by Deb Donahue
So where could he be? If he’d just gone down the timber to take a look at the body she’d found he wouldn’t have taken all his things. Could he possibly have contacted the sheriff already? Maybe the body had already been retrieved and the mystery solved.
As she walked back to the house, she had to admit she felt a little deflated at that thought. She realized a part of her had been looking forward to working side by side with Luke as they uncovered what Harlan had been up to, if anything. She also felt depressed that Luke would leave without saying good bye.
As she approached the house, she half hoped to find another rabbit hanging from the porch roof. He could have waited for her, or left a note, or something. Even Rufus looked disappointed, sitting on the front porch looking toward the barn as if he expected Butch to come prancing out.
Though the sky was black with storm clouds, it was way too early to go to sleep and Miranda found she had no interest in cleaning or organizing or even exploring the many books and boxes she hadn’t yet gotten to. She started a fire and sat in front of it with a book, but the story would not hold her attention. She found her mind wandering and asking questions she couldn’t answer.
Was it Luke’s brother she had found in the creek? If not, who was it and what had happened to him or her? If Luke’s brother had simply left like Patty had been told, why hadn’t he let Luke know?
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that Luke was right. Something had happened to his brother, and whether it had been an accident or not, it seemed Harlan Hunter had lied about the young man.
Miranda went into the kitchen intending to eat the leftovers Patty had sent home with her. Boredom always made her hungry, and so did stress. Before she opened the frig, however, she saw the dishes she’d washed that morning still sitting in the dish drainer. That reminded her that she hadn’t yet returned the casserole dish Sissy had brought her that first day.
That’s what she could do. She could go over to Harlan’s on the pretext of returning the dish. If Luke had contacted the sheriff and the body had been retrieved, she was sure they would have gone to talk to Harlan even if they decided the death had been an accident. It was possible, even—and her cheeks flushed as she thought it—it was possible she might even find Luke there, talking about it at this very minute.
When she opened the car door to let Rufus hop in, she looked at the sky with a worried frown. If they were in for another storm like the night she arrived, she was concerned about the roof leaks she hadn’t done anything about yet.
It wasn’t until she was out of the driveway and halfway down the road that she realized she hadn’t even worried about whether or not she’d be able to make it home before dark. She gave a short laugh. Fear of the dark seemed like such a silly thing to worry about compared with murder and bullets and handsome strangers living in your barn. Maybe Luke’s mystery was just what she had needed to cure her phobia.
It was approaching twilight when she reached the farm. When she drove up to the residence she parked next to a BMW which had pulled up haphazardly in front of the house. She wondered whose car it was. It wasn’t the one Harlan had been driving. He had a Mercedes if she remembered correctly, and the BMW seemed a little ostentatious for Sissy or the hired hand. It seemed more like a city car, she thought as she walked around it, brand new and shiny despite a thin sheen of dust kicked up from the country roads.
The house appeared dark inside, no lights visible from the yard. Miranda hoped that was just because it had not yet grown fully dark outside. She could imagine Harlan might be a bit of a penny pincher who would frown on wasting electricity. When no one answered her knock, however, she began to think her first impression had been correct. No one seemed to be home.
Disappointed, she stood there on the front porch, casserole dish in hand, and wondered if she should just leave the dish and go. She could come back tomorrow, or maybe she should just wait a while. Maybe Sissy had only gone to town for a short—
Suddenly Miranda wanted to smack herself. It was Sunday. She remembered now, finally, Sissy going on and on about her sister and how much she enjoyed visiting her every Sunday. “Even though she’s only a few towns over, I always stay the night. It’s like having a sleepover like we used to have when we were kids, lying in bed in our pajamas and gossiping and laughing all night.”
Disappointed, she turned to go back to her car, but then stopped when she heard voices. From the back of the house, Harlan shouted something she couldn’t distinguish. She hesitated. Just because Sissy was gone didn’t mean she had no way of finding out anything. She could tell Harlan she’d forgotten about Sissy being gone, which was perfectly true, and see if she could tell from his reaction to her visit whether the sheriff had been around to talk to him.
