It seemed like forever before I heard George’s voice. “Clancy, come!”
Clancy glanced at me for permission to go, and I barely nodded. Off she went. A few minutes later she led George back into the area.
“So you go lost after all?”
“Not lost so much as a little turned around. I knew I’d figure out the maze sooner or later, but thought Clancy could get me here faster.”
I just smiled, and stayed seated while George got to work. He sprayed the luminol then yelled in his booming voice, “Turn off the lights.”
The lights suddenly went off. “Who did that?” I asked. The complete darkness caught me off guard. Then George turned on the special light that I didn’t know the name of, and the blue luminescence appeared.
“Jonah was still here, so I asked him if he’d come in and turn off the lights when I yelled.” He motioned toward the glowing blue on the floor. “Well, it’s blood all right. Don’t know if it’s Henderson’s, I mean Cash’s, but it’s blood.” He stood up straight and craned his neck toward where I supposed the entrance was. By that time I was all turned around.
“Okay, turn the lights back on,” he bellowed. No response. “TURN ON THE LIGHTS,” he yelled even louder. Nothing. “HENDERSON!” he screamed cupping his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. Still nothing.
He flipped a switch on the light in his hand and it became a regular flashlight. The blue no longer glowed, but at least we could see a few feet in front of us. “Let’s go. Clancy can get us out without the overhead lights, can’t you girl?” He turned from me to my dog.
“Of course she can,” I said. “Do you want me to go with you or do you want to go turn on the lights first?”
“I thought you’d go with me, but you are kind of clumsy, so…” He couldn’t see my face, but he could feel my anger. “I didn’t mean clumsy so much as…uh, I don’t want you to get hurt.” I could sense the pride he felt at coming up with what he thought were the right words.
Well, those words didn’t work on me.
“I’ll just go with you,” I said. “It would be creepy staying here. Besides, I have a flashlight app on my phone and we can use that for some extra light.” I scrolled through a ton of useless apps until I got to the flashlight. I turned it on and when I did I also noticed that my phone was at 15% power. “That’s enough to get us out of here.”
George asked what I’d just mumbled, so I told him. Then I added, “Of course, if this were a scary movie, the 15% wouldn’t be enough, and the phone and flashlight would die just as the bad guy tried to catch me.”
George said, “Honey, your imagination is what gets you in trouble. Why don’t we stick with reality—with what is, instead of what isn’t or what might be.”
Grudgingly I had to admit he was right. Even as a kid my folks would say I lived in a fantasy world, and apparently not much had changed.
“Let’s just go,” I said, not wanting to be any more introspective than I already had been. It wasn’t a comfortable activity, introspection.
“Pay attention,” George said. “We’ll want to be able to find the place where there’s blood when we come back.”
“I won’t be able to find it, but Clancy will.” I didn’t see her following us, but I sensed her presence, and that was enough.
I felt her soon enough. She ran into me when I stumbled against a stack of boxes that towered over me menacingly. “George,” I screamed. It was all I could think of to do or say, because I was frozen to the spot. I couldn’t actually see the boxes, but felt claustrophobic as they surrounded me on all sides. “George,” I yelled again. No answer.
Clancy came to my side and pushed against me, offering her services. I grabbed on to her collar and was finally able to rouse myself from my frozen state and actually move. “GEORGE!” Still no response.
Tears cascaded down my face. “George,” I whispered, hoping against hope that he was okay. “Why aren’t you answering me?” I turned to Clancy. “Go find him, girl. Go find him.” I shone my flashlight in the direction we had been heading, and thought I could keep ahold of her collar to keep up with her.
There were a lot of obstacles, and it was hard to see with only the flashlight app illuminating a small area in front of us. Almost immediately, I stubbed my toe on a pallet, cussed, cried, and said, “Go ahead, Clancy. I’ll be okay. Just find George.”
I sat on the cold dark floor, rubbing a toe that felt like it might be broken. “Just find George,” I repeated. Clancy came close and licked some tears off my right cheek. Then she took off.
The sound of her movement quickly disappeared, and I was left sitting there, surrounded by towers that felt like they might fall on me at any moment.
That’s when it happened.
SIXTEEN
I felt rather than heard the tower on my left start to topple. Unable to rise quickly, I jumped forward from my seated position just as the boxes fell where I’d been sitting. The loud whoosh of the boxes before they landed was as scary as the landing itself.
I couldn’t see a thing. My heartbeat was as loud as the “George” I yelled. “Clancy,” was the next thing out of my mouth. And soon she was there, but George wasn’t with her. I grabbed her and sobbed into her soft fur. “Where’s George?” I said to the universe and not just to Clancy. “Where’s George?” I moaned, even more loudly.
I’ve never been in a position where I felt totally powerless, but this came close. “My phone,” I yelled. “Where’s my phone?” I figured I’d probably dropped it when I lunged, and it was probably buried under mounds of water bottles and broken boxes.
It was then I noticed that part of my left leg was under the water bottles too. My foot was caught on something. Still holding on to Clancy, I pulled as hard as I could and soon released my foot. But when I tried to stand I just couldn’t do it.
