“I suppose not.” Erin sighed and looked around. She still had no clue who had come into the bakery to take Vic or where they had gone. They hadn’t left any trace behind.
“I don’t see any sign of him—of them here,” Adele said, echoing Erin’s thoughts.
There was an acrid smell starting to waft into Erin’s nostrils. She looked toward the door, wondering if it were coming from outside. “Terry do you smell—wait; the tunnel is under the bakery.”
Terry looked at her blankly. Everyone looked at her as if she were speaking another language.
“Not Auntie Clem’s Bakery,” Erin said. “What about The Bake Shoppe?”
It made perfect sense. The murder hadn’t taken place at Auntie Clem’s. Erin darted out the front door. If there was a tunnel under The Bake Shoppe, then all of the pieces of the puzzle fit. She could see the whole picture. She ran across the deserted street and down the block so she could access the alley behind The Bake Shoppe. It was getting to be a familiar route. Terry and K9 loped at her side, and Beaver not only kept up despite her load of paraphernalia, but passed Erin with a long, easy stride. Adele lagged somewhere behind.
Erin was focused only on getting to The Bake Shoppe. She was irritated with Beaver for passing her and going first. Wasn’t there some kind of professional courtesy that the locals should be allowed in first?
When they reached the back door of The Bake Shoppe, the door was hanging open, the strike plate ripped from the splintered doorframe. Rohilda Beaven had some serious skills. Erin flashed back to entering the bakery once before when the door had been broken. She tried to focus in the present. She wasn’t going to find a dead body this time. Just because it had happened before, that didn’t mean it was going to happen again. Besides, Beaver was there ahead of her. Erin wouldn’t be the one discovering a body this time.
Terry made a motion for Erin to stay back, and murmured to K9. K9 was totally focused, his ears forward and eyes alert, nose pointed like an arrow into the bakery.
Erin entered two steps behind Terry. She was not about to wait outside or to be the last one in the door.
The murder had been there. The drugs were being stored there. It followed logically that the bakery is where they would be holding Vic.
The kitchen was quiet and empty. There was no sign of having been a bloody murder there in the recent past. Charley had scrubbed every last spot away, hoping to be able to reopen.
And now she would be able to reopen, and it would be Erin who was out of business.
Beaver’s sidearm was out, but held down at her side. “This floor is clear,” she advised in a low voice. “There is only one set of stairs.”
“Let me go down first with K9.”
Beaver didn’t look happy about the suggestion, but she nodded agreement. Terry pulled out his gun.
“Erin, I don’t have to tell you to stay put until we’ve cleared the basement, do I?”
Erin nodded. “I will.”
Beaver gave Erin a long look before nodding she was satisfied that Erin would behave herself. Terry spoke to K9 in a low voice, Erin couldn’t make out all his words. K9 listened alertly, his body still. Then they started down the stairs. Beaver followed close behind, her gun held ready, close to her chin.
Erin stood by the stairs, listening intently. She heard a confirmation of “clear” from each of the professionals, then a low discussion between them.
“Can I come down?”
“You can come,” Terry called back. Erin still hesitated for just a moment before descending the stairs. It wasn’t her store, and she didn’t exactly have permission to be there. At least she knew, with Terry calling her down, that they hadn’t discovered another body or other crime scene.
The storage space was similar to Erin’s. Walls lined with shelves of cans or bags of dry goods, as well as a few aisles of freestanding shelves. The walls themselves were of varying building materials. Erin looked down at the floor. It was swept clean, no dust or scuff marks to show where anyone had been.
“Don’t touch anything,” Terry warned as he looked around.
“I won’t.” Erin scanned for any sign of a door. A hole or a crack in the wall, a hinge or swivel of some sort. There was nothing obvious. If there was an old tunnel, it was well-hidden. “You’re the treasure hunter,” she said to Beaver. “So where do you think it is?”
The woman gave her a grin. “You might think that’s just a cover story, but it’s not. I actually do hunt treasure as a hobby.”
