Sarah Graves - Trap Door (Bantam Books Mystery)

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PDB Name: Sarah Graves - 10 - Trap Door (

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Creation Date: 5/17/2008

Modification Date: 5/17/2008

Last Backup Date: 1/1/1970

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Synopsis:

Gravess humorous, well-constructed 10th home improvement cozy (after 2005s Nail Biter) finds Jacobia Jake Tiptree, former money manager to the mob, still hard at work on her 1823 Federal-style house in Eastport, Maine. But shes got more to fix than a roof caving in: her dead ex-husband, Victor, is haunting the house and her friend Jemmy is on the run from hit men, including the ruthless Walter Henderson, whos also made his home in Eastport. A local young man who had been dating Walters daughter has gone missing, and when Jake and her friend Ellie show up at the assassins home, they make a grisly discovery in his barn. Graves weaves in plenty of home repair tips and a correspondence between two antiquarian experts concerning a mysterious book Jake has found in her cellar for an outing sure to please series fans.

TRAP DOOR

By

SARAH GRAVES

The tenth book in the Home Repair is Homicide Mysteries series

Copyright a 2006 by Sarah Graves

Chapter 1

Over a long, successful career of killing people for money, Walter Henderson had never before snuffed out a personal enemy. Hed made a habit of keeping his private life and his business affairs separate, and planning to break that habit now aroused a variety of new emotions in him, none of them pleasant.

Anxiety, resentment, and the kind of bone-deep reluctance a lazy schoolboy might feel, facing a pile of homework these were not sentiments with which Walter Henderson, a paid assassin, had any significant experience.

Thus as he sat waiting in his comfortable leather armchair for the inevitable to occur, he tried yet again to come up with some other way out of the situation in which he found himself. But hed been over it all a hundred times in his head already and hed found none.

Because there werent any. So now here he was. Im not even supposed to be doing this anymore, he thought irritably. With one exceptiona loose end he meant to tie up very soonhed decided that his death-dealing days were history.

But apparently resolutions really were made to be broken, he thought. Then came the sound hed been waiting to hear: stealthy footsteps on the gravel driveway outside, not far from his open window.

Walter looked up from the book hed been pretending to read, in the warm pool of light in the den of his large, luxuriously appointed house in Eastport, Maine. It was late. The housekeeper had gone home to her own house, and his teenaged daughter Jen was already in bed.

Or so shed tried hard to convince him as shed headed upstairs an hour earlier: clad in pajamas, carrying a glass of milk and a handful of cookies, and yawning elaborately.

Smiling with affection, thinking how pretty she was with her golden tan, strong athletes body, and sun-bleached blonde hair, Walter had bid his daughter a fond good night. Then hed built a fire in the enormous granite fireplace that formed one whole wall of the room, piling it with chunks of aged driftwood so it flamed extravagantly before settling to a fierce red glow.

After that, with a scant two fingers of Laphroaig in a chunky cut-crystal lowball glass to keep him company, hed sat down with his book to wait. Despite the chilly spring evening the fire let him keep the window open, admitting salt air and whiffs of wood smoke along with the distant, varied hoots and moans of the foghorns on the dark water a few hundred yards distant.

Now Walter sat very still, listening to the sound of cautious movement outside, a whispery crunching on stones that someone was trying to minimize.

To no avail. That you couldnt approach the house without traversing an expanse of pea gravel was not an accident, any more than the elaborate alarm system, heat-and-motion detectors, or closed-circuit TV cameras that Walter had installed when hed had the house built.

All turned off now, of course. Walter didnt want any record, electronic or otherwise, of what transpired here tonight. Just to be sure, hed had an old buddy of his run up from the city a week earlier to disarm the devices, taking care to make it appear that the central controller circuits had silently malfunctioned.

In the unlikely event that anyone checked. Walter listened a while longer to be certain it wasnt only a wild animal out there, a deer or raccoon or maybe even a moose. There were plenty of them on the island where Eastport was located, seven miles off the coast of downeast Maine and another thousand or so from the neon-lit nightlife Walter Henderson was used to: pimps and hookers, loan sharks and dope addicts, pushers and grifters

All in the past now, he reminded himself without regret. And from the sound of it, tonights visitor was indeed human. A glance outside confirmed this; there was a light on in the barn, faintly illuminating a high square of window.

Which there hadnt been the last time Walter looked. He waited ten deliberate minutes, then laid his book aside, got up, and removed the loaded pistol from its usual place in the upper right-hand drawer of his desk. Placing the gun in his sweater pocket, he padded from the room, pausing in the dark hall but not bothering to go upstairs to see whether or not Jen was really asleep.

He knew she wasnt, that the yawning and milk getting and elaborate expressions of tiredness had all been an act. For the past few weeks, ever since shed graduated and come home from the exclusive New York boarding school where shed spent her high school years, shed been sneaking out via those same back stairs nearly every night to meet a boy.

And not just any boy. Walter knew it was that worthless little helper the carpenters had brought with them last summer when they arrived to rebuild the barn. Which by itself was okay, bringing along a useless helper. He understood that. People had expenses to cover and sometimes they resorted to methods.

Charge high, pay low it was how the world worked. Probably the contractor got a cut of the materials, too, in an arrangement with the supplier. All standard business practice and all right as rain as far as Walter was concerned, as long as nobody got too greedy.

The kid, though. The kid was something else. Because when the barn job was done and the carpenters had all gone, the kid kept coming around. Doing another kind of job now, wasnt he? On Walter Hendersons daughter.

The thought stopped him in his tracks: Jennifer. His pearl, the only person he knew of in the world who hadnt somehow been contaminated or befouled. The idea of some mangy little nobody with grimy fingernails even thinking about touching her

Well, but it wasnt thinkable, was it? That was the whole point. Back in the city hed have snapped the kids neck with his two hands, and that wouldve been that. Dumped him in a landfill or in the trunk of an abandoned car; if push really came to shove there was a sausage factory in Paramus that would take the kid, no problem.

But Walt couldnt do any of those things here, not without screwing up his plans for finishing off that other loose end. And now it seemed no matter what else he tried, he couldnt get rid of the kid.

Padding quietly in the plush moosehide L.L. Bean moccasins Jennifer had given him for Christmas, he slipped down the hall to the silent kitchen, past dimly gleaming appliances and the wall-mounted panel for the alarm system.

The panels bulbs glowed green, meaning the system had been armed. But according to Walts gadget-literate buddy, on commands werent reaching the devices the system controlled.

Walt hadnt told Jen about that, though; no need. For all she knew, the alarms worked as they always had. Thinking this, he continued along the dim passageway past the utility room where a pair of Irish wolfhounds stayed when he needed them to be out of the way.