One Fete in the Grave

by Vickie Fee

  “Just keep walking slowly to the end of the hall and don’t try anything cute,” she said. “And don’t bother calling out for Mrs. Perry. I sent her on a fool’s errand. When she told me the two of you were here, I had an uneasy feeling you were up to something. Listening to you through the bathroom door talking about collecting toothbrushes and razor shavings confirmed my suspicions.

  “Now down the stairs slowly,” she said, prodding me between the shoulder blades with the barrel of the gun.

  “All right, stop right there. Di, you raise your hands up where I can see them. Liv, you open the back door real careful like.”

  “Carrie, have you always known Bubba was Jennifer’s father?” I asked.

  She became wild eyed and agitated, waving the gun. My stomach clenched and I could hear Di’s breaths become ragged and shallow.

  “Shut up. You don’t understand anything about this. Bruce is Jennifer’s father in all the ways that matter. That child worships her daddy and he adores her. I wasn’t about to let Bubba Rowland take that away from either of them. Now move it.”

  She instructed us to walk across the backyard and into the barn, filled mostly with tractors and tools and machinery. When we reached the middle of the barn, she called for us to stop and turn around to face her with our hands up.

  I hoped I could stall her by getting her talking.

  “Carrie, why now? Why after all these years would Bubba decide to tell Jennifer he was her biological father?”

  “Because he’s got an ego as big as all outdoors and he didn’t like being without an heir after his only son died in that car crash, that’s why.”

  It made a kind of odd sense.

  “Di, I’m guessing you’re the more athletic one. Here, catch,” she said pulling a key from her pocket and tossing it to Di.

  “Use that to open the padlock on that hatch next to your left foot.”

  Di knelt down and did as she was told.

  “Carrie, had Bubba always known he was Jennifer’s father?”

  “He didn’t know jack phooey. But he decided to use one of those DNA labs, like you two were trying to do. He came to me boasting he had the paternity test results to prove he was Jennifer’s father and he thought she had a right to know. I begged him for Jennifer’s sake and for his brother’s sake not to tell her. He had the gall to tell me that he’d keep quiet in exchange for my ‘womanly attention’. As disgusting as the thought of Bubba touching me was, I might have considered it if I thought I could actually trust him to keep his word. But I did talk him into waiting until after the Miss Dixie Pageant. Told him if he was any kind of a daddy he wouldn’t want to spoil Jennifer’s big moment.”

  Carrie turned the gun toward Di. “Toss the key back to me. Now open the hatch.”

  Di lifted the heavy metal door to reveal a ladder leading down into some kind of bunker or storm shelter.

  Carrie steadied her aim, holding the gun with both hands.

  “I think you two are smart enough to guess what to do now.”

  “Carrie, you don’t have to do this. We can . . .”

  “Save your breath. You can climb down that ladder or you can drop through the hatch with a bullet in you. Your choice.”

  We descended the ladder, first Di and then me. Looking up through the hatch opening we could see Carrie swing out her foot, the kick causing the heavy metal door to close with a loud thud. In a moment, we heard her reaffixing the padlock, securely locking us inside. We stood in complete darkness for a moment until emergency lights flickered on, creating a dim yellow glow.

  I strained my eyes in the low light to survey our surroundings. Rusted corrugated metal walls and ceilings extended up from a concrete floor forming an arch overhead. It was surprisingly cool in the underground space, considering the current temperature above ground. Bunk beds hung from the walls with blankets folded and stacked on the mattresses. The wall behind the ladder we had just descended was flat, as was the wall at the opposite end of the tunnel-shaped room, which I estimated to be about ten feet wide by fifteen or twenty feet long. The back wall was lined with shelving units except for a drawn curtain in one corner.

  “This looks like a bunker,” Di said. “Bruce and Carrie must be preppers, waiting for the zombie apocalypse.”

