Foreclosed: A Mitzy Neuhaus Mystery (A Mitzy Neuhaus Mystery, a Cozy Christian Collection) (20 page)

Alonzo seemed to have the better of the situation. He was standing, at least. She didn’t see Maxim immediately. There was a pile of crates next to Alonzo and Maxim seemed to be under them.

“He’s not—dead?” She choked on the word.

“No. He’s immobilized, but not dead. I’ve been trying to work out how he sold himself a house. And then why he was stupid enough to get foreclosed. But he’s been pretty pinched about it. I would think at closing the title agent would have noticed that Maxim and Laurence looked a lot alike. There is the chance that Maxim is not in it alone and has a Laurence Mills stand-in for certain jobs.” The pile of crates shifted. “I wonder exactly which one of them Sabrina will ID down at the station.” Alonzo stood with his arms behind his back and one foot up on a crate. The leg was in some sort of makeshift bandage.

“Alonzo, are you hurt?” Her eyes went wide with concern. She held the flashlight on his leg for a long time. It looked like it was bleeding.

“No, not too bad, sweetie.” He pressed his foot down hard on the crate as it rose up again.

“Let me see it.” She moved closer.

“It’s really not a good time. I’m sort of engaged. Did you have a peek and see if the jewels were still in place?” He was bluffing, but it felt good to have his man down and in suspense.

“You know…” she said, smiling at Alonzo, “I wanted to, but I had to grab a box knife first.”

He couldn’t see her features as she spoke, since she held the only light. But he was very excited by what she said. A box knife would be exactly what he would use to access the door to the dumbwaiter. Not that he suspected the infamous and long sought after jewels were hidden behind one layer of wallpaper. But something was hidden there.

“Yes, that would be handy. Though I don’t think now is the time.” He chatted in a calm voice though he was raging with adrenaline. He could hear sirens as the cops pulled into the driveway.

Mitzy turned and ran back upstairs.

She ran straight out the front door waving her hands madly.

She was breathless, but managed to say, “In the basement. Alonzo has him in the basement. I don’t think he’s armed.” She turned and ran inside. The four police officers followed her lead.

Two of the cops had big flashlights lighting the room. The two in front had stun guns.

“Come out with your hands up!”

Alonzo stepped forward, his hands in the air.

Mitzy wanted to tell them that he was a good guy, but they had left her at the top of the staircase.

The crates clattered to the ground and Maxim Mikhaylichenko slowly stood up. He walked forward and let himself be cuffed.

Mitzy and Alonzo cleared up who they were and why they were there, but ended up being escorted to the station as well.

It wasn’t that simple to explain the presence of two Realtors in a foreclosed house at night, especially as they had had a scuffle with the Mafia. The cops took Maxim’s name and the system immediately knew who he was, and most of his aliases.

At the station, Gilbert was put into a small plastic animal crate. Mitzy kept the sling around her body to cover the wet and stinking shirt.

Maxim was a person of interest to the cops so she and Alonzo had a detective and a bad cup of coffee each.

“I was interested in the house because the property next door is my rental. If I could sell it to a good neighbor it would protect my other investment.” Mitzy sipped her hot, bitter coffee from the plastic lid of the paper cup.

“I see.” The detective scratched a note on his paper. “And what brought you into the house this evening?”

She hesitated and he noted it down. “I hadn’t been inside yet. So I guess curiosity. I’ve been talking about the property some on my radio segment—about renovator/foreclosure theft, which I suspected was going on at this property.” She paused for another sip of coffee. She sat up straight but she was shaking. They had their man, but she might be in trouble for it still.

“I’ve heard you a few times on the radio.”

When Mitzy didn’t volunteer anything new he continued. “Was that all you were interested in this evening?” 

“Well…I know I have to be honest, but I feel like a fool saying this out loud. I had done a little reading about this particular house and it seemed to have a mystery associated with it. I sort of wanted to see if there was anything to it.” She held her head a little higher, if possible.

“What mystery?” He might have been asking the color of her shoes for all the interest he had in his tone of voice.

“The family that lived in the home for many, many years is associated with a particular set of missing Russian jewelry. And I wondered if there was anything about the house that would...” Mitzy cleared her throat. “I wanted to know if the jewels were in the house.” Her face burned with shame as she spoke.

“What did you intend to do if you found the missing jewels?” The cop was writing faster now.

“I didn’t have it all planned out, though I did have it in mind to contact a family called Wilber who has some connection to the lost jewels. I thought if there was something at the house, the family would be interested in purchasing the property.”

“You didn’t want them for yourself?” He made direct eye contact, pen poised over his pad.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“What could I do with famous missing jewels? Get into serious trouble, probably. But if the heir of the missing jewels owned the house the jewels were hidden in, they’d be pleased and the value of my rental property would be preserved.” She sighed, drank some coffee and wished that she had a more logical reason for being in the house.

“Why was Mr. Miramontes in the house this evening?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he looking for the same thing you were after?”

“I don’t know. I had gone into the cellar to see what the key I had found fit—“

He interrupted her. “Describe the key.”

She did and he scratched more notes.

“What happened when you went into the cellar?” the detective asked.

“I had a small flashlight and looked around. I saw a man I didn’t know. He addressed me and then attacked me. Alonzo Miramontes came down the stairs shortly after and was also attacked.” She told him as many details of the attack as she could recall, right down to the dog piddling on her shirt.

“And you didn’t know that Maxim Mikhaylichenko or Alonzo Miramontes would be in the house this evening?”

“No, sir.”

