Coup de Glace

by P. D. Workman

  “Yes.”

  “Was it Mr. Ware he got angry with?”

  “Any of the neighbors… but yes, he and Mr. Ware had a number of arguments over boundaries and land rights.”

  “And that new fence… is it in the same place as the old fence?”

  Cindy studied it, considering, before slowly shaking her head.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  N

  o, that’s not where the old fence was,” Cindy said slowly. “It’s much closer.”

  “And you don’t know when he put it up?”

  “No. He keeps the grounds,” she motioned to the cemetery, “so that I don’t have to. I always thought it was very kind of him. Not like he was when I was a little girl and he was always angry and yelling at us.”

  Eliminating the need for Cindy to go to the cemetery herself. She obviously didn’t visit her father’s grave.

  “But why would he move the fence line?” Cindy asked. “Who cares where the fence is?”

  “Your father did.”

  “I know, but he was fussy about things like that. I never could understand why it mattered. So what if it’s not exactly on the property line? That doesn’t change anything. Just because he moves the fence, that doesn’t mean he moves the boundary.”

  Erin frowned and looked at Terry. He pursed his lips. “Actually, Miss Prost, it can.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “It’s something called adverse possession. Squatter’s rights.”

  “He wasn’t living on our land. He can’t claim that.”

  “No. But if you don’t object to the placement of his fence line, and it remains there for twenty years, he can claim adverse possession and get the legal property line moved.”

  Cindy stared at him blankly at first, then as she gradually processed what Terry had said, her face turned into a mask of fury. She cussed Mr. Ware out. “He’s trying to steal my property? That’s the reason he’s been so nice and offered to do the cemetery for me? So he could steal my property?” She shook her head. “Why would he? What makes an acre of my property so valuable to him? It’s not even cleared to pasture.”

  Terry gazed toward the fence line. “Why don’t we take a look?”

  They all moved toward the new fence. Erin thought about how Mr. Ware had previously approached them when they were at the cemetery, demanding to know who was there as if it were his own land. Had he been worried that Bella had noticed something out of place? That one of them would wonder about the grave next to Ezekiel’s? Or had Bella gone back there after taking the goats to the upper pasture, placing the necklace on her grandfather’s tombstone and he had struck her down while she knelt over the grave?

  She was nervous and wanted to take Terry’s hand for comfort, but he didn’t even seem to be aware of her as he marched through the trees, eyes ahead on the fence line. Cindy was still muttering angrily, bristling like an angry dog. They both moved faster than Erin, more used to tramping through the wilds, more confident of themselves than Erin. They climbed over the fence. K9 slipped under it. They moved in opposite directions, looking for something to indicate why Mr. Ware would want to add that land to his property. Surely it couldn’t be just more forest.

  Erin stopped at the fence, loath to go over and trespass on Mr. Ware’s land. But it wasn’t Mr. Ware’s land, it was Cindy’s. She had gone over the fence without a second thought. “Do you see anything?”

  Terry glanced in her direction briefly but didn’t answer. He watched K9 sniff around and studied the ground. Erin climbed over the fence, still feeling like she was invading Mr. Ware’s space, though she logically knew that she wasn’t, and he wasn’t going to come and run her off his land like a child who’d stepped on the neighbor’s lawn.

  Terry was looking down and appeared to be following something along the ground. Erin followed a distance behind. She wondered where the actual boundary line was and looked for the old fence posts or holes where they had been. But if it had been ten years or more since the new fence was erected, any sign of the old fence would be long gone.

  K9 barked and Terry hurried after him. It wasn’t an alarming sound; Erin didn’t think it meant that he had found anything worrisome, but something had caught his interest. Cindy had ranged off to the right, and when she heard K9 bark and saw Terry follow him, she hurried after him.

  “What is it? What did you find?”

  They disappeared behind a hillock and a stand of trees and brambles. Erin picked up her pace, not wanting to be left behind. She got close enough to see Terry kneeling down and Cindy leaning over.

