Another Grave Matter, page 6
part #3 of Volstead Manor Series
He shook his head. “I want you to have it now. It would mean everything to me. Minna would understand.”
I accepted the little glass box, cradling it in my hands as if Granny were handing it to me herself. Then, wanting to hear the sweet tune, I turned the windup key. The delicate notes of “I Love You Truly” filled the air. Granny’s beloved song.
I looked through the glass top of the music box and studied the inner parts—the tiny comb and spring motor and cylinder. The delicate flywheel spun so fast, it became a apparitional image. But the music, oh, the music, brought the memory of Granny back so profoundly I could almost hear her laughing softly—almost feel her pat my cheek as she used to. I looked at the count with what I knew were tearful eyes. “Thank you for this.”
“You’re very welcome.”
I looked at him again, hoping the music box was truly a gift and not a bribe of some kind. He pushed his glasses back, and then looking frustrated, he took them off and folded them up. It was hard not to notice that there were no deep marks on the sides of his nose. Perhaps the glasses were something new in his life. I cleared my throat. “Do you know why Granny loved this particular music box?”
He smiled. “No, I don’t, but I’d love to know why.”
“Because she loved seeing inside it, how it worked. She always said that to know a thing’s true essence, to understand it, doesn’t take away from the wonder or marvel of a thing. It only adds to its beauty. And in that way, we were both alike. We both cherished the truth.”
The count reddened and then coughed. “I’m sorry. Excuse me. I seem to have choked on that silly mint.”
I was sad and a little bit afraid to think it, but his remark was a falsehood—since the mint was long gone. The tune had wound down, and it was time for me to go. I swung my legs around to the open door. “Take care.”
The count reached out to me. “But, I was hoping we could get to know each other a bit better. I’d love to take you out to eat. Perhaps a place where you will feel comfortable. Maybe your favorite coffee shop.”
“How did you know I have a favorite coffee shop?” I tried to keep my voice light and free of suspicion.
“Isn’t that one of the enchantments of women? They have special places they congregate. And share their secrets?” He chuckled, but his face was still flushed.
I wasn’t sure “secrets” was the best choice of words under the circumstances, but for Granny’s sake, I would consider his offer. “Maybe we could meet for coffee sometime.”
His face lit up. “How about now?”
“I’m sorry, but maybe when I have some free time. Your detective gave me his business card, so I’m sure I can get in touch with you through Mr. Loon.”
“That is most generous. I will look forward to it. . .if you are able to.” The count dipped his head.
Since I wasn’t certain if I’d ever see him again, I decided to shake his hand. For Granny’s sake.
The count hesitated briefly, grasped my fingers, and then retreated as if my hands were on fire. But in that second of contact, I discovered something—perhaps something he didn’t want me to know. The count’s palm was as rough and scratchy as firewood. He had the thick hands of a man who did hard labor—not the smooth skin of the idle rich.
11 – The Vultures Were Gathering
“Take care.” I scooted myself out into light. If I ever had coffee with the count, I’d certainly have a few more questions. Where does one come from these days to be a count? England? Eastern Europe? I had no idea. But he had no accent, except for a hint of Texas twang. How strange. I rubbed my neck. No matter how generous and eloquent he was or how much he had adored Granny, the lines on the paper of my encounter with Count Maroni were still decidedly crooked.
Since I was in dire need of fresh air and some strawberry-rhubarb pie, I headed around the sidewalk toward Magnolia’s house. On my little walk, I passed the house of my brand-new neighbor, Zola Fowler. The Count and Zola.What a pair. Apparently, there were two additional cranks to add to my new cast of characters. The limo made its last turn and then disappeared around the corner. The vultures were indeed gathering.
I gingerly placed Granny’s music box in my purse, hiked up to Magnolia’s porch, and rang her bell. When Magnolia answered the door, I saw a woman standing near her in the entry.
“Oh, you finally came for your pie,” Magnolia said. “Come on in.”
I stepped inside and smiled at the woman, who suddenly looked familiar to me.
