“So far, so good,” Coleman said. She looked down onto the path and the homes nearby. “Can you see into the house?”
“No, the curtains are closed.” Henson had moved to one of the front windows then came back over to Coleman. “Around back?”
Coleman was already in motion and he followed her. Due to the design of the house and the foliage, they were mostly hidden from view as they went around to the right of the house toward the rear along a dirt path.
“This might be to the maid’s quarters,” Coleman guessed, stopping at a door. There was a concrete path that led to the far side of the house and presumably another part of the roadway
“Keep your eyes open, Bess.” Henson stepped close to the door and, using his ice axe, as quietly as possible chopped at the wood around the single lock until the door gave. They stepped inside, and he closed the door behind them, even though it no longer was able to latch. It was gloomy in the house, and smelled musty from the lack of human presence.
“Come on,” he said.
“Okay, boss,” she said, mimicking Stepin Fetchit.
“You’re hilarious,” he deadpanned.
Inside, the furnishings were tasteful and expensive, what there was of them. As Coleman had suggested, it seemed the home wasn’t used full-time, but was meant to be a getaway of some sort. The icebox was empty, though there were some canned goods in the larder.
“A summer home?” Coleman speculated as they looked around.
“Somebody with the silver,” Henson agreed. “But none of the furniture has been covered. Are they coming back soon?”
Coleman lifted a shoulder. They continued prowling. The two found the area that had been Ellsmere’s lab, but it was cleared out. Upstairs, there were bedrooms, bedding untouched. Back downstairs in what would be the study, there were animals mounted on the wall.
“What?” Coleman said, noticing Henson drawing in a breath sharply at the sight of the heads. “These dead deer and whatnot bother you? You mean to say them stories they tell about you skinnin’ a polar bear with just a butter knife wearin’ a loincloth ain’t true?”
He’d moved more into the room, glaring up at the head of the buck.
Coleman noted this. “Yeah, so he’s a hunter like you?”
“I hunted for food or hide to wear,” he said, distantly. Then brightening, “I get it now. What with his hatchet men running around in animal masks.”
“Who you talking about, Matt?”
He answered her as he jerked open drawers of a colonial-style desk. Nothing.
“Shit,” Coleman hissed.
Henson looked over at her. “What?”
“Pretty sure I heard voices outside.”
The front door opened on a creak. In stepped two older women carrying linens and cleaning supplies. From where they were in the study, Henson and Coleman could see them through the slightly ajar study door.
“Guess they’re here to clean and shut the place up,” Coleman whispered.
“Then we can find out who hired them. I already got a powerful notion, just want to confirm it.”
“You gonna rough up them old gals, are you, Matt?” She spread her hand imagining a newspaper headline. “Famed colored explorer arrested after assaulting two old white women.”
“What kind of idea you got?”
Coleman smiled. After getting a window open in the study and going outside, Coleman came back around to the front of the house and knocked on the door. It was opened by a heavyset, lined older face.
“Yes,” said the woman.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but I understand Mr. Davis is hiring on help to keep this here fine house going while he’s away?”
The other woman took in Coleman in men’s pants and leather jacket. “You wear that getup all the time?”
“Huh?” Coleman said. “Oh no, ma’am, just got through with a job packing apples off a boat is all. I gots a maid’s proper uniform and what not.”
“Well, I don’t know what Mr. Davis intends to do with this house long term. Me and Ophelia were hired to dust and close it up for now.” Her companion could faintly be heard humming as she began her tasks in another part of the house. Henson and Coleman had spotted various cleaning supplies, mop and so forth in there already. “You might check with the Albright Employment agency here in town. They’re the ones who hired us, care of him.”
“I ‘preciate that,” Coleman said and walked away. She met Henson back at the plane.
“You were right,” she told him. “A Mr. Davis owns the place. Who is he?”
A grim-faced Henson explained, “Fremont Davis. Among other things, he owns a shipping line and fancies himself a big game hunter. Big wig in the Challenger’s Club and was on the board of the National Museum who backed our seventh trip to Greenland.”
“The one where you finally reached the North Pole?”
“No, that was the eighth. The seventh was to fetch the Tent.”
“Get a tent?”
Henson was at the propeller and at her signal, turned the prop and the engine caught on the third try. He came toward the cockpit. “A name for a meteorite like you ain’t never seen.” He climbed in as she began turning the plane around to take off. “It was thirty-four tons and took us the better part of a year to dig it out and move it to the ship. The hardest time of all my years in the land of ice and snow.”
“That’s saying something,” she yelled back as the plane gathered speed.
“You can say that again, sister.” Henson sat back, not seeing the landscape drop away but the hunched backs of men sweating in sub-zero weather. “You can say that again.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Heave, heave,” yelled Amos Leeward as an assortment of white
