Gin Mill Grill Page 2

  “Well, I – “

  “That’s okay. After all these years, you can call it whatever you want.” She took a bite of her pizza.

  Bubba and Clementine sat quietly, but watched her intently. Their eyes traveled to her mouth when she took the bite and chewed.

  Apparently the woman was a tease. She cut off another bite with a knife, forked it, and slowly lifted it to her mouth. She lowered it back to the plate. Lifting it, she moved her hand to the right, all the time watching the dogs.

  They looked like they were hypnotized, their heads moving as though they were watching a sports event.

  Bubba looked close to drooling. I grabbed a napkin and wiped his mouth.

  Eloise laughed. “Can they have a bite?”

  “No,” I replied. “I’ll save some from my lunch and when we put them outside they can each have a small piece.”

  We finished eating without talking about the case, and put the dogs out, each with a bite of pizza in their mouth. Eloise put a bucket of water outside for them.

  When we returned to the dining room, Stanley asked if she’d mind if we looked around the house.

  “Please do,” she said. “I want you to feel free to check everything out. The scene of the murder was in the living room, and the blood stains are under the throw rug. Actually, there are two throw rugs that cover the stains. I love antiques, and a lot of what’s in the house belonged to Horace and Harley. Neither of them had married when all of this happened, and they lived here together. I decided to keep most of their furniture, at least the solid pieces.”

  “Solid?” Stanley asked.

  “Like the desks – there are two – and the China cabinet. Let’s see. There are two chests of drawers that were theirs… Oh, go ahead and look at everything. Maybe you’ll find something my father missed.”

  “Which reminds me,” I said, “can I look at his notes?”

  “Of course. I’ll be right back.”

  She returned shortly bearing a small cardboard box.

  While Pete and Stanley walked through the house, I started reading Eloise’s father’s notes.

  “By the way,” I said, “what was your father’s name?”

  “Archie Glosser.”

  I nodded and turned back to the notes. Many were written on slips of paper, and some were in a small notebook. Archie seemed to write on whatever was convenient. There was also a photo of the twins.

  Eloise stood up. “I’m going to go play with the dogs so you can concentrate.”

  “Watch out for Clem. She’s a licker.”

  “That’s okay with me,” she replied.

  Archie had spoken to the neighbor who’d heard the “ruckus,” along with the other neighbors. They all agreed that Horace and Harley never seemed to have issues. No one had seen anyone near the house except the brothers. There’d been no strangers hanging around. Things had been very quiet until the one neighbor, namely Phil Harper, heard yelling coming from the house. He said Horace sounded terrified. He said he didn’t know whether to interfere or not, but when the yelling stopped he decided he’d better check on things, and that’s when he found the body. He hadn’t seen anyone leaving the scene.

  It seemed, so far, that Archie had been fairly thorough when he spoke to people. He had as many details as possible.

  Other neighbors said that as many twins tend to do, they finished each other’s sentences. They had many common interests. They both had a good sense of humor. I gathered from the notes that the brothers weren’t identical twins, just as Eloise had said. I took a closer look at the photo and saw that they weren’t identical, but they did look very similar to each other.

  Pete stopped and watched me for a moment. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Not yet. The brothers had a lot in common. One note mentions that they spent a most of their time at a place called H & H. I don’t know what that was though.”

  “Ask Eloise. Maybe she knows. Can you set aside the notes for a few minutes? There’s something odd about this house and I want you to help me figure something out.”

  Stanley joined us.

  “What do you mean that there’s something odd?” I asked.

  “The dimensions aren’t right, but I can’t quite figure it out.”

  Stanley sat down in the chair next to mine. “While you’re helping Pete, I’ll read more of the notes.”

  He picked something up.

  “Oh, look. There’s a copy of an old police report.”

  “Why don’t you read that while I help Pete figure out what’s odd about this house, whatever that means.”

  Chapter Three

  “Here’s what that means,” Pete said. “I found one issue that doesn’t make sense.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He took my hand. “Come with me.”

  He led me into the kitchen and opened a door. “What do you see?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I see a food pantry. What about it?”

  “Take a good look at it, and then I want to show you something else.”

  I studied the tiny room, raised my eyebrows in question at Pete, and followed him through the house to a bedroom that was located behind the kitchen and pantry.

  My husband pointed to the wall that separated the rooms. “What do you see? And take a good, long look.”

  “I see a wall. What do you mean by what do I see?” I have to admit, he was confusing me.

  “Think about that pantry, and think about the space between the pantry and the bedroom. Something isn’t right.”

  I studied the wall before leaving the room and returning to the pantry.

  Pete followed behind me, waiting for me to figure out what the oddity was.

  Leaving the pantry, I returned to the bedroom, studying everything about the structure of the house.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “The pantry is shallow, not a lot of depth. It should be deeper. There seems to be way too much space between the walls of the bedroom and the pantry.”

  “I was hoping you’d see it, too,” Pete said.

  “I see what you mean,” Stanley said from the doorway. “I’m sorry, but you two made me curious. Let’s go look at the pantry again.”

