Chapter Twenty-Two #2
As I neared, I recognized Mort’s voice doing the shouting. Both Maureen and Seth had beaten me to the scene, illuminated only by light coming from one open door, and I looked on as Mort wrestled with a young woman whom he had pinned face down in the dim hallway.
Howard and Victoria came rushing down the hall. “What is it?” Howard said. “What’s going on?”
“We think Mort’s caught your intruder,” Maureen said. “He was a little put out that Danielle was going to call in Caceras to figure it out, so he told me he was going to lie in wait and track down where those sounds were coming from.”
“Well, who is it?” said Howard, craning his head forward as Victoria moved to the switch and flipped on the overhead lights.
The woman turned her face at the same moment, and I recognized the pretty young woman who had been hanging wallpaper when we first arrived.
“Katie?” I said.
She stopped struggling upon hearing her name, and Mort helped her back to her feet. She looked fiercely at us for a second or two, but when our faces showed only the confusion we felt, she collapsed back against the wall and buried her head in her hands.
“I don’t understand,” Victoria said. “Katie, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?”
“Not wallpapering,” Mort said. “That’s for sure. Come check this out.” Mort pushed Katie through the open door, and we all followed them inside.
The room, one of the partially renovated ones, showed recent evidence of Katie’s work.
The old wallpaper was partially removed, and shreds of it remained at the base of a ladder.
At first I spotted nothing amiss, except an old wardrobe had been pushed out of its place.
But then I noticed a gaping hole—no, a small square door, maybe a little over four feet by four feet—in the wall behind it.
Howard walked over to it and peered into the passageway behind it. “We have secret passageways?” He turned to Victoria. “Did you know about this?”
Victoria opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Howard scratched the back of his head. “We bought the Scooby Doo house. How cool is that?”
“Now why would there be secret passages?” Seth asked. “Danielle must have had them built into the house.”
Howard had taken out his cell phone and, using it as a flashlight, pushed his way into the opening.
“Be careful,” Victoria called.
“I won’t go too far,” he said. “I just want to see where it goes.”
He came out maybe ten seconds later, pulling cobwebs from his hair.
“The passage takes a bend, then down a narrow staircase—definitely not to code. I didn’t want to try it.
I think there might be another one of these weird square doors at the bottom—it was hard to see—and if I’m not mistaken, that’s an outside wall. ”
“Ah,” I said. When all eyes turned to me, I finished my thought.
“Based on their size, I suspect they’re kitty doors for Quimby.
I noticed that there were remnants of a fenced-in area attached to the house, which likely would have been his outdoor play area.
I’d imagine that there are a number of these kitty doors so that Danielle’s prize pet could have direct access from his cage to the bedrooms.”
“Sure,” Mort said. “Makes sense. Lots of people like to sleep with their pets.” He rolled his eyes.
“But that still doesn’t explain what this one,” he said, eyeing Katie, “is doing prowling around here in the middle of the night.”
At that moment, a plaintive cry came from the passageway. It was definitely no coyote.
“I think,” I said to Katie, “you’d better collect your child, and then maybe we can go downstairs, put on some coffee and maybe a light breakfast, and talk this over, huh?”
It didn’t take long for Howard and Victoria to assemble a continental breakfast from the ingredients that Ginette had prepared the evening before.
The child, a plump toddler who looked about two years old, proved ravenous, but I suspected that was typical and not a sign of malnourishment. She clung to her mother, and Katie held her close in her lap as she cut up food into smaller pieces for the girl’s little hands.
Once her belly was full again, the child dozed off, and conversation resumed—even Mort taking care not to raise his voice and risk awakening her.
“Katie,” Victoria said, “I’m still a little disappointed and a lot confused, but I suspect there’s a story here, and I’d like to hear it.”
“The truth,” Mort urged. “You’ve broken laws by being on the premises. You should feel grateful these folks are willing to hear you out.”
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out,” Katie said.
“When you came here looking for the treasure?” I ventured.
Katie’s gaze darted to meet mine, but then she nodded. “Nobody in my family had heard about Graystone, not until my great-grandfather developed dementia, and even then, he’d talk about it in vague whispers. One phrase he’d use over and over again is the ‘treasure of Graystone.’ ”
“Who is your family?” Victoria asked.
“My great-grandfather was Abdi Njeri,” Katie said.
“Abdi Njeri?” Maureen repeated breathlessly. “Quimby’s trainer?”
Katie nodded. “Shortly after he died, my grandmother got sick. She was the one who raised me. My father and mother were never in the picture. Apparently, they made some bad choices, and I seemed to inherit that gene. I’ve certainly made more than my share of poor decisions.
I do have one good thing to show for them. ” She kissed her daughter’s head.