Miranda walked slowly around the side of the house. There was a chicken coop and another building at the back, from which came the sound of voices arguing. The door was closed, but the place apparently wasn’t soundproofed because as Miranda crept closer, she clearly heard Harlan yell, “But that’s just foolishness. Someone’s been in here, I tell you. Snooping around.”
“And found nothing, you said.” The other voice was calmer but Miranda had drawn close enough by now to be able to hear him clearly. It was not a voice she recognized but the man spoke with a broad Chicagoan accent. She pressed close to the side of the building, crouched low just below a small window.
“Nothing that we know of.” Harlan was clearly still agitated. “Even if they didn’t, the fact that someone is snooping around means we need to be cautious. I can’t afford to get found out.”
“You can’t afford to cancel the shipment either. It’s too late for one thing. The truck is on their way. Do you have any idea what the distributors would do if they thought you were trying to renege on the deal? Would you rather be dead than in jail? And what about your sellers? You can’t afford to upset them, either. It’s better if I meet the truck as arranged and show them the way. You need to deal with that woman before we get there, though, so I suggest you worry more about that than some stupid burglar.”
Dead? Jail? Deal with what woman—Miranda? Suddenly Miranda felt very vulnerable crouched just feet from the shed’s door. She stepped back, prepared to leave or find a better hiding place. Her heel, however, slipped in a small hole in the ground dug by some animal. Thrown off balance, she threw her arms wide to keep from falling but in the process dropped the casserole dish she’d been holding. It fell to the ground with a noisy clatter.
Miranda turned and ran. She made it halfway back to her car when suddenly a hand grabbed her jacket from behind. She tried to lunge away by pulling her arms from the sleeves, but the fit was too tight. Instead, her feet flew out from under her and she went down flat on her stomach. The fall forced the air from her lungs and she gasped to recover oxygen, turning her head in an attempt to view her assailant.
Before she could glimpse more than blue jeans and a muddy pair of boots, something hit her on the back of the head and she went out like a light.
Chapter 18
It was the stench that woke Miranda, but slowly, her eyes still closed, each sense coming back to her one at a time. First the smell of musty rot with undertones of sulfur which seemed familiar. Then she could hear someone talking and the voices also sounded familiar. For a moment she thought she was back outside the workshop at Harlan Hunter’s, eavesdropping. That thought, combined with her awareness of a severe headache, reminded her of her last memory. Someone grabbing her from behind and then smashing her on the back of the head.
She took a careful deep breath before slowly opening her eyes. She was tied to an old wooden kitchen chair, hands behind her and ropes circling her torso so tight she couldn’t move. There was a dirt floor beneath her and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling on frayed and ancient wires. The smell of rotten vegetables came from wooden crates that had been shoved up against a water-stained concrete wall.
The root cellar. She’d been taken prisoner and
incarcerated in the root cellar of her own house. But why?
The voices were coming from the room behind her, where the exit was. In front of her was a door that she hadn’t noticed in her exploration earlier that day. That was because it had apparently been disguised as a row of shelves. The shelves had now been pulled open to reveal a long dark tunnel. Crates had been piled up along one side of it and at the far end, around a bend, she saw a glimmer of light as someone moved around out of sight.
“That should be good,” Harlan called from behind her. Miranda quickly closed her eyes and pretended to be still unconscious as he walked around her to the tunnel entrance. Pausing, he yelled more instructions to whoever was working at the other end. “As long as we have a clear path to the other end we’re fine.” His tone lowered to a normal volume as he added, “More than fine now that Ms. Preston isn’t a problem anymore.”
While Miranda could not see Harlan, she heard the sarcasm in his voice as he called her “Ms.” and she suspected he was looking at her now with a satisfied grin. She worked hard to stay unmoving and keep her breathing slow and even.
