Chapter 96 - The False Bottom
"Put the gun down, Myrna," Alistair whispered, his breathing growing shallow. "We have about ninety seconds before they reach the porch steps. If they catch us in the open kitchen, we're dead."
I didn't lower the revolver, but I tucked it against my hip, stepping away from the counter. "The grandfather clock. Is that what they're after?"
"They want the names," Alistair said, limping toward the hallway. "Arthur kept the original signed promissory notes from ninety-two. The ones linking the shipping routes to the offshore trusts in the Bahamas. If those surface in the federal investigation, Miller and three sitting state senators go to prison for the rest of their natural lives."
I followed him into the narrow, wood-paneled hallway. The tall mahogany grandfather clock stood in the corner beside the coat rack, its brass pendulum swinging with rhythmic precision. Arthur’s grandfather had built it in 1912. For fifty years, I had dusted its glass panels, wound its weights every Sunday, and listened to its chimes marking the quiet passage of our lives.
Alistair reached for the wooden molding at the clock’s base, but his hands were shaking violently from arthritis and cold.
"Move," I commanded, shoving him aside with my shoulder.
I knelt down on the cold floorboards. I knew every notch and scrape in that wood. Beneath the bottom trim, Arthur had fitted a tongue-and-groove slider secured by two concealed brass pins. I pressed the second pin from the left with my thumb until I felt the counter-spring give way.
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A hollow wooden panel popped out two inches. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth and heavy twine, rested a thick bundle of documents and an old metal lockbox.
Outside, the heavy, deliberate crunch of boots on frozen gravel reached the porch stairs.
