by JoAnna Carl
All I had to do to get access to light was reach the hot-water tank without falling over a box of old dishes or some other item my ancestors had deemed too valuable to throw out but not valuable enough to keep upstairs. And these stored items were all hard, too. Nobody would store old curtains or cotton batting down there with the mice and spiders. No, the boxes held things that would make a loud noise if they were knocked over.
Miraculously, I didn’t fall over any of them getting to the hot-water tank. I picked up the box of matches. It didn’t feel exactly full. But I could hear the tall guy and the short guy thumping around, so I had to keep moving. I stood the mop up against the wall, pulled a match out, and struck it on the side of the box.
As the match flared, I looked behind the hot-water tank.
Thank God. I’d remembered right. The hole in the foundation, covered with a sheet of plywood, was large enough for me to crawl through.
The hole started about three feet off the basement floor and was part of our renovation project. It led to the area Joe and Darrell had dug out for the addition to the bathroom and kitchen. The addition would not have a basement, but needed a deep area for plumbing. Eventually the hole would link that area to the basement itself, where the furnace and hot-water heater were. The plywood was a halfhearted effort at keeping chipmunks and other critters outside while the building project was going on.
Now, if Joe and Darrell just hadn’t screwed the plywood in . . . I shoved on the plywood. It gave easily. Apparently they’d simply leaned it up against the wall from the other side.
It wasn’t the easiest thing I ever did, but I managed to push the plywood far enough aside to get my fingers around it, and then to lay it flat. Climbing into the hole was faster. The hardest part was putting the plywood back up so that my escape hatch wouldn’t be obvious to the bad guys when they explored the basement.
I’m sure I made noise. But by now the intruders were thundering through the house, making so much noise of their own that I didn’t worry about it.
The next part of the process was to crawl out into the yard, which was a snap, since the subfloor for the bathroom addition wasn’t in yet. The bad guys had turned on every light in the house as they searched for me, so light was flooding out the windows and illuminating the yard.
In only a few seconds I was outside, standing with my back to the wall of the house. That wasn’t a safe spot. After they were sure I wasn’t inside, the two searchers would start looking outside. I paused a moment, deciding which way to run.
And I heard one of the guys say, “I’m going to bust Haney with an antique baseball bat over this. It was a waste of time from the beginning.”
“But she saw us.”
“So what? She can’t ID us. We should have let it go.”
I guess go was the word I’d been waiting for. I didn’t wait to hear more. I took off for the sandy lane that led to Lake Shore Drive. I ran through the beach grass in our yard—not exactly a lawn—and when I got to the sand I turned toward Lake Shore Drive. I wasn’t sure where I was headed, but I knew I wanted to be where there were people—people I could trust.
I kept running, but I sure would have liked to have had a pair of shoes.
I barely paused when I got to the road. Which way? Who would be home? And could I trust them? Those were two important questions.
Ahead of me I saw a light through the trees. It was coming from Double Diamond.
The Double Diamond driveway was dark and twisty, but if a light was on, it probably meant there was someone at the house. Even if it were only Garnet’s uncle Alex, he ought to have a phone with 911 on its number pad, and I could be pretty sure he wasn’t in with the thieves. After all, they’d robbed him.
I ran across the road—it’s amazing how much gravel travels onto a blacktop road from the shoulder—and started down the drive. I was fervently wishing for the flashlight Joe and I had used on Saturday night. Then I realized I was still holding the box of matches.
They weren’t a lot of help, since they dazzled my eyes, but they gave me moral courage, I guess. I stumbled on, lighting one only when desperate, until I came to the flagstone walk that led to the bungalow’s porch. I yelled. “Help! Mr. Gold! It’s Lee Woodyard!”
I made my way toward the porch, calling out again every few steps. I was conscious of movement behind the living room windows, and before I got to the door the porch light came on. Then the door opened. Alex Gold stood in the door.
“Mrs. Woodyard?”