“I don’t understand why you don’t just kill her,” said the voice she recognized from the workshop earlier. Whoever it was now stood directly behind Miranda. The hairs at the back of her neck stood up at his close proximity. “She’s a nuisance and in the way. We’re ready to bring in the next shipment.”
“There’s no need to harm her,” Harlan said. “Not yet anyway.”
Miranda jerked as he stepped closer and put one finger on her chin to raise her head. Her eyes flew open to find him leering at her.
“Is there, my dear? Do you think I’m a fool? How long have you been awake?”
Miranda wanted to retort, “Long enough to testify against you at your trial.” But she gritted her teeth to control her anger, and instead said, “What do you mean? What’s happening? Where am I?”
It wasn’t hard to sound scared and confused. Her voice trembled and she had begun to shiver from the cool damp cellar.
“You’re asleep, of course,’ Harlan answered. “This is just another one of your foolish nightmares. Just like the ones you told Sissy about, remember? She is worried about you, you know. Afraid you’ll take one too many sleeping pills to avoid the terrible dreams. She’ll be very sad to hear about your accidental overdose.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a medicine vial. As he shook the pills in front of her face, she recognized it was her prescription.
Miranda’s chills intensified, but she held tight to courage. “Are you sure you don’t want me to just ‘disappear’ like your hired hand did this spring? Oh, wait, that didn’t turn out so good, did it? Have they told you yet when they plan to recover his remains?”
That startled the man. His face clouded over and his eyebrows drew together over his piercing eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“So they haven’t contacted you yet. Don’t worry. They will. I only found the body late yesterday. They’re probably doing testing on the green jacket sleeve I gave his brother already.” She told the lie with confidence. “Luke and the sheriff should be here any time now.” Even if Luke hadn’t talked to the sheriff yet, it gave her courage to think that if she did die, Luke was still out there to make sure Harlan went down.
“What is she talking about?” asked the other man angrily. He walked around to where Miranda could see him finally. He had dark, slicked back hair and was wearing an expensive suit. He had a hard look about him that made Miranda realize he was far more dangerous than Harlan Hunter could ever be. She fought against the terror and despair. If she thought too much about him, her panic would make her useless.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Harlan assured the other man. “She thinks Luke Gregorio is going to stop us. Even if she is telling the truth about finding the body, no one’s going to believe an ex-con like him. ”
An ex-con? Miranda suddenly felt dizzy. Had Luke lied to her once again? She couldn’t afford to think that way. She had to believe he would come through for her.
“Did you slip his brother pills, too?” Miranda kept her eyes on Harlan and was rewarded by seeing him taken aback. “Not that it matters. The autopsy will tell the truth. Either way, recovering the body will prove that you’re a liar. Once they start looking into his death, they’ll find out the truth about me, too. And whatever setup you have going on here.”
“Hunter, my men are waiting,” the stranger said impatiently. “They’ve got a lot to bring in so get this over with. Kill her now and be done with it.”
“I need her to sign the property over to me first,” Harlan said.
“What for? If someone else buys the place after she’s dead, we’ll just make other arrangements for storage, that’s all. Having the tunnel is handy but not having one doesn’t make the deal impossible.”
“It’s not just about the guns,” Harlan answered impatiently.
Miranda took in a deep breath. Harlan was dealing in illegal firearms? All that talk about supporting gun control laws had just been a smoke screen then. Harlan Hunter, her father’s former friend, was a hypocrite, a gun runner, and a murderer.
“It’s about the land,” Hunter was saying. “Once this place is mine I’ll be the largest land owner in the county. Hell, with the money I’m making from this business I’ll soon own the county. All of it. They’ll all have to come running to Harlan Hunter if they want anything done around here.”
