by West, CJ
Deirdre hadn’t moved five feet when they all heard the collision of bullet and stone, but this time, Deirdre couldn’t contain her terror. She let out a high-pitched shriek, holding the note long after she hit the ground and lay flat with her hands on her head. Charlie raced past his father, hunched over in an awkward run, his head presenting a bobbing target to the man among the vines. He dropped beside Deirdre and rolled her over. She wasn’t bleeding anywhere, just terrified.
Charlie wondered how the bullet got through the wall until the next one whizzed past his head and struck a rock behind him. The hair on his neck and arms stood on end, electrified by the awesome power that had passed so close. The bullet ricocheted up through the trees zipping through leaves and branches as it went. Charlie dropped prone aiming the gun up the hill. He could see nothing but leaves and trees up there. He fired twice hoping to startle Oliver into moving.
Deirdre screamed again masking any sound Oliver might have made.
The women had just passed Charlie’s house and probably just came into Oliver’s view. But he couldn’t be shooting from the vines and the woods.
He had a partner!
That was the trap. They were covering the houses from both sides.
Another shot struck the ground several feet away. It was a warning, an order to move back.
Charles whistled from behind. He’d closed some of the gap between them and was pointing at the house and motioning for them to retreat to him. The house was protecting him from Oliver at the moment and the stone wall was protecting him from whoever was out in the vines.
They converged in a line, backs against the wall, feet extended.
“Charlie, can you run to the road for help?”
Doped up on cortisone and painkillers like the trainers had done for his comeback, he might have run the entire distance, if he lived that long. There was no cover on the slope up to the woods except the house that sheltered them now and an occasional tree. Running, he’d be exposed to shots from both sides. One hit anywhere would leave him lying in the open waiting for his executioner.
“I can’t run that far. Even if I could, I wouldn’t make it halfway.”
“How about the gunshots? Think anyone heard them?” Deirdre asked.
“Gunshots aren’t that strange out here. There are plenty of hunters around.” Charlie imagined birds of some kind were in season.
Charles nodded toward the house and Charlie saw Deirdre quiver.
Charlie agreed with his father. “I think we rush up behind my house and cut across the lawn. The house will cover us longer that way.”
Charles nodded toward the vineyard. Both men knew they’d be exposed to shots from the vines.
“Come on Deirdre, we’ll be safer inside,” Charlie encouraged.
Charlie rushed up to the house with Elizabeth and Deirdre close behind. When they were in position, he stuck his head and shoulders out past the line of shrubs hoping to attract Oliver’s attention. A bullet shaved the evergreen branches. As it whizzed by, Charlie dodged back behind the house. At the same time, Deirdre and Elizabeth ran across the lawn and up onto the deck. Charlie prayed Oliver had a scope zoomed in on him and hadn’t seen them sneak back.
As Charles started across, Charlie hopped clear of the structure, fired three times from the hip, dropped, and rolled back to cover. No bullet greeted him this time and as he looked back, his father reached the deck unmolested. Not one shot had been fired from the vines since they left the wall and no shots had been fired at Deirdre, Elizabeth, and Charles as they went back into the house.
Charlie walked the length of his house wondering where Oliver’s game was leading. If he had a gun and a silencer all this time, why wait for them to escape and chase them back inside. Why not shoot them from outside the greenhouse? He could have killed them all while they slept. Why work so hard to drop a tree when four bullets would have finished them?
Oliver had a plan. He didn’t want to kill them until he ran out of ways to make them suffer. Charlie prayed he might turn Oliver’s patience against him.
He reloaded the shotgun and hobbled across the lawn listening for the whiz of a bullet he knew wouldn’t come.
Chapter Forty-seven
Water dripped from random spots in the ceiling and puddles splashed underfoot as Charlie walked into the kitchen. Deirdre leaned over the island scribbling on a notepad with Charles and Elizabeth coaching from each elbow.
“What’s going on?” Charlie asked.
