Drago #5 (#2b). Art Inc. Spinella
He pulled the Jeep close to the front porch, a steep affair rising at least 8 feet to the front porch and 10-foot double doors. The house easily spread 120 feet across, the stonework leading to the entrance an intricate mix of tile and cut granite. To the left, a Portico with two-story white columns where, presumably, servants would unload household goods into the side entrance or a driver would pull the Bentley on a rainy evening for the lord and lady of the house to climb aboard without the bother of rain, wind or snow.
“What am I missing here,” I asked Lightfoot.
He chuckled, “Her last name is Holly. As in Hiram S. Holly, the rancher who came here in the 1870s and brought 1300 head of cattle with him. The ranch was handed down and eventually, like I said, became Clarise’s. She sold it for a bunch of bucks and bought this place. Cash on the barrel head.”
Sal asked, “Why’d she work?”
“Had nothing to do, really. Liked people. Still had a boatload of money in the bank she could have lived off of, but decided waitressing would be a way to wile away the time. If you hadn’t noticed, we don’t do opera or cotillions or orchestras ‘round here. She enjoyed just being one of the regular people.”
We climbed the wide hand-cut flagstone stairway to the front doors. The Chief pulled out a key and unlocked it. Walking through the entry, the foyer was as big as my entire house with a pair of sweeping stairways leading to the second floor. The walls were covered in bleached oak with mahogany trim. To the left, wide double pocket doors opened onto a formal parlor, this room in dark mahogany with the requisite Middle Eastern rugs, a marble mantel measuring at least 10 feet across above a virtually walk-in fireplace.
“Let’s separate and see what we can find,” I said.
Sal and Lightfoot took the stairway to the second floor, padding over thick pearl and red runners held in place with a mahogany dowels at each step.
It was hard to know where to start. Furnishings were dust free and polished, but on the wall opposite the fireplace stood an antique desk. I rifled each of the drawers finding little of interest and nothing to give a hint of why Clarise was shot.
Through another set of pocket doors, a dining room, a massive teak dining table with a dozen chairs surrounding its glass smooth surface. A sideboard, made of the same polished teak, held silver services, china plates, cups, saucers and linens.
The kitchen didn’t interest me much since few rich people hid important papers in this work center where hired help spent much of their day.
Back to the foyer and on the opposite side of the grand entry, a study with shelves lined with hardcover books, none of which looked as if they had been opened for years. In an age of Kindle and the Internet, an increasing number of folks were keeping old books for the esthetics rather than the content. It appeared Clarise was among them.
Another fireplace, this one smaller, was fronted by two armchairs and a pair of antique side tables. I opened the drawers of each. Again, nothing of interest.
I saved the large oak desk for last. Having worked in the woods, it was easy to recognize that this oak wasn’t the modern variety. Rather, the grain was tight and straight and easily from an ancient tree cut a century ago and transformed into a work of art.
Sitting behind its leather top, I began opening drawers, putting the contents on the desktop and pulling each out to check both the back and underside. Once out, I peered into the opening to see if there were hidden cubbyholes or unseen levers that might reveal a hidden compartment.
The top right drawer was the winner. It was perhaps six inches shorter than the others and deep inside the pocket was a small false front with a virtually impossible to see fingernail-sized notch. I pressed the compartment face then released it. The front dropped down. Reaching into the compartment, I scooped up two keys and a small photograph. I layed them on the desk top and shook my head in disbelief.
Sal and the Chief came into the den.
“Nicky, there were two people living here. One bedroom, clearly Clarise’s. The second belonging to a man. Pants, shirts, shoes and stuff in the closet.” Sal caught the look on my face. “What’s the matter?”
I slid the photo across the desk, turning it so Sal could get the full impact.
He bent over, looking closely, caught the significance. “Holy Shinola on a bagel.”
CHAPTER FOUR
His sixth trip to the mine at the end of July, Jolly carried a hammer, pry bar and a double serving of apples, cookies and buttered bread. Hung around his neck, a half-gallon tin of well water, a little cloudy from the minerals in the ground under the homestead. The equivalent of hose-water.
Under yet another cloudless pale blue sky, the 12-year-old had his path up the now well-worn trail seared into his brain. No need for markers. His black high tops knew the way all by themselves.
A north wind, common in summer on the South Oregon coast, moaned in the treetops, but Jolly felt none of it. Ground level was calm, hot and what in the winter was ankle-deep mud had become hardpan.
Country kids do such things without parental hovering. Instead of “Come in when the street lights go on” – the order of suburban parents across the U.S.A. -- “Be back by dinner time,” the rural directive on these long summer days. For starters, there are no street lights.
Jolly couldn’t whistle worth beans, but he did anyway. The only similarity to the songs he pushed out between pursed lips was in his head.
Dropping his blue kerchief to the ground beside the boarded-up mine entrance, Jolly backed away a dozen feet, sat on the ground, knees under his chin, and stared at the splintered wood.
“What next?” he said aloud, already knowing the answer. He was hesitating not because he didn’t know what he planned to do, rather building up the courage to do it.
“What if’n there’s critters in there? Or dead bodies or sumthin’?”
Letting loose with a few bars of “Yankee Doodle,” the whistle sounding more like the trill of a blue jay, Jolly stood, dusted off the back of his jeans, pulled the pry bar from his worn leather scout bag with the fringe that his pops made for him to take books to school and straightened his back.
“Ain’t no time like the present, moms would say.”
Jolly pushed the pry bar into the hole catching the hook on the edge of a board and yanked hard.
He fell backward, the boards, as one, squealed on rusty hinges and the entire wall of dry-rotted lumber pulled away from the mine entrance like a barn door.
“Holy chriminy!” Jolly yelped as he tried to retain his balance as he tipped backward, feet pedaling to keep him upright.
But it was the raspy voice that sent his heart into overdrive.
“Whatcha doin’ here, boy!”
“You Irish?” Amos asked.
“Them’s my roots, so pops says.”
“Could tell by all that red hair. Ain’t no one got red hair like the Irish. Ceptin’ maybe the Albanians. Lots of them have red hair, too.”
Jolly looked at the old man with the leather face, crumbled like note paper. “How ‘bout you, Mister Amos?”
“Don’t rightly know any more. Mind’s goin’. Can’t remember lots of things. Scottish, I think.” The voice was harsh, quivered like a reed in a strong breeze.
Amos sat on a log stump. Jolly on the ground with his back to the mine door.
“You scared the pee out of me, Mister Amos, don’t mind tellin’ you.”
A cackle laugh. “No one’s been up this way fer a long time.” His rheumy eyes squinted in the strong sunlight. “Not fer a long, long time.” Leveling his gaze on Jolly, “What made ja come this way?