Manolos in Manhattan (44 page)

“But what did she plan to do?” Holly asked, perplexed. “Did she honestly think she could show up at the dock in Daisy’s place, and persuade Bix to run off to Paris with her instead?”

Klaus shrugged. “Something like that. Love makes us do crazy things sometimes, no? But of course Bix refused; he wouldn’t set foot on that ocean liner without Daisy.”

“He must have been frantic,” Holly murmured, her face etched in sympathy. “Poor Bix! And Dora – what did she do when she realized Daisy was dead?”

“She panicked, of course. She hid the body in one of the trunks Daisy intended to take to Paris. She instructed a porter to carry the trunk to a storage room in the basement. She knew Caruso kept the club’s alcohol hidden in a secret room; Daisy told her as much. When the porter left, Dora dragged the trunk in there and shoved it behind the cases of liquor, slid the false wall closed, and left.

“The very next night, Caruso’s men were gunned down at the brownstone. The building stood empty for several years. No one ever found the hidden room, and so they never found the trunk with Daisy’s body.” He sighed. “She got away with it. But that single, terrible act haunted my grandmother’s conscience for the rest of her life.”

Holly and Hugh left soon afterwards, with Daisy’s portrait tucked securely under Hugh’s arm.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Holly said as they returned to the car. “Now we know where Daisy’s body is.”

“Yes. It’s ironic, isn’t it – her remains were in the brownstone all this time.” Darcy stowed the painting on the back seat and opened the door for Holly. “I suppose I needn’t ask where we’re going,” he remarked with a wry smile.

“The brownstone,” Holly confirmed, barely containing her excitement. “I can’t wait to get back there and find Daisy, and solve this mystery once and for all.”

Chapter Seventy-Eight

They returned the portrait to the attic a short time later – Hugh slightly out of breath after lugging it up four flights of stairs ‒ and propped it up against a crate.

“There!” Holly said with satisfaction. “Daisy’s back where she belongs.”

“I’ll call Alastair to let him know we found the painting.”

“Wait – what’ll you tell him?”

Darcy looked at her in puzzlement. “I’ll tell him the truth, of course.”

“But...what if he calls the police? We promised Klaus there’d be no charges.”

“That’s up to your father,” Hugh said firmly. “The painting is his property, after all. But he’s a reasonable man. I’m sure he’ll let the matter go, particularly since Klaus agreed to return Daisy’s portrait.”

“No, let’s wait.” Holly took Hugh’s hands in hers and met his eyes. “We’ll call Dad later, I promise. But first, we need to go to the basement and find that secret room...and Daisy.”

Hugh nodded slowly. “I just hope that Klaus – or more specifically, his grandmother, Dora – isn’t leading us on a wild goose chase. I’d hate to see you disappointed.”

“Do you think she’s still here, Darcy?” she asked as she turned away and glanced around the attic. “Do you think the breeze we felt, up here in the attic, was Daisy?”

“Possibly,” he said. “But it’s gone now.”

“We have news, Daisy,” Holly cried, “wonderful news. We know where your body is, and we know who killed you. You’ll finally have a proper burial, and a memorial service. I’ll make sure of it. You can finally rest in peace.”

She waited, but nothing happened.

“You can be with Bix again, Daisy! You two can be together...forever.”

But there was no response. There was no silvery echo of laughter, no lavender-scented breeze, nothing...

Only the silent, dusty reproach of the attic, empty now except for a few boxes and a stray cobweb or two.

Holly didn’t realize she was crying until Hugh came forward and took her into his arms.

“It’s so sad,” she wept into his shoulder as he held her. “She never got her happy ending! What if we don’t find Daisy’s body? What if Klaus – or Dora – were lying?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Darcy said, his words measured and calm. “Let’s go down to the basement and have a look.”

“According to Klaus,” Hugh said as they stood a moment later in the doorway of a small room crammed with store returns and empty packing crates, “this was Daisy’s dressing room.”

Holly nodded slowly. “Which means the storeroom must’ve been…” She leaned back to glance down the hall. “That little room right around the corner from the stairs.”

She turned and strode down the hall with Hugh behind her.

The room, currently used as a repository for boxes of yet-to-be-unpacked shipments, wasn’t much bigger than Daisy’s old dressing room.

