by Sharon Sala
“This hurts my heart,” Sahara whispered. “I feel betrayed all over again by this place and the people who were in it. I hate it. If I live through this, I’m never coming back here again.”
McQueen’s voice deepened with emotion as he pulled her closer.
“Baby, don’t doubt me. I need you to believe I will not let anyone hurt you.”
She leaned back, looking at the man he was—a bodyguard, a man who put his life on the line for the job…for her. The fact that they’d fallen in love had caught both of them by surprise.
“I believe you and I believe in you, so how are we going to set this trap? As long as you’re here, it gives any would-be attacker cause for hesitation.”
He looked at her in disbelief. “Well, I’m damn sure not going anywhere.”
“But what if people think you did?”
He looked at her intently. “What are you getting at?”
“People have accidents all the time, right? They get sick. They get hurt. So I have to believe that, whoever the killer is, he’s watching this house all the time, waiting for an opportunity just like that.”
“Oh, he’s definitely watching now,” Brendan said. “You dared him. You called him a coward in front of the whole world. He needs to show you what a badass is he.”
“I’m just pissed off enough now not to care,” she muttered.
He grinned. “Okay, tough stuff, I hear you. But I love you too much to let you run with that attitude. However, your idea isn’t half-bad. What if we set something up with the police? We could have someone else come into this house posing as your attacker. Sutton would know it wasn’t him, and would be suspicious, but he’d also know that I would do whatever I had to do to protect you from anyone. So we convince the world that I killed your attacker, but that I was hurt in the process. We can arrange for an ambulance to take me away…and a medical examiner will haul out a body bag with the fake attacker in it. To the world, the danger to your life is over, which means I’d be okay with leaving your side to get medical attention. If Sutton thinks I’m not on-site, he’d assume this place was completely unguarded and that you’re alone. He’d definitely try to make his move.”
“Yes! Exactly like that,” she said.
“Only… I’ll have to figure out a way to get back in the house unseen almost immediately.”
Sahara snapped her fingers as an idea came to her. “Oh! I know a way!” she cried, and grabbed his hand. “Come with me. I need to find Billie. Last time I saw this, I was just a kid, but there’s more than one kind of secret in this house.”
*
Billie had a pie cooling on the sideboard and was in the laundry folding towels when she heard Sahara calling for her.
“I’m in here!” she shouted, and reached for another bath towel.
Sahara came hurrying into the room. “Mama! Remember the time you showed me that secret passageway to the basement?”
Brendan frowned. “There’s an actual basement in this house? But there aren’t any windows to allude to that. This is New Orleans. It’s below sea level. The place where they bury people aboveground so they don’t float up later.”
Billie laid the folded towel on the stack. “Basements are ground level in New Orleans because of the water level. It’s why the front steps are so high and the veranda so wide. It hides it from the front of the house, and in this case it was always kept secret.”
“We need to see that secret exit, to see what shape it’s in,” Sahara said.
Billie looked nervous. “What are you planning to do?”
Brendan quickly outlined the plan, including the detail about needing a viable entry back into the house without being seen.
“Dear Lord,” Billie said. “I can tell there’s no way of talking you two out of this, so follow me.”
They followed her into the butler’s pantry, where she opened an upper cabinet and pushed a panel at the back of the wall. A four-foot-wide section of floor-to-ceiling cabinets swung out, revealing a narrow stairway leading down to the ground floor.
“There is a six-by-nine-foot room at the bottom of the stairs that’s always been called the basement, when in fact it is only a room, and with a single door that leads outside into an arbor of wisteria vines. You will see how it’s laid out as you go. Follow the tunnel of vines until they end at an ivy-covered wall facing the alley. There is a door hidden somewhere within that ivy. Both sides of the wall are covered in vines, so the door is not visible, and I have no idea how long it’s been since anyone used it.”
“How did you come to know about this?” Brendan asked.
Billie glanced at her daughter, then back at him. “Because that’s how I came into the house when I was young. That little room at the bottom of the stairs used to have a small bed in it. It’s where Sahara was conceived.”
“Oh, Mama,” Sahara said, and just held her.
“Okay, then,” Brendan said, patting her back. Then he flipped a switch just inside the opening. A single light at the bottom of the stairs lit the way.
“I’m going down,” he said.
When Sahara started to follow, he hesitated.
“You told me not to leave your sight,” she said.
He sighed. “Not the first time something I’ve said has come back to haunt me,” he said, then saw concern on Billie’s face. “She’ll be okay with me. We won’t be long, but I need to see if this will serve the purpose I need, or if we need to figure out something else.”
“Okay, but I’m standing right here until you get back,” she said.
Brendan stepped down onto the first step. “Sahara, stay a step behind me and hold on to my shoulders as we descend.”
“Okay,” she said, and down they went with Brendan swiping cobwebs away as they went.
They reached the small room at the bottom of the stairs.
“Would you look at this,” Sahara said.
There were shelves on one wall, a small antique-style desk beneath it with a handmade, three-legged stool on which to sit, but no bed. The surfaces had more mold than dust, as did the brick walls.
