Feta Attraction (21 page)

The air seemed to be moving inside the wine closet. “Inky, come here, will you?”

He had been foraging among the boxes looking for something edible, but returned to the closet. “Yikes, it's cold. Do you have some kind of cooling system to maintain the temperature for the vino?”

Nope. Even on the hottest day of summer it was fifty-three degrees down here.

“Look around in here and see if you can find the source of that draft.”

There was a gap of about two feet between the freestanding shelving and the cold stone walls. I examined them without success. After a minute or two, Inky said from his side of the closet, “Well, here's where it's coming from. There's a door back here behind these boxes of French wine.”

A door? I had lived in this house for twenty years and been down here countless times, and I had never known there was a door in the wine closet.

“Where does it go?” Inky asked.

“Beats me.”

“I'm going to open it. I can't resist!”

I was curious myself. There wasn't room for two of us to stand abreast behind the shelves, so I stood behind him on my tiptoes as he opened the door, which was built into an interior wall, not the stone foundation. A blast of air hit us, momentarily stopping my breath. “Check it out!” Inky exclaimed. “It's a staircase.”

He turned ninety degrees so I could see around him and up the dark passage. I shook my head. Had I been plucked out of my life and set down in a Nancy Drew novel? I thought I knew everything about this house, and here was a secret staircase leading to . . . I had no damn clue.

“You don't know where this goes, do you? We're gonna see, right? I don't think I could stand not knowing.”

Me either. “Do you see a light switch anywhere?”

He ran his hands up and down on both sides of the stairway walls, finding nothing. I pulled the LED flashlight out of my pocket and shined it on the walls. I moved the beam up and illuminated an old-fashioned beaded metal chain with a little bell-like cap affixed to the end. He pulled the chain and the passageway lit up with a click.

Cobwebs lined the juncture of the narrow walls and the low ceiling. The stairway itself was dusty in the corners of the risers, but the treads were bare. Somebody had been up here recently.

“Did you hear that?” Inky whispered.

“What?” I aligned my right ear with the stairwell and listened.

“There it is again!” This time there was no mistake. A muffled moan floated down from the top of the stairs.

“The ghost,” I whispered.

“Ghost? Are you telling me those ghost hunters found something? I was meaning to ask you about that.”

My flight of fancy crash-landed back on terra firma. “They found something, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a ghost. Come on.”

I pushed past him and led the way up the stairs, each tread sounding a distinctive creak. At the top of the stairs I took a deep breath and opened the door.

My little light preceded me as I entered a long, narrow, triangular room, facing a very acute angle where two walls met. I fumbled unsuccessfully on the wall for a light switch, then shined the beam up again to find another pull chain. I gave it a yank and a dim light filled the room.

Motionless, on the bare floor, was the prone form of a man.

TWENTY-TWO

“Oh, my God!” Inky rushed past me and knelt over the body. Spiro. His olive skin had taken on the bloodless, greenish pallor of a mushroom and his classically beautiful face was as still as an ancient Greek statue. My heart sank. Inky put his ear to Spiro's chest and breathed a sigh of relief. “He's alive!”

His arms were bound behind him, and his ankles were also tied together. Inky pulled out his pocketknife and set to work on the ropes. Spiro made some soft, incoherent noises, but seemed unaware of our presence. Inky gingerly pulled back one of his eyelids. “Drugged,” he pronounced.

“Where are we?” I tried to orient myself in the house. We were on the second floor, but there was no stairway opening into any of the bedrooms corresponding to this room. I thought about the weird triangular shape of this space and I understood. The bedrooms were all regular rectangles. The house, though, was octagonal. That meant that each of the bedrooms had a space just like this on the other side of the wall. I doubted I would find three more secret stairways, but the configuration offered some interesting possibilities as far as additional closet space.

This explained why I was hearing ghostly noises from Spiro's room and from Sophie's room, but hadn't been able to locate the source. Poor Spiro had been up here for days. No way of telling whether he'd been fed, but several empty water bottles and some bent straws littered the floor, so it looked as though he'd at least had some water. I did not know, and didn't want to know, how he had relieved himself. My missing bottle of Ouzo, now empty, lay on its side in one corner. Looked like somebody had been having a few shots while he kept Spiro sedated.

“Who did this to you?” Inky spoke softly to him, but Spiro didn't answer. Inky looked at me. “We have to get him out of here.”

“Let's get him to his room and then call the EMTs.” Inky nodded and hoisted him up in a fireman's carry. Inky was made of some strong stuff. He turned and faced the top of the stairs, then sucked in a breath.

