Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  Dot's still shaking her head. “So why's Ben want to go and burn down the house?”

  “Because his ex–best friend is supplying drugs to his little brother and he's going to stop him any way he can. Maybe he followed Dallas and figured out he was making drugs here. Maybe he wanted to kill him—who knows? All I know is there's a lot more to this than we can guess, but there's a connection—a strong one.”

  Holly whispers, “Okay. Let's say you're right. It still doesn't answer, What are we going to do? Right here. Right now.”

  They all look at me like, Yeah—what are we going to do? And I feel like telling them, How should I know? but instead I put a finger up to my lips and nod out at the ruins.

  Dallas comes up slowly, and he pulls a Hefty sack along with him. It's not full, but it's jingling and clanging with the weight of what's inside. He sneaks over to his motorcycle, and at first he tries to put some of the stuff inside a saddlebag, but decides to forget that. He's just going to tie the bag to the bike and haul his chemistry set off that way.

  When he's satisfied that he's got the Hefty bag secure, he takes another look around and heads back for a second load.

  Holly says, “We've got to do something!”

  I say, “Well, Officer Borsch is supposed to be here pretty soon.”

  “That doesn't help us now!”

  “You want to let some air out of his tires?”

  Holly says, “No. He'll see it and know someone's on to him.”

  Dot whispers, “Yeah. Don't drug dealers carry guns and knives and stuff? What if he decides to kill us?”

  Marissa's shaking her head. “I say we make a break for it. Go to the house, call the police, maybe get Kevin out here…”

  They're right and I know it, but I just don't want to leave. “What if he takes off? What if he hears us? What if…”

  “What if we trap him?” Holly's smiling. Like she's got a plan. “Let's put the board back on and trap him inside.”

  Dot says, “But there's a big hole in the board!”

  Holly's still smiling. “So let's put Sammy's bike on top of the board.”

  I'm getting her picture. “Lay it flat?”

  “Yeah!”

  It flashed through my brain that this was not my bike, but I didn't want Sisquane's very own drug lord to weasel out of what he'd been doing. I wanted to trap him. Red-handed.

  Marissa shakes her head. “Dot's right. Drug dealers kill people.”

  Dot says, “But if you leave the cage open, you may never catch the bird.”

  Marissa says, “What?”

  “Just a Dutch expression.”

  “So you're with them? I can't believe it. You guys are crazy!”

  I say, “I think we should do both. The three of us trap him inside, and you go get Kevin and Officer Borsch.”

  Holly whispers, “Well, if we're going to move, we'd better move. I'm surprised he hasn't come up already.”

  So Holly and I scurry over as quietly as we can while Dot and Marissa carry Hudson's bike. Holly takes one end of the board and I take the other, and just as we're getting ready to slide it on, we see Dallas coming up the ladder, a Hefty bag slung over his shoulder.

  He sees us, all right, and at first he freezes. Then, when he realizes what we're about to do, he drops the bag and comes charging at us.

  We slam the board in place, stand on either end of it, and cry, “Now! Put it on now!” to Marissa and Dot.

  They get all kind of tangled up moving the bike around, and then practically throw the thing on us. And it's way too late when we realize that Holly's plan is not going to work. The bike won't lie flat because the pedal's in the way.

  Marissa takes off for the house like a shot, and we can see Dallas through the hole just looking at us.

  Now while we're banging around trying to get the bike in place, he's not pushing on the board or yelling at us or anything. Instead, he's sort of laughing, saying, “What do you girls think you're doing?”

  The last thing I want to do is talk to the Sisquane Connection, so I don't say a word. I just keep on wrestling with Hudson's bike, struggling to get a better seal on the hole. He says, “Hey, I don't know what you're thinking, but I found Penny down here and she's hurt. There's also a bunch of really weird stuff stored here, which we ought to ask Kevin about. Hey, come on. Let me out. This is giving me the creeps!”

  He sounds so calm. So reassuring. So completely unfazed. And for a second there I thought that maybe I was wrong. Then the pedal snaps into the hole, leaving the rear wheel flat and the hole sealed up.

  He takes the pedal and turns it, whipping the tire around faster and faster until the spokes are like a blaze of chrome in the moonlight. “Gee. Isn't this fun?”