She heard in his voice the same inflated ego she’d detected when he talked so condescendingly to her at their first meeting. The same holier than thou attitude he’d expressed at the Fall Festival when trying to impress upon the other men that they had it all wrong and only he was right. Both times he’d been spewing lies like a crooked, power-hungry politician.
Just then the man who had been shifting boxes in the tunnel joined them. Harlan turned to address him.
“Bob, help me put her over in the corner there,” Harlan said.
Bob Meeks and Harlan picked up Miranda’s chair and carried and dragged it across the floor, scraping tracks in the dirt. They placed the chair in the corner facing the wall. The position made her feel even more vulnerable, like someone might attack her at any moment from the rear.
She could not see what was going on behind her, only heard the shuffling of men carrying something heavy and stacking them on the floor. “Leave the explosives in the outer room by the stairs,” she heard Harlan say. “The damp in here is too corrosive.”
Just to the left of her she could see the small corner table she’d noticed earlier. A music box now sat on its top. She recognized it as one she’d had as a child. When the lid was opened, she knew, a ballerina popped up to dance to the tune of Let Me Call You Sweetheart. With a sudden flash of insight, she looked up at the smashed cold air duct leading into the dining room.
So this was where the nightmare sounds had come from. Not from her dreams, nor any childhood memories. Harlan, or his henchman Bob Meeks, had been deliberately trying to make her think she was imagining things. How had they induced the strange visions she’d had, though? Drugs, perhaps? The casserole! Rufus so sick he almost died. Miranda feeling sick and manic and overreacting to the smallest things. The worst nightmares had occurred after eating Sissy’s chicken casserole. Oh no, Sissy wasn’t in on it, too, was she? That friendly, motherly woman?
Before she could despair over that thought, however, Harlan’s voice sounded behind her.
“That should do it,” he said. “Bob and I can move the rest around to make a path to the tunnel. The payment’s in the garage, as usual. Bob will take you up there to get it out of the safe.”
When the others left, Harlan walked up to her. She could feel him untying the rope that wrapped around the chair. Several tugs later she was loose except that her hands were still bound behind her. He jerked her to her feet and she cried out in pain. He showed her a piece of paper and then pressed a handgun under her chin painfully.
“I took the liberty of havin
g the paperwork written up by my lawyer. It just needs your signature. I had it with me the first day we visited. Remember my offer to take this albatross off your hands? If only you’d been a smart little girl then and agreed, you wouldn’t be in this mess right now. Not smart.”
“You’re the stupid one if you think I’m going to sign it now. If you wanted something from me, you shouldn’t have told me you were going to kill me.”
He jerked her around so she was facing the room again. The root cellar was packed with stacks of crates like the ones that lined the tunnel. He dragged her over to the mouth of the tunnel.
“I didn’t say when you were going to die, though, did I? I’m in no hurry. I did a little research on you when you told me you were planning to move in. That and remembering things your grandmother used to tell me. Oh, she’d go on and on about you, she would. Her beautiful granddaughter who was going to be a top news anchor one day. If only she could get over her fear of the dark.” Harlan shook her and put his mouth close to her ear. “Nyctophobia,” he whispered hoarsely, then laughed. “Maybe you just need a little aversion therapy.”
He pointed to the tunnel. What little light had been at the far end was extinguished now. Beyond the entrance the darkness snaked ahead like a live thing ready to swallow her.
“How many hours of complete darkness will it take before you’ll do anything to get out of there, no matter what the consequences?” Harlan waved his gun in her face. “Or will it take days? I have days. I have weeks if need be. I know how to make people disappear, remember? I want this quick and easy, and so should you. One simple signature, a handful of pills, and a long, long sleep. Or would you rather die slowly in the dark, with no one to hear you scream?”
As if on cue, shouts erupted from outside, followed by gunfire. Harlan turned toward the door startled and Miranda took advantage of his surprise to pull away from him. While he was off balance, she kicked him hard in the shins. As he bent over in pain, she ran for the exit, but rammed into someone coming in.
