
He heard Officer Malone’s footsteps descending the wooden staircase which opened into the kitchen. He looked at her expectantly but she shook her head. “Damnit.” Archer spit the word with frustration.
“Two bedrooms, a study, and a bathroom that appears to have been made out of part of the study. Walls and ceilings are solid plaster up there. No closets, just wardrobes.”
“No sign of Nina Watkins, nothing indicating someone was quickly moved?
“No sign of Nina Watkins, but both bedrooms have been occupied. One seems obvious as that of Dr. Graham. His briefcase is there, the bed is made, it’s tidy. The other one has some clothing for both a man and a woman hanging in the wardrobe, the bed is unmade, there is clothing scattered around on the chairs, various shoes, and a pack of cigarettes with a lighter on the side table.
“Good. That’s something at least. Let’s go have a chat with Dr. Graham.”
Before he left to go back to the sitting room, an officer entered by the back door. Officer Jennings poked his head through the doorway and waved a folded packet of paperwork, “Warrant’s here, Detective. We hadn’t gone into the garage yet, waiting on this, but from standing outside, we can see two cars in the garage. One is a green Range Rover and the other is a blue Altima.”
“Thanks, Jennings. You and Wilson get out there and check that garage.” Archer could feel the tension gearing up. He hadn’t found anything yet, but he could feel the familiar tingle of clarity, like the air was thinning. Things were about to happen.
Chapter 38
“Who is staying in the second bedroom, Dr. Graham?” Archer stood in front of Orcenith Graham who had moved from the settee to a writing chair by one of the front windows and was watching the front yard.
“You didn’t find anything, just as I told you.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Dr. Graham shifted in the chair and gave a sigh of exaggerated exasperation, “My caretakers, Detective Vaughn. Obviously, since I don’t live here, someone is required to tend to the property in my absence. A hired couple live in the house and keep it up. It is their room.”
“Do you let them smoke in your house, Dr. Graham? Surely, someone who owns an historic house such as this would be cautious about allowing cigarettes in the house.”
The professor was hesitant, “I, I don’t know anything about that, but I will be sure to follow up on it, because no, of course I don’t want to allow that. If smoking is indeed going on inside the house, I have never noticed the smell of it.”
“You seem surprised, Dr. Graham. I would think you would know more about your caretakers if you trust them to live in your house while you live hundreds of miles away. Maybe you don’t know them as well as you think you do.”
“Perhaps not, Detective.”
“Sit tight a little longer while we finish our search, then we’ll have another chat.”
“I don’t see why you need to search the rest of the property, there’s nothing here and I think you can see that.”
“Let’s just say that I like to be thorough, just as you are in your own profession.”
Faint shouts and the sound of an engine coming from behind the house broke through the conversation and grabbed Archer’s attention. He pointed to one of the officers and to Dr. Graham, then fled through the dining room, kitchen, and out the back door.
The light was fading rapidly as the sun dipped beyond the tree line in the west. The garage was shaded by dozens of surrounding trees except for where the graveled drive entered from the eastern side. There were several voices emanating from the open garage doors, shouting above the revving engine. It was a motorcycle engine. Archer’s heart started to pound, not from running but from the sudden certainty that this was the right place, these were the right people, and this was about to end one way or another. He suddenly realized he was afraid. Not afraid of personal danger but of this not ending well for Nina and Tom, not to mention Aaron if something were to happen to his mother. A vacation that was supposed to be fun for everyone could turn into a family tragedy. He could only hope Nina was still ok.
Archer skidded on the rocks as he rounded the corner of the garage. Officer
s Williams and Monaghan were dragging a man between them out into the open drive. The man was flailing his arms and trying to gain some purchase on the loose surface. Cory Williams boomed in the man’s ear, “Stop fighting us. You aren’t going anywhere.”
The words may as well have been a blow to the abdomen. The man stopped struggling and sank to the ground, nearly pulling Officer Monaghan down with him. “Ok, ok. I give. Just…make it be over. Just make it be over.”
Williams turned to look at Archer, who continued forward, scratching his chin. “Get him cuffed fellas and let him sit over there on the wall.”
After his failed attempt to escape, the man appeared defeated. Archer asked, “Who are you?”
