When Empires Fall (3 page)

Maggie remembered many a time when her mother would wander around the house without purpose, mumbling to herself about murder, blood and revenge, yet never once would she explain her ramblings. So Maggie had simply done the best she could and had taken care of her mother physically, never able to fix what was wrong inside Rosalie’s mind.

But it had been nearly thirty years since her mother’s death during the miserable, sweltering summer of ‘82. And Maggie preferred not to dwell on the unshakable sadness she felt when thinking about it, even though the memory was like a fading dream to her now, colored more with her own imagination than the actual truth.

She let the dark, sad thoughts slip from the forefront of her mind as she made her way down the narrow hallway of her home, stepping around the cluttered tables and bookshelves she’d crammed along the walls over the years, filled with layers upon layers of possessions she just couldn’t live without. Her weathered and frail hand skimmed over the surface of the furniture and the various plates, books, and tiny porcelain figurines that covered it. She hummed softly to herself as she went, her glassy dark eyes searching for something to rearrange. She felt that the living room needed something new in it, something big…

Her hand fell over the surface of her mother’s old writing desk, which had been locked for forty or so years now. Maggie stared at the dusty oak roll-top for a long moment, fighting to remember if she had ever seen what was inside of it. But as quickly as the thought arrived, it fled, and Maggie’s eyes trailed forward and onto other things as she continued her hunt down the hallway, her frazzled gray strands of hair catching the blue light from a window in one of the rooms.

She followed the light and stumbled upon her mother’s old bedroom, with its baby blue curtains, faded cabbage rose wallpaper and antique furniture that dated back before Maggie had even been born. In addition to the modest sized bed layered with faded and worn blankets, the room was filled with all of her parents’ old things, from books to clothing to everything in between. It was a room she mostly stayed away from, as there was so much clutter it was hard to move around, but on this day her eye caught something she had completely forgotten existed until that very moment.

It was an ancient gilded vanity mirror that hung ceremoniously over an equally ancient wooden dresser, complete with her mother’s vast array of perfumes, makeup, and paper flowers, all covered in a rather thick layer of gray dust.

But Maggie paid no mind to the dust that lay over nearly everything in the room, nor to the countless items she nearly tripped over and stepped on as she made her way towards the mirror, her eyes fixated on it as though it were priceless. At that moment, in her mind, it was. She had to take it, had to put it up in the living room where she could enjoy it. There was simply no other option.

She stepped over a bright orange, circular suitcase and nearly lost her balance by treading over an old pair of work boots, but she continued her pursuit. Her right hand stretched out eagerly, fingertips aching to graze over the gold frame molded in the shape of flowers and childlike cherubs. When she managed to get to it, she ran her hands down the frame and wiped off the dust that covered the glass, paying no attention to her own reflection or to the cracks and chips that marred its surface. It was perfect, and it had to come down.

Biting her bottom lip, she gripped the mirror and attempted to lift it, groaning a bit at its weight as she pulled it from the wall. The mass of it tilted towards her and she nearly toppled backwards, but she caught her footing and managed to tumble the mirror onto the cluttered carpet. The back of the mirror faced her, and as she began to turn it over to make sure she hadn’t hurt the glass, something metal taped to the bottom back corner caught her eye. Kneeling down, she peeled off the taped key and held it in her hand curiously, inspecting it in the soft blue light of the room.

It was a curious looking key, certainly not to any door in her home. It was small and pewter colored, with a clover shaped head and long stem complete with two prongs. In the light of her discovery, Maggie forgot about the vanity mirror entirely, and suddenly knew she had to find what the key belonged to and open whatever it was. She let the mirror fall to the floor and rose to her feet, making her way from the room, somehow knowing whatever it was would be somewhere else in the house.

She held the key up at eye level as she wandered up the hallway towards the bathroom, eyeing all of the drawers in the vanity cabinet, seeing if any had keyholes that perhaps she had never noticed. She examined her mother’s old mahogany dresser that resided in that room, trying to stuff the key in the aged lock, but to no avail. Continuing on, she left the bathroom and trailed back down the hallway, nearly passing the old roll-top desk before halting suddenly in front of it, her dark eyes widening with flustered thoughts and flickering memories of her mother sobbing before the vanity mirror, clutching something tightly in her hands for dear life. Had she been holding the key?

With some measure of hesitation, Maggie lowered the key towards the lock on the desk, her eyes frantically looking around to be sure she was alone, knowing she would get in trouble if she was caught prying into her mother’s things.

She reminded herself that of course she was alone. Everyone else was dead.

Her hand trembled mightily as she attempted to shove the key in the lock, missing it by inches the first few tries. But when she managed to slip it inside, it fit with a perfect click. Her breath held frozen in her lungs as she turned the key, her arthritis kicking in and aching horribly in her hand, but she managed to open it and pull up the roll-top, eager to see what was inside.

Visions of gold and glittering jewelry flashed in her mind for a fleeting moment, only to be shadowed by her disappointment when she saw only paperwork. Was it worth locking up something as boring as paper?

Disgruntled now, she pulled out the top few sheets, noting her father’s death certificate, the deed to the house, a few official looking letters from banks and insurance companies. Setting those aside, she got down to a large stack of papers tied together by braided twine. Lifting it from its hiding place in the desk, she stared at the cover page for a moment, her mind struggling to comprehend the words, a strange tingling sensation shivering along the backside of her neck.

