Foreclosed: A Mitzy Neuhaus Mystery (A Mitzy Neuhaus Mystery, a Cozy Christian Collection) (17 page)

Living in the
Baltimore
Victorian.

Another article came up on the Romanov connection. This one was a local Architectural Magazine from the 1980s. It seemed the Baltimore Victorian had been the baby of a very wealthy Indian Scout who had settled down after the war with his own…princess.

Of course.

His own distant relation to the then royal family of
Russia
.

They had designed their home to reflect their disparate passions. It had been a showpiece to some and a design disaster to others. At any rate it was eventually forgotten and left to disrepair and old age. This article was written by a local historian with an eye to rehabilitate local landmarks. Other buildings of interest were also discussed. A few of the homes written about Mitzy knew had been made landmarks and restored.

Who knew about Mitzy’s rental and her desire to protect its value by getting a family into the empty mansion? Who knew about the jewels and the winning auction bid by Aerin? Who would have been doing a title search and learning about the history of the Victorian? Who was going out of his way to purchase the Victorian even though there were a million places on the market right now? She knew all of that.

And so did Alonzo Miramontes.

He was after the house to find the missing jewels.

She was as sure of it as if she were after them herself. She couldn’t put her finger on why he wanted them so badly, but business was bad everywhere and everyone needed money. He must have heard about the jewels from his aunt and uncle well before the auction. And now he was determined to have them.

The key to the jewels that were still missing from the infamous collection was hiding somewhere in the house.

She had to figure it out before he did.

After the attack on Sabrina, she was sure there were no measures he would not take.

Aerin’s necklace was gone, and so was Mitzy’s rental. Alonzo had to be stopped.

“She’s going to get herself killed,” Alonzo muttered. “Poor kid.” But she wasn’t a poor kid. She was in vital danger.

The Victorian had gone into foreclosure before he could get a short sale on it. Since then he had paid close attention to what Mitzy said on the radio.

The constant threats to Laurence Mills were going to get her in trouble.

Laurence Mills, for all intents and purposes had disappeared. He had looked into his whereabouts, since Bruce had asked him to, but no luck.

And with his fairly nondescript appearance, he was hard to find in a city as big as
Portland
. Mid-height, broadish shoulders, sandy brown to brown hair. A straight nose. A round, or broad face, or maybe not. Forty or fifty years old. He could be almost anybody anywhere. No one seemed to remember seeing him, at least not for certain.

Ben remembered seeing a man who almost fit that description parked in their parking lot the day the office was ransacked but he couldn’t describe the car. It was champagne colored, or tan. It was a jeep or a ford or something like that. Possibly mid ’90s. But Bruce knew that was all wrong. They were looking for the black pickup truck. If ever a man defied description it was Laurence Mills. It was like he had intended to disappear. Which he had done very well.

Apparently there was some trouble over the jewelry from the auction as well. Dangerous trouble. Two nights after Mitzy’s sister-in-law had won the piece, the museum where it was held was burgled. All of the jewelry was stolen and all but the Romanov piece were found later, abandoned with an abandoned car. It was all evidence now, at the police station. He had heard that Aerin’s home had been burgled as well. Alonzo figured the two were connected, that the pendant was the object of both break-ins.

The thing that started him thinking on it this time was Mitzy on the radio. She just wouldn’t let up. Today she was talking again about her little assistant Sabrina who had been attacked on her way home from work.

It made Alonzo red-faced angry. Sabrina was innocent. Mitzy and Brett were causing all of the fuss on the radio and in the newspaper.

He had done a title search on the Victorian when he tried to buy it for his sister. It had only had four owners, which was entirely unexpected, considering the age of the place. He assumed that at some point the deed had been transferred to an heir of the same name and it was just recorded incorrectly.

The second owners were Mr. Harry Simonite and his wife who was called Mrs. Harry Romanov-Simonite. The Simonite family built the house that was still there. The home remained in the hands of the Simonites until Maxim Mikhaylichenko bought it from them in 1970. And it stayed in Maxim’s name until he sold it to the mysterious Laurence Mills.

Alonzo had had a headache since his car accident, and he blamed Mitzy. It was time for her charade to end. And the best way to end it was at the source. He’d just have to go to the house and see what it was that everyone wanted so bad.

