Carolina Mist Read online

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out all week.” Belle glared. “While you and everyone else were insisting that I wasn’t hearing anything.”

  “Hush.” Abby waved a hand in Belle’s direction as she pressed the power button on the remote control to turn off the television.

  Standing in the middle of the room, Abby strained her ears and concentrated on the barely audible cry.

  “Meri?” Abby called softly, then louder. “Meri P.?”

  A muffled bark from someplace far away answered her.

  “Oh, my stars!” Belle exclaimed. “She is here!”

  “But where?” A puzzled Abby shook her head. “It almost sounds as if she’s in the walls someplace.”

  “But, of course, Abigail, that’s exactly where she is.” Belle beamed.

  “How could she get into the walls?” Abby began to feel along the wall near the fireplace, where Belle had been standing when Abby had first entered the room. “Belle, do you suppose there is some passageway…”

  “I know there is. Unfortunately, I do not know exactly where it comes out in this house.” Belle’s eyes shone with the joy of finding Meri. “I know that there is a passage from someplace in the carriage house into this house. It leads to a tunnel that runs under Cove Road into my old house.”

  “The Underground Railroad?”

  “Exactly so. People would be brought up this far by river and, from the river, would come through the back of the Cassidys’ carriage house. There was a tunnel from there into this house, and from here to the house across the street. Sometimes people who’d been brought up this far north by other means would go the reverse route, from the house across the street to this one to the river, depending on which route was the safest at any given time.”

  “You don’t know where in the carriage house?”

  “No, but I know where it comes out over there.” Belle motioned across the road with her head. “Josie used to hide there sometimes.”

  “Where?”

  “Under the stairwell in the back hallway is a closet. Along the back wall of the closet is a loose floorboard. Pull up the board, and the last panel on the right side will slide away. It’s not a real big space until you get inside, as I recall. I mean, you have to sort of crawl in, but, once inside, you can stand up.”

  Abby was already on the phone to Naomi.

  “She’s bringing the kids over here to stay with you,” Abby told Belle. “Naomi doesn’t want the kids to know about this just yet.”

  “Don’t you think she should call Colin?”

  “She’s doing that. He’ll meet us there.”

  Naomi was at the door in a flash, her eyes sparkling with anticipation, her children in tow. She planted Sam and Meredy in the morning room with Belle—“Y’all just sit here and keep Miz Matthews company for a few minutes while Mommy and Abby look for something”—and the two excited women made a beeline for Naomi’s house.

  “Did you call Colin?” Abby asked as they flew up the front steps.

  “Yes, but he’s on the road. I left a message for him to call home as soon as he gets the chance.” Naomi closed the front door behind them and practically ran to the back hallway off the kitchen. “I cannot believe what a dunce I am not to have thought of the tunnels. Anyone who grew up around here knows about them.”

  Naomi unlatched the closet door with excited fingers. “Help me get this stuff out, Abby. I swear, I am such a damned pack rat… well, here’s my old tennis racket. I was looking for that a few weeks ago. And Lord have mercy, Colin’s old hip boots. He had to buy new ones when he went duck hunting last year because we couldn’t find these. Never thought to look in here…”

  They tossed items this way and that in their haste to clear a path to the back of the deep closet.

  “What am I looking for? A loose floorboard?” Abby asked.

  “Yes. Right along here someplace.”

  Abby’s fingers searched along the baseboard in the dark. “Naomi, this is silly. Go get a flashlight.”

  “Right. A flashlight.” Naomi backed out of the narrow closet.

  She was back in less than a minute with two long black-handled flashlights, one of which she handed to Abby.

  “It’s here. Right here,” Abby whispered. “Hold the light for me while I see if I can pull this back.”

  “Abigail.” Naomi leaned forward and whispered in Abby’s ear.

  “What?”

  “Why are we whispering?”

  “What? Oh!” She laughed. “I guess it just seems apropos, looking for secret panels in an old… oh!”

  The side of the wall slid away to reveal a black hole.

