Free A Game of Greed and Deception: A Mystery Drama by John Mathews Page A

cover a door up like they did with the one in the closet? There was an
arrow drawn from the living room to the connecting rooms below. She folded the
map back up and set it on the coffee table. Then she grabbed the lantern and
headed into the living room.
    Tammy
peered behind the bookshelf looking for some kind of doorway. She moved her
hand along the wall and felt nothing unusual. Then she looked behind the rustic
desk and sofa. She scoured every inch of wall space and could not find any
trace of a door or opening. She was certain that if at one time there was a way
down into the basement from inside that cabin it must have been sealed off.
    ***
    Maria
took a tea cup from the kitchen and filled it with the water from the melted
snow. She drank some despite a slightly bitter taste. She went back into her
room and gazed out the window. The sun shone through the tree tops as it was
near midday. If dad is out there
somewhere then we’ve got to help him. How could he just disappear and not tell
us anything? She pushed her face against the window and looked up to see
large icicles hanging down from the rooftop near the top of her window. She
wanted to hold one. It might even melt and taste better than the snow water,
she thought. She climbed up on a small chair, opened the window, and reached
outside. It was hard to get a grasp on the icicle. Maria reached out further as
she stuck her head out the window and looked upwards.
    Suddenly,
she screamed and fell back on the chair. She rubbed her eyes, gathered some
courage, took a deep breath, and got up to look again. A snow owl was lying
just off the edge of the roof. It was dead with a sharp nail file pushed into
one of its eyes, and many of the feathers had been removed. Some fresh blood
had dripped down onto the top of an icicle. Maria gasped and covered her eyes
for a moment, shocked that someone would do such a terrible thing, before
taking one last peek. The nail file was purple and pink with an alabaster
handle. She had seen this before in her stepmother’s purse and was sure that it
belonged to her. Horrified, she closed the window and jumped down off the
chair.
    ***
    Tammy set the lantern on the
coffee table to examine it. There was a handle on the top to carry it with and
a knob at the bottom. She removed a glass encasing from the base of the
lantern. Then she turned the knob on the base and a small wick extended
upwards. The base seemed to already be filled with oil. She took her lighter,
lit the wick, and the lantern burned brightly. She adjusted the height of the
wick so that the flame was not too high, and replaced the glass encasing.
    Tammy
went into the walk-in closet. The stools were as she had left them, keeping the
thick, pinewood door secured. She removed the stools one at a time and set them
aside. She turned the handle and opened the door. She looked at the stone
stairway leading downward. With the lantern in one hand and her heart pumping
quickly she started to walk down the stairs, making sure to leave the door open
behind her.

SEVEN
    The stairs were narrow and
turned to the right as they descended. When she got to the bottom of them,
Tammy noticed right away the particular flooring. Carefully placed red slate
tiles had been laid down and sealed with grout to form a walkway. The tiles
were old but in very good condition. She stepped slowly along the narrow path
and felt the air to be a bit warmer and drier than throughout the rest of the
cabin. Looking up, she saw a ceiling that curved from left to right in the
shape of an arch. It had been meticulously crafted from bricks of all different
sizes. The walls were made from a hard, charcoal colored clay. The walkway
gradually sloped downward until it ended at a red brick archway which led into
a larger room. Tammy slowly entered the room and set the lantern down to have a
look around.
    The
ceiling was made of the same multi-shaped brick layout, but with less of a
curvature. In the back of the ceiling were three