Regrettably, I’d had to use the number more than once. I had first encountered Detective Brady Reynolds after I found Cordelia’s body on the front steps of this very house, and I’d kept the state police number saved in my phone ever since. This was Monday, if I recalled correctly, so Reynolds should be at work, unless he’d taken off on a vacation where there was no phone service. Unlikely. I hit the dial button.
“May I speak to Detective Reynolds, please?” I asked politely when a female voice answered.
“What is this regarding?”
“Uh, this is Kate Hamilton in Asheboro. I’m at the Barton mansion—the detective knows where it is—and it appears that we’ve found a body. It’s inside the kitchen wall.”
There was a moment of silence. “Oh, hi, Kate. This isn’t a joke, is it?”
“I wish it were, but it looks real. I suppose it could be a dummy, but with my luck, I doubt it.”
“You sure the person is dead?”
“Yes, and it looks as if he’s been that way for a long time.”
“I’ll put you through.”
I waited on the line for Detective Reynolds. We were sort of friends, now that we’d spent a bit of time together working on other cases. But what would he make of this development? My mind was spinning with questions already. Who was this guy in the wall—assuming it was a man? How long had he been in there? Had someone put a wall around a dead body—or deposited the body inside the wall? Or could it be that some foolish teenager of my generation—or earlier, even—had snuck in, found a crawl space, and gotten stuck?
Reynolds came on the line.
“Hello, Kate,” he began. “I hear you’ve found a body. Want to give me the details?”
“Of course.” I was mildly cowed by his professional brusqueness, but tried to keep the details simple. “I’ve been interviewing contractors to renovate the kitchen at the mansion. My third interview was with a Mr. Wheeler, who’s still here. He thought one of the interior walls sounded hollow. He has a machine that can look inside walls—I’ll let him explain that to you—so he made a little hole and peeked inside, and voilà, there was a body.”
“What can you tell me about the body?”
“Not much, from here. I think it’s male, based on the clothes, but since it’s more skeleton than body, I can’t give you much more detail. It looks like there’s an old staircase behind the wall there—maybe from the farmhouse that once stood on this land—so I guess it’s possible that he died in a fall. But then somebody walled him in. I’m guessing the kitchen was remodeled about 1880, based on the utilities, so if he got walled in, he had to have died around then. And that is the sum and total of what I know.”
“I can’t speculate on the circumstances without examining the scene. Who did you say was with you there?”
“Morgan Wheeler, the contractor.” I realized I hadn’t actually offered Morgan the job, and we had barely talked about it, before this interruption. I’d need some time to think, which was in short supply at this moment. “A potential contractor, I mean. I interviewed two others today, but they didn’t comment on the state of the wall. So … now what?”
“It’s an unexplained death, so we have to investigate. We’ll try to identify the man. That might not be easy, if the body’s from the Victorian era. You don’t think it’s Henry Barton, by any chance?”
“No. We know he lived until 1911, which was long after the completion of work on this house. And people at the time were aware that he had died—he didn’t just disappear. Come to think of it, there are a few existing pictures of him. I can dig one out just to be sure. Maybe the poor man has some ID on him?”
“I doubt it, considering the era. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The age of the body has not been conclusively determined. I’ll round up a couple of my men and come take a look. No one has disturbed the body?”
“No. All we’ve seen was through that hole in the wall. It’s all yours. Oh, and can I make a request? If you plan to remove the poor man from the wall, could you do it without destroying the walls, or anything else? I’m hoping to re-create the kitchen in all its Victorian glory, and I’d hate to lose a big chunk of the house.”
“No guarantees, Kate. Our priority is to secure the evidence. But we can keep the integrity of the building in mind wherever possible. Are there any other means of access to that space?”
“Not that I know of, but I didn’t even know it existed until a few minutes ago. I can check for hidden doors or hatches—maybe upstairs, or in the basement—but if the old stairs were so carefully hidden, any openings would have been too, I’m guessing. But I won’t touch anything.”
“That’s fine. I can be there in half an hour. And ask Mr. Wheeler to stick around—I want to see this machine of his.”