“Phone! I need to call the police!”
He was still standing in the door, but I shoved him aside and stumbled into the cottage, blurting out my story of intruders in the house.
I will say Uncle Alex reacted quickly, dashing to a phone on a desk in the corner of the living room. He called 911, and I sank into a chair and massaged my feet.
I groaned. My grandmother told me that as a child in Texas she went barefoot until her feet were one big callus. She swore she could walk on gravel and not flinch. Right at that moment I would have given anything to have feet that tough. Alex Gold was wearing a neat pair of house slippers, and I could see a pair of rubber flip-flops near the front door. I lusted after both pairs of shoes.
Uncle Alex was talking to the 911 operator. “Yes, we’ll hold the line until they come. Do you want to talk to Mrs. Woodyard?” He listened; then held the phone out toward me. “The dispatcher has sent a car, but she wants to make sure there is no one in the house but the intruders.”
The girls!
The knowledge hit me like a knife in the back. Brenda and Tracy had planned to come home as soon as they cruised by someplace for a Coke. They might be pulling into our drive any minute.
“Oh, no!” I jumped to my feet. “The girls were coming home right away! The bad guys might still be there! I have to stop them!”
I didn’t ask permission to borrow Alex’s flip-flops. I simply jammed my feet into them and ran out the front door.
I stumbled my way back down that dark drive. I was terrified. I might be only their landlady, not their chaperone, but the thought of those girls driving up and surprising the two robbers . . .
The prospect of having to tell my stepmother and Tracy’s parents that their daughters had been shot dead turned me into an Olympic runner.
At least, I suppose I ran. I don’t remember how I got down that drive. I may have swum, crawled, or done cartwheels. I just knew I had to head Brenda and Tracy off. I could not let them drive up to the house and meet those two bad guys.
Just as I got to Lake Shore Drive, the lights of a car appeared to my right, coming toward me. Brenda and Tracy should be coming from the left. I was already panicky, and that car raised my panic to red-flag levels. Who was it? By now the bad guys must know I’d escaped from the house. They might be cruising the neighborhood looking for me.
I jumped behind a bush. I did not want to take a chance on any strangers at that point. No, I’d lie low until the car was past, and I could run across and hide in the undergrowth beside our drive, ready to jump out and wave Brenda’s car down.
To my horror the car slowed, and I realized it was turning into our drive. Then I heard the music coming from the vehicle. There could only be one car in western Michigan that played country music every moment the motor was running. I might not be able to see the color, but I knew that was Brenda’s car.
I plunged across the road and into the headlights, waving. Brenda’s brakes screeched. Luckily she was able to stop.
I ran up to the passenger’s side and grabbed the door handle. “Quick! Let me in! Get out of here!” I yanked the door open and fell in, right across Tracy’s lap.
The next few moments disintegrated even further into farce.
Tracy and Brenda were yelling.
“Lee!”
“What’s going on?”
I was yelling: “Back up and turn left!”
And we were all doing our yelling over the sound of some country singer wailing about drinkin’
, chea-tin’, and his mama.
I was sure everybody within a mile could hear us, but I didn’t care. All I could think was that I wanted those girls out of there before the bad guys—the ones who had had guns when they invaded the Garretts’ house—found them.
When I gasped out an explanation, of course, Brenda and Tracy—with the solid judgment of college-age youths—wanted to go up to the house. I thought I would have to throw myself in front of the car to stop them. It seemed like an hour before I convinced Brenda she should back up far enough to turn into the Double Diamond drive.
When we pulled up in front of the Double Diamond cottage, Alex Gold was standing on the porch.
“I was going to come after you,” he said. “The nine-one-one operator still wants to talk to you.”
I ran into the house and grabbed the phone.
“I’m sorry.” I was gasping. “I realized that two tremendous—I mean, teenage! Two teenage girls were going to go up to the house any minute. I had to stop them.”
