The Deputy's Proof

by Carla Cassidy

  “I think it would be easy to get lost down there,” Savannah replied. “That’s why I never veered from the tunnel that took me to the lagoon.”

  “Did you sleep okay after I left? No nightmares?” he asked.

  “No nightmares, but it took me a long time to finally go to sleep. I’m going down with you today.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Besides, why would you want to go?”

  “I’ll be perfectly safe with the three of you men, and I think I need to go back to banish the memory of the bogeyman.”

  He raised a dark brow. “So, you did have nightmares.”

  “No, I just had a hard time getting things out of my mind. I need to go back down there one more time, Josh. I know I’ll be safe with all of you there, and it will get last night out of my mind.”

  “Okay, if it will help, then you’ll make us a four-man team.” He took another drink of his coffee and sat up straighter in his chair. “I have to admit, I’m more than a little excited to see where all the tunnels lead. And we need to catch the guy responsible for the attack on you last night.”

  “What I don’t understand is this. If he just wanted to scare me, he did that when he grabbed my arm. It was obvious I was terrified, and all I wanted to do was get away. Why did he grab my foot and try to drag me farther into that unknown tunnel?”

  Josh’s eyes darkened and narrowed. “That’s the most important thing to figure out. Who else is using those tunnels and for what purpose? If we can find the answer to those questions then we’ll know who attacked you.”

  “And then I want that tunnel entrance in the backyard filled in so that nobody can climb in or out of that hole ever again,” she exclaimed fervently.

  At that moment the doorbell rang. Savannah got up to answer. Ten minutes later she and the three men stood at the bush in her backyard. “It’s about a three-foot drop, and then the tunnel descends quickly to allow a person to stand,” she explained.

  As she gazed down the hole where she had descended so many times in the past year, a shiver ran up her spine. She couldn’t stop thinking of the night before.

  Josh stepped closer to her, as if he’d felt her shiver and somehow wanted to banish it. Sheriff Trey Walker held several lengths of nylon rope, and Mayor Jim Burns had a box of sidewalk chalk in a variety of colors. They all carried high-beam flashlights.

  Burns was dressed in a lightweight dark suit and a white shirt. He had been mayor for less than a year, unseating Mayor Frank Kean, who had served the community in the position of mayor for twelve years.

  Jim Burns was younger and had been responsible for the amusement park buying land and building in Lost Lagoon. He was also ambitious, high-strung and more than a little bit arrogant.

  Savannah was surprised he hadn’t brought his protégé and butt-kisser, city councilman Neil Sampson, with him. She was also surprised that Trey had come without his lapdog, Deputy Ray McClure, a creep who seemed to get away with as little work as possible.

  Burns took off his jacket and carefully laid it on the ground, all the while nearly dancing with excitement. “I couldn’t believe it when Trey told me about the tunnel system this morning. Let’s get to it.”

  He was the first to descend, followed by Trey. Josh gestured for Savannah to go next, and then he brought up the rear. Instantly she felt a claustrophobia she’d never experienced before as more flashbacks from the night before ran through her head.

  “You said this main tunnel runs straight to the lagoon?” Mayor Burns asked.

  “Yes, but there are seven or so offshoots between here and there,” Savannah replied. “The third one was where I was attacked.”

  Trey turned back to Josh. “But you checked that tunnel last night and didn’t find anything?”

  “I followed it until I came to a fork and then wasn’t sure which one to follow, so I came back,” Josh explained.

  “I think we need to proceed methodically,” Burns replied. “We’ll start with the first offshoot we come to.”

  Savannah bit back her disappointment. She’d hoped to follow the tunnel she’d been dragged into to see where it led. Even if there were forks, they could have explored where each one led.

  They started down the first offshoot. Trey began to trail the thin rope as they walked, like leaving breadcrumbs for them to follow back home.

