Crowned and Moldering (25 page)

As I got closer to the top of the stairs I could hear the mumbled words growing louder.
Prepared to run at any second, I took a tentative step onto the second-floor landing
and was shocked to see someone down the hall by the laundry chute.

“Aldous?”

The old man jolted, then turned and grinned at me. “Shannon! I was looking for the
spot on the second floor where the old staircase would’ve been and couldn’t find a
trace. They walled over the doorway. Did a good job, too.” He held up what looked
like an old backpack. “So, I was looking around up here and I found this. It was stuck
in the laundry chute.”

It took me a full minute to catch my breath from being frightened half to death. “Aldous,
what’re you doing here all alone? How did you get here?”

“My granddaughter has some friends visiting and she brought them up here to see the
lighthouse. I hitched a ride, but I couldn’t make the climb up to the top of the lighthouse.
So while the girls went exploring, I wandered over here. The back door was open, so
I figured,
What the heck?
Thought I’d take a look around.”

“All righty.” Relief flooded through me. My intruder was no more than a curious old
man who had vivid memories of this house. But my breath remained stilted as I led
the way downstairs to the kitchen, where the lights were brightest and we could see
exactly what he’d found in the chute.

“I guess you saw the kitchen demolition in progress,” I said.

“Sure did,” he said, looking around. “It’s a real mess you’ve got here, Shannon. I
hope you show me what it looks like when you’ve worked your magic on it.”

“Promise. Okay, let’s see what you’ve got.” I turned on the light that had once shone
over the now-departed sink, and he held up the backpack. I unlatched the wide front
pocket and pulled out a school notebook.

“Must be some kid’s,” he said.

“Yeah.” But I already knew whose it was as I flipped the notebook open. The first
page was covered in doodles and flowery writing that looked like a young girl’s. Here
and there on the page were hearts drawn around the initials BJ and LB.

“Lily Brogan,” I murmured. But who was BJ? I mentally scanned the list of boys who’d
been in school with Lily and couldn’t think of anyone with those initials. And suddenly
my heart stuttered in my chest. Not a boy. A man. And a teacher. “Brad Jones.”

“What’s that?” Aldous said.

“Nothing,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. “Sorry, Mr. Murch. I was just thinking
out loud.”

And I hated what I was thinking.
It doesn’t have to mean anything,
I tried to convince myself. Every girl in school had had a crush on Mr. Jones. There
had to be a dozen girls who’d encircled their initials with his when doodling in notebooks.
We all imagined ourselves walking down the aisle with him.

But Lily had gone missing. Lily had been pregnant. And Lily had drawn little hearts
with Mr. Jones’s initials on her notebooks. It couldn’t be true, could it?

But no matter what I told myself, I knew it had to be true. Brad Jones had to have
been the father of Lily’s baby.

Now that I accepted that thought, I kept remembering little clues, little things that
had happened lately. Mr. Jones had known that Lily had been trying to get a scholarship.
He’d talked about it just the other day when he mentioned that her father had been
such a bully.

Sean had told me that Lily had refused to tell anyone about her dream of college after
being discouraged by Dismal Dean’s remarks. Had Mr. Jones known about her dream before
Dean did?

I suddenly knew why I’d had that peculiar feeling when I saw Callie talking to Mr.
Jones earlier. It was the look of teenage worship on her face. I’d seen that look
so many times over the years whenever I saw Mr. Jones talking to a teenage girl.

I was reminded of a day back in high school when I happened to see Lily talking to
Mr. Jones in his classroom. But rather than an artless, adolescent crush, the look
on Lily’s face had revealed so much more. She had looked positively radiant, mature,
and deeply in love. And I knew now, as surely as I knew my own name, that Lily had
been pregnant with Mr. Jones’s child.

Not that those few minor facts alone were the reason I believed what I did. But added
to all that was the fact that Cliff Hogarth had tried to blackmail Denise. It made
me wonder if Cliff had known that Brad Jones was the father of Lily’s baby.

But how did Cliff even find out that Lily was pregnant? Did she tell him? I couldn’t
imagine she would.

