Stipulations and Complications

by Becki Willis

  “This pathetic little operation nets me a nice profit every month,” the man hissed near her ear. He was so close she could feel his hot breath blow across her cheek. When she tried turning her head, he twisted her neck painfully in the opposite direction. His voice dropped to an ominous hiss. “Which makes disposing of you merely a bonus.”

  He doubled his elbow and bopped her forcefully on the back of her head. Madison’s neck popped forward. She bit down on her tongue as her chin banged against her breastbone. While she spat out a mouthful of blood and struggled to remain conscious from the staggering blow, the two men laughed and shuffled from the room.

  Time sputtered down to a crawl. Madison’s head was like a lead weight, sitting upon her shoulders amid a steady thrum of pain. A thousand needles pricked her arms as circulation ceased. Her back ached from the strained position. Her tongue was swollen and bleeding. She was too weary to chronicle the many other aches and pains that wracked her body. A sense of overwhelming fatigue seeped into her bones.

  It was several minutes before she gathered enough strength to speak.

  “D-Dewwon? You okay?” she asked around her thick tongue.

  “I think so.” His voice sounded hoarse. “You?”

  The slightest movement set off fireworks within her skull. She grunted a sound intended as affirmation.

  “Maddy?” Derron asked in concern. He twisted his neck around, desperate to see his friend.

  “Okay,” she said weakly.

  “Who are these guys?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “We have to get out of here, Maddy, before they come back.” When he tugged his hands, the overhead lights swung with a blinding strobe effect.

  “Too ti’ed,” she protested. How could she ever stand, with a head the size of a Mac truck upon her shoulders?

  “Maddy, you have to stay awake. You can’t go to sleep now.”

  “So sleepy.” Her head lolled forward, but the movement triggered a round of roman candles in her brain. Lights flashed before her eyes as she jerked her head upright once more.

  “Maddy, stay with me, Maddy,” Derron said firmly. “All I can see is the wall. You’re facing the room. Tell me what you see, Maddy.”

  She tried to focus on the table just beyond her reach. It refused to stay in place, floating haphazardly before her eyes. “Thwee tables. No, two. … One? No, two,” she decided, her eyes crossing with the effort to focus. She slowly named off items that she could see. With each listing, her mind seemed to clear. By the time she finished, she was almost capable of thinking straight. Her speech was improving, as well.

  “Are you more rested now?” Derron asked.

  “I think.”

  “Can you reach my hands? There, that’s it. See if you can tug on my ropes. My hands are small. If you can loosen the cable, maybe I can work one of them free.”

  Her arms were half-asleep and her fingers clumsy. As Madison tried to coax a bit of give from the tight bindings, she thought about the men who had left them here. There was something so familiar about the first man, something other than their brief encounter during the break-in. She had the impression that she knew him somehow, yet even before he rendered her semi-senseless, she could not quite place him.

  “I hear them coming back,” Derron whispered, stilling his hands.

  The men’s voices echoed along the stone walls as they approached from the opposite side of the cavern.

  “Looks like they’re still here.”

  “Not smart enough to get free.”

  A third man was with them. His voice was not nearly as humored. “What do you plan to do with them?”

  “I thought we could decide together.”

  “I say we shoot them and leave them lay,” the second man said. He was the older one, the one who had tied Derron up.

  “Can’t do that, Pops. We need the workspace. We have to start on that big shipment for Waco.”

  As the men stepped into the cavern room, the large space seemed to shrink. Refusing to cowl to them, Madison sat up straighter in her chair.

  “Aw, look at that. The princess looks as grand as ever, even all tied and trussed up like a turkey at Thanksgiving.”

  Madison eyed the man speaking, the intruder from the house. It was the first good look she had of him.

  Seeing her confusion, the man’s laughter had a bitter note. “Still trying to figure out who I am?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “You see me almost every day. Walk right past me, your Cessna nose stuck high up in the air.”

  Her forehead knitted into a frown. “Where do I see you?”

  He snorted in disgust. “Typical.” Without warning, his hand shot out to slap her across the cheek. “All you rich broads are the same. Every one of you!”

  Rich? He has me confused with someone else! Had her cheek not been stinging so, she might have even laughed. But the movement had triggered the fireworks again, and those were no laughing matter.

  “Cut it out, Paul!” the third man hissed. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Paul. Madison’s mind raced to recall having heard his name before. Hadn’t Amanda mentioned him a few times? She thought perhaps he was one of the cameramen at the Big House, but she couldn’t be certain.

  “Why did you steal the journal?” she asked.

  “To see what the old woman wrote about our family. To see if she knew about the tunnel.”

  “T-Tunnel? What tunnel?”

  His short burst of laughter was brittle. “Don’t bother playing dumb. I know you found the tunnel. In fact, I know just about everything you do.”

  “How—”

  “That was a pretty smart little trick your granny played at the restaurant the other night. I’ll have to remember that and try it myself.”

  Her surprise, this time, was genuine. “You were there?”

  “No, but your son told the story so well,” he sneered dryly.

