by Alice Sabo
Aunt Sue was there in front of him with a cell phone in her hand. “Keep talking.”
Asher tried to make his thoughts into sentences, but it all came out jumbled. “Stairs broke. . .Clyde shot at us. . .they’re hurt. Get help!”
Aunt Sue nodded at him and spoke into the phone. “Sounds like Clyde set up in the Black Water Cavern and the Hollywood people came in off the eastern spur. . .How the hell would I know why they were in there? Better get search and rescue. Sounds like people are hurt.”
Chapter 35
Asher woke slowly. His shoulders ached. Had he done too many laps the day before? The scent of Ellie’s hand lotion wafted past him making him smile. He had asked her once to please never change it because the smell reminded him of how great his life was right now.
“Are you awake?” Ellie said softly.
“How could you tell?” He turned his head on the cool pillow looking for her.
“Because you stopped twitching and smiled.”
It took a moment to register, but he realized: Ellie was fully dressed, it wasn’t morning and they weren’t at home. Sunlight flowing in through lace curtains showed him a slightly shabby room with cabbage-rose wallpaper. She sat in an armchair that had been pulled over to the side of the bed, a book in her lap.
“Do you remember what happened?” she asked.
Asher felt a nudge of panic because he couldn’t remember. Where had he been? His whole body ached. The rock slide? No, she left after that. He remembered going to the airport with Bunny. His throat was sore. Maybe he was sick. But she wouldn’t come out for just a sore throat. He tried to sit up and became very aware of how much his hands hurt. His knuckles were split like he had. . .“The mine. Is George? Imre? Is everybody okay?”
“George broke his leg. He’s pissed but okay. Imre has a concussion. They’re holding him at the hospital for a couple days, but he’s going to be fine. Oscar got bashed up but nothing broken. He’s got a bunch of staples in his head, but he’ll be fine too. Landers broke some ribs, and he’s kind of freaked out. Says he saw a ghost.”
“Not a meth dealer with a gun?”
Ellie laughed. “Once again you’re a hero.”
“I am?”
“With hypothermia and lots of new bruises.”
The bedroom door was ajar. Asher heard movement in the living room.
“Is he ready for company?” Bunny came through the door carrying Sharon.
Thomas bulled past him on a mission. “Daddy!”
Asher braced for impact as his son scrambled across the bed, but hugs like these were worth the pain. He lay back against the pillows as Thomas began a long story about being on an airplane. Bunny brought the baby to him. Asher kissed his sleeping daughter’s forehead. He didn’t have to be homesick now because home had come to him.
“You look a hell of a lot better than when I picked you up at Sue’s cabin,” Bunny said. He dumped the chainmail off the other armchair and plunked down into it.
“You came and got me?”
“Sheriff called me. Said it was probably just a little hypothermia and maybe you wouldn’t want to go to the hospital.”
“Huh. That was really nice,” Asher said.
“He had an ulterior motive,” Bunny said with a grin.
“He wants to be an extra?” Ellie asked groaning.
“No. He wants Asher to talk to the local high school about drug awareness.”
“I’d be glad to.”
Bunny nodded. “That’s what I said. Oh, and the braid was a nice touch. Let me know Oscar was alive. As soon as I saw it, I felt better.”
“How’d you know he did it?” Asher asked.
“He does this four-strand thing like making a rope. He’s not a real good swimmer. So I knew he wouldn’t even try. Seeing that braid meant he was okay. You, however, were not. I was worried because you were not making any sense at all when I got there.”
Ellie chuckled. “What was he saying?”
Bunny’s face folded into a concerned frown. “He kept saying he had to save the baby. And something about red sequins.”
Ellie sighed. “Oh, Sweetie.” She reached over to squeeze his arm.
Asher swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Not my daughter, Bunny, the first Sharon.”
“She wore red sequins?”
Asher glanced at Thomas who was arranging small plastic dinosaurs across the hilly terrain of his father’s knees.