Putting those thoughts aside, I returned to the backpack. Opening the main pocket,
I could clearly see a flimsy blouse and a balled-up pair of jeans. There were possibly
shoes and socks and underwear beneath the jeans, but I didn’t want to disturb the
contents any more than I already had.

“Mr. Murch,” I said, “let’s go find your granddaughter and get you back to town.”

“That would be swell, Shannon.” He rubbed his stomach. “I’m getting a little peckish,
now that you mention it.”

For me, that red sauce Mac had promised didn’t sound quite so appetizing anymore.

*   *   *

Once I dropped off Mr. Murch, I swung by the police station to see Eric. He didn’t
seem surprised that I was bringing him a key piece of evidence.

“Mr. Murch found it stuck in the laundry chute,” I said, holding up the backpack.

He frowned. “The laundry chute would empty into the basement.”

“That’s my assumption, although I haven’t inspected it well enough to make sure.”

“I’m surprised.”

“I know,” I said, smiling. “I’ve been slacking off.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ll take it from here.”

*   *   *

Eric decided another search of the lighthouse mansion could wait until the next day,
since time wasn’t really a factor anymore. So all day Friday, the police conducted
an intensive search of Mac’s house. They called in the county crime-scene specialists,
who combed through the backpack and notebook and other odds and ends Lily had carried
with her. They searched the attic for even more evidence, but didn’t find much.

Inside the dumbwaiter they found traces of blood.

In the laundry chute they discovered minute threads that had caught on the wooden
surface. The threads could’ve come from any material that had ever been sent down
the chute, but the specialists would run tests to see if any of them had come from
Lily’s backpack.

Eric’s comment the night before about the chute leading to the basement made me wonder
if Lily’s killer had debated whether to drop her body down the chute, as if she were
nothing more than a sack of laundry, or simply stuff her into the dumbwaiter. Obviously,
he had decided on the dumbwaiter. The thought that someone could be so cold-blooded
that they would leave her in that place alone, in the dark, and walk away made me
sick.

*   *   *

Mac and I had a delightful and very interesting pasta dinner Friday night. Callie
popped into my kitchen to tell us she was home from her girlfriend’s house and, thankfully,
that glow I’d seen on her face while she’d been talking to Mr. Jones was mostly gone,
and she had morphed back into a normal teenage girl.

Once she went up to her room, I asked Mac, “Did Eric tell you why the police were
searching your house all day?”

Mac gazed at me as he sipped his wine. “I think you probably know why.”

I grimaced. “I do, but I don’t want to break any confidences.”

“Then I’ll let you off the hook. He told me that Lily was pregnant with Brad Jones’s
baby.”

My shoulders sagged in relief. “I was dying to tell you, but I just couldn’t.”

He smiled. “I think it’s admirable that you can keep a secret, but I obviously need
to work on my coercion skills.”

“No, you don’t,” I muttered.

That made him grin, but he quickly sobered. “Brad seems like a nice guy, but hasn’t
anyone expressed concern that Lily was underage when she got pregnant by her teacher?”

“That bothers me a lot,” I admitted. “But I remembered that Lily had been held back
a year in grammar school, so she was eighteen years old when she was a senior. Don’t
get me wrong—I’m not excusing Brad. But, officially, she was an adult.”

He nodded thoughtfully, then thanked me for taking him into my confidence.

“I would’ve told you everything sooner because I trust you,” I said. “But I just couldn’t
break Eric’s confidence.”

“I appreciate you saying you trust me, because I feel the same about you.”

“Thank you.” And after hearing myself say it out loud, I realized it was true. I trusted
Mac completely. “So Eric told you all about the backpack and notebook we found in
the laundry chute?”

“Backpack? Notebook?” His eyes widened and he grinned. “I know nothing. Tell me. Hold
nothing back.”

“That’s how we found out it was Brad’s baby.” I told him what Aldous had found in
the laundry chute and how I’d seen those hearts all over her notebook and figured
out that Mr. Jones was the father of Lily’s baby.

“Wow,” Mac said. “I remember looking into the laundry chute. I should’ve investigated
it more thoroughly.”

“I was thinking the same thing. We might’ve saved a lot of time and avoided some problems
if we’d just cleaned out the laundry chute.”

