"Who can fathom the criminal mind?" Tricia took off down the darkened hall, the flashlight beam guiding her way. She paused in the foyer at the base of the grand stairway leading to the upstairs.
"Can't we turn on any lights?"
"Not unless we can be sure they can't be seen from the street."
"What do we tell the paramedics if one of us falls and breaks her neck?"
"Oops?" Tricia aimed the light up the long, dark stairway, wishing she'd taken Mike up on his offer of a house tour. Then again, she might've unwillingly ended up in one of the beds.
They crept up the stairs, with Angelica so close behind Tricia that she could feel her sister's breath on her neck. A stair creaked, Angelica squeaked, and a shot of adrenaline coursed through Tricia.
"If any vampires jump out at us I'm going to lose it completely," Angelica rasped.
They made it to the top of the stairs without any attacking bloodsuckers descending and Tricia ran the flashlight's beam across the floor and into an open doorway. Angelica grabbed her sleeve as she started forward, following her step for step.
The prim and proper formal sitting room had Victorian furniture and decor, from the clunky marble-topped tables, embroidered pillows on the horsehair couches, to the frosted glass sconces on the walls. They found another parlor across the hall, but this was furnished for more masculine tastes, no doubt the domain of the late Jason Harris.
A computer sat on the desk, with neat stacks of papers at its side. Tricia trained the light over one of the pages. "Exhibit one," she said, the light focused on the eBay logo on the top of the sheet. It was a listing for the online auction site, complete with a picture of a Hummel figurine. "I'll bet this is one of the things from Grace's now-empty curio cabinet downstairs. He's been listing her stuff. This is only dated yesterday. And I'll bet I gave him the idea," she said, angry with herself.
"Don't be ridiculous. Look at that stack," Angelica pointed out. "Nobody could accomplish all that in only a day. See, there are photos for everything, too. Doesn't the background look like the kitchen counter and backsplash?"
She was right.
Tricia folded the paper, stowing it in her pocket. "I'll show this to Grace to confirm it's one of her figurines. Maybe there's a way she can recover it, or at least prove that Mike's been stealing from her."
"We'd better get moving," Angelica advised.
"The bedrooms must be in the back," Tricia whispered and turned away for the doorway, still unable to squelch the feeling they were violating the house with their presence.
The two small bedrooms on the right side of the hall were connected by an old-fashioned bathroom. The first, painted in tones of blue, would've suited a boy, and had probably been Mike's. The other, a tiny guest room with a small empty closet, had only a bed, an empty dresser, and a straight-backed wooden chair.
They crossed to the other side of the hall and Tricia played the flashlight's beam across an unmade king-sized bed. "Aha, the master bedroom."
"Now can we turn on a light?" Angelica asked.
Tricia threw a switch and the lights blazed. Unlike the other rooms that were more or less intact, the once-pretty master suite had been ransacked. What Tricia had taken as a rumpled bed proved to be destroyed-the sheets torn and the pillows shredded. The gold-edged French provincial dresser's drawers had all been dumped, with piles of woman's clothes littering the floor. She didn't see the jewelry boxes Grace had told her about.
"Looks like the result of a lot of anger," Angelica said.
"I hope this means he didn't find Grace's hiding place."
"And you know where it is?"
Tricia nodded. "Help me move the mattress and box springs."
"Do I look like a stevedore?" But Angelica did help Tricia pull the mattress up to stand against the wall, and they hauled up one of the twin box springs against it, too. Grace hadn't mentioned the trapdoor would be under a large area rug. They ended up moving the other box spring, dragging away the heavy headboard and side rails in order to pull up the rug. The trapdoor was exactly as Grace had described it, although much larger than Tricia had anticipated, measuring one by two feet. Tricia knelt in front of the recessed brass ring, pulled it up, and yanked open the door. The hiding space was even bigger than the door to it, and filled with an assortment of little black velvet-covered boxes.
Angelica grabbed one and popped it open. "Trish, look."
It was empty.
It took ten minutes of searching to find that they were all empty.
Tricia's eyes grew moist. She hadn't thought the loss of Grace's treasures would affect her so much. But anguish soon turned to pique. "That stinking rat."
Angelica sniffed. "Maybe you were right. A man who could steal from his own mother probablyis capable of throwing a rock through a storefront window. Do you think he's already sold everything?" Angelica asked, her voice soft.
"You saw all those eBay sheets." Tricia picked up the first of the boxes and replaced it in the hiding place. "Have you seen his expensive little car? I'm not saying an insurance agent couldn't afford it, but it seems pretty coincidental that he bought it after his mother was put in the home-and her assets started disappearing." She glanced around at the devastation. "This had to just happen."
"How do you know?"
"Just yesterday morning Mike offered me a tour of the upstairs. He wouldn't have if the room was in this shape."
"Unless he was hoping to suddenly discover a robbery with a handy witness in tow."
Tricia frowned. "He did seem eager for me to come up here." Maybe Angelica was right and it wasn't her feminine wiles that had precipitated the invitation.
She shook her head. No, the slimeball had made his intentions well known.
"How did he ever find Grace's hidey hole?" Angelica wondered. "I mean, this isn't exactly the easiest place to find."
"He's been throwing out receipts. There were lots of them in the trash. He could've found one from whoever built this hiding space."
"It's possible," Angelica agreed, but she sounded skeptical. She helped Tricia replace the rest of the boxes before they restored the room to the way they'd found it. Hopefully Mike wouldn't notice if the sheets, pillows, or bedspread weren't in the exact same positions.
Tricia turned the flashlight on and switched off the overhead light. They waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness before she led the way back down the long staircase, with Angelica at her heels once more.
They'd reached the bottom of the stairs and just started down the hall toward the back of the house when Tricia stopped dead, flicking off the flashlight.
Angelica ran right into her. She opened her mouth but Tricia pivoted and clamped a hand across it. "Shhh!"
Voices.
In the kitchen.
Mike, and he was with another person… a woman, whose voice Tricia recognized.
Eighteen
With her right hand still clamped across Angelica's mouth, Tricia shuffled across the Persian runner and into the dining room, dragging her sister along with her. She plastered herself against the wall of the darkened room, closed her eyes, and listened-concentrating.
Yes, it was Deirdre Gleason's voice.
"I can't make out what they're saying," Angelica complained.
Tricia's hand tightened around her sister's arm, silencing her. She closed her eyes again, concentrating on the muffled voices, but caught only snatches of words:
"Books… case price… wholesale…"
"Total-cash only…"
Obviously they discussed some kind of financial deal. No doubt after their talk the day before, Mike had contracted Deirdre, eager to dump more of his mother's possessions. And a cash deal left no paper trail.
Although risking detection, Tricia crept forward and peeked through the crack in the door, hoping to hear better. A solemn-faced Deirdre stood beside the counter, a book in hand, looking very much like a professor in mid-lecture. Could she have picked up that much knowledge about cookbooks in such a short time? Then again, Tricia didn't know how much the sisters had discussed the business before Doris's passing. Or perhaps it was her accountant's background that made Deirdre such a hard negotiator.