“It’s probably just a sprain,” I said to myself as much as Clancy. “It’s probably just a sprain.” I seemed to keep saying the same things over and over.
“George!” I screamed again, but knew that if he hadn’t answered before, he wouldn’t answer now.
At that point I felt another whoosh, as another stack began falling. Clancy pushed me out of the way, and also got herself out of harm’s way in time. I was still crying, and I couldn’t tell whether it was from pain or fear. Not being able to see anything intensified both.
“Clancy, can you get us out of here if I can crawl?”
Clancy’s response was to get even closer to me so I could touch her. I couldn’t grab her collar this time, as I needed both hands to crawl. She was smart enough to know that, and got right in front of me. The combination of her butt and her tail in my face would have made me laugh at any other time, but I didn’t mind. My girl was saving my life again.
“Can you find George?” Of course she can, silly. Quit asking stupid questions. Aloud, I said, “I know you can find him, Clance. I’m sorry I’m so slow. If it was just you, you’d have found him by now and would have rescued him, caught the bad guy, and received a key to the city by now.” I was babbling, which wasn’t unusual, but it served to calm me, and helped me forget about my injured ankle, and my knees that were screaming from crawling on concrete.
I ran into broken boxes and plastic water bottles several times, and even crawled through some water, where the bottles must have exploded. This wouldn’t have been easy in the best of times, but was nearly impossible in the dark, in pain, and on my knees.
Then I heard a sound that made me forget all that.
“Sam? Sam?” It was faint, but I recognized my George’s voice. It sounded like it was coming from fairly close by, but the towers of boxes made sound echo in strange ways.
“I’m coming, George. Clancy and I are coming.” Just as I said it two things happened. The lights came on and I heard strange high-pitched laughter. I was grateful for the lights, and scared by the laughter. But first, I had to find the man I loved.
“George, say something again. We’ll fi
nd you.”
A moan was the response I got, but by now it was even closer. Clancy went a little ways ahead of me, turned a corner, and I heard her bark softly. “She’s got him,” and that thought drove me forward on knees that I was sure were bleeding by now.
As I got to the corner, I dropped and belly crawled my way to a now-silent George, who had an ever-diligent Clancy trying to wake him by licking his face. I leaned over George from the other side and kissed him. With both of us ministering to him, George blinked and looked from Clancy to me.
“What happened?” he said.
“Boxes kept falling,” I said. “The lights were out, and I hollered for you, and you didn’t answer, and my ankle hurts, and my toe too, and Clancy saved us, and…” I gasped as another sob escaped.
He tried to sit up, and since I was now sitting my hands were free. I leaned over to give him a little boost. He rubbed his head as he sat. With the other hand he petted Clancy.
“Is he… is she… are they still here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know who did it, and I don’t know if they’re still here. But someone had to turn the lights back on.”
Just then I felt the tower of bottles behind me start to wobble. I screamed and tried to instinctively jump on George to protect him. At the same time, Clancy gave a howl like I’d never heard and she lunged toward the tower, effectively toppling it in the opposite direction.
I heard a satisfying scream that didn’t come from me. George stood with Clancy’s help and walked around the boxes. At the same time, he pulled out his weapon and said, in a forceful voice, “Don’t move. Don’t you dare move.”
I couldn’t see who was under the bottles, but I knew who I’d hoped it was. Like a snake, I slithered on my belly around, under, and over bottles and cardboard. With his free hand George worked to free whoever was under the bottles, and revealed a bloody and angry Louise Shannon.
My triumphant “Aha,” quickly morphed into another sob, which really made me mad. I didn’t want this creature to see me at my weakest. However, it seemed I had no choice. My ankle was at the least sprained, my knees were shredded, and I was coming down from a traumatic experience. Of course I was going to sob.
Not Louise though. She lay there with anger written on her normally lovely face.
George said, “You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of—”
I couldn’t take it. “Attempted murder? Attempted murder? She killed her nephew. No attempted about it.”
“Sam, stop.” He turned back to Louise. “You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of Samantha Darling and Chief Detective George Lansing. You are entitled to an attorney. If you choose…”
I zoned out as George droned on with the familiar words, and put my head down on my hands to rest my neck. I knew she’d killed her nephew, but when I took a minute to think, it made sense that George was arresting her for trying to kill us. We didn’t have the evidence to connect her to her nephew’s murder, but I was confident we soon would. Whether we or the Henderson cops got the confession, it didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter if it went to trial. I just knew she had done it and that the truth would come out.
But darn it—I wanted to be the one to get her to crack. And I smiled as I figured out how I was going to do it.
SEVENTEEN
Louise didn’t say anything about wanting a lawyer, so I liked that. But we were in kind of a predicament. My phone was lost under a mound of stuff, and when George pulled his out, it had broken in his fall.
“Do you have a phone on you?” he asked Louise.
“Of course not,” she laughed. “They have a GPS capability on them. I didn’t want anyone to be able to prove I was here.”
George was a little unsteady, but he was the only one available to walk to another phone to call for help. He turned to me, while still keeping the gun trained on Shannon. “Sam, I’ve got to get to a phone. I’m going to leave my gun with you. Keep her lying on the floor and stay far enough away that she can’t kick you. If she gets up, shoot her. Got that?”
