Authors: Fairstein Linda
Lethal Legacy (43 page)
Bea Dutton spread out one of her maps on the
table.
“Here’s where we’re standing,” she said, pointing
at East Ninety-third Street on a copy of a fairly primitive map of the city.
“This row of brownstones was built in 1885. Pretty swell digs at the time.”
Mike squinted and looked at the writing. “Now, how
can you tell when it was built?”
“I did the vertical search for you,” Bea said,
knowing she had captured Mike’s interest. “The 1884 maps don’t show any of the
structures. The next year, here they are.”
“Why were these maps created annually?”
“Did you ever hear of the Great Fire of 1835?”
Mercer and I were shaking our heads, but Mike
answered, “Yes. It destroyed hundreds of buildings in lower Manhattan.”
“That’s right,” Bea said. “Everything that was in
today’s Wall Street area. These are called Sanborn maps, made by a company
right after that fire. They were done for insurance purposes, for claims.
Sanborn had the idea for these very detailed maps, showing every structure on
the island. Can you see?”
Her finger pointed from building to building as
she talked. “The brick buildings, like these, were colored in pink. Things
built for industrial use were green. And down the block a bit, you see the
yellow ones? Those represent wood frame houses—more likely to burn, less likely
to get a good insurance rate.”
“Why is this one both pink and yellow?” Mike
asked.
“A brownstone, but with a wooden porch in the
backyard. I want you to hold that thought, because it’s going to come in handy
a few maps down the road,” Bea said. “In the meantime, I can also tell you
why
these homes were built.”
“We’re all ears.”
“Jasper Hunt—the great-grandfather of Tally and
Minerva—wanted a residence for his mistress. Close to Fifth Avenue, but not so
close his wife would be able to smell her perfume,” Bea said.
“Now, how do you know that?” Mike asked, patting
her on the back.
“I’ve got a library card, Mr. Chapman. It serves
me well. There were tabloids even back in those days. Five buildings in this
row. The one we’re in was completed first, and then the one next door was built
for the mother of his mistress—a deal the young lady was smart enough to insist
upon. The other three weren’t quite as grand, but Mr. Hunt built them for
servants and staff.”
“And Minerva was still using the basement for the
hired help,” Mercer said, referring to Tina Barr.
“The next structural change to note is in 1912,”
Bea said, layering her maps on top of each other. “Something very interesting
has been added to the rear of this building.”
“What’s that?” Mike asked. “Can we see it?”
“Look closely. Attached to one side of the pink
drawing that represents the house, there’s a small black rectangle.”
“Got it,” Mike said. “But what does it mean?”
“It’s an indication that some kind of chamber was
added out in the yard—something that would be impervious to fire and water.
That’s what the black color code tells us. It’s not as deep as the basement
we’re in, which was really helpful for me to know.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Remember yesterday, when Mike made me cancel my
meeting with the Department of Transportation about the flooding in the Empire
State Building? The men were coming to study the Viele map, so that gave me the
idea to search out this site on that.”
“I know you’re the map maven,” Mike said. “But I’m
trying my best to follow this.”
“Let me make it easy for you,” she said. From her briefcase
she removed another thick paper, which she unfolded, revealing a vividly
colored reproduction of a topographical map of Manhattan. “See there? Egbert
Viele, 1865.”
This one had a street grid superimposed on the
island, but no structures or buildings. Instead, it showed a city full of
ponds, natural springs, and streams, from its southern to northern tips, before
it was paved over and populated.
“This is Greenwich Village,” Bea said. “You can
see Minetta Stream coursing below Washington Square. And there’s a creek, just
underneath Broadway in the Twenties. This blue line, up in Harlem, right around
One Hundred and Fortieth Street? That’s also a stream.”
And then her fingertip led our eyes to First
Avenue, just east of the Hunt buildings. “And that, my friends, is an
underground pond, where water pools and collects—to this very day, no doubt.
The stream that leads from it comes right below our feet. You can’t possibly
trace them today, but every architect in the city still uses this map—like an
X-ray of the island—to find out where the leaks are coming from.”
“So what’s your deduction, Sherlock?” Mike asked
the diminutive librarian.
“Elementary,” she said. “Who owned the buildings
by 1912?”
“You’ve got better sources on the Jasper Hunts
than I do,” Mike said.
“Jasper Junior had just come into his own. Don’t
forget, he did his world tour, visiting all the European principalities, in
1905. By 1912, according to the yellow journalists of the day, Junior took over
where his father left off. He moved his late father’s mistress in with her
mother, next door, and brought his own to live right here.”
How had Minerva first described the predilections
of the Hunt men? Rare books, expensive wine, and cheap women. Jasper Hunt Jr.
had a wife, a mistress, and, later in life, perhaps an inappropriate interest
in young girls like Edith Wharton Eliot.
“So what is this chamber he built in the backyard
made of—Kryptonite?” Mike asked.
“Not so deep as this basement, where we’re
standing,” Bea said. “After all, if something was likely to flood in here, it
would be ruined. Seems to me, if a man had valuables he wanted to protect—”
“And if Jasper was more than a little bit
eccentric, enough so not to entrust things to a bank vault…”
“Maybe he built his own vault, right in his babe’s
backyard?” Bea said. “Maybe that’s where she kept her jewels.”
