Skeletons in the Closet (2 page)

“Would you look at this?” Sylvia exclaimed as she scanned the bathroom. “There’s a chandelier in the bathroom, for crying out loud!”

I gazed at the fixture in question and silently admitted it seemed a bit excessive. What else could be expected from people who hosted a Monday night soirée?

We peered in the medicine cabinets (hey, if you’re going to snoop, you might as well go the whole hog), but found nothing of interest. Typical hodgepodge of makeup, cough syrup, Band-aids, and antibacterial ointment as well as antidepressants prescribed to Alessandra Kline. She probably shot them back with a vodka martini while lying on a chaise ogling the shirtless pool man. No wait, that’s
my
fantasy. We shut the bathroom door and exited the master suite. Still no sign of the tour group, thank goodness.

“Well what do you think?” I asked Sylvia.

“I’m glad I don’t have to clean this place,” Sylvia said. She walked to the next door and jiggled the knob. “It’s locked. I bet all the good stuff is in here.”

“Just what is the good stuff, Sylvie?”

“You know, whips, chains, dismembered body parts. Haven’t you ever read a mystery novel?”

I had, but I didn’t think we’d find any of that in the Kline residence. More accurately, I
hoped
we wouldn’t, because I had no idea what I would do in case of such a discovery. There are certain things you really don’t want to know about the people in your neighborhood, Mr. Rogers aside.

“What are they like, Sylvie?” I asked, hoping for something to refute the American Psycho images flip booking in my head.

“Old money, definitely old money.”

“What makes you say that?”

Sylvia tapped her finger against her cheek. “Just a vibe I get. The wife seems pleasant enough, even if her nose is perpetually up in the air. But the husband, well, I only had a glimpse of him. They have that ‘I’m above all this’ aura, you know?”

I really didn’t. Sylvia was an expert when it came to things like aura and cosmic vibrations, but I remained too firmly planted in reality, worrying about making credit card payments and such.

Sylvia gave the door handle one last jiggle and grunted in frustration. “I guess we aren’t destined to discover what’s behind door number four.”

“You might ask me to unlock it,” a deep male tenor broke in.

We both jumped.

“Oh, Mr. Kline!” Sylvia smiled and composed herself, while I wondered if I could force my heart to start up again.

Our host was average height with thick salt-and-pepper hair and a push-broom gray mustache. Amusement lit his extremely pale blue eyes set in a deeply tanned face that would put George Hamilton to shame. “We had heard mention of a tour and we were looking for you and your wife—”

   Mr. Kline raised a hand and smirked at Sylvia. “No need for explanations, my dear. Curiosity is very natural. Speaking of which….” He gave a pointed glance my way.

“Oh, forgive me, Mr. Kline,” Sylvia said, waving a hand in my general direction. “This is my friend and neighbor, Maggie Phillips. Maggie, this is Mr. Douglass Kline.”

Mr. Kline extended a hand to me, and I shook it. “Please, I insist you call me Doug. Maggie Phillips, you say? Any relation to Ralph and Laura Phillips?”

 “They’re my in-laws,” I told him.

“Ah, well, you have my sympathies, my dear.” He smiled at what must have been a bemused expression on my face. “I had the misfortune of crossing your father-in-law in court a few years back, and well, let’s just say his reputation is well deserved.”

Ralph Phillips was reputed to be a barracuda in piranha’s clothing. He’d put several large companies out of business in the years I’d been married to Neil and he loved to regale us with stories of what a large chunk he took out of each adversary. I figured Mr. Kline had been fortunate he hadn’t met up with my mother-in-law instead. At least this way he still had both his testes.

“I guess we should make an effort to find the rest of the tour,” Sylvia said.

Mr. Kline—Doug as he insisted we call him—smiled and extracted a ring of keys from his pocket. “You ladies wouldn’t want to run off before you satisfy your curiosity.” The twist of his lips appeared more dark and frightening than amused, and I gulped as I remembered the old adage about curiosity killing the cat.

“Really, it’s fine,” I said, but he held open the door, and my feet propelled me forward, Sylvia a beat behind me. Apparently, the cats were too dumb to live.

Sylvia stepped through the doorway first, her blonde hair shimmering in the artificial light from a few bright wall sconces. A large oak desk stood sentinel in front of an enormous bay window. Moonlight poured in and cast eerie shadows over the stone flooring. That’s where normality ended.

The room would have been perfectly set in a feudal castle, complete with a giant stone fireplace and a bearskin rug draped on the stone hearth. Sylvia gulped. She’d noted the head was still attached. Sylvia is a vegan as well as an animal rights activist, and I understood it took a great deal of self-restraint to hold back the tirade on cruelty to animals. My attention remained fixed on cruelty of another sort.

“Is that an Iron Maiden?” I wasn’t referring to a member of the notorious British metal band.

Doug stepped toward the object in question and opened one of the wardrobe-like doors, allowing us to see the lethal metal spikes on the inside.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” He reached out and lovingly stroked the lifeless face.

The closest I had ever come to seeing one of these things was at Bruce Wayne’s house as a secret entrance to his bat cave. I’d studied some medieval history and found it disturbingly ironic that a hero like Batman hid his lair beneath a trap door originally designed to efficiently dispose of torture victims.

“What is an Iron Maiden?” Sylvia’s gaze stayed fixed on the snarling bear head.

I looked to our host, hoping he would field that one. My throat was completely dry, and I began sweating like an old Chris Farley skit.

Doug snapped his fingers, and Sylvia’s gaze darted from the rug to him. “
That
is an Iron Maiden. To be precise, that is a replica of the Iron Maiden from Nuremberg castle which was destroyed in WWII during the air raids.”