*   *   *

Saturday, while the police and crime-scene specialists continued to work at the lighthouse
mansion, I took a few hours to drive out to Uncle Pete’s winery to visit him and my
dad. I had talked to Dad on the phone briefly the other night, and he reported that
the barn was almost finished. They would be rolling two huge new tanks into the space
soon, and Dad would finish the construction project and go fishing for a few days
before heading back to Lighthouse Cove.

Uncle Pete’s business had more than doubled in the past few years, so there was always
something new to see at the winery. I parked my car under a shady tree and walked
around until I found my dad in the barrel room. It was dark and cool, and Dad was
in the process of moving one of the heavy oak barrels over to make room for another.

“Dad? Should you be lifting that by yourself?”

He stood up and grinned. “There’s my girl.”

My heart fluttered at his greeting. He had always called me his girl. I rushed over
and gave him a big hug.

“Missed you, honey,” he murmured.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“Hey, what’s wrong? What’s going on?” He frowned as he studied my face. “Did something
happen? Someone hurt you?”

“No, it’s just been a weird time.”

Dad grabbed two wineglasses and walked over to a barrel. He removed the cork and stuck
a long glass tube—sometimes called a thief—into the small hole and siphoned off some
wine for each of our glasses.

“That’s convenient,” I said.

Dad chuckled, and we walked out of the dark barrel room into sunshine. Scattered across
the wide patio between the winery tasting room and the fermentation barn were picnic
tables and small seating areas. After our eyes adjusted to the light, we found a picnic
table and sat down across from each other.

“Spill the beans, honey,” Dad said. “If you need me to come back to town, I’ll do
it.”

“No, I can fight my own battles.” But I wasn’t so sure that was true when it came
to fighting Cliff Hogarth and his slanderous comments. I told Dad all about Cliff’s
horrible remarks about me and our various run-ins. I concluded with the fact that
the guy was now in a coma and laid out in some hospital bed because he’d tried to
blackmail Denise.

“I hate to say it,” Dad said, “but it looks like the guy got what was coming to him.”

“It’s awful to think that way, but I agree.” And in retrospect, my problems weren’t
all that bad.

I filled Dad in on all the grim aspects of Lily’s death and the investigation, omitting
the truly grisly details of the baby and the backpack. He was especially intrigued
by Aldous Murch’s connection to the mansion.

“A hidden room with a staircase? That’s right out of a mystery novel,” Dad said.

“I know.” I laughed.

He wasn’t laughing, though. “I think I’d better cancel my fishing trip and stick closer
to home. At least until Lily’s killer is discovered.”

“I’ll be fine, Dad. I’ve got Mac right next door and Eric is just a phone call away.
You’ve been working so hard out here. You need a vacation.”

“Okay, I guess I can trust Mac and Eric to look out for you. But I want you to call
me at the first sign of trouble.”

“I promise.”

Uncle Pete joined us then, and we spent the rest of the afternoon laughing and sipping
a number of different wines. The two men gave me a tour of the new fermenting area
and showed off their construction skills. We wandered through the vineyards, and later
Uncle Pete served us a pasta salad that almost caused me to swoon.

I drove back to town, feeling so much better and more relaxed than I had in days.
And I was looking forward to the day when Dad would park his big old RV in my driveway
again.

*   *   *

Sunday morning I joined Lizzie and Hal and their adorable kids, Marisa and Taz, for
a ten-mile bike ride down the coast. We stopped for a late breakfast at a funky old
seafood diner we’d been going to forever.

“Lock up the bikes,” Hal told the kids. “I’ll get us a table.”

Eleven-year-old Taz was happy to do it, and unwrapped the bike chain from around the
seat of his bicycle. As he wound it through all five of the back wheels, his thirteen-year-old
sister, Marisa, rolled her eyes and checked her phone.

Lizzie grabbed my arm and we followed her tall, lean, adorable husband up the old
wooden steps to the front door and inside. The smells of bacon and syrup were instantly
overwhelming, and we both grinned.

“I miss coming here,” she said. “I’m having the waffles.”

“I might do French toast.”

“Ooh, good choice,” she said. “And bacon.”

“Naturally.” I glanced outside. “Marisa is so beautiful, Lizzie. And Taz is going
to be taller than Hal.”