  And we did.

  Eloise came in from the yard and saw us all staring at the pantry. “What’s up?”

  “Would you mind if we take everything off the shelves?” I asked.

  She looked surprised. “Go ahead, but what’s going on?”

  Pete smiled at her. “There’s a possibility that we have a little surprise for you. Or are you already aware that there may be a space behind the pantry wall?”

  It was her turn to raise her eyebrows. “No.”

  “Was the pantry already built when you moved in?” I asked.

  “The room was here, but it wasn’t a pantry. My husband, Ed, added the shelves for me. Horace and Harley had just been using it as storage space.”

  We placed all of the cans and boxes on the sink and returned to the room to study the wall space. The first thing we noticed was that the shelves weren’t permanently attached to the wall. They were the kind you set on brackets.

  Pete lifted the shelves and leaned them against the wall, outside the room. “Does this kind of remind you of something?”

  I knew exactly what he meant. “It reminds me of looking for the entrance to a safe room.”

  “My thought exactly.”

  He took one side of the wall and I took the other, and we began feeling around the wall, trying to find anything out of the ordinary.

  Stanley and Eloise waited in the kitchen.

  “Do you have a flashlight?” I called out. The one dim bulb in the room wasn’t very bright.

  “Just a sec,” Eloise replied.

  I heard a drawer open and within seconds someone tapped me on the back. I turned to find her holding out two flashlights.

  “Thanks,” I said, handing one of them to Pete.

  “That’s better,” he said.

>   We found two seams, one at each end of the wall. They’d been painted over, but time had left them visible again.

  “Interesting,” I said. “The area is too big to be a door.”

  Pete gave the section in between the seams more attention. “Nope. That’s it. Just those two seams.”

  “There has to be a way to open this, if it is an opening. Why else would we find seams? I’m stumped.”

  Pete walked out to the kitchen and stood before Eloise. “Did your husband do any other work in that room besides the shelves?”

  “Sure. He painted it. Oh, and there were a few dents in the wall where the brothers had apparently hit it with something. Maybe a ladder or something like that. Ed filled those in with… What’s it called? Sparkle?”

  Pete grinned. “Spackle.”

  We each began feeling along the wall, looking for places that had been repaired with spackle.

  “Got it,” I said. The spot I’d found was very near the seam.

  Pete moved to my end of the room and felt the spot I’d found. “Eloise, is it okay if we remove the spackle?”

  “Do whatever you need to do.” Her voice sounded interested, but she didn’t sound worried about us doing any damage.

  “What’d you find?” Stanley asked.

  “Give me a minute,” Pete said over his shoulder. He pulled a pocket knife out of his pocket and began scraping the indentation clean. It was fairly deep, but not so much so that it would make someone want to take a second look.

  Sometimes timing is everything. Just as Pete reached for the indentation, the bulb in the pantry burned out and we were in the dark, with the exception of the flashlight I held.

  “Just a minute and I’ll bring you a new bulb,” Eloise said.

  “That’s okay,” Pete replied. “I can see well enough.”

  “Actually,” I said, “the seams are more defined with just the flashlight.”

  It wasn’t completely dark, and I could see Pete nod.

  He slipped the ends of his fingers into what I was now thinking of as a slot. It was meant to look like damage to the wall, but I was positive it was a purposeful indentation.

  Pete tried to slide the wall to the left, using the slot. There was a slight movement, but not enough to get excited about.

  Eloise and Stanley stood in the doorway, watching. Waiting. Hoping we were on to something.

  Pete pulled again and we could tell the wall should be moving, but it was stuck.

  “Oh, for heaven sake,” Eloise said. “Just a minute.”

  She disappeared, returning with a hammer.

  “Oh, no,” Pete said. “I’m not going to break down the wall.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said. “But you can gently knock on the edges and see if it will come loose. I really want to know what’s behind that wall. We bought this house around 1975. My great aunt lived here from not long after Horace died, maybe a year after his death, until we bought it. Her sister lived here with her until she passed. None of us ever had a clue that there might be a wall that moves.”

  She handed the hammer to Pete.

  “This is kind of exciting. Who knows what we’ll find? There could be a treasure hidden there, or maybe a fortune in famous paintings or something. Start hammering. Gently, of course.”

  Pete can be very methodical sometimes. He didn’t hammer and try to slide the door open. He gently knocked on the edges all around the door before he seemed satisfied.

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Not yet.” He walked from one end of the door to the other, gently pushing on the wall.

  “Now?” Eloise asked, sounding slightly impatient.

  “Now,” Pete said.

  He slipped his fingers into the indentation again and gave a tug. It moved about an inch before it stuck again.

  He inspected the entire wall once more, grunted in satisfaction, and used his pocket knife to scrape something along the bottom on the wall.

  “May I help?” Stanley asked.

  “I think I’ve got it,” Pete replied.

  He slid his fingers into the indentation and pulled the wall to the side.

  There were scraping noises, and the wall didn’t move smoothly, but it moved. Once the opening was wide enough for Pete to step into, he stood on the threshold and pushed with a mighty shove.