  I stomp on the tire with my high-top and say, “We're not stupid, you know. That's your little drug lab, and we know it.”

  He laughs, “Drug lab? Are you serious? It looks like a bunch of junk to me. Maybe Kevin used this for storage a long time ago. Come on…I'll go with you and ask him about it.”

  Dallas' voice is still calm, but he's starting to push up on the board. And even though pushing from a ladder doesn't give you the best leverage, he's not just playing. He wants out.

  Holly says, “Tell it to the judge, buddy. We're not letting you out until there's a squad of policemen here to escort you to jail.”

  All of a sudden the pushing stops, and two seconds later the blade of a shovel comes gashing through the spokes of Hudson's bike. “Let me out!” he growls, then pries the shovel back down, snapping a gap in the spokes. Dot shrieks and jumps back, and for a second we all let up on the bike. He pushes the wheel up, but the pedal catches on the plywood and it doesn't quite come off the hole.

  I jump on the wheel with both feet, but it doesn't go back down right, and I spin around and fall, like I missed my step on a merry-go-round. Holly jumps on right after me, and there goes the wheel, snap, into place.

  It's quiet for about ten seconds, and then the spade comes crashing through the spokes again like Jaws from under water. Holly skips to the side, so I jump back on the wheel while Dot holds down the frame. There comes that spade, gashing through again. And again. And every time it goes back under, it destroys a piece of Hudson's bike.

  So I'm dancing on this disintegrating merry-go-round, feeling sick about Hudson's bike, panicking because I don't know what in the world is taking Marissa so long, when the spade shoots up and gashes right through me on its way back down. My jeans are torn, my leg is gouged, and pain is screaming through my body.

  And all of a sudden I'm mad. I'm still scared for my life and nauseous from the pain, but running over my emotions like an eighteen-wheeler is anger. Pure, hot anger. And even though I had nothing to fight with, I wanted to hurt him back. Pound on him. Gouge him. Bury him alive.

  I start scooping up handfuls of dirt. Of ashes. And I drop them through the spokes and cry, “You're a dirtbag, you hear me? A dirtbag! And if you think we're going to let you out of there so you can go make drugs someplace else, you don't know your grave from a hole in the ground. You hear me? You're dead. D-E-A-D, dead! You're a lowlife, blood-sucking creep, and we're going to bury you, you hear me? Bury you!”

  There's no way a few handfuls of dirt and ash are going to fill in a root cellar. I knew it was like throwing sand at the ocean, but I was so mad at him that I couldn't stop. And I wasn't just mad at him for gouging me up and destroying Hudson's bike, or for deceiving Lucinda into thinking she'd seen Moustache Mary's ghost. No, it was finally sinking in—really sinking in—just exactly who Dallas Coleman was.

  He wasn't the foreman for Huntley Vineyards. He wasn't the hand who worked for no pay. He wasn't nice or caring or friendly. He was evil. Sneaky, calculating, and evil.

  And the more I saw him for exactly what he was, the more anger I felt for what he did down there. For the poison he made. For the lives he ruined. And I couldn't stop myself—I was flinging dirt and ashes on him like my life depended on it.

&nbs
p; Then the strangest thing happens.

  He stops fighting.

  I stand there for a minute, shaking, and then from the darkness below us comes coughing. Cussing and coughing. Dot whispers, “Oh, Sammy, listen…you got it in his eyes!” She says, “Yes!” and starts tossing in dirt, too.

  The cussing stops, and so does the coughing. And then all of a sudden, like a ghoul from a grave, his hand shoots up and grabs my ankle. And before I can stop him, he's twisted my foot through the shattered spokes of Hudson's bike, and there's nothing I can do.

  I'm going down.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Dot shrieks, “Oh my god!” and Holly yells, “Kevin! Marissa! HELP!”

  Dallas is twisting and pulling so hard that it feels like my leg is going to be sliced like bologna by the spokes of the wheel. And even though I won't fit through the opening in the spokes, it feels like he's going to drag me under, if he has to kill me to do it.

