Secrets

by Kristen Heitzmann

  She raised the light. A metal gate blocked the tunnel, but it wasn’t locked. She pulled it open on creaky hinges and went through into the deepening darkness. There was nothing to fear.

  Her light caught something on the floor, and she beamed onto it directly as the breath left her lungs so she couldn’t even scream. She groped the wall with one hand and stared. Nothing the guys had ever done compared with this. Lance had told her it was there, told her not to go down. How could she know that part was true?

  She shut her eyes and breathed the rank, musty odor. Her stomach clutched. She wanted to go back, but she wouldn’t. She had to know what was down there, all that was down there. Tight to the wall, she went by the corpse, and shortly after, the tunnel opened into a cellar. Racks and racks of wine covered with dust, but surprisingly few spider webs.

  She shined the light around, searching the racks as she walked. Was it worth something? Enough for Lance to seduce her? Fury spouted like a geyser. He could take it all, as long as she never had to think of him again.

  She came to the end of the racks. Another set of stairs. A gasp of relief. She wouldn’t have to pass the corpse again. She climbed to the top, but a bar jammed the opening mechanism. A shudder crawled her spine, and she spun, shining the light back into the cellar. Nothing. But she did not want to walk back that way. She’d get out right here.

  She propped the light and took hold of the bar. Even if she got it free, the mechanism might be stuck. This cellar had not been in any of her structural plans, and obviously it had been a very long time since this end had been opened. She jerked the bar. It didn’t budge. She raised the light and studied how it was wedged into place.

  It must have been jammed into the toothed gears first, then pressed or hammered into the wall. Putting her hands near the wall end, she yanked again, feeling the smallest amount of give. Or was it desperation?

  She could get out the other way if she had to. A skeletal corpse was not going to hurt her. As Lance said, the dead didn’t bother the living. It was the living you had to watch out for. Rage filled her, and she ground her teeth and pulled. The bar came free and she stumbled down, knocking the flashlight from its perch just as something popped behind her.

  Instinctively she dropped, catching her knees on the edge of a step and sliding to the bottom. She could see nothing. Heart hammering, she groped for the light, straining for any sound, and caught a soft noise. Not someone crawling toward her. No stealthy footsteps.

  It sounded like a tiny trickling brook, and she whiffed a sour smell. She pressed up to her knees and breathed it in. Wine? She expelled a breath. Could that loud of a pop have been heard through the walls? She closed her eyes with grim humor. So much for ghosts and gunshots.

  Throat tight, she felt again for the flashlight, crawling around the base of the stairs, praying no mice would run over her fingers. She banged her head on a rack, but found the flashlight at its base. Sitting back on her heels, she pressed the switch.

  Nothing. “Come on.” She pressed it again, shook the light and pressed again, but the bulb must have broken. She dragged herself back to the stairs and sat on the lowest, the useless flashlight across her knee. One thing was certain; she was not crawling back through the tunnel in the dark.

  She pulled herself up the stairs, felt the wall until she found the gears she had freed from the bar. One of them had a small handle, and she tried to make it turn, hoping the bar had not broken the mechanism. The metal groaned but didn’t budge.

  She yanked and shoved, let go and pushed the wall. Open. She was not afraid of the dark, but it was in the dark she’d always imagined … Walter. And he had told Mom to kill her. Her pulse quickened. He’s not real. But she looked over her shoulder as though she could see anything in the perfect blackness of the cellar.

  Wouldn’t a cellar have a light? She groped the wall at the top of the stairs. A small shelf might have held one once, but it was empty now. She grabbed the gears again and jerked back and forth, but they wouldn’t turn. She knew enough about old machinery to guess she was wasting her time. But she couldn’t give up. Not yet.

  Creeping down the stairs, she searched for the bar that had fallen free. Please don’t grab anything warm. It was lying against the wall, and she picked it up and went once again to the top. Swinging the bar in the dark, she aimed for the gears and missed. She adjusted her aim and swung again, then tried the gears. At this rate she’d break the handle off before she made them move.