  “Some kind of cave,” Terry was saying.

  There was the snap of a twig behind Erin, making her jump.

  Erin turned her head quickly.

  It was Mr. Ware. Not the smiling, chuckling tease this time. His face was red, and he held a big heavy handgun that looked like it might have been used during the civil war. It was pointed at Erin.

  “You’re trespassing on private property,” he growled.

  Erin swallowed and cleared her throat, having difficulty getting the words out. “It’s Prost property. Cindy’s right there…” Erin gestured, before thinking better of it and thinking that maybe she shouldn’t have pointed to where Cindy and Terry were crouched. But it was too late to take it back, Mr. Ware was already looking at the additional intruders, his brows squeezing down in a heavy scowl.

  “Get your hands up, all of you,” Mr. Ware shouted, loudly enough that Cindy and Terry heard and looked up to see what was going on.

  Erin raised her hands tentatively. She didn’t know if that was the correct response, but she wasn’t armed and didn’t want him to think she was. Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure everyone must be able to hear it.

  She had turned to look back at Cindy and Terry to see what they were going to do and make sure that they had heard Mr. Ware. In a couple of seconds, Mr. Ware had closed the distance between them and wrapped one long arm around her, pulling her against him.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Terry warned in a calm, reasonable voice. “Stop and think things through. You don’t want to be in more trouble than you are already in. Threatening people isn’t going to help anything. Let’s just all back off and take a breath while we think this over.”

  “You back off. Right off of my property.”

  “Your property?” Cindy screeched. “This is my property! Just because you put a fence on it, that doesn’t make it your property. My daddy was always on the lookout for people like you, trying to take what wasn’t theirs. I should have remembered that. I should have been watching out for you too!”

  “Your daddy was a pain in the neck,” Mr. Ware said. “He was paranoid about those stupid fences. What did he think he was protecting? More pasture land for the goats? There isn’t anything out here that’s worth fighting over.”

  Was there really not anything of value on the other side of the fence? Had he just misjudged the property line?

  Terry made a calming motion with his hands. “Let’s just talk about this. Let go of Erin, and we can all have a civilized conversation. If there’s any confusion over where the boundary line is, we can get a surveyor out here to establish it. There’s no need to go to such lengths…”

  “Nothing out here worth fighting for?” Cindy spat. “What’s this, then?” She gestured at the ground. “If there isn’t anything on my property that you want, then why did you move the fence?”

  “What? There isn’t anything over there. You people think every fox hole is a buried treasure. It’s worthless land. Just more trees and weeds.”

  Mr. Ware was clearly bluffing.

  Terry was watching Erin and Mr. Ware, assessing the situation, but he couldn’t help dropping his eyes to the ground too, studying whatever he and Cindy could see there.

  “I think there might be more to this,” he said. “It’s more a cave than a fox hole, and there’s a path worn in the ground. That means someone has been traveling over this path repe
atedly. There’s only one thing I can think of that makes someone keep going back to a hole in the ground.”

  “I don’t know who you think you are, cop, but you can go back to the city and forget you were ever here. This is my property.”

  “It’s my property!” Cindy argued back. “And this mine—if that’s what it is—is on my property. And I want to know what happened to my daughter! What did you do to her?”

  “You mean did she come snooping around here just like her mother?” Mr. Ware tightened his grip on Erin, his arm so tight around her that it hurt. She breathed shallowly. “You all think you can just come around here and poke your noses into my business? My legitimate and rightful business?”

  Terry started moving toward Erin and Mr. Ware. Erin stayed as still as possible, worried about the big gun.

  “You can just stay back there, young fella,” Ware growled.

  “I thought you told me to get off of the property. I need to go back the way I came if I’m going to do that.”

  Ware considered it for a moment. “Cindy first,” he said. “Get out of here and stay out. And you, just stay where you are, or I’m going to use this thing.” He waggled the gun in his hand to show it off. “Let me tell you, the mess that it leaves behind isn’t going to be pretty.”