We hung up at the same time. I’d acted without thinking—mainly about what impact the discovery of a body would have on my plans for renovating the kitchen. Was a hidden body a plus or a minus when it came to attracting visitors? I’d have to think about that. But it wasn’t as though the state police would have to publicize the discovery. If the poor man had been dead for a hundred years, nobody was going to remember him. I had to wonder if there was an obscure family story that had been handed down through generations, about when Uncle Fred had simply gone missing one day. Then I thought, rather darkly, that it might be some rich competitor of Henry Barton’s who had to be gotten rid of for some reason. How much did we really know about Henry’s character, after all?
I should call Frances at the newspaper. She of anyone could lay hands quickly on the older records of Asheboro. But what would I ask her to look for? Would the town have noticed if a man had gone missing? Had he been local, or from some other area? Who would have come looking for him?
“Kate?” Morgan’s voice interrupted my circling thoughts. “What did the police say?”
“The detective is on his way. We’ve worked together before, over the last few months. Oh, and he asked if you would stay until he gets here—he sounds interested in that machine of yours. Does it have a name?”
“Like … Archibald?” Though his face was still quite pale from the shock of what he’d discovered, he gave a small chuckle. “No, but the generic name is an endoscope, otherwise known as an under-door camera. They don’t have to be expensive, but they can be useful. As you have just seen … Well, I suppose I’ll be sticking around.” He rolled the brim of his faded green ball cap back and forth in his hands, worrying its shape into a deeper curve.
At that precise moment, I heard the front door open and close. Surely the detective and his crew didn’t move that quickly. I turned to see Carroll padding innocently down the main hall toward the kitchen, staring into her phone, a plastic grocery bag swinging from one hand. She stopped dead in the doorway when she saw Morgan.
“Oh, hi. You must be Contractor Number Three? Kate, I got some lemonade at the store … but then I drank it all on the way here. Sorry. What’s going on here?”
Morgan smiled wanly, and extended a hand. “Hello. Yes, I’m here to speak with Miss Hamilton about the renovations on the house. Morgan Wheeler. And you are?”
“Carroll Peterson. I’m here for the summer doing research on the former owner of this house, but I come from Philadelphia.”
“Oh, how nice. ‘I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed!’” Morgan cocked an eyebrow and spoke out of one side of his mouth in a jaunty character voice.
Carroll looked at me. I shrugged.
“W. C. Fields? Really, nothing? I must be getting old.” Morgan waved a hand in the air as if batting away his failed attempt at a shared joke. He began to fan himself with his cap. The afternoon heat had indeed made the air feel close in the Barton kitchen. Or maybe it was the knowledge that there was a dead body inside the wall, five feet from where we all stood. Morgan cleared his throat. “But this is perhaps not the moment for jocularity.”
I nodded, and Carroll looked at me, her eyebrows raised in question. “Carroll, there’s something you need to know,” I said. “There’s a dead body behind that wall. Morgan found it.”
“Are you joking?” Carroll said incredulously.
“Nope. Morgan can show it to you with his little machine here. Don’t worry—whoever it is, it looks like they’ve been in there for a long time. The body is mostly a skeleton now.”
“Have you called the cops?”
“I just did. They’re on their way. I told them they didn’t have to hurry.”
“Gee, Kate, it sure is fun working with you. So, Morgan—find many skeletons in your line of work?” Carroll seemed shocked but a little amused. Having just seen the corpse myself, even through the distance of a wall and a digital screen, I wasn’t able to share her levity.
“This is my first,” Morgan replied, “although you’d be surprised the things you do find in old houses, under floorboards or behind walls.”
“You’ll have to tell me all about it sometime. What happens now, Kate?” Carroll asked.
“Based on my extensive experience with bodies and police investigations, I would guess that Detective Reynolds and his band of merry men will get here and attempt to remove the body. I hope they can do this without destroying part of the house. We should look for other ways of getting behind the wall, although I suppose nobody expected they’d ever need to. Wow, I’ve got a lot of questions. Who was this? How did he die? And if it was a murder, who could have done it?”
“Henry?” Carroll asked.
“From what little I know of Henry, he doesn’t strike me as a killer. But I could be wrong,” I told her, turning to our poor contractor. “I wish I could offer you a cold drink, but we don’t have a fridge. Or … any drinks.”
