A Catered Thanksgiving (22 page)

B
ernie woke with a start. For a moment she looked around, not knowing where she was, and then everything came rushing back. She groaned as she glanced down at her watch. The numbers on her watch dial were illuminated. They read 5:10. She looked across the way. Libby was sound asleep. Her lips were slightly parted. Bernie could tell from the way that her sister's eyelids were twitching that she was dreaming.

And it was still snowing, although not as hard as it had been. Hopefully, the police would be able to get here by this afternoon, and she and Libby would be able to go home. Finally. She didn't even want to think of all the shoveling she and Libby were going to have to do when they finally got back to Longely.

And then there was the shop, Bernie thought as she repinned her hair. The shop. They were officially closed today, so that was good, but they were going to have to get there by this evening, at the latest, so they could start baking. Otherwise, they wouldn't have anything to sell tomorrow morning. The store had never had an unscheduled closing, except for the week after her mother had died, and Bernie wasn't about to let that happen now.

Bernie rubbed her arms. It had gotten colder since she'd fallen asleep. Maybe the cold had woken her up. Or maybe she had woken up because she was hungry. She sat up and slipped on her boots and her jacket. Hopefully, she'd be able to find some leftovers in the kitchen.

If she remembered correctly, there was still some turkey and stuffing the last time she'd checked, as well as cheese, crackers, and nuts. And if worst came to worst, she could cobble something together out of that stash of camping food she and Libby had found. Then she'd go back to sleep until seven thirty, when she had to wake everyone up and get them out of their rooms.

Personally, she'd like to leave all of them in there—it was so much pleasanter not having to hear their constant arguing—but that wasn't a possibility. Bernie passed the stairs on the way to the kitchen, automatically checking as she did to make sure that the marbles were in place. But not only were they not in place, they weren't there.

She moved closer. The marbles were definitely not there. None of them. It was as if they'd never been. Someone had taken them during the night. She considered the implications of that fact. There were lots of them, and the more she thought about what they were, the angrier she got. Whoever was doing this was playing games with her, and she, for one, had had enough. Bottom line. She was tired of being jerked around. She was tired of being here. She wanted to get this settled and get the hell out.

She reached in her pocket and took out the skeleton key and weighed it in her hand before slipping it back in her pocket. For a moment Bernie debated going back and waking up Libby and telling her what had happened, but decided against it. She didn't want to talk. She wanted to act. She ran up the stairs and tried the bedroom doors on the second floor.

The doors that she'd locked last night were still locked. Bernie stood outside of them, held her breath, and listened as hard as she could. She heard snores from Ralph and Perceval's and Melissa's rooms and nothing from the others. Next, she slowly opened the doors and peeked inside. Everyone appeared to be asleep. She carefully closed the doors and relocked them.

She checked out Geoff's and Monty's rooms next. They looked the same as they had last night. She sat on Monty's bed and thought about Geoff. Okay. So was he the one who had taken the marbles, or had someone else let themselves out of their room, collected the marbles, then locked themselves back in and crawled into bed?

Put like that, she was betting on Geoff. Bernie got off the bed and hurried down the stairs. She checked the first floor and the garage. No Geoff. She studied the snow piled up outside the front and back doors and the windows. It was smooth. There were no footprints. Geoff hadn't gone out. Frustrated, she headed for the kitchen to make some coffee. Even though she didn't want to waste the time, experience had taught her that she needed it to think. After it was done, she would wake up Libby. They had to talk.

 

In Libby's dream the snow kept on falling. And falling. It covered the houses and the sky. It smothered the air and weighed down the roofs of the houses. The houses collapsed slowly, each one breaking apart into shards of gingerbread, which melted in the snow, leaving terrible dark stains. She knew if she could get up to the attic, she could fix the leak. She could stop this. But there was no way up. The stairway was hidden. She needed the magic words. But in order to get them, she had to swim through the snow. Suddenly she was in a castle. There were snow flowers. Everything was glittering. Then something was shaking her. Her eyes flew open. She saw Bernie bending over her.

“Rise and shine, sunshine,” Bernie said. “It's time to get up.”