“There’s a padlock on this door,” Sahara said.
“Let’s look for a key first before I go out to the shed to look for a tool to cut it off.”
Sahara turned to the shelves, eyeing the scattered items as Brendan headed for the small desk. She opened boxes, shook old bottles for a rattling sound, but found nothing. She was all the way to the end when she saw an old key hanging on a nail between the shelf and the wall.
“Here it is!”
“Good job!” Brendan said, and gave her a quick kiss. “Now, here’s hoping this thing will still turn enough to unlock.”
“Billie keeps WD-40 in the utility room,” she said.
“Ask her to bring it to you at the top of the stairs.”
Sahara started back up the stairs, calling out as she climbed up.
“Mama, we need some WD-40.”
Billie disappeared as Sahara paused on the top step to wait. Moments later she was back with the blue-and-yellow can of lightweight oil.
“Here you go,” Billie said.
“Thank you, Mama,” Sahara said, and hurried back down.
Brendan sprayed the inside of the lock and then the key as well, removing as much dirt and grime as he could see, then set the can on the shelf.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, and slipped the key into the old padlock and tried to turn it.
At first, it would go only partway, and then it would stick, so he sprayed it again and tried once more. This time, it turned all the way.
“Bingo,” he said, removed the lock and laid it on the shelf with the spray.
The door was as stuck as the padlock had been, but it was no match for Brendan McQueen’s strength. He put his shoulder to it and hit it like a linebacker taking out the quarterback. The hinges squeaked as the door popped open, revealing the inside of a tunnel formed entirely of thick verdant vines and dangling clumps of purple wisteria.
Sahara was entranced. “If I had known this was what was at the end of those stairs, this would have been my secret place. Just look how far this arbor goes.”
“Hey, honey, grab that can of WD-40 and the key. We might need it to open another lock.”
She dropped the key in her pants pocket and took the can as they started through the arbor.
Years of dead leaves and blooms crunched beneath their feet as they started down the concrete path beneath. Sunlight coming through the vines shimmered like tiny rays of gold.
Sahara was so entranced that she was whispering. “The Secret Garden was my favorite book when I was a girl. I feel like I’ve just stepped into one of my own.”
Brendan looked back, saw the wonder on her face and reached for his phone.
“Drop the can,” he said.
She did.
“Beautiful, so beautiful. I don’t ever want to forget this,” he said softly, and began taking pictures of her amid the tangled vines and purple blooms. The scent of the wisteria and the tiny rays of sunlight on her face and clothes were images he would never forget. He didn’t see the love on her face until he was seeing her through the lens of the camera, and when he did, it brought tears to his eyes.
He put the phone back in his pocket and then kissed her. The words came out of his mouth without warning, but he could no more have stopped them than he could have stopped his own heartbeat.
“I love you, Sahara…so much.”
The smile that spread across her mouth matched the joy on her face.
“Oh, Brendan! I love you, too! You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Brendan brushed his lips across her forehead and made himself stop before this got out of hand.
“This is crazy. I’m trying to find a way to keep you safe, and all I want to do is make love to you. Come on. Let’s find the end of this tunnel.”
She picked up the spray can and then took his hand, following a step behind him until they came to the end, facing a wall covered in vines.
“Now to find a door,” he said, and began pulling at vines.
Eighteen
Within minutes the door was revealed, and as suspected, locked with a similar padlock.
“I just realized something. The last person to come through this tunnel was going into the house, because this padlock is inside the wall, just like the other padlock was inside the house.”
“Oh, you’re right!” Sahara cried. “Let’s see if this key works here, too.”
He repeated the process, spraying the padlock and then inserting the key. After a few tries, the lock turned. This door opened inward, revealing a wall of more green vines, but as she pushed some aside, she recognized the location of the exit.
“This is perfect. It opens into an alley,” Brendan said. “Wait here a second, I’m going to squeeze through. I need to orient myself as to what streets are at both ends and which way I would return. As soon as I’m out, you can watch, but don’t come all the way through, okay?”
She nodded, her heart pounding with anticipation as he pulled out a pocketknife and began cutting straight down through the vines, like parting a curtain. It took a few minutes before the opening was large enough for him to slip through.
Sahara pushed the greenery aside to look out, watching him as he ran from one end of the alley to the other end, pausing each time to identify cross streets.
He slipped back into the tunnel, pulled the vines back in place, then shut and padlocked the door. They made their way back through the tunnel, returning to the house and padlocking that door as well before hanging the key back on the nail. He grabbed the can of WD-40.
“Come on, baby. Up the stairs we go. You first. I’m right behind you.”
Billie was still waiting for answers.
“It’ll work,” Brendan said, as they reached the top of the stairs.
Billie sighed. “When is this crazy plan supposed to take place?”
“I have to talk to the detectives and set it up. Hopefully in the next day or so. I need to use the WD-40 again on these hinges. Once all this goes down, I don’t want anyone hearing me coming back inside.”
