Chapter 45
“Nonsense,” said the Professor most emphatically.
“Maxwell,” said Mr. DuBois, “if a butler was discovered with gold coins stashed in his quarters, say under a floorboard or in a box, he would have been sacked immediately. I seriously doubt that the Maxwells who were alive at that time would have permitted those idiots, O’Malley and Ivan, to search his quarters, but if you or Miss Jacqueline thought I might have hidden gold somewhere, wouldn’t you look for it?”
“Jacquie would,” he said, giving her a squeeze.
“You make it sound like I’m greedy.” She chewed her upper lip. “But I admit I would have searched for it. I want to search for it now!”
Mr. DuBois smiled. “There is a dress in the attic that I have wondered about. Maxwell, your mother told me to ask your sister if she wanted it. I believe her exact words were, ‘Are you serious? You think I would wear something like that?’ It was very old. So I wrapped it in muslin, placed it in a preservation box, and stashed it in a trunk upstairs. I remember thinking how difficult it must have been for women to wear such heavy dresses.”
Jacquie’s eyes widened.
Professor Maxwell sighed. “I won’t get any peace around here until you find that dress.”
Mr. DuBois handed him the bowl of candy and marched into the mansion.
The rest of us followed him up the stairs. Jacquie had a little trouble with her tight Morticia gown. Nevertheless, we followed him up to another floor, where Balthus gave up. The rest of us trooped higher and into an attic.
It was unfinished and chock-full of antiques. Three sizable windows across the front of the house would have let in daylight had it not been night. There were cupboards and filing cabinets and chairs that had gone out of vogue. And at one end were stacks of ancient trunks. On top of them were leather suitcases, hatboxes, and one giant birdcage.
Mr. DuBois methodically removed an ancient picnic basket, two hatboxes, and four suitcases from the top of a trunk. He eagerly opened it. Inside was a sealed box. “I never understood why this was so heavy.” He gingerly lifted out a fragile dress of robin’s-egg blue. It was covered with a long vest of sorts in Prussian blue. The short sleeves were made of a gold lace, which also adorned the bustline and the hemline.
Jacquie whispered, “It’s beautiful!” While Mr. DuBois held it up, Jacquie ran her fingers over the neckline and sleeves.
“Nothing,” she said. “I was so hopeful.” But then she knelt and touched the hemline. “I can feel coins!” She gently lifted it to show the reverse side.
I leaned over her shoulder to see. The stitching was perfect.
Balthus entered the attic and cleared his throat. He looked terrified.
Someone in a Darth Vader mask stood behind him.
Jacquie quickly dropped the hem and motioned to Mr. DuBois to close the trunk. I was fairly sure that, under normal circumstances, he would have sealed the box again but there was something about the man in the mask . . .
He didn’t wear a cape like Darth Vader. In fact, he wore a scarf draped over his sweater. It was tan-and-chocolate-brown plaid with a fine line of cranberry mixed in. My heart skipped a beat.
“Too bad Mr. DuBois was wrong,” Jacquie said way too cheerfully. “Let’s return to the fun!”
“He’s not the only one who was wrong.” Darth Vader removed his mask. It was Finley.
Roxie screamed.
I reached into my pocket and held down the side buttons on my cell phone. I didn’t dare take it out. I could only hope it would alert someone.
“Becky. I warned you about interfering in my life,” said Finley.
“You can drop the British accent, Tommy,” she said. “They know.”
“Tell her, Balthus,” said Finley. “Tell her what you did to Cyril.”
“I’m in love with you, Roxie,” said Balthus. “I always have been.”
Roxie flushed and Finley jabbed Balthus in the back. “Tell her the truth! They have it all wrong. It was Balthus who tried to murder Cyril.”
“What?” cried Roxie. “Is that true?”
“That wasn’t me,” moaned Balthus. “I’m very fond of Cyril. I would never harm him.” He gazed at her. “I couldn’t stand how Finley treated you. Everyone thought he was such a great guy. He’s a psychopath, Roxie. He doesn’t care about you.”
Roxie seemed confused. “Finley! Tell me the truth. Who slit my father’s throat?”
“It was Balthus. He also killed Manny.”
“That’s not true!” yelled Balthus. “You left his body rolled in a rug at my old house to make it look like I murdered him. You idiot! Didn’t you know that I had moved?”
In the most chilling voice I had ever heard, Finley said, “You know I love you, Roxie. We’ve had a few bumps in the road, but now they’re trying to blame everything on me when it was Balthus. It was all Balthus.”
