Danger in a Red Dress

by Christina Dodd

  He hit the corridor outside Mrs. Manly’s bedroom and saw Susan running toward him. “What?” he asked. “What?”

  She grabbed him by the arm. “Hannah killed Mrs. Manly. Carrick caught her. She convinced me she was sick, to allow her into the bedroom next to Mrs. Manly’s, and once she was there, she knocked Carrick out the door.”

  Gabriel saw his brother writhing on the floor, clutching his chest and gasping.

  Susan kept talking. “She barricaded herself inside. I don’t know what she’s thinking. She’s trapped.”

  “She killed Mrs. Manly?” Gabriel hadn’t even processed the first sentence.

  Susan comprehended far too much. “I never saw it coming, either. I thought she was . . . Man, Gabriel, I am so sorry.”

  She put her hand on his arm, and nothing she could have done made this as real as her disbelief, her sympathy.

  Gabriel looked in Mrs. Manly’s bedroom, saw a motley assortment of guests and servants milling around. He heard them gasp words like murdered and poisoned. A reporter took photo after photo of the motionless pale body on the bed. Some guy dressed like a zombie used his cell phone to capture every aspect of the scene. Some woman dressed like a cat hovered over the tray of medications, snapping photos, and as Gabriel watched, she moved a syringe into a more photogenic position.

  With a volume that got the attention of every person in the room, Gabriel shouted, “Unless you have official business in here, get out!” Directly to the female, he said, “And don’t touch anything.”

  The servants looked startled, the guests indignant. The female said, “I am a reporter for the Bangor Free Press and I have the right—”

  “Out!” He pointed to the exit.

  She jumped, and something about him must have convinced her he meant business. She started backing toward the door and babbling, “The people have the right to know!”

  “And you have the right to go to jail for contaminating a crime scene,” he said coldly. The cops were going to have a fit.

  She knew it, too, because she left in a hurry, probably to send off her photos.

  Nelson took over, shoving people out. In the corridor, one of Gabriel’s men arrived and briskly directed them down the stairs.

  Turning back to Susan, Gabriel asked in a low voice, “Are you sure Hannah did it?”

  “Carrick witnessed the act.” Susan indicated the still-moaning Carrick. “We’ve got the video. Do you want to go watch—”

  “Later. But first . . .” He walked to the bedroom where Hannah cowered within. He turned the knob.

  It was locked.

  He hit the door with his shoulder.

  It was solid oak.

  He didn’t care. Over and over he smacked the door, putting the strength of his shattered illusions behind him.

  “Stop it.” Susan grabbed his arm and threw him off-balance. “Let me open the lock.”

  He stepped back, breathing hard, and watched her kneel at the door and pull a long thin, sharp knife from the pocket of her jacket. A weapon and, in this instance, a lock pick.

  “Gabriel. Gabriel, call . . . ambulance,” Carrick said faintly.

  Nelson rushed out of Mrs. Manly’s bedroom. “Sir!” He hurried to Carrick’s side. “What happened?”

  “She hit me . . . with a lamp.” Nelson helped Carrick push himself up against the wall. “Broken ribs. Again. Worse.”

  Gabriel switched his attention to Carrick, examined him visually, decided he was right. He had a broken rib or two. He’d live. “I’d say your ribs are the least of our problems.”

  “And she killed my mother.” Carrick’s voice caught, and a tear squeezed from the corner of his eye.

  “An ambulance is already on the way.” Gabriel could hear the sirens, screaming madly.

  Susan turned the knob. “It’s open.” She pushed on the door. It smacked something. Something big.

  Gabriel returned to the assault, smacking the door with his shoulder. “Hannah! Hannah, open this door!”

  Nothing. Hannah said nothing.

  And treacherously, his sense of rage and betrayal turned to worry. “Susan! Get somebody under the window in case she decides to jump.”

  Susan started to say something, probably to point out that a jump from the second story wouldn’t kill Hannah.

  He challenged her with a stare. “Or in case there’s a tree she can climb down.”

  “Right.” Susan called for backup outside and up here.

  “She wouldn’t dare jump,” Carrick said. “She’d better not.”