“Roger Morris.” He looked up at Archer. “I’m Roger Morris.”
“We’ve heard about you Mr. Morris. Did you have someplace urgent to go?”
“Away.”
“We can go into that, and we will, later, but right now I need to know about Nina Watkins. Where is she?”
***
Nina’s head lolled down on to her shoulder, waking her again. She hadn’t slept more than a few minutes undisturbed for what felt like weeks but she knew it couldn’t be more than a couple of days. She was exhausted, worried, and ached all over from sitting on the cool earth inside the cellar. After spending an hour or more checking every shelf, every nook and cranny in the cellar, she sat down to rest and now she was getting stiff. There wasn’t much in the cellar other than the shelves and the broken piece of pallet, no telling how many decades since it had been in use, but she hadn’t come up completely empty handed.
Through her groggy dozing, she thought she heard voices, but figured she was hallucinating or dreaming. At least she thought as much until she heard a key in the lock. As the door was being opened, she definitely could hear shouts. Nina kneeled and then crouched low on the floor at the back of the cellar, determined to try to get past her jailer. She had removed her sandals for better footing. She wished she had the lace-up kind to use the laces to strangle her, but that wasn’t the case.
The woman ducked to make sure Nina wasn’t near the entry. A pair of sneakers came into view on the top stair and the door was pulled shut. Nina stood, her hand nervously rubbing against the cool pewter of the discarded plate she held behind her back. Her search had turned up an assortment of discarded items in the far corner of the deep top shelf. She had needed to use a board broken from the pallet that had been her only furniture to drag the items within her reach. They had been tossed there long ago and forgotten, and probably not viewed as important by these people. She doubted they even knew they were there. They weren’t conventional weapons, but they were what she had.
As soon as the woman’s head cleared the ceiling, Nina twisted at the waist and hurled the pewter plate like a Frisbee, aiming directly for the woman’s throat, or face, or whatever body part of consequence she might be able to strike. She hadn’t spent summers playing beach Frisbee for nothing. The plate caught the woman square across the trachea, causing her to cough, hack, and nearly vomit.
Knowing the plate was a one-time shot weapon good only at a distance, short of banging her on the head with it if she could even recover it, Nina reached into her robe pocket for another item she had discovered. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she’d had plenty of time to examine it. At least she had a close-range implement, whatever it was.
The woman was spitting mad, literally. She finally regained the use of her larynx and released a stream of names that Nina was quite sure were mostly impossible. She realized this was the first time she had seen her female captor face-to-face, and it dawned on her as odd that she hadn’t been asked to turn around this time as she had all the other times.
The woman wasn’t quite as forbidding in reality. She appeared to be about the same height as Nina but looked underweight by around ten pounds or more. ‘Improves my chances,’ she thought to herself as she watched the woman size up the situation. The Matron, as Nina had referred to her, had dirty blond hair which was uncombed, her features were creased into a permanent scowl, her mouth set in a frown, and there were deep lines in the flesh around her lips, like a long-time smoker. The smell of stale cigarette smoke had crept under the hood at times or when she had been facing the wall. Here was the source.
Nina pulled her right hand out of her pocket. Keeping her palm toward her, she rested her right hand against the fabric of her robe. At that moment, she was grateful she had chosen a full robe with plenty of fabric. She raised her left hand, palm out, hopefully to distract from her right hand, hoping her posture looked non-threatening. The woman was so occupied with spitting expletives that she didn’t pay any attention to Nina’s hands
The woman suddenly came at Nina, reaching out with her left hand to grab Nina’s throat. Nina had watched enough documentaries and movies with Tom to know it was often swifter and more efficient to point the cutting edge of a weapon outward and bring it across a person rather than trying to slice at them in a forward motion. Nina had a free shot at it since the woman’s right arm was still at her side. As the woman came nearer, Nina raised her right arm across her in what could be mistaken for a guarding motion, but when the woman was within arm’s reach, Nina swung her right arm in an arc, opening a deep cut on the woman’s right cheek. The woman stopped, surprised. In the few seconds she stood dazed, Nina repeated the motion.
