A Catered Tea Party (5 page)

“True,” Libby agreed. “Coming?” she asked Bernie when Hsaio had gotten into her car and driven off.

Bernie straightened up. “After we take a quick look through Zalinsky's house.”

Libby snorted. “I'm not breaking in.”

“You don't have to.”

“Neither are you.”

“I didn't say I was.”

“So how are we going to get in there?” Libby asked. “Levitation?”

“The way one usually does—through the door, smart-ass,” Bernie told her sister as she turned and retraced her steps to Zalinsky's office.

“What about the alarm?” Libby called after her.

“Hsaio forgot to set it. Stay in the van if you want.”

Libby sighed. She watched her sister for a moment.
Great,
she thought.
Just what I didn't want to do.
But then she turned Mathilda off, took the keys out of the ignition, got out of the van, and followed her sister. Just like she always did.

Chapter
9

B
y the time Libby got to the door, Bernie had her hand on the doorknob. She turned it, and the door swung open. “Tada. Magic,” she cried.

“I thought Hsaio locked it,” Libby said.

Bernie smiled contently. “She did, but it's amazing what a piece of tape over the lock plate can do.”

“I don't know where you learned this stuff,” Libby muttered, but Bernie didn't answer. She hadn't heard her because she was on the other side of the door already.

The sisters spent the next half hour going through Ludvoc Zalinsky's house. They started with his office. After listening to the voice mails on Zalinsky's answering machine, Bernie and Libby had to agree with Hsaio. There were a lot of calls about unpaid bills, but all of them were from agencies threatening legal action.

There wasn't anything else of interest in the office, or if there was, Bernie and Libby couldn't see it. It took less than twenty minutes to go through the rest of the office. The computer was password-protected, so that was a no go, and the few files that were there had to do with rental agreements and warranties. Evidently Zalinsky was renting his Mercedes, and it was about to be repossessed.

Then Bernie opened the door, and the sisters began exploring the rest of the house. It was not what they had been led to believe. In fact, it was the opposite. The kitchen was a big fancy affair with the requisite imported cabinets, double ovens, and granite counter tops, but it gave little evidence of being used.

“Zalinsky didn't cook much,” Libby observed as she opened and closed the cabinet doors. The pots and pans were pristine, and as for food, there were two boxes of pasta and a can of tomato sauce in one of the cabinets, and that was it. “It amazes me that the people who have the nicest kitchens never use them.”

“True,” Bernie said as she studied the pantry. The place was full of kitchen gadgets, including the same brand of electric teakettle that they had used in the theater. “I guess Zalinsky must have liked that brand,” Bernie commented.

“Too bad it didn't like him,” Libby said as her sister closed the pantry door, and they both walked into the den.

The walls were paneled, the books on the bookshelves seemed to have been chosen for their size and color, and the sofa was covered in a bad chintz. The room looked like a stage set, Libby reflected as she began going through the desk drawers. There was nothing in them, except a small toolbox in the bottom drawer. She opened it. The only things in it were a couple of instruction manuals and a basic tool set.

“It's like no one lived here,” Libby observed as she put the toolbox back where she'd found it.

Bernie nodded. She was looking at a piece of paper from a yellow legal pad she'd found peeping out of a coffee-table book on American art. There was nothing on it except a number that had been circled.

“What do you have?” Libby asked, coming up behind her.

Bernie showed her as she took out her phone and dialed the number. Her call went directly to an answering machine that said, “Art Unlimited. Please leave your number, and we will get back to you.” Bernie did as instructed and hung up. “Interesting,” she said, tapping the phone against her chin.

She lowered it, opened Safari, and typed in “Art Unlimited.” A moment later, the site came up. It was tasteful, and the copy on the opening page read,
“
Discreet rentals for the discerning.”

“I wonder what they rent?” Libby said.

“Art.”

“Ha. Ha.”

Bernie tried clicking on the listed links, but none of them worked. “I'll tell you one thing,” she said to Libby. “They have a lousy website.”

“Maybe that's on purpose to keep the hoi polloi out,” Libby said.

