1 Death Pays the Rose Rent (21 page)

In frustration, I threw a rock and screamed, “Damn it!”

And from far away, I heard someone call my name.

“Here. By the lake. Help!”

Fred added his meows to my cries for help.

A dim glow lit up the tunnel on the other side of the lake. It grew brighter as the person carrying the light drew closer.

“Tori, where are you?” It was Michael’s voice.

“Thank God it’s you. I’m across the lake.”

Michael entered the cavern, and the magnificent crystal formations began to glow again, reflecting light from the kerosene lantern he carried.

He swiftly circled the lake and knelt beside me. I hadn’t even realized I was bleeding until he wiped my forehead with his handkerchief.

“You should have known better than to come down here alone,” he scolded. “If George hadn’t seen you head down here …”

“I had to do it,” I explained weakly. “Fred got lost and …”

“I understand. I’ve got a cat of my own. We’ve got to get you to a doctor. What did you do? Slip and hit your head?”

“I was hit. Someone tried to kill me.”

“Who? How? Why?”

I pointed to the leather-covered box. “It has something to do with this.”

He held the lamp closer to the box, and I saw that it had gold initials stamped under the handle:
TAE
.

“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “Hold that lantern still. I want to open this thing.”

The two brass snaps opened easily. The front lifted off, revealing an array of glass-covered dials, knobs, and a switch. I flipped the switch up and down a few times, and the little red light on top of the box began to glow again. When I turned one of the knobs, there was an unpleasant humming sound. I quickly turned it off.

Inside the lid was a pocket, which held several folded pieces of paper. I pulled them out and opened them with shaking fingers. Yellowed with age, folded in thirds, one was a hand-drawn diagram, similar to a blueprint. The other page was covered with the shaky handwriting one associates with the very old or the very sick. It took only a few seconds for me to realize that I was looking at Edison’s own handwritten directions for building and using his strange invention.

“What do you suppose it is?” Michael asked.

“I’m not sure,” I lied. “We’ll let Garnet take a look.”

As I refolded the pages, I pretended concern about Fred. “My cat! Do you see him anywhere?”

Michael looked around. Of course, Fred was right underfoot. “Here he is,” Michael said, and bent over to pick him up. As he did, I slipped the papers into one of my jeans pockets. I wanted to examine the plans more carefully before turning them over to someone else.

“Let’s get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps.” Michael regarded the box. “What are we going to do with this thing?”

“Take it with us. I think it’s the key to Richard’s murder. And maybe the judge’s, too.”

I led the way, carrying the lamp and Fred, while Michael carried the box. It was a relief when we finally climbed the stairway into the basement of Silverthorne Castle. Michael blew out the lantern and hung it on a hook at the head of the stairs.

“Is that always kept there?” I asked him.

“I suppose it is. I used to leave it there when I was a kid, so it would be handy for exploring. Why do you ask?”

“If it hasn’t been used in years, wouldn’t it have stopped working? I mean, you’d think all the kerosene would have evaporated or the wick would have rotted or something. Unless someone has used it lately for his own purposes.” Like sneaking through the tunnels to enter Judge Parker’s basement and murder him, I was thinking.

I also couldn’t help wondering how Michael had found me so fast, unless he had been there when I was attacked. He looked so guileless, so genuinely worried about me—but I had to remember, he was an actor.

CHAPTER 20 

Having been so long in the dark, I was nearly blinded as we stepped into the brightly lit kitchen, so it was a moment or two before it registered that the room was full of people, and they were all staring at us in amazement.

I was acutely aware of the inadequacy of my flimsy, wet T-shirt. And then, from somewhere, Garnet appeared at my side and draped a red-checked tablecloth around my shoulders. Fred buried his head in its folds, like an ostrich seeking security.

“What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise.

“I should be asking you that,” he growled. “I told you not to go down into those caves without me.”

“I had to. Fred fell in, and I had to find him.”

“That’s some excuse,” he said, eyes blazing. “That T-shirt you’re wearing is really appropriate.”

I looked down at my chest and read upside down

IF
I
ONLY
HAD
A
BRAIN
!

