The Complete Honey Huckleberry Box Set

by Margaret Moseley

My small hand slid around its butt, my finger going naturally to the trigger.

  THIRTY–SIX

  I decided to go out the back door. I thought there was less chance of Joaquin hearing that door, protected by the back porch as it was. Putting my hand against the screen, I was startled to see a man standing in the shadows.

  “Who …?” I gasped.

  “It’s all right, Honey. It’s me. Ralph.” And he stepped into the rectangle of light coming from the back door.

  “What are you doing here this late?” I asked, still shaken.

  He came closer. “I was working late, and I saw your house blaze up with lights. I thought … I thought I might find Joaquin, if we’re still allowed to call him that.” He laughed.

  His attempt at humor went right over my head. “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  “For God’s sake, Honey. To give him his check.” And he briefly patted his coat pocket to show where he had it ready.

  Then he saw the gun. “What on earth?” He half raised his arms.

  “Don’t be silly, Ralph,” I hissed. I motioned to him, using the gun’s long barrel instead of my finger. “Come inside. And be quiet.”

  “What’s all this about?” he asked after he’d followed me into the kitchen.

  I decided to trust him. He was here. He’d seen the gun. If I let him leave without an explanation, he’d probably call Silas, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  After I explained my fears, he remained silent, his face white in the bright light of the kitchen, but not from its glare, more like from shock.

  Before he’d recovered from my story, I remembered to ask him something that had been bothering me. “Ralph, Silas told me you had checked out Joaquin’s references.”

  “Yes,” his voice croaked.

  “Well, then, how do you explain why Joaquin is not Joaquin?”

  In a stronger tone he answered, “I lied. I wanted someone here to do the garden, and, well … hell, Honey, he knew irises.”

  I gave him a disgusted look as I tried to figure out what to do with the doctor’s unexpected visit. “You’ll just have to come with me. Yes, that works better, anyway.” Even with the gun, I hadn’t felt all that secure about confronting Joaquin.

  Which is what I planned to do.

  Surprisingly, Ralph readily agreed to accompany me. “Not that I believe you, mind you, but I can’t let you go alone, can I?”

  We crept up the outside stairs, my pointing out to Ralph the two that creaked and, when we reached the top, I cautiously turned my key at the door.

  Joaquin was caught unaware, sprawled across the couch in only his blue jeans, his shirt and coat draped across one of the beanbags, clutching Steven Hyatt’s bottle of wine in one hand and a Styrofoam cup in the other.

  “What’s going on? Honey?” Then, “Ralph!”

  Then he saw the gun.

  Unlike Ralph, Joaquin’s instinct was to dive for the gun, but the bottle and cup in his hands inhibited his attempt, so after one upward lunge, he just settled back in the cushions.

  “Does anyone want to tell me what’s going on?” he demanded as he set his drink on the floor.

  Almost embarrassed, I said, “I think you killed Steven Miller.”

  “What? Are you crazy?” He looked at Ralph. “What’s she saying? Me? Kill Steven Miller?”

  Ralph had sidled up beside me, but still within the protection of the weapon, I was having a hard time controlling it in my hand. I moved my left hand up to help support the increasingly heavy object.

  “Yes, Joaquin,” he answered. “And it occurs to me that she’s right.”

  I flashed him a smile of appreciation for his support. But he went on. “Yes, you killed Steven Miller when you were scouting out the house for the mob or the group that hired you to finish their dirty work.”

  Although I had told Ralph all my suspicions, he seemed to be adding to their content, embellishing and elaborating on the original concept. I looked at him, astonished, as I heard him say, “And when Honey found out, she rushed up here to confront you, and you wrestled the gun away from her and shot her.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, the gun dropping uselessly—barrel down—as I turned to face him, which allowed him to effortlessly take it from me.

  “Move over there with Roselli, Honey,” he said, using the gun to point the direction.

  “I don’t understand,” I protested as I stumbled toward the couch where Joaquin put his bare arms around me, holding me close. That gesture should have comforted me, but it didn’t. We looked up at the man waving the old-fashioned pistol at us.

