by Lourey, Jess
“Tell me again why you want to see the wooden chest?” Carter directed the question at me, but he was eyeing Eric.
“We think there might be something inside it to help with the … story I’m writing,” I said. I was sweating desperation. Eric had let me hold Timothy to quiet him down, but I was hyper-aware of the Offerdahl heir’s hair-trigger penchant for violence.
Carter shrugged. “It’s still up by the attic. Let me tell Libby what we’re up to.” He disappeared downstairs and returned moments later, not making eye contact with any of us. Had he felt the terror oozing out my pores? Could he see how frightened Timothy was? Had he told Libby to call the police? I prayed to every god I didn’t believe in.
“Follow me.”
Eric signaled for me to trail immediately behind Carter. The hair on the back of my neck prickled and every animal instinct in me yelled not to let Eric stand at my vulnerable back, but without knowing where he had Taunita and Alessa or what sort of shape they were in, I had no choice.
As we took the first flight of stairs, Eric was too amped up to make appropriate conversation but tried nonetheless. “Must be nice to live in a house like this. You get to live here?”
Carter glanced over his shoulder, his hand on the stair railing. The Prospect House was closed for business today so the police could continue to gather evidence on the break-in. We were the only ones inside, besides Libby. “My wife and I live next door, in the carriage house.”
“This used to be my family’s place. I’m an Offerdahl.” There was an uncomfortable note of possessiveness in his voice, like he was daring Carter to contradict him.
“You don’t say.”
We climbed the second set of stairs, this one steeper than the first. I wanted to run, to inform Carter what was going on, to believe that help was on its way, but I kept myself calm through force of will. My hope was that we would find exactly what Eric was looking for and there would be no violence. We ascended the final full set of stairs, the narrow ones. We had to duck to reach the third-floor landing.
“They must not have had many fat people around when they built this house,” Eric remarked with a snigger.
“Over there,” Carter said, pointing across the room. We stood in the only clear area on the landing. Around us was the chaos of uncataloged items that I remembered from my first visit here—cardboard boxes with scribbled labels, stacks of musty-smelling clothing, old toys, moldering newspapers. “We have a record of what’s inside, but we don’t know where to put it yet.”
On the edge of the chaos rested a plain wooden box, so old the wood had gone gray. “Hanged Man” was written on the side of it, along with the date of March 1865. A stack of newspapers towered behind it, nearly reaching the ceiling. Behind that was one last tiny set of stairs that Carter had informed me led to the attic the first time I visited.
Eric strode to the box and kneeled. He undid the brass latches on the front and lifted the lid, pawing through the contents. Carter, Timothy, and I were all watching as Eric stood and turned, the wooden fife in his hand. It was nearly as long as his forearm, carved out of a blonde-gray wood, crudely formed but lasting all these years. Eric peered through one end as if it were a telescope. A triumphant smile slid across his face like oil.
“I see it.” He dug his finger in. The sound of dry paper riffled through the air.
Behind Eric, the door to the attic, the unreachable door, began to slowly, deliberately creak open. My heart jumped into my throat. Eric, oblivious, continued to dig inside the fife. I held my breath, terrified of what would reveal itself on the other side of that door. A zombie ghost in ragged tatters, coming to reclaim his inheritance? A floating girl corpse with maggots for eyes? How bad could one day get?
But then the door was fully open, dusty sunlight trailing in. There was nothing on the other side.
“Got it!” Eric said triumphantly, holding a yellowed scroll in his hand. He was framed by mountains of papers, and above and behind, the attic door.
“Hi,” Timothy said, his tiny voice reverent.
I glanced at him, confused. He was talking to the open attic door.
“Hi!” he said again, with more force.
My heart stopped. I didn’t see what he was seeing. The doorway was empty. But I did witness the musty tower of newspapers behind Eric slowly rock, as if pushed by an invisible wind. Reflexively, I opened my mouth to issue a warning, but I wasn’t quick enough.
The enormous pile of aged papers fell on Eric.
