The Mystery Sisters series Box Set

by Karen Musser Nortman

  The light from the phone revealed rickety wooden steps toward the back. As they stumbled toward the stairs, Max gave the 911 operator their situation and location. “Help please! We’re at the—Kell house, on Cranberry Road and being chased!”

  “Chased?”

  “Yes, by a man with an axe!” She shoved the phone in her pocket.

  Lil whispered, “He’s stopped pounding.”

  They climbed the steps, Max first, both of them panting. Three steps from the top, noises on the other side of the door brought Max to a halt.

  “He’s in the house! Quick back down!”

  But Lil wasn’t fast enough for her sister. In her fear, Max tried to go around her, and when she put her weight on the same step, the wood cracked deafeningly. They tumbled and screamed. Max grabbed the handrail, but Lil plummeted to the bottom.

  “Ohmigod, Lil—I’m so sorry—” Using the rail, she hurried down to the heap at the bottom.

  Max got down on her knees, ignoring the shooting pain from her arthritis, and shined the phone toward Lil’s face. Her eyes were closed, and she breathed in rasps.

  “What have I done? Lil—Lil! Sweetie, speak to me.”

  “Sweetie?” Lil croaked. “You’ve lost it. Ohh, my leg!”

  Max glanced up the steps but couldn’t hear or see anything. Did their pursuer leave?

  “We need to hide. Maybe behind the furnace. I know it hurts but we have to hide somewhere if we want to stay alive.” Using the light on the phone again, she looked around the basement. Near the furnace a few pieces of coal laid scattered on the floor by an old coal chute and under the chute—a wheelbarrow!

  She hobbled over to drag the wheelbarrow back. “I’m going to try and get you in here, okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer but pulled Lil’s left arm over her shoulders and gently as she could, lifted her toward the wheelbarrow. The injured leg was partially supported by the sloping front of the barrow.

  Lil gripped the sides, but let go to wipe some of the tears streaming down her face. In the dim light of the phone, Max could see streaks across Lil’s face from the coal dust. Best not to mention that.

  “It must be broken,” Lil sobbed.

  Max grimaced. “I wouldn’t make you do this if the alternative wasn’t so much worse. Can you hold the phone? Literally.”

  “Funny,” Lil gasped and took the phone in her right hand. She aimed the light in the general direction of the furnace but was unable to hold it very steady. Their progress was slow and wobbly, accompanied by grunts and groans. Something brushed Max’s face. She shrieked and almost dropped the wheelbarrow handle.

  “What is it?” Lil whispered.

  “Spider webs.”

  “I don’t know how…someone as tough as you…can be so scared of spiders,” Lil said between clenched teeth. “Do you hear that guy?”

  “No. Not since we came back down the steps. Hold the light up.”

  All the while, Max listened for any sounds from upstairs but didn’t hear any. When they finally were obscured by the furnace from either of the entrances, Max lowered the wheelbarrow gently.

  “Yeow!” Lil cried. Apparently not gently enough. Then for a few moments, the only sound was their own heavy breathing.

  Max stood up. She took the phone and used it to look around. “I guess this didn’t gain us much. We’re not very well hidden.”

  “Help should be here soon, right?” Lil’s voice was getting weak.

  “Sure,” Max said with more confidence than she felt. Lil began to shake. “I’m freezing.”

  “Here—it’s not much but might help some.” Max struggled out of her fleece jacket and tucked it around Lil.

  A door opened above them. Max switched off the light on the phone. Heavy footsteps sounded as well as some other unidentifiable sounds. Someone began to pry the basement door open.

  Max held her breath as she tried to determine how she would know if it was friend or foe.

  A voice from the top of the wrecked stairs called: “Hello?”

  Before they could reply, loud crashes came from the step area and a furry freight train barreled into Max.

  “Rosie!”

  “Mom? Aunt Max?” Terry’s voice called again. “What happened to the steps?”