Mitzy couldn’t take the wondering any more. All the clues she could dig up pointed to a mystery at the house itself. The only way to get to the bottom of it was to go there. Right now.

The house had a lockbox and she had a keycode to open it. She was going to find out what was in hiding on
Baltimore Street
before Alonzo hurt another person.

She parked in the driveway of her destroyed rental house.

She crept out of her car as quietly and carefully as a woman in stiletto boots wearing a puppy in a frontpack could.

Dusk was falling with its promise of shadows. She wasn’t breaking and entering, but she was glad for the coming dark.

Something in Mitzy expected the lock to stick, the door to groan open, and the floor to collapse under her.

Instead, the door opened quietly to the restored foyer she had seen through the windows earlier. The floors glowed like gold in the slanting rays from the setting sun.

The inlaid compass in the center of the floor looked like it was under a spotlight. The entry was as large as some living rooms Mitzy had shown.

The compass.

She tilted her head and looked at it again. It was off. Those windows were dead west but the compass showed them as more southwest. Why would someone craft such a perfect thing wrong? She tapped the toe of her boot on the polished wood, and then went North, by the compass’s directions.

Across the perfect floor, two staircases curved around and met at a second story mezzanine.

The north arrow led her to what she would have called the front parlor.

The floors weren’t restored in this room. They were scuffed and covered in plaster dust.

One wall, the one they had noticed through the window, had a large hole. The dead black of the hole sent a shiver up Mitzy’s spine.

She wrapped her arms around the warm puppy and took a deep breath. She didn’t have time to be scared.

Mitzy made her way to the wall.

She dropped to her knees and peered into the hole.

She poked her hand into it, but found only the scratchy edges of horsehair plaster and lath. The hole in the wall was deep—the old house had thick walls. But it was empty.

Mitzy stood up and dusted the knees of her jeans.

The remains of a ceiling medallion clung to the plaster ceiling. She squinted at it. It looked like the rays of a sun, perhaps. She had never seen a design like it before.

The light fixture was gone as was most of the center of the medallion. She stood on her tip toes and reached for the hole, but the ceiling was very high. She couldn’t reach the hole, or see inside.

Along the outside wall there was a marble fire place that seemed almost cheery in the empty room,

She gave it a thorough once over. The dust was thick all over it, but there wasn’t much inside.

There were ashes, and a cold draft blew down through the chimney.

There were no marks in the dust which was chalky white, even in the dusky half light of the unlit room she could tell it was coated in clean, new construction dust, most likely from damage to the ceiling, and possibly from the walls.

She went back into the foyer, which was still brighter.

Her eyes followed the staircases. The banisters came down to grand posts, shaped like arrows, another design element she had never seen. Her heart fluttered. This was what she had read about in the magazine, the special designs the retired Indian Tracker had insisted on.

The arrow wasn’t straight up and down, but sort of set at an angle. She studied the staircase a bit longer. The smaller posts on the railing were all arrowheads and all at an angle.

She traced the carved arrowhead with her finger. You would never find custom work like this in a modern home. She worked her jaw back and forth to keep from crying. This home deserved better than what it had received from life.

Mitzy followed the arrows up the stairs.

From the mezzanine she scanned the foyer below. The compass was the only thing obviously unusual at the front of the house. And from here, it seemed to be pointing most directly at the base of the staircase and not the formal parlor.

Mitzy turned and gave her attention to the mezzanine.

The woodwork was in disrepair, but she could see the ghost of its former glory in what remained.

Two carpenters who would love to get their tools on it came to mind. She imagined it gleaming and golden. It deserved that.

The mezzanine was like a long hall that stretched the length of the foyer. There were four doors, two to the left of the staircase and two to the right.

Straight back from where the two branches of the stairs met was a large deep room, or sitting area.

The sitting area was flanked with more doors.

She tried to remember how many bedrooms the house was listed as having, but couldn’t pin it down.

She walked slowly into the sitting area, taking note of anything out of the ordinary. A huge leaded glass window dominated the back wall, and the skeleton of a deep, long window seat, with built-in book shelves on either side stretched the length of the room. The panels and the bench had been removed from it.

