Lost and Fondue (19 page)

She was silent for a long time. “I’ll check and get back to you.”

Banks of clouds blocked the late-afternoon sun as I drove toward the winery. Halfway there, the wind picked up in intensity. My insides felt just as rootless. As I swerved to avoid tumbleweeds frolicking across the pavement, I decided the best thing to calm my nerves would be to review what I knew about the case.

Because I refused to believe Quinn capable of murder, I put her relationship with Harker aside for the moment and focused solely on Harker. He was an artist. A good one. And yet, according to Edsel Nash, he was ready to abandon his fine art to become a comic book artist. Edsel said it was because Harker felt his quest for perfection in art was destroying his soul. Was that the truth or did Edsel have a reason to lie? If someone—Edsel—did steal Harker’s art, had he killed him to keep the theft a secret? That seemed like an overreaction.

Harker was also a gambler. He had an outstanding debt with Dane Cegielski. Had Dane killed Harker because Harker refused to pay his paltry debt? At first impression, he’d reminded me of a brooding Hamlet in love with the beautiful Quinn. Had he gone crazy with jealousy because Harker got the girl? If Dane liked Quinn, why would he have set her up by planting Quinn’s ring on Harker? No, I couldn’t wrap my mind around that.

I reflected on how miffed Edsel had seemed when he told us that Harker was tossing aside his career, as if Harker were betraying other artists. Had he killed Harker out of spite? He was the one who had brought up the significance of the brick wall. Had he wanted us to focus on the wall? Was it a killer’s ploy to show how clever he was?

Winona Westerton left me in a quandary, too. Rebecca said Winona had signed on as a donor the moment the trip to Providence came to fruition. Why had she been so eager to become a donor for a school that meant nothing to her? She seemed to have an intimate acquaintance with Dane. Had she become a donor to be near him? I had to find out more about their history.

And what about Prudence and her brothers? Had the Harts killed Harker to thwart the plan for a college? Were they in the process of trying to buy back the winery and its land from the city?

An S-turn caught me by surprise. Struggling to hold the road, I veered right then left. While I navigated the sinuous turns, a curious notion occurred to me. A complete stranger—a thief after the rumored treasure—could have killed Harker.

What if the thief had returned to search for treasure while Rebecca was exploring?

I stepped on the gas and sped ahead. By the time I reached the Ziegler Winery, tension whizzed through my bloodstream. I looked for Rebecca’s red MINI Cooper but didn’t see it. However, given her penchant for mystery, she might have thought it was clever to park the car out of sight, maybe even on the neighboring property. I decided to stash my car out of sight, as well, because I didn’t want anyone—namely, Urso—knowing I was there. I wouldn’t put it past him to figure out what I was up to. Either he had a sixth sense about things like that, or he kept tabs on me by tailing me. For all I knew, he’d fitted my Escort with a tracking device.

Before slipping from the car, I fetched a flashlight from my glove compartment. Although I didn’t need the light to make a tour of the exterior of the mansion, I would need it if I ventured inside. If ...

Gravel crunched beneath my feet as I sprinted across the driveway and up the stairs to the front porch. After Urso was so cavalier about leaving Lois to guard Harker Fontanne’s room at the B&B, I expected to find the entry door of the mansion unlocked, but I was sorely disappointed. It was sealed tight.

Either Rebecca hadn’t entered the easy way, or she had, and she’d locked it after her. Drat! I’d have to break in.

I shivered as an unbidden memory flitted through my mind in full living color. A band of high school kids, led by Freddy, had decided to raid the winery.
Don’t worry about the mice or skeletons,
Freddy had said. He and his partners in crime, which included Meredith, Mr. Boy Scout Urso, and a couple of others, had prodded me up the slope of dead vines, daring me to be the first to steal into the old estate. I promised I wouldn’t chicken out, but in the end, I had. Freddy called me a scaredy-cat. Urso chortled deep as he slithered through the previously broken kitchen window. He never would have gone in if he’d had to break it himself—a major offense. When the group returned fifteen minutes later, they said I hadn’t missed a thing. They hadn’t found anything cool inside. No dead bodies. No buried treasure. But for weeks they had snickered at my spinelessness. The month before Creep Chef ditched me, I told him about the botched breaking-and-entering incident. I often wondered if my cowardice wasn’t one more thing that had driven him away. While sitting at my kitchen table, he’d gawked at me with that sexy, toothy smile of his, his head tilted and his hair a mess of tangles. “My, my, Charlotte. I thought you were gamer than that.”