I whipped around to see what had startled him and felt my heart jump into my throat. A figure stood in the doorway, brandishing a gun.

Russ Riley pointed the gun at Inky's chest. “Put him down. Now.”

“Russ, what the hell are you doing?” I was too shocked to be frightened. Russ? I'd known him since he was a kindergartner, gave him a job every year, and looked the other way when he stole from me. Now he had turned on me and my family?

“Shut up, Georgie.” He grinned his crooked jack-o'-lantern grin, which I'd always thought was cute in a redneck sort of way. Now it just looked evil. His smile looked different for another reason as well. Was he missing a couple more teeth? “I always wanted to say that! Now put him down, or I'll shoot all three of you.” He gestured with the deer rifle and Inky obeyed, laying the still-unconscious Spiro gently on the floor. “Now put your hands up. Both of you.” A hideously mottled green-and-purple bruise covered the left side of his face, and he had quite a shiner.

We complied. “You, Snakeman.” He pointed a finger at Inky. “You are going to stay here, and you are going to keep your mouth shut.” Inky pursed his lips and didn't say a word, but cut his eyes to me.

“You,
boss
, are going to get them valuables for me. Now.”

“Russ, I am telling you the absolute truth when I say I don't know where the valuables are. Or what they are.”

“There's money in this house. I've heard it all my life and I've looked for it all my life. You got it hid somewhere, and you are going to take me to it. Now.”

So he was the one who'd been snooping around and had ransacked the bedrooms. Ewww. His sausage-like fingers, the ones with the homemade tattoos spelling out “H-E-L-L” and “Y-E-S,” had been through my underwear drawer. I was going to throw out everything and buy new stuff posthaste.

He poked me with the barrel of the gun. “Watch it,” I said, my temper flaring. Shooting a deer was very different from shooting a human, and I didn't think he had it in him. A sudden vision of Big Dom's corpse floating on the river came to mind. Had Russ killed Big Dom? It was possible. But he couldn't be working alone. Unless I'd grossly underestimated him all these years, he was simply too . . . simple to be a criminal mastermind. He was working for Jack Conway. I'd bet on it.

I moved toward the top of the stairs, Russ prodding me along with the gun. I looked back at Inky, who nodded at me. Russ locked the door behind us when we reached the bottom.

“Go on upstairs to the kitchen,” he ordered. “Unless it's down here somewhere.”

“Uh, no, it's not down here. So,” I said conversationally, trying to buy some time, for what I wasn't yet sure, “how come you have Spiro tied up?”

“I don't. Well, I do. But it wasn't my idea. Wish it was. I'm getting paid, a helluva lot more than I get paid for being a dishwasher.” I should hope so, if he was taking this kind of risk. Kidnapping was a felony and he was facing serious prison time when this was over.

“Who's paying you?”

“Nice try. But guess what? I ain't telling. Now, where is it?”

“Uh, okay. I do know where it is.”

“I thought so. Now, get it, so I can give it to the guy paying me and I can get my cut. Then I'm blowing this town. I'm going to Florida. And I'm stayin' there. Girls in bikinis on the beach. And no more damned snow to shovel.”

“Do you even know who is paying you?”

“Well,” he hesitated. “No, I don't. But as soon as I get this thing I'm gonna take it to him. Then I'll find out.”

“How much have you gotten paid already?”

“None of your damn business. But a lot,” he said. Now I knew where the money had come from to build that gargantuan garage and to buy that giant gold necklace Dolly had been sporting.

“Look, Russ,” I said. “I've been up all night, and I'm hungry and thirsty. How about I make us an egg sandwich and then I'll go get it? It's outside,” I added, “and it's going to take some work to dig it up.”

He considered. “You got bacon to go on that? And American cheese? Extra American cheese. And make sure I got ketchup on the side. And a Coke to go with it.” He sat down in Sophie's armchair by the cash register, still pointing the gun at me as I gathered ingredients from the cooler. “Start cookin'. And don't try nothin' funny.”

Me? I wouldn't dream of it. I turned on the range and heated up a heavy, copper-bottomed sauté pan. I dropped a big glob of butter in the pan and it sizzled happily. I had a vague plan that I could somehow use this hot frying pan as a weapon. How I would get it close enough to him without arousing his suspicion and getting myself shot in the process, I had not yet worked out. Plan B was to get a shovel from the gardening shed under the pretense of digging up the treasure, then smack him over the head with it. “You want this on toast or English muffin?” I called out.