It was a letter in her mother’s handwriting, with tearstains dotting the yellowed page. But it was the words that struck her with a cold chill, even as she struggled to understand their meaning.

Rosalie told of a vicious murder disguised as a suicide and how the killer had gotten away with it while she had been threatened into silence with death. She had been essentially bought off with money that might as well have been dipped in her dead lover’s blood.

Maggie clasped her hand over her heart in response to its frantic thrumming, her bones chilled to ice as she continued to read the horror that had been her mother’s experience with the Vasser family, and the killer that resided amongst them. She had never known that her mother had been connected to the famous Vasser family, nor had she known the horrific outcome of that involvement. The death that had made her a loathed outsider; a smear on the family history that needed to be scrubbed clean off or else tarnish the prestige of the family name. The horror of it both disgusted and mortified her.

But it wasn’t until she got to the bottom of the letter that she read the words that described the terrible secret that Rosalie had discovered fifty-four years earlier, the disturbing truth that had forced Winston C. Vasser to attempt to change his will entirely, leaving everything to her instead of to his own heirs.

Troubled, Maggie flipped through the pages behind the letter, finding documents that provided proof to all of her claims. It was, essentially, a package that would destroy the Vasser Hotel empire in one fell swoop. Clearly, this had been her mother’s intention and the reason why she had kept this ticking time bomb locked up safely for so many years. She had hoped that one day it would be discovered, even after her death, and then everyone would know the dirty, disgusting truth about the Vassers. She had just been too afraid to reveal the truth in her own lifetime.

Staggered, Maggie slid to her knees and onto the floor, letting the papers flutter to the ground around her, her eyes haunted and glassy with shock.

Moments later, when she felt she had the strength to get to her feet and collect herself together again, she placed a phone call to her only living relative, her niece Hannah, prepared to relate her discovery in the hopes that justice could be delivered for both her mother and the man she had secretly loved over fifty years earlier.

And as she did so, she silently said a prayer to the living heirs of the Vasser family, whoever they were, that they forgive her for what she was about to do.

G
rant Vasser scowled impatiently at the paperwork before him, wondering why it seemed he always had to do things himself if he wanted them done correctly.

It wasn’t as if the people working for him were incompetent or lazy. Although, given the handling of certain tasks as of late, they could have fooled him. He might as well have hired a troupe of dancing monkeys for all the good they were doing.

Maybe his expectations were just too high. Or perhaps he simply lacked enough
sympathy
to understand the excuses for not giving a task one hundred and ten percent. After all, he gave everything
he
did that amount of dedication, so why the hell couldn’t everyone else?

What was the point of even hiring people when they constantly needed to be reminded to finish the jobs he assigned to them? For God’s sake, how hard was it to secure multiple bids for a project as costly and time consuming as remodeling the hotel’s indoor swimming pool?

Apparently too hard, seeing as the manager of the hotel gym had called only the one contractor, received a single, inadequate bid, and then attempted to present it as the only option out of sheer indolence.

Well, Grant was more than happy to call the gym manager on his bullshit. And if the idiot felt one lousy and obviously overpriced bid was the best he could do, then Grant would simply have to get the other bids himself. Again with the “if you want it done right, you should do it yourself” policy. In the future, maybe it would be best to stick to that rule, given the apparent lack of reliable people on his staff.

Clicking into his desktop computer, he looked up the phone numbers of a few well-respected contractors he was familiar with and jotted down the information on a blank pad of paper with his great-grandfather’s old black fountain pen.

He’d make the calls himself and handle this the way it should have been handled in the first place. And if the idiot came asking for a raise any time in the near future, Grant would take great pleasure in bringing up this incident and knocking him down a few pegs. In his eyes, unless a man earned something, he didn’t deserve it.

There was a soft knocking on the door to his office, and he called out for the person to enter as he continued to note down phone numbers. He glanced up as Tara, his heavily pregnant soon to be ex-secretary waddled in, her smile bright and cheerful against her rosy skin and short crop of sunny blonde hair.

“I just wanted to come in and say goodbye,” Tara explained, biting her lip as her eyes suddenly brightened with tears. She glanced around at his office a bit wistfully, clearly basking in her memories of the place one last time.

Grant watched her, feeling instantly uncomfortable by the emotions suffocating the air all of a sudden. Damnit, he hated dealing with things like goodbyes. Especially when it was someone he honestly really liked, which was saying something since it took a lot for him to really like somebody.

He cleared his throat, searching for something to say at that moment that would both comfort her and get her to leave him alone. He had a busy schedule and the sooner this goodbye business was done, the sooner he could get back to it. The sun had already set in the sky and the lights of the city glowed brightly beyond his wide windows, but he still had hours yet until he would be heading home. And in his opinion, time was money and wasting it was nothing short of inexcusable.

“I’m sure you will be very happy,” he told her lamely, hoping his statement didn’t sound too contrived, because it certainly wasn’t. He truly wished her all the happiness in the world; he just didn’t much have the time to stand around vocalizing that wish. “Would you like me to see you out?”