“We need something,” I said, scouting through the garage. “Like a baseball bat. Or a golf club.”
“Or a tire iron?” Camille said, brandishing a heavy rod.
“Perfect,” I said, hefting it in my hand.
“What about me?” she asked.
I didn’t love the idea of my beloved wife coming into the house with Marla. But I also knew she’d never stay behind. “Here.” I picked up an old wooden croquet mallet. “Will this do?”
She nodded, but chose another one. “I want blue. It’s my lucky color.”
I chuckled and put the green one back. “Okay. It’s now or never.”
“Let’s see if we can get a peek inside,” she said. “Over there, by that back window.”
“Sounds good.” If we at least knew where Marla was positioned, we’d have a chance of surprising her. What I didn’t want was to surprise her into shooting one of us.
We crept around the garage and toward the back of the house to the same window I’d climbed in earlier when Jack and I had returned to find Marla gone and the men still imprisoned below. Peering inside, I scanned the back hallway that opened up on the grand living room in the front of the house.
I smelled coffee.
And warm milk.
“Can you see anything?” Camille whispered.
“Not yet.” I shook my head, listening. “It’s quiet, but I’m pretty sure she’s in there.”
We both slipped inside, once again avoiding the jagged glass shards on the window sill. It wasn’t easy, but in seconds we’d passed the empty kitchen and stood breathing softly just before the living room entrance.
I chanced a glance into the room, and then pulled back. “The rifle’s over by the front door,” I whispered.
“Good.”
“Stay here and shout if you see or hear anything. Let me know if she tries to go out either exit, okay? I’m going to scout around downstairs. I don’t hear anything, so she’s probably upstairs with the baby.”
Camille held up her mallet with a determined smile. “Will do.”
I crept around the outer walls of the living room and grabbed the rifle. Walking softly, I checked the library, bathroom, pantry, and den.
No sign of Marla.
I headed upstairs.
Chapter 32
Marla lay in a king-sized bed, softly snoring beside Mason.
The child’s cheeks were red from crying, and he had apparently fallen asleep with his cuppy in one hand, because it lay snugged against his cheek. Marla lay protectively over him, one arm curved across his chest.
I raised the rifle, but was worried about pulling the trigger with the baby in the bed. I wasn’t much of a shot; matter of fact I knew very little about firearms. But I needed the leverage to get the child away from her.
Hell, I didn’t even know if the thing was loaded, although why she’d keep it by the door for protection (or coercion) without ammo would be a mystery.
Camille crept up behind me, gasping when she saw the baby. “Careful,” she said under her breath. “Don’t hurt him.”
I whispered to her. “Can you get Mason out of her arms without waking her?”
Camille didn’t take the time to answer, but slowly stole forward.
I held the rifle steady, trained on Marla.
It happened faster than I could have predicted.
Marla woke with a start the minute Camille leaned over the mattress to reach for the baby. She pulled him to her, sat up, and raced toward the window.
The child woke abruptly and began to wail.
“Get away from us,” Marla said. Her face turned dull red. Her eyes rolled. Her mouth tightened. “I swear, if you shoot, you’ll kill the boy.” She held him in front of her like a shield.
My hands shook slightly. I didn’t lower the weapon, but knew I’d lost my advantage. I couldn’t admit it, of course. “Marla. Put the child down. He needs his mother.”
“Mother?” she shrieked. “That little teenager can’t raise a child. She’s completely incompetent. I’m going to see that my grandson is brought up properly.” She edged toward the opened window. “The right schools. The right art classes. Maybe I’ll buy him a polo pony.”
I kept the rifle up. “He’s not yours to raise, Marla. Please. Let him go back to his mother. I’m sure you can visit him. He just lives down the beach, right?”
“In the enemy’s camp, you mean?” she cackled. “The Cook homestead?” With a wild howl, she lowered her eyebrows and shot daggers at me. “Are you insane?”
Um. Not me, Marla.
Camille had followed her, searching for an opportunity to grab the boy. “Please, Marla. Look at him. He’s crying. He needs his mother.”
“Shut up!” she cried. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
She leaned over the window and held the boy at arms’ length. He squirmed, and my heart went into my mouth.
She’s going to drop him.
“No, Marla!” Camille begged. “Please don’t hurt him.”
“Put the gun down and walk into the closet. Both of you.” She bounced him a little, almost losing her grip. “Now.”
Slowly, I lowered the gun. “Okay.” I motioned to Camille who hurried to my side. “Here?” I pointed to the door closest to her.
“Yes. Do it. Now. Or I drop him. If I can’t have him—” Again, she shook the boy dangerously. “Kick the rifle over here.”
I did as she asked, planning to attack her the minute she stooped to retrieve the weapon. But she was fast. Damned fast.
She picked up the rifle more rapidly than I could lunge across the eight feet that separated us. I ended up with a gut full of steel muzzle. Backing up, I held my hands over my head. “Okay. Fine. Just don’t hurt the boy.”
In seconds, we were forced into a closet. She locked the door, and the sound of the crying baby faded as she hurried away.
“Get us out of here, Gus.” Camille reached for me and held on tight. “You know I don’t like tight spaces.”