Ellie walked to the end of the bed, near Bunny’s chair. She lowered her voice. “She was his assistant. She was stabbed. Her dress was blue sequins, but. . .”
Bunny’s eyes widened. “Oh. I’m so sorry.”
Ellie came back to the side of the bed. “A bad time.”
“Trauma does that,” Bunny said softly. “Brings up memories you think are buried.”
Thomas growled as he attacked the orange dinosaur with the green one, rolling across Asher’s legs. Asher winced at the weight on his new injuries.
“Let’s get Daddy some food,” Ellie said. She shooed Thomas out of the bedroom.
“We were on the news,” Bunny said. “The whole county turned out for the rescue. It was quite the scene. Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars all over the property. They were very excited to be going into the mine. I don’t think Sue was happy about that. Nobody’s been in there since the collapse.”
“Has Denny called to scream at me?”
“Why would he do that? You’re a hero.”
Asher shifted the sleeping baby in his arms. “What about reporters?”
Bunny waved a hand in dismissal. “We’re old news now. There was a bank robbery.”
“This afternoon?” Asher glanced at the light coming through the window. It seemed like it was only early afternoon, but that wasn’t possible.
“You’ve been asleep for almost a day. Oscar’s still asleep, but he’s on pain meds.”
Asher hoped in his case it was the hypothermia and adrenaline let-down and not a reaction to inhaling meth fumes. “Is he okay?”
“That man!” Bunny said with a tone of exasperation. “I drove all the way over there to get you and check on the others, and after waiting forever for them to bring him out of the mine, all he can talk about is the fight. While they were putting him in the ambulance, he said he needed to write down some notes about the fight because he was going to use them for that cop-convict thing he has in the spring. Honestly!” Bunny snorted in indignation. “Anyway. Are you okay? That must have been scary as hell. Although he was impressed with some of your moves.”
“It’s all blurry. Rolling around in the dark.” Asher shook his head. “I don’t think I want to try to remember it.”
Bunny nodded. “Don’t. It’ll come back whether you want it to or not. You’ll have to deal with it then. Might want to talk to someone. Something like this, and the rock slide, it can give you PTSD.”
The memory of an especially rambunctious group therapy session at the hospital had Asher rubbing the scar on his thumb. Somehow violence always preceded turning points in his life because he’d just had another epiphany. “I was a hero.”
“You absolutely were. I don’t know if they would have all made it out of there without you. George had to have surgery on that leg, and Oscar lost an awful lot of blood.”
Asher felt the gratitude in Bunny’s words. Back in the mine, he’d taken charge of the situation to protect his friends. He’d fought an armed man and won. Then he’d put himself at even greater risk by swimming that lake. “I didn’t even think.”
“Sue said the water is freezing cold even in the middle of summer. And it’s hundreds of feet deep. You’re lucky she found you. She said the rocks amplify the sound at the mouth of the cave, so she could hear you swimming out even before she could see you. But by the time you got to the middle of the lake, you weren’t doing so well.”
“I couldn’t think.”
“Hypothermia does that to you. But you survived the gamble and saved the day.”
Ellie came back into the room carrying a tray. Thomas was hot on her heels with a salt shaker in one hand and the pepper in the other. “Here we are,” she said, setting the tray on Asher’s lap. “You need to eat.” Thomas climbed up and offered him the salt and pepper.
“This looks wonderful,” Asher said. He caught Ellie for a quick kiss. She settled on the edge of the bed, taking the baby back.
“Bon appétit,” Bunny said as he left.
“You’re feeling better,” Ellie said. She brushed his hair back from his face.
“I feel great.”
Chapter 36
When Oscar finally woke up, he came by to give Asher his version of the rescue. Asher and family were in the living room when Oscar and Bunny arrived. The right side of Oscar’s face was dark with bruises. A row of staples marched back from his forehead through a shaved patch on his scalp giving him a distinct Frankenstein air. He stepped around the blocks Thomas had arranged on the floor and settled gingerly on the loveseat. Bunny bustled past them into the kitchen with a jug of fresh cider.
