Connie knew that there was little she could do to prepare herself for the plunge into the icy water just beyond the tiny shelter. The temperature of the water was probably below freezing but she would only be under for a few seconds. The fact that she was naked would not make any difference. Even the scanty panties the others wore would not provide enough protection to save them if they did not surface quickly.
"On three," a voice sounded behind her. They each stepped out from under the shelter to the edge of the water.
She took a deep breath with each count.
"One." She breathed in and exhaled.
"Two." She took her final breath and held it.
"Three." She launched herself out from the dock and pulled her arms in tight to limit her exposed skin. The icy cold threatened to make her exhale, but she focused on holding her breath.
She felt herself stop sinking, but when she tried to kick back to the surface, her legs felt like they were encased in ice. Connie's eyes popped open when she couldn't move her legs. She saw the hole in layer of ice above her, and the mud too close below her, then everything went black.
Roger looked at the young woman encased in ice. She had been a part of his grandfather's estate for nearly a hundred years, an estate that was now his. "I wonder if she could be revived."
"Why?" Dexter, the butler scoffed. "She meant nothing to him. He just wanted to say he had a frozen naked body in the house. Probably just his favorite whore."
Roger shook his head. For his grandfather to take this much effort, she had to be more than that. He took reviving her as a challenge, and within a couple days had two specialists looking at the woman in the block of ice.
Roger looked into those soft brown eyes again.
"Her name was Connie," Dexter said.
"And can you bring her back?" he said, turning to the specialists.
"We believe so," a young specialist said.
"Do it," Roger said.
Connie opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She was warm. Damn, she thought. I've frozen to death.
She took another deep breath. The lights above her were unlike anything she'd ever seen. At least I'm not in Hell, she thought, as she tried to breathe normally. Someone moved beside her.
"You're awake," Beth said. "How do you feel?"
"How am I supposed to feel?" she quipped. "Some bastard convinced me to jump into a pool of ice water and I froze to death."
:"You're not dead," Beth said. "We managed to thaw you out, but it took a while."
Connie looked down at the blanket that covered her lithe figure. She lifted the blanket. Everything was there. Connie put the blanket back down and thought, what would Sherlock Holmes do? She moved to sit up, pulling the blanket up to cover herself. She'd jumped naked as a dare with veiled threats behind it, but now she was ready to get dressed and go searching for the SOB that made those veiled threats.
"I have someone bringing you some clothes, but before you stand up I need to explain something to you." Beth stepped in front of her.
"What?" Connie snapped.
"You were frozen for almost 100 years."
"Son of a Bitch!" she spat. "Where are MY clothes."
Beth shook her head. "We don't know."
After stifling the string of vile curses she thought of, she struggled to decide what came next.
"I'm here to help," Beth said holding out a pile of clothes that looked strikingly familiar.
"You mean fashion hasn't changed in a hundred years?"
"It circled back on itself."
Connie shook her head. At least one thing would be familiar to her. She looked Beth up and down. "You're a nurse?"
Beth shook her head. "Therapist."
"Shrink," she spat. "So what do you know about me?"
"Nothing. You were flash frozen in a block of ice and displayed in the home of a private collector for most of that time." she said.
"You're lying," Connie said, as the skills she learned working her way into the police department came back to her.
"The butler at the residence said your name was Connie, but that is all we know."
Damn, she thought. A rookie disappears after her first week as a detective? No one would give a damn. "I want to talk to that butler."
"I'll take you there after you've had some lunch."
Connie hesitantly nodded and followed Beth from the room. She did feel a little hungry.
Connie had read and re-read every Sherlock Holmes story she could find, she'd finished the last one just before that fateful day. The methods he used had helped her survive the arduous process of getting on the police force, and helped her solve a crime that had got her promoted to full detective. They had even given her a gun to go with her badge.
Now she was intent on observing everything she could. Finding any thing about the bastard that did this to her was the only way she could think of to move forward.
Beth knew Connie might react with anger. It was one of the stages of recovery, but the request about seeing the butler was not the pure anger of recovery or shock. This woman was determined to move... But to what end? she thought.
The short ride to the mansion reminded Beth why she hated this job. She was forced to observe the patient with a trained eye, and if she missed something, it would be her fault. This time she knew she was missing much of the wonder that Connie would be feeling. Connie had been silent through lunch, and she showed little outward signs of wonder at the self-driving cab that took them to one of the few old mansions still in existence.
"You aren't going to try to bust up the place, are you?" Beth finally said.
Connie looked at her and smiled. "I was a cop. The only busting up I want to do is to the bastard that convinced me to jump into that pool, and I doubt that will be an option."
Beth was about to point out that things had changed in a hundred years, but realized detective work like Connie was attempting hadn't. Beth decided that working on the problem of her past just might make the adjustment easier for her. If there were any clues to her past at this mansion, Connie would find them.
Roger answered the door. "Connie, I'm sorry."
Connie stopped herself from flattening the man in front of her. He looked a lot like the bastard that had convinced her to jump naked, but her training told her to stop and ask a few questions first. "Where are my things?"
Roger shook his head. "I don't know. I inherited you with the house."
Dexter stepped between Roger and Connie. "The boy's father and I were young boys here when his grandfather brought you here. Even if the old man had wanted to, the technology to revive you wasn't available till now."
"So where is my stuff?" Connie spat. "You can't tell me a pile of clothes with a badge and a gun in them just disappeared."
Dexter's eyebrows shot up, "There were gangsters and corrupt cops involved, so it is very possible,"
Connie took a deep breath.
Dexter motioned her and Beth inside, then closed the door behind them as they followed Roger into a sitting room.
