Morgan James - Promise McNeal 01 - Quiet the Dead (23 page)

“It’s Paul, “I whispered to Daniel. He immediately stood up and I pulled him back down by the pants leg. “No, wait until the car leaves.”

“Good Lord, Promise, you are really into this sneaking around stuff. What difference does it make?” He asked peevishly. The car pulled away, saving me from arguing, and we worked our way back around to the front of the house. Paul was fishing around in his old Jag, sifting through the contents of the glove box. I called his name and turned on my flashlight so he could see us.

He jerked his head out from the vehicle and peered into the darkness. “Holy shit! Dr. McNeal? You scared the begeez out of me.”

“I’m so sorry, Paul. I didn’t mean to frighten you. What happened with the police? Did John Edgars convince them they had the wrong person, or what?”

“Well, believe it or not, my old friend from last night came downtown, with his wife no less, and gave a statement that I was at his house all night. He told them I had too much champagne and he wouldn’t let me drive, which I guess is sort of true. I think his wife just doesn’t want to know the rest of the story.”

“Yeah, there is a lot of that going around these days,” I said, thinking of Garland.

“Well, whatever works. I would feel terrible if I ruined his life.”

I resisted the impulse to fall into my therapy mode and discuss why his friend’s life being ruined would not be his fault. “I’m glad you are okay.”

“Well, of course Barnes made it real clear I wasn’t to leave town until I heard from him, and I was to stay away from his precious crime scene tape, as if I wanted to visit that spooky basement anyway. All I want to do is get some clean clothes, my toothbrush, and a good bottle of wine and I’m checking into the Hilton for the rest of the night. And by the way, Dr. McNeal, I mean, Promise, what is it with Barnes? He acts like he hates your guts.”

I felt a deep frown burrow into my face. There was no way I wanted to count the ways Barnes and I disliked each other. “Don’t worry about it, Paul, the feeling is mutual.” I gestured towards Daniel. “Oh, please forgive me. Paul, this is my friend Daniel Allen. Daniel, Paul.” The two men shook hands in that manly sizing one another up kind of way, and nodded.

“Good to meet you, Paul,” Daniel offered pleasantly. “I don’t usually help Promise break into people’s houses, but she’s been worried sick about you.”

Paul cocked his head and looked first to Daniel and then to me. No doubt he was trying to make the connection between my being worried and us breaking into his house. He recovered quickly. “So, did you manage to break in?”

“Not yet,” was Daniel’s reply, “we just got here.”

I took a step closer to Paul and said, “Paul, I need to explain what we are doing here. I wanted to talk to you about it this afternoon, then all that business with Mitchell sent us all off in another direction.”

Daniel raised his hand, looking like a ten year old asking for a hall pass. “Hey, listen, good news here. Paul is a free man now and your worries are over. How about we all head on back to North Carolina? Paul can stay at the Hilton, or with you out at your place, until all of this sorts out and I can go on home and see about my cows.”

“No, we can not do that, Daniel,” I snapped. “We have to finish this. Paul can we please go inside so I can explain?”

“Believe me, I’d love to go inside. I want to take a shower and wash off the Atlanta jail smell. But, here’s the bad news: the reason I asked if you had managed to break in is that I think my keys are locked inside the house. I was going through the Jag on the off chance I had a second set stashed. No luck. I came up empty handed. Looks like I can’t get into my own house!”

“Okay,” I told them, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. “Now we have to try my theory if we are going to get into the house, and believe me, Paul, we need to get into the house. Come on around to where we found Mamma Cat and her babies.”

Paul and Daniel fell in line behind me and we retraced our steps back to the prickly lean-to on the side of the house. Daniel and I lifted the cover and swung it back against the rock face of the house. “Wait,” I told them, “Paul, shine the flashlight down the steps.” He dutifully obliged and I examined the concrete steps for recent footprints. It was useless. The rain had mucked everything together into a mass of squishy sodden leaves. “All right, let’s go down and try the door into the basement.”

Daniel switched his flashlight on and took a step down into the welled opening. I followed tentatively. Paul didn’t budge. “Listen, uh, Dr. McNeal.” He began slowly.