“Don’t believe him, Roxie. He left a coloring book at Mags Delaney’s house when he stole a rug from her driveway,” I said.
Roxie spoke in a heart-broken voice, “That’s why it took you so long to get to the hospital. You told me the car wouldn’t start and you had to wait for someone to come and jump it.” She shook her head at him. “Our entire marriage was a lie. How could you do that to me?”
Not counting Roxie, who might not be dependable in this situation, there were five of us. We ought to be able to subdue Finley. But how?
I tried to buy time. “Why did you have the coloring book with you anyway?”
“Roxie asked me to bring some things to the hospital. I thought it might give her something to do. But the wind caught it and blew it away. See, Roxie? I love you. You’re always on my mind. You can’t believe their lies.”
Balthus spoke softly. “I was horrified when Hilda said she saw a foot in a rug in my old doorway. I knew that couldn’t be true. But it made me nervous, so I drove over in the middle of the night. Manny was rolled up in a rug in my old doorway, just like Hilda said. I panicked. I knew they would blame it on me. I placed him in the trunk of my car, planning to take him down to the canal and throw him in, but when I arrived, a bunch of kids were hanging around down there.” His voice grew shrill. “I was driving around with a corpse in the car! What if a cop stopped me? What if someone ran into me from behind and called the cops? I left him in the trunk overnight. I was in a complete meltdown. I had to get rid of the body. The next night, I was driving around, thinking I would just ditch him in some bushes when I saw the perfect thing. A coffin. Even better, the soil underneath it was soft, so I buried him and took off as fast as I could.”
“Did you fake a call to the police?” I asked.
“Yes. I wanted to distract them. But I didn’t murder anyone. You have to believe me. Finley’s scarf was tangled in the rug, so I hung it on the fake butler as a message to Finley that I knew what he had done.”
That rang true to me.
“You are not an accomplished liar, Balthus,” said Finley.
Did he have a gun? He still stood behind Balthus, who appeared to be afraid to move. I couldn’t see if Finley had a weapon. Trying not to be obvious, I scanned the attic for anything that might work as a weapon.
Mr. DuBois motioned behind me ever so slightly with his head. I inched backward toward the wall and groped it.
I touched cold metal. It curved like a sickle. Hoping I wouldn’t give myself away, I attempted to remove it from the wall. It came off easier than I would have expected. I held a two-foot-long curved blade mounted on a wooden handle that was probably meant for farming a century ago. Was DuBois kidding? My heart beat far too rapidly. I had no choice. There wasn’t anything else. I held it by my side, hoping Finley would not notice and that an opportunity might arise for me to launch myself at him.
“Roxie,” said Finley, “can’t you see that I need your help? Everyone is against me. You’re the only person who believed in me. It was Balthus who did these terrible things.”
Roxie stepped toward the windows and away from me. I was shocked by her courage. “Why did you take me home yesterday?”
“Because I love you. You know that’s true. I couldn’t leave you there to die. That should prove my love for you.”
Finley left a quivering Balthus and slowly walked toward Roxie. The gun he held flashed under the light. “If you will help me, together we can straighten all this out and be happy again.”
Mr. DuBois grabbed the sickle from me and flung it like a boomerang. The point on the end hit Finley squarely in the abdomen. It hung for a moment where it had pierced him.
The gun fell out of his hand. I ran for it and kicked it out of Finley’s reach. Blood had begun to seep through his clothing and he fell to the floor.
I picked up the gun and called 911 with trembling fingers.
Roxie didn’t go to comfort Finley. She stood over him, watching him bleed out.
Only Becky knelt by him and held his hand. “Tommy. What have you done?” she moaned.
But Balthus had found his moxie. “Looks like it’s your turn to tell the truth, Finley. You’re the one who murdered Manny and stuck him in my doorway.”
Finley gave him a dark look. “Manny would be alive today if you hadn’t sent him to kill me.”
* * *
I had never been so glad to see November first. No more costumes. No more being on the lookout for Finley.
I was horrified for Roxie. The two men she thought had loved her only loved her father’s money. She almost lost the only close relative she had on earth, all because she married the wrong man.
I left Peaches at home that day. If experience was a guide, people would pile into the bookstore just to look around. Nothing had happened there, but murder seemed to attract attention like a wreck on the highway.
Eric was waiting at the front door to Color Me Read. I didn’t have to ask if he had been up all night. As adorable as he was, he looked like he was about to keel over from exhaustion.
“Are you going home to sleep?” I asked, unlocking the door.
