Case One ~ The Deceit (Trudy Hicks Ghost Hunter Book 1) Page 12

  Looking up at Jason, Trudy knew where his mind was going. “Hey, is that the guy I saw going to the basement last night?” The drunk could barely lift his head as Jason shook him. “Were you in the basement last night?”

  The man looked at Jason with deeply bloodshot eyes. “You couldn’t pay me to go into that basement,” he slurred.

  “I’ll bet.” Jason was apparently confused and irritated as he left her at the base of the grand stairwell before heading out to the garage to have a meeting with his team. Trudy sighed as she watched him leave, more confused than ever. Stubborn man, she thought to herself before climbing the steps.

  Once in her room, Trudy closed the drapes and was happy to see the intrusive camera was gone. Reaching down to pull back the blankets on the bed, she sighed a little thinking about her afternoon spent with Jason.

  “That man frustrates the hell out of me.” She wasn’t sure what she was thinking and was definitely unsure of what he was feeling. Still deep in thought, she slipped out of her clothes, prepared to climb between the alluring sheets, when she saw a red ball roll across the floor and into the closet.

  Quickly following the ball, she walked into a mist of frigid air. The pressure was so intense, she forgot about Jason.

  “Vanessa? Are you here?”

  She felt a slight shove and just about fell into the closet, tripping over her own shoes that she left laying carelessly in the way. She gasped when she noticed the gold chain she wore slip from her neck. Trudy watched as it made its way to the floor almost in slow motion and slid in a gap in the floorboards.

  “Well, isn’t that just great.” She put her hands on her hips to assess the situation and worried that the beautiful chain Leslie had bought for her in Italy might be gone for good. Down on all fours, she tried to figure out how to get her chain back. She grabbed a letter opener off the desk and inserted it into the gap. Noticing the floorboard was loose, she applied pressure and gave a shriek as a section about twelve inches long popped up.

  Carefully lifting it, she was happy to see her chain in plain view, as well as an object wrapped in brown paper. Trudy placed the chain securely in the desk drawer before lifting the parchment from the item and realizing it was a journal.

  It was of pale soft leather with a tattered ribbon wrapped around it to hold its contents.

  Gently opening it, the delicate pages were full of neat cursive writing, dates, names, and addresses, and between the sheets were newspaper clippings and photos. Trudy looked at the name written on the inside cover, and feeling like a kid on Christmas morning, she was giddy to see the journal belonged to Vanessa. She carried the treasure to the desk and carefully opened it to reveal the secrets inside.

  Chapter 12

  I’m in hell, Vanessa wrote.

  Trudy sifted through the first couple of pages, learning that the trip back to Chicago was wrought with morning sickness, heartbreak, and tears. Vanessa expressed through her words how much she missed Douglas, wondering how one could be so overjoyed by the life growing inside and yet so tormented by the loss of love so dear. Vanessa wrote paragraphs about how the weeks passed by with Carlson in full attendance. She found that the ache in her heart was now being overshadowed by the all-consuming love for her unborn child.

  Trudy discovered a clipping from a newspaper tucked in the next page.

  Pink or blue, we are over the moon,

  we welcome our first grandchild late in June.

  A bubble of laughter burst from Trudy’s throat. Apparently, the couple announced to their family and close friends in December that Vanessa was with child. Carlson’s parents were so overjoyed that they placed a banner in the Chicago Tribune and threw a party with a guest list so long they had to rent the Florentine Ballroom at the Congress Plaza Hotel.

  Trudy studied the page with a smile. It seemed as if things were going well for Vanessa. The next couple pages were nothing more than guests to invite to the party, with a handful of possible baby names scribbled off to the side.

  A small envelope slipped from the next page, and Trudy unfolded a neat piece of parchment from inside. The cursive was small and now faded. Putting her cheaters on, she started to read while a knot formed in the pit of her belly.

  January 23, 1923

  My dear Vanessa,

  I want you to know that I know the truth. The baby you carry within your womb is not of Carlson’s seed. He and I have been very intimate, and I know there is not a chance that he could perform this deed.