“Promise, remember, call me Promise.”

“Right. Promise. I trust you have a very good reason for needing to get into my house, and I’d love to hear all about it, but I am not going down in that dungeon. I’ve not been farther than the bottom step since I moved into the house, and I don’t intend to start now. It is nasty and probably has more spiders that I ever want to know about. If you will excuse me, I’ll just go sit on the front stoop and wait for you to unlock the front door. Or better yet, let me borrow your cell phone and I’ll call a locksmith and he’ll get us in the front door.”

“Paul,” I said patiently, “even if you had your keys we would need to try and find the other entrance into the basement from out here. That’s what I needed to talk to you about. I think there is a hidden room down there, in the basement, one you’ve never seen. That’s why Mitchell Sanders was here last night. He wanted something stored in that room. I think he got in the same way we are getting in now.” I paused to give Paul a chance to digest what I was saying. “Think about it. You made Mitchell give you his house key the day you told him to leave. I was standing there in the foyer with you. I remember him acting like a spoiled brat and slapping the key in your palm. So he couldn’t have used that key to let himself into the house last night. And you said the front door was locked when you got home this morning, right?”

Paul took a few moments to think. “Well, yes, you may be right. I think I did get his key. Hell, I don’t remember. This day has been so terrible. It seems like five days since this morning when I found Mitchell. I don’t know how he got into the house, and I don’t have any idea what he could have stored in some hidden room in the basement. However, none of that is interesting enough to make me go down there. And who cares if there is a room? The police don’t seem to be concerned about how Mitchell got back into the house, or what he was after. What difference does it make anyway?”

Daniel spoke up. “Look, Promise, why don’t you go around front and wait with Paul. I’ll poke around down here and call you if I can find anything.”

I was not about to let Daniel do my dirty work for me. This was my idea and I was determined to follow it through, spiders or no spiders. “Paul, go ahead and stay on the front stoop, out of sight from the driveway, and come get us if you see anybody coming.”

“Gotcha,” he replied, only too happy to oblige, and returned my flashlight as he hurried off towards the front of the house.

“Well, I guess it’s just you and me, babe.” Daniel was much too cheerful for this serious business.

“Do you want to be Cher or Sonny Bono?” I asked, and heard him chuckle as we descended the stairs to push at the rotted basement door below. As it turned out, two people were not needed to open the door; it gave with such ease I could swear someone kept the rusted hinges well oiled. From where we stood in the basement, I judged we were beneath the main living room in a space about the size of my utility room, probably no more than eight feet deep by ten feet wide. It smelled of damp cement and was empty save for a couple of old ladders tossed on the floor. The walls were concrete block to my left, right, and behind, where we entered, with early stages of black mold creeping from two corners. Some sort of stucco finish divided into a grid pattern roughly three times the size of the concrete blocks, covered the wall ahead of us. We both scanned the grid wall with our lights. Even though it looked solid, there had to be a way from this side into another part of the basement. Daniel’s light moved slowly vertically, then horizontally. I stepped against the wall and pushed at intervals. Nothing moved. “What do you think?” I asked Daniel.

“Umm,” he answered and continued to scan the room. “I can’t see a break in the wall, or any sign on the floor that a door has been opened out into this space. The floor would probably be scraped clean if the wall pivoted out this way.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean.”

“Still,” Daniel said, more to himself than to me, “there is no logical reason a builder wouldn’t open this small room into the larger basement space.” He stepped back and shined his flashlight upward. “Look up, the ceiling is only about seven feet. No wonder I feel like I’m in a shoe box.” I added my light to his, looked up, and agreed. The grid ceiling was indeed low. “Here, hold my light,” he said and handed me his flashlight. Then he up righted one of the ladders from the floor, climbed about half way up, and began to push up on ceiling grid sections along the far wall until he found one that moved. Another shifted up, exposing a hole in the ceiling about three feet deep and five feet wide. “Hand me my flashlight.” I climbed to the second rung of the ladder and hoisted the light up. “Well, now,” he mused, obviously satisfied with himself, “Isn’t this clever?” He backed down the ladder to me, a wide smile covering his face. “Go on up there and take a look. You’re going to love it.”

