“She was down in that cellar—sneaking around. I don’t think that I believe her about the lights. If she didn’t turn them off, who did? And if someone else was down there, how the hell did they get out?”
Griffin shook his head. “I never did find anything. But he wants me to talk to Lacey. I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I may just get something.” He grimaced. “Good cop, bad cop. Carl will have either worn her down or aggravated the hell out of her by now.”
Vickie pushed past him, looking at the clock. It was nearly 7:00 a.m.
“And,” Griffin continued, “Jackson has suggested that you meet up with Angela at the hospital. They’re going to hold Alice one more night—apparently she got a real good dose of baby-baby—and they’re hoping that Liza Harcourt will come around soon.”
“But Alice has been conscious awhile, right? Has she said anything else?”
“I doubt if she’s going to—not now, anyway. Remember why date-rape drugs are so effective—the victims can’t remember that they were raped. They may have an odd feeling of having been manipulated and violated, but they don’t remember any details. Half the time, sadly, they don’t remember people or names. So I don’t think we’ll get much out of Alice.”
“But Liza was given the same thing, so they say.”
“Yes.”
“So what are the chances she remembers anything?”
“We can still hope, and still try speaking with them,” he said. “And you’re good at that. You and Angela. And while you’re sitting around, you can get on with your research. She excels at that, too, and she’ll also get the department going back at headquarters.”
He rolled out of bed. “Hey, get to it!” he teased. “Early hours!”
“I spit on your early hours!” she retorted, leaping up. “They are nothing to me! In fact, I will race you into the shower!”
“Hey. You know, we could share.”
“That doesn’t work out so well,” she told him. “Not if we’re supposed to be moving quickly.”
“Things done quickly can still be tremendous fun.”
Vickie laughed and headed in. She left it up to him as to whether he chose to follow or not.
* * *
“This is quite ridiculous,” Lacey said. “You’ve thrown me in a cell. You’ve now dragged me into an office for the third time to talk to me. My answers haven’t changed. They aren’t going to change. You want to charge me with breaking and entering? Go for it—Gary still owns the place and he’ll make you drop the charges. And whatever it is—obstructing a criminal investigation! How did I obstruct anything?” she demanded.
She was good, Griffin thought. Good—or completely innocent. But if she was innocent, what had she been doing prowling around in the wine cellar?
“Lacey, what did you expect?” he asked her. Carl was watching from behind the two-way mirror; Lacey was seated. Griffin moved slowly around the room, walking behind her and then coming around to look at her, his arms crossed over his chest.
“What do you mean? I work at the Black Bird.”
“Which, as you know, is closed, under lock and key, until the police decide that it’s time to reopen. It’s the scene of not just one, but two crimes, Lacey.”
She fell silent, pouting.
“You were there for a reason.”
“Yes, I work there.”
“You work in the gift shop. And the gift shop was closed, as was the restaurant. Come on, Lacey, quit playing stupid.”
“I’m not playing stupid. I do stock with Gary or whomever now and then. It’s a family business. We all work all over. At a restaurant, a lot of people come and go. Waiters and waitresses, bartenders, kitchen staff. I’m really part of the family,” she said.
Griffin stopped pacing and leaned on the table, his face close to hers. He didn’t raise his voice.
“Why were you in the cellar last night? There was no reason for you to be there. Unless, of course, you were looking for Franklin Verne’s laptop, and if so—why?”
She swallowed in a gulp, staring at him.
“Yes,” she said.
“You were looking for the laptop. Why?”
“I had to see... I had to see what he was doing.”
“What do you mean, what Franklin was doing?”
Lacey let out a long breath. “For me, I just wanted to know. Our group...the Blackbirds...we have so many discussions on what made Poe’s work so good, so fantastic. For one, he had a true talent for seeing what was going on around him—as in the case of Mary Rogers, ‘the beautiful cigar girl,’ the girl murdered in New York while he was living there. Anyway, we all talk, and we talked about great cases once when Brent Whaley was at a meeting, and he said that we were all brilliant, that he was going to be talking to Franklin Verne, and surely, Franklin would want to use one of our ideas. So, you see, I had this great idea that centered around Poe’s suicide, because, you see, I actually think that Poe brought about his own death, that he was completely self-destructive. And I...I wanted to see what Franklin Verne was doing—if he chose to use my idea.”
“At this Blackbird meeting, what else was going on? Who was there?”
“Oh, a few of our out-of-town members were here that day, but they haven’t been back in the city,” Lacey said. “A couple of retirees from Florida. Wonderful people. A lady from Tampa, and he retired to Daytona Beach.”
“But they haven’t been in Baltimore lately.”
“No, they only come up around the early summer,” Lacey said. “Brent was here—of course, I said that. And Liza and Gary and Alice, and I don’t remember who was waiting on tables or tending bar. People were in and out...it was fun. It was a great meeting. It was all a what-if kind of a thing, and it was great.”
“But because of that meeting, Lacey, you were willing to break the law and try to take a computer that is considered evidence in murder cases?”
“It just wasn’t that big a deal.”