  Gabriel noted Carrick spoke well enough when he was angry. “Nelson, get a couple of your burliest men. One woman barricaded this door. We can damn well push it open.”

  They did, but it took four of them.

  Gabriel squeezed through first, prepared for a blow to the head, a gunshot, prepared for an ambush, anything . . . except an empty room. He looked around, noting that the window was locked from the inside. “Hannah. Come out,” he called.

  No answer.

  With increasing disbelief, he looked in the bathroom, the closet.

  She wasn’t here.

  Susan got in next, shoving the furniture and the area rug away from the door.

  Carrick came through, supported by Nelson on one side and one of the footmen on the other. “Where is that bitch? I want to see her face when I . . . Where is she?”

  “Don’t move,” Gabriel said.

  Carrick kept walking.

  “I said, don’t move.”

  Carrick froze.

  Gabriel stood in the middle of the room, looking at the patterns in the carpet. Before the party, some maid had vacuumed it, and since that moment, no one except Hannah had been in here. He saw her footprints from the door to the wall, the mark she’d made while she sat on the floor. He saw the lamp she’d used on Carrick as a battering ram, and then . . . then there were marks by the bookcase. Something had been swung open there. He walked over and yanked on a shelf. Nothing moved. The thing was solid. Turning, he drilled Carrick with his gaze. “Are there hiding places in the walls?”

  “No. Not that I found. Supposedly there are secret passages, but I never found those, either.” Carrick’s voice rose. “Gabriel, are you trying to tell me that you lost her? You lost the woman who murdered my mother? She escaped somehow through some mythical secret passage and I’ll never see her brought to justice?”

  With a cool gaze, Gabriel considered Carrick. “Since I’m not the one who let her hit me with a lamp, I’m going to have to say that, no, I didn’t lose her. You did. Now—Nelson, get someone to break open that bookcase. Call me as soon as you do.” He turned to Susan. “Come on. We’re going to look at the video.”

  They walked past his sputtering brother and into a corridor now guarded by Gabriel’s men, and bustling with EMTs and emergency personnel.

  “Is there video for that bedroom? The one with the bookcase?” Susan asked.

  “No. I didn’t set up in the empty rooms. The more fool me.” Gabriel strode toward his office lined with monitors and digital surveillance equipment. It took only a second to cue up the video for the last hour of Mrs. Manly’s life. He ran the ballroom, the corridors, the elevator, and her bedroom simultaneously, and almost at once they saw Carrick in Mrs. Manly’s bedroom.

  At once, Susan asked, “What the hell is he doing in there?”

  The bed was turned back, and Carrick smoothed the pillow, then placed a red rose in the center.

  Susan sighed and relaxed. “Poor guy.”

  At the same time, they caught the image of Mrs. Manly and Hannah entering the elevator.

  Mrs. Manly raged, “That little twit. He dared—”

  Gabriel turned up the sound.

  Susan pointed at Mrs. Manly’s flushed face. “She already looks ill there.”

  “Yes,” Gabriel agreed. The woman had been in poor health, and only the slightest push would send her into the great beyond. And who knew that better than Hannah?

  Mrs. Manly c
ontinued, “Carrick said I knew where the money is. He said the government knew I knew.” The two women exited the elevator. Hannah made some comforting noises. “I asked how they had found out, and he . . . that little brat!”

  “He told the government that you knew about the fortune?” Hannah asked.

  “Whoa. Do you suppose that’s true?” Susan asked.

  “No. I don’t know.” Gabriel didn’t want to think of that. He needed to listen, to see.

  In Mrs. Manly’s bedroom . . . “He did it to smoke me out,” Mrs. Manly said.

  Hannah walked to the medications and the syringes, laid neatly on a tray. “But you didn’t admit it was true.”

  “Did she just say what I think she said?” Susan asked.

  “Mrs. Manly knew where the fortune is, and she told Hannah.” Gabriel comprehended, but he could scarcely believe. All the watching, the listening, and to find out now that these two women had always—

  Hannah’s voice rose. “Mrs. Manly, you didn’t tell him you knew? Did you?”