When Connie had been promoted to detective, she'd had to refuse the advances of the chief. What if the dare had been a ploy to get rid of her? Damnit, she thought.
"My father spent his life trying to clean the name of his father, and help root out the corruption in the local police force," Roger said stepping forward to put a hand on Connie's shoulder.
Connie pulled away. She suspected he was trying to help, but she would have to learn a lot more about all of this before she dared trust him. "Where is your grandfather's secret safe?"
Roger looked at her puzzled.
"His father never found it." Dexter said.
Beth had been silent so far. "How do you know he had one?"
"Any gangster worth his weight in my time would have had a secret safe," Connie said. She looked around the room and then moved to a nearby easy chair and sat down.
"Are you alright?" Beth said taking a seat beside her.
Roger took a seat across a low wood coffee table.
Connie took a deep breath. "The only hope I have of moving forward without looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, is if I can find that safe, and learn what happened that day."
Beth put a hand on Connie's leg and was about to speak, when a fierce look from Roger stopped her.
"She's right," he said, then he looked at Connie. "I'll help you any way that I can."
Connie leaned back and exhaled. "Thank you, but right now, I need to think."
"Wouldn't it be easier to see if your family or friends were looking for you back then?" Beth said.
"I was an orphan, so no," Connie spat.
Connie thought back to the fateful day of the plunge. She was one of four women who had taken the then dangerous challenge, and as she thought about it, they all had ties to the chief. Damn, she though as she looked around the room. She would have to find that safe and hope it had some clues to what had happened to the others, or face the prospects of looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life, even if she was nearly a hundred years out of time.
The room reminded her of her of the mansions that she'd seen as a girl. Rich bastards that wanted nothing to do with a little orphaned girl. But she realized that this would give her an edge, as she had also seen where they hid their valuables, when they thought she wasn't looking. She looked around the room again, searching for something, anything that was out of place.
"Where was I kept?" she said after seeing nothing that might tell her what she needed to know.
"The study, upstairs," Roger said.
As they stood, Connie noted the look of concern on Beth's face. "If I don't find what I'm looking for, you'll have your work cut out for you."
Beth nodded as they moved toward the study.
The study was furnished in dark wood with bookshelves lining the walls. There was a fireplace on one wall, and on the other, an open space where Connie assumed she had been kept. "Has this room been remodeled at all?"
Roger and Dexter both shrugged.
"His father made sure you were always kept frozen, updating the freezer every time they came out with a new model," Dexter said. "We never really understood why."
Connie took a seat in one of the wing-backed chairs and leaned back into the comfortable leather. "Any secret rooms that you know of?"
Dexter hesitated as Roger shook his head.
"We suspected he had a secret safe some where, but none of the false walls or crawl spaces revealed anything."
Connie leaned back and took what she imagined was a Holmesian pose. She looked at the wall where she'd spent almost a hundred years in limbo. She struggled to take in every detail and then deduce what might have happened there. She remembered her study of the mob bosses in Chicago, and realized that at one point there had been a false wall in front of the space where she had been. The space that she had occupied did not extend to the two adjacent walls of the room.
"Are there any crawl spaces adjacent to this room?" she said.
Dexter shook his head. "The crawl spaces on either side of that opening ended at the attic."
Connie looked up at the ceiling. She surveyed the crown molding on the two sides of where she'd been kept, and then smiled. "That's what you were supposed to think."
Connie quickly moved toward the left side of where she'd been held. She climbed the book ladder on the adjacent wall, and then felt the crown molding on the left side. There was a click, then a section of the molding about as wide as a crawlspace slid out revealing a hardwood drawer.
Roger reached up and helped her lower it to a nearby table. The hardwood box had two flush drawer locks holding it shut. "We could cut it open."
Dexter shook his head. "It would damage the contents."
Connie nodded. "Secret safes usually had a booby trap or two." She reached up and realized that there was still a hairpin in her hair. She bent the pin, and inserted it into one of the locks. It clicked, then she opened the other lock.
The lid slid open, and there were her gun and badge on top of a stack of bound journals, and a couple of maps. Connie hesitantly took her gun and badge, then ran her hand over the journals.
"You may not like what is in there," Dexter said.
"I have no choice," she said. "I have to bury the past before I can move forward."
The bound volume that her badge and gun sat on was labeled Blackmail. Connie shuddered as she read about how the other three women had been pushed back under the icy water, and then their remains taken to the zoo as tiger food. They had each had information on the chief that would destroy his reputation. She stopped reading as the detail of her being found and moved to the gangsters home where she'd spent nearly a hundred years as an insurance policy against the chief had been detailed. On some level that criminal had saved her life. She thumbed ahead to learn that her chief had been killed and that she had been a trophy that the gangster's children would never understand... until now. She closed the book.
Dexter had been right, she didn't like what she'd found, but now she could look forward without having to constantly look over her shoulder.
"So now what?" Beth asked.
Connie looked across at Roger and smiled. "I suspect you still have some cleaning up to do for your father if these journals are any indication, but I have the repertoire to be of help. Are you up for a trip into the past?"
Roger looked at her like a deer in the headlights, as he considered her request.
"I'd be glad to help," Beth said. "Connie has a lot of adjusting to do."
Connie looked at Beth and smiled, then extended her hand to Roger.
After anther long pause he smiled and took her hand. "Deal."
"I will prepare rooms for our guests," Dexter said.
qed.
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Fascinating premise, Neil. This begs to be a novel with the characters fully fleshed out. I hope you will consider it. Best of luck to you on your writing journey.
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