“Thank you, Mitzy. That will be all. We’ll contact you at a later date.”

“I can go now?” Her head spun. She had expected him to put her in a cell, not send her home.

“Yup. We have your statement and that you want to press charges against him for the attack. We will get a hold of you. If you think of anything new that we need to know, please call in.” He stood and motioned to the door. Mitzy exited and sat in the waiting room, waiting for the puppy and for Alonzo.

Alonzo came out of another room, similar to the one Mitzy had been in. He carried out the dog carrier and offered Mitzy his arm.

They left the police station in silence.

Alonzo handed Mitzy into the taxi and then sat beside her. “Did they make the house a crime scene?” she asked him after a while.

“I don’t think so. Unless Maxim says he was there to steal the missing jewels.” Alonzo stretched his arm across the back of the bench seat.

“I had to tell them I was there for the jewels.” She tipped her head back onto his arm. “What did you tell them?”

“I told them that I thought you had gone to the house and I was worried for your safety. I told them that a number of things had happened, such as the attack on Sabrina. I told them I drove by the property, saw your car, and went in to make sure you were okay.”

“You did? You told them that?” She was still wrapping her mind around the idea of Alonzo being on her side.

“I had to tell them the truth.”

“Are you still going to buy the house for Carmella?”

“Are you going to sell it to the Wilbers?”

“I don’t know. It seems like the missing jewels should be theirs. But then, if they are found they might need to be returned to the Russian Government.” She watched the line of apple trees, with white blossoms shining under the street lights as they drove down the road. “How did you know that Laurence Mills was Maxim Mikhaylichenko?” 

“I’ve worked with Laurence on a few jobs. He knew everybody and everybody knew him. But he wasn’t a ‘Mills.’ For starters, he had that heavy accent. Plus he knew a lot of people in the building trades that had bad reputations.”

“And you just put two and two together?”

“Nope. I called one of my more disreputable friends. He looked into it.”

“It wasn’t Bruce was it?”

“Bruce was very helpful. But Bruce is solid gold. Disreputable is the last word for him. I don’t think you need to know who I called. Probably not safe.”

“I’ve had enough of not safe for right now.”

“You buy the house, Mitzy. Buy it for cash. Then decide what to do, if you happen to find something of value in the house.”

“Would that be safe? And could I really afford it right now?” She guessed at the price the bank would ask and knew it was a bigger chunk than she wanted to take out of her cash reserve.

“I think Maxim was working alone on the jewels job.”

“So the house is safe?”

“Probably.”

They sat quietly for a bit longer.

At Mitzy’s parents’ house, he opened the door for her. “We can afford it together. We could own it tomorrow.”

Mitzy took his arm and walked up to her parents’ door. She had the puppy carrier in one hand and her purse over her shoulder. She needed a shower and a cry on her mom’s shoulder. “Give it the overnight test, Alonzo. Don’t decide right now.” 

He wrapped his arms around her thin shoulders and held her, urine soaked shirt and all, for a few moments. As soon as she was safe in the house he took the taxi back home.

Wednesday morning, with deeply depleted cash reserves and afraid they had just made a huge mistake, Mitzy and Alonzo met on the front porch of their new house.

He opened the door with the key and let Mitzy in first. She didn’t have her purple Birken bag today or her smart purple business suit. They both wore boots and blue jeans and clothes you could hunt for treasure in.

She had her cell phone in her pocket, though Maxim was locked up at least until his trial. She also had her personal tool chest, in purple. Alonzo had his as well.

They both went straight to the parlor side dumbwaiter and began pulling off wallpaper. It was tedious and took a straight edge, mineral spirits and a scraper. But the door appeared eventually.

Mitzy took the box knife and sliced into the layers of paint that had glued the door shut.

She was shaking as she loosened three sides of the panel.

“You’re going to slice yourself, give me that.” Alonzo took the knife from her. He worked with a steady hand.

They pulled together on the door until it popped open.

The small box for delivering things up and down the height of the house was made of perfect walnut. It was stained a deep brown and had clear wood grain. It had been sealed up and unused for so many years that it looked new.

But it was empty.

Alonzo pressed on all sides of the box, looking for a secret panel.

“Move over. I want to see.” Mitzy nudged with her hip.

Alonzo pressed on the top of the dumbwaiter and it lifted on a hinge.

Then he turned to Mitzy and kissed her full on the mouth.

Her head spun. Her heart beat like thunder.

She wrapped her arms around him, letting her fingers thread through his thick, black hair.

Then she pulled away.

He wrapped his arm around her waist. “It doesn’t matter what’s in here, Mitzy.”

“No. It doesn’t.” The warmth of his hand on her waist was worth whatever she would find behind the secret door.

It was everything.

He reached in again, held the trap door up.

She slipped her hand inside.

She felt something soft, like velvet. It was hard to grasp with one hand, but she managed to pull the object down into the dumbwaiter.

A heavy purple velvet bag landed with a thud and a poof of dust.

She stepped back. “There it is.”

He urged her forward with a little push.

She picked up the bag carefully, weighing it in her hands and then spilled the contents onto the floor of the dumbwaiter.

The remains of a once great jewelry collection lay before her. Two rings, two small pendants on thick gold chains, and a broach of deep blue sapphires. Mitzy exhaled, speechless.

Alonzo eyed Mitzy, her lean body in casual clothes, hair pulled back into a soft, loose pony tail. Her eyes were brilliant blue and her cheeks were flushed with excitement. He wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, lifting her a little off of her feet.

She every inch of her body shivered.