The smile on my face must have been answer enough because he said, “Don’t shoot her unless she tries to escape or tries to hurt you. Understand?”
I nodded. By then I’d gotten myself into a seated position and was leaning against an unbroken box. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.
At least until George said to Louise, “She’s crazy, Shannon. My fiancée is crazy. She would as likely shoot you as look at you. It’s in your best interest to stay still until I return.”
She didn’t say anything, but I did. “Crazy? What gives you the right to call me names?”
The gun had come perilously close to being pointed at George. He gently touched the barrel and moved it so that it was pointed at Louise Shannon again. He winked at me with the eye she couldn’t see, and I understood. He was trying to scare her into staying still so I’d have no trouble. A smart man.
I still played along. This time I spoke to Louise, “I’ve only shot a few people. It’s not like I shoot someone every time I have a gun in my hand.” I paused. “Well, I guess that’s exactly what I did…” I smiled inwardly.
As George started to leave, he turned around and said to Clancy, “Watch her, girl.” He seemed satisfied. I didn’t know if “her” meant me or Louise Shannon, but it didn’t matter. To me he said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You can trust that.”
My stalwart cop took off, although a little slowly, which worried me. I soon turned my attention to Louise Shannon, though, and thought I’d have a little fun.
“I know you killed your nephew.”
“How do you know? I mean, no I didn’t.”
Maybe she’d hit her head. I thought that I probably shouldn’t try to get a confession from her because her lawyer would say she was groggy or concussed or something, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Yes, you did and I know how and why.” Even Clancy looked at me when I said that. Of course I was BS-ing, but I thought I’d give it a try.
Here goes, I thought. “You murdered him with an urn. You hit him right over the head with it. And you did it because you wanted Jonah to get the factory instead of Cash. It’s that simple.”
“Fat lot you know.” She practically spat the words.
“No matter what you say, Louise, I know that’s what happened. You use this warehouse and shipping department for your water. Oh, and I know the water doesn’t really come from Happy Acres, it comes from the spigot on the other side of the warehouse. You’re not only a murderer, you’re a crook too.” I couldn’t stop smiling by that time. It felt so good to see her smug expression suddenly turn into a quivering red mouth and a red complexion.
She sputtered. She actually sputtered when she spoke. “You don’t know as much as you think you know. It’s not really murder when it’s an accident.”
“It’s a homicide whether it’s murder, manslaughter, or involuntary manslaughter. Homicide comes from the Latin meaning ‘killing the man,’ so I know what I’m talking about.”
“Shut up,” she said.
“You’re in no position to tell anyone to shut up.” She’d almost admitted she killed him accidentally, and didn’t seem to understand what she’d said. I decided to soften up a little bit and see if she’d bite on the bait I threw out there.
I changed my tactic. “Sorry ’bout that. If it was an accident, then that does make all the difference in the world. Most people don’t even go to prison when it’s involuntary manslaughter.”
Her face relaxed at that. She said, “That’s what I thought, from TV shows and movies.”
I relaxed too, but kept the gun pointed in her direction. In those same TV shows and movies this would be the time when the hero (that would be me) would relax too much and would be overcome by the villain (that would be her). I was not going to let that happen. Not this time.
In those shows the authorities routinely lied to the suspects in order to garner a confession. I thought I’d
give that a try. “I’ll testify for you that it was an accident.”
She’d been looking at the floor, but looked up at that. “Would you?”
“Of course,” I lied. “Whatever will help.”
“That’s kind of you.” Of course her narcissistic personality wouldn’t let her think I wasn’t being truthful. She believed the world revolved around her, and any other notion simply didn’t enter her head.
I kept going. “Maybe if you tell me the whole story we can figure out what would be the best thing for me to say to help you.” I tried to form my face into an honest look and hoped she’d believe me. “Just start at the beginning, and continue up to today.”
I made it a request and not a question. She complied.
“Well, Cash threatened me with—”
I quickly interrupted her. “I mean, start at the real beginning, when you started using the warehouse.” My earnestness compelled her.
She visibly relaxed even more. “I discovered the healing properties of the spring when I was a kid, and as an adult thought I should share it with the world.”
She was sounding like a marketing brochure, but I didn’t want to interrupt her again. She was gearing up to tell me her great success story, and if it ended in telling me how Cash died, I was willing to be patient.
“When I started my own business, Jonah wasn’t supportive initially, but when I began getting a following, he saw that I knew what I was doing. I was making money.” She smiled. “I soon realized that to satisfy the demand, I needed a bigger operation. At that point I was just gathering the water myself, purifying and bottling it in my kitchen, and shipping it from my home. I was in over my head.”
“Your business grew fast,” I said, feeding into her sense of self-importance.
“Fast doesn’t begin to describe it. People around here knew of Happy Acres and most had visited there, so there was a sense of nostalgia as well as pride about it. So I asked Jonah if I could bring the water to the warehouse, and package and ship from there. He agreed.”
Where Is Henderson? (Sam Darling mystery #5) Page 10