  My dear, my heart bleeds for you. I can’t imagine the damage this information would do to your reputation, as well as your family and that poor, innocent child.

  I am more than willing to keep your secret, Vanessa, but I will need to be compensated for my good behavior. I will be in contact shortly with details.

  Respectfully,

  Mr. X

  Trudy felt the anger stirring as she read on, realizing that she was starting to care about Vanessa, and now she was emotionally invested in finding out what had happened to her. Trudy continued reading.

  I am preparing for war.

  Vanessa’s first insertion was of paralyzing fear, depression, and a complete breakdown. She wrote that she spent two days locked in her room feigning a headache, avoiding any contact with Carlson or even Connie. Vanessa wrote that her fear then turned to anger, and by the end of the second day, she was furious, determined, and ready to face this threat head-on.

  Another envelope pressed between the next pages. Trudy studied it and knew immediately, by the same small writing on the front, that it was from the blackmailer. She was fuming when she opened it and squinted to read the faded script.

  January 25, 1923

  My dear Vanessa,

  I am genuinely sorry for the delay. I know that you have undoubtedly spent the last two days in woe waiting for these instructions. I will be at the gala to celebrate the arrival of your baby. It will be a glorious evening, and I will wear my finest tuxedo. I purchased the loveliest red handkerchief the other day. I’ve never seen another like it.

  When you see me flutter this beautiful cloth, you will at that time hand me a fat envelope with $10,000 in it. This is a small fee for my silence.

  I am looking forward to seeing you Saturday evening.

  Respectfully,

  Mr. X

  Trudy could almost feel Vanessa’s anger sizzling up from the next passage as she penned her thoughts.

  Vanessa told Carlson about the blackmail and wrote,

  I have never seen Carlson so angry!

  Vanessa expressed her fear when he threw a vase of flowers violently against the wall and showed a side of him that she’d never witnessed before and hoped never to again. Vanessa was stunned to learn that Carlson knew who Mr. X was, and the next few pages explained just how.

  Vanessa documented the events as Carlson showed Vanessa the inscription on the pocket watch that he always carried.

  Forever in my heart…X.

  Carlson told her about his first love. He was seventeen at the time and very confused because the few dates he went on with girls left him cold. The more daring ones would kiss him, and he would feel nothing but disgust. It was a lonely and terrifying time in his life.

  Vanessa described how Carlson met Eric Gallow in the hallway outside his office one morning. Eric was a young, handsome Princeton graduate who his father had hired as a junior manager of the legal department for the Great Lakes division. The two hit it off immediately. Eric helped Carlson understand and accept who he was, and in the process, they fell deeply in love.

  When Carlson went off to college, they corresponded and always signed the letters with an X. That way, if their messages fell into the wrong hands, everyone would think it was an affair with a young lady. Eric would visit him often, or they would meet somewhere along the way. On one of these trips, Eric gifted him the pocket watch after receiving a hefty quarterly bonus. Their relationship lasted well over four years.

  Warning bells went off in Trudy’
s head when she read the next paragraph.

  Carlson had met many interesting and fun characters at Harvard, and he started spending less and less time with Eric as the infatuation began to dim. The visits were becoming annoying, and Eric had become clingy and demanding. When Carlson completed college and got the corner office his father had promised him, he promptly paid Eric to leave town.

  Carlson said he had run into Eric from time to time, but there never seemed to be any hostility remaining. Apparently, he was wrong, Trudy thought.

  Vanessa and Carlson devised a plan to put an end to the blackmail, which Vanessa laid out in detail on the next page. Shaking her head, Trudy doubted the plan to give Eric fake money to expose his identity would work and would only bring more trouble. Curious, she read on and was taken aback by what she read next. Vanessa wrote in depth about a sweet, toe-curling kiss that Carlson bestowed upon her.

  “What?” Trudy asked the pages of the book with a little chuckle and wondered what was happening with Carlson.

