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EMMA WAS RIGHT. MY upper body strength was pathetic.
I managed to grab some kind of root, from which I dangled for approximately one second before my fingers slipped. I dropped into the dark, and landed abruptly in a puddle. Pain flared in my ankle. I looked up at the splotch of light coming in from the skylight far overhead.
Well, I’m not high-jumping out of here, I thought.
“Maw-ly!” Leilani shouted. “You okay? I get help.”
For a second I believed she truly intended to help me. But I heard her footsteps retreating, and then I heard her car start and drive away.
I realized why Leilani didn’t have the key to this spooky old house. It was because the house wasn’t actually for sale. I was at the bottom of a lava tube, in the neglected yard of an abandoned house at the end of a remote country road in the hills above Mahina. And the only person who knew I was here was the one who had pushed me in.
I pulled my phone from my bag, dialed 9-1-1, and was horrified to see there was no signal. I stood slowly, favoring my injured ankle. I dialed again, and reached the phone as far toward the patch of sky as I could.
Nothing. I sat back down and rested my face in my hands.
Could I pray? The last time I’d been to Confession was over a year ago. There wasn’t any penalty for praying when you were behind on Confession, was there? I hoped not.
I shall walk through dark valleys, I...my mind blanked.
Hail Mary, full of grace...what came after that? I couldn’t remember anything. I’d have to make up my own prayer.
Please get me out of here. Or if not, then please make my death painless. Don’t let my parents find out. I guess that’s not realistic. Don’t let them be too sad, then. Please forgive me for all the times I was petty and self-centered. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been a better Catholic, like Iker Legazpi.
When did Leilani decide to dump me into a lava tube? It must have been right after I’d stupidly asked her about Melanie’s browsing history.
Melanie had something on Leilani Zelenko, and it had to do with those regulations she’d been researching. This was why Leilani suddenly “remembered” this house. She’d had been bending the rules left and right to get her deals through, and Melanie had figured it out. But why would Melanie blackmail Leilani? What did Melanie want from her? Melanie had all the money she needed.
I yelled up at the skylight for help, but I could barely hear myself over the rushing of the rain-swollen Hanakoa River. I stood up again and felt my way along the wet, mossy wall in the direction of the road. It was a dead end, blocked with chunks of lava rock. In the other direction, toward the river, I thought I saw a glint of light. I recalled one of Kafka’s aphorisms, something about there being innumerable hiding places but only one escape, and maybe it isn’t the real escape, and anyway there are a lot of paths that look like the real escape but in fact there is no way to the destination. Or something; it depends on how you interpret it and which translation you prefer.
Kafka, I realized, is of little use in an actual emergency.
Keeping my left hand on the wall of the lava tube, I limped toward the light. The tube narrowed, and I hesitated. I was going to have to crawl on my belly through a space that didn’t look big enough. What if I got stuck halfway in, like Winnie-the-Pooh? Well, then I’d starve to death in a stuck position instead of starving to death while moving about freely.
I put my bag down, slipped my phone into my bra, got on my belly and used my elbows to pull me along. I felt a button pop off my blouse, and at some point the seam under my right arm ripped open. I was close to the opening now; I could see the sky through it. Maybe if I tilted my head to the side, I could stick my face out and yell for help? I scooted forward, my elbows pressed to my sides, trying to think about anything except what a narrow space this was. Escape ahead, I thought. Just another few inches, and I’d be free. Or at least my face would be free. The opening was a horizontal slit, facing slightly downward, and too narrow to fit my body through. I scooted right up to the opening, knocking a few crumbs of lava rock loose as I peered out.
I watched the pebbles of lava cascade out of sight. It was probably five hundred feet straight down to the river. I was looking down the side of a sheer cliff.
This obviously was not going to be my escape route.
“Help!” I shouted out into the air, because why not? Then I wiggled backwards a few inches, worked the phone out of my bra, switched it on, and wormed my arm out and down through the hole, into the void. To accomplish this I had to pull one shoulder up to my ear and push the other one down. I dialed 9-1 and then extended my arm out as far as it would go. I turned the phone this way and that until I saw a flicker of a bar: a signal!
I moved my thumb to dial the last digit. The phone slipped from my hand and plummeted to the river below as I stared disbelievingly.
I scooted backward until I was safely inside the tube, sustaining scratches, pulled buttons, and torn seams as I went. I kept going until I reached the place where I had left my bag, moving in reverse the whole way. Finally I had enough room to stand up again.
Maybe Leilani would have second thoughts. She knew Honey Akiona was expecting to meet me, and might report me missing. Leilani could come back and tell me it was just an accident, and if I didn’t press charges she’d give me a break on her commission or something. That was likely, wasn’t it?
No. It wasn’t likely. Leilani didn’t give Melanie a second chance.
I found a relatively dry patch of lumpy pahoehoe lava to sit down on, and tried to think.
What did Melanie want from Leilani?
Melanie wanted the Brewster House.
But Fontanne Masterman disliked Melanie, and refused to sell to her. Melanie had never been able to take “no” for an answer. So she looked for some leverage to use against Leilani, and she found it in those regulations.
And there was no way for Leilani Zelenko to give Melanie what she wanted. Leilani couldn’t force Fontanne Masterman to sell. If Leilani was facing anything like those penalties I had been reading about—prison time, and fines of twenty thousand dollars a day—she must have been desperate to find a way out. Leilani only had two choices: face the penalties, or get rid of Melanie.
I still had the phone records in my bag. I pulled them out and flipped to the end. The last item was an incoming text from Leilani’s phone number. June 10, 2:29 pm.
So Melanie hadn’t gotten up to use the bathroom. She was responding to a text from Leilani.
Leilani must have been upstairs in the master bedroom, waiting. But then what? How would Leilani have triggered Melanie’s allergic reaction? With latex gloves? It was possible.
I was starting to get hungry. I rummaged in my bag, but all I had was a tin with two breath mints left. I wished I had some more of those peanut clusters Leilani was always eating.
Peanut clusters!
Melanie wasn’t averse to blackmail, but I knew she enjoyed using softer methods of persuasion as well. She liked to think of herself as irresistible to men and women alike.
She is very pushy, Leilani had said. Like a man.
I could imagine Melanie trying to negotiate with Leilani in her usual way. It may have worked with Melanie’s unhappily-divorced dissertation advisor, but maybe it hadn’t gone so well when she tried it with Leilani. A trace of peanut candy in Leilani’s mouth would have been enough to induce Melanie’s anaphylaxis. It would have been easy for Leilani to push an incapacitated Melanie over the balcony, where Flora and Constance Brewster had met their end over a hundred years earlier.
I had just solved Melanie’s murder. And now my brilliant induction would die with me.
I struggled to my feet again.
“Help!” I yelled at the fading skylight.
There was no answer.