I did, and he was right: I did love it. When I stood up, my head poking through the hole left by Daniel moving the ceiling grid panel, I could see it was framed down from the true height, leaving a space between the grids and the true ceiling framing. As I scanned down, on the other side of the wall, my light illuminated the darkness of another room beyond. Steep wooden stairs rose from the floor on the other side to meet the top of the wall on this side. “I see what they did, “I called down to Daniel, “they climbed over the wall from this side from the ladder and took out what they wanted by going up the stairs and back to the ladder. One person could easily hand off something to another and then climb back through.” My smile was even bigger than Daniel’s when I climbed down to him. It all made sense. Once a person got back over the wall and down into this side, with the ladder dropped to the floor, who would think of looking up? The ladder became just an old castoff thing stored away in a dusty room. More importantly, Mitchell knew Paul wouldn’t snoop around in the dank spidery basement. “Daniel, you are wonderful! I probably would never have looked up.”

“Sure you would. It may have taken you another five minutes, but my guess is you wouldn’t have left until you found what you were looking for.”

“If you mean I’m bull-headed, you are probably right. Listen, I hear a kind of shushing sound coming from the other side. Sounds like a small motor.” I climbed up the ladder again and flooded the room with light. “Good Lord, there is a dehumidifier sitting on the floor in there with a plastic line going into a drain in the floor. I bet they used that to keep mildew down. I’m going to climb over.” Remembering I was wearing a long skirt, I considered how to hike my legs up and over the wall in a somewhat lady-like manner. I couldn’t come up with anything so I reached down and pulled the rear of my hem up in front and tucked it into my waistband.”

“Good going, girl,” Daniel called up to me. “I’ve seen MaMa Allen do that lots of times out in the fields when she picks vegetables.”

If he meant to embarrass me, he succeeded. “Daniel,” I called down, “If you ever describe my assent up and over this wall in any way or fashion whatsoever, to any living soul, you are a dead man. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he called back with a laugh. “Get on over. I’m right behind you.”

My foolishness was vindicated when we stood in the inner room. This space was more than twice the size of the first, with smooth concrete floors and walls. The dehumidifier hummed dutifully in the far corner, and two glass chimney hurricane lamps sat waiting on a rectangular metal table placed towards the center of the room. A single gray metal folding chair, showing signs of aged rust up and down the legs, sat akimbo at the table, as though someone had just risen from the table and left the room. Neither of us had matches to light the lanterns so we were left with only our flashlights. Daniel surveyed one side of the darkened room. I took the other side where I found a wooden crate about the size of a television box sitting against one wall. In the dim light the box appeared to be about half full. All I could make out were the shapes of what seemed to be silver table wear and a few china pieces. It all looked non-descript, and certainly didn’t date from Charlemagne’s time. My heart sank. If this box was all that remained of a fortune in stolen art and treasures from France during World War II, Angel probably would not come back.

Daniel called from his side of the room. “Come look at this.” I left the box against the wall and joined him. “I think I know what this is. Humor me though, since you’ve read the book.”

My light caught the deep gold before I saw the whole piece, and I moved closer to be sure I was correct. Maybe Angel would rise to the bait after all! “That, my dear, is called a triptych.” I was delighted; my voice no doubt danced like an ugly dog rescued from the pound. “To be precise: a three panel altarpiece, Christian, about thirty inches tall, gold polychrome with various brilliantly colored enamels of reds, blues and amber, possibly made in Limoges, France, in the eleventh century.” I ran my light from left to right; the human faces of the panels reached out from the darkness with an eerie glow, eyes watching us with stoic concentration. “On the left we have St. John the Baptist, kneeling, facing the center figures. The gold cup he’s raising up contained holy water used to baptize Jesus. As you know, that’s the Madonna cradling the Christ child in the center. To our right would be Saint Anne, Mary’s mother, looking on with sadness. And you’re right. I know this
only
because I read about it in Paul Tournay’s book on Carolingian art.”