  I keep moving and pulling back, trying to get free. But the pain is making me sick to my stomach and I'm feeling really light-headed. Then my vision starts blurring and I can barely breathe, and Dot's voice, as she screams for help, is like a whisper in the distance. Suddenly Holly kneels beside me with a broken-off spoke in her hand. “Here! It's all I could find…Sammy, stab him!”

  I choke out, “You.”

  “I can't see what I'm doing! I'll probably stab you!” I take the spoke from her, and it feels small. Like a twelve-inch needle. But when I lean forward, I can see Dallas' hand, his arm, wrenching my calf. I hold my breath, aim, and stab with all my might. Two seconds later my foot is free, and let me tell you, that's not Penny down there wailing like a stuck pig.

  I pull my leg out of the hole, and when Dot shouts, “They're coming! They're coming! And Officer Borsch is with them!” I'm so relieved that I practically break down and cry.

  Then the earth explodes. Hudson's bike and the shattered board fly up, and Dallas shoots out of the pit like a demon from the underworld, looking like he's going to tear off our heads and rip us to shreds.

  And he might have, only Kevin tackled him first. And even though Dallas flipped and whipped and acted like a shark on a pier, Kevin managed to get his hands behind him, and Officer Borsch didn't waste any time snapping handcuffs on him.

  And you'd think at this point Dallas would just give up, but he doesn't. Even with a gun between his shoulder blades, he keeps tugging and kicking until Kevin whips the rope from the loops of his jeans and wraps him up like a rodeo calf.

  Officer Borsch says, “Let's secure him in the squad car,” to Kevin, then takes a quick peek into the hole with a flashlight. Five seconds later he turns to me and says, “This is a clan lab! Back up! All of you, back up! This place may be booby-trapped.” Then he looks back down the shaft and says, “How'd that pig get down there?”

  Well, Penny must've heard his voice, because she starts oinking and snorting and carrying on like the world is coming to an end. I laugh and say, “She fell in, and I don't think she wants you to leave her there.”

  “Well, that's exactly what we're going to do until the investigators get here.” He looks at me, standing right beside him. “Stand back, Sammy! How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “It's not booby-trapped, Officer Borsch.”

  “How do you know that? Just because the pig didn't set it off doesn't mean there's not a trip cord around here. Back up, would you? Just back up!”

  I back up to make him happy, but while I'm moving, I say, “Dallas went down there, Penny went down there, and I went down there. It's not booby-trapped.”

  He whips around. “You went down there?”

  “Yeah. I didn't know what it was. Not until I found this.” I hand him the recipe.

  He takes one look at it, grabs me by the shoulders, and says, “Sammy, you could've been killed. Cookers don't play around. They set cyanide traps and rig up ether bombs. They'd kill you as soon as look at you!”

  I'm starting to get the picture. And I'm about to say something real profound like, I didn't know…when I see Lucinda shuffling toward us.

  Right away I know that the pain I'm feeling in my leg doesn't compare to the one in her heart. But she stops Kevin and Officer Borsch from hauling Dallas to the car, then stands as tall as she can and says to Dallas, “You've deceived me, you've betrayed my trust, and you've destroyed Mary's home. But I'm a Huntley, and that's something you can't take from me. I'll always be the descendant of a fine, upstanding, courageous woman who will be remembered with honor and reverence for her strength and her accomplishments. You, young man, have set your own legend into motion, and I pity those who are condemned to recall it.”

  Dallas looks to the side, and all he can say for himself is, “I didn't burn it down.”

  “What you did is much worse.” She turns her back on him, then shuffles over to us, saying, “Would one of you be so kind as to go to the house and wait for Dr. Pele? He's agreed to take a look at Penny, but he won't know where to find us. I'd wait for him myself, but I don't want to leave Penny.”

  Officer Borsch calls, “You keep her away from that pig! Sammy? Do you hear me? Stand back from that shaft. Farther! Sammy, help me out here! I've got to get this creep put away and get the investigators out here to dismantle that lab, and I don't have time to baby-sit stubborn women!” I point to myself like, Who? Me? and he yanks Dallas along and calls, “Yes, you!” Then he looks at the others and says, “And you, and you, and you, and you! You headstrong females are going to be the death of me!”