  She would not panic. She wasn’t trapped. She could get out the other way. She just had to go back through the dark to do it. She tried the gears again. Just open. But it didn’t. Why would she expect anything good to happen? This was just one more— Pain broadsided her, and she staggered.

  There in the pitch-dark hole she could not fight it. Tears came. Tears Lance would neither soothe nor ever know about. Sobs racked her hard enough to hurt her sides, then anger took over again. She slammed the bar into the gears again and again, screaming, “Open up!”

  But it didn’t. Clutching the bar, she walked down, feeling the stair with each foot before taking it, then found the floor and groped for a wine rack. She could feel from rack to rack to get through the cellar; she just had to concentrate.

  There was no one there to jump out at her, no one playing tricks. It was just dark, empty air. The racks would keep her straight. No chance of getting lost. Not some cave with winding passages. Walk. Just walk. But fear crawled her spine.

  Lance had read something about darkness and fearing no evil, but she didn’t remember the words and there was no evil to fear. No evil. But when she reached the end of the racks, she could not make herself grope for the tunnel. It was stupid. She could hardly get lost. The worst that might happen was a stubbed toe. Or Walter grabbing her.

  Stop it! But even knowing he wasn’t real could not keep her childhood nightmare away. His evil was real; that morning’s memories of the ambulance proof of that. Maybe people only thought Mom imagined him. Maybe she had the ability to see what was really there.

  A shudder shook her, and she raised the bar to the darkness. “Stay away from me. I’ll crack your head if you have one.”

  Her voice echoed in the chamber. She had to walk into the tunnel, the narrow walls, the low ceiling, and somewhere a corpse on the floor. She closed her eyes and steeled herself, then let go of the last rack and felt for the wall. Nothing but air. Two steps, then three. She swung the bar to see if she was in the tunnel already. Just air for another step, then metal on stone.

  She groped forward and found the entrance of the tunnel. Relief rushed in. She was not going to die, though she was mad enough to kill. Lance knew the cellar was down there. He had laid her down in his lap, with the cellar beneath them, and he never said a word.

  All those times when they talked and he sang or read to her…. She had to keep it from hurting. If she let it hurt she would lose her mind; she’d be there right beside Mom. Grief was a psychotic trigger. At any moment she might actually see Walter.

  She spun around and pressed her back to the tunnel wall, straining in the darkness, not quite as inky as the cellar. Was that movement behind her? A shifting of the shadows. Her heart took off racing. If Walter stepped out of the darkness she would die right there. But he stayed just out of sight, as he always had, working his evil on her mind, on Mom’s mind.

  “There is a God and there is evil.” She didn’t know about God, but she could believe in the devil; she’d known him all her life.

  Fury surged to her defense. “Come out and get me, you big coward!” She heaved the bar into the smothering darkness and immediately regretted it. As it clanked and rolled on the floor somewhere far behind, her hands felt empty. The metal had given her a sense of safety, and he’d cheated her of it. Just as he’d stolen her safety that night alone in her room.

  She stood there shaking, afraid to turn around, to grope past the skeleton with her back to Walter. He’s not there! But he was. A presence as real and engulfing as
Jesus had been. Nothing she could see; she was blind, hardly knowing up from down. But she could feel the hatred that fueled her own, and terror worse than she’d ever known.

  Her anger vanished, and she was speechless with fear. She would die, as he’d meant for her to die all those years ago. Her legs jellied; her palms dripped sweat. She could not run. She started to sink. Just give up. She would fall, and he would step out of the darkness and drag her into its maw.

  Jesus. She could hardly form the thought, but the child inside her remembered.

  “Rese?”

  She spun and a light shown in her face. She staggered against the wall as Chaz made his way to her. With everything inside, she drew herself up. “I broke the flashlight.”

