A Tangle in the Vines

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “It’s not that. I saw something dash into the bushes when the lightning was so bright.” Austin shone the beam of his flashlight into the bushes where I pointed. I felt silly. Everything was moving from the wind and rain that whipped through the trees and brush. When there was a pause in the thunder, the wind moaned as if in sorrow or pain. It made my blood run cold. An owl flew from a tree branch above us, and I screeched like a strange bird, startling Austin who turned toward me with the flashlight raised, ready to clobber an intruder. We both laughed with relief.

  “Sorry, but you have to admit, I did see something move. I’m not angry, even though I know your comment about Judy was meant for me, too, and not just about how I’m handling this mess tonight.”

  It had been my crazy idea to stage our first performance of The Calla Lily Players during the November celebration of the harvest. I couldn’t take all the credit for the ridiculous decision. My Hollywood pals had encouraged me. The four members of my “diva posse” had driven to the Napa Valley from LA for my great aunt’s funeral. When they saw the theater, they’d decided to stick around for a while and urged me to go for the Thanksgiving event!

  Even with their help and a few hired hands, trying to put a production together in just over three months was insane. We hadn’t counted on Mother Nature kicking us in the pants. It usually doesn’t rain heavily around here until December or January, and I can’t remember a deluge like this one. If the rain continued, we might be forced to drop the curtain on our play even before it had risen.

  “Take a look at this,” Austin said. I stared at the grate that was lying in the mud in pieces.

  “How could that have happened unless someone deliberately destroyed it? Maybe it’s another gift from one of my not-so-tightly-wrapped relatives.”

  “I doubt it since they’ve been locked up for months. Whoever you call to make repairs tomorrow, might come up with a clue about how long it’s been in this condition. This is recent or Jesse would have noticed,” Austin said. “I’ll see if he can rig up a cover with chicken wire or something like that for overnight. That might keep anything big from getting into the pipeline again.”

  “That’s a good idea, although I don’t see much other than mud and water flowing around the opening, do you?” I bent down and tried to peer over Austin’s shoulder as I asked that question. He was squatting and examining pieces of the grate.

  Muddy water rushed over his leather cowboy boots. I cringed at the sight. Earlier, when I’d said he should have brought an old pair of work boots to wear in the mud, he’d said, “These are a lawman’s work boots.” Austin took one more look inside the pipe before he stood up.

  “The bottom in there is littered with mud and leaves—the stuff you were talking about. I don’t see anything very big, but even with my flashlight, it’s too dark to see very far into the drainpipe. Believe it or not, some water is flowing slowly. That must mean you’ve made progress toward dislodging whatever’s blocking it.”

  “Woohoo!” I said sarcastically. “Let me finish the job so we can get indoors and take off these wet, muddy clothes.”

  “Yes, ma’am! That sounds like a great idea to me!” Austin tore off down the slope. I heard him holler, “Yee-haw.”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it!” I shouted, running after him with the muddy water flying as we made loud splashing sounds. When more lightning struck, I picked up my pace. Breathless by the time I returned to the spot where I’d been digging, Austin was waiting. He swept me into his arms and crushed my lips with a soggy kiss.

  “I’ll go talk to Jesse about creating a makeshift grate for the pipe. As soon as we finish stacking the sandbags, I’ll take over here.” Austin was about to leave when the sky lit up, and the ear-splitting thunder that followed sent me into his arms with my face buried in his chest.

  “That was close!” I cried. He hugged me for a few seconds before stepping around me. Austin bent down and picked something up that was half-buried in the muck. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s an old, broken cassette tape.”

  “Oh, good grief! Some jerk has been dumping garbage in the woods. It’s no wonder the pipe couldn’t handle it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the boombox that goes with the tape is stuck in there.”

  “You could be right. Hang in there just a little longer, and then you can call it a night.” He gave me a peck on the cheek and left. For a few seconds, I could hear splashing and sucking sounds as his boots trudged through the muddy canals that riddled the area around me. I heard him shouting at someone. It might have been Judy, although I couldn’t make out one word of their conversation.

