Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy (23 page)

“I'll never forget the day I met Charlotte, because when she walked into my shop, she was dressed head to toe in vintage clothes. For a second I actually thought I was seeing a ghost. She almost looked like someone who stepped out of another time in history. Except for her long hair, she looked like one of those flappers from the nineteen twenties during the Gilded Age here in St. Augustine.

“Well, I quickly found out that she was from one of the old Minorcan families and that she happened to know even more about the things in my shop than I did. She had grown up with beautiful furniture and china all around her. I learned a lot from Charlotte. In fact, a lot of the clothes and furniture still in this house are things that belonged to her.”

I bet that dress I wore to the wedding rehearsal belonged to Charlotte,
Gilda thought.
Maybe that's part of the reason I was able to see her ghost!

“Yes, there are
many
valuable things in this house,” said Eugene, looking at Gilda and Stephen with a strange intensity. “And, as you've probably guessed, this house has some secrets.”

Gilda and Stephen sat very still, frozen with anticipation.
What is he going to tell us?
Gilda wondered.

“You're family now,” said Eugene, “so I think it's time that I shared the secret with you.” He looked at them both.

Gilda nodded as if hypnotized. “Yes,” she whispered. “We want to know.”

Eugene nodded. “Good. Then follow me.”

Gilda and Stephen looked at each other, and Stephen shrugged as if to say, Don't ask
me
what to do!

Carrying the lantern, Eugene walked into the kitchen. Again, Gilda felt a draft of cold air that seemed to rise up from the floor.

Eugene crouched down and felt with his hand along the floor. “Here—I think this is it.” He carefully lifted the large puzzle piece of wood from the floor and located the secret handle. Then, with a grunt, he pulled open the trapdoor to reveal the dark pit below.

“You don't seem surprised,” he said, looking at Gilda and Stephen with undisguised suspicion.

“Oh, we're just speechless,” said Gilda.

“Yeah,” said Stephen. “That is really weird.”

“Follow me down,” said Eugene, “and I'll show you where a pirate hides his treasure.”

Something about this comment gave Gilda the creeps. She knew it was highly unlikely that Eugene was about to reveal a treasure chest filled with gold coins and jewels.
So what is he planning to show us?
she wondered. She fought an urge to grab a corner of Stephen's T-shirt and cling to it like a security blanket as she followed him toward the cistern.

A short ladder leaned against the wall closest to the trapdoor. Eugene climbed down and then crouched below, peering up at them from the darkness, holding his lantern. Gilda and Stephen followed him down into the cistern.

The cistern smelled damp and faintly rusty. Crouching in the claustrophobic space, Gilda felt the clammy air and the rough coquina stones under her bare feet. She thought of her dream of the yellow fever cemetery but tried to push the image from her mind.

Gilda spied a long bench covered in white cloth and an antique jewelry box that looked hand-painted. Was Eugene going to show them something hidden in the jewelry box?

“Now,” said Eugene, “it's time for these games to end.” His face looked macabre in the lamplight.

“What do you mean?” Gilda whispered.

“You asked about a well, Gilda. And I'm guessing that the appearance of Miss Debbie Castle on my property was not exactly a coincidence. I have reason to believe that you already knew about this cistern.”

“We guessed there
might
be something here,” said Stephen, “but we weren't sure.”

“I see,” said Eugene, leaning toward the two of them. “And what else did you think
might
be down here?”

“We had no idea,” said Gilda. “We were just curious.”

“And we don't
need
to know anything,” said Stephen hastily.

“Did you ever hear the saying, ‘Curiosity killed the cat'?”

Gilda nodded. She felt scared, but also strangely transfixed. She still desperately wanted to know what Eugene was hiding.

“Look,” said Stephen, “we don't need to know any secrets. We'll just go back up to bed now.”

“Oh, no,” said Eugene. “Like I said, you're both family now. And let's be honest: Now that you know about my hiding place for my most valuable treasure, you'll want to explore it soon enough. So here.” He handed Gilda a key. “Explore it.”

