by Alice Quinn
There was a light switch at the bottom. When I flicked it on, a row of ancient lights lit up. Huge bulbs hung precariously from the ceiling. The wires they hung from looked as old as the cellar itself. I climbed up one last time to close the trapdoor, then had a good look around. It was the most unbelievably beautiful cellar. Really magnificent, with vaulted ceilings.
It appeared to have been cleaned recently. It was a shame they hadn’t changed the lights at the same time. The place was full of all sorts of stuff. Bric-a-brac galore! Furniture, broken bits of crockery, suitcases, antiques dating back to the beginning of the century (like I’d know!), all sorts of crap.
There were also racks, barrels, and old dusty bottles of wine. I thought that because they hadn’t taken these bottles up to the pantry room and arranged them in the classy refrigerators, it must be because they were so old, they’d become undrinkable. It was the only explanation as far as I could tell.
The cellar was long. There were several vaulted sections in a row. Pastis was the first of us to see what was what. He was popping behind chests and running along big rolls of fabric lying on the ground. There were so many strange new smells and sights for him to enjoy.
The first thing I did was check for an emergency exit of some kind, like when you go to the movie theater. There’s always one somewhere (usually behind the screen). I couldn’t find it. We weren’t in a movie theater, though, so I don’t know how I’d convinced myself there’d be one.
I thought the best thing to do—something that would calm us all down—would be to settle somewhere and have our lunch. Our meal back at home had been interrupted by these latest shenanigans, and although the kiddies had had their apple pieces, my girls must have been hungry. It wasn’t exactly a square meal.
We needed to find a nice spot. We moseyed through to the last part of the corridor, found a pile of metal chairs stacked up, and moved some of them together so we could sit down. I took what remained of our omelet out of my purse. The kiddies made encouraging yum-yum noises as they munched up their lunch.
After we’d finished, I let Sabrina go off and hunt around the place. It was such a trove down here. A heap of ancient treasures to uncover. The baby girls encouraged her excitedly and followed her around, copying her every move. Within five minutes, the area looked like a flea market at the end of a long day. Shambles to the max. They’d touched—and moved—everything.
I remained at our makeshift table mulling things over. I was trying to make out our predicament as best I could. I hadn’t had a moment to myself since the day before, and everything had gone downhill so rapidly.
I wondered how exactly we’d all come to be in this butthole of a basement and how in God’s name we were going to get out. Even if I did ever get out with my kids safe and sound . . . then what? We’d have to face an even more complicated situation getting away from the police and proving I wasn’t some crazed killer.
There were windows high up on the walls. Well, I wouldn’t say windows—they were more like vents with vertical bars. We could see people’s feet as they walked by. I pushed a few pieces of furniture together to get a look outside. Bingo! There was a cop car right out front. I bet it belonged to Borelli and his buds. Great. It meant I’d be able to watch them leave and know when the coast was clear.
We could escape out of this dank hell we’d found ourselves in, and leave the respectable way too—straight out the front door—but not without getting the money Mademoiselle Kessler and the family owed me. I needed a bit of cash. At least enough to survive for a couple of days, prove my innocence, get my Big Pink back, sell it, and become a multimillionaire.
Easy enough.
Except I was stuck in what was simply a classier version of a tunnel, suspected of murder, on the verge of being arrested and separated from my bambinos, without a cent to my name, crippled by debt, and I still thought it was possible to hit the big time with that diamond?
This neuron deficiency of mine wasn’t getting any easier to deal with. I suppose there isn’t really a cure for it.
I let my imagination run free, thinking things over as I sat watching the kids wreck the joint. I noticed a pile of old magazines in the corner. A little reading would be a great way to pass the time. I was pretty sure there’d be no Snoopy stuff in there, but it was time I learned to adapt to my surroundings.