  “You, rat!” I hollered at an imaginary foe. “Did you destroy the grate and wreck our drainage pipe to save a few bucks on hauling your garbage away?” I attacked the clog angrily. When I landed a savage blow on the stubborn branch, a chunk broke off. It slid out, bringing trash with it—not a boombox, but books.

  For a few moments, lightning and thunder burst around me in almost continuous fury like the grand finale at a fireworks display. In the light, I recognized one of the books—a text I’d used in middle school twenty years ago. How could the garbage be that old without having destroyed the pipe long ago? Staring into the opening of the pipe, I cringed. A tingle like static electricity caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up.

  The straps of an old backpack were hanging halfway out of the pipe, caught on the rest of the oak branch I’d been battering. A chill ran through me as I gave the branch a yank. Nothing happened. When I gave it another tug, the branch came out and so did the backpack. More sludge followed, rife with the odor I’d smelled while driving on LA freeways with the top down on my convertible. I didn’t want to do it, but I pulled out my flashlight to examine the opening more closely. If there was a dead animal in there, I didn’t want to be surprised. I stopped suddenly. Marlowe was barking.

  “Marlowe, what are you doing out here?” I searched the darkness with my flashlight. Even with the help of more lightning, I couldn’t see him. “Judy, do you have Marlowe with you?” She didn’t answer, or if she did, I couldn’t hear her.

  Then, I jumped out my skin as something behind me moved. I turned around and caught the gaping, black mouth of the pipeline in the light. For a moment, I imagined something inside gazing at me. The ground beneath the pipe washed away, and it dropped oozing slime and garbage. I let out the breath I’d been holding as the rank odor grew stronger. A faded red baseball cap lay on the ground amid a slurry of wet, faded papers.

  “Homework,” I muttered. A letter grade was at the top of one of the pages halfway out of the backpack. I bent over, and gasped as I recognized a barely readable name scrawled in the right-hand corner. I jumped, imagining that a ghostly hand had touched me on the shoulder as I read the name again. I felt dizzy, disoriented. “What does this mean?”

  In my muddled state of mind, it took a minute for it to register that Marlowe was barking again, furiously now, closer to me. I spun around searching for him, but I couldn’t see him. When I heard movement behind me again, I whipped around in that direction. I would have sworn I’d glimpsed a shadowy figure—my ghost was on the run.

  “Lillian Callahan, you’re losing it!” Then I felt a moment of relief as Marlowe barked so close that I bent down and reached for him. I missed and my feet slid out from under me. As I fell flat on my back, a disturbing, almost human sound came from the drainpipe. It groaned in metallic agony and dumped its contents in a rush. I pushed against the ground with my feet and hands without getting any leverage in the smelly slime. The sludge from the pipe crept toward me.

  Marlowe was still barking and growling as he raced up the slope toward the woods. Then I heard him yelp. I frantically tried to get to my feet to go after him, but I froze instead. When I fell, my flashlight had flown from my hand and landed beyond my reach, but it had stayed on. It illuminated a ghastly sight as a hollowed-eyed skull moved closer. What followed was even more horrific.
/>   2 Penney Lincoln’s Reappearance

  I never screamed louder in my life. Not even on-screen in one of the many scenes where my devious character, Andra Weis, on Not Another Day had gotten herself into a fix. I kept screaming and didn’t let up as I rolled over and crawled on my hands and knees through the revolting muck until I reached less slimy ground and finally stood up. Flashlight beams bounced around me, already too close to have come simply in response to my screams.

  “Don’t come near me! I’m covered in filth!” I wailed, imagining that I looked like Carrie in that scene at the prom. “Marlowe’s chasing someone! Please get him. I’m afraid he’s been hurt.” I was sobbing now from terror and sorrow. What would I do if I lost my ten-pound Min Pin with the heart of a hundred-pound wolf? Jesse, Judy, and others I couldn’t see flew past me up the path toward the woods.

  “They’ll get Marlow,” Austin said, staying put. “Judy told us he’d spotted an intruder.” I could tell every muscle in Austin’s body was primed for the chase, but he didn’t leave my side. Even in my anguished state, I felt comforted by his presence. “When you screamed, we were afraid he’d done something to you. I’m glad you’re okay, Lily.”