  “Yes. I told him. And told him he was never getting it. Never getting a dime!”

  “Look at her face.” Susan pointed at Hannah. “She’s horrified. She must have been afraid Carrick was going to make her testify about the fortune and she would lose it.”

  “It’s too late for reproaches. It’s done.” Mrs. Manly climbed on the bed, ripped off the headdress. “He made me so angry. Just like his father. Just like his father. Betraying me at every turn. What the hell is poking me?” She pulled a flower out from under her head, flung it to the floor.

  “Listen to her talk. She’s wheezing,” Susan said.

  “I know.” Gabriel wished he didn’t.

  Hannah took Mrs. Manly’s blood pressure and her blood sugar. She called nine-one-one.

  Susan noted, “That was a tactical error. The jury is going to note that she called for the ambulance before she needed it.”

  Hannah brought the tray with the medications and syringes. She gave Mrs. Manly a tablet and told her to calm down. Mrs. Manly told her to go and send the money off.

  “The government will put you in jail.” Hannah prepared two injections.

  “The government’s going to send me to jail anyway, thanks to my Judas of a son. Besides, you have to do it tonight.” Mrs. Manly looked sorry. “I told him you knew.”

  Syringe in hand, Hannah stared at Mrs. Manly, and the expression on her face . . .

  “She looks like she’s ready to shriek at Mrs. Manly,” Susan said. “Mrs. Manly knows it, too. Do you suppose Hannah abused that old woman?”

  “I never saw evidence of it.” But had Gabriel seen only what he wanted to see? Had he deliberately overlooked mistreatment of some kind, all because he’d grown too fond of Hannah Grey?

  Mrs. Manly kept talking. “I know. That was stupid. I was in a rage. I said too much. But he’s just like his father, and I couldn’t . . . By God, that kind of betrayal twice in one lifetime is too much for any one person to stand.”

  “She really doesn’t think much of Carrick, does she?” Susan asked reflectively. “Neither of them does.”

  “Carrick said Hannah was influencing his mother adversely.” Gabriel was listening to the video and responding to Susan’s comments. He knew he was making sense. Yet he had never felt like this in his life, as if a great stone sat on his chest and crushed the air out of him. No, not the air—the hope. Because he knew what was coming. He had to watch, but he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand it if Hannah had really killed Mrs. Manly. And he knew that she had. Every word of this conversation condemned her.

  “I’ll send the money, but first, let’s keep you alive another day. First the insulin.” Hannah gave the injection efficiently, quickly.

  Susan pointed as Mrs. Manly groaned and rubbed the site. “Clearly, she was in pain already.”

  Mrs. Manly said, “I put money behind the photo on my desk. Two thousand dollars. You may need it.”

  “No wonder she grabbed that picture frame!” Susan said.

  When Mrs. Manly gave specific instructions on how to get into the secret passage, Susan promptly called the information down to Mark.

  Mrs. Manly asked if Hannah remembered the codes to activate the account, and Hannah coolly agreed she did.

  Then the horror started. Hannah gave Mrs. Manly another injection.

  “Can’t breathe.” Mrs. Manly clawed at her throat.

  “You’re hyperventilating.” Hannah placed a pillow under Mrs. Manly’s head. “Just breathe slowly.”

  “Dear girl, I think you’ve killed me.” Then, “No use,” Mrs. Manly gasped, and she called for her son. “Carrick . . .”

  As Hannah listened to her heart, gave her another injection, did frantic CPR, Susan watched intently. “Hannah’s doing everything right, going through the motions.”

  “She even looks upset. Maybe she didn’t know it would take effect before she could escape.” Gabriel was proud of how calm he sounded, how analytical.

  With her last breath, Mrs. Manly whispered, “Betrayed . . .” And she was dead.

  Gabriel stood stiffly, propelled to his feet by anguish and fury. “I’ve seen enough. I’m going down to join the search. I will find her.”

  Susan watched him stride away, and whispered, “Then God help Hannah Grey, because she hasn’t got a chance.”

