Chapter 1
Lexy Baker-Perillo took a bite of the chocolate meringue cookie and let the carefully crafted confection melt in her mouth.
Needs more sugar, she thought, as she looked around the basement of the 1950s ranch-style home where she and her husband, Jack Perillo, were sorting through the decades of accumulation that cluttered every inch of the small area. They’d been working on organizing the items off and on for months and it seemed like they’d barely made any progress.
But, they needed to get a move-on because Jack didn’t want to put the house on the market until the basement was cleaned out and Lexy dearly wanted to sell the house soon so she could pay back the loan her parents had given her to start her bakery, The Cup and Cake.
“Why can’t we just sell the house with all this stuff in it?” Lexy asked.
Jack looked up from the box he’d been digging in and straightened, his head almost brushing the low ceiling. He rubbed his hand down his stubble-dotted chin and turned his velvety brown eyes on Lexy.
“Because,” he said as he walked toward her. “No one buys a house that comes with a basement full of stuff.”
“You did,” she pointed out as she watched him pick a meringue cookie from the plate.
Jack’s lopsided grin made her smile. He leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on the tip of her nose that made her heart flutter. “That was just so I could get close to you.”
Jack was joking, of course. He hadn’t known she lived behind him when he bought the house, but the memory of their first meeting warmed Lexy’s heart. She’d bought her house from her grandmother, Nans, who had decided she’d have more fun living in the new retirement center in town where most of her friends were. The house was right behind Jack’s, with backyards separated by an old fence.
One night, Lexy’s Shih-Tzu poodle mix, Sprinkles, had slipped through a gap in the fence and proceeded to do her nightly business in Jack’s neatly manicured shrubs. Much to Lexy’s embarrassment, Jack had come out to see who was skulking around in his garden and that’s how they’d first met.
Of course, she’d had no idea Jack was a homicide detective or that she would soon become his number one suspect in the murder of her ex-boyfriend, but thankfully, things had eventually worked out and now they were married with neighboring houses. They’d decided to take up residence in Lexy’s house since she had so many childhood memories there and Jack’s was going to be put up for sale … that is, if they ever got the basement done.
Jack bit into the cookie and headed back into the maze of boxes.
“These need more sugar if you expect to win that dessert contest,” he shot over his shoulder as he disappeared from view.
Lexy tapped her finger on the top of the box she was supposed to be sorting. The dessert contest was a yearly event in Brook Ridge Falls. Each year the town held a contest based on a certain type of dessert or dessert ingredient. One year it was chocolate, and another year it was pecans. This year, it was meringue.
Lexy sighed and plucked at the folded-over lid of the box. She’d much rather be in her bakery perfecting her meringue cookie recipe and thinking up interesting variations than in here, looking at more than fifty years of old stuff that was left in the basement by the previous owner. Winning the contest could give her business important publicity.
“Woof!”
“Sprinkles, come here.” Lexy craned her neck in the direction of Sprinkles’ bark which, near as she could tell, came from the far corner of the room.
“Woof!”
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
“What is she doing?”
“Probably just exploring.” Jack’s muffled voice came from inside a box he was inspecting, and then he added, “Hey, check this out.”
Lexy looked up to see him holding up a vintage, jadeite green triple-head milkshake mixer. “That’s kind of neat. Does it work?”
“Don’t know, but this place is full of retro kitchenware.”
“And other stuff,” Lexy mumbled as she flipped up the lid. Leaning to look in, her shoulder length, mink-brown hair fell across the side of her face and he shoved it behind her ear impatiently. A pungent whiff of mildew drifted into her nostrils as she peered in at a box full of musty linens.
“It’s a treasure trove of nostalgia.”
“Woof!”
Scratch.
“Nans said all the items might add to the appeal of the house for a new buyer.” Lexy waved her hand around the room. “They could practically outfit the whole house with everything they need just from the items in here.”
Jack wrinkled his brow at her. “I’m not sure what’s with Nans. She told me that, too, but the real estate agent was pretty clear that having the basement full like this would make the house hard to sell. Besides, some of this stuff is valuable. We could sell it and make even more money.”
Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
“Woof! Woof!”
“Sprinkles, cut it out!” Lexy felt a tingle of nerves.
What was that dog into?
Jack brought a box up to the front of the room where they’d decided to pile up the ‘sellable’ items. Space was at a premium in the tightly packed basement and he had to shuffle sideways to get past her and into the designated area.
“You’re going to have to go a little faster if you want to finish this any time soon,” he said.
“Right.” Lexy closed up the box and slid it over to the ‘trash’ area—the linens were too musty to be of any good to anyone. “It’s just that it takes so much time to go through this stuff, I’m not sure it will be worth it.”
“Woof! Woof!”
Lexy spun around, trying to hone in on Sprinkles barks. “Can you see where she is? I hope she isn’t stuck somewhere.”
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
“It sounds like she’s down in the back corner.”
Jack started toward the corner.
“Woof!”
“Sprinkles. Come to Mommy.” Lexy tried to coax her out into the open. “We may never find her in this mess.”
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
“I’m sure we can lure her out with a treat.” Jack yelled the last word to catch the dog’s attention but Sprinkles didn’t stop digging.
Lexy’s anxiety grew as Sprinkles’ digging took on a feverish pace and she followed Jack toward the sound.
“Sprinkles, stop!”
“Woof!”
Scratch, scratch, Smash!
“Yipe!”
Lexy’s heart stuttered when she heard the dog’s yelp and she frantically shoved boxes aside to get to Sprinkles.
Jack got there first, and by the time Lexy cleared the last box, she found him staring at a hole in the wall. Chunks of cement lay at his feet. Sprinkles looked up at them as if she’d just accomplished some sort of intricate trick and was awaiting her reward. The dog’s white fur was covered with gray dust and Lexy might have laughed if she wasn’t so concerned about the hole in Jack’s foundation wall.
“Sprinkles!” Lexy admonished the dog, then put her hand on Jack’s arm. “Jeez, Jack I’m sorry about that hole. I don’t know what got into her.”
Jack bent down and looked into the hole. “This isn’t right.”
“I know. Sprinkle’s has never done anything like that.” Lexy gave the dog a sharp look, her heart melting a little at the dog’s obvious pride in her destructive work. “I’ll pay to get it fixed right away.”
“No, not that.” Jack reached out and pulled another chunk of cement away. “This should be the foundation wall with dirt behind it, but it looks like there’s a space behind here.”
Lexy furrowed her brow. “A space?”
“Yeah.” Jack stood and looked down the length of the wall, then up at the ceiling, then turned and looked around the basement. “I never really looked around down here, but it seems like this wall is a bit shy of the outer edge of the house and there’s another section behind it.”
Lexy’s eyes swept the length of the wall. “But there’s no door or anything.”
“That’s what’s so strange about it. It’s all sealed to make it look just like the other walls.”
“Like a secret room?” Lexy asked.
“Exactly.” Jack bent down and pulled at a loose chunk of cement, then peered through the hole again. “It’s dark in there. Can you get the flashlight?”
The sounds of Jack breaking away bits of cement accompanied Lexy as she wove her way through the boxes to the front to retrieve the large flashlight they’d left by the steps.
“Why would they have a secret room in here?” Lexy asked as she made her way back. She crouched down beside him and handed him the light.
Jack had worked a two-foot opening in the wall. He shined the light inside to reveal a narrow space, about two feet, wide running the length of the wall. “I have no idea,” he said as he poked his face into the hole and played the light slowly down the entire length of the space.
Lexy stuck her face in beside his and the smell of must, dry earth and something else she couldn’t quite place tickled her nose. She felt a pang of disappointment—the room appeared to be empty. And then the flashlight revealed something in the far corner.
Lexy grabbed Jack’s arm. “Wait. What’s that?”
“What?” Jack aimed the beam of light into the corner.
“Oh, it’s just a sack of old, rotted potatoes,” Lexy said as she looked at the bottom of the brown sack laying like a lump in the corner. Some potatoes must have fallen out and were lying in small, dirty lumps around it.