  “What don’t you understand, Lydia, honey? Wait a minute, this is even better. First you shoot Joaquin, and then, before he dies, he takes the gun and kills you. That sounds better, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” I answered weakly.

  “Ralph,” said Joaquin, “this is crazy. You’ll never get away with it.”

  I looked at the man I had trusted, thought I knew so well, and then I understood everything. Too late.

  “Lydia?” I repeated Ralph’s earlier words. “It was you. You killed Steven Miller. But, why, Ralph? Why? And how did you know about …?” Even with his death threat still ringing in the room, I had to know why.

  “About Lydia? From Bondesky, of course. Oh, not directly. Old Jimmy hung around all the time, watching the house for you. That’s what he told me. About how he and Bondesky called you by your secret name. How he was protecting you because you didn’t know about all that money in the house.” He laughed.

  “I didn’t believe him at first. I only questioned him in the beginning because of his always hanging around. I’m surprised you didn’t notice him, but then you’ve always lived here in your own little world, haven’t you, Lydia? I envied you that, especially when the big bills for the clinic came due. They took away my Porsche. Did you know that, Lydia?”

  Ralph rubbed the end of the gun absently across his nose as he talked. Like he’d forgotten he held it and that this was anything but a social call. “Linda left me, too.” He giggled. “No more money. No more Linda.”

  Ralph seemed to remember where he was … and why. He turned the gun toward us again, perhaps sensing what I’d felt—Joaquin tensing at my side, preparing to spring.

  I eased out of Joaquin’s arms to give him more room to maneuver if the chance rose again. “The money?” I asked, trying to keep Ralph distracted.

  “Yeah, all that money your dad hid in the house for you. You know, I worked late a lot, trying to make things come out all right, but nothing would work. And then, I got to thinking about what Jimmy said.” He paused. “We were friends, Jimmy and me. On cold nights, I’d let him sit inside the clinic and watch the house out of the window. Shared my coffee with him. Sometimes, pizza. And he’d talk on and on about his Lydia and the money and how he was going to save her. One night, I just stopped doubting him.”

  “But you must have killed him, too?” I kept on questioning him. Joaquin never said a word, but he sat, coiled on the sofa, ready for Ralph to make a mistake.

  “Yeah,” Ralph said regretfully. “In the long run, his loyalty to you ran deeper than his friendship with me. He caught me trying to break in here one day. After Miller’s death, Jimmy watched the house every night, and I could only come over in the daytime to search. And Jimmy still caught me. It was probably a good thing, too. I didn’t know all those men were hanging around your upstairs. Anyway, Jimmy and I argued in the van. He’d just delivered it and saw me trying to get in one of those big windows off the porch.

  “I persuaded him to come back to the van and when he persisted in saying he was going to tell Bondesky, well … you know, I shot him. I was surprised no one heard it in the house.”

  His thoughts brought him back to the present, and I could see that faraway look disappear from his eyes, leaving only a desperate one as he again turned his full attention to the two of us on the couch. I heard Joaquin groan as he realized he’d missed a chance to disarm Ralph.
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  “Where’s the money, Lydia?” Ralph demanded.

  “I’ll show you,” I said, “if you’ll let us go.”

  “No deals. Wait. First I want you to tie up the gardener here.” Ralph kept my father’s gun pointed toward us as he roamed the room, searching for something to tie us up. Finally, he found a box of black plastic garbage sacks. With scissors from a drawer, he deftly cut the bags into strips while still aiming the gun at us.

  I tied Joaquin with the long black strips, first binding his arms behind him as Ralph instructed and then his ankles. When Joaquin was secure—Ralph made sure of that—he put the gun on the couch and reached for me, roughly pulling my arms behind my back. The plastic stretched, but when pulled tight and wrapped repeatedly around my arms, it made a reliable binding. He’d started on my ankles when Joaquin finally spoke.

  “Don’t tell him where the money is, Honey. He’s going to kill us anyway. I’m sorry I couldn’t—”

  Ralph hit him on the side of the head with my father’s big gun.