“Don’t you say a word until I get out there!” Bunny warned from the kitchen.
Oscar grinned carefully. “I said I didn’t want to tell the story twice.” He shifted with a grunt. “There are a couple of ways into the cavern that had been boarded up over the years to keep kids out. All of the entrances are near Sue’s cabin. I bet that cabin was built by her ancestors. The first ones to start working on the mine. Makes sense that they’d work the cave first.”
“Enough with the history lesson,” Bunny groused from the kitchen. He appeared a moment later with mugs of mulled cider. Asher hesitated to take one. “Just hot apple juice. I promise,” Bunny assured him as he took a seat next to Oscar. “
Oscar smiled, then winced holding the bruised side of his face. “Sue brought the sheriff and the search and rescue team, with tracker dogs, in through a side tunnel. Lit up the place like Grand Central Station. Gotta say, until they arrived, I wasn’t sure if you’d made it. After I got a good look at that water, couldn’t believe you swam it.”
“Me neither,” Asher said with a shrug. He sat near Ellie in the matching wingchair.
“Sheriff said DEA and ATF might be coming in on this. That lab was huge. More than Clyde could handle on his own. Sue said there’s been smugglers and moonshiners using those caves for generations, but she didn’t know the lab was in there.”
“But you said all of the entrances were on her land,” Ellie countered.
“I think he was coming in through the air shaft,” Asher said.
Oscar lifted his mug in agreement. “Right. I mentioned that to Danson. He said it made sense, because Sue watches the entrances, and she would have known someone was going in and out.” He sipped his cider. “She also said they’ve had a few drownings in Black Pond over the years. Too cold, too deep. The only easy access area is by her cabin. Probably another reason why it was built there. Since that’s her land, she keeps an eye on that, too. You were damn lucky she was home.”
Asher nodded. Possibilities of things gone awry made him feel extremely fortunate. “Wait, her land? But Landers said it was Alma’s.”
“Yeah, I asked her about that. She said that she and Erwin are holding Alma’s land in trust. Jeff gets it when he turns 18.”
“He’s almost 18. Why didn’t he know that?”
“She’s a piece of work, let me tell you. She said if he wasn’t going to question it then he didn’t need to know.”
Asher thought about that for a bit. How would he question something he didn’t know about? “Is it worth anything?”
“He’ll own the stables that Ed’s renting. So there’s some income for awhile. Don’t know if Erwin’s holding that in trust.” Oscar shrugged. “Sue said she and Erwin will probably offer to buy him out. He’s been saving up for years with that in mind. And he’s been working that land all that time, so he probably feels like it’s his.”
“Huh. She said changes were coming.” Asher wondered if Jeff would want to stay now that he was a landowner. “Keeping that secret made Jeff less connected to the land. I wonder if that’s what they wanted.”
“Stop,” Ellie said firmly. “You have your own family. You need to stop worrying about the Cahills.”
Asher smiled as he watched Sharon crawl over to inspect Thomas’s creations. “Yes, but I learned a few things about families from them.” He didn’t say they were all things he wanted to avoid.
An autumn chill was sneaking in through the open windows. He sipped the hot cider, cradling the warm mug in his aching hands. Late afternoon light was fading behind a cloud bank.
Bunny cleared his throat. “I got the lowdown on the John Doe from Mrs. Wheatly.”
“Was it Bobby?” Asher asked.
That got him a scowl from Bunny. “How did you know?”
“Aunt Sue said something about him not being around anymore. It sounded especially final the way she said it.”
“Ah. Well, there’s no proof, but everyone’s pretty sure she moved the body.”
“Why?” Ellie asked.
“Apparently so someone would find it.”
“Why not simply call the sheriff?”
“That would make more sense. Mrs. Wheatly said she thought that Sue put it where we’d find it, so there would be more of a commotion over it. Out-of-towners and all. But Sue’s vanished. Mrs. Wheatly said she does this. Goes walk-about whenever people want to talk to her.”