  “This is older than the survivalist movement, I think. I’m guessing this is a fallout shelter from the nineteen fifties or sixties when everybody was waiting for the communists to drop a nuclear bomb. Bruce and Bubba’s parents must have put this in.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen some of those old black-and-white documentaries showing schoolkids hiding under their desks, as if that would provide any protection from a nuclear attack.”

  “It turned out these kinds of structures wouldn’t have provided much protection from nuclear fallout, either,” I said.

  “Maybe not. But it looks like it’ll work just fine as a dungeon.”

  Di pulled her phone out of her pocket.

  “I’m guessing we won’t be able to get cell phone reception in here, but it’s worth a try.”

  She held the phone up to the hatch and various other points around the room. “No bars,” she said. “How long do you think our oxygen will hold out?”

  “Since people were supposed to be able to live in these for months, or years even, I’m assuming there’s some kind of ventilation system.”

  Di turned on her phone’s flashlight function and scanned the ceiling. “Yeah, here’s what looks like a vent. Unfortunately, it’s not big enough for us to crawl through to get out of here.”

  I walked to the far end of the room and pulled back the curtain. It was a privacy screen for the outhouse toilet behind it.

  “At least we’re set if nature calls,” I said. “And we’ve got months’ worth of canned goods on these shelves.”

  I sat down on a lower bunk and Di walked over and sat on the bunk across from me.

  “I can’t believe we never considered Carrie as a suspect. She had access to everything Bruce did. I’m sure she had keys to his truck and had seen him use a slim jim plenty of times, probably even used one herself,” I said.

  “And Carrie handed Bruce the pill he gave to Bubba that turned out to be an antihistamine instead of Imodium,” she said.

  “Oh, crap,” I said. “I just realized, it wasn’t Webster who set fire to the office trailer, it was Carrie.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I remember when I had lunch with her at the diner the other day she said something about the tangerine color spray paint used for the graffiti on the office trailer being the same as the paint used for the graffiti on Rowland’s building.”

  “So? She could’ve seen that on the news like everybody else.”

  “Who in the world would refer to that color as tangerine instead of just plain orange? And they didn’t mention that on the news, but the police report I got from Dave said two empty spray cans were left at the scene and it listed the brand and color names. I remember one of them was tangerine. But those spray cans were bagged for evidence and the only people who would have seen them, besides the vandals and the cops, were Carrie and Bruce, who discovered the obscenities scrawled on the wall.”

  “So why would Carrie torch Bubba’s office at the development?”

  “I don’t know. My best guess is she was looking for those paternity test results Bubba said he had. She certainly wouldn’t want somebody running across those.”

  “That makes sense,” Di said. “At least you were right about Bubba being Jennifer’s biological father.”

  “Fat lot of good that does us.”

  “We know who killed Bubba—and who’s going to kill us if we don’t think of some way out of this.”

  “Did you try holding your cell phone up to that ventilation pipe?” I asked.

  Di climbed onto the upper bunk and held the cell phone up to the vent, tilting it in different directions.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Maybe there’s something in here we can use to
pierce a hole in the hatch. That might let us get cell reception, or at least let somebody hear our desperate cries for help.”

  I got up and started looking around.

  “That hatch is inches thick. I doubt there’s anything in here strong enough to punch a hole in it. But maybe there is some stuff in here we could use as a weapon, and maybe a shield, when Carrie comes back.”

  “That’s a plan with some potential,” Di said as she joined the search of our little prison cell.

  “We could lob cans of lima beans at her,” I said, looking at the labels of the canned goods.

  “Who would stock their shelter with lima beans? Cans wouldn’t be much of a match against bullets. Wait, here’re some matches,” she said. “If we lit a piece of paper and fanned the flame near the ventilation pipe, maybe someone would see our smoke signals. What do you think?”

  “I think if we start a fire in this enclosed space we’re more likely to asphyxiate ourselves.”