  “We didn’t need him anyway,” he said, stopping my scream with a threatening motion of the gun. “Now, where’s the money?”

  I told him.

  Or rather, I told him where the money had been. I told him about the secret passage I’d discovered in the blueprints I’d found in the third-floor workroom. How I’d always believed—had even had nightmares—about just such a passageway. I told him about my accidental finding of it and how the money had literally rained down upon my head.

  And he believed me. “Yeah, when I saw all those cobwebs in your hair this afternoon, I knew you were up to something. That it would only be a matter of time before you stumbled across the cash. So, where is it—this hiding place?” And he pulled on my trussed arms, hurting my shoulders.

  “I’ll tell you, but, oh, God, Ralph, please don’t kill us.”

  “Where is the money?”

  “There.” I nodded my head toward the door less closet. “Next to that trunk.” We both stared at the small, heavy trunk, lying askew just outside the closet. “I found it today. The passageway leads down to the pantry. Under that board. There’re not real steps, though. More like an iron ladder. Father must have built it to link the two sections because Aunt Eddie wouldn’t have a man in the house at night.”

  “Shut up. You’re crazy, you know that.” And he crossed the room in three steps, whereupon, seeing the cut-out section of floorboard, he laid the gun on the trunk and stooped to pry up the already loosened board. “It’s dark down there,” he said. “And I don’t see any money.”

  “It’s farther down,” I insisted. “Way down … on the first floor. And there’s a flashlight that might work in the workroom.”

  He went to the adjoining workroom and returned with the flashlight, and he grunted when he turned it on and saw that it gave out a dim light, enough to show him his way, but not enough to probe the lower floors for the money.

  It had been a tight squeeze for me that afternoon when I’d pushed my way up through the opening. I hadn’t wanted to climb down it, so I had prepared the way, rushing upstairs after Joaquin had left for the police station, to push away the trunk and open the trapdoor. That way, when I had returned to the kitchen and started to climb up the metal rungs I’d discovered in the pantry—thanks to the blueprints—I could see daylight above me through the dirt, though most of it had descended on my head earlier when I’d pulled the money through.

  I hadn’t been afraid, not of the cobwebs or the spiders or the dark. How could I be afraid of something my father had built? Of someplace that he thought secure enough to hide a fortune for me? The nightmares of my youth had vanished when I’d triumphantly completed the secret passage from the first floor to the third and pushed my head through the opening that Ralph was struggling now to enter.

  He never gave a backward glance to Joaquin or me; both of us lying tied with our arms behind us. I looked at Joaquin. His eyes were closed, and there was blood trickling from what looked like a nasty knot rising on his forehead. He was either unconscious or dead.

  As soon as Ralph’s head disappeared from the level of the opening, I began to inch my way toward it. My elbows were immediately scraped and bruised from the rough flooring once I had snaked across the Persian rug, but I kept on, feeling relief when my bound feet finally touched the trunk. I began to push against it with my feet, but it was too heavy for me. Desperately, I leaned against my elbows, pounding the full force of my legs against the sides of the trunk.

  I was afraid, but even more than the fear, I was angry. And the more angry I became, the harder I struck the trunk. I started sobbing, “I’ve never seen the Rose Garden at the White House.” I raised my bound legs for another shove. “I’ve never stood behind Niagara Falls.” Then with another push, “Damnit, I want to see my irises bloom.”

  Below, I heard Ralph cursing, “What the hell? Honey, what are you doing?” And I heard him start upward again. Heard him lose the flashlight, which clanked loudly as it careened past the metal rungs to land with a definite thud on the bottom. Heard Ralph curse again—cruder this time—as he lost a foothold in the darkness and fell. I hoped to the bottom, but it must have been only a few feet, because soon I heard the clanging of his feet as they found another step.

  I thought of the Gulf and of the waves that right this minute were roaring their way toward the shore. I pushed the trunk with all my might. With all I had in me.