Deirdre looked up with fiery determination. “We’re leaving evidence for whoever finds us.”
“What do you mean, finds us?”
“He’s going to kill us. He needs to be punished.” Deirdre dropped her attention back to her writing. She printed Oliver Joyet as neatly as she could and continued with their names underneath.
Charlie couldn’t believe they’d given up. “He’s not trying to kill us. He’s playing with us like a cat toys with a mouse.”
Charles frowned at his son. “The mice die in the end, don’t they?”
The metaphor was fitting. Oliver hadn’t killed them yet because he enjoyed terrorizing them, but this was not a game. If they got out of reach, if they threatened to escape, the game would abruptly end. Charlie had sensed this when he refused to run along the stone wall for help.
Deirdre ripped her note from the pad and sealed it in a glass jar. What she did next baffled him. She placed the jar in the back of the freezer underneath the frozen vegetables they bought a day earlier.
“What are you doing?”
“He has a history of burning evidence, doesn’t he?”
“You don’t think he’ll search the house first?” Charlie didn’t admit that the idea had merit. He hadn’t abandoned his hope for survival as they apparently had.
Deirdre went to work on another note. “How long do you think he’ll stay after he kills us? Don’t you think he’ll torch the house and run like before?”
Appalled, Elizabeth locked eyes with her son. “Torch the house and run? What’s she talking about?”
“Oliver killed a guy in Piolenc then burned the house down,” Charlie said.
“You’re talking about Henri Deudon. Her husband…” Elizabeth seemed to struggle against her own thoughts. “Laroche had pictures of your car next to Henri’s. You were there. You both were there, weren’t you?”
“We saw him kill Henri,” Charlie said.
“And you did nothing?” Elizabeth stared back, aghast. “You let him get away with murder! What were you thinking? And what were the four of you doing in that old house?”
“It doesn’t matter, Mom,” Charlie blushed. “What’s important is getting out of here now. The notes are a waste of time. We need to go.”
Elizabeth stood back against the fridge, her face contorted by visions of her son’s involvement in a murder. They all avoided her disappointed eyes. Deirdre focused on her note, Charles hoisted himself up on the counter and gazed out the kitchen window, and Charlie stood in the middle of the group, unsure where to look as he wondered about an escape through the barn and into the trees.
A telephone rang on the highest possible ringer setting.
The whole group stared at the source of the noise.
Impossible! The phone hadn’t been there a moment earlier, but there it was, bright red, in the center of the counter, ringing away.
It was a rotary phone, the boxy kind with the large round dial that AT&T put in millions of homes before the government split the company up. The power was still out, even Charlie’s cell phone wasn’t working, but Oliver wanted to talk to them and this was the only way. It rang defiantly; a candy-apple red symbol of Oliver’s control. Charlie was sure that only Oliver’s calls would get through. He picked up and Oliver got his wish.
“You’re right, Charlie, the notes are a waste of time. Tell Deirdre the freezer is a great hiding place, though. Very creative. That’s why I liked her.”
Oliver was listening and probably watching too. Charlie
shot looks all around the room for microphones and cameras.
“Don’t bother, smart guy. I spend as much time in that house as you do.”
He could see them even now!
“If you find my equipment, I’ll just replace it.”
The phone was clear evidence of that. He’d slipped in overnight and left it on the counter. All four of them had walked within inches of it without noticing.
Charlie turned away from his parents. “What do you want, Oliver?”
“Oh, it’s Oliver now? I guess we have the departed Mr. Lynch to thank for that. I’m pleased you’re finally catching on. It wouldn’t be fun if you weren’t giving it your best.”
“Let my mother and Deirdre go. They have nothing to do with this.”
“Are you kidding? Deirdre, that little slut! I’m going to enjoy slicing her. She paid Old Baldy seventy-five-K to whack me. Imagine, seventy-five-K of our money! Ungrateful bitch! No chance she’s getting out alive. And your mother? Never. She’s an old bag, but I find those long wrinkly legs quite sexy. She’s going to be my reward at the end of this madness. You can watch, if you’re still alive.”
