Chapter 27
Jennie sat up. The living room was dark, but Zane had flicked on a nightlight in the hallway before going to bed. She hadn’t intended to spend the night, but with it being so late, it was easier. She’d fallen into a fitful sleep. But now?
She swung her legs off the couch and fumbled for her phone. Turning on its flashlight, Jennie reached for the shoebox on the floor.
Reaching into the box, she pulled out the locket and carefully pried free the clasp that held it closed. She stared at the portrait. The young woman. If this really was Lousia Theophilus, Leopold’s illegitimate daughter . . .
Jennie held the flashlight up to the tiny miniature in the locket, her thumb brushing the coarse lock of hair on the opposite side.
What if keeping Traeger Hall sealed shut was all the person had wanted?
The person who’d left the note in Hannah’s locker.
What if by opening the house, they would be negatively affected by a Pandora’s box of mysteries?
What if it had nothing to do with their wanting any potential treasure for themselves?
What if the person who’d written the note just wanted the Hall left alone?
Nothing devious or dangerous or even deadly.
Lousia Theophilus could be the secret of Traeger Hall.
Maybe Jennie had been staring at it from the moment she and Zane had first entered the Hall.
Louisa could be what Leopold wanted locked up for generations, so that her existence couldn’t come back to shame him.
But to hang her portrait for all to see upon entering the house?
What about the artist Vallée? Jennie had pulled up the name on her phone earlier, also running a search for it in various art databases. Nothing. She decided to search the internet linking Traeger Hall and Vallée together.
She frowned as she thumbed her phone screen. The only thing of value the search had brought up was old property records from Connecticut. A house owned by an L. Traeger. The deed was linked to an 1880 census and an occupant at the same address: Fidelia Vallée.
Jennie jumped to her feet, a burst of energy filling her.
Vallée. The person who had painted the portrait of Louisa might very well be this Fidelia Vallée.
And if L. Traeger—listed as owning the property in Connecticut where Fidelia Vallée resided—was the Leopold Traeger, she could have just stumbled on the rumored artist of Traeger Hall’s collection of paintings.
She grabbed her shoes and slipped them on.
She would hike there. Starting the car might wake the occupants of the Harris house, and she didn’t want to disturb them.
It wasn’t that far, and the walk would do her good.
Jennie paused, debating on whether to wake Zane.
With it still being so early, she decided to leave him a note, asking him to join her when he woke up.
Scribbling on an envelope she pulled from the trash, Jennie left the note on the couch and slipped from the house.
In the predawn, a thin line of pink spanned the horizon, outlining Traeger Hall and the bell tower.
She was so excited, it was hard not to bust back into the house and start rummaging through everything to find more clues and more evidence of Louisa Theophilus’s life.
But she tempered her anticipation, taking the time to unlock the padlock Zane had put on the heavy-duty metal gate he’d installed to keep out vandals.
He’d given her an extra key, and she removed the padlock and swung open the gate.
The entrance she and Zane had created beckoned her inside. Jennie pocketed the key and reached for the respirator mask she’d grabbed from Zane’s car on her way out their driveway, along with a flashlight. Once prepared, Jennie flicked it on and ducked so she could squeeze into Traeger Hall.
Jennie instantly swept the beam of light onto the portrait just off the entryway by the staircase.
The woman’s blue eyes stared back at her, unyielding in their persistence.
She walked to it, raising the flashlight and studying the paintbrush strokes, trying to differentiate what was dust, paint, or cobweb.
“What do you want me to find?” she asked Louisa Theophilus. “Who is Fidelia Vallée?” Her voice echoed through the abandoned home and deflected off furniture and tapestries—evidence that whoever had sealed Traeger Hall had left it all behind intentionally.
Jennie scanned the entryway with the flashlight and noted the hallway that ran to the left of the staircase.
She badly wanted to explore the upper level, but maybe the entrance to the bell tower was this way.
There had to be some explanation for how the bell had rung the night of Allison’s murder too. If she could uncover that . . .
Jennie shone the light at a door on the left.
It was a study draped in cobwebs, mice droppings, and piles of chewed paper where rodents had been.
She entered the room carefully, swinging the light upward to make sure nothing was going to cave in from the floor above.
All looked secure. It was a museum. A moment frozen in time.
She shone the light on the desktop. An old book, gnawed and mostly destroyed, lay there. A teacup and saucer, so filthy she couldn’t make out its pattern. A dry inkwell, an assortment of pens, and a tobacco pipe resting on a wooden holder. Jennie reached out and ran her finger across it.
Leopold Traeger’s pipe? It had to be his. He had held it, smoked it, and here she was touching it as if it were a relic worth thousands of dollars. Jennie withdrew her hand. If Leopold had accomplished anything, it had been to immortalize his life. He was not forgotten.
She swept her flashlight along the wall. There. A painting. Two English setters in the same paint strokes and style as the portrait in the foyer. Jennie leaned closer to read the artist’s signature: Vallée.
Of course! Now she was getting somewhere. Perhaps there were records—files of painting purchases or business transactions between Leopold Traeger and Fidelia Vallée.
Jennie pushed on the wooden chair by the desk and noted that it still felt solid.
Regardless of the dust, she lowered herself onto it, sitting at the desk as though she could summon the spirit of Leopold Traeger.
Read his mind. Know his thoughts. He had sat right here more than a century ago and composed the last will and testament that had begun this entire debacle.
He had determined that this place would be sealed shut.
Jennie tugged open a drawer. It stuck, and she wrestled with it for a moment as she sat there enveloped in the darkness.