He dropped the fife and the paper. Both fell at my feet.
I grabbed the scroll and Carter snatched the instrument before giving a floundering Eric a firm push back into the chaos of papers. He speedily herded Timothy and me down the stairs. He shoved us into a bedroom off the base of the stairs at the second floor and locked the door behind us. He ran to the phone mounted on the far wall.
“I’m calling the police. You can explain what’s going on when we have handcuffs on that waste of air.”
I set Timothy on the bed, pushing aside the gorgeous, yellowed lace dresses that were draped across it. He didn’t want to let me go, but I couldn’t trust the lock. I leaned into the heavy oak of the dresser to the left of the door, hoping to push it over and seal the entrance. I was grunting and straining when I heard Eric’s footsteps hammer down the stairs toward us. He tried the doorknob, cursed, and kept running.
We weren’t in the clear as long as Eric had Taunita and Alessa. I ran to the window. The moment Eric’s car sped away, I ran down the stairs. Libby was there, wondering what was going on. I handed her Timothy, told her and Carter where I was going, and begged them to call the police.
I had no illusions that I could fight Eric, especially not if he had Hammer with him. I needed to stall for time, though, and I would do that by putting myself in their path. They could be hiding out in one of the cabins, but the police had been watching those carefully since the string of break-ins. They also could be in the rec house of the brewery, though that was next to impossible as no way would Taunita have let Eric take Timothy without a fight, and the noise of that would have alerted the brewery staff.
That left only the old cabin behind the dormitory, the one Vienna called the grow room.
I drove like lightning, the roads so icy that the front of my car was not always in agreement with the back as to what direction we were going. I roared past Vienna’s, past the dorm, and found the little road behind it leading to the cabin. When I spotted Eric’s car there, the relief washed over me like warm water, quickly followed by fear. I had no plan, only a conviction that I couldn’t leave Taunita and Alessa alone with Eric.
I squealed to a stop, tried to breathe around my pained heartbeat, and stepped out of my car.
What Vienna had referred to as the grow room was a one-room cabin tucked deep into the woods. Puffs of woodsmoke curled asthmatically out of the chimney. Naked oak branches scraped against the snow-buried roof, and the whole unpainted structure leaned a little to the right. Two murky windows stared at me from each side of the door.
Eric was inside.
With luck, Taunita and Alessa were as well, and alive.
I felt a muddy mix of helplessness, fear, and anger. Inexplicably, horribly, the image of the Candy Cane Killer rose into my mind, paralyzing me where I stood. A wave of nausea so strong it felt like vertigo washed over me. I didn’t know if I could override my self-preservation instinct and force myself to enter the cabin. How could I?
But then, I heard a baby cry from inside.
Hot tears clouded my eyes, and I sprinted forward, charging into the cabin, hoping that my directions to Carter and Libby had been clear enough, and that the police were on their way.
Fifty
My breath was a full second behind me, slamming into my back as my eyes frantically tried to take in everything. The dirty windows gave the inside of the cabin a s
mudgy, underwater feel. The single room was bare of all furniture except a pile of wood and a pot-bellied stove that turned the space into a sauna and a rickety table surrounded by four mismatched chairs. Hammerhead was sitting in one chair, Vienna in another.
Niall, my brewery tour guide, was seated in a third. Eric was standing behind them, had probably been pacing before I rushed the scene. Taunita was tied in a bundle on the floor in the far corner, unmoving, her face turned away from me, her hands limp. Alessa was next to her, sucking on a pacifier, a bottle filled with what looked like cola leaning against her chunky little thigh. She had one possessive little hand on her mom. Her eyes appeared swollen, and I could smell her dirty diaper from across the room.
Everyone but Taunita looked up when I flew in, their faces a palette of anger and surprise. Vienna moved immediately to the door and slammed it shut behind me and leaned against it, her arms crossed.
“You’re in on this?”
She ignored me.
