“I guess. But what do we do now?”
“Stay calm. Maybe we can bluff our way out of this.” Who was I kidding? Anne probably knew somebody was down here. If not Nita and me, then somebody else.
The darkness was so total I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I was disoriented and unsure of what direction I was facing. As my eyes started to become more accustomed to the dark, I could see faint light coming from beneath the door at the top of the stairs leading into the kitchen. Not a lot of light, but enough to guide us to the stairs.
“Stay here for a sec. No sense both of us falling down the steps.”
I carefully felt my way up the staircase, holding on to the railing on one side and the whitewashed stone foundation on the other. At the top, I turned the door handle. It turned easily. But when I pulled, the door held firmly closed. A lock on the handle wasn’t keeping it from opening. I tugged again and the door gave way slightly but still didn’t open. Then I remembered seeing a hook near the top of the outside doorframe. Once fitted into the eye on the door, it would hold the door firmly closed.
The thought of being imprisoned caused my body to quiver. What would happen if we couldn’t get out? Who would take care of Inky?
No more waiting for Anne to leave. I pounded my fist on the door and shouted, “Hello! Anyone there?” No response. I pounded louder until pain shot through my hand and radiated up my arm.
That’s when I heard a light knock on the door and a familiar voice.
“Hello, Laura. You really should have minded your own business.”
Anne? I decided to play the innocent. “Hi, Anne. It’s me, Laura, down here with Nita. We came looking for you and decided to see if you were down here. Can you please let us out?” I tried to keep my tone light. “Maybe we can have that cup of tea together we’ve been meaning to have.”
“Now, Laura, you and I both know I can’t do that.” Anne sounded so normal and not the least like a cold-blooded killer.
I tried to sound just as normal and not like a trapped prisoner possibly left here to die. “Sure you can. Just unlock the door, and when we come out, we can talk about this.”
“Sorry, dear. As soon as I finish packing my car, I’ll be on my way. You really should have stayed out of my affairs. This is most inconvenient.”
I heard her footsteps as she walked away. “Drat.”
Earlier we’d seen suitcases in the hall. We knew she was planning to leave town. Could she be so coldhearted as to leave us prisoner in her basement? The answer to that was pretty evident. She had killed two men without a qualm. Would two more people make any difference to her?
I began feeling like a character in Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of the Amontillado,” when a man tempts his rival into a cellar with the reward of a fine cask of sherry and imprisons him there. Was that what was happening to us? We were being imprisoned, and we didn’t even have a bottle of sherry to warm ourselves. Why, oh why, had we left our bags locked in Nita’s car with our cell phones in them?
Drat, drat, drat. And we hadn’t told anybody where we were going.
Chapter 45
Empty basements, attics, and closets as much as possible to show ample storage space.
“What are we going to do now?” Nita called from the bottom of the steps. “She’s going to get away, and we can’t do anything to stop her stuck down here.”
I had to face the direction of Nita’s voice since I couldn’t see her or anything else for that matter. Nita was worried about Anne getting away, while I was worried about us being imprisoned in a cellar, in an empty house, with no one knowing where we were.
“Right now, finding a way out of here is far more important than catching Anne.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll simply call Guido and tell him we’re here.”
I sat patiently waiting for Nita to reach into her jacket pocket and discover her cell phone wasn’t there.
“I can’t find it. I must have left it in my bag. Oh, no. I left it in the car. Please tell me you have yours.”
“Nope. I left my bag locked in the car along with yours. Remember we decided to leave them there?”
“Georgette Heyer!” Now she had gone to romance writers. “Laura, you got us into this. Now what are you going to do to get us out of here?”
“I got us into this?” The stress of being locked in a basement, that was every bit like a dungeon, was starting to get to us fast. At this rate, how long would we stay sane? “You were the one who thought we should search the house using the feeble excuse Anne might need our help.”
I was irritated Nita was blaming this on me. “Maybe we should try sending telepathic messages to Madame Zolta and have her come rescue us.” Madame Zolta was the local psychic Nita had brought to the house of a local homeowner who had been murdered to sweep the house of negative energy. Long story.
“That’s a great idea.” She paused. “Do you think that’ll work?”
“Of course it’s not going to work,” I said, more caustically than I intended. Nita made no response. She was fond of Madame Zolta and believed she had abilities most mortals don’t have. I knew I’d hurt her feelings.
“Sorry. I was being sarcastic and shouldn’t have been.” I started slowly walking down the stairs, holding tightly to the railing.
“From what I remember before the lights went out, there are no windows, or they are boarded up. There may be a door to the outside, but I didn’t see one. Our only option is trying to break down the door going into the kitchen.”
“With what?” Nita asked.
“Whatever we can find down here.”
When I got to the last step, I reached out to determine if Nita was close. “I’m here. Take my hand. We’ll use the wall as a guide and make our way around the basement and search anything we come in contact with.”