“Bailey, I think you and Mrs. Herring know each other. Met at my Christmas party.” Magnolia wore an exaggeratedly bland expression, which was hidden from Mrs. Herring.
“Yes, I believe we did.” The woman stepped forward with her hand outstretched. “I’m Penelope Herring.”
She wore a navy suit with a dragonfly shoulder pin that said she took her jewelry very seriously. Mrs. Herring also had red hair forced into a bouffant. Amazing that women were still torturing their hair. Her toothy smile missed me altogether, since it seemed to be directed at an unseen audience.
Magnolia turned to Mrs. Herring. “Well, since Bailey is here, why don’t you share your concerns with her? I’m sure she’ll—”
“Oh, no. Of course not. And it wasn’t really a concern. Merely a question.” The blood vessel in her forehead bulged a bit.
“I’m here. You might as well ask me.” I wasn’t totally sure I meant that. This woman didn’t look like her query was going to be anything as good as the smell of the pie that was wafting in from the kitchen. In fact, I really hoped she wasn’t going to stay. Eating pie with this woman could be painful.
“Well, I’ll mention it briefly before I go.” Mrs. Herring opened her purse, took out what looked like a miniature bottle of antibacterial spray, and then gave her hands a little spritz.
I blinked, wondering if she thought I’d brought some sort of contamination into the house.
“I was so sorry to hear about your fire.” Mrs. Herring made tiny clacking sounds with her tongue. “The neighborhood is just sick about it.”
“Thank you for your concern.” But that wasn’t a question. Why did people always have to butter you up with flattery before they dropped you in a red-hot pan? Just ask the question.
“Well, it’s been good for the neighborhood that you refurbished the façade of your house. There are others still who need to take up your fine example.”
“Thank you.” Guess I still hadn’t been dropped in the pan quite yet.
We all stood there in silence long enough to make us all do several rounds of throat clearing until Mrs. Herring said, “So, after the fire, I wondered if you plan to keep the same façade. I mean, it’s very impressive with the wood and stone work. And the turret with its spire and all. But will you keep it peculiarly. . .gothic?”
“Well, the fire didn’t ruin the front of the house, except for a little of the turret. And even if the fire had damaged the frontage, it would be difficult to change Volstead Manor since the architect created the whole of it to be a distinctively gothic work of art.”
“I see.” Mrs. Herring snapped her purse shut as well as her lips. “Well, I’d better be going. I’ve got an appointment to have my face vacuumed.”
“You take care now.” Magnolia swung the door open so fast it caused a whooshing sound. After the door had gone shut, she pulled a tea towel off her shoulder, patted her forehead with it, and leaned against the door. “Oh, if you hadn’t come when you did.”
“That bad?”
“I love all God’s creatures, but that woman.” She took my arm. “And what’s that about her face being vacuumed? Sounds dangerous.”
I laughed. “Got pie?”
“Sure do. Come on in.”
I walked into Magnolia’s kitchen and let the sweet aromas and warm embrace of her favorite place seep into my spirit. I could feel how much she loved this room. Touches of gingham and polka dots and florals decorated the kitchen. Nothing really matched, but all things made you feel as if you’d come home. And Magnolia truly loved sharing her gift of pie-baking with the people she loved. I felt grateful that I was one of those people. Since the table wasn’t set I reached up in the cupboard and brought down cups and saucers, remembering Magnolia preferred the one with the tiny yellow rosebuds—the one her mother had given her years before.
Magnolia poured some hot water into the teapot, dropped three bags of Earl Gray into the water, and slid a lavender cosy over the pot like it was a blankey.
She placed slices of pie on the table and I sighed, looking at the tender crust and oozing red fruit. “So what did Mrs. Herring say to you exactly? About my house?”
“Oh, now you don’t pay any attention to Mrs. Herring. She is just full of prune whip, heavy on the prunes.” Magnolia eased herself down onto a chair across from me.
“No, I really want to know.”
She frowned. “Well, if you’re sure you want to know. . .Mrs. Herring said she hoped your insurance company would want to bulldoze your house.”