Doug locked stare for stare with me. “It is said that the condemned criminals in Nuremberg would pass through seven rooms with seven doors before confronting this anthropomorphic death chamber.” He giggled. “It’s actually quite brilliant as far as psychological maneuvering. You confront the face of serenity before entering the wardrobe and having the knives skewer your eyes, shoulders, arms, chest, belly, bladder, buttocks, and legs. No wonder more than a few prisoners confessed when faced with her form.”

My hand roamed subconsciously over all of the body parts he had described.

“Would you like to go inside?” Vincent Price’s long lost brother asked me.

“Um, I’ll pass on that. Thanks.” I took a step back out of self preservation, cravenly putting Sylvia between myself and the madman.

Doug Kline’s full throated chortle wrapped around me like a python, and I winced as a shaft of moonlight caught the serene expression on the face of the Madonna.

“It’s only a mock up, my dear.” Kline reached forward and flicked one of the spikes. To my surprise, it wobbled. “You see, the ‘spikes’ are actually made of rubber. The only affliction one would suffer in here would be a severe case of claustrophobia.” He laughed again, like it was perfectly normal to enjoy something which induced so much terror and pain.

I looked around, hoping to see something,
anything,
which would take my mind off of the disturbing fascination our host showed with horrific death. No such luck, since the alcoves in the wall held an assortment of other metal, wood, and leather objects that I’d previously only seen in textbook sketches of the Inquisition.

Doug closed the wardrobe door and bypassed Sylvia to stand next to me. “You must think me strange, surrounding myself with implements of torture.”

Oddly enough,
strange
hadn’t even entered my head. Psychotic, unbalanced, on a holiday from Bedlam on the other hand….

“The purpose of this room is to constantly remind me of the duality of human nature. Think of the pure genius it took to create all this. The hours spent designing each item until it could inflict the ultimate amount of pain. Now, think of what might have been achieved centuries earlier if these minds had been put to a more constructive use. Man may have had automobiles in the eighteenth century, and today we could possess molecular transporters like on
Star Trek
. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

Well I was boggled, sure as shootin’. Doug Kline stared at me; the deep charcoal ring around his pale blue irises held me hypnotized.
He’s a vampire!
My mind screamed.
Run before he has you in his power!

“There you are!”

 My hero to the rescue! I turned. Neil and a painfully slim woman swathed in a crimson wrap dress stood in the doorway. A gold turban adorned her head, so I couldn’t be sure of her hair color. She might be bald, for all I knew. Her face was wrinkle free, but her eyes held a pinched look. I estimated her age somewhere between thirty-five and ninety. She reminded me of a constipated version of Mrs. Howell from
Gilligan’s Island
.

Doug cleared his throat. “Ladies, allow me to present Alessandra Kline, my wife.”

“We’ve met.” Sylvia stepped forward. “Mrs. Kline, this is my friend, Maggie Phillips.”

Mrs. Kline quirked an eyebrow at Neil. “Your wife?” she asked in a disbelieving tone.

I sighed. Her surprise was a very common reaction, and I’d ceased being offended years ago. Really, I had.

Neil smiled and placed a protective arm around my shoulder. “My better half.”

I resisted the urge to elbow him in the side, even though he laid it on a bit thick. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Kline. You have a lovely home.”

Alessandra Kline waved off the compliment. “You should have seen our house on Martha’s Vineyard. It was truly something to behold.” She sighed wistfully. “This place will be passable as soon as I find a reliable cleaning service.”

My eyebrows headed north at the odd comment. The house appeared immaculate, and I have very high standards. I’d been raised in a home where cleanliness meant godliness, and the state of the Kline’s house was piety incarnate.

“Shall we head back to the gathering?” Doug asked, crowding his wife, Neil, and me at the doorway. His jubilation at his little den o’ horrors had evaporated as soon as Neil and Mrs. Kline had joined the scene and he quickly ushered us all out before relocking the seventh circle of hell. Mrs. Kline had yet to remark on her husband’s odd collection, but then again, she might’ve had a shed full of Dalmatian puppies and a new fur coat design out back.

What a pair.

“Who does your cleaning now, Mrs. Kline?” Sylvia asked.

“Oh, some dreadful woman from an agency was sent in. She overlooked the grout in the bathroom tiles, and I swear I can see bacteria forming in the kitchen sink.”

I guess Mrs. Kline had never heard of Lysol.

“You know, Maggie is fastidious about cleaning. Her house puts me to shame every time I visit, and she has two growing boys living there,” Sylvia chirped.

I shot her a death glare behind the Kline’s backs as we descended to the first floor. What was she insinuating?

“Is that right?” Mrs. Kline couldn’t have been less interested if Sylvia had announced that NASCAR was coming to town.

“You’ve been talking about going back to work, haven’t you, Maggie?” Sylvia sent me a pointed glance.

“Yes, but I really haven’t had time for—”

“How about we kill two birds with one stone here?” Sylvia interrupted.

“I’m going to get us some drinks.” Neil retreated to safer ground. I’d never accuse him of running away, but my husband is no fool. He probably didn’t want to get Sylvia’s blood spattered across his new suit.

I opened my mouth to respond, but my boys chose that moment to tear through a crowd of people, who cursed and spilled their drinks.

“Mom!” Josh squealed as he rushed forward. “She’s chasing us!”

“Who?” I asked. Kenny collided into Josh. I caught them both and actually managed to keep my balance.

“Her!” The boys pointed through the crowd. A beautiful, bare foot redhead in a chic, turquoise silk pants suit raced through the drawing room after my monsters. She carried sling back shoes in one perfectly manicured hand, slowed as she approached us, and seemed oblivious to the stares of the entire gathering. The men’s eyes widened with appreciation, while the women’s narrowed, murderous with disgust and envy.