He was scolding me as if I were a child, and the child within me responded by bursting into tears.

“Oh, shit! Tori, I’m so sorry. It’s just that I was so worried about you.” For the first time, he noticed the bloody wound on my forehead. He put his arms around me and held me close so my nose was mashed against his badge. “Someone get the damn doctor. Why isn’t he here?”

“He’s on his way,” someone answered. “Should be here any minute.”

George slid a kitchen chair under me, and I sat down. It seemed as though there were a dozen people staring at me. Even the lanky Luscious was standing by staring at me with curiosity. Something smelled dreadful. If that was the Mystery Dinner entree, I’d skip it tonight.

“Why are all these people here?” I asked Garnet. “Surely not because of me?”

The people stepped back, parting like the Red Sea, giving me an unobstructed view of most of the kitchen, including the huge stove and …oh …no!

The door to one of the gigantic ovens hung open. Inside was stuffed a body in a lavender dress covered with chartreuse roses. The dress LaVonna had been wearing the last time I saw her. I suddenly realized what I had smelled cooking and gagged.

George handed me a roll of paper towels, but I shook my head. “I’m all right. Poor LaVonna.”

“I came down early and turned on the ovens to preheat them,” George said. “Then I went upstairs to shower and dress. When I came down about half an hour later, I knew that something was terribly wrong. While I was waiting for the police, you came galloping through here like a crazy woman, yelling about

some guy named Fred. I thought New York was strange, but it’s nothing like this place.”

Then everyone started talking at once. Garnet held his hands up for quiet. From behind me came the scent of carnations, which signaled Praxythea’s presence. I turned and saw Sylvia in a sensible blue chenille robe, Rose in her inevitable pink negligee, and Praxythea in some sort of shimmery gray satin that clung to every curve.

Sylvia’s eyes grew huge when she saw the body in the oven. “LaVonna?”

Garnet nodded.

Rose started to sniffle. “I’ve been so worried about her. I knew she just wouldn’t go off like that.”

Praxythea ran her fingers through her tousled red hair. “I had a vision of her lying in darkness.”

“Where have you three been?” Garnet snapped. “Didn’t you hear all the commotion down here?”

“Have you forgotten that two people have already been murdered?” Praxythea asked. “I didn’t care to be the next victim, so I stayed in my room until I heard your police siren. We all met in the hall and came down together.”

I pounced. “You weren’t in your room. You were down below, in the cavern where the lake is.”

She regarded me with all the warmth of a guest discovering a cockroach on the birthday cake. “Why on earth would you say that?”

“I smelled you,” I said, realizing and not caring how stupid that sounded.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She lifted her chin, indicating she was helpless in dealing with a fool.

I pushed on. “Is there another way to get out of the basement … I mean, besides coming through the kitchen?”

Sylvia answered, “Of course there is, Victoria. This is a castle, you know. There are several stairways up: one from the wine cellar to the ballroom, another through the servants’ quarters in the rear. There’re probably more I’ve forgotten about.”

“So Praxythea could have been down there and gone up to her room without anyone in the kitchen seeing her,” I said triumphantly.

“Garnet,” Praxythea said, turning the full power of her blazing green eyes on him, “I’ve been upstairs since I awoke. Why is your friend doing this to me?”

“Forget it,” I grumbled. I knew when I was outclassed.

Dr. Jones came into the kitchen then, carrying his big doctor’s bag. He poked my forehead, twisted my neck from side to side, pressed the small of my back when I told him where I’d been bit, shined a penlight into my eyes, and pronounced me fit.

My case dismissed, he turned to Garnet. “Are you ready to take her out of there?” he asked, referring to LaVonna.

“Yeah. Go ahead, Luscious.”

Luscious had taken advantage of the excitement caused by my unexpected arrival in the kitchen to fortify himself with the contents of his flask.

“Yesh, shir, Chief,” he responded.

Garnet winced. “Come on, Doc. I guess you and I will have to do it.”

Together, they extracted LaVonna’s body from the

oven and laid it on the flagstone floor. While the doctor examined her, I turned my attention to the blue and white Staffordshire plates hanging on the kitchen walls. Fascinating things, blue and white plates.

