Grace Against the Clock (A Manor House Mystery) (17 page)

Tap, tap, tap
.

Allowing my mind to wander helped the tapping become background noise. Every tap sounded the same. Every single one.

Tap, tap. Tup.

Tup?

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

Silly question. They’d all heard it. “Do it again,” Bennett said.

I tapped again, recreating the sound. “There it is.”

Inching forward a bit I hit the baton against the floor. No hollow sound this time. “But look,” I pointed out when their expressions fell, “the board ended right there. Maybe if I try over here—”

I smacked the end of the baton along the edge of the first board to the right. Solid, solid, hollow.

Ecstatic, I said, “There’s a pattern!”

“You call that a pattern?” Flynn’s tone was dismissive, but his eyes sparked with interest.

I had an idea. “Frances, would you mind going upstairs and grabbing a roll of tape?”

She made her way over. Now that things were getting interesting, she looked miffed to have to leave. “What for?”

I shot her an impatient glare. “Just, please.”

She held her pudgy hands high. “Fine. I’ll be right back.”

While she was gone, I continued my search for the faint echo-y sounds as I painstakingly made my way, one board at a time, parallel to the back wall.

“Help me remember which boards sounded different, okay?” I asked Bennett and Flynn. They got down on their knees next to me, placing their fingers along the crevices. Frances returned quickly.

“They had this at the front desk,” she said, handing me a roll of duct tape. She must have read my expression because her tone became defensive. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said, embarrassed to have to explain. “I’m not a fan of duct tape, is all.” I thought about how many times my dad had used it to fix things—in the most unsightly way possible—when I was a kid. “I don’t like the way it looks.”

“Oh, and appearances are so important right now?” She lifted her hands high. “A thousand apologies. I’ll go find
prettier
tape.”

“That’s not what I meant. Forget I said anything. Thank you, Frances.”

Taking it from her, I ripped off a six-inch piece and placed it along the edge where I’d first encountered a
tup
where I’d expected a
tap
. We continued marking the hollow lines with tape as I progressed. Now that I knew what I was looking for, we moved pretty quickly. In a little more than fifteen minutes, we had a rough—and ugly—outline of duct tape on the floor.

The four of us stood to examine what we’d identified.

“Looks like a homicide chalk drawing,” Flynn said. “For a giant murdered puzzle piece.”

I laughed. “It does.”

The puzzle piece, about three feet long and about four feet wide, was far smaller than I’d expected.

Bennett strolled around the shape. “If this is a wood elevator, it’s not a very efficient one.”

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “Whoever designed this took pains to keep it hidden. Otherwise, why so much effort to have it blend in?”

“We don’t know it’s an elevator,” Flynn reminded us. “We could have done all this for nothing.”

Frances huffed. “Well, aren’t you the Negative Nellie.”

This from Frances?

“You know,” I said to reclaim their attention, “if this is supposed to be hidden, maybe the switch to operate it is hidden as well.” To Bennett, I said, “The activating mechanisms are set at a convenient height on the main level. What if we checked the walls again, this time looking for something located at an
inconvenient
height?”

“Low or high?” Flynn asked.

Bennett and I answered in unison, “Low.”

Frances sniffed. “I would have said that, too.”

We started in again, this time all four of us working the walls. I was about to join Frances on the stage-left wall, but she gave me a look that told me she resented the implication that she couldn’t find the thing on her own.

“Mind if I join you here?” I asked Bennett.

“You and your young eyes are most welcome, Gracie.”

We all studied in silence for a few minutes until Frances gave a whoop. I was startled by the triumphant sound, especially coming from her.

“I think this is it,” she said. “Look, look.”

She fairly danced as we hurried over. Using a chubby finger to point at a spot about eighteen inches off the ground, she said, “It’s a fake brick. I could tell. It felt different, so I tried moving it and—See what I found!”

The woman was as happy as I’d ever seen her. I got to my knees to view the fake brick at eye level. Flynn crouched next to me. Bennett stood behind.

“Don’t crowd me out now. Not after I was the one who found it,” Frances said. On her knees, she muscled her way between me and Flynn.

I ran my fingers along the outside of the fake brick. It jiggled.

“What are you waiting for?” Flynn said. “Open it.”

The fake brick was a small door with hinges along its upper edge. I lifted the door to find two round buttons—one black, one white, identical to the switches that controlled the wood elevators upstairs. The white one was depressed. The black one stuck out.

“I’m going to press it,” I said.

“Amazing,” Bennett said.

Frances chimed in. “And I found it, remember.”

I could feel the tingle of fear and excitement rushing up my back as I knelt there, finger poised. “Is everybody ready?”

“For crying out loud, woman,” Flynn said. He jammed his thumb, hard, onto the black button.