I picked up the one on top of the pile. It was a psychology review. I leafed through it and noticed a few bits and pieces that I figured could really help me out in life. I liked the readers’ letters best. The questions people asked! They had such exciting lives! There was stuff in there about people’s jobs, their other halves, their kids . . . That’s what caught my eye. There was something about what to do and how to react when your kids have night terrors. I’ve always been lucky with mine. They’ve never suffered from anything like that. Apparently, it’s terrifying. Your kid just lies there screaming, not even knowing who you are, and the last thing you’re supposed to do is go near them.
Simon often stays over with us, and he’s always been a fragile little thing. He could have a night terror on me some day, and I’d need to know how to react. I made a mental note of the advice and tried to imagine the scene. It was pretty easy because it turned out that there wasn’t much you could do. My grandmother Ruth would have loved that. Do nothing! Pretty good advice! It made sense and wasn’t full of overly complicated words. I looked at who had written the response. Rachel Amar. I knew that name.
I was trying to remember how I knew it when I heard a noise.
44
My heart started hammering like crazy. My first thought was the kids had knocked something over and smashed it. I had an immediate reflex to make sure my chickies were out of harm’s way.
They were fine. It must have been someone trying to get through from upstairs . . . But the noise wasn’t coming from the top of the staircase. It sounded like it was coming from the other side of the wall. Maybe there was another cellar adjoining this one?
All sorts of awful images flooded my mind. Pictures of women and children locked up in the cellar for years on end. Trapped down here by a bunch of insanos.
Serial rapists and killers.
If that was the case, though, it meant that this whole hullabaloo wasn’t even the biggest deal going on right now. It would mean that Max, although what had happened to him wasn’t all that nice, deserved what he got. That he’d in fact been a terrible monster of a man.
Was this a false wall? Were there people trapped inside? Were they being tortured, like in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? No! For crying out loud! Spare me that at least! The noise stopped, then started up again. It sounded like a sort of coughing. In fact, that’s just what it sounded like. No way.
I was frozen with fear. I didn’t want the kids to recognize how uncool I was being. I stood up and jogged farther down the hallway of vaulted sections back toward the staircase. There was so much trash scattered about, weird old stuff from before the war (I guessed). There were some enormous wheels (maybe from a cart?), old tools, and a bunch of objects I had no hope at even guessing their use. Not even a stab in the dark.
I shuffled slowly. The scenes I had in my head had given rise to feelings of dread so severe (even worse than the feelings I got when I thought about cops) that I could hardly handle myself. I didn’t want to get caught in a trap here.
Maybe it hadn’t been the old guy who was torturing these people? Maybe it wasn’t even his dungeon. Maybe it was Mademoiselle Kessler. I mean, she looked like she’d just stepped off the set of Frankenstein.
Pastis stepped out in front of me. He was taking little steps at a creeping pace and had lowered himself to the ground, a typical hunting stance.
The noise stopped. I continued to stealthily move forward when . . . Aaaccchhhooo! Someone sneezed. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Pastis was scared out of his little cat brain too! He knocked down a ladder! It came crashing down, almost taking half my face off with it. Pastis started howling with f
ear and ran in the direction we’d just come from. He was interested in saving only himself! Run for it! That’s his motto.
I let out a scream and the twins came running toward me at full whack, screaming too.
“’K? ’Kay? Momma? Hurty or no hurty?”
I took them both into my arms and turned around. What was that? I saw the silhouette of a woman. She was trying to get away. There was another door!
This cellar was obviously bigger than this one corridor. It was like a set of Russian dolls. A cellar in a cellar in a cellar . . . One room hid another . . . and another . . . Maybe it went on for infinity? The woman had been behind the staircase it seemed. Why hadn’t I seen that doorway?
Sabrina ran to the steps and shouted, “Hello you! Where did you go? Why did you run? Why didn’t you thay hello to my mom? Thee doethn’t bite, you know!”