“Then why have a website at all,” Bernie countered as she walked into the living room. “I feel as if I'm in a fancy corporate office,” she said, looking around.

“I wonder if this stuff comes from Art Unlimited,” Libby said, pointing to the pictures hanging on the walls. They were mostly modern art. She indicated a large canvas with a white background and a white square in the middle. “I just don't get it,” she said.

“Me either,” Bernie agreed. “I wonder if he rented the furniture as well? This place has no personality at all. I think I would have preferred what people said this place was like to what it really is like.”

“Ditto,” Libby observed as she started toward the stairway that led to the second floor. “It's as if he got everything out of a catalog.”

It wasn't until Bernie and Libby got to Zalinsky's bedroom that they found anything that really caught their attention. The bedroom was huge, a fact emphasized by the lack of furniture. The only things in it were a king-sized bed, an antique red-lacquered dresser, a leather-covered armchair, and a sixty-inch TV mounted on the wall across from the bed. The walls were bare except for three small paintings: a Monet, a Cezanne, and a Picasso.

“Do you think they're real?” Libby asked Bernie.

“I don't know,” Bernie said, studying them.

Libby pointed to the Monet. “I didn't know you could rent stuff like this.”

“Me either,” Bernie replied. “But you probably can. After all, you can rent a Prada bag.”

“This is a little different.”

“Just in scale.”

“I wonder what it would be like to own a Monet?” Libby mused.

“Somehow, I don't think we're ever going to find out,” Bernie said. Then she walked over and opened the closet door. “Jeez,” she muttered as she took in the size. “I've slept in bedrooms in Chelsea that were smaller than this.”

She stepped inside. Zalinsky's clothes were arranged according to season, color, and function. There was a shelving system for his shirts, sweaters, underwear, and socks.

“Well, this stuff isn't rented,” Libby observed as she joined her sister in the closet. “I guess he really cared about his clothes.”

Bernie looked at the suit labels. “And paid a lot for them. I'll tell you one thing, Ludvoc would have made Imelda proud,” Bernie said as she studied the rows of custom-made shoes neatly lined up in racks.

She was thinking about how boring men's shoes were when she noticed a very thin line starting at the floor and going about a quarter of the way up the wall. It was probably a crack in the wallboard. Probably. But still. Bernie bent down to get a better look.

“What are you doing?” Libby asked.

Bernie tapped on the wall beside the crack. One side sounded different than the other.

“Do you hear that?” she asked Libby.

Libby nodded.

“I think there might be a door here or something,” Bernie said as she moved the shoes away and lightly ran her fingers over the wall. She could feel some sort of seam. She stepped back and took another look. The seam seemed to be a square. “There's definitely something here,” she noted, moving out of the way so Libby could see what she was talking about.

“You're right—there is,” Libby acceded, after she'd knelt down and traced the crack like her sister had. She sat back on her heels. “Probably some sort of safe.”

“A very large safe,” Bernie said. She could fit her shoulders in there. Then she recalled something. “Or a passageway out. Remember, this house was on the Underground Railroad.”

“But I thought Endicott gutted the farmhouse and rebuilt it,” Libby objected.

“He did. But he could have rebuilt the tunnel as well.”

“Why would he do that?”

Bernie shrugged. “I don't know. Because it pleased his fancy?”

“Maybe that's why Zalinsky bought the house in the first place,” Libby suggested.

“Could be,” Bernie said. “It's something that might appeal, especially if you thought you were going to have to make a quick getaway. Have you noticed there's no personal stuff in this house? No picture albums, no books, nothing.”

“Yes, I noticed. And your point is?”

“Maybe what we're looking for is in the tunnel.”

“What are we looking for?” Libby asked.

“I don't know,” Bernie admitted. “Something.”

Libby massaged her calf muscle. “Okay, let's suppose you're right,” she told her sister. “How do we get into it? There's no opening for a key, so I'm guessing the door to the tunnel has to open with some sort of hidden spring or lever.”

“That's what I'm thinking too,” Bernie said.

She and Libby stood up and began looking around the closet. They moved the clothes and the shoes and studied the walls and the floor. Nothing. Then they ran their hands underneath the shelving. They didn't feel anything except wallboard.