  He pressed his into her hand. She grabbed it like a pole in a raging ocean, then turned and shined it behind her. Nothing—at least as far as the beam extended. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I heard you banging, but I couldn’t get through.”

  So he’d gone in the other way. She swallowed. “You knew the tunnel was here?”

  He nodded. That meant Rico knew too.

  “Star?”

  “She found it.”

  So everyone knew but her. She recalled Star’s piercing look when she mentioned Lance’s skeletons. But Star had said nothing. Sworn to secrecy? Lance sure knew how to sink the spear.

  She started past the skeleton lying just feet from where she’d almost collapsed. Her rubber legs hardened as she moved. She sensed Chaz right behind her but didn’t check to see. She had looked foolish enough.

  Climbing the stairs, her legs actually ached, and not just the knees where she’d fallen. The muscles themselves clutched up. But she was out; she was safe. She was furious. She turned on Chaz. “Where did you hear me banging?”

  “In the pantry. I was walking through the kitchen and heard you.”

  The pantry. She turned off the flashlight and stalked to the house. The pantry required the ceiling light even in the day because of the depth of the space. Chaz stood in the doorway behind her, and she addressed him without turning. “Which wall?” But she’d already guessed by the configuration and the way the stairs had come up to it.

  “The end.”

  Lance had filled the shelves with cans and bottles, but she searched through them for any sort of device, then found a hole plugged with a chunk of wood. She pulled it out and felt the lever inside. She pressed the lever and the metal gears released. No doubt she could have done that from the other side as well, if it wasn’t pitch-black and terrifying.

  She grabbed a shelf and pushed, and the wall swung out with a ponderous groan. She opened it just far enough to verify the tunnel, then heaved it closed again with a shudder she made sure Chaz didn’t see. She left the pantry and shut the door.

  Hunger hit her like a blow. She must have burned through Lance’s breakfast in the tunnel, and it felt good to imagine it purged, but what was she going to do without him? She had reservations and no cook. No entertainment, no managing partner…. She spun when Star came in with Rico, and they were all three staring at her, conspirators with Lance, gaping at her now.

  Star had a hollow look, but brightened when their gaze connected. “ ‘Oh it is excellent to have a giant’s strength.’ ” Typical Star, seeing only what she wanted to.

  Rese squared her shoulders. “I suppose you’ll be leaving now that Lance is gone.” She directed it to Chaz and Rico but guessed it might mean Star as well. A wave of panic struck her at the thought of running the inn alone, but she masked her face.

  Star said, “They don’t have to, do they?”

  Rese frowned. They were Lance’s friends and had no reason to be there without him. No reason to any of it without him. She slammed the door on that thought.

  Star twisted her hair into a wad. “You need help.”

  “No, I don’t.” Her Help Wanted sign had caused everything that followed. She’d rather do it all alone than let anyone help her again.

  Star wailed, “You can’t cast us out. ‘The miserable have no medicine, but only hope.’ ”

  Who was Star to think she had the corner on misery? “I’m not telling you to go. I just assumed you would.”

  “How could we leave you?” Star came and took her hands. “Friends forever.”

  Rese swallowed. What did that mean? And what possible good was it? “Anyone know how to cook?”

  Lance pressed the phone to his ear, relieved Rese had allowed Chaz and Rico to stay. He suspected that if Rico left, Star would go with him, leaving Rese alone with all of it.

  “It’s only until she hires a cook, mon.” Chaz spoke softly. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  He did. He wanted to know everything: how she was doing, what her neck felt like. But he knew that without being there. He’d taken a crowbar and rammed it in where her tendons should be. “Chaz, I’ve got to fix this.”

  “That would take voodoo, and it’s not allowed.”

  Lance squeezed the bridge of his nose. “She’s that mad?”

  “She’s … stoic.”

  Stone. Hard. Guarding herself. He drew a slow breath. “If I could just talk to her… .” Hold her, comfort her.