Asher sipped the hot cider, watching Sharon’s chubby little fingers grabbing at the blocks. “Do they know why Clyde killed him?”
“How did you know that?” Bunny snapped, obviously peeved that Asher had spoiled his tale.
“Um, they were partners?”
“Mrs. Wheatly said they probably argued over money. She got the lowdown from the coroner, who happens to be her cardiologist. Clyde shot him and dumped his body in the woods. Took a machete or an axe to him, so it would attract animals. Sue must have been following him. Word is, she kept an eye on Bobby for Alma. So what you heard in the woods was Clyde mutilating the body. And when you ran to call the sheriff, Sue showed up and took it away.”
“Except for a foot,” Asher said with a grimace. Then he remembered her sudden visit. “She came by here and asked me how long I’d been here. She seemed surprised that I’d been here a whole week.”
“Everybody agrees that she probably didn’t see you because then she wouldn’t have had to move the body. But, if you had been a little faster getting out of the hot tub, you’d have run into Clyde and his machete.”
Ellie patted his hand. He eased up, realizing he was clutching the arm of the chair. “That would have been bad.”
Oscar grunted an agreement. “Sounds like slasher movie meets British farce.”
Asher didn’t have anything to add to that. He’d keep Sue’s wound to himself. She might not have been shot. That wasn’t a mystery he needed to unravel. The room was still. Sun peeked through the clouds sending a shaft of bright light through the windows. Sharon squealed tossing a block at Thomas. He should feel glad that it was all over, but he had a niggling finger of worry for the young Cahills in the back of his mind.
“What shall we do about dinner?” Ellie asked.
“Chinese?” Oscar suggested.
“Well, we can’t go anywhere with you looking like Igor,” Bunny quipped with a pointed look at Oscar’s stitches.
“Does the Indian place. . .” Asher started to ask but could hear someone on the porch.
Jeff and Jo came in the front door loaded down with grocery bags. “We heard about the accident at the mine and figu
red you’d need a good dinner,” Jeff said in greeting.
Asher smiled. Something had changed. Both kids had a happy glow about them. “I’d love some home cooking,” he said. “Got enough for all of us?”
“Sure.” Jeff went through to the kitchen.
Jo smiled at the kids on the floor. “You folks just relax. Jeff and I will get it all set up for you.”
“Works for me,” Bunny said, sinking back into the cushions.
“Mmm.” Ellie agreed.
Asher looked a question at her.
“Employees are great,” she said with a smile. “I’d love a cook while we’re here.”
“How’s your mom doing?” Asher yelled after them.
Jeff peeked out the kitchen door with a pound of butter in one hand and a big wooden spoon in the other. “Momma fainted while we were making arrangements for Uncle Bobby at the funeral home, and we hadda take her to the hospital. Doctor said it was a stroke.” He ducked back into the kitchen.
Jo came out with a dish towel in her hand. She leaned against the doorjamb. “The doc said she’s gonna need to be in one of them assisted care places, and we were really worried about that, ‘cause we thought it’s kinda like a nursing home. But it’s not really like a nursing home, ‘cause we all went there and checked it out, and it’s a nice place. Aunt Sue said she’d pay for it.”
“Don’t know where Aunt Sue’s getting that kinda money,” Jeff grumbled from the kitchen.
Jo shrugged. “It’s a nice place for Momma. She’s safe there.” She slipped back into the kitchen.
Asher glanced at Ellie. He felt better that the kids wouldn’t have to take on the burden of caring for a woman that would soon forget who they were.
“They got there on their own,” Ellie murmured.
Asher nodded acknowledgement of the gentle admonishment. But he wondered if the kids would be as accepting of the situation if he hadn’t broached it first.
The clank of a cast iron pan hitting the stovetop was followed by the sizzle of butter. Asher sank back into the chair dreaming of biscuits.
