[November 26th] [The Rockford Files-related] Chronicles of a Friendship, 26

[insaneladybug.livejournal.com]

Title: Chronicles of a Friendship, scene 26
Day/Theme: November 26th - The Girl's Cage
Series: The Rockford Files (using characters from The Queen of Peru episode)
Character/Pairing: Ginger Townsend, Lou Trevino
Rating: PG-13/T

Part 2 of three parts.


By Lucky_Ladybug

There were three doors in the large kitchen—the entrance from the living room, the entrance from outside, and the entrance from the servants' quarters. The latter had been explored all of once and then locked when Ginger and Lou had moved in.

There had been no real reason for closing it off, at least, not that they consciously knew of. They simply didn't need those rooms and had mutually decided to seal them until such time that they felt otherwise. As Lou approached the dark wooden door now, fumbling with the lesser used of the keys that had come with the house, he had to admit that he was wondering why.

"Don't you think it's weird that we closed these rooms off, Ginger?" he said. Finally locating the right key, he fit it into the padlock and turned it. The heavy lock clicked and the bolt slid upward.

Ginger stood by, observing the grand re-opening of the back hallway. "I don't know," he said flatly. "The padlock was already there, really. We just snapped it shut and decided to leave it that way."

"Yeah, I guess. But why?" Lou removed the padlock and undid the rest of the locking mechanisms. As he took hold of the door and pushed it open, the long, dark pathway revealed itself to them.

Ginger looked displeased by the musty odor. "So we wouldn't have to deal with the treacherous stink," he declared.

Lou coughed. "Well, it shouldn't be as bad as the basement, anyway. And I think we mostly aired it out of down there."

Ginger reached and pulled on a string hanging from the hall ceiling. A light clicked on, illuminating a large portion of their path. He started down, prompting Lou to hurry after him.

"The servants' kitchen is right here," Lou announced, pausing to look into an open doorway.

"I know; I looked," Ginger replied. "We went all through that kitchen in the past and didn't find anything not belonging in a kitchen. Actually, we scarcely found anything that did belong, either. It's rather strikingly bare."

"No arguments there." Lou sighed and kept walking. "But we really oughtta keep these rooms in better condition. There's no telling when we might need one of them."

Ginger pushed open the door to a bedroom. It gave an ominous creak, revealing the old and partially covered furniture and wooden walls.

"Well, perhaps one reason we left these rooms alone is because they certainly weren't given the same amount of attention from the interior decorators," he said. "They're very plain."

"I hope that was the only reason," Lou muttered.

"And not that we somehow sensed that something was wrong with these rooms?" Ginger grunted. "I haven't sensed any such thing so far."

Lou sighed. "I just hope we're not gonna get some bad surprise about our house."

"Such as that it's a hundred years old and Jennifer actually lived here?"

"Who knows," Lou returned. "Or maybe it's a copy of her house."

"Ordinarily I would say you're a chronic worrier, but after our experiences, I wouldn't dare." Ginger peered into each room they approached. Mostly the rooms consisted of very basic bedroom furniture. Now and then there would be a mirror or a painting on the wall.

Lou paused upon seeing a photograph. "Hey, there's a person," he announced, wandering into the room. "I wonder who he was."

Ginger followed, watching as Lou took the picture off the wall and looked for any possible identification or a way to extract the photograph from the frame. "Anything?"

Lou sighed in frustration. "Nothing." Finally he put the picture back on the wall, not knowing what else to do with it.

There were no clues anywhere in the room, so the two of them finally moved on. The next door was ajar, and as Ginger started to come up on it, he stopped and did a double-take.

"What is it?" Lou exclaimed, almost plowing into him.

Ginger pushed the door open farther. "I thought there were people standing in here."

"Huh?" Lou peered into the room, rocking back at the sight of half a dozen assorted lifelike statues. "I don't remember seeing these things when we were looking in here before!"

Ginger strolled in and up to the nearest figure, which had been fashioned to look like a 1920s flapper. "Wax," he reported, running his fingers over the raised upper arm. "I remember seeing them, but I could have sworn I shut the door upon departing the room."

"Was I here at all?" Lou said in amazed disbelief.

Ginger thought about it. "I'm not at all sure you were," he admitted. "If I remember correctly, you had gone on ahead. I may have mentioned the figures in passing, but I don't think you went back for a look."