  “Give me the light.” Abby put her left hand over her shoulder to take the flashlight from Naomi. In the dark, she found the switch and turned it on, sending a bright beam of light into the darkness that had opened up in front of them.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Colin?” Naomi asked as Abby inched into the hole.

  “One of us should, I guess.”

  “Oh, no you don’t, Abigail McKenna.” Naomi watched Abby disappear into the open wall. “If you think I am going to sit here and wait while you have an adventure, well, you are sadly mistaken.”

  Naomi followed Abby into the wall.

  “Wow, this is something.” Abby shined her light along the wall, where dozens of names had been scratched into the stone that lined the passageway on one side. “I’ll bet these are the names of the escaped slaves who passed through this very spot.”

  “I doubt that they’d have wanted to leave such a record. More likely than not, it’s the names of the town kids who made it through the tunnel. It was sort of a badge of distinction, you know, to make it through this far. Oh, my golly, would you look here,” Naomi exclaimed. “ ‘Sharon Dare.’ Looks like my sister was a little bit more of a daredevil growing up than we knew.”

  “Watch your step, Naomi, the landing here is a little weak.” Abby sent the stream of light downward to illuminate the stairwell, which seemed to descend forever into the earth and end somewhere in darkness far below. Without thinking, she began slowly to follow the wooden pathway down. Seeing that Abby had gone exploring, Naomi fell in step behind her.

  “Oh, my God, Abigail, what was that?” Naomi cringed as something fat and furry passed over her ankle.

  “You probably don’t want to know. Oh!” Abby shrieked as the hairless tail of something flicked at her leg.

  “Don’t look down at it,” Naomi told her. “Maybe it’s not what we think it is. Just keep going.”

  “How’s your leg holding up on the steps?”

  “Okay. If I fall, I’ll just be sure to land on you.”

  “Please, feel free to do that… oh, God, Naomi, I hate spider webs… oh, this is creepy.”

  “Maybe we should wait for Colin.” Naomi paused on the steps. “Nah. Keep on going, Abby. This little adventure is all ours. You know, after you’ve had children, your life really changes—oh, Lord, what do you suppose that was?—and you sort of settle into this nice, safe routine… did you hear that?”

  “Don’t think about it. We’re almost to the bottom.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll soon find out. Oh, look, there’s a sort of bunkbed-type thing. People must have stayed over here when it was too dangerous to travel.” Abby flashed her light around the room which was a widened section of a long passage. A brass candle holder, its candle long since burned away, stood atop a small wooden table. Wooden bowls and tin cups were stacked on another.

  “Look.” Abby pointed her beam of light straight ahead to a long, narrow pathway. “This goes right under Cove Road. Right to Aunt Leila’s.”

  She took off toward the passage with Naomi close behind. They followed the path for about three hundred feet before coming to another flight of wood steps that led upward at a steep angle.

  “Almost home,” Abby muttered as she started up. “Literally and figuratively.”

  “Wait up, Abby,” Naomi pleaded. “
Going up is always harder than coming down.”

  “Want to stop and rest your leg for a few minutes?”

  “No.” Naomi shook her head. “I don’t want to stand in one spot that long, Abby, something’s bound to crawl on me. No, I just want to slow down.”

  Abby held in check her natural inclination to run up the rest of the steps and slowed her pace for Naomi’s sake.

  “We must be inside Aunt Leila’s house,” Abby told her. “There can’t be too much farther to go.”

  From deep in the darkness above them came a low growl. “Meri?” Abby called out hopefully.

  Tiny doggy toenails began to tap-dance on the wooden landing as Meri heard her name.

  “Meri Puppins!” Abby laughed, and the dog barked happily. “Oh, my stars, as Belle would say, someone is going to be so happy to see you!”

  Abby picked the dog up in her arms and was immediately rewarded with dog kisses on her neck, her chin, and wherever else the little dog could reach.

  “Belle?” Abby called as loudly as she could. “Belle, can you hear me?”

  “Yes! Yes, Abigail.” Belle’s reply was muffled.

