Last Puzzle & Testament (36 page)

“
All
of the drawers?”

“No. Or the cubbyholes, either. But we will now.”

An exhaustive search of the cubbyholes of the desk turned up nothing more interesting than Emma Hurley’s phone bill, and a deck of pinochle cards.

The desk drawers were no more productive. One was crammed with receipts. Another held bank statements from the Bakerhaven Savings & Loan.

Cora Felton pulled a statement out of an envelope, shone her light on it, and whistled. “Wow. The woman had forty-six thousand dollars in her checking account, and over half a million in savings.”

“Is that all?” Sherry said.

“
All?
” Cora said. “Did you really apply the word
all
to half a million?”

“She was worth a lot more than that. So where’s the rest of the money?”

“In a secret drawer, perhaps? Is that how you’re thinking? Come on, Sherry. You’re the logical, rational one.
I’m
the wide-eyed romantic.”

“You certainly are,” Sherry said. “I don’t recall mentioning any secret drawer.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” Cora said. “And, like you say, the money’s got to be somewhere. Come on, let’s check it out.”

“Check what out?”

“The desk. How deep are these drawers?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there room for anything behind them?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, let’s make sure. Come on. Pull one out.”

Sherry pulled the top drawer all the way out and Cora shone the light where it had been.

“Nothing in this one,” Cora reported. “Here. Let’s measure. Hold it up to the side of the desk.”

Sherry held the drawer along the side of the desk. It went almost to the back. “It’s a full drawer. No room for anything behind it.”

“Uh huh. Hold it up, let me check the bottom.”

Sherry held the drawer up. Cora bent down, shone the light, banged on the bottom.

“Okay, nothing there, just a simple wooden drawer. Put it back and let’s check the next.”

“I bet they’re all the same.”

“I bet they are too. That’s no reason not to look.”

There were seven desk drawers, three on each side, and one thin pencil drawer across the middle. Sherry and Cora pulled each one out, checked each side and bottom.

It was on the bottom of the middle drawer on the right side of the desk. Cora’s flashlight lit up a large circled inscription in black Magic Marker:

#1.

Underneath, also in black Magic Marker, was a rhymed couplet:

The kitchen will do
For your next clue

Cora Felton grinned. “Well, this is more like it,” she said.

“More like it?” Sherry exclaimed. “Are you kidding me? This is utterly fantastic! Are you telling me there’s a whole different puzzle?”

“Why not? It’s what we were looking for.”

“Even so. I don’t see how you can be so calm about it.”

“Calm? Who’s calm? I’m jumping out of my skin.” Cora struck a pose. “Come on, let’s go! The kitchen will do for our next clue!”

They replaced the drawer and hurried off to find the kitchen.

“Keep your flashlight down,” Cora counseled as they descended the stairs. “In case anyone’s driving by.”

“We’d see the headlights,” Sherry told her.

“Even so,” Cora said.

Downstairs, they went through a living room that was a medley of styles, including a marble fireplace, a modern convertible couch, a love seat, an ottoman, and Queen Anne chairs. Next, a formal dining room where a massive oak table seated twelve, and the walls were lined with antique breakfronts and serving stands. Sherry and CoSherry ara detoured around the table and pushed through a pair of swinging doors into the kitchen.

The Hurley kitchen was extensive for a private house. On one wall were two stoves, one with six burners, the other topped by metal grills. Another wall held a floor-to-ceiling refrigerator and a walk-in freezer. Still another held sinks and an industrial dishwasher, the type racks of dishes were fed through on a conveyor belt. On the fourth wall were shelves of pots and pans, and a door to a separate pantry lined with provisions.

The center of the kitchen was dominated by a huge butcherblock table, nearly as large as the table in the dining room. Knives and kitchen utensils hung neatly around the perimeter from racks.

“Well,” Sherry said. “Where do we begin?”

Cora shone her light around, considered. “Under the table,” she decided. “I would expect writing on the bottom of the table, just like on the bottom of the drawer.”

