The Hidden

The stairs to her apartment were to the far left. A sign hanging from a velvet rope advised No Admittance. She unhooked the rope and walked upstairs.

The whole second floor was hers. She had a kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom and even a guest room. It wasn’t fancy, but to be honest, she preferred it to the main house, which had been fully renovated to offer the rustic, frontier look guests expected.

In the main house, the parlor was spacious, and boasted Victorian furniture, period portraits and paintings, and a number of mounted animal heads, all of them at least a hundred years’ old. The dining room offered more massive heads, including a giant moose head that stared down at the large central table, which seated twelve.

The animal heads actually made Scarlet a little sad, but Trisha had told her that they were part of the tradition of the West and the guests expected them. Even so, Scarlet had never quite gotten used to them, and she had actually declined several meals at the main house because she felt so uncomfortable eating with the dead moose looking down at her.

Her place, however, was, in her opinion, just as nice as the main house, not to mention it was her own.

And neither her apartment nor the museum had trophy heads anywhere on the walls.

The apartment had been recently remodeled and refurbished. The master bedroom held two antique dressers, a washstand with a pitcher and bowl and an antique bed frame that held a very modern and comfortable queen-size mattress.

Scarlet loved her job here and was enjoying the emphasis on the Civil War, Reconstruction and westward expansion. It was so different from her work in Florida, which had focused on the Seminole Wars.

She walked into the kitchen and decided to brew tea while debating whether to go into town for dinner. She hadn’t actually left the property in a few days, so getting out and about was probably a good thing to do. She could become reclusive all too easily, she knew.

She was mulling over the strange pictures on the camera and pouring hot water over a tea bag when she heard a thump.

It was a loud thump. Loud enough to make her nearly spill scalding water over her hand.

She quickly set down the kettle and frowned. The sound had come from downstairs, where there shouldn’t have been anyone. She was certain she’d locked the door behind her.

Unease filled her. There wasn’t even a door between her and the downstairs, something she’d never thought about before.

She dug in her pocket quickly for her cell phone. After the camera incident, she didn’t want to sound like a paranoid idiot, but she didn’t want to take any chances, either.

She dialed the main house. “Hey,” she said when Ben picked up, “I’m just checking. Is anyone supposed to be downstairs in the museum? I just heard...something down there.”

“Not to worry, I’ll be right there,” he told her.

“I hate to bother you.”

“It’s a bother of about thirty steps. I’ll see you in two minutes.”

As soon as Scarlet heard Ben’s key in the door she ran down the steps to meet him.

He hit the switch that turned on all the overhead lights. “Let’s see what’s up, okay?” he asked.

“Thanks. I didn’t know—I thought maybe someone was supposed to be in here.”

He shook his head. “You, Trisha and I have keys. No one else. So what did you hear?”

“A thump.”

“A thump. Hmm. Well, let’s look around.”

The museum consisted of a single large room, with the platform holding Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir right in the middle.

They began to walk from one end to the other and found one of the frontiersmen on the floor.

“I’ll be darned. My great-great-whatever fell down,” Ben said.