Libby groaned. “I had the worst dream. Except for the end.”

“Tell me about it later,” Bernie answered as she shoved a cup of coffee under Libby's nose.

Libby started to get up and groaned again. Everything hurt. Her back hurt. Her legs hurt. Her neck hurt. And her head. Her head hurt most of all. She had a throbbing headache right above her eyes. Or maybe it was behind her eyes. Or maybe it was both. And her mouth felt cottony and dry. And she had a bad taste in it. A very bad taste.

She looked at her glass, which was still sitting on the coffee table right where she'd left it. The smell made her want to throw up. And she hadn't even had that much to drink. Maybe four ounces of brandy at the most. Somehow it didn't seem fair to be so hung over after drinking so little. Now she remembered why she mostly stuck to beer and wine.

Bernie examined her sister. “You don't look good,” she said. An understatement. Libby looked like Medusa with her hair going every which way, but she was trying to be polite.

“I don't feel good,” Libby said.

“You have drool on your chin.”

Libby wiped it away with the back of her hand.

“Have some coffee.”

Libby squinched up her face. “Ugh.”

“How about a raw egg?”

“That's disgusting.”

“But effective.”

“I'll take the coffee,” Libby said, reaching for it. She took a sip, made a face, and took another sip. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Five thirty.”

Libby grimaced. “I want to go back to sleep.”

“You can't. The marbles are gone.”

Libby gave her a blank look as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the sofa. She felt as if she was in a stupor. “What marbles?”

Bernie snorted impatiently. Her sister always took forever to wake up. “The marbles I put on the stairs. Remember?”

“Oh, those marbles,” Libby said.

“Like we had so many of them.”

It was all coming back to Libby. Geoff. The Field family. The marbles Bernie had put on the stairs, which Libby had thought was an incredibly stupid idea, anyway.

“They're gone,” Bernie repeated. “Vanished. Evaporated.”

“I get it,” Libby said as she wiped the sleep out of her eyes with the sleeve of her black cardigan sweater and patted her hair into place. Why did Bernie always look so good? She could spend a week sleeping in the back of a truck—and had—and still look perfect. It wasn't fair.

“Someone took them.”

“Obviously.” Libby took another sip of her coffee. “Couldn't you have waited another half an hour to tell me this?”

“No. It's not my fault if you can't drink and decided to, anyway.”

“Sometimes you are beyond outrageous.”

“Well, it's true.”

“So you admit you are outrageous.”

Bernie grunted. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“No,” Libby snapped. “I want to stay here, because it's so much fun. Of course I want to leave. We have to get back to the shop so we can start baking.”

Bernie nodded her head up and down vigorously. “Which is why we need to get this Monty thing sorted out, because if we don't, we're going to be answering questions from the cops forever when they finally arrive. And if we're really unlucky, they'll hold us over.”

“I…”

“Which means,” Bernie continued, “that we have to find Geoff and we have to find him now. He's the nearest thing to a lead we have.”

Libby leaned forward. “I'm not disagreeing with you, Bernie.”

“Good.”

“You know, you're not exactly Little Miss Sunshine, either.”

Bernie grinned. “That makes two of us.”

Libby rubbed her temples. She felt slightly better after she had the coffee, but not by much. “How are we going to find Geoff?” she asked.

“I don't know,” Bernie admitted. “I already looked through the house. He's somewhere, but I don't know where.”

Libby drained the rest of her coffee and put the cup on the coffee table. “If that's the case, then I think we should do the next best thing. I think we should go back upstairs and wake everyone up. Maybe one of them isn't asleep. Maybe we'll learn something. At least it's something to do.”

“As in if I'm up, they should be, too?”

“Precisely,” Libby said. She got up and put her parka on. “It's gotten colder in here.”

“Yes. It has.” Bernie grinned. “Let's go and kick some butt. That should warm everything up.”

“Let's,” Libby said. For once in her life she was looking forward to it.

She followed Bernie up the stairs and down the hall. The floorboards creaked and cracked under the weight of their footsteps, and Libby wondered once again how anyone could walk on them without being heard. Bernie came to a stop in front of Bob and Audie's room. Libby did the same. She was watching Bernie fish the skeleton key out of her pocket when her dream flashed through her mind. Something occurred to her. She held up her hand.