Sahara stood out of the way as Brendan began spraying the hinges to the passageway, then opened and closed the doors over and over until they were silent. When they went shut for the last time, he gave the spray back to Billie and winked at Sahara.
“Now we lay the trap.”
*
Detective Shaw found the email from Brendan late in the afternoon after he got back to the precinct. When he opened the attachment and realized the bodyguard had actually uncovered a probable half brother to Sahara Travis that no one knew about, and that he was someone she’d known all her life, his first thought was to compare the DMV photo Brendan had sent to the security footage they had from The Magnolia.
It took a few minutes to get everything set up. When he notified his lieutenant to update him, Lieutenant Coleman opted to sit in on the viewing.
“Afternoon, Lieutenant. Go ahead and take that chair if you want.”
“Now, what is it we’re going to be doing here?” Coleman asked.
“I received a DMV photo of Sahara Travis’s newly discovered half brother. We’re going to compare it to the security footage from The Magnolia and see if there’s a match.”
Shaw started the playback where it picked up the repairman on security cameras outside The Magnolia, then again inside at the service entrance, then in the elevator going down to the basement.
They could tell the man’s approximate height from stationary objects he had passed, and they were assuming the hair and mustache were fake. Then they picked a still shot from the security footage and on a split screen brought up the DMV photo.
“What do you think?” Shaw asked, as they eyed both faces.
“I don’t think it’s the same guy,” Coleman said.
“Neither do I, which is disappointing. Still, to be on the safe side I’m going to put them in facial recognition.”
It didn’t take long for the program to kick out an answer. No match.
“Well, that’s that,” Coleman said. “Keep me in the loop. We’re getting flack from some Hollywood bigwigs because Sahara Travis is still in danger.”
“Yes, sir,” Shaw said, and then sat down at his desk and called Detective Fisher in New Orleans.
*
Fisher was already working on the new information from McQueen’s latest email, going through Sutton’s bank records to see if he’d made any large cash withdrawals that would coincide with the cash found on Harley Fish’s body, and was going through his credit card accounts to see if he had made any recent flights to LA, but so far they’d found nothing.
And then his phone rang.
“New Orleans Homicide. Detective Fisher speaking.”
“Detective, this is Detective Shaw in LA. I assume you also received the new email from Brendan McQueen?”
“Yes, sir, we did. We already knew he’s a damn fine bodyguard, but he’s not half-bad as a detective, either. We’re understaffed here, so there’s no way of knowing how long it would have taken us to dig all this up.”
“Agreed,” Shaw said. “We sent you footage from the security cameras at The Magnolia, right?”
“Yes, it’s in the computer file.”
“Have you had time to compare that man in the footage to Sutton Davidson?”
“No, I have not,” Fisher said.
“Then I’ll save you the trouble. They’re not the same man. According to Sutton Davidson’s DMV information, he’s six-four, one eighty pounds, which makes him damn skinny at that height, and the man in the security footage is not that tall. He’s also not skinny. And the facial recognition program we use kicked him out.”
Fisher sighed. “Well, I guess I should say that’s good to know, but it’s really not. We already know our killer is willing to hire a hit man, because we have a dead one here on a slab in the morgue.”
“Oh really?” Shaw
said. “You’re sure it was a hire?”
“Yes. A local with a bad rep named Harley Fish. He had a thousand-dollar roll on him and the address of the Travis estate written on the back of a scrap of paper. And…when a relative came to officially identify the body, we learned Harley Fish could read some and knew his numbers, but his handwriting was illegible, which means Fish did not write that address on the receipt himself,” Fisher said.
“Damn it. This is like trying to pin murder on a ghost.”
“Agreed,” Fisher added.
“Okay…so we have another heir to the Travis estate, but we can’t tie him to either one of these hits,” Shaw said.
“Not yet, we can’t,” Detective Fisher said. “But we both know shit floats. He’ll make a mistake, and when he does, we’ll get him.”
“Then I wish you luck,” Shaw said. “Stay in touch. If you take him down, let me know.”
“You can count on that. Thank you for staying in contact,” Fisher said, and then disconnected.
*
Bubba was on his way home early.
The longer he’d thought about the challenge Sahara had thrown out, the more irrational he’d become. The scenarios running through his head were rash, with little chance of succeeding. It would do him no good to kill her if he got caught in the process.
He thought about taking a couple of days off work to find a location where he could watch the house. If enough people left the premises and he was in disguise, he would take the chance on going through her bodyguard to get to her. With a big enough gun, he could take anyone down.
*
That little trip outdoors through the tunnel of wisteria whetted Sahara’s appetite for freedom, which made the impossibility of walking out the front door an insult all over again.
So to stay on the move, she prowled the rooms from top to bottom, looking in places she’d forgotten were even there with Brendan patiently at her side. She showed him a tiny room on the servant side of the house where a slave skilled in sewing would mend laundry and make clothes. She showed him the ballroom on the grand side of the mansion, where Katarina regularly held parties, and a single chair in an empty room that used to be where the gentlemen of the house got their haircuts.