“Who are you?” Niall asked, standing. He was wearing a wife beater, which revealed a deep purple octopus tattoo curling down his right arm.
Eric was breathing heavily, clenching and unclenching his fists. He must have barely beaten me here. The air was still charged with whatever heated argument they’d been having when I barged in.
“That’s the detective I was telling you about. She’s got the fife.”
Niall shook his head. “You’ve messed it all up, the whole thing, for a fife?!”
“Not just a fife.” Eric tugged on the barbell above his eye. “It’s my family legacy.”
Niall smacked Eric alongside the head with enough force that he almost fell into the stove. On the ground, Taunita’s form shifted, making me realize I’d been holding my breath. She was alive. Relief washed over me, making me weak.
“Now what?” Niall asked. “You think about that?”
Eric held his hand over his bleeding nose. His eyes glowed like dynamite fuses. “Now I go back for the fife. I still have one of the kids.”
“Except now both of these women have seen me. Dammit, I knew you weren’t worth it, Offerdahl.”
“Who told you about this cheap land?” he whined. “Who connected you with all the buyers?”
Was Niall an O’Callaghan, or just someone who had the ear of an O’Callaghan and used his access to convince them to open a brewery here? I inched closer to Alessa, who was still in her footie pajamas. The diaper smell intensified. Poor baby probably hadn’t been changed since they’d been abducted. I didn’t have a plan, exactly, except to comfort Alessa and her mom until the police got here. I prayed Taunita was conscious, though I wasn’t hopeful.
“You. Brownie. You look familiar.”
I stopped in my tracks. “You led a brewery tour that I was on. Is your real name Niall?”
“Bill.” He continued as if we were on a first date. “I’m the graphic designer for O’Callaghan’s. Maybe I mentioned that in the tour? I did the same job for their carpet company, and it was my idea that they start this brewery. As you just heard, Eric helped us to find the cheap land. Would have been a great gig with a little drug running on the side to keep things interesting, except this shit got greedy.”
He lunged at Eric again, and Eric tripped over himself trying to get away. It worried me, to see how scared Eric was of Bill. Hammerhead watched it all impassively. Vienna was fidgeting at the doorway, shifting from foot to foot.
“It’s my inheritance!” Eric said.
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Bill said, matter-of-factly. “And you’re the reason I now have to kill all three of these people. Or, I should say, why you have to kill them. If you hope to walk again, that is. We’ve got too much money riding on this. Those drugs don’t grow on trees, you know? There’s investors I got to pay off. Hammer, you guarantee he does what he’s supposed to do. Chop the bodies up for all I care, just don’t leave a mess here.”
He grabbed a black ski jacket off a chair and strode toward the door, his cold authority chilling me. “Oh, and her, too.” He tossed a glance at Vienna.
“What? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Except tell people about this place. You had one job, and that was as lookout, not hostess. You messed up a good thing, sweetheart.”
She opened and closed her mouth like a landed fish.
“Don’t look so stupid,” Bill said, brushing past her. “Eric said he saw you showing some old lady around. Had to be how Brownie here found us, right?”
He glanced at me. My poker face must have given me away. “That’s what I thought.” He slipped out the door, slamming it behind him.
I started talking fast, the sweat running down my spine. “You’re not guilty of anything right now, Eric. You kill us, though, and you’re a murderer.”
He looked at me blearily. “Shit, I’m already a murderer. It should have ended at Maurice, then that damn backwoods sheriff almost catches me with a trunk of Oxy. Plus, now I got this little kidnapping. What’s four more bodies?” He reached into his waistband and pulled out a gun, a sleek black semiautomatic, glittering and efficient. “If I don’t do it, I can’t live nowhere no how. Bill has eyes everywhere. You watch the door for me, Hammer.”
The giant was emotionless. He strode to the door, pushing Vienna toward the table. She was as pale as winter, her eyes wide circles of shock.
My voice was hoarse. I felt like I was choking on words, not sure which to choose, knowing that four lives rested on me picking correctly. “Kidnapping carries a whole lot shorter sentence than murder.”
