All Fudged Up (Candy-Coated Mysteries) by Nancy CoCo

Author:Nancy CoCo
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2013-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

I held my breath and listened. Nothing. Not a single sound. All I heard was my own heartbeat.

“I’m doing a sweep of the room,” Rex continued. “If I were you, I’d come out with my hands up before I got shot.”

“I know I would,” Frances said. She petted Mal, who whined.

I took my dog from Frances and snuggled her against my face in the hope of calming her down or maybe I hoped to calm myself down.

“Clear,” Rex called. I stepped inside the small room. It looked completely different in the daytime. The metal shelves looked dusty, and the jars that sat on them were empty and covered with dust.

“I thought I told Liam to have this place cleared.” Frances tsked. She ran a finger along a metal, gray shelf and lifted it up to show me the dirt. “This is appalling.”

“I’ll hire someone to clean it out,” I told Frances. “Right after we ensure there isn’t some sort of secret passage.”

“What makes you think that anyway?”

“I swear someone was down here moving shelves last night,” I said. “Rex heard it too.”

“There are marks where this shelf has been moved,” he said and holstered his gun. He put his shoulder into moving the shelf, but it didn’t budge. “There has to be some sort of locking mechanism.” He ran his capable, square hands along the underside of the shelf.

I walked the wall, looking for footprints. I felt a definite draft near the back corner and tucked Mal under my arm to take a closer look. On close inspection, there were tiny cracks in the mortar—outlining what looked to be a door about five feet in height and three feet wide.

“I think there’s a door.” I ran my finger along the edge. “There’s a breeze coming through here.”

“We need to figure out how to open it.” Rex came over to see where the door was. “Try pressing on the rocks of the wall.”

On one side of the coal bin was a large metal hook, and a set of heavy chains hung from it. I remember asking Papa about the chains as a kid. He had told me they were from a dark period in the history of Mackinac. I had made up a story in my head about escaped slaves. But the truth was most likely it was used for preparing pigs for slaughter.

We didn’t do that now, but my guess was one hundred years ago when they were feeding hotel guests, the meat had to come from somewhere. Ugh, I didn’t want to think about it. In fact maybe the first thing I’d do when I hired a new handyman was have him remove the chains.

Side-by-side, Rex and I pressed rock after rock to no avail. Frances held Mal and watched us from beside the shelves. “Wait!” I said and walked over to them. “Rex, didn’t you say the shelves were moved last night?”

“Yes.” Rex studied the shelving. “I also remember it was too heavy for me to move by myself.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.