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Thursday, January 2nd
It was one of those situations that just fall into your lap: Ellis and Alexa met for lunch, did some shopping, and went back to the Garibaldi residence for a while when Alexa became fatigued. Ellis then called Charlotte to arrange for a ride home within the hour.
Charlotte was six ways of nervous, trying not to think too hard about having agreed to not to go to the Garibaldi farm on her own or without telling Barnes or Donovan. But Donovan was in Chicago, in the midst of an auction that could change his life. And Barnes, as the representative of the local literal interpreters of the law, was as much a part of the problem as part of the solution. She had the gut-level feeling that all hell would soon break loose, and if the authorities discovered cannabis growing in the tunnel, Gani and Alexa would definitely be the losers.
Her palms went sweaty as she approached Gani’s hospitalroom, which still had the same guard posted outside. It was not difficult to get in and pay a brief visit.
“Charlotte!” Gani was sitting up a little more, and looked a little less like death warmed over. “Happy New Year.”
She was glad to see evidence of many visitors—cards, books, gifts, and plants and flowers, and even a couple of balloons. “What are you, twelve?” she teased.
“I wish my friends would save their money, on one hand, but having reminders that there’s people out there supporting me helps. Most of them know about me and Alonzo, too.”
“Will you be here much longer?”
“A couple of days, at least.”
She steeled herself to embark on her real mission, and spoke to him quietly about Hewey being Alexa’s uncle and a possible kidney donor, and what might happen at the lab once that relationship to the Sawyer family was exposed.
“My daughter is with Alexa right now, and I’m on my way to pick her up. This is my chance to get in the tunnel and get rid of those cannabis plants. I need to know how many, where they are, and how big they are.”
Gani said nothing for a bit, but Charlotte could see him go from panic to thinking rapidly. “I can’t let you take this kind of chance, Charlotte.”
“I’ll be careful. Is there anything I can use as an excuse to be in the lab at all?”
He hesitated again, then nodded. “My keys are in the console there. I’ll give you the one for the lab. Get some paper and I’ll write some numbers down. Say I sent you to make sure the conditions in the seed bank were stable—they are, but it’ll sound as plausible as anything to most people.”
He explained to her again how to open the entertainment center in the lounge to access the tunnel. “The left hand wall as you go in is where the cannabis is, the first six plants. They’re still small, about a foot from root to top. They’ll be wet so you’ll want a plastic bag. Just get rid of them as soon as you can.”
He sighed as she fished an empty plastic bag out of the trash and stashed it in her purse. “I just hope we don’t end up regretting this, Charlotte.”
“Me too.”
Alexa was curled up on one of the love seats in the Garibaldi living room, and Ellis was sitting across from her in the other when Charlotte arrived. They had had an enjoyable few hours and still found many things to talk about and share, but it was clear that Alexa was seriously fatigued. Janice had gone to pick up meds and groceries. Charlotte knew she had to hurry, and explained, without sitting down, about visiting Gani that morning and that he asked her to check on some settings in the lab for him. Then Alexa suddenly got up and ran to the lavatory off the kitchen. Charlotte and Ellis could hear her throwing up.
Charlotte thought fast. If something went wrong while she was in the lab to get rid of the cannabis, she didn’t want Ellis anywhere near the place—or Alexa either, for that matter. And Alexa’s health was deteriorating, had been ever since her return to Elm Grove. She was going to need a kidney sooner rather than later. The time for action was now.
“Ellis, do you think you could take Alexa to the emergency room? I will tell Janice when she gets here, and I’ll get a ride to the hospital with her.”
“Sure, I can do that,” she agreed, and took Charlotte’s car keys.
Charlotte was relieved when Alexa didn’t protest, and she left the young women, making her way as quickly as possible to the lab.
Perfect, she thought. Janice wasn’t around, and there was no sign of Hewey or the white panel truck. She tested the lab door, and it was locked, so Hewey was not likely around and working on the cleanup.