“What's this key for?”

“I'm sure you'll figure that out. Oh, but we'll need a bit more light first. Let me grab another lantern or a flashlight from the kitchen.”

Eugene swiftly climbed the ladder out of the cistern. As Gilda moved her flashlight around in the darkness, she walked over to the bench and lifted the white cloth.

Gilda gasped with surprise: “Stephen—look!”

It wasn't a bench at all;
it was a sealed coffin
.

A dried bouquet of lilies rested on top of the coffin
—a bridal bouquet.
Gilda saw that a rough inscription had been laboriously carved by hand into the top of the casket:

Gilda also noticed something soft and white propped against the base of the coffin—a couple of pillows and a blanket. An image flashed in her mind: Eugene tiptoeing downstairs in the middle of the night to rest his head against the coffin.

Stunned and speechless, Gilda turned around just in time to see the ladder swiftly disappear from the cistern before the trapdoor slammed shut over their heads.

H
ey! Let us out!” Gilda and Stephen pounded on the trapdoor, but the only response was the sound of a latch clicking shut and something that sounded like a heavy piece of furniture being moved.

“He's weighing down the trapdoor so we can't get out,” said Stephen.

Stephen examined the boards overhead, looking for a weak spot. Groaning with the effort, he pressed up on the trapdoor with his hands. He tried punching the trapdoor from beneath, but only succeeded in injuring his hand. “Ow!”

“Maybe if we create a big disturbance, Mom will hear us and come downstairs,” Gilda suggested. Both she and Stephen yelled at the top of their lungs:
“HELP! HELP! HEEEEEELP! MOM! HELP!”

But nobody came to help them. “I think it's pretty difficult to hear anything from upstairs,” said Gilda, pausing to catch her breath.
It wouldn't be very hard for Eugene to simply keep Mom out of the kitchen until the wedding,
she thought, feeling queasy at the full implications of being trapped underground with a coffin containing a dead body.
And who knows what he's planning to do with us.
Her thoughts raced as she struggled to control her urge to break into hysterical tears. More than anything, she wanted to get out of that dark, clammy cistern.

“Wait a minute,” said Stephen. “Do you think he might be playing a big joke on us?” He kicked the coffin. “I mean, it's Halloween. Maybe that thing is fake. Or empty.”

“It
isn't
fake,” said Gilda. “For one thing, Mr. Pook has a terrible sense of humor.”

“Exactly my point,” said Stephen. “Although I suppose carving a bad poem into a coffin is a lot of trouble to go to just to make a joke on Halloween night.”

Gilda shone her flashlight over the top of the casket. Large nails sealed the rough-hewn coffin shut. “
He's
the one who did it,” Gilda said. “Eugene killed Charlotte Furbo. That's why he locked us down here; he knew that we were about to figure it out for ourselves.”

Why didn't I figure it out sooner?
Gilda wondered. Somehow she hadn't wanted to consider the real possibility that Eugene might be a murderer. True, she found him unlikable, but she also felt sympathy for the little boy who had lost his father at the train station. And she had had fun with him and her mom on the pirate ship, too.
Maybe, deep down, part of me hoped that it really would work out—not just for Mom, but for all of us,
she thought.

“If Eugene is really a murderer, Gilda, then we're in deep, deep trouble, because there's not much incentive for him to keep us alive,” said Stephen. “I mean, if he really did kill this woman and now we have proof, he's not going to want us around to tell the tale.”

No,
Gilda thought.
My life cannot end in this dank old cistern, underneath Mr. Pook's house!
There had to be some way out of this mess. “Well,” she said, “what is Mr. Pook going to tell everyone when we don't show up at the wedding?”

“He could blame it on
us
. He'll say we ran away or something. Then maybe they'll file a missing-person report and look everywhere for us. But by the time they suspect Eugene, he will have had plenty of time to get rid of us—or he could just let us run out of air down here.”