  Max used the phone light again to find her way back into the other room. “We had a little accident. There’s an outside stairway.” She pointed to that side of the house. “But we barricaded it.”

  Terry bent over and peered toward where she pointed. “Can you pull that chest away? I’ll send the police around that way.” He started to straighten up and then said, “Where’s Mother?”

  “Back behind the furnace.” Max paused. “She may have a broken leg.”

  “What—? Never mind. We’ll get her out of there as soon as we can.” He raised his voice. “Help is coming, Mom!” He left.

  Max tried to move the dresser out far enough to get the door open. Rosie alternated between dancing around her mistress with joy and sniffing out the wonderfully intriguing corners of the basement. Max heard no sound from Lil.

  When she got the door open, she could see the destruction of the bulkhead doors their assailant had wreaked with the axe. Boards had been chopped out leaving only the frames. Two police officers pulled broken boards away to clear the steps. One paused and looked down at Max. “This guy was serious.”

  Max gulped. “Yes, he was. Did you catch him?”

  “There was no one around when we got here.”

  She moved back and tugged more on the dresser but gave up and returned to check on Lil. Her sister was barely conscious.

  “They’re almost here, Lil. Hold on, sweetie.’

  The sound of the dresser crashing to its side signaled the police breaching the entrance. Terry was right behind them.

  “Max? Mom?”

  “In here,” Max called back. Flashlight beams bounced off the dirty stone walls as the police led Terry to the furnace room. Max felt doubly guilty for getting her sister into this when she saw the worry on Terry’s face.

  EMTs arrived and carried Lil out on a stretcher. As they loaded her, Max caught a glimpse of black coal dust smeared all over the back of Lil’s clothes. Another strike against her. Terry ran alongside holding his mother’s hand.

  The police chief arranged to have Max’s car towed to a tire shop in town. He helped her back out the bulkhead stairs, around the house to the back door and into the kitchen. Rosie stayed right at her heels. In spite of the lack of heat, the protection from the wind made the house warmer than the outside.

  Mansell pulled out a chair at the table and helped Max sit.

  “I want to go to the hospital with my sister.”

  “Can you tell me what happened? Then I’ll give you a ride to the clinic.”

  Max told her story in fits and starts, keeping her eyes down so she didn’t have to see the disbelief and accusation on his face.

  “What possessed you to come here by yourselves at night?”

  Max shrugged. “Just thought we’d take a look around. We did find some clues.”

  “Really?” Mansell’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “And what would those clues be?”

  “Well, a clue I should say. There’s a manikin in a shed out back that I think used to be at the dining room table. I think the one in the dining room with the blood on its face is the one that was in the bedroom.”

  Mansell got up, smacked the swinging door with one hand, and walked into the dining room. He was back in a moment.

  “I see what you mean. But what’s the significance? What kind of ‘clue’ is that?”

  “I don’t know. But the murderer went to a lot of work to stage a scene. What was he trying to accomplish?”

  “Let’s work at this from a more concrete angle instead of your ‘pie in the sky’ ideas. Who was chasing you? Did you recognize a voice? What did he say?”

  Max tried to reconstruct events after they found the manikin in the shed. “When he came up behind us, he said s
omething like ‘Pretty smart for an old biddy.’ I know he called us old biddies. Then he yelled ‘Hey!’—twice, I think—when he was chasing us. I think that’s all we heard him say. And we don’t know that many people around here so I don’t know how we could identify him from that.” She paused. “Although his voice did sound a little familiar.”

  “Think! Who have you met while you were here?”

  “Hmmm. Art Carnel. But I don’t think it was his voice. Oh—I forgot to tell you! We had pizza with two of the women from the bus tour tonight. While we were eating, Art came in and one of the women said she was sure it was the same guy who Barbara had shown her a photo of—Al Carson.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s the murderer, but we’ll check it out. Who else have you met?”