“Klaus said Dora told him the false wall slid back by pressing a particular spot on the baseboard,” Hugh murmured. He wore an intent look as he entered the room.

“And did she happen to tell him
which
wall it was?”

“No. We’ll have to examine every inch of the baseboard here…” He touched the wall that abutted the stairs. “And the interior wall. Those are the only places that might conceivably accommodate a secret room.”

They both knelt down and began to press their fingers along the baseboards. Holly eagerly searched the interior wall; Hugh, with a more methodic approach, began to examine the wall adjoining the stairs.

Neither spoke as they focused on the task. Holly was glad she’d worn jeans and a T-shirt; she was soon covered with dust. The search took the better part of an hour. Although they pressed their fingers along every inch of every bit of baseboard, no secret panel slid back, and no hidden room was revealed.

Holly leaned back on her heels, disappointed. “Where is it, Hugh? Where’s the damned secret panel?”

He stood up in frustration. “I don’t know. I can’t think why we haven’t found the right spot; we’ve searched every bit of baseboard in here! Besides, this house is old, and nothing’s been disturbed since 1929...”

His voice trailed off, and a thoughtful expression settled on his face.

“I know that look,” Holly accused him. “What are you thinking, Darcy?”

“What do old houses do, Holly?” he asked her. “They settle. This flooring, for instance.” He indicated the slight downward slope of the linoleum. “It isn’t level any longer.”

“Right,” Holly said slowly, “but I don’t see what that has to do with anything…?”

“I’m thinking that it means we need to lower our expectations, so to speak.”

“Okay, now you’re really talking in riddles,” she complained. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Hugh said with growing determination, “that perhaps we need to search further down the baseboard.”

“Oh, right,” Holly said with growing excitement. “The walls have settled, so we might need to look a little lower to find that hidden panel…”

Hugh let out an exclamation as his fingers pressed against a section of plaster at the bottom of the baseboard an inch or so above the dirt floor.

There was a rusty, mechanical whirring sound, and a panel, just large enough for a person of medium height to walk through, slid open to reveal...

...a hidden room.

Chapter Seventy-nine

Holly joined Hugh at the entrance to the secret room. “It’s dark in there,” she observed doubtfully, “really, really dark. Did you bring a flashlight?”

He looked at her in exasperation. “No. Why must I always be the one to think of practical considerations such as flashlights?” he grumbled. “After all, I found the secret panel – wasn’t that enough?”

“Never mind that,” Holly told him, “I’ll go up and get one. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“I’m hardly going anywhere, am I?” he asked testily.

Holly, assuming his question was strictly rhetorical, didn’t reply.

She took the basement stairs two at a time. “Flashlight, flashlight,” she muttered as she paused in the entrance hallway. “Where would Dad keep the flashlights?”

He’d keep them up in his office, of course. She headed for the ground-floor staircase with her face set in equal parts determination and excitement.

They were about to find Daisy’s body, after all this time! The mystery of her disappearance would finally be solved.

As Holly approached the foot of the stairs, something sparkly on the floor caught her eye. She knelt down to see what it was. It looked like a ring.

Her fingers closed around the delicate band of figured silver with its three-carat, pear-shaped diamond, and she cupped it in the palm of her hand. It
was
a ring.

It was her engagement ring from Ciaran.

I don’t want to marry you, Ciaran. Not now...not ever.

She could still hear her words, echoing with grim finality as she’d taken the ring off. She’d flung it at him so hard it had bounced off his chest. It must have been lying on the floor since Saturday night.

Good thing Coco didn’t find it
, Holly reflected as she stood up and studied the ring dispassionately. She would’ve sold it on eBay, or taken it to Tiffany for a valuation and a store credit.

Holly sighed. She knew only that she didn’t want it. She’d broken off the engagement, so by rights the ring belonged to Ciaran. She’d have to figure out a way to give it back to him...without actually
seeing
him.

Because, outside of the inescapable pages of a magazine, or a fleeting image on the television screen, she never wanted to lay eyes on Ciaran Duncan again.

Holly dropped the ring in her jeans pocket and hurried up the stairs in search of a flashlight, all thoughts of Ciaran and his ring forgotten.

