Under the Boardwalk (23 page)

Charlie's eyes widened in horror.

"Killed who?" Zac whispered.

"Tom," Hallie whispered back. Zac gasped.

Julian turned toward Hallie again. "I thought I'd taken care of you when I ran you off the road in that stupid little car."

He smirked when he saw her confused look. "Yeah. You really don't remember anything, do you? Doesn't matter now."

"Where's Windy?"

"Come see," he said, pointing with the gun toward the open trap door.

Had Kyle found Windy? She had to distract Julian to give Kyle time. "Why did you try to choke me, Julian?"

He smiled. "Charlie said you were getting close to the mark with all your stupid questions about the carousel. I wasn't going to take the chance on your wrecking this deal."

"What deal?" she asked. She looked at the displays around them. What was he talking about?

"You mean you still don't know?" Zac said. "Charlie seemed to think you were getting close."

"Charlie talks too much," Julian said. "Not that it matters."

"You're going to let them go, JJ, aren't you?" Charlie said softly. "You promised."

"Sure, baby, sure." His voice sounded completely different from the snarling accusations of a minute ago, soothing, reassuring. Hallie had heard that soothing voice before, in David Cooper's promises:
you do what I want, baby, and I'll take care of you.
They'd all be dead as soon as Julian completed his deal, whatever it was.

"You promise?" Charlie whispered.

Hallie heard an echo of her own voice in that submissive question.
Don't listen to him
, she silently pleaded.
Men like him use you for their own ends. They tell you you're nothing without them, and then they strip away your dignity and pride until there's nothing left of you.

"Move," Julian said to Hallie. Hallie jumped back a foot. He brushed past her to the cellar door. A cord dangled down into the hole. She hadn't noticed that before. Julian plugged it in, and suddenly a pool of yellow light shone up out of the hole. Great. With the lights on, Kyle had just lost the element of surprise.

Julian gestured at Hallie. "Take her downstairs," he said to Charlie. "And you," he said to Hallie, "remember this." He pointed his gun at Zac's head. "Don't mess with me." Hallie nodded.

Charlie gestured with her gun for Hallie to go down the stairs. She did, with Charlie following close behind. At the bottom she looked around her, and gasped. In the harsh glare of the work lights the room glittered with gold and glass jewels and a hundred shining glass eyes staring back at her. She gaped at the sight. Boxes had been thrown helter skelter into the corners, and a large open area had been cleared in the middle of the room. Piled in the middle were at least fifty carousel horses.

Everywhere horses. Dozens and dozens of carved horses, each more lifelike than the last.

"It's the Illions," Windy said.

"Windy!" Hallie ran over to where Windy was tied up to a bunch of pipes in the corner. "You're all right?"

"I'm all right," she said. She looked a bit ragged and tired, but she was alive. Hallie hugged her. "You're alive. Thank God. But what's going on?"

"Don't you know?" she asked. "This was the surprise."

Charlie came over to them and quickly cut the zip ties binding Windy.

Windy rubbed her wrists and nodded at Charlie. "She overheard Zac and me talking about what we'd found. Then when Julian bumped the Little Guy off the road, and you got run off the side of the hill, I was sure it was the last time I'd ever see you."

"I didn't remember any of it," Hallie said.

"Yeah. They finally told me that you had amnesia. Gee, girl, you picked a fine time to lose your memory."

"But this—" Hallie looked around at all the horses. "This was the big secret you were going to tell me?"

"Of course. The Illions."

"My Illions," Julian corrected her. He had joined them again.

"So what's an Illions?"

"So you didn't figure it out?" Windy said.

"No. I don't understand."

Windy looked at Julian. "Go ahead," Julian said. "She might as well know everything." Julian lit a cigarette.

Windy turned back to Hallie. "Marcus Charles Illions," she recited. "Considered to be one of the greatest carousel carvers ever."

Hallie nodded. "Yes, I read the newspaper clippings about the antique carousel being destroyed, but—it was destroyed...." She looked around. "Wasn't it?"

Windy smiled. "That's what we thought."

"And you just happened to come down here and find it?"

She laughed and shook her head. "You don't know what this place looked like. The horses were buried behind fifty years of crap. I never would have found them if I hadn't been looking for them."

She must have looked confused, because Windy explained: "There was this newspaper article, about the fire that happened here—"

"—when your parents died? I saw it. But it said they died trying to save the carousel..."

"...and they were overcome by fumes from burning fiberglass and died."

Hallie's eyes widened.

"Exactly," Windy said. "What fiberglass? These horses are made of wood. So I did a little more research and found out that my grandparents had updated most of the rides regularly, especially back in the 1940s and '50s. Back in those days an old wooden carousel would have been considered a piece of junk by most people. It would have been considered an upgrade to replace it with a shiny, new, factory-made fiberglass one."

"But nobody knew about it?"

She shrugged. "My grandparents must have known—but they died a long time ago. My parents would have known, too—but they were killed in the fire. By the time the carousel collectors' market went looking for the old wooden carousel horses, nobody had ever seen them at this park, and anyone who checked would assume it had been destroyed. You have to realize, until recently, people were chopping the old wooden horses up for firewood. Nobody put together that the carousel wasn't found twenty years ago, and of course anyone looking since would assume it had burned. With all the business records had been destroyed in the fire, there just wasn't any way to put together what had really happened."

Hallie sighed. "And then you found the diary mention of the basement storage room."

"Yeah. Zac was convinced the carousel destroyed in the fire was made of fiberglass. And then I found mention of another storage place we'd never heard of. If the carousel was anywhere, that's where it would be."

