Home Repair is Homicide 13 - Crawlspace (34 page)

“Help!” The cry came again from the darkness that smelled of sea salt, damp earth, and rotting wood.

Bella tried shouting back, but no sound would come from her throat. The tunnel looked ready to swallow her. But then Jake’s cry for help came again, and Bella knew she had no choice.

None at all. Which was why, standing there in the old Dodd House cellar, lip trembling and hands shaking, fear twisting like a cramp in her stomach, Bella Diamond squared her shoulders and lifted her head.

She settled herself firmly on her feet, bit her lip, and clenched her hands into tight fists, the better to punch somebody in the nose if she had to. Then she closed her eyes and ran at the tunnel, keeping her hurrying feet close to the center as best she could so as not to trip on the iron rails the old cart once ran on.

Just a minute or so
, she told herself as she sprinted along in the gloom.
Then I’ll come out into the light and find Jake and be able to—

Help her
, Bella would have finished, but instead she smacked suddenly into something unyielding, exactly at knee level, and flew headlong onto it. Clinging on in terror, she felt whatever it was lurch forward, slowly at first and then faster.

Much faster … the smooth thrum of rails vibrated beneath her, and dank, chilly air rushed past her head.
The cart
, she realized as the slope she was traveling on angled sharply downhill.

It was the old tin-can cart, freewheeling down the tunnel’s tracks. “Oh,” she moaned, feeling the walls zoom by.

There was nothing to hang on to, nothing to try to stop with, and
she didn’t dare raise her head or put her hands out for fear they’d be knocked off. Faster and faster …

That other stop block
, she thought suddenly. There would be one at each end of the tunnel, so the cart wouldn’t roll right out onto the floor … .

Gasping with the unwelcome realization of what was about to happen, she yanked in her arms and legs, ducked her head into her arms, and in general squinched her whole self into as tiny a ball of tender, vulnerable body parts as she could.

Then she waited. The cart went on freewheeling beneath her. Astonishingly fast …

Flying in the dark.

THINK
,
JAKE TOLD HERSELF FIRMLY WHEN SHED GIVEN UP
yelling, her throat sore. But as soon as she’d begun thinking, she wished heartily that she hadn’t, because the result was so discouraging.

Twenty feet in six hours was the rate at which Passamaquoddy Bay filled with salt water as the tide rose. And once it rose up past the windows in that old door, she realized grimly …

Then she heard it: a high, keening exhalation, like air being let out of a balloon. Breathless screaming was what it was, actually.

Next came a thud, followed by a thump like a sack of wet laundry hitting the floor. Something heavy collapsed for a while, like stones sliding down a chute. And then …

“Oh!” said a woman’s voice. “Oh, good gracious!”

Shocked, uncertain, as if its owner was checking for broken bones. It was Bella Diamond’s voice, coming from the rear of the chamber in an alcove where no light shone.

The voice was muffled, as if it came from behind a door.
The old tunnel
, Jake realized.
She’s come down the …

“Bella, over here!”

The creak of seldom-used hinges sounded. Suddenly an image of the slide bolt on the trapdoor above her flashed into Jake’s mind. Lockable, so no intruder could find his way upstairs into the Artful Dodger.

The inhabitants of the Dodd House would no doubt have felt the same way, and their safeguard would have been more than a simple slide bolt. “Bella! Don’t close that …”

Door
, she meant to finish, but another loud hinge creak and a solid-sounding thud cut her off. Too late … A flashlight beam appeared, wavering uncertainly around the chamber. Behind it was Bella, looking stunned but miraculously undamaged as far as Jake could tell in the gloom.

“Bella, I’m trapped. Get me out of these ropes, can you? Ellie’s here somewhere, too … .”

Sounds of sloshing filled the room as Bella’s flashlight approached; the water in here was becoming very deep indeed.

Too deep. “Oh,” Bella breathed in consternation when she got to Jake’s side. “Now you lie still. I’ll get you out of here and … hmm,” she finished, tugging at the cord around Jake’s wrists.

“Bella,” Jake managed, “the tide’s coming in. We’ve got to get Ellie out of the—”

By the flashlight’s beam Jake saw worry growing on Bella’s face. “It’s going to fill up, isn’t it?” Bella asked. “This room is, I mean.”

She always had been quick on the uptake. “Yes.
Yes
, it is. In fact, it’s filling up right now, so I really do very strongly suggest that you—”

Hurry
. “Too bad I didn’t bring scissors,” Bella remarked.

Yes, that is regrettable
, Jake thought. But before she could say so, Bella had both hands on Randy’s motionless form. Patting him down …

“Maybe he’s got a knife.”

With a mighty heave, Bella hauled hard on his jacket collar with one hand and on his belt with the other. Randy Dodd rolled over, head lolling hideously and sightless, half-open eyes aimed upward.

But then without warning, awareness came into them and he surged up, roaring and swinging. Jake flung herself at him; Bella had already found the knife on his belt and removed it.

Snatching it from her, he raised it and brought it down.

Trying to roll out from under it, Jake knew she was not going to be fast enough. Bella backed away hard as the knife, an unpleasantly large and sharp-looking specimen, continued to descend.

Until suddenly Randy’s hand fell open, his eyes unfocused, and his mouth formed an O of unhappy surprise as Bella swung Roger Dodd’s cast-iron skillet at his head and connected solidly. He dropped bonelessly on impact.

It was a lovely sight, but Jake didn’t waste time gawking at it. “Get the knife, cut these ropes, do not slit my wrists while you’re at it,” she instructed.

