Secrets (24 page)

“Interesting thought,” Jeff said, moving the candle and his hand along the wall. “Charles bought the house a couple of years before this party, so I doubt if all of it was finished then. I wonder if Ruth knew the owner before Charles bought it?”

“Humph!” Cassie said. “From what Althea wrote of her, I can't imagine she came from money. It's more likely that her relatives worked on the place. Besides, wasn't she from Texas?”

“You're not only a gorgeous dame, you have a brain too.”

“I found it!” Cassie said, her hand on the wall.

“Good girl!” Jeff moved close to her as he examined the hole in the wall. “There's something blocking it.”

“Great,” Cassie said. “He's hung a picture over it.”

“I don't think so,” Jeff said. He was digging at the hole with his finger, but he couldn't reach whatever was obstructing it.

“Wait a minute,” Cassie said, then removed one of the long, decorative pins from her hair. “Althea gave me detailed instructions of what I was to wear this weekend, and today I was to stick two of these things in my hair. I almost didn't do it.” She motioned for him to move aside. “Let me try.”

She stuck the pin into the two-inch-wide hole, wiggled it around, and it slipped into a little indentation of whatever was blocking the opening. Cassie moved the pin to one side and the space opened. “
Voilá
!” she said, then leaned forward to look into the light.

“Let me check it out first.”

“No, thank you, Mr. CIA, I opened it, so I get to look through it first. I can—” She paused. “Oh, no. This is too much!” She moved away from the little opening and gave Jeff a look of disgust. “I think Charles knows about us and has prepared for our spying on him.”

Jeff didn't say anything but bent to look through the hole. He saw a round vision of what he assumed was Charles Faulkener's bedroom, all of it draped in red damask that looked to be fifty years old. He'd been told that Althea had seen Charles having sex with Florence Myers and he'd half expected to see the two of them on the bed together. But that wasn't what he saw.

Charles Faulkener lay sprawled across the bed and his throat looked as though it had been cut.

Cassie told herself that what she'd seen wasn't real, but it certainly looked real enough that she felt the blood draining from her. Dizzy, she put her hand to her head.

“
C
ASSIE
,” J
EFF SAID
as he stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. “This is probably a trick. Look at me! I'm sure you're right and this is just some actor's idea of a joke. My guess is that Althea arranged it all.”

She raised her eyes to his. “Althea said she no longer had anything to do with Charles Faulkener. She couldn't have done it.”

“Althea lies. She's a liar the size of the earth.”

Cassie jerked away from his grasp. “I don't want to hear any of this. Althea's been a friend to me.”

“To you, yes, and to the U.S. government, but there are a lot of people who haven't been pleased by what she's told about them.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Cassie said, her hand to her throat. She couldn't get the image of that man out of her mind. “Maybe we should call the police and let them handle this.”

“Not yet,” Jeff said. “First, we have to go down there and see if it's real.”

“You mean, see if he's really dead? You mean that you want us to go down there into that room and see if he's really been murdered?”

“Yes, that's exactly what I mean.”

She moved away from him. “No, thank you. I'll wait for you in my bedroom behind bolted doors.”

“No,” Jeff said. “You're going with me. If Faulkener has been murdered, then that means there's a murderer in the house and I don't want you unguarded.”

“Good idea,” she said. “I'll just get my car keys and leave this place.”

“Come on,” he said, putting his arm through hers. “Think of this as an adventure. Besides, I really do think it's all part of the game. You saw the footprints. Someone has been up here recently, so they knew about the peephole. It was probably Charles. He made sure the hole was still there, then staged this performance for us.”

“So you think Althea told him you and I were going to be here? Even though she said Charles hates her?”

“I wouldn't trust a word Althea said.” He was walking back toward the ladder, but this time he was holding Cassie's hand, as though he was afraid he'd lose her in the big attic.

“What makes you dislike Althea?”

“I don't dislike her. In fact, I quite enjoy her company. If she were forty or fifty years younger I would have asked her to marry me after our first dinner together.”

“You're certainly free with your marriage proposals,” Cassie said tightly.

“I've only asked one woman to marry me.”

“Two. Lillian and Skylar.”

Jeff opened the trapdoor to the stairs and looked down into the linen closet. The light was still on and the door closed. Turning, he started down the ladder. “When all this is done, you and I are going to have a long talk. I am not and never have been interested in Skylar Beaumont. I told you that I got rooked into being a cover for her so her father had a reason to—” He paused on the stairs. “Cassie, baby, there are some things that I'm never going to be able to tell you, and you'll have to realize that. My job isn't something I can talk about to anyone. Well, except Dad, that is.”