  So Officer Borsch and Kevin haul Dallas away, and Dot decides she'll go to the house to wait for the vet and call her mom. Marissa goes with her, which leaves Holly and me with Lucinda, the moon, and a sky full of stars.

  At first Lucinda is stubborn. She wants to see Penny, and she's not in the mood to wait for someone to haul her out of the cellar. But we make her sit down on a felled tree trunk, and then sit beside her, one on each side.

  And at first Lucinda's full of questions. She wants to know everything. But after a little while we find ourselves just sitting there, staring at the ruins, at the stone fireplace poking up from the earth. And Lucinda says, “I never considered myself to be someone who was living in the past, just appreciative of it.” She gets a faraway look in her eye. “I never thought I'd leave—certainly never thought I'd be forced out. If only we hadn't fallen on such hard times…” She shakes her head and sighs. “Poor Kevin. All this time he's been trying to protect me from how bad things really are.”

  Holly whispers, “Does this mean you have to sell?”

  Lucinda's eyes are brimming with tears. “Do you know why Kevin was at the Murdocks' today? To tell them no. To tell them they had gone too far, burning down Mary's house, and that he wanted no part in any dealings with them.”

  “You mean he didn't know what they were planning?”

  She sighs and says, “Last June I was deathly ill, and Kevin saw no sense in continuing the vineyard. He got approached about this development idea and didn't think it would hurt to have a few sketches made, but they took that as permission to go hog wild. I don't blame him for what he did, but it breaks my heart to think of these magnificent oaks being cut down…the thought of sod and golf carts and condominiums. It seems so artificial, so smooth. There's something about the rugged outdoors that makes you feel a part of the world around you.” She lets out another sigh. “Oh, I don't know. It's a different time, and humans are a different breed. Life's become entertainment where it used to be an experience.”

  We're all quiet for a minute, then Holly asks, “So what are you going to do?”

  “The truth is I have no choice. We've fallen into debt, and since I can't come up with a better solution, I suppose we'll have to sell the property.”

  Holly whispers, “What about Mary? What about the house?”

  “The house is gone, but Mary? Mary will never be gone. As long as there's her diary to read, people will know her. And remember her.”

  I
was about to tell her that that was true. Mary Rose Huntley was not somebody I could forget anytime soon. Neither was Lucinda. But before I can, Lucinda says, “Dallas probably discovered that root cellar when he was searching for the gold.”

  Holly says, “Hey…do you think he found it? Do you think it was hidden down there?”

  “Hmmm,” Lucinda says, like she hadn't even considered it. “I rather doubt it. A scoundrel like that wouldn't stick around if he'd discovered it. Besides, it makes no sense against the riddle. The ridge is nowhere near it.”

  As I'm listening to Lucinda, looking at the moon shining on the chimney of the fireplace, something in my brain snaps. Hard. And all of a sudden my heart starts beating faster and I'm feeling very strange. I whisper, “The ridge. The ridge.”

  She says, “It's no use, my dear. I've looked all my life. We've dug up every square foot of land anywhere near the ridge.” She lets out a long, choppy sigh. “The gold was either discovered long ago, or perhaps Mary used it herself.”

  Now while she's talking, I'm walking over to the chimney like a zombie saying, “Where the ridge meets the rock and the rock meets the ground…”

  Holly jumps up and follows me. “Where are you going?”

  “To where the ridge beam of the roof met the rock of the chimney.” Lucinda shuffles behind us. “The ridge beam? Why, I'm sure that's not what she meant…”

  I just keep moving, then stand by the fireplace and say, “The ridge beam rested right in that big notch in the rock. See it? The ridge beam meets the rock of the chimney…and the stones go all the way to the ground!”

  “Yes, but…”

  “And Lucinda! The box! How's that part go? The box is shallow, black and crowned…?”

  “That's right, but…”

  “Lucinda, this is it! It has to be! The fire box is not very deep, it's black from soot, and crowned—you know, arched!”

  Lucinda had quit arguing. She was right alongside us, saying, “Not far in, left and high…Gold and silver, warm inside. Warm from the fire! Oh, girls! After all these years. It's been right here in front of me!”