Mike straightened up and smiled for the first time
that afternoon. “Or maybe that’s where he kept the panels of the great map of
1507. High and dry, locked in a waterproof, fireproof chamber where nobody was
likely to look. Had to get past his lady love to get to the yard. Buried his
treasure under his father’s favorite garden ornament.”
“Don’t tell me Billy Schultz didn’t know what his
neighbor was digging for,” Mercer said, crossing the kitchen floor in three
strides to open the back door.
Mike was on his tail just as quickly. “That’s a
pretty deadly vertical search that landed Tina Barr so permanently horizontal.”
I had gone upstairs to knock on Billy Schultz’s
door before returning to the backyard, but there was no answer. Both Mike and
Mercer were digging with garden spades when I joined them and said he wasn’t
home. Bea had pulled the collar up on her raincoat and watched them work from a
bistro chair set out behind the house.
“You ever get your hands in the dirt up on the
Vineyard?” Mike asked. “You have any idea what we’ve got here?”
I knelt down beside him. “The top couple of inches
is mulch. These look like tulip bulbs,” I said, lifting out several plantings
below the surface. “Some people plant them in the fall.”
Mike jabbed his small shovel into the dirt again.
“Too bad Tina didn’t stick around for the spring bloom.”
“She’s still the victim,” I said. “Is there
another shovel?”
“Not until Billy Schultz gets home.”
Whoever tended the little garden kept it densely
packed with perennials and small shrubs. Mercer was pulling them out to get a
better angle as he dug.
Minutes later, I heard the sound of metal clanging
against metal. “I’m in,” Mercer said.
Bea jumped to her feet and both of us clustered
behind him. Mike saw the hole in the ground left by Mercer’s uprooting of a
dwarf pine and started digging furiously. Seconds later, the tip of his shovel
struck against some kind of metal vault.
“Right where it shows on the map,” Bea said.
Both men scrambled to excavate the dirt on top of
the buried chamber.
Just like on the diagram Bea had shown to us, the
exterior of the rectangular chest was almost ten feet long bordering the rear
of the house, and only three feet wide.
“It looks like it’s split into compartments,” Bea
said, peering in over Mike’s shoulder.
“Can you tell from your map,” Mike asked as he
continued to throw dirt back onto the flagstone path adjacent to the site,
“whether there were peepers way back then in the buildings behind us?”
He raised a valid point. It wouldn’t have been a
very good hiding place if everyone around could see the dig.
“It appears from the maps I’ve examined that Hunt
enclosed these first two buildings—the ones for his mistress and her mama—with
a common wall,” she said, pointing to the brick surround, which was about
twenty feet tall. “The family held on to the property behind us until almost
1930, when those apartments that back up on it were constructed.”
“See that stump?” Mercer said. “Bet there was a
big old shade tree right there that might have given some cover.”
“You gentlemen need to understand something about
topography,” Bea said. “The reason this chamber was displayed on the map is
because at some point, the top of it must have been visible, on the surface of
the ground. A hundred years later, with shifts in the land, it settled in a
little deeper.”
“So what are you telling us?” Mike asked.
“That this would have been much more accessible to
Jasper Hunt when he wanted to get to it,” Bea said. “Probably only covered with
a thin layer of sod.”
Mike and Mercer were both kneeling at ends of the
chest. “Doesn’t seem to be any opening on my end,” Mike said. “Totally
airtight. How about you?”
“Same.”
Bea looked pensive as she walked back to the
house. “Could be another way at it, don’t you think?”
I followed her into the kitchen, where she turned
to study the cabinet doors high above the sink, out of reach to both of us.
“You’ve got me on height, Alex.”
I dragged one of the chairs over and stepped on
the seat of it to climb to the lip of the old sink. I pulled at the latch, too
useless a location to have ever been replaced by any of the tenants.
It stuck for my first few attempts, then opened
wide as I yanked again, practically dislodging me from my perch. Bea reached
out to steady my legs.
The thick layer of dust that coated the interior
shelf had recently been disturbed. Streaks across the width of the space
suggested someone had reached inside.
“You might be right, Bea,” I said.
“Hey, Mike,” she called out. “Come help us.”
Mercer and Mike were behind me seconds later.
“Make yourself useful, Bea,” Mike said. “I’ll hold
her legs.”
He put his hands around my calves, squeezing them
to reassure me that all was okay between us.
I reached back and ruffled his thick black hair.
Mercer opened several closet doors until he found
a stepladder. He helped me down and, with his great height added to the three
steps, was halfway inside the cabinet when he called out, “There’s a false
front here.”
He leaned to the side, pulling out the piece of
wood that formed the crossbar for the single shelf.
In the space behind the center cabinet—a good four
feet wide—was the side of the metal chamber we had seen from above.
Directly in front of Mercer, in the seam of the
concealed door, was a keyhole—an old-fashioned design, which looked like it would
accommodate a notched tip turned with an ornate bow.
“Call the lab, Mike,” I said. “Get someone up here
with the key that I found in the library stacks.”