“What?” Bernie asked impatiently. She was primed and ready to go.

“Wait a minute.”

“Having second thoughts?”

“No. I just had an idea.” Libby gestured to the hallway. “Remember how I said the layout of this floor struck me as odd?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think I finally figured it out. Something isn't here that should be.”

Bernie's eyes flitted over the hallway. She wasn't getting it, and she didn't want to waste time figuring it out. “And that is?”

“This house has an attic, correct?”

“Correct,” Bernie said, still not seeing where Libby was going with this. “We saw it when we came in. It's got three small windows and a fourth with a window fan in it.”

“So where's the door to it?” Libby asked. “We have doors to the bedrooms. We have doors to the bathrooms, but that's it. No attic door.” Libby pointed to the ceiling. “And the entrance is not one of those pull-down trapdoor jobbies with a ladder.”

“There isn't any entrance,” Bernie said, marveling at how she could have missed something that obvious.

“But,” Libby continued, “there has to be one. Whoever built this house wouldn't have built an attic without some kind of access to it.” She realized they were whispering. “That wouldn't make sense.”

“And the logical place for it would be in this hallway,” Bernie said, taking up where Libby had left off. “Which means someone closed the doorway up and covered it over with the wallpaper.”

“Has to be,” Libby said.

Libby and Bernie studied the walls. After a few minutes Libby thought she saw a raised line.

“I think it's here,” she told Bernie as she ran her finger up the line. “I can feel it.”

Bernie stepped in front of her and ran her thumbnail up the line. “Never underestimate the power of fingernails,” she said as the paper split in two. She carefully tore off a little piece of the paper. “Look,” she said to Libby. “Here's the wallboard and here's the plaster.”

“Someone used wallboard to sheetrock over the doorway.”

“So it would appear.”

“It looks like a do-it-yourself kind of job,” Libby noted. “They didn't use joint compound or tape. Plus, there's an eighth-of-an-inch difference between the Sheetrock and the plaster.”

“Well, it was good enough. We didn't see it.” Bernie was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “The question is, why did they do it at all?”

“More importantly,” Libby said, “is Geoff hiding up there?”

“And if he is, how is he getting in and out?” Bernie chewed on the inside of her cheek while she thought. “If he is up there, that would explain why we haven't heard him walking around.”

“Indeed it would.” Libby licked her lips. They were dry. She needed her ChapStick, which was at home. “The entrance has to be on this floor. A closet would be the most logical place to locate it.”

“Well, we were going to wake everyone up, anyway,” Bernie noted.

“I know, but…”

“But what?” Bernie asked.

“I think there may be an easier way to find out what we want to know.”

“Such as?” And then Bernie realized why her sister had said what she had. “The plans,” she cried.

Libby nodded.

The women ran for the stairs.

B
ernie turned on the kitchen light, while Libby yanked open the bottom drawer of the kitchen cabinet and grabbed the manila envelope she'd seen yesterday. While Libby looked over her shoulder, Bernie opened up the envelope, shook the remodeling plans out, and spread them across the top of the kitchen counter. As she did, she noted that the date they'd been drawn up and the name of the architect, P. Bidwell, were stamped in the upper right-hand corner.

“You ever hear of him?” Bernie asked Libby.

Libby shook her head.

“Me either,” Bernie said. “I wonder if Dad has.”

“Probably,” Libby replied. “Dad knows everything about everyone in the tri-county area.”

“Too bad we can't ask him.” For a moment Bernie thought about seeing if she could call him and then decided against it. It was too early, and she didn't want to alarm him, so she turned her attention back to the plans.

There were twelve pages in all. Nine of them had to do with four separate jobs: remodeling the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom, combining four of the smaller rooms at the back end of the first floor into one great room, and adding a sunroom onto the left side of the house. The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth pages contained what Bernie and Libby were looking for.

“The good news is these are what we need,” Bernie said, pulling the pages out and setting them side by side. She smoothed out the creases with the side of her hand, while Libby squinted to get a better look. “The bad news is they're in really bad shape.”

