Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

1800s and then restored in the 1950s for the enjoyment of an eccentric and extremely wealthy engineer who fancied himself an artist. Since no gallery in the Northeast seemed interested in showing his watercolors, a collection of amateurish renderings of local vistas, he created his own gallery and spared no expense restructuring and decorating the place. Several times a year, he would invite one hundred or so of his closest friends to a showing of his latest works, events that were well attended more because of the lavish spreads of food and liquor than the art hanging on the walls.
    What his guests didn’t know was that their host’s primary entertainment during these events was concealing himself in the very room to which I was now headed. The guest bathroom was located on the other side of the lobby under the stairs and was clearly marked. This was the facility used by Law Barn clients and most of the staff. The door to the other bathroom, which only a few of us frequented, was nearly invisible in the elaborate wall paneling of the coatroom and was further obscured by the coat rack that stood in front of it. There was no exterior doorknob. To get the door to pop open, which it did silently, you had to scoot around the left end of the rack and press the paneling in the right place. I did that now.
    The room that was revealed was an elegantly equipped restroom, outfitted with a mahogany vanity and old-fashioned water closet with a pull chain. The exterior wall featured a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, well stocked with classic fiction, as well as pulp fiction of the ‘50s. A small but extraordinarily beautiful Oriental carpet covered most of the floor, and an overstuffed chair sat cozily in the corner along with a small end table and a lamp with a tasseled shade. When Emma introduced me and my partners to this plush hideaway, we fell in love with it immediately and vowed to keep it a delicious secret among the four of us—and Grace, of course, who kept it spotless along with the rest of the Law Barn and saw that it was stocked with fresh soap and towels. Dubbed the Reading Room, it became a welcome retreat to which we could repair to make private cell phone calls, coddle headaches and cramps, or just close our eyes for a few minutes on particularly hectic days.
    It was some months after we had moved in that we discovered the reason for the secret room’s existence. According to a relative of the now deceased artist- cum -engineer, whose rather dreadful self-portrait hung behind Jenny’s desk in the lobby, it had been especially constructed by Mr. Watercolors to indulge his favorite pastime of hide and seek. In the middle of one of his parties, he would disappear from view, only to reappear disconcertingly next to some guests who had thought they were engaged in private conversation. Watercolors waited comfortably in his secret lair until his guests had consumed enough alcohol to be indiscreet. Then up he would pop, creeping about and eavesdropping.   In this way he was able to glean not only his visitors’ real opinions of his paintings but many bits of gossip that came in handy in his business dealings.
    My partners and Emma and I enjoyed the story and the room itself. It offered complete privacy and sanctuary from obnoxious clients. It was also enormous fun to have a hidey-hole into which we could vanish right under the noses of staff and visitors.
    As I enjoyed the scent of the special tulip hand soap we kept on the vanity, images from the morning tumbled chaotically through my mind … the wild geese on the cove, Emma’s shocked face, Mavis Griswold’s pleased smile. It had been an odd reaction to the situation, to say the least. Had I imagined it? No, I had not. It had crept across Mavis’ face against her will, I was sure. I debated the wisdom of mentioning it to Lt. Harkness. Drying my hands on the fresh guest towel Grace had provided, I decided to consult Emma before making up my mind one way or the other.
    As