Chapter 14
I did as Maisie requested and closed the door behind me.
Nolan raised an eyebrow. “I have a kid like that. Everything is always wrong, everyone is always against her, and her parents are nothing but an embarrassment.”
“Teens are difficult,” I said.
“My daughter is thirty-three! I thought she might outgrow it, but she likes to blame everyone except herself. Given what Dolly said, I’m thinking maybe Maisie is like that.”
We stood in the vestibule. I eyed Nolan. “You seem to know a lot of people around here. Have you ever met Frederic van den Teuvel?”
“Doesn’t sound familiar. Is he selling a house?”
“Not that I know of.”
Nolan jingled coins in his pocket and gazed around as if he was taking inventory of the woodwork. “How come it’s always the rotten kids who inherit these grand houses and sell them? This place is something special. But someone will buy it and rip out the incredible original woodwork. Pity.”
“I hope that won’t happen.”
He sighed. “I’m going to hang out here a few minutes, then knock on the door and see if she’ll talk to me about listing the place.”
I nodded. “Good luck. I’m headed upstairs to let Eric know I’m leaving. Assuming they’ll let me in there. See you later.” I started up the stairs.
At the top, no one paid any attention to me. It was fascinating to see them photographing the skeleton. It was wedged in between brick columns pretty well. I assumed it would collapse and fall apart as soon as they tried to move it.
Eric spied me and walked over.
“I snuck in,” I whispered. “No one chased me away.”
“They’re focused on their jobs. This is highly unusual. I’m hoping we can get a handle on how long it has been here. What do you know about the other residents?”
“You met them last night. They’re all members of the coloring club, but I don’t know them very well. Olivia and her sister Priss tutor online for a living. They’ve lived here a long time. Edgar Delaney is a grad student. I think he’s new to town.”
Eric slung his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Just think, if you hadn’t stumbled into this, it could have been hidden here for decades.”
“I suspect it would have been discovered when someone renovated the house. Maisie doesn’t want anything of her mother’s. The house will be sold, though Nolan says the skeleton will discourage some potential buyers. Not that I blame them. I don’t know how I would feel about living in a house where someone had been hidden in a wall.” I wrinkled my nose.
“Florrie Fox! Are you afraid of ghosts?”
Even though he was teasing me, I thought about it for a minute. “The rational part of me acknowledges that a skeleton can’t hurt anyone. But knowing that something bad probably happened to him in this house is kind of creepy.”
Eric nodded. “But a lot of bad things have happened everywhere we go. We just don’t know about them as we’re living our lives and going about our business. I think I could get past that.”
“How do you know Nolan?” I asked.
“He’s sort of a fixture in this neighborhood and knows a lot about it. When a house goes up for sale, Nolan is likely to be involved. He usually lets me know when a house is empty so we can help him keep an eye on it.” His eyes narrowed. “So you’ve been going through books all day?”
I nodded and dusted off my clothes. I gazed around at all the people working. They were so intent on their jobs.
Eric glanced at the piles of books on the floor. “Were these books like this?”
“No. They were on the bookshelves. I went through all of them and took them down. There was nothing on the floor when I came in. But I did notice the plastic over the window. From the outside, you can’t tell that it’s sealed off. When I first saw it, I thought maybe Dolly was trying to keep out the cold, but now I wonder.”
“Looks like Dolly had a very big secret.” He glanced at me sideways. “Makes a person wonder what else she might have done.”
“We don’t know that Dolly killed this person,” I said without much confidence.
“If we can figure out who it was, maybe we’ll have a better grasp of what happened. It appears that the skeleton had a broken neck. It’s in better condition than most of the bones I’ve seen.”
A woman passing by us looked at Eric. “It depends on the microclimate of the place where the skeleton is found. This one wasn’t subject to water or sunshine, but it would have gone through cycles of heat and freezing as the temperature changed.”
It was almost overwhelming. Dolly’s death, and now an unidentified person who died heaven knew when? I asked Eric to keep me posted and walked down the stairs slowly.
I hadn’t even made it to the second-floor landing when I heard a muffled crash and a scream. I was ready to dash to someone’s aid, but I wasn’t sure where the sound came from. I knocked on Olivia and Priss’s door.
Olivia opened it.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure. Seeing that skeleton was certainly a shock. But we’ll be fine. I can’t believe that Dolly would have done something like that.”
“You didn’t hear a crash?”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“No. Not a thing.”
“Okay. Sorry to disturb you.”