  “She said if you set foot on the property she’d shoot you.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t have a gun.” He’d faced some pretty tough neighborhoods, especially Rico’s. He’d never been shot, but he’d been knifed, and maybe that was a more accurate description of the pain he felt now, slow and slicing.

  “Nonna wants me to bury Quillan.”

  “Rese would be glad of that.”

  Lance closed his eyes. “Did she go down?”

  “I heard her banging and shouting through the pantry wall. By the time I got down the other way, she had broken the flashlight and was … pretty scared.”

  Lord. He sagged. “What do I do, Chaz?”

  “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all things will be added.”

  Lance sank down on the bed. Wasn’t that what he’d been doing? Or was it his own kingdom he’d built, sharing his faith because of who he was, not who God was?

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Drained, head aching, Lance went into the narrow bar side of the restaurant downstairs instead of the elegant room where he’d dined with Sybil. He chose one of the small tables along the wall, picturing Rese in the kitchen, arms around herself, chin set. “I don’t date my employees.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s bad policy.”

  And it was. If he’d kept it business as she had intended, she would not be hurting now. She might be furious; she might be fierce. But he could take that. What he couldn’t stand was the visceral knowledge of how much he’d hurt her. Because if what was going on inside him was anywhere close to what he’d made her feel….

  He sank into a chair. Behind the bar a panel was carved with the year Prohibition was repealed. The carving reminded him of Rese; the date, of Nonna. There it was in a wooden panel, his dilemma. Just when he thought he had figured it out, it got turned back on him again.

  He opened the briefcase of dossiers he had carried down. He had no idea how to make things right with Rese, so he tackled the search that had brought him there in the first place. What had Vito been involved in? Illegal trafficking? Money laundering?

  The bartender asked what he wanted. Lance could answer that, given a year or two. But he supposed the man meant in a smaller sense. Food was not tempting, but his head ached from stress and lack of nourishment, so he ordered a burger and fries, then read through the pages on Arthur Jackson.

  A period of the man’s life was detailed on those pages, but there was nothing overtly damning except the odd times he met with people for what seemed to be transactions. Whoever had recorded it all had gone to a lot of trouble to tell him very little. He knew when and with whom, but not what, as though the what was already assumed and this was just a record of its happening.

  Lance narrowed his eyes at the page. Dates, tim
es, payoffs, transactions. Someone watching and recording. But what was the reason for such meticulous scrutiny? Blackmail? The two photos were poor, probably shot from a distance.

  He picked up one and then the other, looking closer at Arthur Tremaine Jackson. He didn’t see much resemblance to Sybil, and certainly didn’t recognize the people with him. But the photos might have meant something to someone.

  His burger came and he took a few bites while he perused the other envelopes. Some of the men looked like downright thugs. The muscle of the operation? Their pages also had dates and amounts, but again listed no reason for the payments. No sales of merchandise, no services rendered.

  If Vittorio had compiled these, he knew—or was working for someone else who knew—what the entries meant. They were very discreet records, but the fact that they’d been hidden in the cache suggested their incriminating nature. Someone didn’t want these found.

  And what about the cash? Blackmail? If Vito had something on all the guys represented in the envelopes, that might account for the hefty stash. He chewed a tepid French fry, then pushed the plate aside and uncoiled the string on the last envelope as Sybil slid into the chair beside him. He hadn’t seen her come in, and her sudden presence was like a vulture lighting. She must have smelled carrion.

  She set down her glass of wine. “You look miserable.”

  He sighed. “You look great. As always.”

  “Your flattery will get me nowhere.” She flicked her hair back over her shoulder.

  He smiled grimly.

  “I heard you took a room here.”

  “You did?” That was quick, even for a smaller town than Sonoma.

  She winked at the bartender who blew her a kiss. “Donny listened to me rant after the last time. He thought I’d be interested.”

  The man had said nothing of Sybil to him. But given their respective allures, that was understandable.