  “Stop! Put him down!” That was my fiery Puerto Rican friend, Zelda, shouting at the top of her lungs. She issued the command to stop in English and then again in Spanish. A barrage of foul-mouthed curses delivered in Spanish, French, and Italian followed the order. Then a man’s voice bellowed in rage and pain. I rejoiced when Marlowe barked. He was alive!

  “Grab him, Jesse!” Judy hollered from somewhere in the darkness. “Don’t let him get away. Who is he? What’s he doing here?”

  “Let’s hope Jesse tackles him. The answer to Judy’s questions must have something to do with that,” I said, pointing to an intact body lying on top of old bones not far from a skull. Then, I did something my soap opera character never would have done. I took a step, doubled over and dry-heaved near where I’d crawled out of the muck. I backed up quickly, though, and choked back a scream at another grisly sight.

  “Eek, eek! Get off me!” Something was crawling up my arm. I stripped off my rubber raincoat and tossed it onto the ground. The odor it gave off was horrid. I must be losing my mind because Austin pointed his flashlight at me, and there was nothing on my arm.

  “What is it?” he asked as I pointed at the ground. He searched the area around my discarded raincoat.

  “That! There!” I hollered as a long black centipede slithered from my coat sleeve. I shivered and almost kicked Marlowe as I scooted away.

  “Marlowe, thank goodness!” I cried. Normally, he would have jumped into my arms. He took a sniff, whimpered, and backed off.

  “I’m calling Rikki,” Austin declared. “I want her to come out here. If the guy who just flew up the hillside is responsible for two dead bodies, maybe authorities already know who is.”

  “Three,” I corrected him. “There’s another one.” Austin located the skull near where I’d tried to lose my dinner. This one was only partially visible as it protruded from the muck. “If they know who his, what’s he doing out here?”

  “That’s another reason to get Rikki involved. If he’s a fugitive from justice, the U.S. Marshals Service should be in on the investigation from the beginning.”

  “We lost him,” Jesse hollered as he came bounding back down the slope, breathing hard, with the others a few steps behind him. “I called 911 and reported a male intruder on the property who tried to steal your dog before escaping into the woods. The fence must have given way during the storm.” The fence had been rebuilt a few months ago when Austin recommended that we upgrade our security. My guess is the same man who just ran away destroyed the grate on the drainpipe and knocked down the fence.

  “Marlowe bit him!” Zelda chortled as she and Judy caught up to Jesse.

  “He’s never done that before!” I exclaimed. “Is he okay?”

  “I hope not,” Judy replied, shouting to be heard.

  “It serves him right! Zelda told him to put Marlowe down. What choice did Marlowe have but to take matters into his own jaws?” Melody asked as she took a step back. Like the rest of us, my neat-freak diva friend was covered in mud and muck up to her knees. “What is that stench?”

  “I’m talking about Marlowe. Is he okay?” I hollered, ignoring Melody’s question. I was grateful to get a word in. When everyone shut up, they took Melody’s lead, and backed away. Melody leaned over and picked up Marlowe.

  “Marlowe’s fine, thanks to Jesse. Jesse almost had his hands on the creep, but when Marlowe bit him, he tossed Marlowe like a football. Somehow Jesse changed direction and caught him in the dark.”

  “Like a first-rate pass receiver in the NFL,” Carrie added. An actress, turned, publicist, turned sports journalist, I’m sure she knew what she was saying.

  “Thank you, Jesse,” I said. “Why grab Marlowe?”

  “To keep him—and us—from tracking him as he ran for it,” Austin replied. “Hang onto Marlowe, Melody, so he doesn’t wander into the crime scene.”

  “Crime scene? Is that what’s causing the disgusting odor?” Melody asked, covering her nose with her free hand.

  “Yes, but it’s probably me too since I rolled around in the slime pit,” I added.

  “Not compost, I take it,” Judy commented during a pause in the thunder.