I walked down to the first-floor landing. A door in the foyer was open, and I could hear moaning.
The front door opened. Priss stopped short and eyed the floor, scanning it from one side to another. She looked up at me, and her face flushed. “Mice.” She shivered and her shoulders twitched. “I saw one here the other day. Are you all right? I thought I heard a crash.”
“So did I.” I flicked the switch for a light, but it didn’t come on. “Is someone down there?”
“Florrie?” It was Nolan’s voice.
In a loud voice that I hoped he could hear, I said, “We’re coming.”
I grasped the railing, and walked down carefully, step by step. “Nolan? Are you okay?”
“Be careful, Florrie. One of those steps is slippery.”
I made it to the bottom where a light illuminated Nolan on the carpeted floor.
Priss was right behind me. “Oh, Nolan! You poor thing!”
“I think I twisted my ankle.”
I pulled up his trouser leg a little bit to get a look. It was already beginning to swell. “You’d better have it x-rayed.”
“Nonsense. Help me up. Forty years of selling houses and this is the first time I have ever fallen.”
He was tall, but Priss and I managed to get him on his feet.
“Man, but that’s painful. He leaned against the wall and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “Whew. Looks like it still works.” Nolan dialed a number. “Of course, my daughter’s phone would roll over to voicemail.”
“I can take you to the emergency room,” offered Priss. “We just have to figure out how to get you up the stairs to the car. I’ll get my car keys.”
“While you’re upstairs, why don’t you ask Sergeant Jonquille to give us a hand?”
“It’s lucky that he’s still here!” Priss walked up the dark stairway carefully.
“They need to replace that light bulb,” grumbled Nolan.
“I guess Dolly was the one who kept up with things like that.”
“One of those stairs is slippery as all get out, too. Didn’t you notice it?”
I hadn’t. “I walked down very carefully.”
“Aww. This is just what I needed.”
The sound of someone flicking the light switch on and off caused the two of us to look up the stairs.
“Be careful!” yelled Nolan. “There’s a slippery step.”
Eric loped down to us. “What happened?”
After a short discussion, Eric called an ambulance. When Priss returned, she promised to meet Nolan at the hospital.
The EMTs made quick work of putting Nolan in the ambulance.
As soon as he was out of the building, I returned to the stairs. I walked up them slowly in case Nolan was right about one of them being slippery. But none of them were.
Eric returned. “You should have been a cop. Did you find the slippery step?”
“Nope. I was talking with him not fifteen minutes before he fell, so I don’t think he had been drinking.”
Eric walked up and down the stairs, examining them. “I don’t see anything. Sometimes people just slip. I’ll have a word with Maisie about switching out the light bulb.”
When I was leaving the building, I found that a small group of people had gathered outside. Two large TV vans had parked on the street.
A reporter holding a microphone rushed at me. “Are you a tenant?”
“No.”
“Can you confirm that a skeleton was found in a wall?”
They already knew about it? I could have confirmed the existence of the skeleton, of course, but it felt wrong to do that. Eric or another police officer should tell them. I took the easy way out by saying simply, “No.”
“Can you tell us if this was related to the murder of Dolly Cavanaugh?”
That stopped me in my tracks. How could they already know that she had been murdered? I had only learned the night before.
“Who left in the ambulance?” asked another reporter.
“I don’t have any information. The police will be able to tell you more.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“A favor. I just came over to do someone a favor.” I hurried away. Some favor. Exposing a secret wasn’t exactly what I would call a favor. And now that Dolly was dead, she couldn’t even defend herself. Everyone would assume she had murdered the person in the attic. Dolly would be blamed and the case would be closed. It wasn’t as though the real killer would step forward. He would get away with murder.
I crossed the street and looked back at the big brownstone. I didn’t think I had been taken in by an act on Dolly’s part. She had been genuinely nice. I strolled over to the store to talk with Veronica.
Color Me Read bustled with patrons. It was an odd contrast to the glum atmosphere at Dolly’s house.
Veronica and Helen were in the middle of a child’s birthday party. The children laughed and giggled as Veronica read Bats at the Beach to them. Helium balloons floated in the air and a special bat birthday cake sat on a table in the corner, just waiting to be cut.
I trudged up the stairs in search of the professor, but I found Zsazsa in the second-floor reading room. She held a book about estate planning.
“Zsazsa?” I said in horror. “Are you okay?”