“Might as well take her to the morgue. I’ll finish up there,” Dr. Jones said.

“Any idea of what the cause of death was?” Garnet asked.

“Offhand, I’d guess it was that carving knife stuck in her heart,” he replied cynically. “Roasting her only added a bizarre twist.”

“Can you tell how long she’s been dead?”

“Establishing the time of death has been made complicated by the heating of the body. But certainly more than forty-eight hours.”

“But she left a note Wednesday night saying she had to leave because of a family emergency,” I said.

“How do you know that?” Garnet asked.

“Because LaVonna asked me to come over Thursday morning. Said she had something she wanted to talk to me about, but when I got here, she was gone. Rose told me she’d left a note saying she was called away in the middle of the night.”

“Did you see the note?”

“No, Rose said Sylvia threw it away. I said I thought it was odd, because LaVonna had told me she didn’t have any family, then Rose got vague and said maybe it was some other kind of emergency.”

Garnet turned to Sylvia. “Do you remember what the note said?”

“I never saw a note,” Sylvia said.

Rose stared at her sister. “You told me—”

“I did not.”

“Did too.”

We listened helplessly to the juvenile squabblings of two siblings in their seventies. If they had been children, someone would have sent them to bed. As it was, we had no idea how to stop them.

“Oh, dear,” Sylvia cried out. “I think I’m going to faint.”

Dr. Jones ran to her side and caught her as she fell. As big as she was, he almost went down with her.

“She’s burning up,” he said, not realizing the irony of his comment when LaVonna’s body lay, still smoking, a few feet away.

“Sylvia,” he said. “I want to put you in the clinic. We need to find out what’s wrong.”

“No!” she yelled, quite loudly for a woman who had just almost passed out. “There’s too much to do. I’ve got to be at the Rose Rent ceremony at noon, and there’s the dinner tonight to get ready for.”

The doctor threw up his hands in exasperation. “Okay, you’re the boss, as usual. But if you won’t go to the clinic, I insist you go upstairs and rest for a few hours. I’ll give you some aspirin to see if we can’t get that fever down. If you’re not better by tonight, you’ll go into the clinic, like it or not!”

She nodded and allowed the doctor and Praxythea to assist her out of the room.

Luscious managed to pull himself together long enough to help the ambulance driver place LaVonna’s corpse onto a stretcher. As they carried her out the back door, I went over to Garnet. “The box

over there by the basement door …it’s the Edison machine I told you about …it’s real.”

Garnet opened it. Several people joined him to stare at the odd configuration of knobs, dials, and switches. He flipped the switch and the light came on. “I suppose you’ll say it runs on magic,” he said.

I sighed. “Haven’t you ever heard of batteries?”

He grinned, and I realized he was rattling my chain.

“It doesn’t look like anything special,” he remarked, still staring at it.

“I’m positive it’s the key to the whole thing. Richard’s death …and LaVonna …”

He looked at it skeptically. “I’ll just put it upstairs in the library for now. No one is to touch it, does everyone understand?”

Nods all around. Garnet placed his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll have the ambulance driver drop you off. And when I’m finished here, I’ll stop by to see you.”

I nodded, then reached up to touch the little leather pouch I had taken from the body of the dead soldier.

“I’ll bet when you guys were kids, you were afraid of dead bodies,” I said, looking from Garnet to Michael and back to Garnet again.

They both squirmed self-consciously.

“What makes you say that?” Garnet asked.

“Because if you hadn’t been, you would have examined the body in the cave, and if you’d done that, you would have found what I found today.”

I pulled the pouch over my head.

“Come here, Michael. I don’t think you need to worry anymore about a developer building split-levels at Silverthorne Meadows.” I handed him the pouch.

He hesitated a moment, then opened the little bag, and the necklace flowed into his hand like quicksilver. The deep blue stone and the chain of diamond flowers absorbed the light they had missed for a hundred and thirty years and mirrored it back at us a thousand times brighter.

An almost religious hush fell across the assembled group. If nothing good ever happened to me again, at least I’d always have the memory of that moment.