  “No, I’m afraid not. The good news is the clogged pipe is finally open,” I replied, not having to shout too loudly as the storm slackened. “The bad news is…”

  “That freak who ran away killed something…” Zelda’s voice trailed off as her flashlight settled on the body and she crossed herself. “Or someone.”

  “More than one someone,” I responded. I was about to explain when a huge bolt of lightning hit a tree in the preserve area on the other side of a fence not more than ten yards away. The tree exploded, and screams rang out.

  I screamed too, but not because of the fire and noise. There was hatred in the eyes of a man hidden in the brush. I grabbed Austin’s arm. Marlowe growled from deep inside his belly. When I looked again, he was gone.

  “I saw him,” Austin said before speaking to everyone.

  “Jesse, I’m glad you called 911. We need the authorities out here right away. Do you want to see if the dispatcher will put you through to Dahlia? I’m going to give my boss, Rikki Havens, a call and see what the U.S. Marshals Service can do to help.”

  “I’m sure Dahlia will be glad to have all the help she can get. I’m almost certain one of the bodies belongs to a girl who went to middle school with me. She vanished and I never heard what happened to her.”

  “Are you talking about Penney Lincoln?” Jesse asked, aghast.

  “Yes. Her name is on an old worksheet lying in the mud and there are more papers in a backpack that are probably hers. That’s got to be the baseball cap she used to wear everywhere she went, don’t you think?” Jesse’s eyes followed my finger to the hat lying inches from a skull. He didn’t speak but nodded in agreement, as he swayed ever so slightly. I was afraid the tall, sturdy man might keel over.

  “Are you okay?” Carrie asked him.

  “I will be. I just need to walk this off,” he added as he stepped away. “We were convinced she’d run away.”

  “That’s what I heard too—that she’d run off with some guy,” I said.

  “As I recall, the police claimed Penney’s disappearance wasn’t related to boyfriend trouble because her mother insisted that she didn’t have one,” Judy said. Jesse and I glanced at each other.

  “Did they check with her friends? I wasn’t a close friend, but if I’d been asked, I would have told them to check to see if any of her male friends were also missing.” Jesse had stopped pacing around. “What about you, Jesse?”

  “Maybe her mother didn’t know what was going on, but we did. All the buzz at the time was that Penney Lincoln was a girl with lots of boyfriends who ran off with one of them.”

  “No matter what Penne
y’s mother told the police, she knew better,” I said. “I overhead Aunt Lettie tell someone that using almost those exact words.”

  “Who?” Jesse asked.

  “I’m not sure—she was on the phone at the time.”

  “Clearly, it wasn’t me. Of course, I wasn’t Lettie’s only friend,” Judy added.

  “Well, whoever Lettie was speaking to had to be a man because she said ‘goodnight, handsome’ when she hung up the phone in her study,” I said.

  “I’ll tell Rikki that the disappearance of Penney Lincoln is the place to start. Maybe we’ll get lucky and a name will pop up to help us figure out who Jesse almost got his hands on tonight.” As Austin struggled to place his call in the darkness and rain, the rest of us drifted a little farther away from the awful scene. They kept their distance from me.

  “If he’s the one who killed Penney Lincoln, how old must he be?” Judy hollered.

  “Not that old if he was able to get away from Jesse the way he did. He’s in reasonably good shape to have outrun our resident wide receiver.” Jesse had recovered enough to get on his phone and place another call to the police. He even managed to smile at Carrie’s remark.

  “Actually, he doesn’t have to be any older than me if he was Penney’s age when he killed her or even a little older,” I argued. “Maybe they had a lover’s quarrel, and it got out of hand and he accidentally…”

  “Yeah, right!” Zelda said, cutting me off. “He’s the unluckiest man I’ve ever known if you’re saying he killed two other people by accident too.” She paused before going on. “You saw the way that dirtbag was looking at you when the firelight caught him hiding behind the fence, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “If you ask me, I’d say he was trying to decide if you’d fit in the drainpipe.”

  “Stop it, Zelda! Lily said she saw him. She must already be creeped out. I am.” As Melody spoke, she searched the area around us. We all did the same, peering into every dark space. The downpour had eased up, but the bushes and trees still rustled in the breeze. He could have been concealed anywhere.