Only the flashlight provided light, and she had her phone with her if she needed a backup.
The drawer finally tugged free, and she peered inside.
Old, chewed papers; another book, warped from age; a small metal box toward the back of the drawer.
She pulled the box out and set it on the desk.
When she opened it, she smiled. Its contents were so simple, the day-to-day life of someone in the nineteenth century.
Buttons that might have come off Leopold Traeger’s suit coats or shirts were among the items in the box, as well as a matchbook, a few coins that could be worth something, and a penknife.
Closing the lid, she slid the box back into the drawer, leaving the rest as it was.
The rest of the drawers weren’t much different in their contents.
Jennie moved to the wall shelves. Books lined them, so thick with dust that she could barely read their titles.
There were a few gaps where, instead of books, a vase rested, a small knickknack, and in the corner of one shelf, a compass encased in glass.
The glass was grimy, and Jennie couldn’t tell if the compass was anything special.
She moved on. Where would Leopold have stored information on the artist and about Louisa? Louisa’s boarding school records perhaps? Records of payment to support her . . .
Jennie swept the flashlight’s beam around the room until it landed on a landscape painting, hung on the wall behind the desk. Again, her flashlight confirmed it. Another Vallée. She hurried to the painting and, ignoring the spiderweb that clung to her hand, lifted it off of its wall hook.
“Of course.” Her voice sounded louder than she’d imagined it would be.
But being alone in Traeger Hall in complete darkness made it eerie, even to her own ears.
The wall safe behind the painting wasn’t even latched.
Jennie’s fingers curled around the door and tugged it open. She raised the light to peer inside.
Aside from a sheaf of papers tied together with string, the safe was empty. No jewels or gold coins or other such riches. Jennie smiled to herself. Mom would have loved this time capsule of stories that had become treasures. She pulled out the papers and set them on the desk.
“What did you leave in the safe that was so important, Mr. Traeger?” she muttered to herself. “Who was Fidelia Vallée—?”
Jennie whipped her head up at the sound of the floor creaking but saw only blackness. With no light source inside the abandoned mansion, she would have expected to see a beam of light if it was Zane.
“Zane?” she called. Tugging out her phone, she glanced at the time: 5:32 a.m. He could have awakened and come to join her.
But the fact he didn’t answer unnerved Jennie.
“Zane?” she called again, this time shining the light through the open doorway of the study.
She saw the hallway and then nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Her ears must have been playing tricks on her.
Jennie brought the flashlight back to the folder and finished untying the string. The folder fell open, and she saw a sheaf of old handwritten pages in brown ink. They had to mean something to have been stored in a safe. And why had the safe been unlocked, with these pages left behind?
Lifting a page, Jennie held it toward the light. “‘Girl with Chestnut Hair. Poppy Field in Oil. Dogs of the Moors,’” she read aloud. Jennie carefully examined the header of each page. They were records of Vallée paintings, at least forty of them. Jennie frowned, sinking onto the chair.
Had she missed something in her research?
Was there an artist named Vallée who had become someone in the art world?
Or was this Leopold Traeger’s attempt to hoard paintings from one he believed would rise to fame?
If he sealed Traeger Hall to hoard the paintings, there was no good explanation for that action either.
Their beauty and value would be kept for ghosts only.
Traeger in no way benefited by sealing a collection of paintings from an unknown artist in his home for a century!
Jennie froze.
The floor had creaked again.
A chill made her shiver, and she had the sudden sensation that she was being watched. She grappled for the flashlight, knocking over Leopold Traeger’s pipe and stand.
“Zane?” she tried again.
This time she was answered with more distinct footsteps. The person wasn’t trying to hide from her. A light flickered and then shone down the hallway.
“Is that you, Zane?” Jennie was irritated by his not announcing himself. He of all people knew how creepy this old place was.
A figure rounded the corner, and Jennie stared, confusion muddling her senses. This person’s presence in Traeger Hall made no sense, and yet at the same time it did. “Oh! H-hello.” She managed a wobbly smile. “You scared me.”
“Yeah? Sorry about that.”
Jennie eyed the visitor with suspicion. “How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t.” The individual took another step into the room.
“But—”
“I warned you to keep this place shut.”
Jennie stilled. Hannah’s locker. The note. The pieces fell into place, but there were still several missing. She didn’t have a complete picture, and fear began to trace its way up her spine.
“I just needed more time.” Another step toward her.
“What is it you want?” Jennie demanded, trying to sound strong and failing at it. The words came out in a breathy plea.
“The paintings, Jennie. One at a time, and with the right connections, I can move them and make a killing.”
“These?” She waved the Vallée records in the air. “They’re worth nothing! No one in the art world would recognize a Vallée.”
“Don’t worry.” The smile didn’t quite meet the person’s eyes. “They will. Once I’m able to move the last Degas.”
Jennie ignored the unwanted visitor for a moment and quickly shuffled through the records in her hands.
Vallée.
Vallée.
Vallée.
Vallée.
Degas.
Degas.
Monet.
She jerked her head up in surprise. “There are priceless works here?”
Jennie was met with a laugh. “Quite a few actually. I’ve had to be real strategic in moving them. Even in the underground art world, selling priceless paintings is a dangerous business. Eight years and counting . . . it’s been a lucrative hobby.”
The individual who’d threatened Hannah really had wanted Traeger Hall left alone. This person had been pilfering Leopold Traeger’s fine art collection for years.
Allison had been right. And if she’d been killed for her meddling, then it stood to reason they would be willing to kill again.