  And suddenly it slid effortlessly into place. Like it was greased. And then I saw Joaquin’s legs next to mine as he gave the final push that sent the trunk squarely over the secret opening.

  Without pausing, he raised and twisted his body so that he was lying over the trunk, his head dangling down. “The other end?” he gasped.

  “Nailed shut. The pantry entry, anyway. I did it this afternoon. And the second-floor opening is covered with a big chest of drawers in the war room.” My breathing pattern matched his, and we sat that way for several minutes, listening to Ralph bang against the bottom of the trunk, calling to me to let him out.

  After a while, I inched over to Joaquin, and despite smearing blood all over my white blouse, he managed to bite and tear the plastic rope from my arms. I removed the bindings on my legs and then returned the honor for him, using the scissors Ralph had found to cut the bags.

  “So,” he said when he was finally in an upright position, but still sitting securely on the trunk.

  “So,” I answered, but my thoughts were on Ralph whose pleading had ceased. What must it be like in that dark hole, alone and knowing that everything was coming to an end? I hoped the flashlight was still working. I hoped he had some light.

  I walked across the room and bent to pick up the gun from the corner of the room where it had skidded when I’d banged on the trunk.

  “Where did you get that antique?” asked Joaquin. “And where’d you get the crazy idea that I’d killed Steven Miller? Or for that matter, that I’m not really Arthur Roselli?”

  I stood beside him. “You were acting so mysterious at dinner. Nervous. All that talk about leaving before the others got here. And then, that strange, strained goodbye.”

  Joaquin reached out and pulled me against him, where blood and sweat mingled across his chest. “Aw, Honey, that was because I do need to get back to Italy. This discovery of mine, the one I thought was going to be so great, is really going to be trouble.”

  “It doesn’t work,” I guessed.

  He started a frown that ended in a grin. “No, the trouble is that it does work.”

  “I don’t understand. No, wait; maybe I do. But you were so distant at dinner tonight. It made me think strange things.”

  “I was trying to protect you. To keep you away from what I see ahead. That’s why I was trying to avoid this.” And he kissed me. And I kissed him back. He pulled away and said, “Just think if I’d done this in the first place, we’d never have all the fun we’ve had tonight.”

  THIRTY–SEVEN

  Opti
ons.

  For a person who lived every day with a typewritten plan, I had lots of options.

  Steven Hyatt wanted me to go to Australia with him. “As my primary—oh, all right, my only investor—I’d think you would want to see how I’m spending your money. And how I’m going make us more. I’m really on to something hot here, Honey. Won’t you come with me?”

  And Harry. I knew I loved Harry, but was it only on the island? Or was it the dog? I couldn’t separate the two. If I loved Harry so much, how come I’d felt the way I did about Joaquin?

  Joaquin. Arthur Stephen Roselli. For sure. The man who hadn’t been able to slip back across the border after all, because he’d had to wait for the police to guide a dazed, light-blinded Ralph from the concealed passageway in my house.

  “Where’s the money, Honey?” Ralph had screamed when he could finally focus his eyes and saw me standing there with Silas Sampson.

  “What’s he talking about? Money?” asked Silas.

  And because it was Silas and he was so easy to lie to, I said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about, Silas. There’s no money. See for yourself.”

  I was glad it was Silas and not Lennox who’d asked.

  Ralph had gone berserk then, yelling and raving about Jimmy and Steven Miller. Even ripping open his starched white shirt to show the almost healed wound Steven Miller’s big flashlight had made when the poor man had struck him, right before Ralph shot him.

  Joaquin had stayed and met the authorities from Italy, and it was big news in the Star-Telegram about him being alive. And about his discovery. Like Bondesky had said, all kinds began crawling out of the woodwork, and we’d had little time together. But it had been good. When he left—just this morning—just three weeks after the first telephone call, he asked me to come with him. Or even later. I could come later.

  He was definitely an option.

  Janie Bridges had squealed when I called to tell her the news. I wanted her to hear it from me before it hit the airwaves. “I told you it was Ralph,” she said.

  “Janie,” I said, “you didn’t.”