  Vanessa’s next installment in the journal was on the day of the party and how Carlson had been absent the past couple of days. As the final preparations were made, Vanessa penned that she worried she would have to go alone, as she hadn’t seen her husband.

  Carlson did show up, as per Vanessa’s next entry. She gave him hell for his absence, and in return, he gave her a stunning necklace of fiery diamonds and warm pearls. It took her breath away. She wrote about getting lightheaded as he gently clasped it at the nape of her neck.

  Vanessa was ready to execute the plan the couple had devised and wrote about the envelope that she stuffed with a hundred pieces of newspaper cut neatly to the same size as a bill. She expressed her surprise when Carlson told her she wouldn’t need that, referring to the envelope.

  Trudy was concerned when she read how Carlson told Vanessa to trust him and to forget that any of this had ever happened. He threw the envelope into the hearth and watched as the hot coals caught it on fire.

  Trudy read the next page twice, as it seemed, according to Vanessa, the threat made by Eric Gallow simply disappeared. Vanessa wrote that she did indeed ask Carlson about Eric Gallow and was a bit irritated when told her not to worry about it. Vanessa, being headstrong, remained angry at him for more than a few days, until Carlson showed up one afternoon with a bulge in his overcoat and a sly grin on his face.

  She wrote,

  How can I be mad at such a sweet man who is holding a quivering bundle of fur in his arms?

  Vanessa was delighted that the bundle turned out to be a German shepherd puppy, and she fell in love with the sweet pup she and Carlson named Caesar.

  Trudy looked up from the journal and about the room, wondering if it was Caesar’s spirit that was hanging around the house and if it was his red ball that mysteriously showed up about the house. Shaking her head, she could have sworn she heard a slight whine coming from the corner.

  Vanessa shared pages and pages of humorous tales of puppy training, her growing size, and the awkwardness of the visits from her physician, who stated that she would have her baby in late June.

  Trudy unfolded a note from Connie about the dog’s bad behavior.

  Child, you have to be smarter than a dog to train him, and, my dear, I am sorry to tell you, but you are not.

  Connie included a name and address of a local dog trainer. Trudy couldn’t help but laugh out loud and had to wipe away the moisture from her eye, so she could read on.

  The month of June was trying for Vanessa. She wrote almost daily of her condition and felt she was going to burst. Trudy sighed as she remembered too well those last exhausting weeks before Aaron was born. Turning the page, another tiny clipping from the newspaper was glued to the page. The article was Vanessa’s sibling’s engagement announcement for almost two years in the future.

  Theodore Holland and Gloria Petit

  Have announced that they will be united in marriage on June the twentieth, 1925.

  On June 29, 1923, Vanessa woke up with her first contraction. Trudy chuckled as sweet Vanessa initially thought it was the spicy dinner she had last evening, Connie’s famous Creole chicken, but when the next contraction came minutes later, she realized, “Oh my God, I’m going to have a baby.”

  Giving birth was one of the hardest and sweetest things that she just couldn’t put into words. Vanessa wrote that the pain was far more excruciating than she ever anticipated. Vile words ripped from her lips between the screams that later made her blush, and just when she was to the point of exhaustion, the midwife placed the most beautiful, perfect angel into her arms. A boy! Ten fingers and ten tiny toes, Chase Theodore Wilcox, the name she and Carlson decided upon if the baby was indeed a boy.

  Vanessa wrote that she waited for Carlson to arrive, as she couldn’t wait to show him their son. She kept asking for him, but Connie would hush her and tell her it was time to rest. Vanessa mentioned in the journal that she heard screaming and crying outside her bedroom door, but she couldn’t keep her eyes open and fell into a sweet, blissful sleep.

  Trudy wiped her own eyes, emotional at how Vanessa described giving birth to her son, and braced herself when she discovered two newspaper articles stuck together. She swallowed nervously as she unfolded them. The first column dated June 30, 1923, was of a deadly shooting at the Frazer Club.

