Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed: An Augusta Goodnight Mystery (with Heavenly Recipes) (29 page)

“I haven’t the faintest idea where to start looking once we get inside,” Ellis said as we made our way through the sparse woods Indian style. The moon was obscured by clouds, which was an advantage in a way because it gave us the cover of darkness, but it was difficult to see where we were going. I walked behind Augusta, keeping my eyes on the golden gleam of her hair.

“I suppose it depends on who took the locket as to where they might hide it,” Augusta said. “Or, if they believe no one will come looking for it, they might not hide it at all.”

I hoped we would be that lucky. A glance at my watch told me it was almost seven o’clock already and I didn’t want to spend any more time in that house than necessary.

With Augusta stationed out front to alert us if anyone approached, Ellis and I let ourselves in the back door and stepped into a small laundry room that opened onto the kitchen. I felt like the guilty intruder I was and resisted the impulse to turn and run, but I knew Ellis would never let me forget it. “Okay, I’ll take Jeremiah’s room and you search his parents’,” I said, feigning bravery.

“Be sure to leave everything the way you found it,” she warned me, knowing some of my more careless habits. “We don’t want them to even suspect we were here.”

I had brought a container of Augusta’s homemade candy—divinity, of course—and hurried to slip it among the packages under the family’s small artificial tree just in case we were caught. If we were lucky, however, the Tanseys would never know who brought it.

The cottage was built in the Cape Cod manner with a half
story upstairs, which I assumed to be Jeremiah’s, and as it turned out, I was right. The enclosed back stairway off the kitchen led to a long, narrow room with two dormer windows facing the front of the house. At least, I thought, from here I would be able to see the lights of an approaching car.

Jeremiah, it seemed, lived a rather Spartan lifestyle if it could be judged by the furnishings in his room, which contained a single bed, dresser, small table, and straight chair. On the wall across from his bed, shelves held a large television set with all the electronic attachments including a DVD, CD player, and speakers. But from the looks of my surroundings, I didn’t think he spent much time there, and who could blame him? A computer sat on the table next to the bed and I was tempted to turn it on to learn if there was anything of interest there, but I’m just now getting accustomed to the one I use at Bellawood, and I didn’t want to take a chance on messing with this one.

I didn’t dare turn on a light so I used a flashlight to look through Jeremiah’s dresser drawers which I found to be surprisingly neat. I don’t even pretend to know a lot about current fashions for men, but I recognized some expensive brand-name clothing in Jeremiah Tansey’s closet. For someone who worked as an unskilled laborer for a fencing company in nearby Rock Hill, he seemed to spend more on his wardrobe than my professor son, Roger. But being single and living at home, I reasoned, why shouldn’t he?

Downstairs I could hear Ellis moving quietly about and when I was sure the locket couldn’t possibly be in Jeremiah’s room, I took one more look around, closed the door behind me, and went downstairs to help.

A glance out the living room window showed Augusta still keeping watch out front, wrapped to the teeth in her cape, and hugging herself for warmth, and I reminded myself to hurry as I knew she hated being cold.

“I found a box with a few earrings and a necklace or two in there but not much else,” Ellis said, stepping from the couple’s room. “I hope Santa Claus brings Louella a gift certificate for some decent clothes for Christmas. The contents of that woman’s closet is just plain dismal.”

“Sounds like she could take some pointers from Jeremiah,” I said, and told her what I’d observed upstairs. Of course I knew I’d be the very last person appointed to snoop for the fashion police, I told myself as the annoying virtuous part of me waggled a finger, but I couldn’t help what I saw.

It took the two of us several minutes to examine the contents of the curio cabinet in the dining room, being careful not to drop the souvenir cups, plates, and doodads from various vacation spots. I didn’t dare to touch the lovely hand-painted cake plate that was displayed on the top shelf or the dainty china teapot beside it. Besides, it was obvious the locket wasn’t here.

“What now?” I asked after a search of the buffet drawers proved disappointing. “Guess there’s nothing left but the kitchen.”

Ellis frowned. “Isn’t there a small room on the other side of it?”

“You mean the pantry?”

“No, behind that,” she said. “Looks like it’s been added on.”

“Oh, right! I forgot about that. One of the former tenants built it for his mother, but lately, I think it’s just been used for storage.”

“Sounds like a likely spot to hide a locket.” Ellis pushed open the swinging door from the dining room and hurried through the kitchen, stopping abruptly at the closed door of the added room. “Damn! It’s locked!” She tried the knob again, shaking it. “Well, this should tell us something. Now we’ll never know if it’s in here or not.”

“Of course we will. We might not be able to get inside,” I reminded her, “but I know somebody who can.”

Augusta was so happy to be invited in out of the cold, she practically rushed inside in a blur and didn’t even hesitate to
debate the issue when Ellis told her we wanted her to let us into a locked room.

Ellis snatched up the jacket she had cast aside earlier. “I’ll keep watch until it’s open,” she said, hurrying toward the front of the house. “Just try to hurry, please!”