“Medical bills ate up all the family assets, and all of a sudden, I was a single mother living in a dumpy apartment I could barely afford, with no living relatives except a child to care for.”
“So the lure of some kind of treasure must have been appealing,” I said.
“That wasn’t my initial intention,” she said.
“I was really looking for family. From the articles I found, I realized that when my grandmother was born, my great-grandfather must still have been working here. I hoped someone would know if any of my family were still in the area, or that at least the old lady he worked for might help, maybe take us in while I kept looking, but when I arrived, she had already sold the house and seemed kind of down on her luck herself.”
“So you decided to look for the treasure instead?” Victoria said.
“Sorry about that,” Katie said. “I kind of bluffed my way through the interview. I’d actually never done wallpaper before. I just watched a few videos on YouTube. When people were out of the house, I had a chance to look around. I found the tunnels on the first day.”
“And moved in?” I said.
She winced. “Not my finest move,” she said, “but the little money I’d scraped together to get me here was gone, and it was either camp out here or look for some kind of homeless shelter.
I figured it was so large a house, nobody would notice.
I’d just slip out occasionally so I could be seen arriving for work.
If people were about, sometimes I would leave at night, but then… ”
“You’d have to break back in to care for your child,” I said.
“All for what?” Mort said. “A treasure that, for all we know, might not even exist?”
Katie’s eyes teared. “I never said I had the best judgment.” She sniffed. “But I wasn’t doing it for me. You have to understand that. I was doing it for her.” She kissed her child’s head again. “My little Rose.”
“We’re just supposed to believe that?” Mort asked.
“I’m dying,” she said abruptly.
Mort rolled his eyes, but I laid my hand on his arm and said, “How’s that?”
“Cancer,” she said.
“May I ask what kind?” Seth asked.
“Pancreatic. I was so busy caring for my grandmother and my great-grandfather that I ignored the early symptoms. By the time my doctor discovered it, he said my case was incurable, that any treatment would hurt more than it would help and it was better to make the most of the time I had left.”
“That’s often the case with pancreatic cancer,” Seth said. “Did he give you a prognosis?”
“The oncologist seemed to think that I have maybe a year, if he was being optimistic. I choose to be optimistic.”
Seth nodded.
“Which is why you were so intent on locating family,” Victoria said, her brows knit in concern. “To find someone to care for your daughter.”
“Or at least some way of providing for her after I’m gone,” Katie said.
Victoria spun away, I suspect to hide the raw emotion in her face.
“You wanted the truth,” Katie said. “That’s all of it, the whole ugly mess.” She looked up at Howard. “So, what are you going to do with me?”
“Well, we’re not turning you over to the police,” he said. “But I think we should have a long talk with Danielle when she’s up. She may be old, but she’s pretty lucid, at least when she wants to be. Maybe she can tell you something about your family or this elusive treasure.”
“In the meantime,” Victoria said, “let’s get Rose a decent bed to sleep in and let you both get some rest.”
“Don’t disappear,” Mort warned Katie, shaking a finger at her.
“I literally have nowhere to go,” she said.
* * *
“And she said Abdi Njeri was her grandfather?” Danielle asked after we had told her the whole story over breakfast.
“Great-grandfather,” I said.
“We recognized the name as Quimby’s trainer,” Victoria said.
“So please note,” Mort said, “that we have solved your haunting problem.”
Danielle ignored Mort’s comment. “Bring the girl to me,” she insisted. “I must see her at once.”
Victoria rushed off as if she were a chambermaid doing her mistress’s bidding and not the owner of the house and technically Danielle’s landlord, but I suspected she was anxious to see if there could be some kind of positive resolution to Katie’s dilemma.
Katie arrived freshly scrubbed, still smelling of the scented shampoo and body wash that Victoria had placed in all the guest rooms. She carried herself tall and erect, but I could see the tremble in her hands and a slight muscle twitch by her right eyebrow.
“Where’s Rose?” I asked.
“Still sleeping,” Katie said.
“You’re Katie Njeri?” Danielle asked.
“Katie Brown. My great-grandfather was a Njeri, though.”
“And your grandmother? What was her name?”
“She was born Pearl Njeri.”
“Pearl?” I repeated, then put my hand over my mouth. Of course.
Danielle reached out an arthritic hand and beckoned Katie to draw closer to her.
She looked her over for a good minute. Finally, she said, “Child, you’ll find no gold or money or anything of monetary value hidden in this house.
My hidden treasure—my pearl of great price—was lost to me long ago.
You can, however, stop looking for your family. ”
Katie gulped. “I was afraid there’d be none left.”
“Just one,” Danielle said. “Child, I am your great-grandmother.”
And with that, Katie swayed, then fainted, and crumpled to the floor.