As he disappeared down the ladder, Cassie raised her eyes skyward for a second, then she started down the ladder. “Okay, tell me,” she said. “What does your dear father have to do with this?”

“Let's just say that if he'd been born a few years earlier, he'd be the prototype for James Bond.” Jeff waited for her to get to the floor, then he put the ladder up. He put his finger to his lips, then opened the linen closet door and cautiously looked out. “All clear,” he said as he took her hand and they walked out.

The idea of the CIA, a dead body, and a dear, sweet man being a James Bond clone was more than Cassie wanted to contemplate. When they passed her bedroom, she halted. “I'll see you later. Back in Williamsburg.”

Jeff took her hand. “No, you don't leave my sight. Faulkener's room is at the end of the corridor. Just a few steps more.”

Reluctantly, Cassie followed him. She shook her legs and her silk trousers unfurled, and she did her best to brush dirt and cobwebs off her garment. “Where is everyone?” The huge hall was empty.

“I was told that Charles doesn't allow the servants to wander about freely. Althea said he thinks he's a king, so he makes them sneak about to do their work. As for the other guests, they were outside all day that Saturday. Except for you and me. We were having sex in my bedroom.”

“Which means that the killer was roaming around free,” she said. They'd reached the door to Charles's bedroom and she looked at it nervously. “Remember that the killer was somewhere. And so was Ruth, your wife. She came into the room and put something under the floorboard. Have you looked there, yet? After all, you did spend last night in that room with Skylar.”

“I slept on the couch,” he said as he tried the doorknob. It was locked.

Cassie turned to go back down the hall. “Too bad. We can't get in.”

Jeff caught her arm and pulled her back. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a little cloth case. When he opened it, she saw several small tools.

“I've seen those on TV! It's a housebreaker's kit.” She watched him bend forward and put one of the tools inside the door lock. “Really, Jeff, this is going too far. I think we should call the police.”

“And tell them what? That a man who loves drama may have set himself up to look as though his throat was slit so we could spy on him through a hole in a wall? We can't do anything until we find out if he's actually dead.”

“And if he is, you'll call the police?”

“Maybe,” Jeff said, then stood up as he opened the door.

Cassie had no intention of entering the room, but Jeff pulled her inside and shut the door behind her.

“Stay here and I'll look around,” he said quietly. “And don't you dare leave.”

Cassie waited. There was a deep cabinet to her right, so all she could see of the room was the wall to her left and a small table at the end. To her eyes, the bedroom wasn't real—more like a stage set. It was all done in a deep, dark red, like for an opera. The walls were covered in dark damask and hung with half a dozen portraits set in heavily carved, gilded frames. Cassie turned to her left a bit to look at the paintings and saw that they were famous movie stars of the 1930s and 1940s that had been rendered to look as though they were fifteenth-century aristocrats. There were Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Clark Gable and Rudolph Valentino. On the table were silver-framed photos of more celebrities, each of them signed with gushes of love to Charles.

It seemed that it was a long time since Jeff had left her by the cabinet and she hadn't heard a sound from him. She had the odd idea that he'd left her alone in the room.

“Jeff?” she whispered.

“Stay there,” came his hoarse reply.

His tone told her everything. “He's dead, isn't he?”

“Completely,” Jeff said as he came to stand in front of her.

“Now can we call the police?”

“No.” He put his hands on Cassie's shoulders. “This isn't a police matter. This old guy wasn't as good at investments as people thought he was.”

When Cassie began to tremble, Jeff pulled her into his arms and stroked her back. “Ssshhh, be quiet,” he said. “It's going to be all right. I sent a text message to Dad and he'll take care of it. I want you to pack your bags and get out of here.”

All Cassie could do was nod in agreement. Spies and murderers weren't something that she wanted anything to do with.

“Okay,” he said, “for right now I want you to wait here while I go check that your room is all right.”

“You want me to stay here? In this room? Alone?”

“Right now I think it's the safest place. I don't think the murderer will come back here and risk getting caught. I'll only be five minutes. Stay here by the door and you won't have to see anything. Okay?”

Again, Cassie just nodded.

Jeff gave her a quick kiss on the forehead, then he slipped out the door and left the room.

The first three minutes he was gone seemed like hours. Cassie stood on one foot, then the other, then back again. She kept looking at the doorknob, hoping it would turn, but also fearful that if it did turn, it would be the murderer.

