“Lizzie Borden’s a lot more famous than whoever killed Clay will ever be.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got recent and local on our side,” he said. “No, I’m not worried about people coming to the show house. Now, the bank’s a little worried about who’s going to buy the house. It’s one thing to visit a famous murder scene and another to live in it.”
“Fortunately, not our problem,” I said.
“Fortunately,” he agreed. “I expect someone will buy it sooner or later, given the housing shortage here in town. And I have to say, it’s been an interesting house to work on.”
“With all these different personalities, you mean?”
“And interesting in and of itself,” he said. “Didn’t I ever tell you about all the hidey-holes we found?”
“Hidey-holes?”
“Secret compartments all over the house. Like in the back of one of the kitchen cabinets there was a false panel you could slide up to find a little hollowed out place between the studs. And in the master bath, if you took the drawers out of the vanity you’d find a door to another hiding place under the eaves. And in the front bedroom, the one that now looks like Dracula’s castle, one on either side of the window seat. Someone had fun with it, making secret compartments every place where most houses would have little pockets of dead air and lost space. And there were a couple of places you could lift up floorboards to find secret compartments. All told, a couple dozen hidey-holes.”
“What was in them?”
“Nothing,” he said. “We’d get excited every time we found one. Me and the boys spent hours, poking and prodding to find every single secret hidey-hole. But not a single one of them had anything inside but dust.”
“Not by the time you got to them,” I said slowly. “But what if there was something in them at one time?”
“I’m sure there was, sometime or other,” he said. “I was thinking most likely a drug dealer built them to hide his stash.”
“Or a miser who didn’t trust banks,” I suggested. “Or a woman who wanted to keep her jewelry with her instead of putting it in a bank vault. Or maybe just someone who thought they were cool and would amuse the kids by hiding toys and candy in them.”
“That’s an idea,” he said, chuckling. “Make it sound all romantic. Maybe the bank will have an easier time selling the house if people think there’s gold and jewels hidden away inside it.”
“Maybe that’s the reason for all the vandalism that happened in the house this fall,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t really vandalism—maybe someone suspected there might be secret compartments and broke into the house to look for them.”
“Well, they did find a couple of the compartments,” he said. “Looked like an accident to me, though. And a lot of the damage wasn’t to anything that could possibly have a secret compartment in it. Just pure meanness.”
“Maybe that’s what you were meant to think,” I said. “If I didn’t want anyone to know I was breaking down a wall to find a secret compartment in it, maybe I’d just do a lot of random damage all around.”
Randall looked thoughtful.
“They were pretty persistent,” he said. “Kept trying to break in even after Chief Burke put on extra patrols in the area. I suggested putting in a security system—the bank wasn’t too crazy about the expense, but I think they’d have gone for it eventually. Then the idea of the show house came up, and I figured whoever was doing it was scared off by all the activity—first me and my workmen, and then all the decorators.”
“Who used to live in the house?” I asked.
“Nobody,” he said. “Like I said, it’s been vacant—”
“For six years, yes,” I said. “But before that?”
“Family named Green,” he said. “Not from around here, and they moved away after the bank took their house. Why?”
“What if one of the Greens is trying to find something they left here?” I asked. “In one of those hidey-holes?”
“Something that’s still here after six years?”
“What if Clay wasn’t killed because anyone had a grudge against him but because he was unlucky enough to be here when the prowler broke in?”
He thought about it for a few moments.
“No crazier than some of the other stuff I’ve seen lately. Tell the chief, and maybe he can track down the Greens.”
“Randall?” It was Mother. “Could I borrow you for just a moment?”