Alonzo’s coat and boots were still hanging on the pegs in the entryway where he left them nearly two weeks before. The hall was dark, as was the greenhouse, when she looked through the observation window. She flipped on a wall switch to make the long hall feel less ominous, and entered the office area, turning on the lights to make her “errand” plausible. She tried not to be unnerved by the still-vivid memory of Alonzo’s body lying on the floor.
Then she entered the lounge and approached the entertainment center. She took a deep breath, felt for the latch behind the frame to the left of the TV, and pressed it. The center front of the unit swung open silently, revealing a space filled with a low purple light.
The tunnel was not a straight shot from the lounge, but down a short flight of steps and slightly off to the side. From where she stood she could see the hydroponic trays on the left hand wall, and the cannabis plants growing in them. As she went down the steps she could see another door, more like a barn or shed door, and guessed that it opened to the tunnel that led to Hewey’s outbuilding. The floor was packed dirt, the walls and ceiling a mix of timber and packed dirt. Like the portion of the tunnel that led off of Bishop Hall, it was high enough to stand upright.
She put the strap of her purse on crosswise so it wouldn’t slip off as she worked, pulled out the plastic bag, and went into the hydroponic lab. It appeared to be fully operational, from grow lights—which was the source of the purple light—to circulating pumps. But she couldn’t stay and explore. She carefully pulled out the six cannabis plants from their tray and put them in the bag. They did look an awful lot like the buckeye plants, but were more delicate and there was a slight difference in the toothed edges of the leaves. She wrapped the bag tightly and stashed it in her purse.
A rustling movement from the back of the tunnel startled her just as she was turning to leave. An animal? But a woman’s voice called out softly.
“Charlotte? Oh, how did you find me?” Then a woman in a coat with the hood up walked toward her from the shadows.
It was Lola.
Charlotte rushed to her, and Lola started crying, gripping her arm in emotion. There was no time for questions—Charlotte had to get them both out of there, out of the lab, and away from the Garibaldi farm, come hell or high water.
Or Hewey. He was in the opening of the tunnel, just looking at them. Then he turned and went up the stairs. Charlotte shouted at him to wait, but by the time she reached the steps, he had closed the entertainment center. She pounded on the door with all her might and called out to him to let them out of there, but of course there was no response. There was no latch on the inside, either, just a smooth wall with the outline of a door. She checked the door to the outbuilding tunnel. It was locked. They were trapped.
Lola was leaning against the opening to the tunnel, unsurprised. “Believe me,” she said, “I’ve tried to find a way out of here. There isn’t one.”
Charlotte thanked her lucky stars that she’d sent Ellis away, and checked her cell phone. One bar. She dialed Barnes, but was uncertain the call went through. And she felt guilty, because she’d promised Donovan that she wouldn’t go to the Garibaldi farm by herself or without telling him or Barnes. Well, Gani knew where she was—and so did Ellis and Alexa. It was just a matter of having faith and keeping one’s nerve. She took a deep breath.
“So how did you get here? I’m glad you’re okay, everybody worried when you didn’t show up at Jimmy’s party.”
Lola explained what happened. “I was on my way, you know? Got all dressed up—” here she opened her coat to reveal the sequined top and silky palazzo pants she was wearing, “—but when I started the car, the brake warning lights were on. So I got out and checked, and there was fluid on the tires and the driveway. I’ve had my brake lines cut before, so I knew what I was looking at. I couldn’t believe it. I even thought for a minute it was you or Diane being pissed off at me. Bad, huh?” she laughed ruefully. “Then somebody grabbed me from behind, put his hand over my mouth, and threatened to kill me if I made a peep. There were two guys, I think, but it was dark and they put a pillowcase or something over my head so I couldn’t see, and I didn’t see anything again until I ended up in here. Where is here, anyway?”
Charlotte explained where they were at—and why.
“Oh, great!” Lola rubbed her temples. “Now I know why the Garibaldi woman was so mad at that hillbilly. I was supposed to be you. But now you’re here. Now what? They kill us both?” She pointed to the ceiling and the top of the doorway. “That guy was in here this morning setting in those exploding target things.”
“Explosives? What?” Charlotte was startled.