  “No need to make any threats,” Terry assured him. “I’ll stay still. Miss Prost, I want you to do what he says. Go back to your car. We don’t want any violence.”

  “You think there hasn’t already been violence here?” Cindy’s voice was a howl. “Where is my daughter? What have you done with her?”

  “Just get out of here, woman! I never could abide the Prost women and their never-ending nosiness! Why can’t you just stay at the farmhouse and mind your own business?”

  Did he mean Grandma Prost? Bella? Cindy herself?

  Cindy had, Erin was relieved to note, begun to walk back toward the cemetery and her car, though not at all happy about it. Ware pulled Erin off the barely discernible path, causing her to stumble, so that Cindy could walk by. After Cindy walked past him, Ware looked back at Terry.

  “Take off your gun and drop it on the ground.”

  Terry didn’t protest, but immediately did what he was told, unsnapping his service weapon, removing it from the holster, and dropping it on the ground. K9 whined and sniffed at the gun, concerned about his master’s strange behavior. Terry stood with his hands at his sides, looking calm and relaxed. “You’re in charge,” he said. “Should I go with Cindy now?”

  Ware nodded. “Walk slowly, and if that dog makes even a twitch toward me, I’m going to blow him away.”

  As worried as Erin was for her own safety, she didn’t want anything to happen to K9. The dog was Terry’s loyal partner and she couldn’t bear to see anything happen to him.

  Terry looked at Erin, his eyes unreadable dark holes. She knew he would do whatever he could for her, but she didn’t know what he could do. Would Ware let her go once the others were off of ‘his’ property? Erin had a pretty good idea that he wasn’t going to be satisfied there. He knew as well as they did that kicking them off the property wasn’t going to make it his. It wasn’t going to keep anyone from returning.

  “Can I go now?” Erin asked, her voice quavering even though she tried to keep it strong.

  Ware looked toward the cave, uncertain. “Did they go inside?”

  “No. No, they just came over and saw the hole. No one went in.”

  One strong arm around her and the gun jabbing painfully into her side, Ware dragged her over to the hollow that Terry and Cindy had been in. Erin averted her eyes, not wanting to see the cave. If she didn’t see it, he couldn’t kill her for being a witness. He could let her go, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone anything.

  “Doesn’t look like much of anything, does it?” Ware asked his hot breath in her ear. He bodily turned her toward it. Erin stopped trying to look away and obeyed him, looking down.

  It didn’t look like a cave or a mine. Erin had been spelunking with Vic and Willie and Terry, and she had been in the entrance of one of Willie’s mines. But neither experience would have led her to believe that the crevice in the ground was anything of importance.

  “Get down and take a look,” Ware told her.

  “I… I don’t want to.”

  “Get down.” He pushed her away from him, throwing her down with surprising force. He might be an old man, but he wasn’t weak and frail. “You’re the one who started all of this, asking questions about what was none of your business. So you take a look.”

  Erin was on her hands and knees. She reached out and swept her hand through the long grasses and wild plants to find the entrance. What had looked like just a small hole and a twisting crack in the soil was actually much bigger, it had simply been camouflaged by all of the overgrown weeds. Erin parted them, crawling forward on her knees, to reveal a hole large enough for a man or woman to crawl in through. She nodded and backed up.

  “Yes… I see it now. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I don’t want to stay here anymore. I’ll leave you alone. You can…” she waved her hands at the cave, “do whatever.”

  “Go inside. Have a look around.”

  Erin felt like she was choking just at the thought. “I don’t like caves,” she confessed. “I don’t want to go inside.”

  He smiled at her words. “Crawl in. It’s bigger inside.”

  “I can’t. I was hurt in a cave once. I can’t do it.”

  He put his booted foot on her backside and shoved her. Erin fell on her face. A red and yellow lightning of pain shot from her face into her brain and, for a moment, she could see nothing else. She pushed herself back up, grit in her mouth, afraid that she’d broken her teeth or her nose. She tried not to inhale through her nose, afraid of sucking in blood. She crawled forward, finding her way more by feel than by sight.