My bite of pie stopped in midair. “But why?”
“Penelope Herring has a phobia.”
“A phobia?” I set my forkful of pastry down. “What kind of phobia?”
Magnolia looked at me. “She has an irrational fear of all things gothic.”
12 – Disturbing and Dreamlike
Maybe I really don’t want to know the mind of Penelope Herring after all.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you. You’ve gone all pasty.”
“No, I’m all right.” I took a bite of pie to prove it. “Oh, this is so fine.” I pointed to the pie with my fork. “Oh, now this is your best pie ever. This has an open-your-own-restaurant-called-Magnolia’s-Pies quality to it.” Then I let my tongue do the salsa with it for a minute before my stomach had a chance to dance. “Magnolia’s pastries—rhapsody in a pie plate.”
Magnolia grinned. “You say that every time.”
“I know. But it’s true every time.”
“Only reason you’re saying it this time is because it’s going on one o’clock and you probably forgot to eat lunch again. I know I’m a broken record, but honey, you are going to blow away one of these days, and when you do, we’ll never be able to find you.” She shook her head.
“You’re right. I did forget lunch.” And there had been plenty of time to eat, especially since my day was beginning to feel like a week’s journey. I gobbled up a couple more bites. “I’m a little surprised about Mrs. Herring’s fear. I knew phobias could get pretty bizarre, but I’ve never heard of that one before. I feel sorry for her if my house is causing her dread and anxiety every time she sees it. The first time I saw Volstead Manor it struck fear in my heart too.”
Magnolia chuckled
But on another internal note, I wondered just how much Mrs. Herring despised and feared my house. A little? A lot? Enough to set fire to it? Apparently another vulture had joined the pack. But I kept those baleful ponderings to myself.
Magnolia removed the cosy from the teapot and poured two steaming cups of Earl Gray. “None of these houses match or fit with each other, especially the ones here on Midnight Falls. But that’s the charm of this old neighborhood. Yours just happens to be gothic. So Penelope has choices. She can get some counseling, or get some deliverance, or she can let a big moving van roll her right on out of this neighborhood. And if God doesn’t mind me saying so, I think we’d all prefer the last one. But you didn’t hear that from me.” She winked.
I laughed. “Okay.” I breathed in the essence of the tea and took a sip. “Ahh.” Just like drinking the finest perfume.
Magnolia smiled as she cradled the cup in her hands. “That ‘ahh’ in the tea comes from the Earl’s secret. . .oil of bergamot. . .from Italy.”
“Oh, really?”
Magnolia took a bite of her pie. “You getting all ready for your wedding? I’d better not hear about you canceling.”
“You heard about Dedra, then. News travels fast around here.”
“Yeah, she called me, but she didn’t really give me a chance to talk to her. But I will.” Magnolia had a motherly, but determined glint in her eye.
“I wish you would. She’ll listen to you.” I took a careful sip from my cup.
Magnolia and I continued our munching until we were both too full of pie to move. But all the laughter seemed to burn off enough calories so that I could take my leave and make my way back to the manor to continue my search for clues.
After a brisk walk around the crescent-shaped sidewalk to my house, I opened the front door of Volstead Manor and sighed. Now where was I? It appeared my life had become a stream of interruptions.
Room by room and floor by floor, including the turret and attic room, I went through Volstead Manor, meticulously looking for anything unusual. Anything at all that caught my attention.
I found absolutely nothing—nothing, that is, beyond the fuse box. But then again, maybe that was all I needed. It seemed to me, though, before I called the authorities, it would be more than nice to have built up a bit more evidence.
A detailed search around the perimeter of the house would be a good move, but I decided to have a quick look in the cellar first. No one could have started the fire down there, since the door was hidden, and yet I felt this unexplainable tug to once again explore that underground room.
Over the last several months, I’d given some carefully selected friends and folks a tour of the cellar, so I was getting a little more familiar with the space. But because the lighting had never been modernized in that part of the house, I still hadn’t seen the contents well enough to study everything down there. Wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look anyway.