Examining the bottom of the table was slightly complicated by the fact that it had a lower shelf, which was crammed with pots and pans. Still, Sherry and Cora managed to squeeze in and shine their lights enough to see that there was nothing written there.

“Next theory?” Sherry said, disappointed.

“Same theory, different location,” Cora told her. “I’d still look for writing underneath. How about that counter leading from the sink to the dishwasher?”

There was nothing there. But there was underneath the counter leading out of the dishwasher. The message, once again, was in Magic Marker:

#2.

How low can you go
To find your clues?
Here’s an offer
You can’t re-fuse

“How low can you go,” Sherry muttered. “Would that mean the basement?”

“Sure sounds like it,” Cora replied. “But what’s this offer you can’t refuse?”

“It’s hyphenated,” Sherry said.

“What?”

“
Refuse
is hyphenated.
Re
hyphen
fuse.
That’s got to be significant.”

“Fuse box!” Cora exclaimed. “I bet there’s a fuse box in the basement.”

“I bet you’re right,” Sherry said. “You think we can find it in the dark?”

“We will if we have to,” Cora answered. “If there’s no basement windows, we can turn on the lights. So where’s the basement door?”

It was in the back hallway off the pantry. Sherry nudged the door open, exposing the stairway leading down. There was a light switch on the wall near the top.

“Shall we risk it?” Sherry asked.

“You stay here,” Cora said decisively. “I’ll go down, see if there’s windows. If not, we’ll switch the light on.”

Cora crept down the stairs while Sherry waited by the light switch. Cora reached the bottom and moved off, leaving the stairs dark. Sherry aimed her flashlight down the stairwell. The beam didn’t reach the bottom. She played the light around the stairs, fingered the switch. The shadows in the basement were impenetrable.

Sherry waited impatiently as the seconds ticked by. Told herself she was stupid for being nervous. Even so, it was taking too long. A few more seconds and she’d either switch the lights on, or go downstairs and—

“Sherry!” Cora hissed from the shadows below. “It’s okay. Turn ’em on.”

Sherry threw the light switch. Nothing happened.

“It’s all right, turn ’em on,” Cora said.

“I did,” Sherry said.

“Then they’re not working,” Cora told her. “I guess we’d better find the fuse box. Come on.”

Sherry joined Cora at the bottom of the stairs.

“There’s no windows that I can see,” Cora reported. “It’s hard to tell, because there’s lots of partitions. There’s a stairs up to the back lawn—you know the kind I mean—concrete steps up to a flat door that would pull up from the outside—but that’s not going to let any light out, besides it’s in the back. I found the furnace and the water tank. I haven’t found the fuse box, but it can’t be far.”

“Okay. Then we can trace the electricity from it.”

“That’s what I like about you. Always thinking. Come on.”

Cora led the way through the dingy basement, keeping the flashlight down to illuminate the debris scattered on the concrete floor.

Sherry followed with her flashlight up, trying to spot the spiderwebs, which seemed to be everywhere. Most of them were old, but many were new and occupied, and some of the spiders seemed aggressively large. Sherry’s flesh began to crawl. She shuddered, hurried along after her aunt.

“Watch out for that rake,” Cora warned.

Sherry stopped, shone her light down, saw that she had nearly tripped over a pile of garden tools. She detoured around it, checking carefully for overhanging webs, then followed Cora’s bobbing flashlight to the other side of the cellar.

“Okay, here we are,” Cora announced. “Here’s the water heater.” She played her flashlight over it. “There. Isn’t that an electric cable coming out of the top?”

“There’s two of them,” Sherry said, shining her light. “One in each direction. Either could lead to the fuse box.”

“Wanna split up?”

“Not particularly. But it would be faster.”

“All right. You go right, I’ll go left.”

Sherry shone the light, followed the shiny silver electrical conduit along the wall. It was difficult, because every now and then she’d hit a partition she’d have to go out around, and pick up the conduit on the other side. Fortunately, it ran fairly straight, only occasionally detouring around a column, beam, girder, or whatever they called structural supports in an old house—Sherry had majored in linguistics, not architecture.

