Okay, Drew, think. What if you let yourself down and hang full length by your arms, then drop to the basement below? She glanced nervously down into the murky darkness, imagining the jumble of sharp-edged pieces of machinery or nail-studded boards she might land on. No, the only sensible way out was upward.
Nancy tried using her arms to push herself up out of the hole, but after half a minute, she gave up. She didn’t have enough leverage.
Looks as if I’ll have to come up with plan B, she thought. Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly and began to pull her right knee up toward the floor. Her aching arms felt as if they couldn’t hold on much longer, but soon the toes on Nancy’s right foot were touching the underside of the floorboards. With one last effort, she turned her foot to one side and pulled it toward her. It just barely cleared the far edge of the hole.
With a loud sigh of relief, Nancy extended her leg onto the floor and let it take some of the strain off her arms and shoulders. She rested that way for a few moments, then pulled her other leg up and rolled cautiously to one side. If there was one weak spot in the floorboards, there might be others.
Just above her head, a little daylight filtered in through the dusty windows on either side of the front door. Nancy spotted her flashlight in a corner next to the door. She crawled over and retrieved it, then got carefully to her feet.
Beyond the yawning hole, the floor of the hall was thick with dust. A few pieces of old furniture kept the place from being completely empty. Nancy decided it was too dangerous to investigate the house. She’d have to find out about I. Wynn some other way.
Nancy squinted in the sunlight as she stepped out onto the rickety front porch. For the first time she noticed a small nameplate on the side of the doorframe opposite the bell. On it, the name Ignatz Wynn was written in small, shaky handwriting. Ignatz, huh? thought Nancy. That was hardly a girl’s name. What was the story here?
She checked the mailbox that was nailed to the porch railing, and discovered a letter. It was from the People’s Federal Bank, a bank statement from the look of it. It had been mailed only a few days earlier. Nancy put it back into the box. There was no need to read it; she’d already seen the transaction records of the account.
A movement in the house across the street caught her eye. Someone had parted the Venetian blinds and was peering at her through the slats. In the next instant the person was gone.
Crossing the street, Nancy knocked on the door of the house. No one answered, so she rapped harder. Slowly the door opened, just enough for Nancy to see a short, gray-haired woman in a worn housedress. “What?” the old woman snapped, gazing up at Nancy suspiciously.
“Excuse me, but I was wondering if you could tell me something about Mr. Wynn?” Nancy asked.
The woman’s blue eyes narrowed. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m his niece,” Nancy told her, mentally crossing her fingers.
The woman’s face softened a bit, and she opened the front door wider. “Well, I hate to tell you this, honey, but your Uncle Iggy passed on. He just lay down one night and didn’t wake up. It was a peaceful death, I guess.”
Nancy’s mouth fell open. “You mean, he’s—dead?” That was news!
“Has anyone—I mean, anyone else—in his family been by?” she inquired after a moment.
“I didn’t know he had any family,” the woman told her. “I saw a woman come by one day. And a man the next. But I don’t know who they were.”
“Was the woman small?” Nancy asked. “That would be my cousin, Marie,” she added quickly.
“This was someone else, then. She was kind of fat. The man was on the tall side. I didn’t get a good look at them. I mind my own business.”
Nancy smiled to herself at this last remark. “Do you know what’s going to happen to the house?” she asked.