  TWENTY

  Hannah hurried down the steps in the secret passage, her heart pounding in her ears. She hated the silence, so profound, so alone. She hated that darkness, so thick and old. At the same time, she feared sound, she feared light, she feared the moment her pursuers ripped open the walls looking for her, found the bookcase and the secret passage, and set off in hot pursuit, baying like a pack of bloodhounds.

  The stairs kept turning, zigzagging through the hidden parts of Balfour House. The stairs leveled off on the main floor, and as she walked along the long wall, she could dimly hear music and voices. The ballroom. A few steps more, and it was quiet again. She passed an entrance, the back of a bookcase. Then down she plunged again, the steps winding, then leveling off, winding, then leveling off. She knew she was in the basement when once again she saw the outline of a bookcase.

  There she hesitated, her hand on the latch.

  If she were a good person, she would do as she had promised Mrs. Manly. She would come out of hiding, go to the computer in the butler’s office, bring up the program, punch in the code, and return Nathan Manly’s fortune to the people.

  But Hannah wasn’t a good person. She wanted to live, to be free, and if she was captured, she knew without a doubt she’d be convicted of murder and sentenced to prison—or even executed. Judges and juries were notoriously harsh on nurses who betrayed their patients’ trust.

  She wasn’t going to do the right thing. She was a coward.

  But guilt prodded at her. Taking the thin pen out of her breast pocket, she wrote in tiny letters on the wood on the back of the bookcase.

  Household Accounts. Silverware, Inventory. Capital B. Capital H. Small N. Capital M. Small C. Asterisk. 1898.

  In case she forgot. In case she died and someone someday found the code. Not Carrick, but . . . someone.

  Then she hurried on.

  The stairs plunged down again, leveled off, and abruptly the walls and floor turned from boards to stone. She stopped and shone her light around. She was in a cave. It was dry but cool. The floor sloped down. The ceiling got lower. And at the far end, she could see a wall.

  Mrs. Manly hadn’t sent her into a trap. Had she?

  Hannah walked forward, grateful for her flat rubber-soled shoes. They gave her the traction she needed to cross the rough stone . . . to the wall at the end of the tunnel. The wall with a thick metal door.

  The hinges and the lock showed spots of rust, and the lever shrieked as she pressed it down.

  It didn’t open.

  She pushed it up.

  It didn’t open.

  She licked her dry lips, and frantically shot the f
lashlight around the cave.

  There. There on the floor. A dull glint of metal. A key on a ring.

  She grabbed it, fit it in the lock, and turned. Inside the lock mechanism, she felt a grinding as years of rust were dislodged. The tumblers and pins rasped past one another, moving slowly when she needed to hurry. Hurry.

  She pushed against the key. The shaft began to twist, to warp. Just as she feared it would break off in the lock, the mechanism clicked into place.

  She pressed her hand against the door. It was cold. Freezing against her palm. What was on the other side? The police? A furious, murderous Carrick? Or a cold-eyed, accusing Trent?

  Yet she had to go forward.

  She knelt on the rough stone floor, set the picture frame down, and opened the back. Just as Mrs. Manly promised, there was money. Hundreds, fifties and twenties. It would save her life—if her life could be saved. If she could escape Balfour House and the estate without being detected.

  She stuffed the cash into the capacious pockets in her skirt, then lifted the photograph away from the glass. It showed a glowing Melinda, dressed in her wedding gown, clinging to handsome Nathan’s arm.

  Hannah had no time, but she couldn’t leave the picture here to be found by the searchers or, worse, never to be found at all. Carefully she folded it down the middle, then ripped it in half and tucked Mrs. Manly’s image into her breast pocket. With a violence that spoke volumes, she crumpled Nathan and tossed him aside.

  Standing, she pulled the key from the lock. She turned off her flashlight and placed it in her pocket. Pressing the lever down, she leaned against the door. Something fought against her, something more powerful than rusty old hinges. She cracked the door an inch.

  The wind gusted through the opening with all the vigor of an incoming winter storm. She held on to the handle, desperate that the door not slam back and alert any searchers of her whereabouts. Taking a breath, she stepped out of the cool cave and into the blasting wind. Carefully, she shut the door. She locked it.