I yanked my thoughts back to the moment at hand. My young assistant was missing.

“Rebecca?” I whispered a few times as I traipsed around the perimeter of the mansion and attempted to open each door and window within reach. Nothing budged. I peered through the kitchen window. No sign of her. No drawers left open. No lights on anywhere.

Worried that I was right and she’d slipped and struck her head on something, I picked up my pace. Halfway around the mansion, I noticed movement overhead. A lacy curtain behind a closed window was dancing to and fro. The house didn’t have air-conditioning. Air had to be getting into the building some other way. I heard a
clackety-clack
and moved away from the building. The doors on the second floor balcony were batting against each other, as if the latch had come loose in the wind, but I knew better. That had to be the way Rebecca had sneaked inside.

The Corinthian marble columns holding up the balcony were embellished not only with stylized acanthus leaves but with swirling grape vines that had been nicked by time. In high school, I wasn’t very good in gymnastics class. I couldn’t do flips or backbends, and balancing on a four-inch balance beam was not my idea of a good time, but I could shinny up a rope like a monkey. I shrugged out of my rain slicker, then I kicked off my loafers, tucked the flashlight beneath the waist of my trousers at the small of my back, and gripped the marble vines with my hands.

Inhaling a long breath of courage, I wedged a toe onto a nick in one of the clumps of faux grapes and started my ascent. Good thing I’d worn trousers to work.

Minutes later, I scrambled onto the balcony, belly first. I rose to my feet, brushed paint flakes off my scarlet sweater, and took one long look at the valley below. The view was truly magnificent, but I couldn’t stand there and think about how the view might inspire even the most moderately engaged college student to new heights of learning. I had to find my wily assistant.

I pulled open the doors, slipped inside, and closed the latch. As I faced the marble-floored ballroom, a notion hit me that anybody in town could have broken in like I just had—I was no Pink Panther—which only broadened the suspect list of who could have built the brick wall.

“Rebecca?” I hightailed it to the hallway and down the stairs, passing the gallery of photographs of the Ziegler family and wondering, ever so briefly, about the family’s chilling history—the insane mother, the nutty daughter, the rumors of treasure. Had their insanity been inspired by the house? And now, decades later, had some evil spirit wormed its way into the psyche of a murderer?

It took me a few minutes to scan the bedrooms on the second floor. No Rebecca. I searched the observatory and library on the first floor. Still no Rebecca. I peered into the kitchen, thinking perhaps I’d catch sight of her from a different angle, but she was nowhere to be found.

She had come to the mansion to check out the brick wall, which meant she had to have gone to the cellar.

I hurried across the foyer, grasped the handle of the door leading to the cellar, and yanked it open. The candles that had burned brightly in their rusted iron sconces on the night of Meredith’s event were now doused. The scent of must and dank decay swam out. I backed up a few paces, flattened myself against a wall, and clutched the flashlight to my chest. In my line of business, I’d visited a lot of cellars and been intoxicated by the aroma of ripening cheese, but this scent was dirty and tomblike. How had I erased the memory of the scent from my mind?

Battling nausea, I fumbled for the light switch. A single, outdated light flicked on, but its glow was dim.

“Rebecca?” I listened but didn’t hear a sound. “Are you down there? Are you hurt?” I switched on my flashlight for extra illumination and coaxed myself down the steps. Cool air chilled me, and I regretted leaving my rain slicker outside. I crept forward, careful not to slip on the mossy stone floor, the beam of my flashlight scoping out what lay ahead.

“Rebecca?” I eyed the fireplace where we’d found Quinn hiding on the night of the murder. It was empty. I raced ahead to the wine cellar that was guarded by metal bars and peered inside. “Rebec—?”

My cell phone jangled in my pocket. I whipped it out and felt a wave of relief sweep through me. A photograph of Rebecca’s face stared back at me. I answered and said, “Where are you?”