But that last admonition proved unnecessary because Augusta had the locked door open before Ellis had crossed the room.

“Dear God!” I sighed, looking past her. And Augusta, who dislikes hearing anyone take the Lord’s name in vain, barely made a face.

“What is it?” Ellis rushed to see and stood fixed in the doorway, her fingers fastened onto my shoulder. The small area in front of us contained the furnishings of a young girl’s room, including a large rag doll in a rocking chair and an open book on the bed. In the narrow closet we found a limited array of clothing appropriate for a teenaged girl, and just about every space on the wall was covered with photographs of Dinah Tansey throughout most of the stages of her brief life.

t seems to be some kind of shrine,” I said, standing transfixed in the doorway. “How sad!”

“And creepy.” Ellis walked over and looked closer at the book. “They’ve even left it open to mark the place as if she’ll be back to finish reading it.”

“What was she reading?” I asked, leaning over to see the title. I wasn’t surprised to see Daphne du Maurier’s
Rebecca
, which I had read a number of times during my teens.

“It’s almost as if she never left,” Ellis said, looking around.

“She didn’t,” I reminded her, “because she was never here. Dinah married Dexter Clark soon after high school before her parents even moved to Stone’s Throw. She never saw this room.”

So far Augusta had not spoken but I saw that she had stepped back from the doorway and now stood in the kitchen. The stones in her necklace, I noticed, were lusterless and dark. “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” she said. “I think we should leave right now.”

“But we haven’t even looked in here,” I said, opening a drawer in the chest next to the bed. “If the locket is in this house, wouldn’t this be the natural place to keep it?”

“Please, Augusta! We’re so close. I’m sure we can find it.” Ellis looked at the kitchen clock. “See, it’s not even eight yet. Just give us a little more time.”

The angel sighed. Her earlier confidence and enthusiasm seemed to have vanished into the night. “Very well, I’ll be waiting out front, but do look quickly. However, I don’t believe you’ll be finding anything there.”

“Well, Augusta was right … there’s not much here,” Ellis said, shutting a desk drawer a few minutes later. “I haven’t seen anything but some old schoolwork, a couple of paperbacks, and a few letters.”

I had found the dresser drawers to be almost empty as well except for a few pairs of stockings, underwear, and a modest bathing suit. “I guess this is what Dinah left behind when she ran off to marry that loser.” I shoved the drawer back into place. “I can’t understand what she saw in him. What a waste!”

While Ellis searched the closet, running her hands over shelves and crevices, I checked for a hiding place in the bedding, feeling under the mattress and pillow with no success. “Let’s get out of here,” I said finally. “This place is depressing.”

Several pairs of shoes made a neat line across the closet floor and Ellis examined them one by one before carefully putting them back into place. “I’m with you,” she said, and froze with her hand on the closet door. Someone was in the kitchen.

Heart thudding, I knelt behind the bed as close to the floor as I could get, but if one of the family was there, surely they would notice the door to the locked room was not only unlocked, but open.

Whoever was in there was now opening the refrigerator door and I heard the clanking of jars being shifted about. I dared to
glance across the room at Ellis, who was attempting to flatten herself against the wall.

Something squeaked. An oven door? This was followed by a puzzling period of silence. I was working up the courage to make a dash for it when I heard another noise, one I couldn’t identify, but it warned me the person was still there.

Ellis held a finger to her lips and began to move silently toward the door, hand out, as if she meant to close it quietly, when someone shouted, “Ah!”

I recognized that “ah” and it sounded even more heavenly than usual. Augusta! I jumped to my feet and joined her in the kitchen, where she stood at the counter holding something in a small plastic bag. “Ah!” she said again. “I thought I’d find it here!”

She had taken the top from the canister that held flour and the white powder lay scattered like snow on the countertop.

“What is it? Is it the locket?” Ellis reached for the bag. “It
is!
Won’t Idonia be surprised when she sees it?”

But Augusta was already cleaning away the mess she had made and now she held out her hand for the locket. “We can’t do that, Ellis. We have to put it back right away or they’ll realize we’ve been here.”

All this trouble for nothing!
I thought. “So why look for it if we have to put it back?” I fumed. “At least let’s open it and see what’s inside. There must be a reason this is so important to somebody.”

But the only thing we found inside was a yellowing photograph of a bridal couple and the engraved date of their marriage, just as we had been told. Augusta quickly buried the locket once more, replaced the top, and in an instant the countertop was gleaming. “Now that we know who took it, it will serve our purpose better to let the police discover it here,” she said, quickly rinsing her hands at the sink.

Ellis frowned. “But we really don’t, do we?”

“Don’t what?” I asked.

“Know who took it,” she said. “It could’ve been any of the Tanseys.”

I watched as Augusta made sure the door to “Dinah’s room” was locked, and one look told me she was wearing her “secret” face. “You know, don’t you?” I asked. “You know who took the locket.”