  “We found Meri, and she appears to be fine,” Abby yelled. “Now all we have to do is find a way out of here and… oops!”

  Abby’s hand accidentally found the way out. The thick wall she leaned on opened suddenly, spilling her into the morning room, where the dog flew out of her arms and into Belle’s.

  “Oh, my dear little pup!” Belle crooned. “Oh, Abigail, you found her! Oh, Meri, I’ve missed you.”

  Belle fell back into her chair, her legs wobbly from emotion and tired from the strain of it all.

  Sam and Meredy immediately poked their heads into the passage.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” Naomi wagged a finger at them. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Mommy, you have webby things in your hair,” Meredy told her.

  “I don’t.” Naomi cringed and peered into the mirror over the mantel. ‘Oh, Lordy, don’t I, though. You’re even worse than I am, Abby. Look at yourself.”

  Abby took a peek at herself and shrugged. A car door slammed outside, and Abby went to the front hall to look through the window.

  “Colin’s here,” she told Naomi as she opened the front door and called across the street. “Colin! We’re all over here. Come see what we found!”

  “Abby, what happened to you?” Cohn frowned as he took in her appearance, dirty clothes and cobwebs in her hair. “Naomi! What in the world…?”

  “Colin, we found Miz Matthews’s dog!” Naomi’s eyes danced as she grabbed her husband by the arm and pulled him into the room where Belle sat with her dog on her lap.

  “Hi, Daddy.” Meredy came in from the kitchen carrying a pot of water, which she set on the floor next to Belle’s chair, just as Belle had instructed her to do. “Mommy and Abby brought Meri out of the wall.”

  Colin’s gaze followed Meredy’s pointing finger.

  He whistled long and low, then walked over and peered into the dark chamber beyond the room. “How did you find this?”

  “From our house,” Naomi told him.

  “What do you mean, from our house?” Colin frowned.

  “Miz Matthews remembered a secret panel in our back hall closet that opened up and led to a passage that came over here…”

  “Whoa, back up there, sweetheart.”

  “There’s an old passage from the Underground Railroad days that links this house with the carriage house and goes under Cove Road to your house,” Abby explained.

  Colin took the flashlight from his wife’s hand and entered the darkness, instructing the others to stay behind, telling them, “You never know what’s down here.”

  “Oh, we have a pretty good idea.” Naomi giggled.

  Within twenty minutes, Colin appeared at the back door. “There’s a trap door in the stable which leads to the tunnel which leads to the house.” He shook his head. “I cannot believe you two were foolish enough to go down there alone.”

  “You weak woman,” Naomi grunted. “Me macho man.”

  “Knock it off, Naomi.” Colin scowled. “I have never played that game with you, and you know it.”

  “Well, Abby and I did just fine.”

  “I think you and Abby were damned lucky that whoever used the tunnel to come in here on Sunday wasn’t down there today when you decided to go exploring. I wish you had waited for me.”

  “We tried to. At least, we thought about it. But you were taking too long getting here, and the wall opened up, and we just had to go in.”

  Colin kissed the top of his wife’s head. “Okay, let’s go on home, and you can show me where it starts. Abby, you stay here and watch that the kids don’t go down into the wall.”

  “And that no one unexpected comes out,” Belle called over her shoulder.

  38

  “It sounds as if you had quite a week.” Alex leaned back against the wooden garden bench where he and Abby had cozied up after breakfast. He pulled Abby back with him, so that they rested against each other on the rustic settee which Susannah had found in the carriage house. Sunny had painted it a gleaming white to surprise Abby, who had found it to be the perfect spot to sip her second cup of morning coffee and watch the birds.

  “Umm,” she murmured, snuggling back against his chest, her arms around his to sink closer into him, still wrapped in the early-morning glow of having Alex awaken her at dawn to love her into a new day.

  “And I do agree with Colin, that you and Gran should not be here alone,” he continued. “As soon as this trial is over, I will take a few weeks off and come stay with you. That is, of course, if you’ll have me.”

  “As often as possible.” She grinned in reply.

