The ladder looked to be about one hundred feet high, and the opening at the top of it was as black as a moonless night. I clenched my teeth, took a deep breath, and started to climb. It took forever, and I had nearly reached the hole when I heard a sound coming from above. A faint, rustling noise, as if someone who was waiting there for me had changed position.
It took me two seconds to slide back down the ladder. I was attempting to pull the ladder out of the hole when I heard Meow. I looked toward the sound and saw two glowing cat's eyes looking back at me.
Not a monster. Just a cat. Now I realized the murderer must have slipped out and locked the door behind him as I checked Darious for signs of life. I was still trapped inside, but I was alone, and I was going to get out if I had to tear the barn apart board by board.
Rather than do that, I moved the ladder back to the opening, and when it was firmly in place, gritted my teeth and climbed it. The cat was sitting on a cardboard box watching me when I pulled myself onto the floor. “Hi, kitty,” I said, cheerfully. “Sorry to bother you.”
With a twitch of its tail, it let me know it didn't mind. The shuttered windows at this level were firmly closed, but I recalled seeing a double set of doors right under the peaked roof of the barn. There would have been no need to lock something that high up. I found a rickety flight of stairs with no railing, and climbed it on my hands and knees.
My luck had returned. When I pushed on one of the doors, it swung open so easily, I had to grab the door-jamb to keep from tumbling out. My head reeled as I looked down. Even a person who didn't have acrophobia would get dizzy up here, and I'd had a fear of heights ever since I could remember.
I tried to concentrate on looking at the horizon. The barn was facing east, and the moon was already over the mountaintops. From my vantage point I saw the farmhouse, and I screamed for help as loudly as I could. Nothing happened so I took a deep breath and yelled the word every farmer fears, “Fire!”
The farmhouse door burst open, and two figures came running out.
“Help!” I cried. “Please help me.”
The couple ran down the hill to the barn and looked up at me in wonderment.
“I'm locked in,” I called. “Do you have a key?”
“No key,” the man called back.
“Then please call the police. And tell them there's a dead man in here.”
He turned his back to me and sprinted up the hill. Right past his house. I wondered why, until I remembered the Amish don't have phones. I hoped he didn't have far to go.
He returned in about ten minutes. “They're coming,” he yelled. “Yo u ’uns okay in there?”
“I'm all right. Thanks.”
By the time I'd maneuvered down the scary stairs and the even more scary ladder, I heard a siren. Trying not to look at Darious, I waited, and after a short while someone began to attack the barn door. The wood splintered as an ax broke through, and I saw a face peer through the opening. It might not have been the cavalry, and it certainly wasn't a knight in shining armor, but right then Luscious Miller looked better than anyone I could have imagined coming to rescue me.
He enlarged the hole he'd made and stepped through. “Wow,” was all he said as he gazed in astonishment at the whirling carousel. A smile lit his face, and I knew he was experiencing the childlike wonder of it all. But the smile faded when he saw the body in the chariot.
“How do you stop it?” he asked.
“There's a switch inside the workroom, but it's locked.”
Luscious picked up his ax and let me lead him to the workshop door. After a few minutes of being hacked, the door disintegrated. “Come on,” he said. “Show me how to turn it off.”
I pointed to the lever halfway up the wall. When he pulled down on it, the music stopped. I'd nearly forgotten how blissful silence could be, after listening to “In the Good Old Summertime” for more than an hour. I'd probably hear it in my dreams for years to come.
While I waited, Luscious examined Darious's body. I looked around for something to sit on and found several piles of cardboard boxes in one corner that looked fairly strong. I was resting on top of one of the piles when Luscious returned, looking shaken and pale. “I gotta call the coroner.”
He pulled out his cell phone and made the call. Then he asked me to tell him why I was in an Amish barn on the edge of town with a dead body riding a carousel.
“Have a seat,” I said, and waited until he sat on another pile of boxes. Then I told him everything that had happened from the time I arrived and discovered the body until I spotted the farmer and called for help. Luscious didn't interrupt, except to go tsst, tsst from time to time.
“But why did you come here in the first place, Tori? How well did you know this Darious guy?”
I had hoped I wouldn't have to explain why I was there. It would probably be relayed to Garnet before I got home that I'd had an assignation with a good-looking guy, who just happened to have his throat cut before I arrived.
More tsst, tssts from Luscious accompanied my explanation of how I had first met Darious. He was hissing like a snake by the time I finished telling him I'd only come to the barn to tell Darious I wasn't interested in him.
“Seems kinda funny to me you had to come out here to tell him you wasn't gonna see him no more. Couldn't you have done it by phone?”
“He didn't have one.” But I wouldn't have done it by phone, even if Darious had had one. Memories of when my ex-fiance, Steve, called to tell me he was going to marry someone else still hurt. It was the coward's way to break someone's heart, and I couldn't turn around and do it to another person.
He took his policeman's hat off and smoothed his three strands of pale blond hair over his bald spot. “Still seems kinda peculiar.”
To hide my irritation and embarrassment, I stood up and turned away from him. In doing so, I knocked over the box that topped off the pile I'd been using as a seat, and some newspaper-wrapped articles tumbled onto the wooden floor. A few items came unwrapped, and I stared aghast at them. Although I'd only seen the items once before, I recognized them immediately for their uniqueness. Then, they'd been in a glass display case in the Lickin Creek Public Library. Now, scattered about on the rough wooden floor were some of Gerald Man-ley's gutta-percha collectibles that had been stolen from the library last Sunday night.
Luscious recognized the collection almost as quickly as I did. “Holy cow,” he said. “So that's where them things went to.”
“The other boxes, Luscious. We'd better see what else is here.”
We opened one box after another, and in one I found the hexagonal bracelet with seed pearls I'd last seen on Maggie's wrist at the library. And there were other things, too, that I didn't find very interesting but that were valuable Civil War collectibles, according to Luscious. Whether or not they had also been stolen, we didn't know. But when we opened the box of antique fire chief's trumpets that both of us knew had been stolen from the volunteer firemen's company museum, we knew for sure that Darious had been a thief.
“There are more boxes on the upper levels,” I said. Without even looking into them, I was sure we'd find the antiques stolen from the Gettysburg collection. Anger surged through every inch of my body. Anger with Darious for deceiving me into thinking he was nothing more than a harmless carousel lover. And anger with myself for being so easily deceived. I knew carousels cost a small fortune. Darious had no visible means of support. I should have realized right away something wasn't right.