“Don’t leave again,” the dispatcher said. “I have a unit headed for your address. How many intruders are there?”
I stood there, trying to give coherent answers. I was glad to see that Tracy and Brenda had followed me in. They were introducing themselves to Alex. I turned my back and tried to concentrate on the 911 operator’s questions.
“I’m afraid they’ll be gone by the time the patrol unit can get here,” I said.
“What kind of vehicle were they driving?”
“I didn’t see . . .” I gasped again. “I’ll bet it was a blue Ford pickup. That’s what they had this afternoon. And that’s what the dead man was driving.”
“Dead man? There’s a dead man?”
“No! No! I mean the man who was found in the lake yesterday. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”
The 911 operator was growing more and more confused, and she must have been ready to yell at me, but she kept her temper. She kept asking me questions, but my answers were getting more and more nonsensical. “Ask Underwood!” I said. “He knows who I am and how I fit in.”
“Who’s Underwood?”
I realized that I was talking to someone in the sheriff’s office thirty miles away. She might well be unaware that Detective Underwood of the Michigan State Police was involved in an investigation at Warner Pier. The situation was way out of control.
At that point Alex tapped me on the shoulder. “I can see the lights of the police car,” he said. “They’re here.”
“The police are here,” I said. “I’m handicapped. I mean, hanging! I’m hanging up.”
I slammed the receiver down and followed Alex out onto the porch. As I closed the screen door behind me, I realized he was alone out there. Brenda and Tracy weren’t with him. I’d barely grasped that when Brenda’s car started down the driveway.
“Where are the girls going?” I’m afraid I screamed the question.
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “When you said something about a blue pickup, they looked at each other and rushed out the door.”
CHOCOLATE BOOKS
Chocolate Without Guilt
by Terry Graedon and Kit Gruelle
(GRAEDON ENTERPRISES)
Terry Graedon is a medical anthropologist and coauthor—with her husband, Joe—of the “People’s Pharmacy” newspaper column. Kit Gruelle is a pastry chef. Their credentials are impressive, and their goal is “recipes that taste decadent but can, with moderation, fit into a healthy diet.”
People always put that moderation clause in, darn it.
But this small book—around a hundred pages, ring-bound and most readily available through the “Peo-ple’s Pharmacy” column or Web site—opens with an overview of twenty-first-century research and scientific opinion on the risks and benefits of eating chocolate. This is followed by recipes for cookies, cakes, pies and tarts, frozen desserts, fancy desserts, and other treats. The nutritional content of each recipe is provided.
“Who’d guess that cocoa has more iron, ounce for ounce, than beef liver?” they write. But they also include a section on chocolate’s hazards.
A simple, easy-to-understand look at chocolate and nutrition—plus recipes.
Chapter 17
I made a weak effort at running after Brenda’s car, but I knew it was useless. After about thirty steps I stood stock-still in the Double Diamond drive, shaking my fists at the sky.
“So help me, God! If Brenda’s still alive at midnight, I’m going to send her back to Texas, and then I’m going to fire Tracy’s behind! I don’t care if I have to personally watch the counter every hour we’re open for the rest of the summer!”
Brenda’s car turned south on Lake Shore Drive, just before a second patrol car went skidding into our drive. Neither car had used its siren, so I gathered some attempt was being made to catch the intruders in the act. But I doubted that they were still there.
The girls hadn’t gone to the house. But where had they gone?
I went into the Garrett cottage and used the phone to call 911 again. I told the dispatcher that Brenda and Tracy had taken off and that I had no idea why, but I was afraid they were looking for the bad guys. I described both of them and pointed out that Brenda’s car had Texas plates. The dispatcher didn’t sound too excited, and maybe there was no reason to get excited. Knowing Brenda and Tracy, they might have simply gone off because one of them realized she was out of nail polish.
