Secrets Read online

  “I don’t like this place,” she whispered.

  “Neither do I. Look.”

  She looked where he held the candle and saw the footprints. “Do you think Charles knows that you and I are plants? He asked me if I knew Althea, but I skirted the question.”

  “Nice to know that you can lie when necessary.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That you know that sometimes a person needs to have secrets,” he said.

  “I don’t have any secrets as big as yours.”

  “Oh? What about the fact that you arranged for me to hire you and that you were living under my roof under false pretenses?”

  “Under—” She didn’t like what he was saying and she would have turned around and left if they weren’t surrounded by utter blackness. “Nothing I have ever done is as bad as what you did to me.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.” He held up his hand. “Do you hear that?”

  “Voices,” she whispered.

  Jeff started walking again, then motioned for her to follow. They had come to a wall. “That peephole should be around here someplace. See if you can find it.”

  After a grimace of distaste at putting her hands on anything in the dirty old attic, Cassie reached out and started feeling along the wall. “What I don’t understand is how Hinton’s wife knew about this peephole. I hadn’t thought about it before, but now that I see this place, I could imagine that not even Charles knew of the holes. Althea said he bought the house when it was nearly derelict, but it had once been a great estate. I wonder what he changed when he remodeled it? Did Charles put the peepholes in or were they already here?”

  “Interesting thought,” Jeff said, moving the candle and his hand along the wall. “Charles bought the house a couple of years before this party, so I doubt if all of it was finished then. I wonder if Ruth knew the owner before Charles bought it?”

  “Humph!” Cassie said. “From what Althea wrote of her, I can’t imagine she came from money. It’s more likely that her relatives worked on the place. Besides, wasn’t she from Texas?”

  “You’re not only a gorgeous dame, you have a brain too.”

  “I found it!” Cassie said, her hand on the wall.

  “Good girl!” Jeff moved close to her as he examined the hole in the wall. “There’s something blocking it.”

  “Great,” Cassie said. “He’s hung a picture over it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jeff said. He was digging at the hole with his finger, but he couldn’t reach whatever was obstructing it.

  “Wait a minute,” Cassie said, then removed one of the long, decorative pins from her hair. “Althea gave me detailed instructions of what I was to wear this weekend, and today I was to stick two of these things in my hair. I almost didn’t do it.” She motioned for him to move aside. “Let me try.”

  She stuck the pin into the two-inch-wide hole, wiggled it around, and it slipped into a little indentation of whatever was blocking the opening. Cassie moved the pin to one side and the space opened. “ Voilá!” she said, then leaned forward to look into the light.

  “Let me check it out first.”

  “No, thank you, Mr. CIA, I opened it, so I get to look through it first. I can—” She paused. “Oh, no. This is too much!” She moved away from the little opening and gave Jeff a look of disgust. “I think Charles knows about us and has prepared for our spying on him.”

  Jeff didn’t say anything but bent to look through the hole. He saw a round vision of what he assumed was Charles Faulkener’s bedroom, all of it draped in red damask that looked to be fifty years old. He’d been told that Althea had seen Charles having sex with Florence Myers and he’d half expected to see the two of them on the bed together. But that wasn’t what he saw.

  Charles Faulkener lay sprawled across the bed and his throat looked as though it had been cut.

  Cassie told herself that what she’d seen wasn’t real, but it certainly looked real enough that she felt the blood draining from her. Dizzy, she put her hand to her head.

  19

  “ CASSIE,” JEFF SAIDas he stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. “This is probably a trick. Look at me! I’m sure you’re right and this is just some actor’s idea of a joke. My guess is that Althea arranged it all.”

  She raised her eyes to his. “Althea said she no longer had anything to do with Charles Faulkener. She couldn’t have done it.”

  “Althea lies. She’s a liar the size of the earth.”

  Cassie jerked away from his grasp. “I don’t want to hear any of this. Althea’s been a friend to me.”

  “To you, yes, and to the U.S. government, but there are a lot of people who haven’t been pleased by what she’s told about them.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cassie said, her hand to her throat. She couldn’t get the image of that man out of her mind. “Maybe we should call the police and let them handle this.”

  “Not yet,” Jeff said. “First, we have to go down there and see if it’s real.”

  “You mean, see if he’s really dead? You mean that you want us to go down there into that room and see if he’s really been murdered?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  She moved away from him. “No, thank you. I’ll wait for you in my bedroom behind bolted doors.”

  “No,” Jeff said. “You’re going with me. If Faulkener has been murdered, then that means there’s a murderer in the house and I don’t want you unguarded.”

  “Good idea,” she said. “I’ll just get my car keys and leave this place.”

  “Come on,” he said, putting his arm through hers. “Think of this as an adventure. Besides, I really do think it’s all part of the game. You saw the footprints. Someone has been up here recently, so they knew about the peephole. It was probably Charles. He made sure the hole was still there, then staged this performance for us.”

  “So you think Althea told him you and I were going to be here? Even though she said Charles hates her?”

  “I wouldn’t trust a word Althea said.” He was walking back toward the ladder, but this time he was holding Cassie’s hand, as though he was afraid he’d lose her in the big attic.

  “What makes you dislike Althea?”

  “I don’t dislike her. In fact, I quite enjoy her company. If she were forty or fifty years younger I would have asked her to marry me after our first dinner together.”

  “You’re certainly free with your marriage proposals,” Cassie said tightly.

  “I’ve only asked one woman to marry me.”

  “Two. Lillian and Skylar.”

  Jeff opened the trapdoor to the stairs and looked down into the linen closet. The light was still on and the door closed. Turning, he started down the ladder. “When all this is done, you and I are going to have a long talk. I am not and never have been interested in Skylar Beaumont. I told you that I got rooked into being a cover for her so her father had a reason to—” He paused on the stairs. “Cassie, baby, there are some things that I’m never going to be able to tell you, and you’ll have to realize that. My job isn’t something I can talk about to anyone. Well, except Dad, that is.”

  As he disappeared down the ladder, Cassie raised her eyes skyward for a second, then she started down the ladder. “Okay, tell me,” she said. “What does your dear father have to do with this?”

  “Let’s just say that if he’d been born a few years earlier, he’d be the prototype for James Bond.” Jeff waited for her to get to the floor, then he put the ladder up. He put his finger to his lips, then opened the linen closet door and cautiously looked out. “All clear,” he said as he took her hand and they walked out.

  The idea of the CIA, a dead body, and a dear, sweet man being a James Bond clone was more than Cassie wanted to contemplate. When they passed her bedroom, she halted. “I’ll see you later. Back in Williamsburg.”

  Jeff took her hand. “No, you don’t leave my sight. Faulkener’s room is at the end of