“You haven’t been in the country much, have you?” She pointed at a series of homemade packets stuck together with what looked like putty. “The gun enthusiasts like to practice with exploding targets. You shoot at them with a rifle and they explode, not like dynamite, but enough to be exciting. They use ‘em to break up beaver dams, blow up animal tunnels. I think they’re gonna try to cave in this tunnel.”
Charlotte said nothing as the reality of the situation gradually settled into her brain and bones. There were easily a dozen of the exploding target packets stuffed across the beam and the top of the side posts.
“They’re gonna bury us in here, Charlotte, just like somebody did to that guy.” She gestured with her thumb toward the shadowy back of the tunnel, where Charlotte could just make out a pile of rubble. It was the other side of the blockage she saw from the Bishop Hall side with Jack.
“What guy?”
“Oh, who knows?” Lola’s expression was bleak and beyond hope. “It’s just a hand. All bones. I found it when I was trying to see if there was a way out back there. I mean, this is probably one of those old tunnels you read about in articles about Elm Grove history, and this is one of the oldest homesteads in town. The Corton University president used to live here. My boss made us all read up on that stuff because he said selling Elm Grove is part of being able to sell a house. I think whoever blew up the tunnel back then screwed up, or maybe just took advantage of the situation to get rid of somebody inconvenient. Like us.”
Charlotte’s eyes adjusted slowly as she walked toward the collapse. And there, on the floor, lay a skeletal hand amid dusty blue-printed fabric.
She tried her cell phone again, but the signal was very weak. First, she dialed Donovan, but as expected, there was no answer. Then she dialed Barnes again, still uncertain if it went through.
Lola shook her head. “No signal, huh? I didn’t even get to try my phone. Those jerks took my purse and never gave it back to me.”
“Okay, then. Here’s my idea. My daughter has taken Alexa Garibaldi to the hospital. When Janice gets back, she’s going to wonder what is going on, where they’re at. Hewey will probably tell her that I’m here, and she’ll want to talk to me. I’m going to tell her that Alexa is very sick, and that Hewey is her best hope for a kidney, because I’m pretty certain that Hewey is Janice’s half-brother and therefore Alexa’s uncle. There might even be more blood relatives. That it’s all okay, we won’t say anything to anybody, we understand how everything that’s happened has made her panic, but the most important thing right now is helping Alexa, that we’re all agreed about.”
“It’s a nice idea, but I don’t think it’s going to work, Charlotte. That woman is demented, and that big guy with her, Hewey you said his name was, he just does what she tells him to do. I think we need to be prepared to rush them when they come in, even if it means risking getting shot, because it might be our only chance. You follow me?”
“You mean try to keep him from shooting the explosives?”
“Yeah. I don’t think we’re going to get a chance to talk. Both of us need to rush the one holding the gun, which is probably going to be Hewey. Of course if there’s more than one gun, we’re screwed. Then you might as well talk.”
“I’m hoping somebody figures out I’m stuck here, picks up the GPS, and lets the cops know.”
“Why were you pulling out the weed when you came in?”
“You didn’t see that.”
“You still might as well tell me.”
Charlotte sighed. She might as well. “See all these plants in here?” She gestured around the room. “They’re not cannabis. They’re a special hybrid of Texas buckeye being grown for medical research. The plants I grabbed? Those were cannabis, grown for personal use by a cancer patient. The people who probably shot Dr. Garibaldi are pressuring his partner and his widow to turn this into a pot farm, and they’re tempted to do it because Alexa needs money for her transplant. But I know the cops are gonna find out about this place sooner rather than later. I came down here to get rid of the cannabis so Gani and the Garibaldis don’t end up in prison and losing everything.”
“Wow.” Lola slid down to sit on the floor, and Charlotte did the same. “I always figured you for a hard-liner, you know? Real black-and-white on dope and money and sex, and just a goody two shoes.”
Charlotte burst out laughing. “I probably am, I’ll own it. But I know there’s a difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. People sometimes do illegal things, and even bad things, for good reasons.” She turned to look Lola in the eye. “And I know that if people think I’m going to go hard line on them, they’re not likely to ask me for help. Like you.”
“I’m sorry about that, Charlotte, I really am. I’ve screwed everything up.”