After five minutes she suddenly remembered the letters in the clock in Charles's bedroom. Althea had told her there were diamonds under the floorboards and letters in a clock in Charles's bedroom. “They're love letters and important to no one but me,” Althea had written. “If Charles finds them he'll destroy them, so I want them in my possession before it's too late.” The last words made Cassie remember that Althea was old and wouldn't be on earth much longer.

Soon ten minutes came and went, but Jeff still hadn't returned. It was when Cassie heard a clock chime the hour that she decided she had to get those letters for Althea. She was sure that if she told Jeff she needed to get them, he'd drag her from the room.

“I can do this,” Cassie whispered, then put her hand up to the side of her face and stepped around the big cabinet that blocked her view of the body on the bed.

She walked swiftly past the bed, keeping her hand up and her face turned. At the far end of the room was a short, fat cabinet and on top of it were three old clocks, each one looking like it should be in a museum. “Great,” she mumbled as she picked up a clock encased in mahogany. She saw no drawer or any place where letters could be hidden. The second one was ceramic, covered with pictures of shepherdesses holding crooks. She found nothing in it.

The third clock was brass and too heavy to pick up. The front of it had nothing, so she moved to the side of the cabinet to look at it. Unfortunately, when she did, she was in direct eyesight of the body on the bed.

For a moment she was mesmerized; she couldn't help staring at it. There was Charles in an absurd velvet bathrobe over dark green, satin pajamas, fully dressed as though for a Noël Coward play, splayed across the bed. He was perfect except for the gash across his throat and the blood that had soaked the bed around him.

Cassie put her hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. Her heart was pounding and her body was shaking. Who would want to kill that old man after all these years?

The sound of voices in the hallway, just outside the door, made her snap back to the present. She looked back at the clock and remembered why she'd come there. On the side of the clock was what looked to be a smooth place, as though it was worn out from having been pushed hundreds of time. She pulled her sleeve over her finger so she wouldn't leave any prints, and pushed.

A little drawer popped open and in it was a single piece of folded paper. She grabbed the paper, pushed the drawer shut, then scurried back to where she'd been standing when Jeff left her.

A second later, he slipped into the room, closing the door behind him.

“What took you so long?” Cassie shot at him.

“I had to make a couple of calls. Cassie,” he said slowly, putting his hands on her shoulders, “you can't leave now. It's too dangerous. It's going to be a while before they can get here and I'm to keep you with me.”

“Who is ‘they'? And where is the danger for
me
?”

“They are the people I work for, the ones you refuse to believe in. And the danger to you is that you know Althea. We've been able to protect her so far, but they fear that you're now acting as her eyes and legs.”

“Why was Charles killed?”

“Because his luck ran out.”

She looked at him questioningly.

“When he was a young man, he made money through investments, but he spent more than he made. When whatever he invested in lost money, he began to buy and sell things.”

“Like what?”

“It's changed over the years from legal to illegal, and in the last ten years to dangerous items, such as arms.”

“Yeow!” Cassie said.

“Exactly. We've had a man working on him for the last three years, but we've not been able to catch him in the act. For all that he seems harmless, he was a wily old man. His one weakness was these re-creations of that murder. He was obsessed with it.” Jeff looked at Cassie. “Althea didn't give you some task to do for her, did she?”

Cassie started to say no, but she wasn't a practiced liar.

“What have you done?” Jeff said, looking at her hard.

“I saw a man with his throat cut, remember? It's upset me.”

“Sorry,” Jeff said softly. “Come on, let's get out of this room. Let's go to my room and wait there.”

“And get whatever's under the floorboard,” she said as she hurried after him, but he didn't answer.

His bedroom—the one he shared with Skylar—was twice the size of the one she'd been given, but it was decorated in the same slick 1930s style. She sat down on a pale green slipper chair. “So now we just sit here and wait?” She was looking at the bed and thinking about Althea and Hinton being under it and seeing Ruth raise a floorboard. It had to be on one side of the bed. There was a big Aubusson rug that covered most of the floor but left the edges bare.

Jeff sat on the side of the bed and started typing out text messages on a BlackBerry. After a while, he looked up and saw where Cassie was looking. “Go on,” he said. “Look for it.”

“You aren't curious?” she asked.

“Not in the least. I can't imagine that a murder that took place over sixty years ago has anything to do with what happened today. And today is my concern now.”

“It's for Althea,” Cassie said, but Jeff smiled at her in a way that let her know that he knew it was her own curiosity.

She went on her hands and knees beside the bedside table. Jeff swiveled around to put his feet up on the bed to give her room to maneuver.