Divas and Dead Rebels (36 page)

When I reached the upstairs landing, I moved more cautiously. The lamp cast a limited glow, but the downstairs looked completely dark. Usually the outside lights shone through the leaded glass door and windows into the entrance hall, but now it was dark. It was a small detail that I may not have noticed at one time. But my recent experiences had sharpened my senses, so this time, I noticed.

Instead of continuing down the staircase, I retraced my steps to the upstairs hall and went to Bitty’s room. I didn’t knock. If she was downstairs she wouldn’t hear me, and if she was asleep she wouldn’t hear me.

Somehow I managed to turn the doorknob without making any noise and eased open her door to peek inside. Two lumps lay atop the high antique bed, covered by white striped damask comforters. Snores emanated from the smaller lump. I stepped inside and tip-toed to the side of the bed.

Chitling had her own mini comforter to match Bitty’s. I rolled my eyes. Bitty was covered to her chin so that all that was visible was a pink eye mask and pink silk cap over her head. She looked like something out of a 1930s movie. Maybe a W.C. Fields comedy. I briefly debated on how to waken her without either one of us wetting ourselves. Scare tactics were clearly out of the question.

I hit upon the perfect method: I poked Bitty’s Mini-me with my finger and let her wake Bitty.

An indignant
ruff!
made Bitty sit up immediately. Blinded by her sleep mask, she put both her hands out to feel for the dog. Chitling obliged her with a nip that was no doubt meant for me.

I quickly put my hand out of reach and whispered, “Bitty, hush.”

“Wha—?” She clawed at the mask over her eyes and blinked up at me. I could see the whites of her eyes by her illuminated clock. It was 2:04 AM. “What—Precious, are you okay?”

“Precious is fine,” I hissed at her. “But we may not be. I think someone’s in the house.”

Bitty still blinked at me. She looked pretty silly with her sleep mask under her chin. “That’s impossible,” she whispered. “We locked the doors and set the alarm.”

“I know. But either you have really large rats or an intruder. Call nine-one-one.”

“Did you see someone?”

“No, but I know I heard something downstairs.” I paused, straining to hear if the noise below repeated. We were whispering, but sometimes sound travels in old houses. I picked up her bedside phone and held it out. I knew it’s a land line and connected to the alarm monitoring service.

“Call it in to your service,” I whispered as I waggled the phone in front of her.

Bitty took the phone, put it back on her nightstand, and reached for a small black square that dangled from a chain. She punched a button and all hell broke loose.

Sirens started going off. Lights flashed on and off, all while sirens shrilled and Chitling yodeled protests. My first reaction was to hit the floor. I prostrated myself on the Persian rug by the bed and put my arms over my head as I’d been taught to do in the first grade A-bomb drills. If the Reds had ever nuked us, I’m not sure what good a flimsy wooden desk and my arms over my head would have done to protect me from a nuclear blast, but nonetheless I automatically revert to my grade school days in times of great stress.

I was vaguely aware of Bitty getting up and looking for her slippers—one of which was under my right knee—and Chitling trying to out-scream the sirens. Lights blinked on and off. Noise bounced off walls. It took me back to my youth and the disco craze of the 70s. It wasn’t a nice trip.

“I am just sick and tired of this,” Bitty said loudly enough that I could hear with her bending over to get her slipper, and then she added, “I’m going to get the shotgun.”

Bitty jerked her slipper from under my knee, I lifted my head to see her scoop the still howling pug into her arms, and she headed for the bedroom door. I scrambled up and attempted to stop her.

“Bitty, wait! Don’t go downstairs until we know it’s safe!”

She ignored me. If I hadn’t been alarmed that she’d run into some hulking brute intent on stealing her silver—or a homicidal maniac looking for me—I’d have let her go. Instead, I followed behind trying to out-scream the shrilling sirens.

“Bitty! Bitty! Stop! Wait!” I yelled in vain. Sometimes I’m very slow to grasp the obvious. I finally realized that if I wanted to stop her before she got downstairs, I’d have to get a bit more proactive. So when I got close enough to her, I grabbed the back of her billowing pink nightie.