  “Of course, quite a few men came through the haunted house, but I don’t know that I would remember any of their voices. A couple of the volunteers. There’s a guy named Bert who works at the bank with Terry and a science teacher—Vince something? I can’t think of any other men that we’ve actually visited with. Oh, the guy that owns the Inn—Wendell—and a couple of men on the bus tour.”

  Mansell folded his arms. “Let’s head in to the clinic. We can continue this discussion on the way.”

  Max stood. “What about my dog?”

  “She won’t be the first dog to ride in that cruiser. I don’t know if I can lock the house. Terry had a key and I forgot to have him leave it. Maybe there’s a deadbolt I can lock before we go out.”

  Max snapped her fingers. “Lil said she saw a ring of keys in the shed under a jacket. She wondered if that’s how the murderer got in to the house.”

  “Let’s go. We’ll check it out quick before we leave.”

  Max led him through the garden to the tool shed. She shivered with the evening chill and the lack of her jacket. It would be just her luck to come down with pneumonia. Or maybe she deserved it for dragging Lil into this. The thought of Lil's severe pain made Max's stomach clench.

  Mansell opened the shed and shone the light around.

  “There’s the old jacket.” Max pointed to the row of hooks.

  Chief Mansell lifted the jacket. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and picked up the ring of keys. “Some of these look old enough to be the keys to the house.” They headed back to the house, while he examined the keys with the flashlight. He separated out a couple and stumbled twice. When they got to the back door, he tried them both and the second one worked.

  “Okay.” He aimed the flashlight at the steps and the ground beyond. “We’ll have to go around the side. My cruiser’s out front.”

  They passed the crippled Studebaker on their way. “The tow truck should be here any time. I’ll check with them when we get to town.”

  Max nodded, but her feelings of guilt threatened to lay her out flat. If she hadn’t followed her wild hair idea, neither her sister nor her car would be lame.

  Chapter Twelve

  Max

  Chief Mansell seemed to run out of questions, and they rode in silence in to town. He had placed the ring of keys in an evidence bag on the console between them, and Max picked them up to look at them in the light of the passing streetlights.

  “One of these keys is very different,” she commented, holding up a small brass key. “It looks a lot newer.” The old Sesame Street ditty, “One of these things is not like the others,” started to run through her head.

  “I noticed that,” Mansell said, without looking.

  “Kind of looks like a safe deposit key.”

  Mansell nodded.

  Max turned toward him. “I know you probably can’t talk about it to me, but this whole thing makes no sense. Why put the body on display? The only reason I can think of is exactly what happened: shut down the haunted house and keep people away from it.”

  “It didn’t keep you away from it.”

  “And that made somebody pretty unhappy. That nun’s habit makes it seem like there’s a connection between the murder and that old robbery. Could the money have been hidden here? But why would they have left it that long?”

  Mansell pulled into the parking lot of a small clinic. He put the cruiser in park and turned to her.

  “We got confirmation today that fingerprints found on a cross that was with the habit belonged to a man who died in prison. He was arrested for another crime shortly after the robbery here.”

  “But there’s still one robber at large as far as you know.”

  “All the more reason for you to be cautious and stay away from that house. I see Terry’s car here so I assume you will get a ride with him. I’ll take your dog to his house and check back later to see how your sister is doing.”

  As the chief pulled away, Max felt a mix of humiliation and guilt.

  Inside the clinic, a brightly-lit waiting room greeted Max. One young couple sat holding hands, worried frowns on their faces. While Max stood at the counter, a nurse came out and called “Mr. and Mrs. Hurd?” The couple jumped up to follow her back down a hallway.

  A young man at the desk turned from his computer. “Can I help you?”

  “My sister, Lillian Garrett, was brought in by ambulance?”

  “Yes, she’s in that first cubicle to the right.” He pointed down another hall where several divided sections were enclosed by curtains.

  Max walked to the first curtain and pulled it aside tentatively. Lil lay on a table with Terry by her side. The right leg of her pants had been cut open and a middle-aged woman in a white coat was examining the leg. Black coal dust smeared the pristine white sheet on the examining table.