  Di dropped the matches and dropped to her knees to look under the bunk bed. She held up something and looked at it for a moment before dropping it, recoiling, and saying, “Eeww.”

  “What is it?”

  “It looks like a used condom. It would appear Bruce and Carrie use the dungeon as a kinky romantic getaway. Or one of them uses it to get away with someone else,” Di said.

  “Carrie and Bruce wouldn’t use condoms at this point, I wouldn’t think. Wait a minute. Let me see that,” I said.

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m not going to touch it—like you did, by the way.”

  I knelt down. “Shine your flashlight on it.”

  “Be my guest,” she said, handing me her phone.

  I looked at the disgusting item more closely. “Di, this is a recent discard, not an ancient relic.”

  “Good for them.”

  “No, I mean I don’t think Carrie or Bruce are the ones using the dungeon for romantic encounters. My guess is this little hideaway is a private spot for Jennifer and her boyfriend. What’s his name? Garrett Timbs. That’s it.”

  “Oh, I guess that makes sense. But how does that help us?”

  “Di! Nell was questioning Billy Jr. about this place just the other night.”

  “Billy Jr.’s been down here with Jennifer? He’s kinda young for her, isn’t he?”

  “No, no, no. I don’t know that he’s been down here, at least not when Jennifer and Garrett were in here. But Billy is best buddies with Garrett’s little brother, Gavin. He came in with Billy at Nell’s house while I was there to talk to her about Jennifer’s DNA sample. Nell got upset with the boys for tracking cow manure into the kitchen and questioned them about why they’d been out in a pasture anyhow. They were giggling and elbowing each other and giving cryptic answers. I didn’t think anything about it at the time. But they said something about a special place Garrett likes to take his girlfriend and how it was ‘the bomb.’ I know now they must have been talking about this place. Maybe the middle schoolers have been spying on the lovers or listening to their grown-up activities through the air vent.

  “But, wait a minute. They couldn’t have gotten cow poop on their shoes in the tractor barn, and I don’t think Jennifer and Garrett have been slipping into their love lair through the hatch in the barn, either. There’d be too great a risk of them getting caught—the kitchen window has a clear view inside if the barn door is open.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying there’s got to be another entrance into this space—which means there’s also an exit.”

  “Where?” she said, looking around doubtfully at the confined space.

  “I don’t know, but we’re going to examine every square inch of this room until we find it.”

  Di started scanning the ceiling, thinking if there was a second exit it was most likely a hatch like the one we’d come down through. I began feeling along the wall for any lines or breaks that might signal a door. As I stood on tiptoe, moving my hands up the wall, I spotted a small flashlight tucked under the edge of a blanket on the top bunk. I grabbed it and flipped the switch. It actually came on.

  After scanning the ceiling, Di bravely shined her phone light under the bunk where we’d found the discarded condom. I knew she must be desperate to get out of this place. So was I, which is why I wasn’t above crawling along the wall behind the grungy toilet.

  I’d just about given up hope when the flashlight slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor. When I bent down to retrieve it, I could see an arc of scuff marks etched into the illuminated section of the floor. The scuff pattern seemed to emanate from the edge of the shelves holding the canned goods on the back wall.

  I showed my find to Di.

  “This must be it.”

  It looked like the shelving unit had been swung open and closed over a period of time, creating the marks on the floor. Di and I pushed and pulled trying to open the door. We ran our fingers along the outer perimeter of the casement trying to find a latch. Next, we pulled everything off the shelves, dumping the rations onto the floor, and pushed and pulled on each shelf and the shelf backing. Finally, I banged my fist on one of the shelves in frustration. When I did, it popped out of position, opening up a hidden space on the side of the unit and revealing a latch. I tugged at the latch and the door sprung forward slightly.

  As we pulled on the door, it swung open on hidden casters along the scored arc on the floor. There was an elevated opening, slightly smaller than the opening to the hatch we had climbed in through. I shone my flashlight into the space. We scooted a crate in front of the opening and Di said, “I’ll go first.” I didn’t argue.