“You bastard!” Charlie slammed down the receiver.
Terror flooded the faces huddled around him as if the end of the conversation would bring a hail of bullets through every window.
Charlie prayed his mother hadn’t heard Oliver’s threat.
“What did he say?” Charles asked.
“He’s taunting me.”
The phone rang again and Charles picked it up angrily. He never uttered a word. His face went numb in response to whatever was said on the other end. He looked around the room dumbfounded and handed the phone to Charlie.
“Hang up on me again and you’ll watch me have my way with your mother then kill her slowly, understand?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m disappointed with you, Marston. After all I taught you, you let me ruin your parents’ house with that waterfall. I expected more from you.”
Charlie said nothing.
“Don’t you wonder how I did it? Come on, you must be thinking, damn I saw him do it once. I knew he was going to try it and I couldn’t stop him. That must be sobering for a college genius like you. How long did you spend in the attic?”
“I found the drain pipes.”
“Sure, after I soaked you. That didn’t take a Ph.D.”
Charlie hissed into the phone, much to Oliver’s delight.
“Now, as for your low-life father, it seems he forgot our appointment this morning. Why don’t your remind him for me.”
“What appointment?”
“Surely you saw the briefcase.”
Charlie motioned to his father as if carrying a heavy case. Charles shrugged and began looking around the room. Apparently in all the confusion, he’d misplaced it somewhere in the house.
“Charlie. It’s in the dining room by the door.”
Charlie pointed toward the dining room and his father retrieved the case and waved it in the doorway.
“Very good, you have it.”
“If you knew exactly where it was, why didn’t you just take it when you installed the phone?”
“Good question, Young Marston, but you’re not allowed to ask questions. You deliver the money. Actually, you’re late, so get going.”
“Where are we supposed to be going?”
“Don’t tell me you lost the note, too. Such incompetence. How can your family build a multi-million-dollar wine business, but yet you can’t keep track of a briefcase and a note? If you’re going to steal and pillage like your father, you’d better get some practice delivering blackmail.”
“What note are you talking about?”
“Don’t families talk anymore? Never mind. You and daddy take the case to the fermentation room.”
“We’re not leaving the women.”
“Get this straight, Charlie. You’ll do exactly what I say.”
The women took a step toward each other and clasped hands.
Charlie didn’t answer.
“I was playing with you over at the stone wall. I know you couldn’t see it, but that shot was four inches from your ear. I saw you jump. Damn good shooting, huh? I thought about nicking your earlobe. I could have done it, but who knows if you’d have moved and spoiled everything. You’d be no fun with a bullet in the side of your head. Ask TJ.
“Know this: I can take you out anytime. So, you two get over to the barn with that case. If either of the women goes with you, I’ll drop them as soon as they clear the hedges. And if you don’t get moving, I’ll shoot the next thing I see through one of those windows. I’m done firing warning shots.”
The line went dead.
Charlie hung up and immediately placed his finger on top of the nine and pulled the heavy dial all the way around; he followed with two short jab-arcs for the ones. Of course rotary dialing didn’t work with their touchtone service, but he had to try.
Next, he took a piece of paper from Deirdre’s pad and started scribbling out his plan. The others seemed confused at first, but they soon understood that Oliver was watching everything they did. Deirdre and Elizabeth wrote short questions that showed their fear almost as much as their shaky handwriting.
Charles opened the case. The money was all there and it didn’t seem that anything was added. Certainly nothing that could harm them.
In a few minutes the plan was set. Charlie and Charles would deliver the money, while Elizabeth and Deirdre took advantage of the fact that Oliver’s attention would be focused on the men.