“I don’t plan to be caught for either.”
“I don’t believe you can shoot us in cold blood.”
He snorted, aiming the gun at me sideways, gangster-style.
“Dang, Eel,” Hammer growled, his first words since I’d charged into the cabin. “Bill said not here. Then we just got a mess to clean up. Go do it out back in the woods.”
I was wondering if this is what Orpheus’s last moments had been like, fumbled between inept crooks who were trying to steal what was rightfully his. As long as we were talking, though, we weren’t dying. I twisted the skin under my arm to give me something to focus on other than the panic. “Let me get Taunita up. I’ll carry the baby. We can walk to the woods. It’ll be quicker.”
I hurried to Taunita’s side before he could argue. I was grateful to find that she was not only conscious, but had no visible wounds other than deep bruising over her right cheek and a black eye. I didn’t know how much longer we had, but her being unharmed increased our odds of survival from zero to around a tenth of a percent.
“Keep her hands tied,” Eric warned.
I unknotted the rope around her ankles and helped her to her feet. Her eyes were grateful but bruised. “The police have Timothy,” I whispered. “He’s safe.”
A sob escaped her, and she fell into me.
“Hurry up!” Eric pushed us with the butt of his gun.
I made sure Taunita could stand before I scooped up Alessa. She felt soggy and light, her tiny body hot and wiggly in my arms. “Hey, sweetheart,” I said. It was all I had. I opened my jacket and zipped her inside, where she squirmed and whimpered and stank, only her head visible through the neck of my coat.
I gently held Taunita’s elbow to steady her. “I’ll lead the way,” I told Eric.
My words sounded brave, but I felt like I was walking above myself, looking down to see our sad little trio marching to our death. I kissed the top of Alessa’s head and held her tight, the honey scent of her baby shampoo thick in my nostrils, laced with the sour reek of urine.
Taunita leaned into me. Alessa’s grubby little fists bunched up my shirt.
We stepped into the glare of the sunlight, the brightness blinding after the murk of the cabin.
Something even brighter than the diamond glint of the sun caught my eye, and then a
gain, from a different angle, followed by a third glare from a new angle. I had only one second to guess what it was. I pushed Taunita down, curled Alessa into my arms, and fell over them both.
The raging thunder of a gunfight rained over our heads like judgment.
Fifty-One
“I knew she was no good,” Mrs. Berns stage whispered. She was wearing her cap guns, had in fact told me she hadn’t taken them off except to sleep since her grandkids had arrived two days ago, coincidentally the same day I’d charged into the grow room. Apparently, they appreciated Mrs. Berns exactly as she was.
“You knew no such thing,” I argued. Because of her grandkids’ arrival, we hadn’t had a chance to speak since the shoot-out, an old-West style gunfight of Battle Lake’s finest against Hammerhead and Eric. Gary hadn’t seemed happy, exactly, when he’d first spotted me stepping outside of the cabin, but at least he hadn’t shot me. Eric had taken one in the elbow and another in the shoulder. Hammer had not been so lucky and was now sporting a toe tag. Vienna, using her finely honed hunting instincts, had ducked about the same time as me and gotten away without a scratch.
Once taken into custody, Eric refused to go on record for killing Maurice, though Kennie informed me that Stingray was in the middle of negotiating a deal, narcing on Eric, and admitting to robbing cabins and thrashing Curtis when the old man had caught him and Eric trying to rob the Apothecary. In return, he’d been offered leniency on drug possession charges.
Bill had already been extradited to Chicago for a whole raft of drug-related crimes he’d left behind. For now, the O’Callaghan’s brewery was set to re-open once the police were done thoroughly investigating the premises, but it remained to be seen whether anyone in the family knew about the drugs being dealt right under their noses. If O’Callaghan’s could be traced back to the influx of OxyContin and fentanyl into Otter Tail County, they would go down hard. I kind of hoped they weren’t in on it. The world needed more ice castles and chocolate stout.