Hallie shook her head. "But all this." She turned to Julian, who lounged against yet another King Kong with a bored expression on his face, and the gun aimed right at her stomach. "I mean I get that this is a great find for the Madrigal family. But it's just an old carousel. Why the guns?"

Julian snickered. "It's not just an old carousel, baby, it's over four million dollars, on the hoof, so to speak." He laughed at his own joke. "Collectors buy 'em and put 'em in their living rooms so they can show the world how rich they are."

"But how are you going to sell a whole carousel?" she asked.

He went over to the stairs. "Charlie!" he shouted. "Get that kid tied up again and get down here."

"A lot of carousels have been lost over the years. He can sell the horses individually over time and make up any story he wants," Windy said softly. "As long as there's no one around to contradict him."

He went up the stairs and quickly returned with Charlie trailing behind him.

"Curiosity satisfied?" Julian asked. He stubbed out his cigarette on the floor. He took out a knife and cut the zip-ties on Windy's legs and hauled her to her feet by her bound wrists. "You're going to help lift all this junk. For now, get over there." He pointed to the corner with his gun. "Keep an eye on them," he said to Charlie. "I don't want anybody sneaking up behind me."

Kyle. Where was he? Hallie tried to look around without being obvious. Had he found a way out? JJ motioned again with the gun, and she and Windy backed up into the corner of the basement.

"The Wurlitzer!" Hallie said.

"Huh?" Windy said.

"It was in the diary, too."

This band organ was even bigger than the one in the attic. It was covered in painted scenes of Pajaro Bay. She recognized the wharf, and the houses on the hill.

Windy leaned up against one side of the machine, looking worn out. Hallie leaned against the other side and watched Charlie and JJ. "Keep an eye on them," he told Charlie again.

She pointed her gun at them, a scared look on her face.

Julian started to work, going through all the stuff, tossing aside things he didn't think were valuable, pulling out the horses and gathering them in the center of the room. He'd put his gun in the waistband of his jeans, but Hallie didn't think it would take him long to pull it out and fire.

Hallie glanced back at Charlie. Would Charlie really shoot them? Hallie tried to gauge her expression. She tried to recall her own frame of mind back when she'd been trapped under Dave Cooper's evil influence. Charlie believed at least half of the lies JJ was telling her, but seeing Tom shot had shaken her badly. Could they use that?

Hallie glanced over at Windy. She leaned against the Wurlitzer with his eyes closed. She looked exhausted, and very young. "Are you okay?" Charlie said quietly to Windy.

She opened his eyes and nodded slightly. Charlie settled down on a box to watch them. She put the gun in her lap and pulled out a cigarette, which she lit with shaking fingers. She did care about the kids. She didn't want them to get hurt, and she apparently was deluding herself into thinking Julian was going to let them go when this was over.

Charlie smiled tentatively at them, an apologetic smile. So she had divided loyalties, Hallie thought. She wasn't letting Julian in on everything she was thinking. Hallie gave Charlie what she hoped was a friendly smile. Charlie looked down, embarrassed.

"What are we going to do?" Windy whispered.

Hallie gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. She turned around and ran her hand over the glass front of the band organ, and traced the etched "Wurlitzer" in the glass with one finger. In the reflection she could see yet another old King Kong looming behind her, and another pair of eyes as well. She brushed the dust off the glass. Kyle.

She turned around and leaned back against the machine with what she hoped was a neutral expression. She stared blankly off into the middle distance. There he was, standing behind the gorilla, barely ten feet away. Their eyes met. She quickly looked away. When she glanced back, he was gone.

There he was, on the other side of the gorilla. He seemed to be working his way toward the stairs, where Julian was working. Please, Kyle, she silently begged. Don't do it. Julian reached into his waistband and adjusted the gun there. He looked up and saw her staring at him, and grinned. "Ready to go to work, baby?" he sneered.

She turned away. She looked around the cellar. With all this stuff in here, there should be something they could they use against JJ and Charlie. Charlie's hand shook as she held the gun, but if they jumped JJ, she could fire and kill them all. She couldn't just stand here. She had to do something.

Hallie looked at the machine she and Windy leaned against. It was a giant thing, towering over them. It seemed even larger now that some of the other junk had been cleared away from it. Light glimmered off the dusty front of the machine. She could still see Kyle's form reflected in the sections of glass not covered by the logo. She quickly stepped in front of the glass to block the reflection. She glanced at Julian and Charlie. They hadn't noticed. She rubbed her hand over the glass again, seeing her own pale face reflected. Her hair was a mess, as usual. She brushed the stray strands into place. No sense leaving a messy-looking corpse, she thought.

She was going to die, she thought. Julian would make sure of it this time. And Charlie? Charlie would go along, if for no other reason than because she was too scared not to. Kyle. Somehow the thought of him dying was more horrible than anything that could happen to herself. He had a mission in life. He had to live. His life had a purpose and a meaning, not the least of which was the young woman leaning against the machine only a couple feet away from her.

She set her jaw. Maybe she didn't have any important mission in life, but she wasn't going to give up yet. She wasn't much, but she was a survivor. Dave Cooper hadn't defeated her, and this little worm Julian wasn't going to either.

Her eyes refocused on the glass in front of her, and she noticed the logo again. Wurlitzer. She traced it with one finger. A band organ. She wondered if it was as loud as the music at the carousel was. She couldn't hit Julian over the head with it, and that's all that mattered at this point.

She noticed Windy was looking at her quizzically.

She shrugged and stepped back to lean against the side of the machine and survey the room again.

Something bumpy rubbed on her shoulder. She looked down. There were two buttons on the side: one said "lights" and the other said "power." She glanced up. Charlie was watching her. Hallie tried to look casual. Charlie looked away again. Hallie leaned against the buttons, pressing as hard as she could with her shoulder.