"Weird. Who the heck would've made these?!" Lou wandered amongst them, stopping near a man in a long dinner coat and top hat.

"There should really be some manner of identification," Ginger frowned, tipping the flapper to look at the soles of her feet. "But there is not."

"There's probably something we're just not getting," Lou said, "like an initial or a design hidden in the folds of the clothes or something. Somebody that could make these would be awfully proud of their work. They'd have signed them in some way."

"I agree, unless they were a cliché frustrated artist," Ginger grunted. "Some of them are never satisfied with their work, even if there is no reason for displeasure."

They stopped and looked around the room one last time. The only other objects were several empty square crates, a shaded pole lamp in a corner, and a closed and locked grand piano.

"I wonder if the piano's still good," Lou mused. "If it's not, we could probably sell it."

"Unless we truly are experiencing spirit activity," Ginger said as he inspected the lock. "If we summoned it by merely going through those items in the basement, I'd hate to think what selling part of the property might cause."

Lou cringed. "Good point." He ran his hand over the closed cover. "But it wouldn't do us any good; neither of us play."

"Mum wanted me to take lessons once," Ginger said. "There wasn't really anyone to teach me except an old bat all the children were afraid of. I went mainly to show them they were all being ridiculous."

"And were they?" Lou blinked.

"She was certainly an eccentric," Ginger said. "But she wasn't a witch. And she most definitely wasn't the real-world equivalent of the witch in the Hansel and Gretel fairytale."

"The other kids were saying that?" Lou exclaimed.

"You know how preposterous children's imaginations are," Ginger said.

"True," Lou relented. He walked away from the piano and towards the door. "So did you learn anything from her?"

"A few things that I've probably forgotten." Ginger lingered for a moment at the piano but then turned, not sure he wanted to play this piano even if they could get it unlocked.

The rest of the corridor was similarly bare and gloomy, with the rooms sparsely furnished and unhelpful. The only other vaguely interesting object was a locked trunk in one old bedroom. It smelled of must and refused to open with any of the keys on Lou's keyring.

"Do you think we should get a crowbar and try to pry it open?" Lou wondered.

Ginger grunted. "I brought a small crowbar, just in case we would need to force something open." He took it out from inside his coat and handed it to Lou, who looked it up and down and went to work on the lid with it. "We might as well see if it works."

The lock was rusted and soon popped free, to Lou's relief. He pushed back the lid, staring into the cavernous trunk. "This thing's deep."

Ginger bent down to look. "What's that?" He reached inside, running his fingers over what looked like several man-made indentations in the wood.

Lou blinked, squinting at the marks. "Hey," he gasped. "It's words!"

Ginger took out his penlight and shined the small beam on the wall of the trunk. "‘Help,'" he read. "‘I can't get out.'"

Lou stared, his eyes wide. "Somebody got trapped in this thing?!" He felt around the walls and up on the lid, seeking any signs of other messages. "There's something on the lid!"

Ginger looked up, flashing the penlight on the spot Lou indicated. "‘Jennifer, 1910.'"

Lou slumped back. "Jennifer again," he moaned. "Well, she must have been rescued in time, at least. You said that death certificate said 1918 and that she died of the flu."

"Yes." Ginger paused. "Although when I think of it, the 8 on that certificate looked somewhat odd."

"Yeah?" Lou looked to him. "Odd how?"

"As though another number had been behind it and they tried to erase it on a typewriter," Ginger said.

Lou gripped the edges of the trunk, stunned. "Like maybe a zero?"

"Perhaps." Ginger leaned back. "It could have just been a simple typing mistake at the time. But if it wasn't, and the actual death date was 1910 before they altered it, such a change would have had to have been made sometime after 1918. And what would have been the purpose of it then?"

"Maybe they moved somewhere else and they didn't want anyone to know when Jennifer really died?" Lou suggested.

Ginger nodded. "But why? A child being trapped in a trunk could have easily happened during play. It's a tragic accident, not something of which to be ashamed."

"Unless . . ." Lou trailed off, sickened by the thought that had leaped into his mind.

"What?" Ginger prompted.

"Unless it wasn't an accident," Lou finished.

"Murder?" Ginger's eyes narrowed. "The product of a hateful parent or other adult?"