“Really?” Griffin asked. “Not that big a deal—and what about murder, Lacey? It’s where Franklin Verne was brought and killed. Was that no big deal?”
“No!”
“Was it important enough to get that computer, Lacey, that you would have killed to get it?”
“Oh, my God! No. This is all ridiculous.”
“Okay, Lacey, then who would kill over all this?”
She let out a long breath, staring at him.
“Gary,” she said. “Gary Frampton. He’s not even a has-been, he’s a never-was! He wants to write, he’s always wanted to write. That’s why he has the books in the restaurant, that’s why he has the pictures of Poe... That’s it, yes! Gary Frampton is a murderer. Or Alistair! Yes, of course, it’s Alistair! Alistair is the one, he secretly wants to be famous—he wanted that book he’s eternally working on to be published. He wants to write great fiction—to be like Poe. He wanted to be a Franklin Verne!”
Griffin turned away from her, aware that Carl Morris had been watching him.
He shook his head. Lacey was just throwing out names. Either that, or she was really good at playing the naive idiot—and she was involved.
His phone was ringing. He answered it quickly, wondering if there had been any kind of a breakthrough at the hospital.
But it wasn’t the hospital.
It was Adam.
“Griffin, get over here, please, now. There’s some kind of screeching here—and it’s coming from the walls.”
* * *
Vickie kept concentrating on Poe, hoping that would help.
He had been murdered. He hadn’t given into temptation; he had loved his intended bride and he had meant to keep his promise to her.
He’d been tricked by a man named Reynolds. Tricked into leaving the train at Baltimore, and then lured down a dark str
eet. He’d been kidnapped, his clothing had been stolen and he’d been dressed anew—used by pollsters, men intent on getting their candidate elected.
They had arranged for him to be attacked by a rabid dog. Or had that been...before?
As Vickie drove to the hospital, she decided to question her smartphone. The system on her phone had been named Gladys.
Gladys had a lovely Kiwi accent, as if she were a New Zealander.
“Hey, Gladys! How long does it take to go into dementia from rabies?” she asked aloud.
“Hello, Victoria,” Gladys said. “Rabies. Length of time for symptoms to appear depends on the area of the bite. An arm or leg, possibly a week. On the face or neck, sooner. If bitten, Victoria, go immediately to the hospital for a series of shots. If symptoms occur at a later stage and the victim hasn’t been treated, there is no survival.”
The timing was right.
“Gladys, what writers came to prominence in the horror and mystery fields in the 1850s? Writers who might have created works that resembled those of Edgar Allan Poe.”
Gladys answered, “I know of no writer named Alice the Hoe.”
Vickie winced. She had asked two questions at once. She rephrased. “What writers came to prominence along with Edgar Allan Poe in the 1850s?” she asked, enunciating as carefully as she could.
This time, Gladys went off nicely.
“The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, along with works by Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. And then,” Gladys continued, “we have lesser known work...”
Gladys went on to talk about a few of the near misses as well.
“Among those ‘imitators’ was Walter Randolph, a student of Edgar Allan Poe. His ‘Lilies Cut From Life’ made a brave attempt to capture the narrative style of Poe along with the overall atmosphere, failing dismally. Critics were brutal. The author, in fact, was shot down by police—but not before he managed to stab to death the editor of a Washington paper who had dealt harshly with his material.”
Vickie almost drove off the road, but she managed not to do so. She was nearly at the hospital.
She waited until she reached the parking lot and put a call through to Griffin. He didn’t answer. She quickly dialed Angela, even though the agent was just upstairs in the building.
Angela was a seasoned guru when it came to research, so Griffin had assured Vickie. If there was a way to find out more about the murderous Walter Randolph, Angela would be able to help Vickie dig it up—and quickly.
“I’ve don’t know if this means anything or not, but there was a Poe imitator named Walter Randolph who put out some work shortly after Poe’s death. I think he might have been the Reynolds who Poe was supposed to meet in Baltimore before he died,” Vickie explained.
“Okay, I’m on it. I’m staying here, hanging out in Liza Harcourt’s room,” Angela said. “You might want to turn around. I just called Griffin and I was about to call you. Gary Frampton took Alice back to Frampton Manor. Jackson went with them. I thought you might want to meet up with them there and talk to Alice—maybe she can give you something.”
“Thank you,” Vickie told her. “I’m heading back around.”
“I’ll get on this research now. Hopefully, an answer will somehow help us...and if not, well, I’m doing my thing as guard duty here, anyway.”
“Thanks, Angela,” Vickie told her.
Angela said goodbye, and that she’d keep Vickie informed on anything at all that she discovered.
Vickie turned the car around and headed for Frampton Manor.
She was only about twenty minutes away, and she soon pulled into the driveway.
The door opened as soon as she arrived. Hallie stood there. She seemed to beam with surprise and pleasure as she saw Vickie.
“Hi!” Hallie said. “Gary and Alice are back with Special Agent Crow. I’m so pleased that you’re joining them. It felt so odd—scary, even—here, with everyone suddenly gone. But Alice is okay—she’s up in bed already, if you want to talk to her. And Gary is doing well, too. He’s in his office with Special Agent Crow.”