We felt along the stone foundation until we came to a metal cabinet. My hand came into contact with some handles, and I gently pulled the doors open. I didn’t want anything to fall on us. I stuck my hands inside and felt shelving. Starting with the top shelf, I slowly moved my hands along the edge, coming in contact with dusty jars with lids. Filled canning jars. They must have been there for years from the feel of the grime on them. The other shelves contained jars as well. No luck there. “I feel canning jars. Full ones. Depending on the condition of what’s in those jars, we might not starve for a while.”
We continued to feel our way along the wall. My knee struck something hard. “Ouch!” I stopped and rubbed it. With each minute, I gained even more respect for Helen Keller.
My knees began to wobble and I felt as though my system was shutting down. We had just eaten, so it more than likely wasn’t a low sugar drop. If it wasn’t a sugar drop, then it must be the early signs of a panic attack. I couldn’t let that happen when I needed to keep my head clear and my body functioning well. “Why don’t we sit down for a while?”
We sat with crossed knees on the cold floor. The cold bypassed my flesh and went straight to my bones. I began to shiver. The rain and drop in temperature earlier in the day made the basement feel even colder than it would have felt this time of year.
“I’m sorry. This is my fault,” Nita said, her teeth beginning to chatter. “I shouldn’t have convinced you to come in here.”
“No sense placing blame. I could have said no.”
We sat quietly for a while. “What if we never get out of here?” Nita said with a shaky voice.
“Don’t talk like that. We’ll get out—eventually. Guido will be looking for you and someone will eventually notice that Anne has left town and wonder why.”
“What if we don’t get out? Nita asked. “It’s times like this that make you evaluate your life.” She paused. “Do you have any regrets?”
I thought about her question for a long minute. “Lots. But I particularly regret having an expired passport wit
hout a single stamp in it.”
Nita laughed—a good sign she wasn’t panicking. “I regret that I left Guido with a huge stack of dirty laundry. Oh, gosh.” Nita jerked upright. “I forgot to give Guido the new password to our bank accounts. I just changed it.”
“Relax. You can give it to him when we get out of here.”
I heard Nita settle back down. “I’m getting really chilled.”
“I know what you mean.” I thrust my hands into my jacket pockets, glad I had worn it when I left home. In one pocket, I felt my car key and pulled it out. I stared at it. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
“Look, Nita.” I held up the key, and then realized she wouldn’t be able to see it. “I found my car key in my pocket. If I trigger the panic button, it will set off the car horn and someone might come to investigate, especially if I keep doing it.” I held the key high over my head, pushed the button, and waited for the car horn to start sounding outside. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing.
“We’re too far away from your car for it to work,” Nita said, disappointed.
“Well, it was worth the try.” I put my hands back in my pockets. My fingers came into contact with something in my other pocket. I pulled it out, examining it with both hands. It felt like two small boxes of some sort. I held them up to my ear and shook them. Match boxes. How had they gotten into my pocket? Then I remembered Josh had given the matches to me the day I’d visited his shop with Geoff and Ron. I could hardly believe my luck finding them. Good old Josh. Had he foreseen my need for them?
I slid one of the boxes open and pulled out a match. My hands shook so hard I could hardly strike it.
Nita started at the erupting flame. “What the heck!”
“Matches Josh gave me.” The flame burned down close to my fingers, and I blew it out before it could burn me. “Nita, I’m going to light another one. When I do, quickly look around us to see what you can find. If we can’t find any old candles, look for an old broom or even a stack of newspapers.”
I struck several more matches in a row while Nita scurried around searching the basement close to where the matches illuminated.
“Here’s a broom. What do you want me to do with it?”
“Break off a handful of the bristles. I’ll set them alight. They’ll give us a burst of light but will burn out fast. When I set them alight, look around to see what you can find.”
I touched a match flame to the bunch of broom bristles. They flamed up quickly and put off a burst of light. After a few seconds, I dropped them to the floor and stamped out any embers with my shoe. “See anything?”
“Here, I found a rake. We can try using that to break down the door. And I found a stack of old newspapers.”
“Great. Give me the papers, and you get ready to run up the stairs when I light some.” I took wades of paper and rolled them tightly to form a torch. “See if you can get the teeth of the rake between the door and the doorframe.”
I lit the paper roll and Nita ran. I stood there like a torchbearer, wondering if any of the characters from my favorite mystery series ever faced such a bizarre situation as this. When the paper flared up too much, I dropped it on the floor and stood back and let it burn out. Thankfully, nothing was close enough to catch fire.
Nita yelled from the top step. “The rake teeth won’t fit between the door and the frame. I’m going to try wedging it under the door.”
I heard a loud crack.
“Christopher Columbus!”
Uh, oh. Now she had gone to historical figures. A sure sign her stress levels were escalating.
“What happened? Are you okay?” I felt my way over to the bottom of the stairs.
“The handle broke off.”
“It was a good try. I’m going to light another torch. Come back down and let’s think about what we can do next. I’m getting thirsty. Did you see a deep sink down here?”
Nita came back beside me. “Didn’t see one.”
I dropped the torch and let it burn out. We sat down again, the air around us smelling of smoke.
I tried to get comfortable on the hard floor. “One thing is certain. These old houses were well built. It would probably take a bulldozer to break down that door.”