I felt her tremble against me. “I know, baby. Turn on your phone light.”
“Battery’s dead,” she said. “And hurry, Gus. We have to save Mason.”
“Stand back.” I handed her my phone, which still had a sufficient charge, and prepared to launch myself at the door.
The closet filled with an eerie light. It smelled of mothballs.
The door wasn’t one of those pre-fab, fake wood numbers. No, this was a solid wood, a six-panel job, and the padlock I’d seen on the outside had certainly been added after the door had been installed.
On the inside surface, scratches appeared in the white paint.
Fingernails?
I wondered who she’d locked in here before, but in my sinking heart, I knew.
Beckett.
I slammed my body against the door, over and over again.
It barely budged in the frame.
“Keep going, honey.”
In spite of my aching shoulder, I kept it up.
There wasn’t much room to stand back and leap at it, so it was tough to get up much momentum.
From down below came the sound of a door slamming. Shouting ensued. I thought I recognized Winston’s voice sparring with the shrill voice of his wife. Beneath it all came the persistent cry of little Mason.
“Is that her husband?” Camille asked hopefully.
“I think so. Maybe Jack just dropped him off.”
“Maybe he’ll help us.”
“Maybe. But she’s got the rifle and she hates him now. Remember Cindy?”
“Oh, right.” Her face fell.
More screaming came from downstairs, followed by the sound of something crashing. A vase? Dishes? I couldn’t picture Marla holding both the boy and the rifle and throwing things. Maybe they fought and fell into something breakable.
It grew quiet.
“Did they leave?”
“I hope not.” I slammed myself against the door, over and over again. After another five minutes of no succ
ess, I rested against the door. “I don’t know if this is going to work, baby.”
“What else can we do?” Her eyes widened.
“Give me a minute.” I leaned against the wall to let the throbbing in my shoulder die down a bit. I figured I’d never be the same after this.
Do they replace shoulders like hips these days?
“See if there’s anything we can use in here. Like a tool. A screwdriver. Anything.”
Camille played the light around the long, narrow closet. “Umbrella?”
I shook my head. “Don’t think so.”
“Shoes. Boots. Hanger?”
“No.”
“Wish we still had that crowbar.” I could picture the heavy iron rod in my hand, imagined using it to pry open the door.
“Sorry, honey. There’s nothing.”
I started up again, pounding against the wood panels.
After what had to be the fifteenth try, I heard a faint crack.
“You’re getting it, Gus.”
“Right.” I switched to my left shoulder and rammed it again.
It moved a fraction of an inch.
“Again!” she said.
I complied.
After a dozen more lunges, the door splintered open, and I fell forward into the bedroom.
“Hurry. Come on.” She reached down to help me up.
I stood and glanced around the room, then looked out the back window.
“Oh, no.”
The dune buggy was gone.
Chapter 33
“Oh, Gus. She’s got the baby with her. How will we ever find him?”
“We’ll find him.” I strode across the living room and looked out the window. “Wait. Why’d she take the dune buggy and not the Lincoln?”
“Maybe she was out of gas.” Camille stood at the window, peering out.
I opened the front door and saw muddy tracks going across the soggy lawn, leading to the beach. “See those tracks? They’re fresh. Why’s she heading for the water? That’s insane.”
“Could they have a boat out there?”
“Maybe, but it’s probably one of the storm victims that was dropped upside down in the dunes.”
“When she finds out, she might come back, right?”
“Maybe. And we’ll be ready for her.”
“Where’s Winston?” she asked. “Would he have voluntarily gone with her?”
“I don’t think so. Either he was forced into the buggy with her, or…” I glanced toward the cellar door. It stood ajar, and I was sure it had been closed when I checked the first level earlier. “Come on. We’ve got to check the cellar first. She may have locked him up again.”
One more time, with Camille close behind, I descended to what I thought of now as “the dungeon.” The lights were already on, lending their eerie yellow light to the passage. I checked the first room, where I’d been imprisoned for what had seemed like forever, but had only been hours. “This is where I was locked up.”
“Oh, honey. It’s so scary. And if you hadn’t found that key in the tin box—”
“But I did. Let’s check the rest of the rooms.”
We opened the heavy door to Albert’s cell.
No one home.
The next room also proved empty. “This is where she tossed her husband and son.”
“Oh my God,” Camille said, her face full of sadness. “What could drive a woman to do that?”
“She’s a very sick woman, hon. Come on. There’s one more room with a lock on it. It’s where Robbie was held.”
Down the hall, we checked into the still-smelly room where Robbie had been held since Memorial Day.
Camille held her nose. “Ugh. Gross.”
“I know, right?” I turned around to head back to the main room. “It looks like Winston’s not down here. Unless she brought him further down the tunnel. I can’t imagine why she would, though.”
“Nothing that woman does makes sense, Gus.”
“For sure. Anyway, once this whole thing is over, we’ll go through the tunnels again and I’ll show you the treasure. Along with Winston and Beckett, of course.”
Her eyes shone. “Oh, Gus. I’d love that. But right now, we’ve got to find—”
A primal scream came from upstairs, followed by the slamming of the door at the top of the cellar stairs. The lock clicked.