  “Please,” she begged.

  He didn’t capitulate. Erin crawled farther in, feeling rocks under her knees, blinking and hoping that her eyes would get used to the dimness inside and that she wouldn’t be left in total darkness. Not again. Erin tried to breathe slowly, finding herself gasping, already worried that she was running out of air. When she had been lost in the caves before, Willie had brought oxygen. Where was Willie now? Why hadn’t they found the cave when they had searched for Bella the previous day?

  Because they had not known to search beyond the marked boundaries of the property. They hadn’t realized that the fence was in the wrong place. How were they to know? How would anyone other than the Prosts know?

  “That’s far enough,” Erin said. “Please. It’s dark. I can’t see. I can’t breathe.”

  He threw something at her that hit her in the elbow and made the nerve tingle all the way up to her fingertips. At first, she was disconcerted, thinking he had thrown the gun at her. Then she realized it was a flashlight. He had no intention of letting her come out, he wanted her to go farther. He wanted her to see what she was being consigned to.

  Erin fumbled with the flashlight. She found the switch and used both hands to get it turned on. She shone it around her and was surprised to see that she wasn’t in a narrow tunnel, but a large room. A natural cave. Tall enough for a person to stand up in. She looked back at Ware, who was in the narrower cave entrance behind her, holding the gun on her.

  “It’s… big.”

  “Yeah, and this is just the front lobby.” He crawled in and then got to his feet. He pointed to a tunnel that branched off to the right. “Over there. Take that one.”

  Erin shuffled forward. She didn’t want to trip and fall. Her face was already throbbing. So were her knees and palms. Her elbow was numb. She didn’t want to go any farther. What if he only wanted her to go in so that he could kill her and leave her dead body there, perhaps never to be discovered, like Grandma Prost? Had he walked Bella into the same cave the day before? How many women did he think he could kidnap? Surely, he understood that the police were onto him and there was no l
onger any escape. Cindy and Terry knew what he had done. They had seen him take Erin. Only a lunatic would think he could get away with further violence.

  “I’m tired,” Erin protested. She touched her face. “I’m hurt. It’s bleeding. Can’t I go home now?”

  “No. Take that passage.”

  “I don’t like caves. I can’t breathe in here.” Her breaths were coming in short, sharp gasps. With the two of them in there, the air couldn’t last for long. “Please just let me go.”

  He shoved her. Erin didn’t fall, but she was afraid that she was going to stumble over her feet and take another face-plant. She shuffled forward, aiming for the passage Ware pointed to. She probed the darkness with the flashlight, trying to see what she was walking into as far ahead of time as she could. What was she going to find down there? Bones? A decayed body? Rats? Bats? She felt suddenly woozy, and before she knew what was happening, Ware had caught her and lowered her to the cave floor, pulling the flashlight away from her.

  Erin covered her mouth, trying not to vomit. Her breathing was so fast she could no longer control it at all. She hunched over, her arm over her stomach and her hand over her mouth.

  “You really don’t like caves, do you?” Ware asked, chuckling.

  “No.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  H

  e let her kneel there for a few minutes, then grasped her arm and pulled her to her feet.

  “Please let me go home,” Erin urged.

  “Just shut your whining. Come with me.”

  Her body moved automatically as he pulled her along, putting out one foot and then the other to keep her from falling, but all the while she just wanted to curl up and cry.

  The tunnel was narrower than the big room Ware had called the front lobby. Erin could feel it closing in around her. She still felt dizzy and sick, but Ware ignored her moans and drunken swaying, taking her down the passage.

  They kept going. Erin saw tools along the way. She saw areas where there had been chunks taken out of the walls, though whether with a pickaxe or explosives, she didn’t know. She could see darker striations running through the rocks, but she didn’t know what she was seeing. Willie would have known. He was the miner. He would have been in heaven in the little underground cave system. It was just the type of place he was always looking for.