He followed me inside. “Yeah, I’m beat.”
“Then I won’t offer you any coffee.”
He nodded. “I thought you’d like to know about Finley. They operated on him last night. The next forty-eight hours are crucial, but the doctors are optimistic. His sister, Becky, has been by his side since the surgery. Pretty amazing, given what he has put her through over the years. She tells me she’s going to try to get him to take a plea deal. Privately, she said she was actually relieved because he wasn’t dead, but he wouldn’t be running around conning and terrorizing people anymore if he is in prison.”
“It must be awful to know a relative is doing that. What about Balthus?”
“That’s going to be interesting. It appears that Balthus hired Manny to kill Finley. With Finley out of the way, Balthus could marry Roxie, the woman he loves, and have access to her daddy’s wallet.”
“Basically stepping into Finley’s shoes.”
“Except that he’s not a psychopath. But we found some interesting paraphernalia in his apartment. Specifically, the material needed to make chloroform. He has confessed that no one attacked him the first time he went to the hospital. He passed out from the chloroform he was trying to make. You were right about the bottle belonging to Hilda. He was planning to fill it with chloroform and use it to murder Finley, thus pinning the blame on Hilda. But chloroform is notoriously unstable stuff, and he knocked himself out. His head hit the bed frame as he fell, hence the bleeding. And he dropped the bottle, which shattered on the concrete floor.”
“If Balthus made the chloroform . . . are you saying he accidentally made himself sick?”
“Exactly. Of course, we have your testimony about the gas. There’s no question that Finley attempted to kill him, but it appears Balthus nearly did himself in with the chloroform he was making.”
“That’s why he was so afraid. He hired Manny to kill Finley, but it didn’t work because Finley killed Manny instead. Balthus isn’t a hands-on kind of guy. He feared Finley. After all, now Finley knew that Balthus had tried to have him murdered! Balthus needed to get rid of Finley, so he made his own chloroform, intending to use it on Finley! It all fits together.”
Eric took a deep breath. “Hard to believe all that was happening under our noses. But here’s the thing. Even though the de Gama business is in big trouble, his family isn’t broke. They made enough investments to keep themselves nicely afloat. Mommy and Daddy are flying in to hire a fancy attorney.”
“Then why was Balthus living like that?”
“He didn’t want them to know he had wasted his entire trust fund.”
I saw what Eric was getting at. “A good lawyer could get him off of a murder-for-hire charge because the only real witness, Manny, is gone. Finley is an unreliable witness because he’ll say anything to make himself look good. So there’s really no proof that’s what happened?”
“Our buddy, Balthus, may walk.”
“What about Ellis? Did Finley murder him, too? Or was that the Boyles?”
“Finley murdered Ellis. His sister, Becky, had hired Ellis to find him. Finley had to get rid of Ellis, who would have revealed his true identity to Cyril and Roxie. The jig would be up! And now I’m going home to fall into bed.” He leaned over to give me a kiss and left immediately.
I was still reeling from that news when I took down the scrying mirror and carried it up to the professor’s office. He could decide what to do with it.
When I returned to the checkout desk, Glen, our delivery guy, was carrying in eight boxes.
“It’s good to see you around again. Are you back at work full time?” I asked.
“That was something, huh? I was bitten by a cobra. Can you believe that? A cobra! Some idiot kid shipped it to another idiot kid and it managed to wiggle out of the box while it was in my delivery van. I’m lucky I lived to tell about it.”
“Unbelievable. Is it legal to ship a dangerous snake like that?”
“There are some special companies that ship them in accordance with a specific protocol. They’re usually drugged so they’ll sleep through the trip. But these two wise guys thought it was okay to stick a snake in a box and ship it!” He leaned toward me. “Still got that skull?”
“Actually, it was identified and is being returned to the mausoleum where it belongs.”
“I hope I never have another shipment like that one!”
I hoped not, either. Glen left and I walked outside for a breath of fresh air. It was nippy but the sun was shining. Best of all, now that it was November, the ghost craze in town would fade away.
A large van blocked my view. On the side was written Harry’s Plumbing. A man opened both doors in the back. He grabbed some equipment and saw me when he turned around. “Good morning! Hope the noise hasn’t been bothering you.”
“Noise?”
“Those old plumbing systems can be cranky. Sometimes it sounds like somebody’s dying in there. But I’ll have it all fixed by the end of the day.” He nodded at me and entered the building next door.
So Harry hadn’t been screaming, after all. I wasn’t going to tell. After all, maybe it wasn’t the plumbing that howled!