Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(84)

Never a dull moment.

“Spidey’s still pretty hungry,” she tells the boys. “Maybe he needs some dessert. I’ll go give it to him, and then we’ll go. You two can watch TV until I’m ready.”

They nod agreeably and head into the next room as she goes back upstairs.

Stepping back into the Rose Room, she hears the litter’s familiar pipsqueak sounds. Bending over the crate, she’s reassured to find that pipsqueak Spidey is mewing heartily along with his siblings.

“I’m so sorry, little fellow,” she says as she inserts the tube and begins feeding him right there on the floor, not wanting to waste time getting situated on the chair. “I didn’t mean to make you wait so long. I promise it won’t happen again.”

As he ingests the kitten formula drop by painstaking drop, she looks over at the closet. Again, she wonders how Pandora Feeney’s hair scrunchy wound up there.

She did live in this house at one time.

But she hasn’t in years. Her belongings shouldn’t be lying around here as if she still comes and goes freely . . .

Unless she does.

The door is open, the light still on. From this angle, she can see all the way to the back wall of the closet, beneath the row of hanging garments that are neatly arranged in order of length.

There, beneath the hems of Leona Gatto’s skirts and dresses, she can see a crack in the closet wall. Not a snaking fissure in the plaster like the one that runs along the ceiling above the bed and elsewhere in this house—in all old houses.

This is a perfect straight edge, perpendicular to the floor.

Somehow, Bella refrains from jumping up and jarring the swaddled, still-feeding kitten on her knees. Somehow, under Chance the Cat’s maternal gaze, she manages to carry on as if nothing has happened. She croons patiently to Spidey and strokes his head with her fingertip, hoping he doesn’t pick up on her tension as she gapes at the closet wall.

“Take your time, little guy. You deserve it. I sure took my time getting back here to you, didn’t I?”

At last, he’s ingested two milliliters of formula. She removes the tube and settles him back into the nest with the others. Chance the Cat gives her a slow, appreciative blink before busying herself grooming Spidey as his siblings continue to nurse and knead at her.

Bella pauses to pet Chance’s head as she dutifully licks her kitten’s fur. “After all you’ve been through, you’re such a good mommy.”

Everyone needs to hear that once in a while.

Sam used to say it, and often.

You’re such a good mommy . . .

She doesn’t suppose she’s ever going to hear those words again. Certainly not from her mother-in-law.

Again, she feels a prickle of dread when she thinks about leaving for Chicago. Again, she warns herself to focus on the moment at hand. Max and Jiffy must be growing restless downstairs.

She quickly goes over to the nightstand and opens the drawer where Max stashed Luther’s flashlight.

She takes it out, turns it on, and hesitates before going over to lock the Rose Room door from the inside. Just in case.

Then she hurries back over to the closet. Crouched down beneath the row of hanging clothes, she trains the beam along the geometric crack in the wall.

It’s definitely not due to a settling foundation. It isn’t a crack. And the back wall isn’t made of plaster. When she reaches out to knock on it, she hears a hollow sound.

For the second time today, her trembling fingers feel their way to a hidden latch. Yes, there it is, a raised ridge in the corner where the hollow wall meets the plaster one. She presses it and gasps as a piece of the back wall swings away from the back of the closet.

Okay.

Okay.

What now?

She leans out of the closet, listening for Max and Jiffy.

Instead, she hears the faint sound of the front door opening and closing downstairs, signaling the return of one or more of the guests.

Maybe it’s Steve Pierson. She wants to see him and Eleanor before they leave. She needs to know whether their daughter really is in labor or if they’re frightened, fleeing.

She thinks of Pandora and again looks into the closet.

She has to know. Before she does anything else, before anything else happens, she has to find out what’s hidden behind that wall.

She reaches past the hanging clothes and pulls the door open until it brushes against them. Then she crawls in and shines the flashlight into the wedge of opening.

The rectangular space that lies beyond isn’t a storage niche like the ones downstairs beneath the window seats.

Strips of loosely peeling floral wallpaper in shades of peach and gold cover the back and one sidewall, indicating that they must once have been part of the bedroom itself. Shining the light upward to where those walls meet the ceiling, she sees a carved right angle of wood that matches the painted crown molding in the room. Eerily shrouded in spun webbing, a curved metal bracket extends from the wall to a frosted glass shade with a gaslight key. The fixture is identical to the electric-converted sconce on the bedroom wall just outside the closet door.

This nook, and possibly the closet, too, must have been added long after the house was built. Angling the beam downward, she sees that the hardwood floors, which extend seamlessly from the bedroom into the closet, are abruptly curtailed at the edge of a yawning chasm.

So then, this isn’t a secret hiding place.