  “Come in.” Lil gave her a weak smile, and spoke in a thin, raspy voice. “Some of your investigating is kind of hard on my wardrobe.”

  Terry turned to look at Max and frowned. He did not take this as lightly as his mother.

  Max walked up to them. “I’m so sorry. It was a stupid thing to do.”

  “Yes, it was,” Terry said. His voice was flat.

  In spite of knowing her culpability, Max was taken aback. Terry had never been less than respectful to her. She stood there a few moments, unsure of what to say. Terry turned back to his mother.

  Finally she asked, “Is it broken?”

  “I’m afraid so,” answered the doctor. “A small fracture. I’m going to try splinting it first. At her age, we don’t have to worry about too much activity.”

  Terry rolled his eyes. “I wish.”

  Max said, “I think I should go to the waiting room.” She left.

  Max tried looking at a magazine but couldn’t concentrate. She found the restroom, washed her face, and smoothed her hair. Her socks were covered with burrs and her jacket pocket was ripped. After she had done what she could to restore her appearance, she returned to the waiting room.

  She sat and stared into space. The only other person in the waiting room was the young man at the desk. Her brain went from regrets over her part in Lil’s injuries to puzzling over the identity of their attacker and back again.

  Finally, Terry came out of the cubicle, pulling on his jacket. “They’re going to keep her overnight. Let’s get home.” He didn’t wait for an answer but headed for the door. However, his upbringing would not allow him to ignore his manners, and he stopped to hold the door for his aunt.

  Once in the car, Max asked, “Did the doctor splint it or did she have to use a cast?”

  “There’s a splint on it for now,” Terry said.

  “Does Melody know what happened?”

  “Of course. I’ve been talking to her.” Nothing more was said until they pulled in the driveway. He turned to Max. “I’ll handle the kids’ questions. I don’t want you alarming them about their grandmother.”

  Max felt insulted and hurt. “Of course I wouldn’t.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her, shut off the car and got out. Once again he held the front door and inside, took her coat.

  Max’s antics were beginning to exact a price on her joints and muscles, and she hobble
d to the kitchen. Melody and the kids were at the table playing a game of Chutes and Ladders.

  “Aunt Max!” Ren said. “Rosie came home in the police car! Where have you been? Where’s Granny Lil?”

  “Your dad will tell you all about it.” She turned to Melody. “Do you have any coffee made, by any chance?”

  Melody started to get up. “I can make some—unless you’d rather have a glass of wine.”

  “Sit still. That does sound good, but I’ll get it.”

  “There’s an open bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge.”

  Max poured a glass and sat down away from the table while they finished their game.

  Rival turned in his chair. “Dad! What happened to Granny Lil?”

  “She broke a bone in her leg and they had to put a splint on it. Remember when Ren had to have a splint on her arm? Granny’ll stay at the clinic tonight and we’ll pick her up in the morning.”

  “How did she break her leg?” Ren asked.

  “She fell. Now pick up your game because it’s time for you to get up to bed.”

  Ren and Rival raced each other to put pieces in the box, and then charged up the steps. Melody poured herself a glass of wine and sat back down at the table. She grinned at Max. “So spill! What were you two up to?”

  Terry sat down with a bottle of beer “Mel, it isn’t funny,”

  “Of course the broken leg isn’t, but the rest sounds pretty exciting.” She turned back to Max. “So do tell.”

  Max related an abbreviated version of events. When she got to the part about the assailant trying to break down the door with an axe, Melody’s eyes got wide.

  “Wow! Weren’t you scared?”

  “Very,” Max said. “That’s when we tried to get up the inside stairs to get out through the house. But he beat us there and barricaded the door. When we tried to get back down the stairs, one of the steps broke and that’s when Lil got hurt.” She paused for a moment and sipped her wine. “Fortunately we were able to call 911, and the sirens must have scared him off. We did discover a couple of important things before that all happened, though.” She told them about the manikin and the ring of keys.