The Matron clapped her hand to her face then looked at it. Seeing the already copious amount of blood, she shrieked and reached out, tangling both hands in Nina’s hair. It had become a cat fight.
Nina remembered the silly characters from horror films who inexplicably throw down their only weapon and resolved to maintain a tight grip on hers. She shifted it in her hands as the woman yanked her forward by her hair at the same time that a knee sharply connected with her abdomen. All the air fled Nina’s lungs in a rush. She couldn’t draw a breath and remained bent over. The woman hit her on the back of the head with both hands fisted together.
Evidently, not her first rodeo.
Nina sprawled on the floor on her knees, only to be jerked upward by her hair a second time. The woman held onto the hair on the back of her head and crumpled the front of Nina’s robe in her other fist. “You little bitch, you aren’t getting out of here alive. I told that fop to do away with you in the beginning. He’s too prissy to do it, but I’m not.”
“Who. In the hell. Are you?” Nina asked in spurts as she was able to get air into her lungs again.
Nina focused on the woman’s face as she drew breath and opened her maw to make a remark, or to yell, or something. She was breathing her stale smoke breath in Nina’s face. Her anger had made her careless though, and she didn’t see Nina’s approaching blow until it was too late to avoid it. Nina had turned the instrument around. She still held tightly onto the handle but with the knife edge now facing toward her, above her hand, and the odd fork-shaped tines at the end that curved in the opposite direction faced the Matron. Even in her desperation to get away, Nina brought it down with a certain amount of trepidation, aiming for the woman’s left eye.
***
Archer became aware of another sound. Again, the silence of the night was disturbed by the sounds of a scuffle floating across to the garage from the darkness of the back yard.
“Monaghan, stay with Mr. Morris.” Archer took off running, Cory Williams sprinting right behind him. He called to Cory over his shoulder, “I’m going to run out of officers pretty soon.”
They slowed as they passed the light of the house pouring out of the kitchen windows and entered a gloomy part of the yard where the little remaining twilight didn’t penetrate and all detail dissolved. “Where is it coming from? It sounds muffled.” Archer’s vision was still adjusting to the dimness as he unclipped his flashlight and shone it in sweeping arcs across the back yard. He saw a faint glow of light ahead. He ran toward it, being careful not to trip as the ground began to slope gently downward. As he got closer, he could see the light was s
eeping out around the edges of a set of closed wooden doors on a cellar.
He and Officer Williams reached the cellar at the same time, each yanking upward on a handle. They were set at a forty-five-degree angle. Rather than being constructed of planks nailed to a frame, they were thick solid oak doors, banded with iron, with beaten iron handles. Archer could still hear the sounds of a struggle coming from inside the cellar, shuffling, struggling, and muffled cries.
The doors made a dull booming sound as they dropped flatly onto the pounded earth built up around the cellar. When closed, the doors met a wooden frame, but beyond that the chamber was stone lined. He braced one hand against the arch just inside the entry and leaned down to peer into the cellar before charging in without knowing the circumstances. After one look, he ran down the stone steps.
Two women were entangled on the dirt floor, fighting. One, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, was kneeling on the second one who was wearing a dirt and blood-encrusted robe and was kicking wildly. Archer was relieved and alarmed at the same time. Here was Nina, obviously alive and definitely kicking, but still in danger. Archer reached out to grab the woman by her arms and pull her off Nina, but she suddenly lurched backwards, smacking into his knees and throwing him off balance.
The woman fell on her back and Archer plunged forward, over her head and landed across her lap. He cursed as he scrambled to regain the upper position, aware that his back was exposed. Cory had pulled Nina away from the center of the room. In his peripheral vision, Archer could see blood streaked down the front of Nina’s robe and his heart thudded. Once on his feet again, he took the woman by the arms, which she held in front of her, her hands covering her face. He hitched her up to standing position.
Archer shot a look over his shoulder to make sure Nina didn’t need immediate attention. Seeing that she was calm, he asked Cory to radio for an ambulance and to bring several pairs of gloves to root cellar due to the presence of blood. He then turned back to the unknown woman. He could see blood seeping through her fingers. “Ok, take your hands away from your face.” She didn’t move or respond.
Buried Roots Page 22