  Flashlight beams danced on the walls, on the floor and ahead of them as they moved in silence. She had a feeling Trey and Jim were silent with awe. She couldn’t help her own curiosity and was aware of the comfort of knowing that Josh had her back.

  When they reached another tunnel on the left, Jim pulled out a piece of yellow chalk. As they walked down that way, he marked their path with bright yellow arrows.

  Savannah had an unusually good sense of direction; it was what had guided her down the tunnel to the lagoon in the first place. She sensed that this new underpass was taking them someplace in the center of town.

  They’d walked for quite some time, stopping every couple of yards for Jim to mark the wall, when they finally came to the end of the tunnel and a set of stairs that led upward.

  Savannah’s heart began to beat too fast as she wondered where the stairs would lead them. Was this where her attacker might have come from? Trey shoved the mayor behind him and pulled his gun. A glance backward showed her that Josh also had his gun out of his holster.

  Had it been out the entire time he’d been walking behind her? Was he intent on protecting her from anyone who might come up behind them?

  She chided herself. It wasn’t about her. Certainly protecting the mayor of the city would be uppermost in Trey’s and Josh’s minds.

  At the top of the stairs was an old wooden trap door in the ceiling. Trey shoved it open about an inch, just enough to allow in a faint glow of daylight.

  “Where does it go?” Jim asked in a whisper.

  “I’m not sure. I won’t know where we are until we go up.” He shoved the door open farther, but held it so that it wouldn’t make any noise when it fell to whatever floor it was in.

  Trey stepped up first and then the others followed. Savannah immediately suspected where they were...in the storeroom in the back of Mama Baptiste’s Apothecary Shop. The smell of herbs and spices, of mysterious roots and such filled the air.

  Trey closed the door quickly, and Savannah noted that it seemed to disappear as it fit so neatly into the dusty wood floor. It would be easy for nobody to know it was there.

  Trey held up his finger to silence anyone from speaking while wild thoughts flew through Savannah’s head. There was no way it had been Mama Baptiste down in the tunnel the night she’d been attacked.

  But what about Mama Baptiste’s son, thirty-three-year-old Eric? He and Shelly had shared a friendship of sorts before her death, but Savannah had always found the dark-haired, black-eyed man to radiate a dangerous energy.

  Was it possible that he’d been the person to attack her? And if so, why? And if he had some reason to want to hurt her, would he come after her again?

  Mama Baptiste squealed in surprise as the four of them came out of her storage room. She clasped a hand to her chest. “Most of my customers use the front door instead of the back, and they don’t come in with guns drawn,” she exclaimed.

  Josh put his gun back in his holster, as did Trey. Mama’s store held walls of tourist-type items for sale, but her main business was the herb and root concoctions she mixed and sold to people in town who suffered everything from an upset stomach to arthritis.

  Strange herbs and roots hung drying from rafters in the ceiling, and Mama herself looked part gypsy with her long salt-and-pepper hair wild down her shoulders. She was clad in a bright red peasant-style blouse and a floor-length red-and-yellow floral skirt.

  “We didn’t use the back door,” Jim said.

  Mama Baptiste frowned in confusion. “Then how did you get in?”

  “Through a tunnel that led to a trap door in the floor in you
r storage room,” Trey said.

  Josh watched Mama’s face intently. She appeared genuinely shocked. “What are you talking about? A door in my floor?”

  “Come on. I’ll show you.” Trey disappeared into the back room with Mama Baptiste as Mayor Burns wandered away from where Savannah and Josh stood near the counter.

  “What about Eric?” Savannah asked softly.

  “Have you and he had any problems?” Josh asked.

  “None. I know he and Shelly were friendly, at least as much as Eric is friendly with anyone, but he and I have never had much interaction,” Savannah replied.

  “I swear I didn’t know that hole in the floor was there,” Mama Baptiste said as she and Trey returned from the back room.

  “Maybe we should speak with Eric,” Josh said. “Is he around?”