“Sort of like what he did to Charlotte,” Gilda whispered.
So
that's
what happened,
Gilda thought.
Eugene killed Charlotte, and then simply told everyone that she ran off to Europe and left him.

“I just want to say one thing,” said Stephen, placing his hands on Gilda's shoulders. “Thank you so much for the best Halloween I've ever had.”

“Hey, I'm not the one who locked us in here!” Gilda knew that Stephen's sarcastic comment was partly an attempt to disguise his own rising panic at their plight, but her temper flared nevertheless.

“But it was
your
idea to go down and investigate the cistern in the middle of the night. If I hadn't listened to you, I'd still be sleeping soundly in my bed.”

“Then maybe you should blame your own lack of judgment instead of blaming your little sister,” Gilda snapped. “And besides, you're forgetting about Mom! If we hadn't come down here, we never would have known that she's about to marry a killer!” The thought nauseated Gilda.
Will our whole family end up down here trapped in the cistern together?!

“Believe me, Gilda, the thought crossed my mind. But it's not as if we can do anything to stop Mom while we're stuck down here!” Sighing, Stephen crouched on the floor and leaned his back against the rough stone wall. “Look—I'm sorry I blamed you; this isn't your fault. We shouldn't waste oxygen with all this arguing, anyway.”

“How much oxygen do you think we have down here?” With the trapdoor closed, the air already felt heavy and stale.

“I have no idea.”

“Can't you estimate? I mean, you're the mathematician and engineer.”

“But not a biologist. I'd just be guessing.”

“Maybe we should both try breathing with one nostril.”

“It's a shame nobody else is around to hear these last little witticisms, Gilda.”

“Okay, we're two smart people, Stephen. We have to literally think outside the box and find a way out of here. Like—maybe there's some kind of machine you could make with wood if we broke apart that coffin. Maybe we could force our way out!”

“First of all, we don't have any tools down here to pry open a coffin. Second of all, ARE YOU CRAZY? I don't exactly want to spend whatever time I have left down here smelling some corpse that's been down here for who-knows-how-long!”

“At least I'm trying to come up with a solution.” Gilda ran her fingers over the rough stones.
Send me an idea, send me an idea. . . .

“I've got it!” said Gilda.

“What?”

“Debbie Castle! She knows about the cistern. And thanks to me, she and her mother were invited to the wedding. So when the two of us don't show up for the ceremony, she'll suspect something. At least she'll know where to look! Otherwise it could take years to figure out that we're down here.”

“Good point,” said Stephen, a more positive note entering his voice. “But let's just hope she'd actually think of looking here
soon
enough. I mean, if Eugene comes up with some convincing lie, she won't be very likely to just take off from the wedding ceremony, break into his kitchen, and start pulling open the trapdoor without his permission.”

Gilda realized she had been turning the key Eugene had given her over and over in her sweaty hand. “I wonder what this key is for?”

“There's no keyhole on the trapdoor; I already checked.”

Gilda shone her flashlight on the jewelry box that had been on top of the coffin and saw a keyhole in front.
Does he keep some of Charlotte's most valuable jewelry in here?
she wondered as she fit the key into the keyhole and opened the box.

Inside, she discovered something that lifted her spirits, even if it did nothing to solve her immediate problem.

The box contained a small, leather-bound diary and some yellowed stationery. “Look, Stephen! I found Charlotte's diary!”

“How does that help us?”

“I guess it doesn't.” Nevertheless, Gilda felt excited to read the journal despite the dire circumstances in which she found herself. She flipped through Charlotte's diary entries, skimming writings about dances, favorite dresses, tea parties, and artistic displays she wanted to create for Charlotte's Attic. She read entries about the repeated engagement proposals and gifts from a “handsome” but “awkward” older gentleman named Mr. Eugene Pook.
Maybe now I'll finally understand who the woman in white really was,
Gilda thought as she pored over the entries.