It turned out to be a robe over pink satin pajamas, and Bitty shrugged out of it on her way down the last flight of steps. I muttered something ugly under my breath, although I needn’t have kept my voice low. The alarm was loud enough to wake all of the dead at Hilltop Cemetery a half mile away. Bitty continued on her quest to be armed and dangerous, so I tossed the robe on the landing railing and took the next three stairs in a single leap to catch up to my brainless cousin.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten I was no longer twenty and limber. My bare foot caught on something, and I pitched forward, the momentum of my falling body carrying me a lot farther than I wanted to go. Not only did I catch up to Bitty, I nearly obliterated her.

When I crashed into her, my weight toppled us both off the last step and onto the floor. Our combined weight carried us forward, and we slid across the entrance hall on the highly polished wood. I felt my flannel nightgown scrunch up around my waist as I tried to stop our progress. It wasn’t the easiest thing to attempt. Nor was it the most graceful. I felt—and I’m sure I looked—like a spasmodic monkey in my floor-polishing trip across the entrance hall. Beneath me, Bitty made grunting, squeaking sounds that I could barely interpret over the relentless wail of sirens. She was a pink, plush, protesting pillow that cushioned my floundering body.

We came to an abrupt stop at the far edge of the entrance hall. My foot connected with something thin and hard, and I realized an instant too late that I’d somehow kicked over the small mosaic table that held a retro-style French phone. It toppled over and landed on my right leg. I said, “
Ow
!” but couldn’t hear my own voice in the racket around us.

Then a rude shove rolled me completely onto the floor. Bitty sat up, Chen Ling clutched tightly to her chest. The dog’s little bug eyes were probably crossed, but there was definitely no loss of movement. Or attitude. Still clad in her pink nightwear, Chitling wriggled free of her doting owner and landed indignantly on the floor. Then she took off for the kitchen area. I decided to turn off the blamed alarm before I lost what was left of my hearing. It took a couple tries before I managed to get up from the floor and stand a bit shakily on my bare feet. My big toe on my right foot throbbed. Apparently I’d stubbed it before my ride down the staircase.

After only two tries, I put in Bitty’s code on the alarm system, and the sudden silence was nearly deafening. It felt palpable, as if I could reach out and touch it. Then I turned on the lights. I blinked a few times while my vision adjusted to the onslaught of illumination. So where was our intruder? Had he done the sensible thing and gotten out while the getting was good? I hoped so.

“While you’re over there,” said Bitty from the floor, “turn on the lights.” She sounded a bit irritable. I couldn’t blame her. Or could I? If she hadn’t taken off down the steps neither one of us would have ended up polishing the floor.

“They’re already on, as if you didn’t know,” I replied in what was decidedly a peeved tone of voice. I felt she deserved that much. “Call the alarm company to tell them there’s been a mistake. I’m sure it’s too late now, but—”

“Trinket?” She sounded a bit shaky, and I looked up from rubbing my bruised big toe just in time to hear her shriek, “I can’t see! I’m blind! Trinket, I’m blind!”

I shook my head in disgust. “No, you’re not. Your silly little nightcap is over your eyes. Take it off, and you’ll be just fine.”

“Oh. Well, I called myself taking it off.” Bitty dropped the mask she held in one hand, fumbled with her nightcap, and got it pushed back on her head. “Ah. Much better. Now I can see.”

“Glory be, a miracle! At last Bitty can see.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Why on earth would you think that?” I limped toward my cousin still sitting in the floor like a pink satin frog. “Since no one has tried to kill us yet, or has appeared with the family silver in a pillowcase, we’ll just wait for the police to check things out.”

Bitty looked startled. “Police?”

I stared at her. “Don’t you hear the sirens? They’ll be here in three-point-two seconds by the sound of them.”

“Well, they can look for the intruder, but whoever it was probably took off when the alarm went off. If he did, it’s up to you to come up with a good explanation of why we punched the panic button.”

“Good thing I happen to have one handy—truth will just have to do. Maybe we just gave in to panic.”