“Toast. None of that fancy wheat stuff either. White.”

“Sure thing.” I dropped four eggs, one by one, into the pan, and put yesterday's cooked bacon on a layer of paper towels into our high-powered microwave to warm up. Four slices of bread went into the toaster, two white and two homemade wheat. I had just begun to flip the eggs when a knock sounded at the kitchen door. We both looked up.

“Who is it?” Russ demanded.

“I don't know. I'm not expecting anybody here this early.”

“Go see who it is and get rid of them.”

“The eggs are going to get overcooked if I leave them.”

He paused. “Come in!” he bellowed as he got up and stood behind the armchair, holding the gun low so it was not visible.

The door swung open and Brenda Jones walked in. Her hair was combed down and back into a frizzy ponytail, and she had inexpertly applied some makeup. She looked as nice as I'd ever seen her, and she was sober to boot. “I'm here for breakfast,” she announced.

I forgot I'd invited her. “The restaurant isn't open yet, Brenda, but I'm just making some bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. You can either come in and have one with me and Russ, or you can come back in a couple hours.” The invitation might get me shot, but I was betting on the fact that Russ wanted the treasure more than he wanted me dead, and he thought I knew where it was. He wouldn't want to take the chance of shooting either Brenda or me and giving the other the chance to escape. Russ glared at me, and I went back to flipping eggs.

“Russ, you handsome dog, you,” she cooed at him, fingering the neckline of her turquoise tank top. She turned to me. “I think I'll take one of those egg sandwiches too. Russ, where've you been? I haven't seen you around lately.”

While she flirted I made a few more pieces of toast and assembled the sandwiches, giving Russ two eggs, and one each to Brenda and me. I set the plates down on the counter. “Should we eat in the dining room?” He wouldn't take the gun with him and tip off Brenda.

“No! We'll eat right here.” He patted the back of the armchair. “Just set it right here. And where's my Coke?” That demanding tone was annoying me. I was definitely going to fire his sorry ass when this was all over. In fact, he could consider himself fired, effective immediately. I handed him the plate and a can of Coke from the fridge, which he set on the narrow shelf next to the chair.

“Brenda, would you mind going out into the hallway and getting us a couple of those folding chairs?”

After she had left, he whispered, “Don't try nothing. I still got my gun back here.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Brenda came back in and set down the chairs, which she arranged next to the armchair.

“Come on out from behind there and sit with us,” Brenda suggested, her voice hopeful.

“Naw, I'm fine right where I am.”

“So whatcha doing here so early?” she asked, cutting her darkly mascaraed blue eyes at him.

Russ didn't answer, just took a big bite of the sandwich. Brenda looked at me and shrugged.

At that moment the back door flew open. Russ dropped his sandwich and shouldered the gun, faster than I would have thought possible for someone at his level of physical conditioning. “Who the hell is it now?” We all froze, Brenda in midbite, and turned to stare.

“Ma?”

“Russell Riley, what the hell are you doing? Put that gun down. Now!” Dolly strode toward him unafraid. He attempted to maneuver out from behind the chair, but it wasn't as easy as it looked while still holding the gun, and he bumped one hip against the chair. It moved and blocked his way, slowing him down long enough for me to grab the waist-length tail of his mullet and yank him off balance. I hooked my ankle behind his leg and pushed. Brenda grabbed the gun away from him as he sat down hard in the chair. She trained the weapon on him.

“You can put that gun down, Brenda,” Dolly said. “He ain't going nowhere till he tells me what he's been doing. Now, mister.” The morning light sparkled on the jewel pasted onto her long hot pink gel nail as she poked it into his chest. “You want to explain to me how come I just got a phone call from the tattoo man telling me to get over here because you were doing something stupid? Huh?” She jabbed him again and he winced. It looked like it hurt.

Brenda sat rapt as the harangue continued.

“I had to go over to your house this morning and take care of that damn barking dog of yours, since you apparently decided not to come home last night. I thought you were in that car wreck out on Route 12 a couple hours ago, you dumb son of a bitch.”

Inky, bless him, had phoned Dolly rather than the police. It was a genius move, really, since the police had to be looking for us. What had Dolly said, though? There was a car wreck? That would explain why Detective Hawthorne and the rest of the local police force weren't knocking at my door like everybody else this morning. Yet.

I ran out into the hallway and downstairs. I tried the door to the secret stairs but remembered when the handle wouldn't turn that Russ had the key. I ran back up, breathing more heavily than I would have liked. “Russ, give me the key.”