Endless Fear (31 page)

“
Seems like August said the larder. I believe from the outside it once looked like any root cellar, but inside there used to be a narrow ramp way.”

At any other time, Spencer would have enjoyed the history lesson but not now. “April!”

They had gone about ten feet, walking in silence, prodding the dark with their beams when an acrid stench assailed Spencer’s nostrils. “What’s that awful odor?”

“
I don’t know.”

A flapping sound arose.

Suddenly something swooped off one of the rafters and dived for Spencer’s hair. He swore. Ducking, he wrapped his hands protectively about his head. “What the hell was that? Birds?”

“
Bats.”

“
That explains the smell, but how did they get in here?”

“
They’re all over the island. These tunnels are probably teeming with them.”

“
Shouldn’t they be hibernating this time of year?”

“
Yeah. But I read somewhere that they can be awakened when disturbed.”

Chapter Eighteen

“
April!” Heedless of sleeping bats, Spencer called her name every few seconds. The word resounded off the tunnel walls and throbbed emptily inside his ears without answer.

“
Look.” Thane had pulled to a stop.

Coming up behind him, Spencer splayed his light into the darkness ahead. The tunnel was cluttered by a wall of cobwebs that dangled from the rafters like shredded white hosiery. A scattered pile of rat or bat droppings littered the earthen floor, but he saw nothing to account for the wonderment in his brother’s voice. Disappointed and growing impatient again, he griped, “What?”

“
Not there.” Thane grasped Spencer’s flashlight and yanked it toward their right. “There.”

Outlined in the limited beam, he saw a man-sized slit in the dirt wall. Surprise and puzzlement curled through him. He moved closer, panned the light into the opening, then stepped back and played it across the entire section of wall. An almost imperceptible line circled what appeared to be a massive boulder.

Spencer touched the stone. The composition was as hard as any rock, but it felt different. He tapped the end of his flashlight against it. The clink of metal hitting metal rewarded the effort.

“
What the hell is it?” Thane demanded, moving closer.

“
It seems to be some kind of door. Hold this.” He handed Thane his flashlight and applied his palms to the rock, shoving hard. It moved inward with such unexpected ease, Spencer lost his balance. He pitched to the ground. His knee banged painfully against the first of three crudely chiseled stone steps just inside the opening.

“
Well, I’ll be…” Thane said, stepping over him and fanning both beams into the dark cavity. The passage was barely wide enough and tall enough to suit the average man, and not five feet in, it veered to the right, taking what appeared to be a 180 degree turn. “Isn’t this interesting?”

Rising, Spencer brushed at his slacks. “I don’t recall any mention of secret passageways opening into other parts of the house, do you?”

“
Not a one, but that pseudo-granite door has been there a long time. Probably installed by Octavius himself.”

Spencer nodded. “Considering the smuggling that went on, it makes sense the old guy would’ve built himself a few escape routes.”

Thane handed back the extra flashlight and strode forward, hunching over to accommodate his tall frame in the low ceiling passageway. “Where do you suppose this leads?”

“
I don’t know, but judging by the effortless way that door swung open, it’s been used and used recently.”

“
Do you think April could have found this and come in to investigate?”

Knowing her terror of the dark, Spencer couldn’t imagine anything less likely than April traversing dark corridors of her own free will. And yet, what other hope did he have? “At this point I’m willing to consider just about anything.”

The crouched position grew uncomfortable sooner than Spencer would have thought possible, but uncertain of what lay ahead, he knew they dare not move faster. “Unless my sense of direction has failed me, I’d say we’re backtracking, skirting the house on the outside of the basement.”

“
Your sense of direction is right on, but the air quality in here could use improvement.”

Just as he was getting used to the crick in his neck and between his shoulders, Spencer saw Thane straighten. His head disappeared from view. A second later he was stretching his own spine. They were standing in a ten-by-ten room.

“
What do you make of this?” Thane asked.

Drawing a lungful of somewhat better air, Spencer wheeled his light across the coarse dirt walls and floor. Except for a rusted Coleman lantern sitting next to a rat-eaten mattress in one corner and a wooden ladder in the other, the chamber was empty. “Storage room, apparently.”

“
For opium, diamonds, wool, whiskey, or Chinese slaves…?”

“
Probably all of them at one time or another.”

“
Lord, if only these walls could talk. Why is there a mattress down here?”

Spencer shrugged and kicked at it with his shoe. Dust furled upward. “It’s too new to have been for the slaves. At any rate, no one’s lain down on it for a lot of years, I’ll tell you that.” Normally this discovery would have intrigued him, but it brought him no closer to finding April, and right now nothing else mattered. He stepped to the ladder and shined his light against the ceiling. “Hey. Come here.”

He was scrambling up the ladder, lifting the wooden hatch before Thane responded. It flopped back on its hinges, but any expected banging this should have caused was muffled. He clambered over the lip of the opening. One look at the tools hung on hooks and scattered about and he knew where they were. “So much for both our senses of direction,” he told Thane. “We’re inside the storage shed.” The storage shed sat on the rise above the dock.

“
No wonder it seemed like such a long walk.” Thane joined him. “Did you know this trapdoor existed?”

“
No.” He glared at the gunny sacks that had reposed on its top. “It’s obviously kept covered on purpose.”

“
The question is why?”