She closed the book. “I miss Dolly so much. We often went to estate sales together early in the morning, then grabbed some breakfast. She was frequently my companion for afternoon tea. Something precious is missing from my life now.”
“You two were quite different.”
“Our backgrounds and our education weren’t in the least bit similar. Yet we were kindred spirits. We understood each other. Everyone needs a friend like that. I shall miss her every day as I would a sister.”
She sighed and sucked in a deep breath. “But her death was good in one way. I need to put my matters in order. I won’t have my nieces hiring a dolt like Percy. That’s for certain.”
Now that she’d told me Dolly was like a sister to her, I didn’t know how to break the news about the skeleton. “There’s a skeleton in Dolly’s attic,” I blurted.
Zsazsa gazed at me blankly for a moment. “Is that some kind of joke? I don’t understand the humor.”
I collapsed into the chair beside her. “It’s not a joke. I found it this morning behind a built-in bookcase in her attic.”
“This cannot be. I knew Dolly very well. She would never have done such a thing. It must have been there for a very long time, and she had no knowledge of it.”
“I guess we’ll find out. With all the amazing modern techniques, they can probably tell quite a bit about the skeleton.”
“There you are.” Professor Goldblum joined us. He plopped into a chair. “I’ve been looking all over for you two.” He peered at us with inquisitive eyes. “Unless this is a private discussion?”
Zsazsa waved her hand. “Nonsense, you are most welcome. We were talking about Dolly.”
Goldblum, a chubby little man who had retired from the university, sat back in his chair. “Her death was such a loss. Dolly was a pistol.”
I was slightly amused to hear him describe her that way. “Did you . . . go out with her?”
He chuckled. “Gracious, no! I’m not the sort of man who interests women. And Dolly had her share of admirers. I’d have been at the end of the line.”
“Oh?” I asked as casually as I could.
“For starters, I’m pretty sure that Nolan was attracted to her.”
“Nolan?” Zsazsa pinched her nose. “I cannot fathom why women chase him. Like the”—she lowered her voice—“Beauton sisters. They practically salivate when they see him. If you ask me, he looks like a weathered sailor and has all the appeal of a shark.”
Goldblum snickered. “All I can say is that women never look at me that way.”
“Really,” continued Zsazsa, “have you ever heard Nolan talk about anything except real estate? It’s like watching a TV with only one channel. I find him painfully dull.”
I didn’t know how to break the news to them. Was there any good or kind way to tell someone about murder? Zsazsa and Goldblum were very smart. Maybe they would come up with ideas that could help the police. I closed the door to the room.
Zsazsa sat up in alarm. “What is it? What has happened?”
I told Goldblum about the skeleton.
“Fascinating!” Goldblum sat up. “I can’t quite picture how one would do that. Do you have photos?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “What kind of pervert would take pictures of it?”
“I thought young people took pictures of everything these days.”
That was probably true. I shuddered at the thought of a selfie with the skeleton. “Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me, but the police are taking plenty.”
“But they won’t show them to me!” Goldblum smirked at me. “Didn’t I say Dolly was a pistol? My, my! I never would have expected it of her. She was wilder than I thought.”
“There’s more. I’m so sorry.” I reached for Zsazsa’s hand and clutched it. “I’m afraid Dolly was murdered.”
Zsazsa bounced on her chair like she had a spring inside her. “I knew it! I have said all along that she did not have a heart attack.”
“She drank antifreeze.”
The two of them fell into silent horror.
Zsazsa made the sign of a cross over her face and shoulders.
Goldblum rubbed his eyes with his thumb and middle finger. He sniffled a little when he said, “Could it have been related to the skeleton in her attic? Someone took revenge?”
“So if they figure out who the skeleton is, then they will know who murdered our Dolly?” Zsazsa looked down and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I cannot believe that sweet Dolly would have killed someone and hidden that person in her attic for eternity.”
“Now, Zsazsa. Do not despair. There are several possibilities,” Goldblum reasoned. “A previous owner could have hidden the body there. Or perhaps it was done by her husband who lived there for several years before he passed. A tenant might even have done it.”
Zsazsa’s eyes opened wide. “The Beauton sisters,” she whispered.
“There is one other thing you should know,” I said. “The Florist appears to be gone. When I found her, she held a small scrap of paper between her fingers. I think it’s from the book.”
“That changes everything,” said Professor Goldblum. “Obviously the thief murdered her to steal the book.”
“Not so fast.” Zsazsa held up a finger. “How would a thief manage to get her to drink something with antifreeze in it?”