  “Wait a minute,” Eloise said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “There’s a little pipsqueak scratching at my back door. Don’t do anything until I let the dogs in. I want to see what you find.”

  “Don’t let them…”

  She disappeared and let the dogs in before I could stop her.

  “…in,” I said, sounding defeated.

  Eloise and the dogs reappeared at the doorway to the pantry.

  Clem and Bubba sniffed the air. Bubba whined. Clem’s tail wagged frantically.

  “Pete! Watch out!”

  The dogs barreled past him and entered the chamber we’d found. Or room. Or whatever it was.

  Pete pushed the door to make the opening wider, and we pointed our flashlights into the room.

  Eloise and Stanley squeezed in next to us, not wanting to miss anything.

  A musty smell emanated from the space, but before we could see anything, Bubba came flying out of the room, tail between his legs, and ran smack dab into Stanley, knocking him over. The dog didn’t stop until he reached the back door where he sat and stared at it. He wanted out – now!

  “Where’d Clem go?” I asked.

  Pete helped Stanley up and we turned our flashlights back to the room.

  And there was Clem – sitting on the lap of a mummified corpse, looking quite proud of herself. I saw her tail wag – once.

  Chapter Four

  “Uh, I think we found Harley.” Eloise’s eyes were opened wide.

  “Ya think?” Pete said.

  No one screamed, no one panicked and no one fainted. Apparently Eloise was made of sturdy stuff, and I guessed that Stanley had grown a spine after seeing his share of death over the past few years.

  “Ugh! Grab that dog before she starts licking,” I said. I’d come to know her bad habits.

  Pete stepped forward and plucked Clem off the body’s lap. He carried her out of the room and put both dogs outside. I heard her immediately start scratching at the back door.

  “That was a surprise. I would have expected Bubba to take this in his stride, not Clem,” I said.

  “If you recall,” Stanley said, “Bubba was once frightened of what he perceived as a ghost.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.”

  Stanley seemed to be in a take charge mood. “We’ve got to call the police. Pete, call your friend, Rick. You know he’ll let us look things over since the crime is so old.”

  I agreed with Stanley. “You’re right, Stan. They’re so busy that he’d probably just as soon let us take over the investigation. There’s nothing they can do now.”

  I turned to Pete.

  “Call him, sweetie.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Eloise said. “You’re on the case for a few hours, and you’ve already found Cousin Harley. No wonder you have such a great reputation.” She was speaking rapidly, which made me realize she might be nervous.

  I took a step away from her, remembering that fast talking made her spray a little spittle. “Luck. Now if we can just figure out what happened.”

  While Pete called Rick, I stepped into the room, which was bigger than the pantry, and began taking a good look around with the help of the flashlight.

  “Don’t move. Wait for me.” Eloise excused herself and ran to the kitchen, returning with a light bulb. She replaced the one in the pantry which gave us a little more light.

  “This is like a safe room, but it’s from before there was such a thing. I guess your cousins were forward thinkers,” Stanley said, looking at Eloise.

  She stepped into the room, too, and she reached to pick something up, but I stopped her.

  “Don�
�t touch anything. Just look. The police, regardless of how old the murder is, will want to investigate.”

  “How do you know this was a murder?” she asked.

  “It could be because there’s a knife sticking out of his chest.”

  “Oh.” She leaned forward to inspect his chest. “Oh, yes. I see that now.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “At least now I know he didn’t murder his brother.”

  “We need to determine if this is really Harley,” I said.

  “Who else would it be?”

  I shrugged and tipped my head to the side.

  Stanley pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “I’m going outside to call Felicity. I think I’d better let her know I’ll be awhile. I was supposed to take her shopping this afternoon.”

  While he was gone, I used my own phone to take pictures of the scene. Things would get moved around, and the crime scene techs would take the body. I wanted to remember everything just as we found it.

  “I’d like copies of those photos to add to my father’s notes, if you don’t mind.” Eloise didn’t look the least bit embarrassed about asking for pictures of a murder scene.

  Of course, this didn’t quite seem real.

  I surveyed the area and talked, partly to myself and partly to Eloise. “This room must have been fairly airtight. There’s dust, but not as much as you’d expect. If this was some kind of safe room, I wonder what he thought he’d do for air.”

  “Maybe he never thought he’d spend that much time in here.” Eloise sneezed, stirring up a smattering of dust.

  “Maybe. I wonder why he felt the need for a secret room. Or maybe it wasn’t meant to be a secret. It could have simply been a place to get away from everyday life.”

  “I think I might know what this room was used for, but let me think it over before I offer my opinion,” Eloise said.

  I noticed a pipe sitting on a small table next to the easy chair Harley sat on. I sniffed, noticing the faint smell of tobacco. A book sat on the table next to the pipe. Not picking it up, I glanced at the title which was Murder on the Blackboard by Stuart Palmer, one of my favorite old-time authors. This would have been written in the early 1930s. Apparently Harley was a man after my own heart. Our client had said Horace died sometime around 1932, and apparently Harley died at the same time.