by Mims, Lee
“You have all you need to get your loan and execute your option, right?”
“Except Gladys! If someone finds her … kills her … ”
“Quiet!” he boomed. “That’s where you’re going to have to rely on me. Look, I’m in total sympathy with you, Miz Cooper. Meaning, I’m on your side. I will find Gladys Walton and I will bring Ivan Thorpe and Nash Finley in for questioning. Trust me.
“But I can’t do my job while I’m worried about you getting kidnapped or killed on my watch. Now go home to Raleigh and stay out of trouble until I find Gladys and call you.”
With that, he opened the door, taking a few steps through it before he turned and pointed at me. “I’m serious as an open grave, Miz Cooper. I don’t want you running around here right now. Go home. If I have to, I’ll throw you in jail until I figure out what’s going on.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I sat there for a while, sipping my drink. I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself, but Sonny Evans had rattled me. I poured myself another drink, swirled my finger in the ice cubes, and licked it.
I sipped until the delicious elixir was gone, then went to check on Bud.
I gave him a gentle shake.
“Ummpf,” he said.
“You feeling all right? Not about to leave the planet, are you?”
“Not without you,” he said, reaching for me.
“Bud? You know what the doctor said. No unnecessary physical activity, and you need to be roused every few hours. That’s all I’m … ”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence. Bud had his own idea of the therapy he needed. The next thing I knew my eyes popped open and it was early Sunday morning.
Where was I? Damnit, I did it again. I tried to beat a hasty retreat back to the sofa in the sitting room where I could scold myself in private, but as I began to slide my feet over the edge of the bed, Bud pulled me into spoon position, nibbled my ear, and murmured, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, babe?”
A nudge in my back told me what Bud, ever the romantic, was thinking. I said, “If you’re thinking about where Gladys might be, I guess so.”
“Now, now,” Bud said, his breath warm against the back of my neck. “I’m sure the good sheriff can handle it, and I’m equally sure you should let him.” His fingers went to my breasts, where he squeezed gently and my breath caught in my throat. “Relax babe, Gladys probably has some place she goes to be by herself. Someplace hidden that only she knows about.”
Bud’s left hand slid slowly down my abdomen and tried to slip between my tightly clamped thighs. I made a face. Trouble was, he couldn’t see it so I pulled his hands from my body and stood up, ignoring his frustrated sigh.
“Cleo, tell me you’re coming back to Raleigh with me today.”
“Of course I am,” I lied—for the umpteenth time in the last several days. “Wouldn’t want to upset Sheriff Evans.” In fact I had an entirely different plan. Something I’d told Gladys had resurfaced in my mind when Bud used the word hidden. I had a hunch I knew right where Gladys was. And this time, after so many times of being wrong, I had to be right. The trick was to get to her without anyone following me.
One thing was clear. I needed to get rid of Bud. His attempt to protect me last night had nearly gotten us both killed. I worked better on my own.
“Bud,” I said, gathering my scattered clothes from the floor and wadding them against my chest, “I think Will should drive you home and stay with you. Just to be on the safe side. I’ll get Tulip out of the way, take her with me. I’ve got lots of paperwork to catch up on.”
I started for the door but Bud said, “Wait. I want your word you’re coming back to Raleigh. I know how you are and I don’t want you coming up with some scheme. You’ve done everything you need to do, Cleo, and Will’s almost got your presentation done. It’s a waiting game now. You have no reason to stay here. This whole business is far too dangerous. What if I hadn’t been there last night and you’d been the one hit on the head? God only knows where you’d be now.”
“Bud, I have reports I need to finish—”
“I’m serious, Cleo. Think about how treacherous these people are. At first, neither one of us really believed anyone would go to such lengths. But now that we know they will, it’s doubly stupid for you to pursue this any further when you don’t have to.”
Bud sat up in bed. “Please, babe. You don’t need the money.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Bud, when you have plenty. You don’t know what it’s like to worry about bills, about a mortgage … ”
He was really starting to piss me off. Best to end the conversation. “Fine. You can have your own money. I’ll set aside a big old trust account for you. Anything you want.”
“I don’t want your money, Bud. That’s the point—the point you never understood.”
Silence.
I padded back to the bed, gently pushed him back to lay down, and gave him a peck on the forehead. “Don’t forget to take your antibiotics,” I said and headed for the bathroom.
I heard Will’s voice through the door as I toweled dry. Bud was explaining the plan for the day. It was set. The two of them would go back to Raleigh, and I’d stay here to do my “paperwork.”
“Great,” I whispered to my guilty countenance in the mirror.
TWENTY-SIX
I was in a hurry to check out my hunch about Gladys’s whereabouts. But as I was tying my sneakers, I heard a timid knock on the door. Tulip crouched low on all fours, a low growl rumbling in her throat. I slid the curtain back and peeked out.
Shirley stood on the balcony gazing at the garden below.
I opened the door and asked her to come in. I could see she had been crying.
I directed her to sit in one of the wingbacks. I figured she was here to apologize for her attack on me, for blaming me for Robert Earle’s death. But after a few minutes of unabated snuffling, and not a word out of her, I got impatient.