“No way…” I ran to the top of the stairs and rattled the doorknob. “Marla!”
I heard her muttering and swearing on the other side of the door. “Now stay put!”
I didn’t think my throbbing shoulders could take another hour of slamming against a second door, nor could I get much leverage from my position on the steps below the door. I headed back down.
“Come on. I have another way out.”
“The tunnels?”
I nodded. “Yep.” I took her hand. “You ready?”
“Let’s go.” She squeezed my hand. “At least we know Marla’s back in the house with the baby. She’s not going to try to run away.”
I had to admit, I was relieved to know where little Mason was. The idea of Marla zooming off to Boston or who knows where had worried me. With no access to the FBI, or roadblocks, or Amber Alerts, I had been afraid we’d never find the boy.
We hurried down the main tunnel, ignoring the first passage offshoots.
“Why do you think she went to the beach?” Camille asked.
“I don’t know. It was weird. But I’ll bet you're right about the boat. Maybe she thought she could hide out on it, keep the baby away from everyone?”
“Maybe.” She peered down the second set of tunnels that appeared on the right and left. “Isn’t it weird to think that Tooly McNabb probably had all of these rooms filled with stolen treasure?”
“It’s unbelievable. Especially when you think of all the ships he robbed, people he killed, and boats he probably sunk in the process.”
“Talk about pure evil,” she said, now a little breathless.
“Amen.”
We passed the third set of cross tunnels. They seemed to come up much faster now that I wasn’t going down to search each and every one of the rooms for three gold crosses.
“I keep thinking of Zebediah Cook’s wife, Rachel, and how McNabb murdered her right out on the flats.”
“Yeah?” We kept moving at a fast pace.
“I can’t help it. Being here in McNabb’s cellar, knowing he lived here, dragged sea chests down here, piled up his jewels here…and thinking he killed that poor woman just for the treasure. It makes me sick.”
I took her hand, and turned her to me. “I know. It’s really sobering when you think of how he took so much from so many people, most of whom we’ll never even know about.”
“And poor Reverend Cook. To think of the courage it took to make that initial journey over the seas, and how so many people used to die during such voyages. They almost made it—I mean, they were right in the bay out there—only to have his wife murdered. My God, Gus. I can’t imagine his pain.”
“I think you just did.” I squeezed her hand.
“How much longer?” she asked.
“About—” I stopped and listened. “Wait. Did you hear that?”
A faint cry came from ahead of us. A cat? A bird? How was that possible underground?
“It’s a baby,” she said, her eyes widening in horror. “Oh my God. Could it be Mason? How in the world did he get down here?”
The cry came again. Definitely a baby.
“Because Marla must have put him down here before she went out to the ocean with her husband. God knows what happened out there. Come on.”
We ran down the tunnel, stopping to listen every few minutes. The wailing grew louder, and when we reached and passed the fifth cross tunnel it suddenly became fainter.
“Wait,” I said. “Let’s turn back. I think he’s down the side passage.” We raced back, stopping in the middle of the crossroads. “Listen.”
Camille’s hand shot toward the right hand
passage, where I’d found all of the treasure chests brimming with jewels. “He’s in there.”
We hurried into the passage, and indeed, the crying sounds became louder the deeper we went. When we reached the altar table between the two heavy velvet curtains, we stopped and looked frantically for the child.
“Where is he?” Camille said with an urgent whisper. “Oh, Lord. Where is he?”
It sounded as if he was in the same room with us, but there was no baby in sight.
“Inside the trunks,” I said. “Hurry.”
Camille began to weep. “Oh no. I don’t want him to suffocate like I almost did. Oh, please God, no.” She flew along the walls, flinging open trunks on one side while I covered the other side.
We found no baby boy wiggling inside any of them.
I knew on any other day, she’d be oohing and ahhing over the treasure. But not today.
She turned a tear-stained face to me. “Where is he, Gus? Where’s Mason?”
Chapter 34
The cries seemed louder closest to the end of the tunnel, so we worked our way back, looking more carefully now, behind sea chests and under tables. Again, at the altar, the crying was the loudest.
“Under the altar,” she said. “Pull away the tablecloth. He must be in here.”
We yanked the cloth away to find…nothing.
We stood and stared at the dead-end wall. How was this possible?
“Could she have made a recording and hidden a little tape player down here?” I said, knowing it sounded crazy. Then again, we were talking about Marla.
“Wait a minute.” Camille studied the altar, the thick velvet drapes, and the entire face of the dead-end passage. She looked up, down, and side-to-side. Her eyes narrowed. “Look. Those wires run through that hole up in the corner. This isn’t the end of the passage. Come on. Help me figure it out.”
I yanked aside the heavy drapes to find a seam on either side of the wooden wall. “You’re right.” I leaned on one side of the panel, but it didn’t budge. The crying grew more plaintive.
Camille ran her hands over the wooden door, and then pointed to the bottom of the floor beneath the altar table. “Look at these scratches. This is a door, and it definitely swings open.”
Murder on the Brewster Flats Page 14