“We might be here a while. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“I think if we weren’t stuck here together, you probably wouldn’t speak to me again.”
“Wrong. I admit I was furious when I found out you were living in my house, but Donovan has this way of getting me to step back and see the larger picture, to find out why a friend would do something that’s off, find out what kind of trouble they’re in before kicking them in the ass.”
Lola chuckled. “Well, he oughta know! We got in trouble with the same bunch of lunatics. How’d he find out—you and Diane tell everyone?”
“No. He was with me when I went to check the house to see why my utility bills were so high, and recognized your red sweater.” She thought for a moment and realized that Lola might not know about her relationship with Donovan. “We’re together, you know, Donovan and I.”
Lola looked incredulous. “I thought you and Simon—.”
“Didn’t really take off.” Charlotte smiled to herself, thinking of how much things had changed in such a short period of time.
Lola chuckled. “I wouldn’t have called it. I mean, it was clear Donovan liked you, but it was also clear you were oblivious to the fact and only had eyes for Simon. Of course, most women would only have eyes for Simon.”
“I wish I’d spotted Donovan’s feelings a lot sooner, but better late than never.”
“You’re in love, aren’t you? You look like you’re finally getting some.”
Charlotte just laughed.
Lola laughed too. “That laugh told me everything I needed to know.”
Charlotte turned the subject back to Lola. “So why did you need to stay at the house?”
“Finances. The fall market was a washout, between the weather and the economy staying flat, so I wasn’t making my commissions. I gave up my apartment before I went into debt again, and stayed with a relative out in the country for a couple of weeks, but we really got on each other’s nerves. She smokes, too, and all my clothes would smell like an ashtray, and Bysell Realty has a no-smoking policy that extends to second-hand smoke and the smell of it on our clothes and in our cars.” She shifted to get more comfortable on the floor.
“Then I showed your house once to this guy who is eventually relocating to the area. He’s an executive with one of the big industries on Lake Michigan. Right now he still flies between here and Dubai, and sometimes India. Every time he wants to look at a house it’s at some godforsaken hour like ten at night or five in the morning. And most of the time he wants to look at a house in Lake Parkerton. I thought if I stayed at your place I would be able to jump when he said jump, and I thought if I invited him over for a nightcap or breakfast or something, he’d get to see how comfortable it was and how pretty it is in the morning when you look out over the lake. He’s divorced, with a couple of teenagers who mostly stay with their mom, so he doesn’t need a big place, but he wants a nice place. He particularly wants one that Paul Dalmier designed.”
“Oh my god, Lola, why on earth didn’t you tell me? I’m stunned that there’s any interest at all in the house in this market, and the lengths that you would go to show it. I would have been the most supportive client in the world for that.”
“A lot of reasons, Charlotte. No one likes admitting they’re failing financially, as you well know. And after what you went through yourself, and not being able to go to Paris to see Ellis like you planned when the house didn’t sell, I didn’t want to get your hopes up about this guy, especially if he decided to buy one of the other Dalmier houses instead of yours. Which could happen.”
“Does Diane know about this? From what she said to me, she went pretty hard on you.”
“She got pretty mouthy, y’know? I think she was stressed out about some other things and wasn’t going to take any prisoners. But she said she was going to leave it up to you, and I was going to talk to you at the party, but instead I’m talking to you now, I guess.”
Charlotte looked at her phone. They had been locked in the tunnel for nearly an hour. She got up to stretch her legs, then walked down to the cave-in to take another look at the bony hand. The bars on the phone moved up to two, so she dialed Barnes again, and while the screen was lit she turned it to shine some light on the hand, but it was the fabric that caught her attention. There was something vaguely familiar about it.
The phone vibrated, but the message simply said the call did not go through. She tried again, but still no luck. Her eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light and she examined the blockage, to see if there were any gaps that could be widened, thinking that if she and Lola could get to the basement door at Bishop Hall, they could make enough of a racket to be heard. Maybe. There was a possible opening toward the top at the right-hand side, but after looking at the ceiling, she realized that removing any of the debris would mean risking more of the ceiling coming down and burying them alive. Better to wait. It had only been an hour, and she still felt that Janice was likely to want to talk to her.