  “I’m not sure where he is,” Mama replied. She walked behind the counter and picked up a cell phone. “I can call him and get him here. But what does a tunnel have to do with Eric?”

  “We’d just like to have a talk with him,” Trey said with a sharp gaze at Josh.

  Josh tamped down an edge of irritation. God forbid he attempt to do his job, especially when his boss was around. Mama made the call, and while they waited for Eric to arrive, Jim and Trey talked to her about business while Savannah and Josh wandered the aisles of the store.

  Savannah said nothing, but Josh sensed a nervous energy emanating from her, one that he didn’t understand given the circumstances of the situation.

  He finally took her by the arm and led her to a corner of the store, away from where the others stood waiting for Eric to arrive.

  “What’s going on? You seem unusually nervous.”

  Her dark chocolate-colored eyes gazed up at him, and in the depths of them he saw not just anxiety but also confusion. “I was just remembering back to the time before Shelly’s murder. She and Eric were spending some time together, and Shelly had told me one night that she had a sticky situation on her hands, but she refused to be specific about what she was talking about.”

  Josh contemplated her words. “Do you think Eric had something to do with your sister’s murder?”

  “I don’t know who killed Shelly, and I’ve really not had any interaction with Eric since Shelly’s death. He just always made me feel uncomfortable.”

  “You haven’t had much interaction with much of anyone since your sister’s death,” Josh replied.

  “And that’s the way I like it,” she said firmly.

  Josh wanted to tell her that it wasn’t right for her to be such a recluse, that she was young and beautiful and deserved a life of happiness. Before he could say any of those things, Eric walked into the shop.

  Eric Baptiste had the proverbial bad-boy aura. Clad in black jeans and a short-sleeved black T-shirt, he also had lean features and lips that looked as if they’d never smiled.

  He was something of a mystery. He’d been born and raised in Lost Lagoon, but he was a loner who didn’t appear to have friends and lived alone in one of the shanties on the swamp side of town.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked as his gaze went from Trey to Josh.

  “Do you know about the tunnel under the floor in the storeroom?” Trey asked.

  Eric’s eyes narrowed slightly, so slightly that Josh wondered if anyone else noticed. It was a definite tell to Josh what the answer was to the question.

  “Yeah, I know about the tunnels,” Eric replied. His mother looked at him in surprise.

  “Have you been down there?” Trey asked.

  “I’ve used them.” He looked at Savannah. “I use the same tunnel you do to get to the swamp.”

  “Why?” Trey asked.

  “It’s the easiest way to get to the swamp to gather the herbs and roots that Mama uses in her concoctions.”

  Savannah moved a bit closer to Josh. “Did you attack me? Did you try to drag me into another tunnel?”

  Eric’s features expressed genuine surprise. “I’d never hurt you, Savannah.” His gaze on her was dark and intense, and Josh fought the impulse to place an arm around her and pull her tight against him.

  A softness swept over Eric’s face. “I can’t believe how much you look like her.” He frowned and turned back to face Trey.

  “How well do you know the tunnel system?” Trey asked.

  “I know there are lots of tunnels, and I also know Savannah and I aren’t the only ones who have used them.”

  “Who else?” Jim asked. “And do you know the network well enough to map it out for us?”

  Eric shook his head. “I don’t know who else, but several times when I’ve been down there, I’ve heard male voices. I tried one night to figure out where they were coming from, but sound is distorted down there, and I never saw anyone else.”

  “What about mapping the network?” Jim repeated.

  Once again Eric shook his head, his shaggy black hair shining in the light dancing through the store’s window. “No way. I’ve only been in a couple of the tunnels. I mostly use the one in the back room to get to the tunnel that Savannah has been using to get to the lagoon.”

  “So you knew Savannah was using that tunnel,” Josh said.

  “I knew that she was mostly in the tunnel on Thursday or Friday nights, so I stayed away on those nights,” Eric replied.