“You’re not a very good advertisement for newlywed bliss, Shirley. What’s wrong, girl?”
She stared at me, looking even more pathetic. “It’s Ivan. You were right. He’s got this friend”—sniff sniff—“and he talked Robert Earle and me into trying to get Momma to sign a Power of Attorney paper so they could take over mining her land.” She stifled a sob.
Even though I was already certain I knew what had been done to Gladys by her evil spawn, it was nonetheless shocking to hear one of them admit it. I got a box of tissues from the bathroom, handed her one and said, “Who’s the friend?”
“His name is Nash Finley. I don’t know how Ivan knows him. But it gets worse.”
Was that possible?
“They’ve got Momma hidden down in the root cellar, but they can’t make her sign the papers. I heard them say what they’re planning to do to her … ”
“What, Shirley? What are they planning to do to her?” I shouted. I also shook her. The thought of poor Gladys in a root cellar made me want to do more than shake the silly girl, but now was not the time.
“They … they’re going to kill her. Just ’cause they’re frustrated. And they don’t have any other plan. They didn’t know I was listening. They were in Momma’s desk messing through some papers for her signature so they can forge it.”
She sobbed uncontrollably for a minute, then stopped and looked up at me. Snot was running from her nose. Her lips were swollen, her face blotchy and streaked with tears.
“I just barged right in,” she continued, though now with an urgency that caused her to reach out and grab my hands. “They’re real mad at me, Miz Cooper. They said now that I know about their plans, I’m just as guilty as they are, and I’d better go along. But I’m not! I didn’t want anything like this to happen.”
She closed her eyes, then said, “I didn’t know what to do so I told them I was going out to get food.
I’ve got to do something to save Momma, but I didn’t know what, so I just started driving and ended up here.”
“When was this? How long have you been gone?”
She looked at her watch. “Maybe half an hour … little longer.”
“You’re right about one thing,” I said. “We’re going to do something to save your mother.”
“But … ”
“Don’t worry. You just do what I tell you to do.”
I sat in my Jeep scratching Tulip behind the ears, waiting anxiously for Shirley’s call. I was at the job site and had used one of the roads Wink had forged on the back side of the Walton property, so I didn’t pass by the house.
Patience is not one of my virtues; fortunately, I didn’t have to practice it for long before my cell rang. I checked the screen. Excellent.
“Everything okay, Shirley?”
“I did like you told me. I drove my car into a ditch then called Ivan and told him I couldn’t get it out. I said that he should bring help. He said he’d bring Nash. I can see them coming toward me now.”
“You stuck the car down in the ditch pretty good, didn’t you, Shirley, so it will take them at least thirty minutes to get it out?”
“Yes, yes, I did what you said!” She started to cry again.
“Good,” I said, “crying is good. Keep it up. That way you won’t have to answer too many questions when they get there.”
Shirley cried all the harder. I hung up.
I petted Tulip, who sensed something was up. “I’m just going to get Gladys, girl,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I could hear her whine after me as I trotted through the woods. I figured it was about a ten-minute jog to Gladys’s house.
The door was ajar when I arrived. I pushed it open, stepped into the foyer and listened. I called out, “Anybody home?”
Silence.
Assured both men had gone to rescue Shirley, I set out to find the root cellar. As I tiptoed into the kitchen, I found more proof that Nash and Ivan had left in a hurry: a half-eaten pizza in a box on the table. The room should have been redolent with its fragrance, instead, odors of stale beer and ripening garbage warred with each other. Dirty dishes crowded the sink. Almost gagging, I opened the door to the walk-in larder.
The rope handle was right where Shirley said it would be, nestled into a groove in a three-foot by three-foot wooden trap-door in the floor. I slipped my finger under the rope, and pulled to lift it.
It did not budge.
I looked for the problem. An old oak box about the size of a large picnic cooler was blocking the door. I strained to move it and it wouldn’t budge either. I slid the top off the box and rested it against a shelf. White residue. Salt. Must be an old salt chest used back in the days when country folks used to pour copious amounts of salt on raw pork as a way of preserving it.
Removing the top of the chest had reduced its weight and I was able to shoulder it off the door so I could open it. I leaned the now-open door back against the salt chest and looked down the stairs into the black depths of what Shirley had called the root cellar. I couldn’t recall any time in my life when I’d been in a root cellar and had no desire to experience one now, but seeing no alternative, I took a deep breath and stepped down.
Cool but dank, humid air surrounded me as I descended the stairs until my head was just below the level of the floor. “Gladys?” I called down softly.
I heard nothing. Why wouldn’t Gladys answer me if she was down here? Obviously, she wasn’t. I turned to leave and saw a light switch on a doubled floor joist to my left.
Maybe Gladys wasn’t answering because she was tied up, gagged. I flipped the light switch and tentatively turned and trotted the rest of the way down into the room. At first glance, it looked to be a pretty nice space, for a root cellar anyway. It was about twenty-five by fifteen feet, had a concrete floor and nicely painted beige walls. Eight rows of shelves, each about five feet long, marched across the room. Stepping farther into the room, I quickly scanned the entire space. Gladys had a fully stocked and organized root cellar. There was one key thing missing: Gladys.