Then I called Joe on his cell phone. He answered on the second ring. I could hear Italian music, so I gathered that he, Pete, and Darrell had gone to the Dock Street Pizza Place. I guess I made sense when I tried to tell him what had happened. Anyway, he told me to stay at Double Diamond, and he’d be there in a few minutes.
Then I fell into one of the Double Diamond chairs, kicked off the flip-flops I’d borrowed, and rubbed my feet. “Uncle Alex—I mean, Mr. Gold! I’m sorry to have involved you in all this.”
“Don’t apologize! It sounds as if you got involved because you were a witness to the robbery over here.”
“Maybe.” I held up a flip-flop. “Anyway, thanks for lending me your beach shoes.”
Alex looked at the sandals as if he’d never seen them before. “Those aren’t mine,” he said.
I looked at his tiny little foot, which was at least three inches shorter than mine. “I guess they belong to Dick then. If you don’t mind, I’ll keep them on until I get home.”
He frowned for a moment. Then his face cleared. “You’re welcome to them. You’d better wait here. Let the police handle things at your house. I’m sure they’ll be over to talk to you in a few minutes.”
He was right. Very shortly Warner Pier patrolman Jerry Cherry parked his patrol car outside and came to the door. Jerry’s boss, of course, was my aunt’s new husband, Hogan Jones. I’d known Jerry ever since I moved to Warner Pier, and I was glad he’d been the law officer detailed to babysit me.
No one had been found in our house, Jerry said.
“I wasn’t imitating—I mean, imagining! I didn’t imagine those two,” I said.
“Oh, no. There are some signs of intruders. The other guys are checking for footprints and such, so you need to stay here until they’re through.”
“Is someone looking for the girls?”
“Oh, yeah. Detective Underwood got involved, and he sent a state police car south on Lake Shore Drive. And now, do you want to tell me just what happened?” Jerry smiled. “I know you told the dispatcher, but you’ll have to tell it several more times.”
Joe and Darrell came in while I was talking to Jerry. After Joe and I had held each other awhile, Joe said he’d walk over toward our house and see if he could find anything out. My impulse was to dig both hands into his shirt and pull hard to keep him from going, but I restrained myself. He instructed Darrell to stay at Double Diamond with me. Pete hadn’t come in with them.
Shortly after Joe left, the girls came back. They’d gone about five miles south on Lake Shore Drive before a Michigan State Pol
ice trooper had pulled them over and ordered them to return to the scene.
I was still angry with them. “Why on earth did y’all take off?”
Tracy answered. “You said the guys might be driving a blue Ford pickup, and one had come flying out of Eighty-eighth Street as we came by. We thought we might see where it had gone.”
“Of all the dumb—”
“Oh, Lee! We weren’t going to stop it or anything. We just thought we might see where it turned off.”
I bawled them out good and proper, but they didn’t look contrite. “Well,” Tracy said, “we didn’t find it anyway. So I guess it was a waste of gasoline.”
Joe came back in. “I almost got cornered by Harold and Alice,” he said. “I told him you needed me here.”
“I do.”
“I guess Pete’s around somewhere. I haven’t seen him since we left the Dock Street.”
In half an hour or so Underwood came in to quiz me. I explained how I’d come into the dark house and had seen the stranger at the front door, then a second stranger circling the house. Because one was tall and the other short, I’d decided that they might be the two men who had held us up at the Garretts’. Then I’d decided they were very likely the same two I’d stumbled over looking for Pete Falconer at the River Villa that afternoon. I told him how I’d fled down the basement stairs and escaped through the hole in the foundation, crawling out from under the current bathroom into the gaping hole that would eventually be covered by the floor of the bathroom addition.
The part that interested Underwood most was the angry comment I’d overheard once I was outside: “I’m going to bust Haney with an antique baseball bat over this.”
I didn’t know which guy had said it, but I was sure that was what he’d said. Underwood quizzed me several times to make sure.
“That’s what it was,” I said. “I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now.”
“Is there anybody around here named Haney?”