“Where are
you
?” she asked.

“I thought you’d slipped off to check out the brick wall in the winery.”

“Me? Break the law?
Au contraire
.” Her voice crackled with static. “Hello, Charlotte? Can you hear me? Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. I thought I’d lost our connection.” She giggled. “Would I do something you specifically told me not to? Okay, maybe I would, but this time I listened. You aren’t—?” She gasped. “You are. You’re in the winery. Are you in the cellar? Is the brick wall new? Can you tell? Is there crime scene tape? If not, you can investigate. Remember, Grandmère said setting the scene—”

The reception ended.

“—is key,” I whispered, finishing her thought for her.

Knowing she was safe, I followed her suggestion—I was at the winery, after all—turned my attention back to the cellar, and replayed the evening in my head. I imagined the path Rebecca and I had trod that night. I heard the shrieks of the crowd. Pictured my first sighting of the brick wall. I’d believed Quinn lay behind it because I’d spotted the tails of her multicolored scarf on the flagstone floor.

Re-creating my movements, I tiptoed to the far side of the brick wall. A sour taste flooded my mouth as I remembered Harker’s blue-tinged face. At the same time, a flurry of questions zipped through my mind. Why were you here, Harker? Who put that ring in your hand? Who had time to build the wall? And how had that person gotten down here without being seen?

The wall was around six feet long by four feet high—long enough to hide the body of a man, yet short enough to see over. It was nothing like Poe had described in his short story. It was definitely not a crypt. Was the act of murder a simple case of vengeance? Edsel was obviously jealous of Harker’s talent. Dane didn’t appreciate that Harker had won the girl. Was Winona hurt that Harker, a younger man, had cast her aside? Had Freddy hated Harker dating Quinn so much that he had plotted to end Harker’s life on this particular trip? He’d visited Meredith at the holidays. I hadn’t seen him, but he had been here. Freddy could have slipped inside and built the wall then. Whatever he had hidden in his suitcase might reveal his dastardly plan, but how many breaking-and-entering expeditions could I carry out in one day?

I ran my palm along the brick wall. The mortar felt smooth, not craggy with age. For all I knew, it could have been built in the last week or the last few months, but I was pretty certain it wasn’t as old as the house.

During the scavenger hunt, Rebecca had speculated that a place like the Ziegler mansion might have hidden staircases. I panned the cellar’s gray stone walls with the flashlight’s beam. The walls looked intact, but on the flagstone floor by the far wall there were gravelly particles. Had Harker made the mess? Had he discovered a trove hidden behind the wall? If so, he must have clawed at it with his fingers. I hadn’t seen a tool beside him when I’d found him. I didn’t see one now.

As I rushed to the stone wall and groped for a chink in the mortar, my pulse kicked into overdrive. Advising myself to be meticulous, I limited myself to small three-foot sections at a time. The first was intact. The second area proved no more fruitful than the first. Neither did the third. How I wished I had the wherewithal to just get the heck out and leave well enough alone. But I didn’t.

Cursing my zeal for truth, I moved to a fourth area. Then a fifth.

On the eighth section, which was an area near the floor, a gray stone came loose. Then another. I examined the stones closely with the flashlight. They seemed to be façade stones, sawn in half to be applied to a flat surface. I squatted down, peered into the hole I’d created, and saw vertical wooden slats. Did they form a door? Was the elusive pirate treasure hidden behind the door?

Elation bubbled up inside me. I almost let loose with a scream of joy, but I bit back the sound when I heard something slam overhead. Had someone else arrived? The murderer, perhaps, returning to retrieve the treasure.

Heart pounding, I leapt to my feet and raced up the cellar stairs. No way was I getting caught in a dank cellar fitted with metal bars. I peeked out the door leading to the foyer but didn’t see a soul. I scooted to the front door and peered through one of the etched windows that flanked it. No car stood in the driveway. Had I really heard a sound or had guilt from trespassing made me imagine it? How cliché, if that were true.

But then I caught a glimpse of movement to the right. Was it an intruder? Flattening myself against the door, I drew in deep breaths and begged myself to keep calm. Any normal person would have parked in the driveway.