Belinda had picked up the living room since Darcy had been here yesterday. Everything was back in its place, the picture frames back in order, the furniture arranged perfectly again. The poltergeist had not struck today.
They went to where the stairs leading up to the second floor started. This was where the door had been in her vision. Instead, it was a wall. Darcy looked but saw no seam, no joint, no hinges. Nothing that would let anyone know there had ever even been a door here. Belinda smiled at her confusion and put a finger up to her lips. "This is a secret, you know. I had this built just two years ago now. I wanted to keep my real treasure safe and hidden."
Aha, Jon's expression said. Darcy knew what he meant. They had been asking about money, and Belinda had said there was none, but that didn't mean there wasn't something of value in the house.
Belinda reached out to the paneled wall beside the stairs leading up to the second story. It looked just like any other part of the wall, but Belinda put her hand against a certain spot and pressed here and there with her ring finger and thumb. Darcy blinked. Those two points had blended into the pattern on the wall panel but Belinda had found them with practiced ease. When she pushed and held them the panel released with a soft snick and a narrow rectangular door opened toward them. It was right where Dominic had shown Darcy the door in her vision. The door that led downstairs.
Reaching into the exposed space behind the hidden door, Belinda flicked a switch and lights came on, revealing a finished stairway with hand railings on both sides, leading down. The walls were painted blue. Light brown carpeting softened their footsteps. Obviously, someone had spent a lot of time on this.
Belinda smiled and waved them on. "Come on down. Let me show you the only treasure my Dominic left me when he died."
The stairs were steep and narrow but they opened up at the bottom to a wide space that must have run half the length of the house over their heads. It was cozy, with narrow horizontal windows along the top of the cinder block walls peeking out over ground level to let sunlight in, wall to wall carpeting, and a short set of steps at the other end leading up to metal hatchway doors like cellars sometimes had.
And along the walls were dozens of framed newspaper articles.
Belinda looked at several of them in turn, her face taking on the look of a woman viewing masterpiece paintings in a museum. "Dominic made this space for me, so that I would never forget him. He loved me so. I loved him, too." A tear ran down her cheek. "I miss him. So much."
Darcy and Jon read some of the clippings, all of them from different newspapers, with dates carefully written in a strong hand in the lower right corner of their colored paper backings. They were reviews of different Broadway musicals. Some of the titles Darcy recognized, and some of them she didn't. But all of them had to do with the same Broadway actor. Dominic Franco.
Belinda's treasures.
"Did you know he was a Broadway star?" Jon asked in a hushed whisper.
"I had no idea." Darcy noticed that the reviews were all positive, some of them comparing Dominic to Walter Matthau and Laurence Oliver. His turn as the lead in Phantom of the Opera was referred to as the "standard by which all other performances would be forever judged" in one. It was a very impressive trip down someone else's memory lane. Who knew they'd had a celebrity living right here with them in Misty Hollow?
"How much do Broadway actors get paid?" Jon asked, a little too loudly.
"Oh, enough to get by," Belinda answered, turning from a full page ad for Les Miserables. "We met when he was just coming to the attention of the right people. His Bella Linda. That's what he called me back then. I loved him for who he was, of course, not for his paychecks. After he retired he had some royalties coming in, for a while. Those have mostly dried up by now. No, my Dominic was an extremely talented man but he was never going to be rich."
Darcy had to wonder. Movie actors lived in luxury, at least the most famous ones did, but what about Broadway actors? Maybe there really was more money than Belinda knew about.
"Have you felt anything?" Jon asked. There was no need for him to explain what he was talking about.
"No," she answered. She had tried again today, but if there was a ghostly presence in this house she couldn't sense it. "I don't know—"
"Oh, my," Belinda said now, her voice dismayed. "However did this happen?"
She was looking at one particular article, the yellowed paper ripped in the middle, nearly from side to side. "This doesn't even belong in this frame. It belongs in that one, and that one belongs in here."
The two frames were side by side, but it was obvious that the long, narrow one had the wrong newspaper clipping in it. The article barely fit, crumpled at the bottom where someone—obviously not Belinda—had shoved it in behind the glass.
Now who would have switched those articles, Darcy wondered. More importantly, why?
"Oh, I know." Belinda smiled suddenly, nodding her head. "My Dominic has been playing his tricks."
Darcy wasn't so sure. Piling books up into teetering stacks was one thing. It seemed a little beyond the scope of what even a poltergeist was capable of to expect that Dominic had come down here in spirit form, taken the frames down, removed the articles, swapped them, and then put the frames back together and up on the wall.
So, if it wasn't a ghost, and wasn't Belinda, then who had switched the articles in their frames?
"Belinda," Darcy asked as a thought suddenly occurred to her, "who built that hidden door for you? Do you remember?"
"Oh, certainly." She nodded, but then scrunched her brows in thought. "I've used the same people for different things since then. A contracting company out of Oak Hollow. They do such nice work." She snapped her fingers. "Ah, yes. Handyman Express. That's the name. I'm sure I have the number upstairs. Why? Are you going to have some work done to Millie's old house? I always told your Aunt that she should have that front porch redone."
"No, nothing like that. But do you think you could find that phone number for me?" Darcy saw Jon looking at her, wondering what she was thinking. She'd have to tell him later.
"I can get the number," he said, taking out his cell phone and heading for the stairs. "Let me make a call to my precinct over in Oak Hollow. We probably have this Handyman Express in our files there."
She watched him disappear upstairs, for a better cell signal no doubt. Then she gave the room another good look. Not much here. If someone had come in here, what could they have been looking for?
Thinking the answer might be as simple as looking at what was right in front of her, Darcy read through the two articles, where Belinda had replaced them on the wall. One was a review of Dominic's performance in a production of Guys and Dolls, which had run on Broadway for four months. It was very complimentary, but didn't seem to offer any insight into the current situation. The other was an interview with Dominic himself. It talked about how he had grown up in a small town in Canada, and how he had just met the woman who he knew would be the love of his life. Belinda, no doubt, although the article didn't specify. The rest of the article dealt with his techniques for stage performance. Interesting, but again not helpful.
The other frames held more of the same, all except one. On the wall to the right of the stairs was a large photo of Belinda and Dominic, dancing with each other, him in a tuxedo and Belinda in a long ball gown. Their love for each other shone on their faces.
One more time, Darcy reached out with her sixth sense and tried to feel the presence of any ghost, any spirit, anything from the other side that might be haunting Belinda Franco. Once again, she felt nothing. She was going to have to approach this mystery from another direction.
If it wasn't a ghost doing all this, then it had to be a person.
So how did that person get in? The door leading down here from the living room wasn't locked, but a flesh and blood person would still have to get inside the house to enter that way. So if not through there, then how?
Looking down to the far end of the room, Darcy suddenly knew the answer.
She walked over to where the six wide steps led up to red entry doors, angled overhead. "Are these locked?" she asked Belinda.
"Of course, dear. They've been locked for years. I have to keep all of these important things here safe. My treasures." She ran a hand along some of the frames.
Darcy stood on the top step, bent over below the doors, examining them closely. When she put her hands against the one side and pushed, the door swung upward without resistance.
They weren't locked now.