Chapter Forty-eight
Charlie and Charles slipped out the back door and circled behind the wrecked greenhouse and the fallen tree to shield themselves from Oliver’s position up in the trees. They stopped against the near corner of the barn and considered which of the entrances would lead safely to their rendezvous in the fermentation room. The most direct route through the office would channel them into a narrow aisle, surrounded by hiding places every six or eight feet. The lower side of the barn featured three more entrances; one each to the warehouse, the processing room, and the fermentation room itself. There was also a lone door on the far end of the barn that the men used when walking back and forth to the gift shop.
Charlie turned his attention away from the barn and peered across the parking lot into the trees. The sun shone brightly on the green leaves spread outward to collect its energy. The forest behind them was dappled with light, highlighting a tree trunk here, a patch of brown leaves there. Everything else was painted in tiny splotches of black. Oliver could be there shrouded in black with his crosshairs hovering on Charlie’s chest. If not, he’d be inside the barn preparing an ambush.
Charles seemed to sense their vulnerability, too and limped around the corner toward the loading docks.
At the lower corner, out of sight from above, the men agreed to approach the fermentation room from opposite ends of the barn. Charlie traded the shotgun to his father for the case and watched him limp off toward the far door. While he waited, he looked back toward the house. He couldn’t see through the windows, but he knew the women were rushing around, trying to find the cameras while Oliver came to collect his blackmail. He prayed they’d be safe as he scoured the trees one last time, hoping to spot Oliver on his way down.
Charles reached the fermentation room doors and waved for Charlie to slip into the warehouse. At first he felt enveloped in gloom, but shapes slowly emerged. On either side, twenty-foot columns of wine, bottled, boxed, and shrink-wrapped hemmed him in. He groped his way along the double row of pallets that clogged the aisle. The stacks, butted together, forced him straight across the warehouse with a half million dollars at his side. Oliver could be anywhere, above, behind, even straight ahead. Charlie searched the boxes, listening intently for the slightest movement as his sneakers treaded quietly by pallet after pallet.
Safely through, he paused in the entryway to the bottling room. Without power, the everyday hum was replaced by m
urky silence. Ghostly quiet machines lined the walls with a half dozen ambush points Charlie would have to pass. He hunched low, checking among the stainless steel legs for human ones. Then he stepped to the wall and craned his neck behind the row of machines. Finding nothing, he walked slowly onward, turning every twenty feet or so to be sure no one had followed him in from the warehouse.
The cellar appeared to be a narrow sixty-foot hallway lined with aging bottles of sparkling wine when, in fact, it was almost as wide as it was long. The bottles were double-stacked neck-to-neck. Only the circular bottoms faced the hall, like shiny cordwood. Behind each double-stack, were nine more that filled the bay fifteen feet deep, plenty of room for Oliver to hollow out a hiding place and wait.
Dealing with anyone else, Charlie’s imagination would have been a distraction, but Oliver went to incredible lengths to exact his revenge. He’d spent years considering what would happen next. He’d spared no effort; no effect would be too spectacular. He had them headed for the fermentation room, a big lofted room with four entrances, tons of equipment, and forty-foot ceilings. He could have chosen any of the buildings, but what better place for his final show. Here was the symbolic center of the winery he’d lost. This is where Oliver would take his revenge.
Charlie stood outside the solid double doors and listened. He half-heartedly checked the door-casing for wires, realizing he was already beyond any realistic chance of protecting himself. Oliver could take his life anytime he wanted and this filled Charlie with an odd sort of courage. With nothing to lose, he felt free. Dramatic action could only save him. He opened the door and moved boldly inside. Flickering light streamed down from the fans in the huge gable vents. A gentle breeze pushed the blades in lazy circles.
The office door to the left was open, revealing fabric walls, but little else. Beyond, a stack of oak barrels filled with Chardonnay reached toward the roof. On the other side of the room, the stainless steel fermenters glistened in a row like missiles ready for launch.
Feet shifted on concrete. Charlie snapped to his right, caught a glint off the shotgun and saw his father’s head, poking around the fermenters as he himself had done in the bottling room. When their eyes met, Charles shook his head to indicate he hadn’t seen anyone.