Cynthia Hamilton - Madeline Dawkins 01 - Spouse Trap

by Cynthia Hamilton

  “I thought hanging out a coyote pelt would discourage you from sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. I guess I can’t begrudge you for hiring someone to figure out who set you up for the photo shoot—not that anybody could ever, ever trace that back to me, or anyone else, for that matter. It was a waste of his time and your money, not to mention his life. But that was solely because someone had the bright idea to snoop around in my business affairs.” Steven checked his list again.

  “Oh, right—champagne!” he said, walking past her to the far wall rack that held his bubbly. “Can’t have a celebration without champagne,” he gloated. “Oh, you’ve been out of the loop—I’m going to ask my new girlfriend to marry me. I think she’s pretty keen on the idea. Of course, your early departure from Guam has cost me more money. But I’ve been assured that ‘Madeline Ridley’ has completed her residency requirement, so it’s just a matter of time before Elizabeth and I can make it official.” He looked over his shoulder at his current wife.

  “Poor Madeline—you just royally fucked things up for yourself. Okay, the set up was difficult on you—I get that. But I had no choice. I ran into financial difficulties and had to find a way out. You weren’t ever going to come into any money, and besides, I needed a quick fix.”

  Steven went back to perusing his list. “So, there you have it. I’m just bringing in provisions so Hughes won’t have any reason to come down here until…” He let out a semi-amused huff.

  “I don’t suppose you named me as beneficiary on your bank accounts, did you?” he asked hopefully. “Oh well, I still have the insurance policy, though that won’t pay off for a long time, seeing as how your remains will never be found.”

  Madeline just stared blankly at him. He had killed what little spirit she still possessed with his mercenary thoughts. She closed her eyes, willing him to leave so she could die in peace.

  Madeline’s defeated demeanor stirred what passed for compassion in Steven’s limited emotional range. She opened her eyes to find him standing in front of her, regarding her almost ruefully.

  “For what it’s worth, I never wanted it to end up like this.” Madeline’s throat closed as she looked at the man she had honestly loved and had hoped to spend the rest of her life with. The only bright spot she could find in this horrific scenario was that she had never been able to have children. The very thought of such a thing almost did her in.

  Without another word to her, Steven carried the box out of the wine cellar and deposited it on the ledge. He came back down and flipped off the overhead light, then closed and locked the door behind him.

  Being back in the blinding darkness caused a ripple of panic to surge through Madeline’s body. She didn’t want to die like this, not in here, not at the mercy of Steven and his ghouls. She started to shake as great sobs fought against the silver tape across her mouth.

  I will not let him do this to me! she thought, doing her best to control her breathing and relax the tightness in her throat muscles that ached so painfully. I will get out of here, I will get out of here…she repeated to herself. The more she heard the words in her mind, the more focused she became.

  If I’m going to get out of here alive, I first have to cut these restraints, she thought. But how? She wished she had spent more time refreshing her memory of the wine cellar layout while she had the chance. She’d have to go off memory until—if she were very lucky—she could get the lights turned on again.

  Now that her mind was geared to its mission, Madeline’s instinct for self-preservation kicked in. If she could get over to the light switch, could she get it turned on? Yeah, she thought, I could do that… Being able to see would be a tremendous comfort. She had always feared impenetrable darkness. If she could see, it would make a possible escape more plausible.

  She used the wine shelving to pull herself to her feet, which had become so numb she could barely stand on them. She lost her balance and tottered into the wine rack, creating a din of jostling bottles. Her heart pounded against her chest and she had to steady herself before she could concentrate on moving her feet. It was no use; her ankles were too tightly bound. She leaned against the wine shelving and lowered herself back to the ground.

  Once she was lying down again, she reached her hands down toward her feet, where her fingertips just barely grazed the backs of her shoes. She arched her back as much as possible and was able to push one shoe off.

  Exhausted but exhilarated, she freed her other foot. She could already tell she had more wiggle room with the shoes out of the way. She got back to her feet and was able to make half-inch shuffling steps. The process was excruciatingly slow, but it worked. She used her fingers as a rudder and a means of staying in contact with the wine bins as she worked her way to the far wall.

  Once she hit the end of this section of wine racks, she would have a space of about four feet to navigate in order to reach the wall where the light controls were located. While she shuffled her feet, she used her right elbow to mark and keep track of the number of bins she passed. Though she had not been paying much attention to where she’d been situated, she had a vague idea that she had been roughly halfway into the room, which if memory served her well, was about 30 feet long. Each bin width was 20 inches wide.

  Her mind was too frazzled to do the math, but she guesstimated that she had five cubbyholes to pass before she would reach the void. One…she counted. It seemed to take forever to reach the second divider. Two…

  On it went, tiny gains of distance from an incredible use of energy and willpower. Five! Her fingers fluttered, searching for wine bottle necks to prove her theory wrong. Nothing. She rested against the flat edge of the shelving frame while she collected herself. Now she would be without a map for the four feet of space before she’d encounter more shelving—four feet that would normally be two strides. She’d have to go slow and straight to not lose her course or her balance.

