I carefully closed the door, crept between two single beds, and faced two doors very close together.
Behind the first door was an empty closet. I opened the second and looked up narrow, dusty stairs. Taking the key ring out of my pocket, I fumbled the skeleton key into the lock and turned it. As I did so, a thick steel bolt slid out of the door and with a soft snick locked in place. I almost giggled.
The attic was a dark, musty confusion of still shadows and primitive silence. One small window cast a murky shaft of light down a narrow aisle between stacks of boxes and trunks. In slow motion, every creak of the sagging floorboards sounding like a gunshot, I made my way down the aisle to the dust-caked window and scratched at the encrusted glass with a fingernail.
Well beyond a back yard layered with last fall’s leaves, the roof of a shed or garage peeked over the top of a thick nest of spindly maples and high brush that hadn’t been trimmed since Hector was a pup.
It would have taken twenty minutes with a putty knife to scrape off the encrusted grime on the window. I gave up on the idea of more sunlight and pulled out my overpriced penlight.
Crawling down the aisle on my hands and knees, I examined the trunks. At the end of the aisle, near the stairs, I found a wall of boxes stacked four high, lifted sheets, and peered at old leather chairs, a desk, and a dried-up leather sofa.
Apparently the Obermeyers didn’t care for Gordon’s taste in furniture.
I finally found it tucked in a dark corner covered by a gray wool blanket and surrounded by boxes full of plain, functional china and several decades’ worth of The Journal of Applied Economics.
And it did indeed look like the movie version of a pirate’s treasure chest except it was perhaps twice as large and the brass trim looked suspiciously like aluminum. Every move carefully choreographed, I cleared a path through the boxes and, teeth clenched, slowly, ever so slowly, moved the chest away from the corner timbers.
Again I pulled out the key ring, wiped the sweat off my face, and with a fairly steady hand inserted the brass key into the chest.
It turned easily. The penlight between my teeth, I lifted the domed lid until it was fully open and resting on the large hinges.
It was stained and mottled black, probably from fats and fluids and perhaps fungus, and it fell apart at my touch. But there was enough of the original to make out some of the letters. Gordon Rabart had died with his new University of Connecticut sweatshirt on.
I looked down at the jumble of clothes and bones, took a deep breath, and with one finger started poking and pulling at the clothing and pushing at the bones.
And found several ribs with gouges in them. Something had gone through Gordon Rabart, doing terrible, lethal damage in the process.
Slowly, carefully, I closed the lid and, again thinking through every move before I made it, replaced the chest and boxes as I had found them, covered the chest with the dust-heavy blanket, and made my way down those narrow stairs.
I was halfway down the main stairway before I realized Elinor and Milt were having drinks in the music room. I turned around and, with teeth clenched so hard my ears were ringing, crept back up the stairs. Their mumbling, mingled with the occasional clink of bottle on glass, was indistinct. Perhaps I should go down, help myself to some sherry, plant my tired butt on a loveseat, and join the conversation. “I say, Elinor, which one of you did Gordon? And why? Why on earth kill your own brother? The brother who was so kind to you and Milt? The brother who allowed you to live your parasitic life for so many years?”
I sat on the top step, arms on knees, head on arms, for a good twenty minutes before it occurred to me that there must be a back staircase to a house this large. With the caution of a rat in a Park Avenue kitchen, I slunk along those cream-colored walls until I came to the rear of the house and the back stairs.
I tiptoed down and entered a large kitchen teeming with expensive looking gadgets and saturated with the smell of baking ham. In a corner was a wine rack. I grabbed the first bottle that came to hand, eased through the back door, crept across a large screened porch and into the back yard.
The bottle tucked under my arm, I plunged into the heavy growth surrounding the shed and headed for the next street. I thought about Inning a peek in the shed but didn’t want to push my luck.
It was almost five when I made it back to Blood Sweat and Black Iron. I locked the bike to the van with the Black Iron logo painted on it and went into the building.
Wading through the noise, the smells, and the glistening, straining muscles, I found CeeCee talking to a grossly muscled young man with a black ponytail and no neck. She was dressed in yellow spandex and pointing to the muscles on her right inner thigh. Arms folded, his face a blank mask of seriousness, the kid with no neck was staring at her thigh and nodding.
Then the kid, apparently enlightened, walked away. I went up to CeeCee and yelled, “Where’s Cat?”
She pointed to a steel-framed apparatus festooned with cables and weights. Hanging from the top of a steel beam was the sling. Cat, her head and left front leg hanging out of it, was fast asleep.
CeeCee plucked the sling off the beam, handed it to me, and yelled, “I stretched her good and brushed her teeth again, just to get her used to it. Where the hell were you? I thought maybe I’d inherited a cat.”
“I was catching up on some work,” I hollered. “Thank you very much for taking care of Cat. May I drop by tomorrow?”
“You may. Want to stick around and do some iron? I won’t charge you.” I gave her my famous look of disdain and, with Cat snuggled in the sling, fled Blood Sweat and Black Iron.
Slumped on the settee, one hand gripping a mug of Lancers, the other gently kneading Cat’s neck, I listened to the wind whisper in the trees and thought about unfulfilled dreams, self-concern, and murder. Later I refilled my mug, took the cover off my ancient Underwood, and started typing.
I leaned the bike against the wall, then stood by the woodstove and stared at the broad back of Betty Worthen. After a moment she raised her head and looked my way. She picked up her coffee and blue cap, lumbered to the last booth, and slid into the back seat. I sat opposite. “Good morning, Betty.”
She took off her cap and carefully placed it dead center on the table. “You’re going to screw up my day, aren’t you, Harry?”
I pulled the sheet of paper out of my sweat jacket pocket, unfolded it, and slid it across the table. Betty gave me a sour look, fished her glasses out of her blouse pocket, stuck them on the end of her nose, and picked up the paper.
She put the paper down, took off her glasses, and savaged her face with both hands. Then she sipped her coffee, gently set the cup down, and in a near whisper said, “Elinor is what? Sixty-five? Sixty-six? And Mill? He’s at least that old. The last time I saw them they appeared to be in the very peak of bad health. They eat more than I do.” She shook her big head. “What put you onto them?”
I pulled out the key ring. “Elinor gave Bob Kokar this key ring. It has the keys to that station wagon, which is natural since Bob was going to use it to deliver the chest to their house. It has the chest key, which Bob probably slipped on the ring per Elinor’s instructions.
“The skeleton key must have been on the ring with the others when Elinor gave them to Bob. And the question I asked myself was, why have a key to your attic or basement on your car key ring?”
Betty grunted. “Because you are planning to kill your brother, stuff him in his new trunk, and hide his dead ass up in the attic, and you want to make sure everything is handy. It would be frustrating if you wanted to lock the body in the attic and couldn’t find the key.”