River Mourn

by Bill Hopkins

Chapter 25

  Saturday Afternoon, continued

  Rosswell chanted in a sing-song voice, "Fraidy cat, fraidy cat, ate so much, your head's too fat."

  "Yeah, funny, real funny." Ollie inspected the bookcase again, more slowly this time. "The hinges are clean, but dry. I think we can swing it open without making a big squeak or pulling the whole library down on us. Mrs. Bolzoni won't hear a thing."

  "WD-40." Rosswell flew out the door, jumped into the truck, and raced back with a spray can of the lubricating oil in a few seconds. He plunked it in Ollie's grasp.

  Ollie removed the cap from the can. "Got everything now? It's really handy when you break into places fully prepared."

  "No worries. I'm totally organized." Rosswell grabbed the can from Ollie, shook it fiercely a few times, then thrust it back. Ollie spritzed the hinges.

  After several minutes of pulling, pressing, and poking, Ollie discovered the spot that, when pushed the right way, swung the bookcase open. Rosswell leaned against it as it eased into the parlor, the bottom clearing the floor by an inch.

  Rosswell said, "Coming open, slowly but surely."

  "If we see any bodies in there, I'll drag Gustave down here myself."

  Rosswell held up a hand, signaling Ollie to pause. "I'm never telling Gustave another thing. He's bad."

  "Agreed."

  Rosswell nodded and they bent to the task.

  Before the doorway into the lightless corridor fully opened, a thick book sneaked from a shelf and tumbled onto Rosswell's left foot. The spine of the heavy volume caught him across the toes. A slight yet distinct crack sounded. Rosswell fell backward on his butt.

  "Ouch, damn!" Rosswell curled into a fetal position. "That fracking book broke my big toe. Hurts like a mother giving birth to triplets." Whining because the fetal position made his foot hurt more, he unwound, working himself into a squatting position. Afraid of losing his balance if he moved too fast, he scooted over to the tome, Moby-Dick. When he stood, a quote from the story hurried from his brain to his mouth. " 'The rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into the blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.' "

  "Off to the hospital, Captain Ahab."

  "I'm not that hurt." Rosswell sucked in a deep breath. "If I can recall quotes, then my brain's stronger than my pain."

  "Here's some science to squash that positive thinking."

  "Give it to me."

  "You can't walk with a broken toe."

  Rosswell leaned to one side. "Watch me." Out of his pocket flew the green bottle full of pills. He selected a painkiller, chewed and swallowed it. "I'm good. Now get the duct tape out of my truck."

  Ollie hurried to the truck and back.

  With the tape, Rosswell bound his big toe to its neighbor and stood. "It's only cracked. That will hold me for awhile."

  A pall of dust whooshed from the passageway when the bookcase fully opened. Rosswell sneezed and wondered if the last people who lurked in there had lived before the Civil War. The passageway, built with narrow grooved boards running vertically, stood gloomy and silent, waiting for someone's visit. Rosswell compared the taste of the dust freed from the passageway to the swirling motes of stuff in the bedroom at his grandmother's house where he stayed when he was a child. When he opened the window those many years ago, the wind swept across cornfields, bringing grains of dirt and pollen gusting in. To a kid, the air in the bedroom had tasted like the Sahara, only grittier. His child's eyes felt full of sand, especially after he'd fallen asleep at the window, waiting for his mother to reappear, as he knew she would. Rosswell's grandmother-God (if there was one) rest her soul-had told him only that his mother was "called away on business." Grandmother never spoke of his father at all. He'd never reappeared.

  Now, Ollie saluted the inky darkness of the secret heart of the house. "Onward, monomaniac commander. Let us plunge into the blackness of darkness."

  Rosswell sneezed. "The white whale ate Ahab."

  Ollie grimaced. "I hope we meet no whales, white or otherwise, in there." Rosswell stepped across the threshold into the passageway. Ollie followed. "This thing runs through the middle of the house."

  "If it ran along an outside wall, it wouldn't have windows. The neighbors would gossip about a house that had no windows."

  Ollie pouted. "I knew that."

  They flicked on the flashlights and plunged further into the darkness, now lit by two beams of LED blue-white rays. The darkness, equivalent to the bottom of a sunless cave, swallowed the light.

  Rosswell stopped and fell against the wall when he heard the noises-low-toned vibrations that punched his gut. The sounds made him shiver. Prickles, running up and down his arms, made his neck hairs rise straight up. Soft at first, the noises increased in intensity.

  Barely above a whisper, Rosswell said, "Ollie." Rosswell placed his fingertips to the wall where the noises emanated. "This place sounds haunted, like everyone says. Mrs. Bolzoni will raise the rates for the entertainment value."

  They pressed their ears to the wall. Moaning, sounding to Rosswell like it was human, grew louder, then softer. The noise recalled the eerie sounds Rosswell had heard deep in the desert during the war. The tuneless moaning happened at different times of day or night. Quite mysterious. No one had ever been able to explain the source of those murmurings in the Middle East.