“Don’t tell them
that
. You’ll make it sound as if we’re just two hysterical women again. I’m getting tired of them looking at me like I’m crazy.”

I looked down at my cousin. She still wore her pink nightcap. It tilted over one ear in a warped, drunken fashion and looked as if a blob of Pepto-Bismol had been plopped atop her head. Her blonde hair stuck out in erratic spikes. She blinked up at me. I smiled. “Bless your heart.”

Bitty’s eyes narrowed. She recognizes an insult when she hears it. Before she could share what would undoubtedly be an offensive retort, there was a banging on her front door.

“Police! Open up!” came the shouts, accompanied by more fist banging.

“They’re playing our song,” I said as I walked to the front door, belatedly aware of my rumpled state and ratty old nightgown. I smoothed down the flannel as best as I could and opened the door. “There’s been a mistake,” I began to say, but quickly found myself pushed back by several uniformed officers of the law.

They shot so many questions at me simultaneously that I reeled backward. One of them grabbed me by the arm to steady me. “Is this a medical emergency?”

“Where’s the intruder?”

“Do you need an ambulance?”

“How many people are in the house?”

“
Is
there an intruder?”

I didn’t know how to answer without looking stupid. Or more stupid. I shook my head. “I don’t know. We haven’t seen anyone since we came downstairs. But I know I heard someone.”

Two uniformed officers hustled Bitty and me out onto the front porch while they looked for our dangerous robber/killer/invisible man. I didn’t know how else to classify it at that point. My nerves were shot. Being threatened isn’t fun, but I had to face the fact that it was becoming a regular occurrence in my life.

So we stood out on the front porch in our nighties, shivering while police did a thorough search of the house. Lights atop police cruisers strobed the night, and no doubt revealed far more than either Bitty or I needed to show. We finally sat down in wicker chairs still on the porch. One of the officers had brought Bitty her pug, and Chitling sat grumpily in Bitty’s lap. I looked at my cousin.

“We need to stop doing this.”

“It’s not my fault we’re sitting out here freezing to death,” said Bitty, sounding every bit as grumpy as her dog looked. “I’m probably getting frostbite.”

“I doubt that. It’s fifty degrees out here.”

“But cold enough to do skin damage,” Bitty persisted. “It’s so damp.”

“I’ll give you damp and cold, but forget frostbite. Not even if you were stark naked could you get by with that claim.”

Just as Bitty opened her mouth to reply, the front door opened, and one of the policemen said, “Mrs. Hollandale, can you tell me if the window in the laundry room was already out?”

“Already out?” Bitty repeated with a blank look. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“The window glass has been removed.” He said it slowly as if talking to someone with senile dementia. “Did you remove the glass, or have it removed?”

“Why . . . no. I didn’t.” Clutching the dog to her chest, Bitty stood up. “So now the glass is broken?”

“No ma’am, it’s not broken. It’s been cut out.”

“Cut out? Wait. I want to see.”

“We’re processing the area right now. There’s a ladder up against the outside of the house, so we’re dusting it for prints, too.”

Bitty began to pace. I sat in the wicker chair pondering the situation. Okay, so I’d been right, and someone had broken into the house. Not a random intruder, since the glass was cut out and not broken. That meant someone wanted in and knew Bitty had a security system that may actually be in use. Which also meant, that whoever wanted in had a very good idea of what they wanted and was willing to risk arrest to get it. Or get rid of it? The last thought made me shiver.

Apparently Bitty saw that because she said, “I told you it’s cold out here.”

“I’m not shivering because of the cold.” I stood up and leaned close to Bitty. “If someone broke in tonight, it’s for a specific reason. I think the same person who killed Catherine thinks I have or I know information that can incriminate them.”

Bitty’s eyes widened. “But—do you?”

I thought for a long moment. It was becoming obvious to me that Catherine had left behind information she thought I was smart enough to figure out. Unfortunately, she had made a grave error in judgment. I had no idea what she left behind, and even if I did find it, she’d probably disguised it so that I doubted I’d be able to correctly interpret it.