“Thank you,” Vickie told her. “I guess I’ll just check in with Jackson and Gary, and then go up and see Alice.”
“You don’t have any bags—an overnight case of any kind?” Hallie asked hopefully.
“No, I’m not—I’m not sure what will be happening later,” Vickie said. “I hadn’t known until a few minutes ago that Alice was being released.”
“Well, she’s fine. Doing very well. She’s just extremely sleepy,” Hallie said.
She opened the door wide for Vickie to enter. Vickie slid by her.
“I’ll just run into the office,” Vickie told her.
“I’m going to put some coffee on. I’ll be in the kitchen. Oh, are you hungry? Should I make you a sandwich or something?”
“Sure!” Vickie said. Keeping Hallie busy seemed like a good thing to do. “Thank you.”
“No problem!” Hallie said happily. She turned to head to the kitchen and then stopped. “Whoops, sorry. What kind of a sandwich? Turkey and Swiss okay? Are you a mayo-and-mustard kind of girl, or just mayo?”
“Sounds great, and sure, a little mayo and a little mustard,” Vickie said.
Hallie smiled and went through the door from the central hallway to the right. Vickie watched her go, and then she turned toward the left wing of the house. Walking through the parlor back to the office, she couldn’t help but notice details of the house and the decor, more visible now in daytime than they had been during her last stormy visit. Everything had an air of faded gentility, something once very nice but lost in time. It was almost as if the very air was composed of ghosts of the past, and as if a fine, ghostly gray mist hung over everything from the walls to the furniture to the floor.
Yep. “Fall of the House of Usher.”
She hurried on through.
Gary Frampton’s home office was much like the rest of the house—something out of a gothic novel.
The desk was a beautiful, heavy wood, oak, Vickie thought. Even antique and untended for decades, it had a beautiful natural patina. Naturally, Gary had a laptop on his desk and a small printer. But nothing else in the room showed any link to the twenty-first century. The phone on a small pedestal table by the door hadn’t been connected in years and years; it had probably been installed in the 1920s.
An antique Oriental rug lay on the floor and the walls were covered almost floor to ceiling with bookshelves.
Many of the books appeared to be priceless—first-run, original copies of classics.
She wondered, however, how many were still in decent condition. They hadn’t been a valuable collection when they had been set in the shelves—they had just been reading material. Fiction, at that.
Gary had been sitting behind his desk. Jackson was on one of the two Duncan Phyfe chairs in front.
Both men rose as she entered the room.
“Miss Preston,” Gary said. “How very nice to see you.”
“I’m glad that Alice is well, and out of the hospital,” Vickie told him. “I thought that maybe I could speak with her and try to get to the bottom of what might have happened.”
“I did try speaking with her,” Jackson said. “But you might just come up with the right question to break through,” he added.
Vickie nodded. She knew why Griffin loved working with him and Adam so much. Neither man either thought himself as more experienced or more certain to get results. They trusted those who worked with them and never micromanaged.
“I’ll run up and give it a try. Hallie is making me a sandwich,” she told them. “If she comes here, will you let her know I’ll be right down?”
“Of course!” Jackson assured her.
S
he left the men and returned to the hallway. She could hear Hallie moving about in the kitchen. As Vickie started up the stairs, she noticed the art on the walls. There were framed paintings: pictures of famed writers, some alone, some together in imaginary groupings. There were also vintage Frampton family portraits.
One portrait had to be of Alice—or her mother. Vickie peered closely at it. She thought that the painting was of Alice’s mother, definitely. The hair was feathered in a style popular in the 1970s and ’80s.
The resemblance was startling. She had been very beautiful.
Vickie gazed at it just a moment.
Writers...and this beautiful woman. Alice’s mom.
She could have lingered longer, but she hurried on.
The place still seemed so odd...bathed in a strange drab, gray mist.
She gave herself shake, paused and then ran on up the stairs.
On the second floor, she tapped on Alice’s door, wondering what to do if the girl didn’t answer. The door, however, wasn’t really closed, and when she knocked, it opened.
“Yes?” Alice said. She was in bed, but sat up as Vickie entered.
She still looked way too much like her mother, Vickie thought. She was wearing a long white nightgown reminiscent of something from the mid-1800s.
What was it about the house? Did people forget what century they were actually living in?
“Hey, Alice, it’s me, Vickie Preston. Do you mind if I come in and speak with you for a while?” she asked.
“Sure,” Alice said. She smiled wistfully as Vickie approached her and patted the bed. “Sit here, is that okay?”
“Sure.”
Vickie perched next to the girl on the edge of the bed. Alice was curled up with her legs beneath her. She was pale and seemed thinner, but though her eyes were anxious, they were clear.
“You’re doing okay?” Vickie asked her.
“More or less,” Alice said. “My father is a jerk. Jon is a heavy sleeper. He doesn’t know what happened—I mean, he really doesn’t. But of course, he’s my dad. He’s not going to like any guy that I’m involved with. I guess it’s the way fathers act—being fathers.”