I’d expected a
thunk
, a
whirr
, the hum of a motor. Expectantly, we all turned around, disappointed by the utter quiet.

Nothing.

I started to say, “I was so sure.”

But the floor shifted. Silently, it began to lower.

Frances’s mouth hung open. I could hear her breathing. “Will you look at that,” she said.

Flynn’s right hand went for his holster and he thrust an arm out to urge us all back. Only Bennett seemed unsurprised. “Well done, Grace.”

“What do you mean?” Frances asked, having regained her composure. “I’m the one who found the fake brick.”

“Yes, of course, Frances. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

She gave a self-satisfied nod.

The perimeter we’d drawn out with duct tape—the puzzle-piece shape in the floor—dropped out of sight faster than I would have expected. Much faster than the home’s other wood elevators.

We disregarded Flynn’s orders to stay back and approached the edge of the opening as the platform slipped downward, then stopped.

“Wow,” Frances said.

Bennett nodded. “Indeed.”

I flashed back to the moment immediately before I’d entered the secret passage in my basement. What was it with hidden tunnels lately?

“I’m going in,” Flynn said. “You all stay here.”

“I’m going with you,” I said.

He glared at me. “We don’t know what we’ll find. You’d better not.”

“I doubt the killer is hiding down there. It’s been almost a week.”

Bennett cleared his throat. “I would feel better if we waited for one of our security team to accompany the detective. Frances, please give them a call, would you?”

“Frances, wait,” I said. I placed my hand on Bennett’s arm. “I’ll be fine, honest. I need to know where this goes. I need to be part of this.”

“Gracie, you get too involved with these things. You put yourself in danger.”

“But I’m not going alone this time. Detective Flynn is with me.” Bennett’s jaw was set, but I sensed he was about to relent. It wasn’t as though he could forbid me from going down there, of course, but I was always reluctant to risk angering him.

Flynn had dropped into the abyss.

“We’ll be right back,” I said, “I promise.”

Bennett worked his jaw. “Don’t be long.”

Frances made a clucking noise. “That girl never listens, does she?”

Chapter 22

The odd-shaped opening in the floor meant that there were only a couple of places wide enough for me to sit at the edge. Seeing as how I was in a skirt, I couldn’t simply jump in the way Flynn had. Not if I wanted to maintain my dignity. I found one decent-sized spot, sat, and tucked my skirt’s fabric around my legs as they dangled into the darkness. I thought again about the secret passage we’d discovered at my house, and how dark it had been inside.

“We should get a flashlight,” I said.

Flynn’s voice was a couple of feet away. “Have one. Come on.”

There was enough ambient light from the auditorium to let me see down to the bottom. I eased myself forward and braced my hands on the side of the opening, elbows bent. “Here goes,” I said, and dropped in.

I stumbled, but didn’t fall. Good thing I was wearing flats.

The space was a little deeper than I’d imagined at first, about six feet down. When Flynn had gone in, he’d landed in a crouch and stayed that way before moving out of sight. I could see that there was a tunnel ahead of us, lit only by the skinny beam of Flynn’s flashlight.

He turned around. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yes, fine. What’s down there?”

“Gracie, be careful,” Bennett said from above.

“First rule,” Flynn said. “Don’t touch a thing. Here.” He dug out two pair of latex gloves and two sets of paper booties. He handed one set of each to me. “Put these on.”

“How much stuff do you carry?” I asked. “You had the baton, the flashlight, now all this.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he hollered up to Frances to call the department and request an evidence team.

“Now?” she asked. I could tell she’d done that to irk him. It worked.

“Yes, now. Grace and I will do our best not to disturb anything. This still may not have anything to do with the murder, but I don’t want to take chances.”

I stepped off the platform, surprised to find that the floor down here wasn’t dirt, like in my home’s hidden passage. This floor was solid. The walls were concrete and rounded, as though we were standing in an oversized storm drain. One tall enough to allow us both to walk upright.

It was dark in front of Flynn. I could only see about ten feet ahead. “Where do you think this leads?” he asked. He raised the light to the top of the circular space and traced it forward. “What’s above us in the mansion in this direction?”

I had to stop to think. Getting my bearings, I pointed over my right shoulder. “That way is the front of the house, which means we’re not far from the indoor swimming pool.” I reached out to skim the concrete side with my fingers. “The deep end of the pool is probably on the other side of this wall.”

“Maybe this is an access point for repairs?”

“Could be,” I said, but I was doubtful and my tone conveyed as much. We continued to creep forward as the tunnel made a sharp left. “I’m pretty sure that up ahead and to the right above us would be the Birdcage Room. There’s not much between here and there except—” I stopped myself.