“That’s quite all right,” Morgan said, though a fine gleam of sweat had appeared on his forehead. “I’ve got a thermos in the truck.”
“Does Josh have anything to drink out in the carriage house?” Carroll asked.
“Maybe. I think he’s out there now. Why don’t you check? You don’t have any evidence to offer. I should wait here for the police.”
“I’ll do that,” Carroll said, and headed for the back door.
I followed her to the steps. “See if Josh has some cups, or a cold beverage, or send him out to find something. And bring him back here—he might as well hear the story. We can ask if he knows anything about this hollow wall. He must’ve poked around this place when he was serving as caretaker.”
“Will do. I won’t be long.”
I went back into the kitchen to find Morgan fiddling with the hulking cast-iron stove. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he liked devices. He straightened up when he saw me. “So, what’s the story here? I tried looking up the Barton mansion’s history online, but there wasn’t much of anything written about it. Are you wanting to live in this place, or is this part of some grand scheme?”
One more thing to add to my to-do list: find a tech person and put together a website for publicity. We were going to need some press coverage—once we dealt with this body and figured out what to tell the public about it. If anything. And find someone to take pictures, or ask Frances for some archival photos, and … oops, I hadn’t answered Morgan’s question. “So you haven’t heard about the renovation project? Do you live in Asheboro?”
“No, I’m a couple of towns over, west of here. But not far.”
“That’s one of our problems. Most people don’t know what we’re up to, even locally. Here’s the short story: This town is dying off, and has been for a while. But a lot of the old buildings have good bones, as they say. We’re going to rehab all the storefronts on the main street in town—a lot of them got really banged up in the storm a few months back—and rebrand the place as a ‘Victorian village.’ Think of Old Sturbridge Village, or Colonial Williamsburg—a living history site, with reenactors, old-timey craft and trade demonstrations, period-appropriate foods, the whole thing. But we’re starting on Henry Barton’s place, with a chunk of cash provided by Mid-Atlantic Power, thanks to Henry’s brief affiliation with Thomas Edison back in the day. That’s a long story, but suffice it to say Edison wasn’t the only guy experimenting with new lighting systems in the 1880s. So, here we are. With a body in the wall. And I really want this kitchen to work, and to help people see what life was like a hundred years ago, and—is any of this making sense?” I was starting to sweat. The day’s heat, combined with the enormity of the task I’d just outlined to a relative stranger, was feeling oppressive.
“Uh, sort of,” Morgan said. “And I hadn’t heard about any of that. You should hire a PR guy.”
“I agree. But I’m the only one running the show, and I wish my days were thirty-six hours long. It will get better, I keep telling myself. We’ve got money in the bank, a board, and people working on the plan. I wanted to get the kitchen started just so I had something real to show people. You can feel free to run screaming out the door and never come back—I’ll understand.”
Morgan laughed. “What, and miss all this fun? I wouldn’t dream of it! You’ve got this incredible building, like something preserved in amber, you’ve got money to spend, you’re getting people in town involved, and you’ve got a plan. That all sounds like a good start, if you ask me.” His level assessment was a balm to my overwhelmed psyche. “But you want to make this place authentic, not Theme Park Maryland, right?”
I nodded vigorously. “Exactly. It’s a rare opportunity, and I want to do it right. If the whole thing fails, Asheboro is no worse off than it was when I started. Or we’ll take the rest of the money and turn the old Barton Shovel Factory into a museum and stop there. But I’m going to at least try to bring back this kitchen. Are you interested?”
“You know, I think I am.” He scratched his head, looking around the room with what appeared to be a familial fondness. “This project could make or break us both, but it sure won’t be dull. I’ve got some time free—I turned down some other work this summer to build a new shed out back of my own place, but that can wait. You want me to write up a proposal and a cost estimate?”
Maybe it was the heat, but I was feeling a little giddy. “Sure, why not? But for now, can you stay long enough to keep Detective Reynolds and his henchmen from tearing the place apart to get that body out?”
“Not a problem,” Morgan said, smiling.
As if on cue, the police arrived, pounding on the front door.