The woman came into view and the twins burst out laughing. I knew who it was immediately. It was Amy . . . well, Lani. My old work buddy! Wow! I didn’t like the look of this! Why in God’s name was she down here? What or who was she avoiding? Could she be the one who’d killed the old fella? I bet she did! She must have smacked him over the head with the statue of those old-fashioned Hooters girls and then come down here to hide.
If that were true, she wasn’t very good at killing people. First off, trying to lie low at the actual crime scene? What the heck? Sooner or later they’d find her down here. It wasn’t like they were just going to ignore the whole basement, was it? It was just a matter of time. In fact, it was surprising they hadn’t checked it out already.
Sabrina was blocking Lani. She couldn’t go anywhere. I headed over to the secret doorway and opened it wide. There was a really strong chemical smell in there. What was that? I found the light switch and flipped it on. Pastis, ever nosy, also came to take a look.
The lights revealed a workshop. They must have been special lights for artists or something, because I’ve never seen bulbs so bright and white. Dazzling! There were canvases on easels everywhere. Some were still wet by the smell and look of them. Tubes of paint were scattered on every surface. It was an artist’s space, a real workshop. Off Pastis went for a good sniff, picking up hundreds of traces of scents along his merry way.
I didn’t understand any of this whole business. Some of the paintings I recognized as belonging to Max. What were they doing down here? I turned to look back at Lani and saw she was trembling from head to toe. Even her arms were wobbling like mad. What had she been up to? I figured I’d met my match with this one!
“Lani?” I asked as softly as possible.
She turned her head toward me, caught my eye . . . and the tears came gushing out.
“No me. No me,” she whispered.
I took that to mean that she was saying she had nothing to do with Max’s death. The pair of us didn’t exactly have master’s degrees in English, but we understood each other. I stepped toward her reassuringly, and my Sabrina took her hand. We all walked back to where we’d had our food. It was like our temporary living room.
An hour later, and completely exhausted following the multitude of hand gestures I’d had to use, I understood two or three things a little more clearly. Sabrina turned out to be the better translator out of the two of us. It’s not that she can speak English—she’s too young—but she can speak the language of emotions, my Sabrina. If someone is having difficulty finding their words because of some kind of trauma, Sabrina can get onto their wavelength and understand what they’re saying.
Anyway, what we got out of Lani was that on Friday, the day before, she had shown up late for work because of some issue or other with her family. She had put her coat away in the back kitchen (at the top of the stairs), then gone around the first floor opening up the curtains. When she’d entered Max’s office, she’d seen it—the stiff. Flat out on the floor.
She’d gotten scared shitless when she heard a noise and ran back to the pantry and down the stairs. She’d picked up her coat along the way, but forgot to lock the door behind her.
I was wrong when I said I thought the police would be down in the basement checking it out anytime soon because they’d already done it. After I’d left yesterday, they checked the whole house, including the cellars. Well, they couldn’t have checked all of the cellar—they hadn’t found Lani, and they hadn’t found the secret door to the workshop. She’d been lucky. The door was difficult to see, so hiding in the workshop had been the right decision. They didn’t even get a whiff of her.
One of my skills in life is somehow inheriting children who aren’t mine. This time I’d landed myself an adult to take care of. She was in a bigger mess than me (if that was possible).
45
I tried to tell her that she’d be safe with us. That nobody was going to accuse her of having killed the old man. She didn’t have a credible motive, to use the professional terminology like Borelli. In fact, it made no sense that she would do it—she’d lose her job! Plus, anyone could see she was too much of a weakling to kill anyone. I told her so, and the tears came tumbling down her cheeks again.
As I was consoling her to the best of my ability, she stood and ambled over to my things. I asked her what she wanted. She picked up my big purse-turned-suitcase and took out my wallet. There wasn’t a penny in there, but that’s not what she was looking for. She took out my ID card and held it out.
“Have not. Have no payyyy peurzzz . . .”