  Once again he looked at Savannah. “If this is about somebody attacking you, then you all need to look someplace else. Shelly and I had become friends before her murder, and I would never hurt Savannah. When I look at her, she reminds me of how much I cared about Shelly.”

  “Where were you last night around midnight?” Trey asked.

  Eric tensed and a knot appeared in his jaw, pulsing in irritation. “I was at home at midnight last night. Was anyone with me? No, I don’t have visitors. Did anyone call me? No, I don’t chitchat on my phone at that time of night.”

  “Then nobody can corroborate your alibi,” Trey said.

  “My son would never hurt anyone,” Mama exclaimed.

  “Is this the part where you tell me not to leave town?” Eric asked wryly. “Is that it? Can I go now?”

  Trey waved his hand dismissively. Eric nodded to his mother, then to Savannah, and then left the store.

  “Everyone in town thinks Eric is just a no-count loner swamp rat who works for his mother in her store,” Mama Baptiste said, her dark eyes lit with a fiery glow. “But he has a degree in botany. He could work anywhere he wanted, but he chooses to stay here in a town that gives him no respect, because he loves me. He would never hurt anyone.”

  “We’re done here for now,” Trey said.

  “We’re done for the day,” Jim replied and gestured for them to follow him out the front door. “I’ve got a two-thirty meeting with Rod Nixon and Frank Kean about amusement park business,” he said once they were outside in the hot afternoon sun. Rod Nixon was the owner of the amusement park.

  Jim looked down at his white shirt that now had the tinge of brown dirt. “I need to get showered and changed. We’ll work the tunnels again tomorrow, but in the meantime, I want this all kept quiet, and I don’t want anyone down there without me.” He turned to Savannah. “I’ll pick up my suit jacket from your place sometime tomorrow.”

  “I’ll walk with you back to the station,” Trey said to the mayor. City Hall was located right next door to the sheriff’s station. “Josh, go home and get some sleep. Savannah, I’ll be in touch if I learn anything new about the attack.”

  Together the two men headed down the street, and Josh turned to Savannah. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

  “That’s not necessary,” she protested. “You need to get to bed so that you can be alert for your night shift.”

  “A few extra minutes won’t matter, and besides, I insist,” he replied.

  They walked down the sidewalk that would take them to the side street that would eventually lead to her house. “I can’t believe that Eric was using the same tunnel I’ve been using for so long and I never kn
ew,” she said.

  “You know that makes him our number one suspect in the attack on you,” Josh replied.

  “But he said he’d heard other voices down there, which means somebody else is using the tunnels,” she protested.

  “That’s what he said.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  Josh released a tired sigh. “At this point I don’t know what to believe. All I know is that I didn’t like the way Eric looked at you or that he said you look so much like Shelly.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, Josh knew his feelings for Savannah weren’t just professional. It was a touch of personal jealousy that had winged through him as he’d seen the soft look Eric had given her.

  “Are you implying that Eric might have killed Shelly? I certainly didn’t hear his name mentioned during the investigation.” There was a touch of censure in her voice.

  “We didn’t know about any connection between Eric and Shelly at the time,” he replied. A knot formed in his stomach, as it always did when he thought of the sloppy investigation into Shelly’s murder.

  They turned off onto the side street. “All I know is that I think it would be a good idea for you to keep your distance from Eric.”

  “I keep my distance from everyone,” she replied wryly. “The only person I see on a regular basis is Chad Williams, who delivers groceries to me once a week, and my neighbor, who wishes I’d move out.”

  “Jeffrey Allen?”

  She nodded. “I think he was thrilled when my parents left town, but he was upset that they left the house to Mac and me. He was hoping he would finally be able to buy it. He’s rude and hateful and has made it clear that he thinks I should move out and sell the house.”

  “Has he given you any indication that he knows about the tunnels?”

  “No, but I’m sure he probably knows about the one in my backyard now since we all went down it this morning. I imagine he was at his back window watching everything. There isn’t much he misses in the neighborhood.”