I heard what sounded like the cellar door slam shut. “What the fuck?” I muttered. Then I heard a distinctive sliding sound and my heart did a double clutch. I flew to the stairs and stared up at the closed cellar door.
Don’t panic. Panic won’t help anything. The door probably just fell over from where you propped it against the chest, right?
Hoping against hope, I climbed back up and gave the door a tentative one-handed push. It didn’t budge. Next, I sat down on the stairs and pushed up with a bust-a-gut, two-handed, give-it-all-you-can heave. It might as well have been nailed down. I figured a salt chest would do nicely too.
I reached for my cell. Oh my god. I’d left the damn thing in the Jeep thinking it would be wise not to have it ring at an inopportune moment. Seemed kind of stupid now, since they make mute buttons for those times when you’re sneaking around looking for friends bound and gagged in root cellars.
Deciding now was as good a time as any to panic, I pounded the door with both fists and called for help. When that didn’t work, I let go with a stream of expletives even I didn’t know were in my vocabulary, then stopped and listened.
A lone cricket chirped from somewhere in the cellar.
I descended to the bottom step and sat with a dumfounded thud. It was only a few minutes ago that I was thinking of Shirley as stupid. Obviously, I needed to reassess. Visions of me beating the living daylights out of her came to mind and gave me renewed energy to look for a way out. Just then, I heard voices from somewhere behind me. I got down and tiptoed—don’t ask me why—in their direction.
At the far corner of the cellar, I stopped and listened again. The voices had stopped. I looked around. At about ceiling height, an indentation, maybe ten by twenty inches and the depth of the wall, caught my attention. Perhaps it might at one time have provided ventilation, maybe even been a window.
Stretching as far as I could, I rubbed it with my hand. The screen or glass that once had been there was now a panel of plywood, painted the same beige as the walls.
At that moment, the talking resumed, seeming as if it was only a few feet from me. Visualizing the exterior of Gladys’s house I guessed I was pretty near the parking area in the back.
On a shelf next to me were a bunch of those large Costco-sized cans of pork and beans. Very quietly I made a base of four cans, then set another three on top of that. I stepped up and leaned as close to the wall as possible. I put my ear to the plywood window.
“ … blew it last night, or we’d have had her.” Ivan Thorpe’s voice. No doubt about it.
“It’s not like I had any help from you. But not to worry. We have her now,” said a voice I wished I didn’t recognize so well. My ears strained closer.
“Doesn’t her coming here prove she doesn’t know where Gladys is?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it’s time for plan B.”
“Well, for that we’re going to need”—
Their words were lost in the sound of gravel crunching under shoes. They were moving away. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, damn it!
I wiped cold sweat from my brow. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like plan B.
TWENTY-SEVEN
You know how it is when you’re having a real bad nightmare and you know it’s just a nightmare, but you can’t make yourself wake up? Well, that’s how it was for me in that cellar. Besides which, everything in my body felt dangerously loose right then, including my legs, but I resolved to remain standing. I couldn’t bear to think about the alternative, plan B, which I was fairly sure could be titled “The Eliminate-Cleo-Cooper Plan for Owning Your Own Granite Quarry.”
I heard the distinct sound of a car engine starting, then another, through the plywood window. I waited for a while but heard nothin
g more than the muffled sounds of the birds in the trees beside the parking area.
I leaned against the cool wall and laid my head in the crook of my elbow. What the fuck had I been thinking to believe one word Shirley said? What was her role in all this? It was obvious now that she was lying when she told me Ivan and Nash had just arrived to pull her out of the ditch. They had to have been here, waiting for me to walk into their trap.
On the other hand, maybe Ivan and Nash told her the story she relayed to me back at the Morning Glory and she really had come to me for help. Maybe she was still in the ditch. I straightened up and blew out a determined breath. Now wasn’t the time to speculate or worry about her.
Then I thought of my dear dog waiting patiently for me, and you know what? That’s when I started getting pissed off. I had to get out of here, but unless Scotty beamed me up or I suddenly discovered I could rematerialize on the other side of a wall like a ghost, I was at a loss as to how to go about that.
In desperation I struck out with both fists at the plywood window. Whoa! It shot out of its place, moist, loamy air rushed in, and I was staring at the underside of the shrubs at the back of the house. Maybe I was dealing with a couple of goobers after all. They hadn’t even checked the cage to see if it would hold their quarry.
Suddenly, I felt a whole bunch better, even given the size of the tiny opening in front of me. It didn’t matter, honestly, whether or not I could fit through it; out was where I was going, and nothing could stop me. Placing one hand outside the opening and one hand on the ledge, I leaped up.
“Fuck!” My forehead made a cracking sound on the painted metal frame and there was a crash as I fell off the pork and bean cans and toppled to the floor. Additional height was called for, and right quick. I pulled more beans from the shelf to add another level to my reconstructed, fiber-rich stepstool and tried again.
This time I managed to get one shoulder and a boob out. With toes digging into the wall and somewhat resembling my pet hamster when he used to squeeze through my little-girl fingers, I oozed into the narrow space between the shrubbery and the foundation.