  The slow shuffling of her feet was accompanied by toneless humming as she scooted toward her target. Her head reached it before her feet, receiving a rude welcoming with a bump on the forehead. She groaned but wasted no time reverting to the process of letting her hands guide her to the end of this row of wine bins. She didn’t bother to count or calculate this time; her goal was in reach and her anxiety demanded that she get the lights turned on before she lost what was left of her mind.

  This time it was her right foot that took the impact as it collided against the step off the landing. She grasped at the side panel to secure herself while she contemplated how to maneuver up the step so she could get to the controls. The only way to do it was to sit down and swing her feet up, then lie down and get to her knees. Once she had done that, she was stuck. She had used the shelves and wine bottles behind where she had been tossed to act as handholds. There was nothing like that on the flat surface of the wine rack frame.

  Having come so far and being faced with defeat, Madeline began to wail—a horrible, mournful sound that was all the more hideous because her mouth couldn’t give vent to it. Please God! Please God! The refrain played over and over in her head, a comfort, a blanket to smother out her despair. Keep trying, keep trying, came the answer.

  She rolled off her knees and back onto her butt, then scooted her back up against the end of the shelving. She tottered on the edge of the step while her hands grasped at the edge of the frame. Having more or less established a connection, she used every fiber in her being to scale up the side. She almost capsized, but righted herself and pushed for the last gain, ending up in a standing position against the wall.

  She began to whimper, out of relief this time. She had done it. She rested against the shelving unit until she had worked up enough stamina to tackle the next step: finding and turning on the light switch. To do this, she inched her way to the corner, where the shelving unit met the wall. The controls were on the entrance wall, just before the door frame. She visualized walki
ng in the door, usually in high heels, as hostess to a cozy dinner for five or six couples. She envisioned lifting her left arm to about elbow-height to flip on the switch for the chandelier over the dining table.

  Madeline used her upper arm to locate the switch plate. She found it, but couldn’t bring her hands up that high. Instead, she had to use her elbow, which was as hard as trying to pick up a dime with fireplace tongs. On the fourth attempt, she connected with the switch, her reward being the most beautiful, blinding sparkle of the crystal chandelier. If she hadn’t been gagged, she would’ve laughed with joy.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she thought out the next step. She had to find something that would cut through the hard plastic ties that bound her wrists and ankles. Seeing her extremities chaffed and bluish-purple gave emphasis to the urgency of the situation.

  Okay, think, think! Down the hallway she had crossed over on her way to the door was a pantry/utility area, with an antique pine hutch outfitted with stemware and wine accessories. Corkscrews, she thought, though that was a rather dubious tool for her needs. Still, she had to make her way over there and see what else might be available. She managed to hop off the landing without falling over, and began her trek to the pantry.

  Being able to see made the twelve-foot commute much easier. Now that she didn’t have to feel her way in the dark, she was able to make small hops, which speeded up the process tremendously, but also drove the ties deeper into her skin.

  She managed the light switch in the alcove and shifted so that her back was to the hutch, where her hands could do their job. She pulled open the first drawer and squirmed around to look at the contents. Mostly what she had expected to find: antique wine openers and tastevins. Before wasting any time on a long shot, she hobbled in front of the next drawer and repeated the process.

  This time she struck gold—or rather, plastic and steel, in the form of a box cutter. Not all the wines in their cellar came in wooden crates; usually just the French wines and ports. The rest came in cardboard boxes, which Hughes opened using this very sharp blade.

  Madeline was so close to liberating herself, she could hardly control her emotions. But she thought things out carefully, pushing the lever up to expose the blade, positioning it just so before picking it up, removing it from the drawer, and trying to get the blade where she needed it without opening a vein.

  Once she had it all figured out, it was just a matter of time, skill and perseverance. After a couple awkward, pain-inducing minutes, she heard and felt the blade chew its way through the plastic. She continued to saw away, keeping her grip on the box cutter as best she could while pushing outward with her wrists. After another minute, the box cutter broke through the plastic binding, sending it falling to the floor. She dropped the cutter and began massaging the ligature marks on her wrists.

  Then, with a quick, hard jerk, she pulled the tape off her face.

  “Shit!” she gasped. “Oh my God!” She rubbed her face and lips gingerly, checking for blood. It felt as though she had just ripped off a layer or two of skin. No blood on her hands, but plenty of filth. She bent down and cut the ties away from her feet, and after a quick rub of her ankles, she headed back through the main room to the powder room in a second alcove, pausing only long enough to slip her flats back on.

  The sight of the toilet reminded her of other neglected body parts. She scrubbed her hands and face and rinsed her mouth under the faucet and then drank like a dog until she remember they kept bottled water in the front alcove.

  She found a case of Pellegrino in one of the storage cabinets. She drank half a bottle, belched and finished it off. She also discovered a box of Carr’s Table Water Crackers. She ripped the cellophane and tore into the crackers like a starving wolf. These two acts made her feel almost human again.