“As well as working for the government?”
“No comment. Treasure hunting is fun and relaxing. Going new places and trying to solve hundred-year-old puzzles. Great way to vacation. And if you actually find something, all the better.”
“So what do you think? Is there a tunnel down here?”
“I’d like to see some old blueprints, but so far I haven’t been able to get them for any of these buildings. They are too old; if anything was ever filed municipally, it’s long since been destroyed. Measuring out the room might help. But it’s going to take some time. I don’t see anything obvious, no more than in yours.”
“If there is, they might have hidden Vic there. She could just be a few feet away from us and we wouldn’t know it.”
“You’re right,” Terry admitted. They were all silent, straining to hear any sound behind the walls.
“Vic?” Erin was afraid to shout; she didn’t want to attract any bad guys. But she called as loudly as she dared. “Vicky? Can you hear me? We’re here. Where are you?”
They again waited, but could hear no voice or other noise in response.
K9’s nose was quivering as he looked around the room, looking at Terry and obviously wanting to explore, but too obedient to break away from his master’s side. His ears swiveled this way and that.
“Let him go,” Erin suggested. “Tell him to find Vic.”
Terry looked down at K9. The dog was practically vibrating, he wanted to explore the room so badly. “Is Vic here, K9? Find Vic. Go find Vic.”
K9 rocketed away from Terry and started to cast for scent along one wall of shelves. He gave a sharp bark, pushed his body partway into the shelf, and scrabbled with one paw at the seam where the wall met the floor as if trying to dig.
Erin looked at Terry. They all hurried toward the wall, surrounding K9 and looking for some sign of a door.
“Help me pull the shelf away from the wall,” Terry told Beaver.
Erin didn’t see how they could move it. It was piled with heavy cans and fifty-pound sacks of flour. They would have to clear it off before it could be moved. But Terry and Beaver positioned themselves on either end and gave it a heave. It didn’t budge an inch. They both pushed and wiggled and shook it, looking up and down for some way to move it. But K9 must have just been chasing a mouse. There was no way that shelf was moving.
“It’s bolted to the wall,” Beaver pointed out, indicating a couple of anchors near the top.
Terry stepped back, his face sweating, lined with worry. “I don’t see how the tunnel could be here.”
But the treasure hunter wasn’t ready to give up. “Don’t be so quick to accept things as they appear.” She walked along the shelf, examining it from all angles. “There’s a way in. If the shelf is anchored to the wall, that means that the whole wall moves.”
“This isn’t TV,” Terry said impatiently.
“I’ve seen all kinds of hidden rooms. Even now, there’s a huge demand for safe rooms either to store valuables in or to escape to in case of a home invasion or looting. They can be incredibly well-hidden.” She inched along the wall, reaching through the shelves to prod anything that displayed some variation from the wall or shelf around it. Knotholes and planks and discolorations. Like Terry, Erin thought it was too hokey to be real. The tunnel had to be a red herring. A rumor someone had started to throw people off the track of whatever it was they were really doing.
Then there was a loud click. Erin’s mouth dropped open in surpr
ise. Beaver was a strong woman, that was obvious from what Erin had seen of her body when she had taken the bulky jacket off, but she did not have the strength to move six hundred pounds of dry goods on her own. Yet she was pulling on something, and the shelf and wall were sliding forward as if on wheels. The whole section of shelving and wall swiveled around and doubled back against the wall beside it. K9 was squirming around the corner before Beaver even had it pulled all the way open, Terry calling him to stop and stay. The hole behind the shelves was black as pitch, but when the shelf stopped in its full-open position, there was another click, and fluorescent lights blinked and flickered to life.