When she returned to the basement ten minutes later, Holly rushed down the hallway and into the storeroom. “I found a flashlight. Sorry it took me so long, but I had to go all the way up to the fourth floor. I can’t wait to see what’s inside that secret room...oh!” She came to a stop.

The storeroom was empty. Hugh was nowhere to be seen.

“Hugh?” she called out again, her heart skipping a beat. “Where are you?”

“I’m in here,” came the muffled response.

“Where?” she asked again, and glanced around at the empty room.

“I’m in the hidden room. Bring the flashlight. And hurry – this lighter’s just about to die.”

She knelt down in front of the yawning black entrance to the hidden room and played the flashlight beam around inside the interior.

“Are you crazy?” she demanded as she caught sight of Darcy, holding up a lighter like a concertgoer demanding an encore performance. “What if that panel slid shut? It happens all the time in films. You’d be trapped in there for all eternity!”

“The panel won’t slide shut,” he told her firmly. “I took the precaution of wedging a metal canister against the doorframe. What took you so bloody long, anyway?”

She explained that she’d had to go up to the fourth floor to find a flashlight – leaving out the part about finding Ciaran’s engagement ring on the floor – and added, “I’m coming in now...ugh!”

“It’s only a few cobwebs. Just brush them away and bring me that flashlight.”

“Okay, okay. God, you’re cranky.”

“I get that way when I haven’t eaten,” he retorted.

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Holly said as she edged closer and handed him the flashlight. There was enough room to stand up ‒ barely. “I promise that when we get out of here, I’ll buy you a pastrami sandwich from Shatz’s, with a dill pickle and extra mustard...and a root beer.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“Was this room ever wired for electricity?”

“It was,” he replied, nodding his head at the bare bulb dangling from a ceiling fixture, “but that bulb long since gave up the ghost.” He glanced over at Holly. “So to speak.”

“So what’s back here, anyway?”

He played the flashlight beam over stacks of wooden crates. “Crates of whisky,” Hugh answered. “Help me shove them out of the way, will you?”

They set to work, and began dragging the crates out into the storeroom. A short time later they’d stacked everything in the corner; the hidden room was empty, except for a couple of remaining crates...

...and, hopefully, Daisy’s trunk.

“There it is!” Holly breathed as Darcy shoved the last two crates aside. She clutched at his arm, her heart racing.

It was a vintage steamer trunk, about five feet long and two feet wide, with leather straps and handles on either end. The brass fittings had long since tarnished to a dull mottled gold. It was plastered with travel decals from far-flung places like Cairo, Venice, Singapore, and Madrid. The decals – probably once brilliantly colored – had dulled to sepia-tinted shades of brown.

A wave of sorrow, so strong it took her breath away, gripped Holly. Her hands tightened on Hugh’s arm.

Poor Daisy! She’d packed this trunk with her wedding trousseau for her elopement with Bix – nightgowns with delicate handmade lace, tea dresses and party frocks, silk stockings and shoes and pretty underclothes – and instead, because of her half-sister’s jealousy, the trunk became Daisy’s casket.

She lifted her gaze up to Darcy’s. “Should we open it now? Or wait for the police?”

“We should probably wait,” he said doubtfully. “If Daisy’s inside that trunk, and we open it, we’d be tampering with evidence.”

“But if we wait,” Holly pointed out, “and all those police officers and forensics people are here, taking pictures and doing whatever it is they do, we...we might not get to see Daisy.”

“See her how, exactly?”

“She might not appear to us. She might not be able to show up to...to say goodbye, if all those people are here.”

“Holly,” Hugh said gently, “you tried talking to her earlier, in the attic. There was no breeze, nothing. Besides,” he reminded her, “she’s...gone.”

“Don’t say that!” Holly cried, and her face filled with mingled anguish and anger. “Daisy can’t be gone, not when we’ve finally solved the mystery and found her body down here in this hidden room.”

He eyed the trunk. “We don’t know that she’s even in there.”

“She is. I know it. Please, let’s – let’s open it.”

“All right,” Darcy agreed reluctantly, “but I’ll need something I can use to pry the lid open. It’s locked.”

“So you already tried to open it!” Holly accused him.

“Yes, I did,” he admitted. “Come on – let’s see if we can find a crowbar somewhere.”