To prepare for my trek into the darkness, I gathered up my flashlights and set them in the library. I unzipped my purse and pulled out an ornate piece of brass, which was the top of a perfume bottle I’d found in an old chest. Amazingly, it had turned out to be the key to opening the passageway. The society of women who’d run a bootlegging business out of Volstead Manor had been quite ingenious, not only in the way the door opened, but in the way it had been concealed within a paneled wall in the library. In fact, I never would have found the door had it not been for the clues hidden in that same chest. Yes, the ladies had been quite clever, but it was inventiveness driven by criminal intent.
When all was in readiness, I knelt down on the wooden floor as I had so many times before. I took the coiled piece of brass and pressed it into the matching notch along the baseboard. I recognized the heavy release of an internal mechanism, and as always, I moved out of the way as the hidden door swung open, appearing magically out of the wall.
The blackness from the vault-like interior seemed to swallow up the light from the library. Perhaps the impression came from my spiritual views of the sinister purposes of the underground room, but I was never for sure.
I switched on all the flashlights. Then I proceeded to place one of them around my neck, strap the headlamp to my forehead, and pick up the hand-carry, wide-beam, whopper-sized flashlight. I’d never been more prepared or looked sillier.
After stepping into the darkness, I stopped at the landing and turned to face the staircase, which led downward into more gloom. Chilled air curled around me like wraithlike fingers, seeping through my clothes and even my jacket.
I turned my full load of light downward into the inky-black passageway. The beams from my flashlights not only lit the staircase, but they also busied themselves producing eerie shadows on the brick walls and the wooden stairs. Eerie enough, in fact, to make any sane person run the other way. But I would, as always, rise above the horror.
My left hand carried the flashlight while my right hand locked onto the rickety railing. I eased down to the first step. Then the second. But the moment my foot hung over the third step, images, disturbing and dreamlike, invaded my thoughts. How could anyone forget? The first day I’d come down the cellar staircase, I’d seen the tripwire on the third step. When I’d experimented with a sack of potatoes—dropping it on the wire—a small section of the staircase had opened up like the jaws of a monster. It was meant to consume whoever was on the stairs, making the victim fall into the dark abyss underneath the staircase, the same way the sack of potatoes had been devoured. That kind of memory snapshot could pull the rug out from under a good night’s sleep for a long time. And it had.
Together Max and I had carefully cut the tripwire and removed all traces of it, and yet I still passed over that third step. Way over it. I tottered a bit and grabbed onto the railing to regain my balance. The rotten wood moaned in disapproval. Then the railing snapped. I stumbled down a couple of steps as my shoulder skidded along the rough bricks. The handheld flashlight burst out of my grip, tumbled down a few steps, and then flickered out. My descent scudded to a painful halt.
Great. Just great. I limped down a few more steps and sat down to assess the damage. My jacket sleeve was frayed, but not torn all the way through. My arm and shoulder throbbed, enough that I was guaranteed a bruise in the morning. I pointed my headlamp downward and picked up my handheld flashlight. I shook the thing. Nothing. Then I gave it a few good slaps on the side. The light flickered back on. Well, that was something.
I could easily give up my potentially worthless expedition, but determination once again superceded logic. So, after taking on the rest of the steps, I was swallowed up by the cellar—into the surreal and cheerless room, the musty aroma of all things old, and a very dicey piece of history. I just stood there, shining my lights around the place to get used to my surroundings. The underground parlor—which still took my breath away—could have been the group’s meeting place to discuss their illegal enterprises, or it could have also been their own private speakeasy. “Hmm. Prohibition. Guess it wasn’t quite as effective as they thought it would be.”
A thick film of fine dust still covered everything. No dirt had been whisked away and everything was just as I’d found it on that first day of discovery. I’d taken nothing, except for the Penumbra Ruby. My inaction wasn’t out of respect for the women of the shadows—since the ladies didn’t deserve my esteem—but it came from an expectation, that after the wedding and the adoption, our little family might enjoy coming up with a workable plan surrounding the cellar and its contents.