“Except what?”

“There’s another passage that leads from the underground parking into the basement of the mansion. The employee entrance.”

He didn’t comment. The circular walkway we were in wasn’t wide enough for us to continue side by side, so I kept behind him. Now that it had become clear that the ceiling wasn’t about to collapse in on us, we’d even picked up the pace. So far I guessed we’d traveled about fifty feet, which meant we were still underneath the house.

“It smells like something. What do you think it is?” he asked.

I lifted my head a little and took in a deep whiff. “Whiskey?”

Flynn half turned. I could see the pleased look on his face. “Same thing I thought.” He stopped and glanced around. “When the evidence team gets here, I’ll have them look for the source.”

We found ourselves at a dead end—a flat iron wall with no discernible door—less than a minute later.

Flynn groaned. “Another puzzle to solve?”

“There has to be a way out,” I said. “And I’ll bet this one isn’t so hard to find. I mean, whoever built this didn’t want people to know about it, so they took precautions to keep the mechanism from being easily detected. But once a person was down here, I’m betting they wanted to keep things simple.”

I stepped into the flashlight’s beam and placed my hands on the circular iron wall, about where a doorknob would be. All I felt was cool, coarse metal. I moved my fingers a little higher up, then higher again. I was at about the mid-space between elbows and shoulders when I found it.

“Here we go,” I said.

Flynn came around me, directing his light straight on. There was a latch like the kind you might see inside a walk-in freezer, the kind where you lift the handle in order to open the door, only much smaller. Rather than have him push past me again, I decided to let him do the honors. “Go ahead. You know you want to.”

“Stand back.”

Yeah, like I was really going to do that.

He lifted the latch and pushed the door open. I blinked.

We weren’t in sunshine, but were definitely outdoors. A gust carrying the scent of fresh-cut grass rolled past us. We heard mowers in the distance. There was an underlying smell of hot, wet greenery, with a sweet twist of honeysuckle. The passageway opened into what felt like a mossy, underground cave with trailing vines covering its sunny mouth. From what I could tell, we were southeast of where we’d started.

I wondered how a spot like this could have gone unnoticed by our caretakers for so long. I’d have to ask them about it. But for now I needed to see where the light was coming from.

Flynn had remained silent but now swung his arm out, stopping me from pushing through the branches and shrubs that had blocked the opening.

“We’ve established that this leads to the outside. That’s good enough for me for now. Let’s go back.”

“Don’t you want to see where we are?”

He gestured for me to return to the dark passageway. “Our evidence techs will be able to tell if anyone has been through those weeds recently. If you and I go traipsing through there, we’ll muck it all up for them.”

“Good point,” I said.

“I know what I’m doing. Even though you and your assistant don’t think I do.”

“That’s not fair.”

He turned, briefly. “Isn’t it?”

There was a look in his eyes at that moment that I hadn’t expected. For that half second it was as though I could see how Frances and I must appear to him. Amateurs poking their noses in. Solving murders and putting themselves in danger. More to the point, in his mind, we undermined his authority. Regularly.

“We never intend to get involved,” I said to his back.

I saw him shrug. He flicked the flashlight back on, and we used it until the sharp turn. At that point there was enough light streaming in from above where we’d left Bennett and Frances. He shut it off again.

“Seriously. I realize I’ve probably been a pain in your side—”

He made an indescribable noise that conveyed “That’s an understatement.”

“You have to admit that we’ve helped. Whether we intended to be part of your investigation or not, the fact is that a lot of recent murders were solved because we got involved.”

He spun and spoke in a low voice. “I would have been able to solve every single case without your help.”

His brows were tight, and even in the dim light I could see the shimmer of fury burning in his eyes.

I chose to say nothing.

“But because you and your wicked witch assistant jump in, no one gives our department any credit. It’s all you. All because of you. And the media eats that right up.”

I hadn’t realized how much antipathy Flynn held smoldering in there. I probably should have, but I’d always reasoned that the end justified the means. “I’ve never looked to take credit. What difference does it make as long as the killer is brought to justice?”

Still talking softly, he said, “It matters to me.”

“That’s why you’re including us this time, isn’t it?” The light was beginning to dawn. If he included us, then he would be able to control the message. If this murder was solved successfully, he could bask in the glow of a job well done.

“It’s all about the attention,” I said as we neared the opening. Borrowing from Frances, I said,
“Tsk,”
then added, “I expected better from you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Rather than answer, I brushed past him and stood on the platform, looking up. Bennett and Frances seemed relieved to see us. “When Flynn joins me aboard the platform top, how about you hit that button?” I said to Frances. “I’m sure this will hold us both, and I’d much prefer riding than having to climb up there in a skirt.”