  Confusion showed in her eyes. “But how…”

  “You really haven’t figured it out yet, have you? You’re nothing but a stupid old cow.” He leaned close to her face and said in a loud, harsh voice, “I bugged your house, princess. With your permission, I might add.”

  “You-You work for Amanda.” It was slowly making sense to her, penetrating through the throbbing pain in her head. She had a vague recollection of him being at Granny Bert’s, helping install cameras for the show. She looked at him more closely. She was fairly certain he had come to un-install the cameras, as well. “But you took the cameras out.”

  He lifted his shoulder in a noncommittal shrug. “Could be I overlooked a mic or two.”

  “You’ve been bugging the house?” Madison asked in outrage. “Listening to everything we say?”

  “Every boring word. Your daughter does like to go on, doesn’t she? I know all the senseless gossip from The Sisters High, the words to every last cheer, and how her grades are slipping because she’s worried about your new romance with the chief of police. She hasn’t told you that she failed her last math test, by the way.”

  Before she could dwell on that piece of information, Paul the cameraman gave her a smug smile. “Of course, once in a while I hear something useful. Like the fact that the journals did exist. Hearing you hash out all your theories helped me to plan my next move. And of course it was quite handy, knowing you were coming out here again today.”

  “So it really was an inside job,” Madison murmured. “You’ve been able to hear everything we say and do, because you had access to the cameras and the mics. And you could get around the alarms because you work at the house.”

  “I not only work there and have access, I’m the one who set it all up to begin with,” he told her smugly. “Even the alarms.”

  “This-This was all Amanda’s doings?”

  He snorted with disdain. “Look around you. She’s another one of you rich broads. Does this look like her style?” With an exasperated shake of his head, he explained what she was o
bviously too stupid to comprehend. “When I heard about the television show being filmed there, I made certain I was hired as a technician. A simple hack here and there, a few fake letters of reference, an altered document or two, and the head office suddenly sent a local expert in at the last minute.”

  “How convenient,” Madison said drolly.

  “Ain’t it, though?” His grin was diabolical. “As lead camera technician, I control where the cameras go. I made certain they stayed away from the cellar, until that nosy worker happened to discover the hidden staircase, and, hence, the secret room and its skeleton.”

  A vague memory surfaced. “That was you that day, wasn’t it? You ran in with a second camera, trying to get in front of us.”

  “I wasn’t sure where he was leading you. What he had discovered.”

  “You thought he had found the tunnel,” Madison realized.

  “But instead, it was just a skeleton.”

  The older man beside him clearly blanched. He could not stop the dance of revulsion that shimmied through his shoulders. “All those years, we were down there with a dead body, and never even knew it,” he whined.

  So no one had known about the skeleton. In her estimation, this confirmed that the remains definitely belonged to Clarence. But so much else was still left unexplained.

  “What-What were you doing down there?” she asked.

  “What do you think?” Paul smirked.

  Madison answered with a disdainful look and a question of her own. “Did Miss Juliet ever know?”

  The second man answered. “That old broad had no idea what went on right beneath her own house.” He spat out a stream of tobacco juice, not bothering to turn his head. It hit Derron, leaving a dark stain to trickle down the leg of his red jumpsuit.

  With a high-pitched squeal, Derron jumped, causing the lights to bob merrily up and down. The other three men laughed and made crude remarks at his expense. The swaying lights gave Madison the perfect cover to jerk at her hands again, trying to wrest them free. She thought she felt one of the cables give, yet when she tugged, she found her hands were still firmly bound.

  “Served her right,” Pops continued. “Her and her highfalutin ways. It all started with my grand pappy. He cooked up corn liquor down there, right beneath her fancy dining room. Served it at some of her parties, too, though she never knew where it came from. All those years, and she never had a clue. Always acted so high and mighty, like she was better than our family. So it seemed only fair to replace the rinky-dink still with an even bigger operation. What’s that they call it, Paul? Poetic justice?”

  The third man was clearly losing his patience. During the entire confrontation, he kept to the shadows, his face never quite visible. His voice was sharp when he spoke. “Who the hell cares what they call it, as long as we call it a profit? You two have been yakking long enough. We need to start the batch for Waco. Do something with them and dispose of the bodies. Call me when it’s done.” He issued the brusque order before he turned on his heel and stomped away.

  An empty silence stretched in his wake. Madison dared a glance at Paul. Given the thoughtful expression on his face, she guessed he was debating how best to kill them.

  Stall! The urgent thought spurred Madison to speak up.

  “I-I don’t understand. Your grandfather had an illegal still in the basement of the Big House?”

  Paul wasn’t fooled. “You understand just fine. Your boyfriend figured it out last night. How they used the tunnel to bring in the corn and then cart out the liquor. My old granny didn’t need a fire to do laundry; she needed a fire to make whiskey.”

  Maybe it was the headache, but Madison was having trouble keeping up. “Wait. I thought it was his grandfather.” She cut her eyes to indicate the older man, knowing any movement would create starbursts in her head again. “But you’re saying it was your grandmother?” Her eyes cut back to Paul.

  “Technically, it was both his great-grandparents, my great-great.”

  “You’re father and son?” she squeaked.

  “Aw, so you’re not quite as stupid as I thought,” Paul grinned.