  A male victim was shot dead last evening as he made to leave the premises. Also killed by a gunshot wound was the gunman by Club security. The family of the victim asks that his name remain anonymous.

  The second newspaper piece was the painfully brief obituary of Carlson Holland.

  Carlson Holland died unexpectedly on June 29.

  He was a loving son, a doting husband, and a father to a son he never met.

  Trudy felt the tears overflowing on her cheeks as a sob tore from her throat. Even if Trudy hadn’t been a detective, it wouldn’t require great police work to figure out the victim at the Frazer Club was Carlson. Vanessa confirmed it by writing a passage after a visit from Raul, who witnessed the attack.

  Raul was with Carlson that night. The two ran into each other at the club and decided to have a drink together. When they were preparing to leave, a flamboyant young man came up and started screaming at Carlson. The young man kept yelling that Carlson had killed Eric and murdered the love of his life. Raul also revealed to Vanessa that the young man shouted that he knew about the baby and that it wasn’t Carlson’s, just before he shot Carlson dead.

  There was no saving Carlson. The fatal bullet struck him in the heart, and he had died instantly.

  Vanessa wrote that Raul was very upset, and they took comfort in each other’s arms. The duo discussed the possibility that Carlson may have actually murdered Eric over the blackmail.

  Trudy leaned back in the little desk chair and ran her hand through her hair. She wondered if Carlson did murder Eric, whether they could both be stuck here, looking for some kind of justice. She bent back over the journal and continued reading.

  Vanessa wrote about the days, weeks, and months that followed.

  “The joy and the sorrow.” She felt the burden that she was partly responsible for Carlson’s death. Her plan and determination to get pregnant, and yet to hold Chase in her arms, she knew she would do it all again.

  Carlson’s accountant visited her one morning to go over her finances and to have her sign some documents. She found out that morning she was a millionaire twenty times over, and Chase, on his twenty-first birthday, would inherit twice that amount. Vanessa penned that she was overwhelmed. She thought about the magnitude of the inheritance and what was now her responsibility.

  Carlson’s family did everything they could to protect Vanessa from the seemingly scandalous events that led up to Carlson’s death. They never asked her anything about it; they just showed her great support and love. Charles and Hanna Holland were a constant in her life, staying put in their city home until they could brave going back to the mansion upstate where memories of Carlson would be overwhe
lming.

  Trudy thought the whole story was sad, but she knew there was more. Something else was keeping Vanessa here. She picked up more newspaper articles that were clipped together toward the back of the journal. Some were crisp and almost brand new, others so faded that she couldn’t make out the print.

  She studied a small clip of a missing person.

  July 31, 1923

  Mr. and Mrs. Henry Gallow of Springfield, Illinois, are looking for information on their son, Eric Michael Gallow, who has been missing since the 25th of January, 1923. Anyone who may have information on his whereabouts is urged to contact the Cook County Police Department. A reward is offered if the information leads to finding Mr. Gallow.

  Trudy tried to make out the photo of Eric, but it was just too faded. She speculated if Carlson did indeed murder Eric Gallow, it could be Carlson and Eric in the house with Vanessa. Bewildered, she just couldn’t make sense of it.

  She found another clipping about a building that was to be constructed in Philadelphia.

  The Stanley Hall construction will begin in April of 1925. The project manager, Douglas Thorton, confirmed this in a meeting between DHT Buildings International, City Council, and the Zoning Commission of the City of Philadelphia.

  “Ahh…I wondered what happened to you, Doug,” Trudy whispered as she skimmed over the article and wondered if the news of Douglas being in the country made Vanessa at all nervous, or if perhaps they continued their affair.

  She speculated what DHT stood for and wrote a note to add that to the research.

  She perused the pages where Vanessa mostly wrote about special moments, the baby, birthdays, holidays, and the plans for Theodore and Gloria’s wedding. She also wrote about the Hollands returning to their upstate home. She found a card from Carlson’s mother.