  She climbed in and I entered right after her. We crawled something like twenty or thirty feet until the area in front of us dead-ended. Suddenly Di stood up; the space overhead opened up, soaring what I guessed to be at least twenty feet. Di stepped onto a metal ladder attached to the metal tube ascending upward into darkness beyond the scope of what our small lights could illuminate.

  Di went up the first few rungs and I followed closely behind. When she reached the top, she said, “There’s some kind of lid. Here’s hoping I can push it open.”

  I held my breath. In a moment I heard a creaking and saw a shaft of sunlight peek through as the lid began to open. Without warning, the lid dropped, shutting off the sunlight, and Di slid precipitously down several rungs of the ladder, kicking me in the jaw.

  I managed to hang on, just barely, and she caught herself, keeping us both from tumbling down almost two stories onto the metal surface below.

  “Are you okay?” I called up, my jaw still smarting, but no real damage done.

  “I’m going to have some bruises, but I think I’m okay,” she said.

  “Do you think you can open the lid?”

  “Yeah, I just lost my footing as I pushed up. Maybe once I get to the top again you can climb up so you’re behind my back. Wrap your arms around me and hang on to the sides of the ladder to steady me and keep me from tilting backward again. If we start sliding, grab on to the the first rung you hit and hang on for dear life.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure it was a great plan, but it was the only one we had at the moment. And staying in the bunker wasn’t an option.

  Di started back up. As she hit each rung, I heard her moaning, obviously in pain.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I twisted my dang ankle when I fell down the ladder. I’m trying to step up with my other foot and not put weight on it. I can make it.”

  When Di was up as high as she could go I kept climbing until my head was almost between her shoulder blades, hoping I could steady her as she pushed up on the lid.

  I saw a small shaft of sunlight again, then a bigger wedge of light as Di thrust her arms upward. I could feel her wince from the pain every time she pushed upward, putting a strain on her injured ankle, and she was trembling trying to keep the heavy lid ajar as she struggled to push it completely open.
>
  She took deep breaths readying herself for what we both hoped was the final heave-ho. I leaned back away from her slightly, trying to give her space to thrust upward with all the power she could muster from her muscular legs that walk more than six miles a day on her mail route. I felt her bend her knees slightly and surge upward.

  We heard the thud of the lid clapping against the top edge of the metal shaft as blinding sunlight flooded in.

  “You did it.”

  “Finally,” Di said, breathless, laughing and crying at the same time.

  After she sucked in a few deep breaths, she climbed to the top of the ladder and flung her upper body out of the escape hatch, pushing herself forward with her foot from the top rung. I climbed up and Di grabbed my hand and helped me climb out.

  We both sat on the grass, catching our breath for a moment.

  “Please tell me you didn’t drop your cell phone when we slid down the ladder.”

  “Nope. I have it right here. Let’s hope we can get reception.”

  She held her phone up.

  “I’ve got three bars.”

  “Hallelujah,” I said. “Call Dave.”

  Di handed me the phone. “You call him. I have a feeling I won’t like his tone when I tell him where we are. Just press two.”

  “Does that mean I’m number one on your speed dial?”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  I pressed “2” and before I could say anything Dave started barking, “Where the hell are you two? A farmer found Liv’s car abandoned in a field with the keys in the ignition. I’ve got volunteers combing the woods searching for you.”

  “Um, Dave, this is Liv. . . .”

  He started yelling again and I held the phone away from my ear. Di grabbed it and shouted at the phone, “Dave, shut up and listen. Liv and I are in the cow pasture behind Bruce Rowland’s tractor barn. Come pick us up. Oh, and arrest Carrie Rowland while you’re at it. She killed Bubba.”

  Click.

  “He’s on his way.”

  “He won’t be alone,” I said. “Apparently, Carrie moved my car to a nearby field and Dave has a search party looking for us.”