  “Ah, yes, just one of the fringe benefits of playing security guard.” He laughed and gave her a squeeze.

  “I feel like I’m playing hooky,” she told him with a sigh. “I should be upstairs working on the wainscot in the small bathroom.”

  “I think you can safely take an hour off here and there to relax. And what is the point of having done all this”—he waved his arm to take in the entire backyard area—“if you never sit and just enjoy the view?”

  “It does look pretty good, doesn’t it?” She sat up slightly so that she could see the full expanse of garden she and Sunny had worked on over the past few weeks.

  “It looks wonderful,” he assured her.

  And it did. The old paths had been painstakingly uncovered and the bricks dug up and reset, the perennial beds cleaned up, and the herb garden restored. The first of the roses were in bud and early bloom along the fence, several long-armed branches reaching up and over the arbor where the white roses would soon bloom in concert with the red as they had so long ago. All in all, Abby thought, some of the old magic had returned, and it filled her with pride. Aunt Leila would have been pleased.

  “What do you hear from Drew?” Alex asked casually.

  Abby frowned. “Actually, nothing. I haven’t heard from him since last weekend. He still doesn’t even know about the break-in.”

  Alex leaned back against the hard bench and sighed, debating whether or not to tell Abby that, in trying to track Drew down to see if he could check in on her and Belle this past week, Alex had found no hotel in Williamsburg that was hosting a sales meeting for an athletic equipment company. And in checking with the colleges Drew claimed to have as clients, he discovered that no one had ever heard of a Drew Cassidy.

  Maybe, Alex thought, while Abby was painting inside and he was painting the front porch, he’d slip on over across the street and ask Colin to do a little background check on old Drew. Just a precaution, Alex told himself, trying to beat down the uneasy feeling that had begun to spread. Maybe Colin could track him down and there’d be a logical explanation. For Abby’s sake, Alex wanted Drew to be everything that Abby believed him to be.

  But even beyond wanting to confirm Abby’s faith, there was something more. Alex had, as Abby had pr
edicted, liked Drew. While there did appear to be something guarded about the man, there was also something intrinsically decent about him. Alex found himself wanting to solve this little mystery, hoping that his earlier suspicions would be proved false.

  “Well.” Abby patted his arm gently before standing up and stretching. “I really do need to get to work.”

  Alex sighed. He liked just sitting with her, smelling the early-morning scents of honeysuckle and roses and lavender and feeling Abby’s softness. He wanted to hold on to the moment, and he wanted to hold on to her. He could have stayed right there for the rest of the day and been damned happy to do so.

  “Okay.” He reluctantly let her go. “Help me up, and I’ll get started on the front porch. But, you know, that will only take another weekend or so. If I spend a few weeks here, all of the work will be done by the end of next month.”

  “Most likely.”

  “What will you do then?”

  “Contact a Realtor.” Abby shrugged. “I guess that’s the next logical step.”

  They walked in silence the rest of the way to the house, holding hands, neither one of them wanting to think about the next logical step, both of them wondering just what, after all, logic had to do with what was going on between them. They both sighed at the same time, as each considered first the other’s personal agenda, then his or her own.

  “I think I’ll cut some flowers for the hallway,” Abby said unexpectedly as they reached the back porch, and she sought out the small clippers she had left in a small basket for just such a purpose.

  Knowing this was his chance to sneak a call to Colin, Alex leaned down and kissed the back of her neck. “I’ll get started with that front porch railing. See you at lunch.” Alex began to dial Colin’s number but was distracted by the sight of Abby strolling leisurely, basket in one hand, clippers in the other, as she followed the path into the garden. He hung up the phone without completing the number and went to the window for a better view. Mesmerized, he stared.

  In old jeans and a dark green T-shirt, Abby’s lithe body moved between the rows with all the grace of a tiny dancer, the cobbled walk her stage and he her only audience. A surge of unexpected emotion flooded him to the core, and he knew with crystal certainty the most elemental of facts, the only real truth of his life. His only true agenda stood in the damp grass in bare feet, snipping stalks of butter-yellow forsythia.