The supporting structure of the seat showed damage, as though the wood had been ripped off with violence. Mitzy’s stomach turned. She knew they’d never find the missing pieces.

There was very little furniture in the house, but a buffet or bar of some sort was still in the sitting room. With the view over the back property this must have been a place the Victorians who build the house had loved to sit and entertain. She could imagine the bar filled with shiny bottles and glassware.

She hated to admit it, but the house would make a lovely little inn.

Dark had set in fully now and Mitzy could see the moon from the large window, but it didn’t shine brightly enough to light the room.

She pulled a small flashlight from her purse (a Realtor has to be prepared). She wondered if it would be worth it to run back out to her car and grab the Maglite, but decided against it, both because it was so dark out, and because she didn’t want to stop.

She pushed open the door to the room closest to her instead. She swept the room with her little flashlight. It was papered in something vintage, possibly original.

From the glow of her flashlight it seemed in good condition. She sighed. If Evy Simonite-Wilber had loved the old jewelry so much, how much more would she love the house, if only she could see it again?

The paper was a toile pattern, but in a Native American design of hills and ponies and tee pees, a deep maroon pattern set against yellowing cream.

She touched it gingerly, just with her fingertips. It wasn’t paper, but silk.

The room, true to its era, had no closet but was of a decent size and must have been a bedroom. She was sure it could fit the standard four poster bed, a wash stand and a wardrobe of the era. Those few pieces would fit perfectly and be all that was expected, even in a home of this quality.

The fixtures were missing from the wall—gas light fixtures. There was no switch for electric, so possibly when electric had been added it had been added only for rooms that a smaller family with less money had been using.

She knew just the electrician she would hire if she could buy the house from the bank.

There was a hole in the wall where the gas fixture had been. Mitzy lit it up with her flashlight but there was nothing to see, just thin gas piping.

It would be impossible to clean and restore the silk wall coverings with such a large hole cut out.

What a waste.

The condition of the next room was similar, though there was an electric light switch. Mitzy tried it but wasn’t surprised to find it did nothing.

The electricity had surely been turned off when the bank took ownership.

She let her flashlight shine on the walls. They were papered in something from the 1970s; eagles and flags. She looked around for any fixtures, but there were none, though there were wires hanging from the ceiling where an electric light fixture had been previously.

In this room there was no obvious damage. She wondered about the selectivity of the person who had sliced up the house. What did he already know as he tore it apart? Did he have a treasure map or just an eye for what could be resold most easily?

The next bedroom had been stripped bare to the plaster. There was no paper, no silk, no wood trim, no electric outlets or switches and no gas fixtures. The floor was even stripped of its wood, leaving the wide old planks of sub floor exposed. On the other hand, there were no large holes cut into any wall or ceiling or floor and no damage done to what was left behind.

In fact, it looked almost like this room had been cleared quite a few years ago by someone who was careful.

She was learning a bit about the house, but the information so far was scattered and didn’t fill any of the holes she had in her story.

She moved on to the rooms across the way, hoping to find something more useful.

The first room had its original toile silk, but this pattern was of an Eastern, or Russian look with thatched roof villages and onion roofed churches.

There were no switches or outlets, so apparently it hadn’t been used as a bedroom in the last seventy years. The gas fixtures had been removed, but nothing had been cut up.

Or had it? She swung her light into a dark corner and looked more closely. There was a fairly large hole, but it seemed more like a critter nest than her treasure.

She shook her head. Was she a fool? She was hunting treasure in an old empty house—and expected to find it. The other house hunter was too. They both wanted to find the rest of the lost Mikhaylichenko-Romanov jewels.

But he seemed to have a treasure map, and all she had was her wits.

Her heart beat pounded in her chest.

Why was the compass off of due North and why did the balustrade have arrows? Was she supposed to follow the arrows? The compass led her first to the parlor where the most extensive digging had been done. She surmised the other treasure hunter had followed the arrows there as well.

The staircase arrows led her upstairs, but so far only the rooms on the side where the compass was pointing had been damaged. Another point in favor of the compass being a clue.

Mitzy slipped the door shut quietly and moved on to the next door.

It was locked.