It was thinking about Janice that triggered her memory, and she bent down to pick up the cloth with its blue-dyed African pattern. A pattern like the one on the dashiki Janice’s boyfriend Stu James wore in the yearbook and newspaper photos.
The fabric came away from the bones in a fragile sheet. Charlotte put her phone back in her coat pocket and carried the piece of cloth with both hands to where the light was better at the front of the tunnel.
“Ew.” Lola cringed when she saw what Charlotte had. “You touched that hand?”
“Didn’t have to. But I think I recognize this fabric.”
“Looks like old hippie fabric.”
“It is. A dashiki, if I’m guessing right, one worn by a student who went missing around 1968.”
“In the university president’s tunnel?”
“Yep.”
They sat quietly again, waiting for what inevitably had to happen, the arrival of Hewey and possibly also Janice.
Charlotte allowed herself to speculate further about the fabric. If it was, indeed, Stu James’ dashiki, and if that was his hand lying on top, it was perfectly plausible that a dead Stu James had something to do with the “trouble” that Janice was in back then.
Did she have something directly to do with his death, or was it circumstantial? Or was her relationship with Stu something Eddie Corton felt had to be stopped—and Corton himself did the guy in or had his right-hand man do the honors? She wondered if Dorene knew what happened.
Then she remembered that Alonzo had told Hewey that Janice was afraid of tunnels. And there was Alexa’s recounting of the argument between her mother and her father, when Alonzo told Janice that she was afraid of what’s “down there.” Given where they were standing at the time, “down there” could very well mean down in the tunnel.
Whatever it was Janice was afraid of, it had to do with the body in the cave-in, whether she was directly responsible for it or knew that Eddie Corton or Dodie Mahon was responsible for it. It had to remain hidden, a secret, something to be avoided at all costs. No wonder she was so upset with Alonzo during their argument on the day he was killed. A fact which made it extremely likely she killed him, or had Hewey do it for her.
The more she became convinced that Janice had something directly to do with the body in the cave-in, the more Charlotte became convinced that Janice also had something directly to do with Alonzo’s death. And the more she had to do with Alonzo’s death, the more likely she was the one behind the other incidents, such as the theft of the buckeye plants, the cross burning, and the cutting of Gani’s brake lines—and Lola’s kidnapping, under the impression that it was Charlotte being kidnapped. The memory of Janice’s shock at seeing her at Jimmy’s party only cemented her conviction.
But for Charlotte, the most important information depended on whether or not Janice knew the truth about her parentage, if she knew that Hewey was her brother and could thus help Alexa. The amount of time and energy invested in controlling how the tunnel was used seemed to indicate that she might not know. Or suspected, and didn’t want to have her illusions about her grandpop shattered.
Lola broke into her thoughts. “Boy, I really gotta pee. And I’m thirsty and hungry. Do you think that water is safe to drink?” She pointed to the hydroponic troughs.
“I wouldn’t chance it. Full of fertilizers and other nutrients, I would think. If you’re desperate to go, pick a spot a long way away.”
“That’s over by that hand, and it makes me too nervous. I’ll just hold it. They gotta come in here and deal with us some time.”
“The more I think about it, the more I like your plan over mine.”
“To rush ‘em? Just hope I can do it with my bladder this full.”
“I’m just glad it isn’t pitch dark and there’s plenty of oxygen—and someone to talk to.”
“Good point, good point.” Lola stretched her back from side to side. “If this place ever comes up for sale, though, I don’t think I want the listing.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
Then she felt her phone buzz, and quickly drew it out of her pocket. “One Text Message,” it said. She checked the bars, but they were down to one. There must have been a momentary increase. She opened the message, saw it was from Donovan, and felt the tears well up:
“I will find you.”
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MORE TIME WENT BY.
“You know,” said Lola, “I’m glad you aren’t with Simon anymore. Something isn’t right about him.”
“How do you figure?”
“Please don’t hate me for this, but I set my cap for him, too, you know, and I actually started long before you met him.”
“You guys went out, you mean?”