There was a body writhing on the floor, K9 attacking and trying to get a purchase. But then Erin realized that it was Vic, and K9 wasn’t attacking her, but was nosing her worriedly and licking her face. Erin dashed forward, pushing by Terry before he could process what was going on and call K9 off. Erin dropped to her knees beside Vic and pushed K9 hard out of the way. Vic’s mouth was gagged and her eyes were wide with alarm. Erin levered the knotted cloth out of Vic’s mouth and pulled out the rag that was stuffed inside it. Vic coughed and retched and lay on her side, breathing heavily, but no longer kicking.
“Praise the Lord,” she whispered. “All praise the Lord and the Bald Eagle Falls police department.”
Terry was beside Vic and worked on her hands, cuffed together behind her. As soon as he released her, Vic brought her hands around in front of her and wiped her face.
“Dog drool. I do not need a doggie face wash on top of everything else!”
Erin laughed. Tears of relief ran down her face. No matter what else she had lost, she still had Vic.
Terry looked down the narrow tunnel, swearing under his breath. Erin looked. Pallets of packages shrink-wrapped for shipping ran down one side of the tunnel. Hundreds and hundreds of white bricks.
“They really were storing it here. Using this as their shipping center or a way station,” Terry marveled.
“How much is all of this worth?”
“Thousands,” Terry said. “Maybe millions, I don’t know.”
“Enough to get the feds to listen to your requests,” Beaver said, chewing her gum open-mouthed.
“Oh, dear.”
Erin looked at Adele, who had caught up with them and followed them to the tunnel. She stood there, white-faced, looking at the drugs and at Vic. Terry was working on getting Vic’s legs free, then she sat up. Her own face went pale.
“Adele! What are you doing here?”
Adele just looked at her, not answering. Erin looked back and forth between them. There was definitely something going on that she hadn’t caught on to.
“I called Adele to come sit with me when you disappeared and Terry was trying to track down suspects,” Erin explained. “Why… wouldn’t she?”
Vic rubbed the insides of her wrists gingerly.
“Because her husband is the one who nabbed me.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
E
rin felt her own eyes widen. She looked at Adele and knew by her sheet-white face that she had already known or guessed as much.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Adele said, shaking her head. “I swear to you, Vic, I had no idea what he was up to.”
“You didn’t know that he was the one who kidnapped me, or you didn’t know anything about this caper?”
Adele swallowed. Terry was watching her carefully, but didn’t interrupt, letting them talk it out naturally.
“I didn’t know why he was in town,” Adele said. “I knew something was up, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know about the drugs, or that they were going to take you. I didn’t know any of it. He put on that he was only here to see me… but I… there was something different about him and I knew he wasn’t telling the full truth.” She gave a little laugh and shook her head. “There’s one way to know for sure when Rudolph Windsor is lying, and that is that his lips are moving.”
“You told me that he was just in town to see you,” Terry said. “You said that he wasn’t involved in anything criminal.”
“As far as I knew, he was in town to see me. That was before I’d even talked to him, so how was I supposed to tell you any differently? I told you as far as I knew, he didn’t have a criminal record. I left it completely open. It was up to you to find out whether he did or not.”
“He does,” Erin contributed. “Terry said he has a record for fraud and theft. But nothing related to organized crime. We didn’t know he had anything to do with the clans. What… which clan did this?” Erin motioned to their surroundings.
“Jacksons,” Vic said bitterly. “Of course. It was Aunt Angela’s bakery. I don’t know if anyone knew about the tunnel while she was alive. But some time after that, they started moving in…”
“This is a pretty big depot,” Beaver observed. “It takes a long time to move that much dope. Engineering that door wouldn’t have been an overnight job, either. They’ve been around here for longer than a few weeks. This operation has been going on for some time.”
Vic stared at Beaver. “Beaver?”
“We think she’s with DEA or something,” Erin filled Vic in. “She won’t say, but…”
“With an operation like this, you can bet that they know that we’re here now,” Terry said in a low, serious tone. “I’m surprised that there weren’t guards outside or in the tunnel ready to take us out when we got too close. I didn’t see any electronic monitoring, but you can be sure we set off alarms somewhere.” He chewed his lip. “It’s not safe for us to stay here, and we don’t have the manpower to safeguard it.”