“Maybe the lever is outside,” Bernie suggested after she and her sister had explored every last inch of the closet.

“Maybe,” Libby agreed as they trooped into the bedroom.

After ten minutes of fruitless searching over, under, and behind the bed, tapping on the headboard, looking behind the dresser, moving the chair, lifting up the rug, feeling behind the curtains, and peeking under the paintings on the wall, Bernie and Libby conceded defeat. They plopped themselves down at the foot of Zalinsky's bed.

“Maybe the story about the tunnel isn't true,” Libby said. “Maybe those cracks are just signs of the house settling or a bad wallboard job.”

“Maybe.” Bernie sighed and looked out the window. She had been so sure too. From where she was sitting, she could see the tops of the oak trees as well as the neighbor's perennial garden, which was bordered by a small stream that meandered down the hill. For a moment, she watched two robins on the branch of a crab apple tree. Then her gaze shifted to the window. “It's a nice view,” she commented. “But the window treatment really detracts from it.”

“What would you do?” Libby asked.

“Well, for openers, I'd get rid of those curtain rods.” Bernie sat up straighter, warming to her topic. “Those curtain rods are truly awful. Could they be any bigger? Your eye goes right to them. They're completely out of character with the room. And those supports! Dragons? Seriously, why would anyone do that?”

“Why indeed,” Libby said. Suddenly she had an idea. “Unless . . .”

Bernie turned to look at her sister. “Unless what?”

“Look how big the dragons are.”

Bernie's eyes opened wider. She put her hands up to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she cried.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Libby asked.

Bernie gave a snort of a laugh. “All this time we were poking around, and the answer was right in front of us.”

“Maybe,” Libby said.

“Why else would the thingees . . .”

“Thingees?”

Bernie waved her hand impatiently. “The whatever you call the supports for the curtain rods . . . why else would they be so large?”

“Bad design?” Libby replied.

Bernie didn't answer. Instead she and Libby got up off the bed and rushed over to the window. Now that they were looking carefully, Libby and Bernie could see that the support on the left was slightly bigger than the support on the right. Bernie walked over to the left side. She stood on tiptoe and raised her hand. Nope. She was too short. She couldn't reach it.

“I need something to stand on,” Bernie said, looking around the room. The armchair. She pushed it across the floor and hopped up on it. “Here goes nothing,” she said as she reached up, grasped the dragon's tail with both hands, and yanked down on it.

Bernie and Libby heard a creak and felt motion. She pulled down harder. This time the dragon moved. Bernie instinctively held up her hand to catch the curtain rod in case it fell, but it stayed in place. “We have game,” she said as she jumped off the chair.

She and Libby rushed back inside the closet. There was a small, visible space where the crack in the wall had been.

“It
is
a door,” Bernie said as she bent down, grabbed hold of the edge, and pulled.

The door opened a little wider.

Libby looked at the opening. “I don't know,” she said. “This opening would be a pretty tight fit for Zalinsky.”

“He could still wiggle his way through,” Bernie said as she peeked inside.

She couldn't see anything. It was all blackness. She took out her phone and opened the flashlight app. Suddenly the tunnel came into view. She moved her phone up and down. The ceiling was low. She wouldn't be able to stand upright, but she could get down on on her hands and knees, and she'd been right, it was wide enough to get her shoulders through with a couple of inches to spare on either side.

She crawled in a little way and played the light over the walls. A couple of feet down, she spotted a box sitting on the floor. Books were piled on top of it. She crawled in a couple more feet, removed the books, and dragged the box out. It was your standard brown cardboard carton, the kind one sent packages in, and it was sealed with packing tape.

“It's heavy,” Bernie noted as she lifted the carton up and put it on Zalinsky's bed.

Then she got her keys out and slit the tape with the key to the van. Libby looked over her shoulder as Bernie opened the flaps. There was a dark green backpack smushed inside. Bernie lifted out the backpack and unzipped it.

She let out a low whistle. “Wow,” she said as she shook out the contents.

“For sure,” Libby agreed.