Nita laughed. “Yeah. Too bad we didn’t bring a truck. We could’ve attached a rope to the door handle and had the truck back up to pull the door open.”
“All we’re missing is a truck—and a rope long enough to reach the street. We should have planned better.” At least we hadn’t lost our sense of humor.
A truck in front of the house. That triggered a memory. I recalled telling Tyrone about some of the features in these old homes. How they originally had coal furnaces. Workers would back a truck up to a house and dump a load of coal down a chute into the basement.
A coal chute from the sidewalk to the basement. Could we be that lucky?
“Nita, when I walked around the basement before Anne turned off the light, I saw the walls in the corner of the furnace room stained with coal dust. That means this house used to have coal stored here and must have had a coal chute. It may still be here.”
“So?” She said it as though wondering what that had to do with the price of tea in China.
“The chute goes from the street to the furnace room. If we can find it, we may be able to climb up the chute and push the cover off at the top. If that doesn’t work, we can yell from there and maybe someone going by will hear us.”
“How are we going to climb up a chute?”
“They don’t go straight up and down like a laundry chute.” I shivered thinking about my experience with one before. “They slope from the street into the basement, going under the porch. I remember watching workmen deliver coal to my grandparents’ house when I was a kid. The chutes aren’t that long or that steep. It might be worth looking for it.”
“I’m game to try anything that’ll get us out of here. What direction was the furnace room?”
I lit a match and looked around to get my bearings. “In that far corner. Think you can find your way there in the dark? We’re getting low on matches, and I want to reserve a few.”
Holding onto each other, we slowly made our way across the basement, bumping into a crate of empty soda bottles that rattled. Eventually, we made it to the entrance of the furnace room. The wooden door screeched when I pulled it open.
The coal storage area was located in the far corner. Using the wall as a guide, we made our way to the corner. I ran my hands over the wall in that area feeling for whatever covered the chute. My fingers came into contact with what felt like a piece of plywood pushed up against the stone foundation. For the first time that day, it seemed as though things might be going our way.
“Nita, give me your hand and I’ll guide you. Do you feel the edge of this board?” I positioned her hand against it.
“Yes.”
“I think it covers the entrance to the chute. See if you can get your fingers along the edge. When I say go, pull it as hard as you can.”
“Go.” We both pulled, and it gave away so easily we landed on our bottoms with a thump.
“Well, that wasn’t a challenge at all,” Nita said.
I felt along the entrance to the chute and was relieved to find that it hadn’t been filled in. “The challenge will be climbing up the chute.” I rubbed my sore bottom. First my knee and now my bottom. By the time we escaped, I was going to be one big bruise.
I pushed my head inside and was relieved to see a few pinpricks of light at the top.
“Can you tell how long the chute is?” Nita asked.
“Not really, but I can see a little light, so we’re not too far from the street. The chute’s probably the same width as the porch. With any luck, it’s only about fifteen feet—maybe a few more feet because of the slope of the chute.
“Okay, let’s give it a try. I’
ll go first. Wait here until I get a feel for how it goes.” I breathed in slowly through my nose and exhaled out through my mouth, trying to calm myself. Feeling a little calmer, I put my knee on the lip of the chute, stooped over, and pushed myself inside. The chute was wide enough for me to fit inside okay. Grime covered the inside, and it felt creepy. Between the dark and the grime, this must have been what it was like during the Victorian Era when young children had been stuffed inside chimneys to work as chimney sweeps. If our lives weren’t at stake, no amount of money would have convinced me to go inside the chute.
At first, I tried to climb using my knees but found there wasn’t quite enough room for that, even with me stooped over. Crawling on my stomach and using my forearms to propel myself forward seemed the only option. The chute wasn’t as I had imagined it would be—smooth metal like a children’s sliding board. It had been heavily dented from years of coal landing on it and each ding was encrusted with bits of coal. The smell was awful, and I could feel gritty bits of coal dust and dirt, and things I didn’t want to contemplate, in my nose and on my tongue. I started to cough.
“Are you okay? Want me to give it a try?” Nita’s voice sounded muffled, as though coming from a great distance, not the few feet that separated us.
“Yuk. It’s disgusting in here. I think I swallowed some coal dust.” I started coughing again.
After my coughing jag stopped, I pulled myself forward a couple of feet and just as quickly slid back to where I started.
“This isn’t going to be as easy as I thought. Bits of coal are digging into my arms and body.”
“How about if I push you?” Nita suggested.
“Thanks, but I don’t think you’d be strong enough to do that.” Sweat began dripping into my eyes, and I wiped my face with the backs of my grimy hands.
“I’ll tell you what. I’m going to scoot up a bit. When I do, climb in behind me. Stretch your arms and legs out to the sides of the chute as though to anchor yourself. Maybe with you there, I won’t slide backward, or at least not as far.”
Nita clambered in behind me. “Okay. But be careful where you put your feet. I don’t want a flattened nose. It’s not the greatest nose, but I’m rather attached to it.”
Laura Bishop Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 43