“Help is on its way,” Beaver said serenely, “if they’re not here already. You think I would come down here without pulling my own alarm cord first?”
She stopped, cocking her head to listen. Erin tried to hear any footsteps or other sounds indicating that other people were upstairs.
“The good thing about this little storehouse is that its security relies on there being zero traffic. If you suddenly have a bunch of people coming and going into a shop that is supposed to be deserted, people get suspicious and take notice. They couldn’t be seen coming in. All movement of product would have to be in the dead of night. They could process during the day, cutting, weighing, and packaging, as long as no one could see inside the store. But they could only move goods when there was absolutely no one around.”
“So that’s why there were no guards?” Erin asked. “And does that mean… Charley didn’t know what was going on here, under her own nose? Could it go all the way back to when Angela was still running The Bake Shoppe, as long as they only operated during the night?”
“Charley might not have known. But she’s a Jackson, so it’s hard to be sure whether she was in on it or not.”
“She was a Dyson more than a Jackson.”
Beaver shrugged. “We’ll keep an eye on her. I didn’t see her spending any time here at night.”
“Angela couldn’t be here while the bakery was operating because of the contamination. So no one would have thought twice about her being here at night when everyone was gone.”
“There will be an in-depth investigation.”
“It was Rudolph who brought you here?” Adele asked Vic, tentative.
Vic nodded. “He’s the one who grabbed me and brought me here. He talked to other guys, but he’s the only one I saw enough to recognize.”
Adele shook her head. “Where did he go? Did he tell you what he was doing after he left you here?”
“No. Just said he was taking care of things.”
Erin had a sinking feeling in her stomach.
Vic turned to her, as if she had said something audible. “What?”
Erin took a deep breath and let it out. “Auntie Clem’s.”
“What about it?”
Erin took Vic’s hand, more to get strength from her than to give it. “Before we left there, I smelled gasoline.”
Terry looked at Erin sharply,
his face suddenly gray. “What?”
Erin just nodded. Terry moved quickly, heading out of the tunnel, through the store room, and up the stairs quickly, clicking his radio to talk to the dispatcher. Erin knew she had to follow him and find out how bad it was, but she delayed. She needed a few more minutes of not knowing.
Vic moved slowly, obviously stiff from lying on the floor. Erin helped her to her feet, and the taller girl leaned on her as they walked toward the stairs.
“I’m sorry,” Adele said, still ghastly pale. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
They walked by Beaver and stopped for a minute, back in the more familiar surroundings. The tunnel filled with drugs had been like another world. The Bake Shoppe storeroom was so like Erin’s own, it was like stepping back out of the magical wardrobe.
They gave each other an encouraging squeeze, then made their way up the stairs.
Beaver had said that her people might even be there already, but Erin hadn’t taken it literally. The bakery proper and the street outside were a beehive of activity, with yellow warning tape being strung up, bright lights shining on the scene, and black-jacketed figures everywhere. Erin didn’t look across the street to Auntie Clem’s Bakery, but instead looked for Terry and K9. She could already smell the smoke.
“How bad is it?” she asked when she saw him.
Vic was pulling on her hand, trying to get her to go to the window where they would be able to see the front of Auntie Clem’s.
Terry looked grave. He shook his head. “It’s bad, Erin. They’re trying to control the spread. The other businesses. Some of them have residences over the stores.”
“Why would someone do that?” Vic demanded. “What’s the point in burning Auntie Clem’s?”
Erin tried to speak around the lump in her throat. “Because we wouldn’t tell them where Jeremy was. Or they knew we were getting too close to figuring out about The Bake Shoppe and were trying to distract us.”
“Jeremy! Is he okay? They kept demanding to know where he was, and I said I didn’t know…” Vic’s eyes filled with tears. “They kept making threats, and I was so scared of what they were going to do to me. They kept describing how they were going to torture me and saying such foul things…”
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