  The problem she now faced was getting out of the cellar alive. Just feeling like a human being again had taken her mind off the real peril she was still in. This brief reprieve would be nothing more than a tantalizing interlude if her malefactors caught her here.

  She had helped design this cellar under the four-car garage and the apartment Hughes now occupied. She knew there was no trap door or hatch or doorway hidden behind the wine racks. There was no reason to have a deadbolt on the inside of the door, so the only way to lock it was from the outside.

  After the hard-fought reprieve, Madeline began to fear there’d be no way to save herself after all. She pulled a chair away from the dining table and sat down to think. As she sat there, she heard the sound of footfalls coming from above. Panicking, she ran to the door and turned off the light. She would need to hide and ambush her assailants before they found her.

  She waited, heart pounding so hard, she felt light-headed, but no one came down the stairs. She turned the light back on and looked at her watch. 2:05. Hughes had gone to his apartment for his two-hour break for lunch and a rest. This ritual would make it possible for her to escape.

  Now she had two things going for her: if Hughes was at liberty to take his break, this meant his employer had most likely left the premises. It also meant Hughes was now directly above her on the other side of the ceiling. What she needed to do was create a very loud commotion, one certain to bring Hughes running to investigate.

  She had the perfect implements for generating plenty of racket, but with the reinforcements used between the two levels, a bottle of wine being smashed on the tile would be a muffled sound on Hughes’s level, if heard at all. She would have to hurl many bottles to the ground simultaneously.

  She walked around examining the five separate wine racks, including the narrow ones on either side of the door. It would be great if she could pitch one forward—that would surely get Hughes’s attention. But she knew all the shelving had been bolted into the limestone walls.

  Her next best idea was loading the dining table with bottles and tipping it over. That might work, she thought, hastily grabbing bottles and lining them up on the table. As she yanked absurdly expensive Bordeaux and Burgundies from the bins, she adjusted her methodology. Sure, gutting Steven’s wine collection would be satisfying, but she might have a secondary round of noise if she used his vintage champagnes. She nearly giggled at the prospect of producing canon-like pops as upended champagne bottles released their corks.

  When she had assembled about three cases’ worth of wine, Madeline removed all the chairs on the right side of the table. Then she stood back and studied the logistics: tip table, run to the landing, cut the lights and hold herself flat against the wall until Hughes unlocked the door and came in. Then, wham! hit him over the head with a bottle. Madeline nodded. It was a good plan—foolproof, as far as she could see.

  She took a bottle of wine and placed it to the left of the door, where she would stage her attack on poor Hughes. She didn’t like that aspect of the scheme, but she had to console herself with the thought that he would knowingly put himself in harm’s way to protect her. She’d find a way to make it up to him, she hoped.

  With everything in place, she thought through the next few steps beyond knocking out the butler. She then took a deep breath and grabbed the underneath side of the table, and with all the strength left in her, tried to tip it over. It didn’t budge.

  Madeline was now perspiring all over—from exertion and dread. This had to work. She didn’t have time to think of something else. The tablecloth. She grabbed the ends and gave it an experimental tug. Some of the bottles jiggled, but she could tell she wouldn’t get the desired results with her arms.

  She moved the end chair and rearranged the bottles so she could gather more cloth to tie around her waist. It would be a weird maneuver, pulling the cloth to the left with her body so that the bottles would crash to the floor and not on her heels. She did a couple practice runs without the cloth tied to her, then she fastened it with a loose knot.

  “One, two, three…” She lunged for
ward, the bottles rocking against one another and starting to tumble. She held the ends of the cloth as she continued to lurch forward. She was rewarded with a deafening cacophony as the bottles fell off the edge of the table, most smashing on impact, some surviving the fall only to be broken by another landing on top.

  It was a good execution, deriving as much racket as she could hope for. So much so, her ears rang from the sharp, explosive impact. It made much more noise than she had expected. Dark red splatters were everywhere, so were ragged fragments of glass. It was a beautiful mess, she thought, pleased with her handiwork. But she had little time to savor the ruination.

  She shook her head in hopes of restoring hearing as she made her way to the door. She cut the lights and strained to hear anything above the ringing in her ears. She could hear nothing, so she counted to herself.

  Even a man in his sixties would be able to abandon whatever he was doing, run out of the apartment and down the steps to the cellar in two or three minutes. Madeline would give him four, then she’d panic.

  One-hundred and thirty-one, one-hundred and thirty-two, one-hundred and… Even with her compromised hearing, she could hear the key in the lock. She lifted the bottle over her head. The door flew open and Hughes stepped in. He flipped on the light and stared at the wine carnage in horror.

  “Merciful heavens,” he uttered, then dropped to the floor as Madeline’s well-wielded bottle whacked the back of his head.

  Madeline cried out as Hughes went down. She was shaking as she bent to examine the damage. She had never caused anyone physical harm before, and she didn’t like the feeling. There was no broken skin, but the spot was already turning color. She knelt on the floor and felt his neck to make sure he was still among the living.

  She picked up the set of keys Hughes had carried in and, taking one last look at the destruction she was leaving behind, slipped out the door, locking it behind her.