  “Maybe I am. You’ll have to explain it to me.”

  Actually, she thought she understood all too well. Miss Juliet had fired Ralph Bishop over moonshine. Apparently, the man had found a way to get even with her.

  She recalled what else she knew about the family. Miss Juliet had not granted them residency in her namesake town, labeling them as unworthy of citizenship. In addition to firing one Bishop as town gardener, various journal entries had referenced conflicts with the extended family throughout the years.

  Madison did not recognize either of the men, but she had admittedly lost touch with much of the community after moving away twenty years ago. Yet even though she did not know them, they obviously knew her.

  She had to keep the men talking. The more time she killed — poor choice of words, Madison! — the more time she had to think of a solution.

  She felt Derron’s finger slip alongside hers, sending her some type of message. She half-listened to Paul, half-decoded the tap of Derron’s fingers against her skin. One thing she definitely understood: Derron’s hands were free.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Do we have to spell it out for you?” Paul asked with a weary sigh.

  “It looks like you might.” Madison batted her eyes a few times, trying to look as stupid as he accused her of being. Would leaving her mouth hanging open help? Anything to get him talking and delaying the inevitable.

  “You might say we’ve had a longtime family business, conducted in part in Juliet Randolph’s cellar. Once the old woman finally died and left the house empty, we were able to expand our operation.”

  Judging from his speech and his overall demeanor, Paul was well educated and, in Madison’s estimation, better than this. This was a despicable occupation on every level imaginable.

  “So you left messages on the mirrors, moved things around, tried to revive the ghost stories to scare us away.”

  “But you were too stupid to heed the warnings.”

  “You stole the journal because you thought it had some big secret in it.” She looked up at him with guileless eyes. “Whatever could it be?”

  She understood Derron’s sharp thump of warning. Don’t overplay the dumb act.

  The older man, however, fell for her ruse. “She could have said something about the tunnel. About finding the still. If you ever made the connection to our family, you’d come looking for us.”

  This, she had to admit, was the part that truly did not make sense to her. Nor did the covert messages Derron scribbled on her palm with his finger. Confused by both, she did not bother to hide her frown. “I don’t understand. Say it again.” Let each man think her words were meant for him.

  While Pops repeated himself, Derron started over with his own message. This time she concentrated on her friend’s crude communication, understanding at least part of what he relayed. His hands were free and he had a gun. She had no idea what the rest of his plan might be, but it gave them a fighting chance.

  It was more than these men would offer. Madison had the distinct impression that Paul’s father was less educated yet more evil than his son was. He had a mean glint in his eye, whereas Paul’s eyes glittered with greed and ambition. Paul, however, had a quick temper. He seemed to harbor some personal vendetta against her, if his ‘princess’ references were any clue. Despite education and ambition — or perhaps because of it — the son might very well be the more dangerous of the two.

  “But the still operated years ago,” Madison said. “How would that lead us to a modern-day meth lab?”

  “You’re here, ain’t ya?” Pops snarled.

  “Not because of the meth lab. I had no idea it was down here. I’m here because of the property dispute…”

  It dawned upon her with sudden realization. She had it all wrong.

  Perhaps she was as stupid as a cow!

  “You’re- You’re
not a Bishop.” Her voice was faint.

  Pops was clearly insulted. “Hell, no!”

  Paul’s lips curled downward with wrath. “You don’t even recognize me. Typical of a rich princess like yourself.” He kicked the foot of her chair, jarring her with the force. “English Lit, Mrs. Bell’s class?”

  Stars exploded in her head from the sudden movement. Madison peered through them to the man standing at her side. A vague memory surfaced. “We were in the same class. You were a couple of years below me. We did a skit together for that literary meet.”

  “And you insisted on rewriting the classic,” Paul spat. “You refused to kiss me like the scene dictated.”

  “It was a free interpretation skit. We were instructed to put our own spin on an old story.”

  “It was humiliating! The mighty Cessna princess, too good to kiss a lowly Adams. Wasn’t it enough that your family had already stolen everything from mine? You already had everything. All I had was my pride. But you took that, too, in typical Cessna fashion.”

  It slowly sank in. “You’re Hank’s son and grandson,” she whispered. “The ones with control of the land.”

  “That’s right. The land was the one thing you didn’t take from us. We’re not about to let you take it now.”

  Pops — named Gerald at birth — joined the conversation, his voice bitter. “Truman Ford was my great grandfather. He was Miss Juliet’s right-hand man. Everyone knew she would leave her estate to our family. Truman and Lily were already gone, but Grandma Ruth was next in line. My father after that.” His face twisted in rage. “Me, damn it! Do you know how many times I heard my daddy say it would all be mine one day? He worked there for free, fixing up the place he thought would be his own. Then your granny stole it out from under us! Convinced the old woman to change her will. The Big House rightfully belongs to me and mine!” He paced the length of the tables littered with meth-making paraphernalia. “But we showed her. We got even, didn’t we, boy? We started the family business up again, this time bigger and better than ever. We didn’t bother with penny-ante liquor. We went for the big-time.” Gerald Adams spread his arms out, indicating his sorry enterprise.