Bella complied, then turned to Ellie. “We’ll haul her onto that cart,” she said. “Then the two of us can—”

“No, we can’t,” said Jake as Bella sat Ellie higher against the wall and began patting her cheeks gently.

Bella rubbed Ellie’s bound wrists. “Why not?” The water on the floor was nearly a foot deep now, and rising fast.

“Because the door you came through is locked.”

Jake made her way up the sloping floor to it, grasped its iron handle and pulled. But just as she’d expected, it wouldn’t budge. Like the trapdoor, it was meant to let people in.

Not out. The people who lived in Dodd House hadn’t wanted any menial laborers getting ideas about making their way up the tunnel, into the rich dwelling of their employers.

So they’d prevented it, and as she’d feared, they’d left nothing to chance. Whatever lock they’d installed, it engaged whenever the door was shut. Jake yanked again, felt the rusty antique iron of the old handle flaking under her touch. The years and the salt water had taken their toll.

Just not enough of one. And now water surged through the two
high, barred window openings on the bay side of the room, foaming and churning. On the floor, it had risen to Ellie’s waist.

Jake looked down at the iron door handle. It had been strong and new a couple of centuries ago, but …

Then it hit her, that the bars in the window openings were probably iron, too.

Old iron. Rusty iron. She peered up at them.

“Bella, come over here and help me a minute,” she said. “I’m going to try something.”

B
ELLA,” SAID JAKE AS SALT WATER WENT ON FILLING THE
old stone chamber. “What do you call that thing on a vacuum cleaner, with a brush at the end of it?”

“A wand,” Bella said promptly. She was crouched by Ellie’s slumped, still-unconscious form.

“Right. Feel around under the water. You’ll need two of them and I think I saw …”

Old vacuum-cleaner parts. Bella waded obediently, felt under the
water with her hands, and at length came up with a pair of long black plastic tubes.

“Good,” Jake said. “I’m going to try to get out of here and find help. I’ll be as quick as I can, but …”

She explained what Bella would need to do. “Breathe through it,” Bella repeated, eyeing the tubes doubtfully. “And try to get Ellie to do it, too? But … why don’t we all go?”

“Bella, you can’t swim,” Jake reminded her. “And Ellie’s unconscious.”

She turned to the window opening from which she’d pried the old iron bars. Rusted as they were, they’d been sturdier than she expected; luckily the welded spots holding them together weren’t.

The water surged icily around her calves. “It’s by no means a sure thing that I’ll make it, either,” she added gently.

Bella’s face went still. “All right,” she said. “What else do you want me to do?”

“Give me a lift.” Short, sharp stubs of old iron still stuck out of the window opening. But she had hammered each one down with a rock until she thought it might not take out her appendix when she wiggled past it.

She placed her foot in the step formed by Bella’s two hands.
Please let all this work
, Jake thought shakily.

“Once I get out there, I’ll scramble across the rocks onto dry land, come back in and call help from Roger’s phone, upstairs in the bar. Then I’ll be down for you.”

Please, God, let the ladder still be up there
. She didn’t add that the rocks were always slippery or that by now most of them were already underwater. Bella knew. But …

“Bella, just in case I run into some kind of trouble …”

Bella’s green eyes softened briefly. But then her bony face hardened with resolve. “Don’t run into it. Run through it.”

She glanced over at Ellie, then shoved the flashlight she held into Jake’s jacket pocket.

“Take this. And hurry up about it, please; that tide’s not getting any lower while we’re gabbing here.”

She braced herself with her hands under Jake’s foot. “One, two—”

Jake sucked a breath in.

“ Alley-oop!” Bella called from behind and below her, and shoved upward hard as Jake thrust her arms out through the opening.

Her head and shoulders, followed by her torso, went through, too, all the way to her hips.

Which stuck there, firmly and painfully. She wiggled one way: no result whatsoever. She wiggled the other as a huge, icy green wave rolled in and engulfed her.

“Bella!” she choked, coughing out sand and seaweed. “Bella, I’m—” Suddenly something poked her viciously from behind. Not just hard but sharp, like a needle in her right buttock.

That knife
. “Hey!” she yelled, squirming away reflexively. And then—

She was out. In the icy water, drowning.

Flailing and drowning.

GASPING AND STRUGGLING, JAKE FELT THE SEAWATER CHILL
her body down in an instant, her blood thickening and all her muscles cramping at once.

A mass of thick seaweed surrounded her, trapping her. The water wasn’t knee-deep, as she’d hoped, or even waist-deep. Shivering uncontrollably, she forced her legs to straighten but couldn’t touch bottom.

The lights of town gleamed beyond the breakwater, impossibly distant. She’d have tried yelling for help, but when she opened her mouth water poured in, choking her. A wave swamped her as she surfaced again, gagging.

No one on the breakwater, no cars on Water Street … A chunk of driftwood slugged her, opening a cut over her left eye.

Another, much larger collection of flotsam nudged her. She heaved herself onto the mass of branches and vegetation, but her legs sank through at once.

Spread your weight
, she thought, frantically paddling with cold-numbed arms. A hard, sharp something hit her shoulder; she pushed against it. It was a rock, a great, big …

She clung to it and reached out for another one, and found it. Hauling her body through water so cold, it felt like dry ice burning against her, she got herself up onto a jagged surface.

Waves crashed somewhere nearby, which meant more rocks. But if she obeyed the strong urge to try swimming toward them, it would be all over for her; she would not survive another intense chilling.