What did she mean? Oh! Of course! Papers! She was an illegal. We call them sans-papiers in French. It meant she had no actual right to be in France. A stowaway! That was why she was afraid to talk to the cops.
Even if she did have papers and they questioned her, she wouldn’t have that much information to add to the investigation. She hadn’t seen anything of importance. Of course, the fact that she’d done a disappearing act didn’t weigh in her favor, which meant she was pretty much in the same boat as me—a suspect. She should have thought it out a bit better.
But there was a difference between us. Say she spoke to the cops. She could be accused of murder, sure thing, but—and this was a big deal—I’d no longer be a suspect, because her statement would prove that the old guy was a goner before I’d even arrived.
How was I going to convince her to speak with Borelli and the others? She’d obviously think she’d just be throwing herself to the wolves. There were two ways out for her: the guillotine (yes, I know we hadn’t had that particular French speciality for a while) or a one-way ticket back home. Deportation. Back to square one.
I couldn’t even imagine how she’d gotten from the Philippines to France without the proper paperwork. The sacrifices she must have made, the cost, the reasons behind it all, the painful separation from her family, the exile, the suffering . . . And all that for nothing. Just to be deported. Or even worse, accused of popping someone.
But I was now fantasizing about her doing just that—talking to the cops—so I could walk free! No way. Impossible. I couldn’t ask her to do that.
I climbed on top of my pile of furniture again to look out the vent. The cop car was still there.
I headed back to the stairs and went up to have a listen at the door. The door was very thick. It must have been so the food and everything in here was kept at a low temperature. I’d heard Borelli’s voice earlier, but no sound was coming through now. Whatever was going on must have been too far away from this side of the house.
We only had one solution left: wait.
As I headed back down into the basement, the thought struck me that maybe we all needed a snack. We’d been through an emotional roller coaster since lunch. There was nothing like a snack to act as a pick-me-up.
After his adventures in the workshop, Pastis had managed to make his way back to the group. He knew food was on its way. He always knew what I was going to do before I did. He sat down in our makeshift living room and made sure he’d placed himself between the food supply and the boiler in the corner. He has sense, I tell you! This was definitely
the warmest area of the cellar, maybe even the whole building. We all dug into our food. More apple pieces and some slices of ham. The babies loved it. A real feast. In our world, we weren’t used to high-quality ham like this.
As soon as our bellies were full to bursting, Lani played with the kids. She went mad for the twinnies. She told me she loved babies, and that—it was so sad—when she’d left the Philippines, she’d had to leave her two children behind. They were three and four when she left, and now they were thirteen and fourteen. Her sister had custody. Her husband had made it as far as the US. She’d never heard from him again.
However, she regularly sent money back home to her sister, and that money went a long way to keeping everyone comfortable: her sister, her children, her sister’s family, her mother . . . She was also able to send her kiddlers to school. Apparently, you had to pay for it over there.
Ten years without seeing your kids? I choked up and turned away so I could wipe my eyes and blow my nose discreetly. I wanted to know whether or not her father had passed away—she hadn’t mentioned him at all—so I asked. Strangely, her color deepened.
“Do not know.”
OK, why wouldn’t she know? I was sure she was lying.
There was a brief silence. She calmed down a little, and I sat there wondering what the story might be with her daddy.
She wanted me to explain why my children were three different colors. She was pretty direct! I explained all about my various love stories. I’d had a real weakness for Sabrina’s father. He was from Cape Verde. Lisa’s father, my ex-husband, was now holed up with the boss of a real estate agency. And Emma, who I felt was my own daughter, was actually my friend Yasmina’s child, but Yasmina had died in childbirth.
It was wonderful talking about our histories, but while we were chatting, one thought kept repeating itself in my schizo brain: How was I going to find the real killer? Only the answer to this question would get me off the hook and allow Lani to fall off the cops’ radar. Seeing as they didn’t have any other leads, they’d soon start looking for her, even if it was to simply strike her off the list of possible suspects.
