Lethal Legacy

THIRTY-SEVEN

I had gone upstairs to knock on Billy Schultz’s door before returning to the backyard, but there was no answer. Both Mike and Mercer were digging with garden spades when I joined them and said he wasn’t home. Bea had pulled the collar up on her raincoat and watched them work from a bistro chair set out behind the house.

“You ever get your hands in the dirt up on the Vineyard?” Mike asked. “You have any idea what we’ve got here?”

I knelt down beside him. “The top couple of inches is mulch. These look like tulip bulbs,” I said, lifting out several plantings below the surface. “Some people plant them in the fall.”

Mike jabbed his small shovel into the dirt again. “Too bad Tina didn’t stick around for the spring bloom.”

“She’s still the victim,” I said. “Is there another shovel?”

“Not until Billy Schultz gets home.”

Whoever tended the little garden kept it densely packed with perennials and small shrubs. Mercer was pulling them out to get a better angle as he dug.

Minutes later, I heard the sound of metal clanging against metal. “I’m in,” Mercer said.

Bea jumped to her feet and both of us clustered behind him. Mike saw the hole in the ground left by Mercer’s uprooting of a dwarf pine and started digging furiously. Seconds later, the tip of his shovel struck against some kind of metal vault.

“Right where it shows on the map,” Bea said.

Both men scrambled to excavate the dirt on top of the buried chamber.

Just like on the diagram Bea had shown to us, the exterior of the rectangular chest was almost ten feet long bordering the rear of the house, and only three feet wide.

“It looks like it’s split into compartments,” Bea said, peering in over Mike’s shoulder.

“Can you tell from your map,” Mike asked as he continued to throw dirt back onto the flagstone path adjacent to the site, “whether there were peepers way back then in the buildings behind us?”

He raised a valid point. It wouldn’t have been a very good hiding place if everyone around could see the dig.

“It appears from the maps I’ve examined that Hunt enclosed these first two buildings-the ones for his mistress and her mama-with a common wall,” she said, pointing to the brick surround, which was about twenty feet tall. “The family held on to the property behind us until almost 1930, when those apartments that back up on it were constructed.”

“See that stump?” Mercer said. “Bet there was a big old shade tree right there that might have given some cover.”

“You gentlemen need to understand something about topography,” Bea said. “The reason this chamber was displayed on the map is because at some point, the top of it must have been visible, on the surface of the ground. A hundred years later, with shifts in the land, it settled in a little deeper.”

“So what are you telling us?” Mike asked.

“That this would have been much more accessible to Jasper Hunt when he wanted to get to it,” Bea said. “Probably only covered with a thin layer of sod.”

Mike and Mercer were both kneeling at ends of the chest. “Doesn’t seem to be any opening on my end,” Mike said. “Totally airtight. How about you?”

“Same.”

Bea looked pensive as she walked back to the house. “Could be another way at it, don’t you think?”

I followed her into the kitchen, where she turned to study the cabinet doors high above the sink, out of reach to both of us. “You’ve got me on height, Alex.”

I dragged one of the chairs over and stepped on the seat of it to climb to the lip of the old sink. I pulled at the latch, too useless a location to have ever been replaced by any of the tenants.

It stuck for my first few attempts, then opened wide as I yanked again, practically dislodging me from my perch. Bea reached out to steady my legs.

The thick layer of dust that coated the interior shelf had recently been disturbed. Streaks across the width of the space suggested someone had reached inside.

“You might be right, Bea,” I said.

“Hey, Mike,” she called out. “Come help us.”

Mercer and Mike were behind me seconds later.

“Make yourself useful, Bea,” Mike said. “I’ll hold her legs.”

He put his hands around my calves, squeezing them to reassure me that all was okay between us.

I reached back and ruffled his thick black hair.

Mercer opened several closet doors until he found a stepladder. He helped me down and, with his great height added to the three steps, was halfway inside the cabinet when he called out, “There’s a false front here.”

He leaned to the side, pulling out the piece of wood that formed the crossbar for the single shelf.

In the space behind the center cabinet-a good four feet wide-was the side of the metal chamber we had seen from above.

Directly in front of Mercer, in the seam of the concealed door, was a keyhole-an old-fashioned design, which looked like it would accommodate a notched tip turned with an ornate bow.

“Call the lab, Mike,” I said. “Get someone up here with the key that I found in the library stacks.”