  Ollie spoke close to Rosswell's ear. "Something is suffering, sounds like to me. Doesn't sound human."

  "There's no such thing as ghosts."

  "I didn't say it was a ghost. Something not human."

  Rosswell listened closer until he recognized the sound after a few seconds. "Oh. Wait. Never mind. Some of Mrs. Bolzoni's guests. Afternoon delight."

  "Sounds industrious." Rosswell could hear the embarrassment in Ollie's voice. "They'll be tired."

  Rosswell whispered, "We need to make less noise."

  Ollie nodded. Rosswell limped forward as gracefully and quietly as he could. It was difficult for him not to bitch and moan over his pain in the darkness.

  The tunnel, about five feet wide, ran straight for twenty feet until it ended in a brick wall. When they reached the wall, Rosswell said, "There's no tunnel going to another house here. Or, if there is, it was sealed up long ago."

  "I like to call tunnels in a cave horizontal tubes."

  "Thank you, Mister Science."

  They shined the flashlights around, covering every inch of the wooden walls to their left and right, and the brick wall in front of them. At the same time, the flashlight beams crossed and landed on a large picture frame, hung by wire and hook on the brick wall about six feet off the floor. A drawing was visible behind the glass of the frame. Rosswell brushed at the dust and spider webs.

  Ollie whispered, "It's a map of some kind."

  "Ink on paper. Not faded one bit."

  "It's been in the dark for a century or so. Ink doesn't fade when the sun doesn't shine on it. In addition, the temperature and humidity have been steady here for decades. A study done in Brazil during the 1990's-"

  "Ollie, shut up."

  Ollie shut up.

  Each of them grasping one side of the frame, they lifted it from the hook, setting it on the floor. They kneeled in front of it, hunched over it, and examined it. The flashlight beams revealed a professionally drawn rendering, neatly lettered, and exquisitely detailed. Although the paper may have been a tad browner than it was over a hundred years ago, Rosswell was right. The ink appeared as fresh as the day it was drawn.

  Rosswell said, "The map shows Nathaniel's house." He brushed dust from the middle of the glass. "These lines here must represent tunnels to these other two houses. I'll bet my flashlight on that." A basic plan of all three houses displayed the location of the passageways in each house and how they connected to each of the other houses. "And the cave is right here." His finger rested on the north side of Nathaniel's house.

  "Constructing two tun
nels must've cost a lot of money. It had to be dug by hand."

  Rosswell tapped the picture. "Slave hands built those tunnels."

  "Who lives in those other two houses?"

  "The assessor told me. None other than your two goofy waitresses."

  "How could they afford houses like that?"

  "You're the research assistant. Add that to your list of stuff to find out."

  Ollie hefted the framed map. "Let's carry this to the truck. We've got to sneak it by Mrs. Bolzoni. Then you know what's next."

  Rosswell did a fist pump. "Time to commit more felonies."

  Rosswell squeezed the truck, the framed map sequestered behind the seat, into a parking space on the courthouse square. "You make danged sure that Mabel keeps Karyn and Jill hopping those tables as long as she can."

  "I'll tell Mabel we need to burglarize their houses." Ollie made no move to leave the truck.

  Rosswell hung his head. "This is a shakedown, isn't it?"

  Ollie shrugged. "You know, a little honey for the pot."

  Rosswell fished out a hundred dollar bill and forked it over to Ollie, whose hand stretched out with fingers wiggling. His hand didn't close over the money. Rosswell fished out another Federal Reserve portrait of Benjamin Franklin and said, "That's it. I'm busted flat till payday."

  "We both know you're lying." Ollie disappeared into the restaurant, only to reappear in a flash. "Forgot to tell you. I'm not putting anything on YouTube. What if Mary Donna's relatives saw it?" He disappeared into the restaurant again.

  Rosswell, subdued by the club of conscience that Ollie had whacked over his head, checked his cell phone. No messages from Tina. Or anyone else. He plugged it into the charger, reviving the dead battery. He likened the phone battery to his brain. Neither one was getting enough juice. He thought about the upcoming foray into the belly of the beast and wondered why bellies of beasts always had to be so small. And so dark. And so full of critters.

  "Why am I doing this?" he asked himself aloud, and knew the answer immediately. Because he longed for Nathaniel's arrest for the murder of the woman. The one he saw tossed off the ferry. If he couldn't prove Nathaniel killed the woman, maybe he could find Tina. He didn't know where else to look. This was his last plunge at Nathaniel. If he didn't find Tina at River Heights Villa, then he'd start looking somewhere else, but where? He knew only that he'd better hurry. Death stalked him.

  In the heat of the setting sun, Rosswell shivered, wondering if the Grim Reaper's search for him would be successful.