Lola’s voice went quiet. “Not really. I just slept with him a few times.”
The words were clear but the meaning took a few moments to sink in and utterly stun her.
“You have got to be kidding me. While I was dating him?” Simon’s reaction to her taking up with Donovan was more outrageous than ever.
“Um, two or three times, yeah.”
Charlotte replayed nearly every instance she could recall Simon interacting with Lola, and her initial jealousy of the way Lola was so familiar with him, leaving lipstick kiss marks on his face, hugging and holding him in the coffee shop or in the bar at Amaretto, and the way he would look at her when she was dressed provocatively, only to be given a look of disapproval if she so much as flirted with him herself.
“If you only knew,” Charlotte began, “what I was feeling when he wouldn’t let himself go with me, how inadequate and even unattractive it made me feel—”
“Well, in a way I do, because we’d be drinking at a bar, and every once in a while he’d come back to my place, but he never, ever asked me out to dinner, or a date of any kind. You got the stuff I wanted from him, and I guess I got the stuff you wanted from him, and it looks like we both lost out to Philippa.”
“There is that,” Charlotte sighed, still stunned by this new information. “You knew about her?”
“Only after looking him up online, and I put two and two together. He’s damaged goods, and I wondered what caused it.”
She couldn’t help but wonder about the timing of everything. “Oh, please. Did you guys—at my house?”
“Once. But that’s not the worst part, not really,” said Lola. “When he did it—no, you gotta know about this, Charlotte, it’s important—he did the exact same thing each time. I mean exactly. I felt I could have just as well been a picture in a skin mag. No real call and response, you know? It’s like he had to depersonalize it, he couldn’t allow himself to feel it. I kept hoping he’d loosen up the more we did it, get comfortable, you know, but he never did. It was lousy. Maybe we’re just as well without him, I’m thinking. Both of us.”
“Well, clearly I am!” She thought about Lola’s willingness to sleep with a guy when he didn’t even seem to like her company enough to so much as go to dinner together. Nonetheless, an acidic bubble of jealousy rose, against her will. “Have you slept with Donovan?”
“No! No, not him, Charlotte, honest. Never. Never even tried. I was setting my cap upward, you know—Donovan Targman was poorer than me, and Simon Norwich seemed like such a good catch.”
A good catch. Donovan said the same thing. Some catch.
When Hewey and Janice came in, it was so quietly that Charlotte and Lola were caught unawares. Hewey, as expected, had the gun, and waved it to make them both go back further into the tunnel, while he and Janice remained outside of it between the stairs and the door to the other tunnel.
Lola spoke first. “Do I get a chance to use a toilet and get something to eat and drink?”
Hewey said nothing, didn’t even change his expression. Janice just rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be joking. You’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Charlotte,” and here she turned to look at her, “you have been sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong, so you have no one to blame but yourself.”
“I’m involved because Alexa involved me. I didn’t invite myself, Janice. She is so sick, and her time will soon run out. Did Uncle Hewey here have a tissue matching test done yet?”
“You too?” she cried. “It’s not true! Has that Filipino been spreading Alonzo’s lies?”
“No,” said Charlotte, shaking her head. “I learned it from your mother. Hewey’s mother Dorene is your mother, too, and her father was Eddie Corton’s right-hand man, Dodie Mahon.” Charlotte saw Hewey lower the gun as he realized she was talking about his mother. “You remember Dodie Mahon, don’t you Janice? You remember this, don’t you?” She held up the piece of dashiki cloth. “It belonged to Stu James, didn’t it?”
Two things happened at the same time. Janice screamed and swore that Charlotte was going to die, just as Donovan quietly slipped in behind Hewey, swinging the grip of his cane at Hewey’s head.
Hewey fell, dropping the rifle, and Donovan leapt off the stairs to get to it, stumbling on his weaker leg.
Charlotte started toward Donovan, but he recovered and ran at the same time as Lola to tackle Janice, who grabbed the rifle awkwardly and loosely aimed it at the exploding targets.
“Donovan! Get back!” cried Charlotte, just as the gun fired, the charges went off, and the world came roaring, crashing down.