The print on the three pages was faded, making them extremely difficult to read, but Bernie managed to make out the labels on their tops. The first page showed the original position of the stairs, the second page showed the stairs' projected new position, while the third page showed sketches of the two rooms that were going to be built in the attic.

“If I'm reading these plans right,” Bernie said to Libby, “the new access to the attic is through the closet in Monty's room. If that was Monty's room back then.”

“Very odd,” Libby said. “It's not where most people would choose to locate a flight of stairs.”

“And it was probably quite an expensive undertaking even back then.”

“Had to be.” Libby indicated the other pages. “Note that none of the other proposals were implemented.”

“The stairs might not have been, either,” Bernie pointed out. “Maybe whoever did this just got as far as closing off the hallway entrance.”

“That doesn't make sense. Then you couldn't get up to the attic.”

Bernie shrugged. “Maybe whoever was paying for it ran out of money and figured they'd finish off the job later, only they never did.”

“I bet Monty was the one who commissioned it.”

“I bet you're right.” Bernie rat-a-tatted her fingernails on the countertop. “I wonder if Ralph and Perceval would know.”

“I'm sure they'd know. We should ask them,” Libby suggested.

“We will.” Bernie looked at her watch. It was a little before six. “After we see if we can find those stairs.”

The sisters left the kitchen. On the way, Bernie grabbed two pieces of bread and some Brie that had been left over from the night before and handed half to Libby.

“Eat,” she said.

Libby made a face. “My stomach is still kind of rocky.”

“Eat anyway,” Bernie told her. “I have a feeling we're going to need all the energy we can get.”

“What if Geoff is up in the attic?” Libby said as she chewed on her bread. It was slightly stale.

“What if he is?” Bernie asked. “In fact, I hope he is.”

“He does have that sword.”

“Yes, but we have truth on our side.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, you're right.” Bernie turned around, marched back into the kitchen, and picked up the knife they'd used to carve the turkey with.

“This does not make me feel confident,” Libby said when she got a gander at what her sister was carrying.

“Well, it makes me feel better.”

“Boy, I'm so-o-o relieved.”

“You know the problem with you?” Bernie said.

“That I'm sensible?”

“No. That you worry too much.”

 

Bernie walked over to Monty's closet, opened the door, and stepped inside. She reached up, took the clothes that were hanging on the rod, and handed them to Libby, who laid them out on the bed. When the closet was completely empty, Bernie stepped inside. Libby joined her, but it was too crowded to see anything with her in there, so she stepped back out and waited while Bernie eyeballed the wall.

“I don't see anything,” Bernie said after a moment had gone by. She rapped on the wall with her fist. All she got back were thuds.

“Maybe Monty never got around to changing the stairs,” Libby said.

“We already discussed that.”

“Well, I'm saying it again. Lots of people commission things but don't follow through,” Libby said, thinking of the kitchen renovation they kept postponing. “I think we should wake up Ralph and Perceval and ask them.”

“Give me another minute,” Bernie said, turning back to the closet wall. She knew the opening was here, and she was damned if she wasn't going to find it.

She studied the wall some more. It was blank. There were no seams. Nothing to indicate a door. Maybe there was some kind of lever you had to push to get the door to open. That was a possibility, but a far-fetched one in her estimation. No. The door was here. It had to be. But where?

She turned and examined the right-hand wall of the closet, tapping lightly on the wall as she went. Then she turned to the left-hand side and that was when she saw it. The slight indentation in the wall. It was barely visible. She wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't been looking. She reached over and placed the tips of her middle fingers in the depression.

They just fit. She pushed. Nothing. She pushed harder. She could feel a slight movement. She tried again. More of a movement. On the third try, the wall slid away, revealing a dark space. A burst of cold air came rushing out. And a hint of something else, which Bernie knew but couldn't name. A moment later Bernie's eyes got used to the dark, and she was able to pick out a vague outline of the steps. She picked up the carving knife she'd left on the floor and started up them.

“Wait!” Libby cried.

But Bernie didn't.