At one point the cable swooped upward, ran along the ceiling, which made tracking it harder. Running it must have been harder too, and Sherry couldn’t help wondering why the electrician had bothered. Still, she followed it diligently, while keeping an anxious eye out for arachnids.

She lost it in the corner. The corner was particularly dark and inaccessible, with two partitions thrown up, in Sherry’s estimation, solely for the purpose of frustrating her. She couldn’t really get in between them without squeezing into a rather uninviting space, with rubble on the floor, cobwebs on the ceiling, and a stack of old lumber piled upward against the wall. Her only real hope was to pick it up on the other side. Only the conduit didn’t come out of the other side. On the far side of the second partition there were no cables at all. No electrical work of any kind.

Sherry shone the light, sized up the situation. Decided either the conduit had taken a turn in the corner and was now running away from the wall along the ceiling, or else this corner was where the power ran upstairs to the rest of the house.

She took a step backward, played the light along the ceiling.

Heard a noise.

She snapped off the light, stood very still.

“Got it!” Cora Felton muttered triumphantly.

Sherry felt silly. She and Cora had circled the whole basement, and wound up right next to each other.

“Where are you?” Sherry called.

“Right here. Can’t you see me?”

“Can you see me?”

“No.”

“Then how do you expect me to see you?”

“There must be another wall here. Come out around.”

“You found the fuse box?”

“Yeah, but I can’t reach it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s near the ceiling.”

“The fuse box is near the ceiling?”

Cora didn’t reply.

Sherry picked her way toward the center of the cellar, detoured around a storage area of some sort, and immediately saw Cora Felton’s flashlight. It was trained on a fuse box on the wall near the ceiling just out of reach.

“Wonderful,” Sherry said. “There’s no box or step stool?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Then how do they change the fuses?”

“I would imagine they’re circuit breakers.”

“That’s not the point. How do they get up there?”

“They stand on something. Emma Hurley probably removed it after she left the clue.”

“Assuming she left it here.”

“Or assuming someone left it here for her. I bet whoever left the clue took the step stool away just to make it harder for us.”

“As if it wasn’t hard enough,” Sherry said. “Okay, I’ll find something.”

Sherry went back to what had appeared to be a partitioned-off storage area. Investigating, she found it to be exactly that. A makeshift Sheetrock door was unlocked, and swung back on squeaky hinges to reveal boxes, trunks, and suitcases. Sherry chose a trunk that was sturdy but empty and light enough for her to carry. She hefted it by the handle, lugged it back to her aunt.

“I hope this is high enough,” Sherry said.

“We could stand it on end.”

“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t get on it, and I wouldn’t advise you to.”

“All right. Let’s try it flat.”

Standing on the trunk on tiptoe, Sherry was just able to reach the cover of the fuse box. She reached up, pushed it open to reveal a panel of circuit breakers.

“There we go,” Cora said.

On the back of the fuse box was:

#3.

My, oh my
The attic’s high
Where the light comes
From the sky

“Skylight,” Sherry said. “Would an attic have a skylight?”

“Don’t be so literal,” Cora scolded. “I don’t know what the attic has, but that’s where we want to go.”

“Just a moment …” Sherry said.

She shone her flashlight over the fuse box. One of the circuit breakers was tripped. Sherry reached up, stretched her finger, pushed it over.

The cellar lights came on, and proved to be bare bulbs screwed into ceiling sockets with dangling pull cords. Several of them were on, though not the one where Sherry and Cora were standing. Cora reached up, pulled the cord, turned theirs on, lighting up the alcove.

“Well, that certainly would have helped,” Cora said. “Too bad the breaker was tripped.”

“Yeah,” Sherry said dryly. “I suppose we can thank Emma Hurley for that.”

“Oh, doubtless,” Cora agreed happily. “Any other breakers tripped? It would be a shame to run into the same thing in the attic.”

“We probably can’t risk the lights there,” Sherry said.

“Even so.”

“No, the circuit breakers are all okay. Come on, let’s go.”

With the lights on they had no trouble negotiating the basement floor, and in a minute they were climbing the stairs. At the top Cora threw the switch, plunging the basement into darkness.