“
Who knows?” The very furtiveness of the camouflage made Spencer uneasy, for he felt certain this secret was not connected with smugglers or pirates. Inexplicably, he sensed it had something to do with April, and yet, he couldn’t say how or why he felt this. Did she know about this tunnel, this escape hatch? Had she used them for some un-guessable reason? He wanted to hope. Anything was better than the images he couldn’t quite dispel of her broken body lying on the rocky shore of Haro Strait. He strode to the other side of the building and rattled the doorknob. The resistance scrapped his hope. “Karl was right. It’s locked up tight.”

“
It’s cold in here, too.” Thane clasped his hand on Spencer’s shoulder. “Sorry about the wild goose chase. Let’s get back to the house. There may have been some word about April.”

There wasn’t.

Spencer’s mother placed a fresh cup of coffee and a sandwich on a plate in front of him. Evidently, Helga had sliced up the sirloin tip. The O’Briens ate hungrily. Spencer didn’t begrudge them, but he couldn’t sit here and watch them eat.

Carrying his coffee, he retreated to August’s den and was grateful to find he had the room to himself. Apparently the party goers had all been informed of the cancellation. He jerked open the drapes. The fog stared back, pressing against the French doors like a bloated-faced monster, ugly and drippy, wetting the glass as effectively as rain, thwarting his efforts to hunt for April. The second it started to dissipate he would be ready.

Behind him the telephone rang. He jumped and spun toward it. “Hello?” He answered tentatively, hoping the caller would be April, yet fearing it would be someone with bad news about her. “Calendar House.”

“
Finally. I apologize for the lateness of the hour, but I’ve been trying to get through for ages. I got so many busy signals, I was about to call the operator to see if something was wrong with the line.”

“
No. Nothing’s wrong with the line. It’s been in use.” Probably another guest, he thought, not recognizing the woman’s voice nor wanting to deal with her petty complaints. “Who is this?”

“
Nancy Merritt. May I speak to April Farraday?”

The doctor. He’d forgotten he was going to call her. Only now that she was actually on the phone he didn’t know what to say to her. How did he tell April’s psychiatrist they had lost her on an island the size of Farraday? Weary beyond his years, Spencer sank to the edge of August’s desk and deposited his untasted cup of coffee next to the phone.

“
Doctor, this is Spencer Garrick. I was the one you spoke to earlier this evening. I’m afraid there’s a…a problem. April can’t come to the phone.”

“
A problem?” He could have sworn her voice had raised a notch. “Has April suffered an…ah…relapse?”

Had she? Could the mixed signals he’d been heaping on April since the first day of her arrival here have sent her into a mental tailspin? Over the past few hours, he’d considered and rejected this possibility so many times he no longer knew what to think. “Not that I know of.”

“
Not that you know of? What kind of problem are we talking about, Mr. Garrick?”

The moisture drained from his mouth. Spence reached for his abandoned mug and swallowed a gulp of lukewarm coffee. Just as he started to speak, the doctor cut him off.

“
April left a message on my answering machine sometime in the wee hours of last night.” Dr. Merritt’s obvious impatience punctuated every word. “She mentioned a mishap with a wine rack, but she said her wounds were minor.”

“
They were.” So April had called the doctor. Was there something to be learned from an exchange of information? “This has nothing to do with the wine rack.”

“
Mr. Garrick, you’re frightening me. What has happened to April?”

As succinctly as possible, he explained everything he knew, including the family’s assumption that April had fallen or jumped from the cliff. “We’ve called the Coast Guard, but the fog is so dense at this moment we’ve had to discontinue our own search.”

“
Oh, God.” Nancy Merritt's whisper sounded stunned, but surprisingly resigned. “April’s message was…I…I was afraid something would happen.”

Spencer was suddenly furious. “Then why did you wait so long to call?”

“
I’m in Seattle at a convention,” she answered defensively. “I had only collected my phone messages before I called the first time. And when you said everyone was about to sit down to dinner, I assumed you had seen and spoken with April and that she must be fine. But when she didn’t return my call…”

“
I see.” The words fell from his mouth as flat at his hopes of finding April alive and well.

“
Mr. Garrick, I can’t say April couldn’t have fallen from the cliff, but I have no reason to believe she was suicidal.”

He rammed his fingers through his hair. “May I ask you what message she left on your answering machine?”

“
You may ask. However, I assume you know that disclosing the confidences of my patients would breach my professional ethics.”

“
Doctor,” he ground between clenched teeth. “I appreciate your reluctance to discuss this with me, but if April can still be helped, can’t you see that every minute counts?”

Nancy hesitated, obviously debating the virtue of doctor/patient confidentiality against patient welfare. Couldn’t she see there was no contest? April had to come first. “Doctor?”

“
All right. You understand I’m only doing this for April’s sake.” He also understood from her tone that the damned woman wasn’t going to tell him anything more than she thought he needed to know.

“
The reason I asked if April had suffered a relapse was because of the way she described the incident with the wine rack. She said at first she thought someone pushed it over on her, later she’d decided it must have been an accident, but by the time she called, she’d come to the conclusion she was losing her grip on sanity altogether.”

His scalp felt too small for his skull. “Is…is that what you suspect?” The line went blank and for a split second he thought the doctor had hung up. Then he heard her breathing. Considering. Spencer crammed his fist into his thigh. God, couldn’t the woman think faster than this?

Finally she replied, “I’d have to see and speak to April before making that kind of judgment. Tell me, during these past two weeks, has she shown any signs of regression?”