“Wait a minute …” Jack angled the flashlight on the sack and Lexy realized the brown, leathery form was too long to be a sack of potatoes and not only that, it appeared to be wearing a pair of shorts, a wife beater t-shirt and one red flip-flop on its right foot.
Jack let the light linger at the top of the ‘sack’ and Lexy’s heart jerked in her chest when she recognized that it was a face.
She grabbed Jack’s arm, her green eyes wide. “Is that what I think it is?”
"I'm afraid so." Jack's face turned grim. "We've got a mummy in our basement."
***
Lexy took a step backwards, bumping into a box and almost falling over it as horror spread through her. Her mind flashed on all of the candlelight dinners, romantic evenings, and relaxing nights watching TV upstairs in Jack’s house … and the whole time, a dead body had lain down here in this secret room.
“How long has it been here?” she asked.
Jack shrugged. “I have no idea. I guess at least since before I bought the place, because I sure as heck didn’t seal it up in there.”
Jack paced to the corner and moved a stack of boxes aside to inspect the joint where the walls met. “It looks like someone built that false wall to make the secret room. That wall is wood frame construction, not cinderblock like the rest of the foundation. Then they refinished it just like the other walls on purpose, so no one would even know the room was there. It’s so narrow that I don’t think you’d know unless you measured the room. If it wasn’t for Sprinkles, we might never have noticed it.”
“So someone did this on purpose?”
Jack looked at her and nodded. “There’s no way this was an accident.”
Lexy shivered, then bent down to peek into the room again. She’d seen quite a few dead bodies in her time, but never one that was mummified. It looked so strange, with the leathery skin stretched tight and the clothing, although dirty and a bit worse for the wear, still on it. “I can’t believe someone put a person in here, sealed them up and left them to die.”
“Maybe they were already dead.”
“Well, that’s a slightly more pleasant thought.” Lexy shuddered, realizing there had been a killer loose in the neighborhood and right in the house behind Nans. Of course, given Nans’ odd hobby of investigating murders, Lexy realized that the older woman would have probably been more intrigued than repulsed.
She made a mental note to call her grandmother right away. This must have happened when Nans was living in the house behind Jack, and Lexy was sure her grandmother wouldn’t be able to resist investigating the death that had happened practically right under her nose. “How long does it take for a body to mummify and why didn’t it deteriorate into a skeleton?”
“That’s a good question. I guess it must have been pretty dry in there. I don’t know how long the process takes, but I think mummies can be preserved for centuries like this.” Jack bent down with his face near the hole and sniffed.
“What’s that strange smell?” “Mummy smell?”
“No, something else. It smells flowery.”
Lexy bent down closer to the hole and inhaled deeply. Her nose picked up on that familiar scent again and then she realized what it was. “Hmmm, that’s weird. Let me see that flashlight.”
Jack handed the flashlight over and Lexy aimed it at the small lumps beside the body that she’d thought were potatoes.
“Ahhh, so that explains it,” she said.
Jack frowned at her. “Explains what?”
“See those small lumps?” Lexy trained the flashlight on one of the lumps. “I thought they were potatoes but now I can see they are sachets.”
Jack let out an exasperated sigh. “And exactly what is a sachet?”
“It’s a little pouch that you can put dried flowers and scents in. Ladies used to use them in their lingerie drawer to add a nice smell. It’s pretty old fashioned. I don’t think anyone does it anymore. These are lavender-scented.”
Jack’s left brow ticked up. “And why do you think lavender sachets would be in here with a mummified body?”
“I’m guessing they put them in to hide the smell.”
“Hide the smell?” Jack snorted. “It’s pretty hard to hide the stench of a dead body. I don’t think a few silky pouches of flowers is gonna do it, but I guess someone who wasn’t so familiar with dead bodies might think so.”
“So, you think this is the work of an amateur?”
Jack shrugged. “Hard to tell until we find out who the victim is. That’s a job for the police. I guess I better put in the call.”
Jack dug in his pocket with one hand and turned Lexy toward the exit with the other. “In the meantime, I guess we won’t be continuing our work in the basement—this is a crime scene now.”
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