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Carpenter lifted the huge wine rack out of the way and put it to the side. Then he placed his hands on the wood-paneled wall. “There’s something that looks like a stethoscope in my case. Except bigger. And it has headphones.”
Shane looked in the case and retrieved the device. He brought it to Carpenter, who placed the headphones on and then put the cone at the other end against the wall. He turned a knob on the control and began slowly sliding it along the wall in short swaths, working from the floor up to the ceiling.
Shane waited, wondering what mischief Agnes and Lisa Livia were up to upstairs. And why all of a sudden he and Carpenter were having conversations instead of short exchanges about packages and cleanups.
“There is indeed a void behind here,” Carpenter said, removing the headphones.
“You can hear a void?” Shane asked.
Carpenter handed him the equipment. “It sends a pulse out, like sonar.” He was staring at the paneling as if it were going to speak to him.
“What—” Shane began, but Carpenter held up a hand indicating silence. Shane figured he was waiting for the vibe to speak to him again. Or maybe the void.
Carpenter looked left, then right, at the ghastly imitation of the Venus de Milo. He reached out and began to run his hand over the statue.
“Carpenter?” Shane said when his friend put his hands over her breasts. Maybe the rhinestones had gotten to him. “I think Lisa Livia wants that.”
Carpenter pressed both breasts and at the same time took the toe of his boot and jammed it under the floorboard of the paneling in front of him. There was a slight noise, and Shane moved forward and knelt, putting his fingers next to Carpenter’s boot. He hooked them under the floorboard and lifted. A section of the paneling slowly began to lift, protesting against the inertia of the years it had been stuck in place.
“I am curious.” Carpenter went over to his case and pulled out two headbands with flashlights attached to the front of them and tossed one to Shane. “Frankie was the older son, but not the Don. Stuck down here with his Venus de Milo Bomb Shelter. And your uncle, he’s worried, but he’s not saying anything. Doesn’t strike me as the type to scare easy, your uncle.” He turned on his light and faced toward the void.
Shane did the same, feeling very troubled. Joey didn’t scare easy, but something had kept him quiet and stuck in Keyes for a long time.
The tunnel was about four feet wide going up to a rounded roof slightly over six feet high. It was lined with brick, very old brick, and it was deep, black as hell beyond the light cast by Carpenter’s beam.
“Let’s see what lies ahead.” Carpenter started in, and Shane followed. He couldn’t see past Carpenter’s bulk as they moved down the long tunnel, and he almost bumped into him when he came to an abrupt halt after fifty feet. The cleaner moved aside so Shane could see that the passage abruptly ended in a steel wall. No, a steel door, Shane realized as he saw the metal wheel in the center and the outline of a hatch.
Carpenter knelt and examined a keyhole to the left of the hatch, probing it with a long flexible rod he pulled out of one of the many pockets on his coveralls.
“Not pickable,” Carpenter decided. “Plus, the moisture down here has rusted whatever mechanism is in there solid anyway.”
“Blast it?” Shane suggested.
Carpenter rolled his eyes. “Always using the hammer when finesse will work. Wait here.” He edged past Shane and went back down the tunnel.
Shane looked at the steel hatch and rapped on it with his knuckles. Solid. Blasting it would probably bring the house down on top of them. That would piss Agnes off. Don’t want Agnes pissed off, Shane thought. Fiery, okay. Pissed off, no. At least not at him. If Taylor came by and infuriated her again, he was willing to lend a hand. Or whatever she needed. He began to wonder if Agnes was alone upstairs?—
Carpenter was coming back.
“You know,” Shane speculated, “if someone whacked Frankie Fortunato and didn’t have Joey’s skills as a cleaner, this would be a good place to stash the body. And if Frankie had put the safe with the money in here already and that person had shut the door with the key on Frankie’s body and then found out the five mil was in there, that person might have been getting pretty steamed over the past twenty-five years.”
“Why kill Frankie if not for the money?” Carpenter carefully placed a wooden box on the floor and opened it, revealing several glass vials. He also laid out a long green nylon case. He peeled open the Velcro holding it shut, revealing steel rods.
“Maybe the killer thought the money was elsewhere,” Shane said. “Maybe in the trunk of Frankie’s Caddy. And when the killer found out that five million was in here, he was screwed because he couldn’t get in without getting noticed and that would bring attention to the body, so ...”
“You say he,” Carpenter said as he began setting up what looked like an IV drip holder. “You have your suspicions.” He angled a glass tube into the keyhole.
“There are suspects. If Frankie is in there.”
“Do you suspect your uncle?” Carpenter put a glass tube with a stop-cock on the bottom onto the IV drop holder.
“No. Joey has his faults” —a lot of them— “and he’ll lie to you without blinking, but his oath is good. Hell, the mob calls him Joey the Gent.” But Joey was lying about something else. And that meant he must have a damn good reason for lying.
Carpenter very carefully turned the stop-cock until a single drop of the liquid dripped into the long tube and slid down it, disappearing into the keyhole. There was a hissing sound, and a small puff of smoke appeared.
“Don’t breathe the fumes,” Carpenter advised. “Poisonous.”
Shane stepped back.