"It seems like it would've had to have been someone in the family," Lou said in horror. "If it was someone else, you'd figure they'd want to let the news out."

"Perhaps we're both overly suspicious," Ginger said. "It could have been an accident, the result of a neglectful adult, and they didn't want to let it be known because of that."

"Yeah." Still haunted, Lou made one last search of the trunk before closing the lid. "Why the heck do you think they'd keep this thing around, though? Why not burn it?"

"They may not have had the option to do that without someone noticing," Ginger said, straightening. "Perhaps it was a family heirloom, not something they could easily be rid of."

"So they'd just lock it and stick it where no one would see it," Lou mused.

"All of this could explain why there's so little information on the family," Ginger said. He gave the room one last glance before crossing to the door.

Lou got up and hurried after him. "And maybe at least one person, her dad or something, hasn't ever been at peace. So when we started stumbling on all that stuff, he tried to contact us so we'd want to learn more and start piecing the truth together."

"That's possible," Ginger agreed. "On the other hand, he could be a juvenile twit who gets his jollies by tormenting people in the middle of the night and his usage of the name Jennifer is a mere coincidence."

"Do you really think that?" Lou wondered.

Ginger grunted. "I don't know." Part of him could not stand to admit to believing the other, more bizarre and disturbing possibility. He wasn't fully sure he did. He would rather cling to something, anything, that sounded more reasonable.

Lou sighed. "Yeah. I don't know what to believe, either. I mean, all we've really got is a handful of evidence that could add up to mean any number of things."

They headed out of the room and checked in the remainder of the rooms, finding nothing else of interest.

Lou shook his head when they came to the end of the hall and a boarded-up door that had once led outside. "That was really weird," he said. "And really creepy when you think about that trunk." He idly tugged on one of the boards, but upon finding it tight, he left it alone and stepped away.

Ginger nodded. "Let's go back," he said. "There's nothing more we can do here."

"And there's still other places to check," Lou said. "Like those rooms on the second floor we don't use. I guess we could look in the attic again, too."

"I suppose we should. But first we should have dinner." Ginger took out his phone, studying the time.

Lou leaned over to look. "Holy cow! I got so caught up in this that I wasn't even thinking about food."

"But you probably will now, won't you?" Ginger said.

Lou's stomach growled in response.

Lou sighed, shaking his head. "It looks like it."

A bit amused, Ginger walked with him up the hall and into the kitchen.

It was with haunted relief that Lou replaced the padlock and clicked it closed. He had no intention of going back into those rooms any time soon. It was a part of their house that he would just as soon leave to wander in the past.

His only question was whether they would be allowed to do that. They knew firsthand how restless ghosts could get—and how determined to keep the past alive.

Maybe with any luck, Ginger was right about the mysterious caller being a prankster.

Lou didn't, however, want to bank too much on that.

He was quiet as he prepared dinner. Ginger, sitting silently and watching, and helping where needed, noticed. "Usually you have more to say than this," he grunted.

Lou sighed, his shoulders slumping over the pot of potatoes and carrots he was slicing. "I guess I keep thinking about that trunk," he said. "And hoping that we're wrong and they got her out."

Ginger nodded. "Perhaps they did. We don't know they didn't."

"Dying from the flu would be awful, but it seems like suffocating in that trunk would be a lot worse." Lou gripped the knife. "Especially if it really wasn't an accident."

"There's probably no way to prove whether it was or wasn't," Ginger said. "Most likely there's only more evidence that could go either way."

"Although you'd have to wonder why some ghost would want us to find this stuff out, if there's really no way we can connect it up."

Ginger handed Lou another carrot. "Perhaps keeping the secret was what drove him to unrest. Then, simply knowing other people had learned all that could be learned would be enough to put him at ease."

"I guess." Lou sighed as he cut up the carrot. "Who'd ever think all of this would be hanging out in our house? I'm almost scared to know what's next!"

"And we still don't know how that cult fit in," Ginger frowned. "Perhaps it's completely unrelated and there is nothing more to find now that we discovered that medallion."

"That's what I'm gonna hope," Lou said.

Ginger nodded in approval. He hoped the same thing.

"I really hope there's nothing weird on the second floor," Lou said. "My room's the closest to that hallway."

"I suppose we'll find out after dinner," Ginger said.