Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 26

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 m.u.f.fled, 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 slos.h.i.+ng 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.

s.n.a.t.c.hing 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."

CHAPTER 11.

BELLA," 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 st.u.r.dier 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, G.o.d, 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 b.u.t.tock.

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 ma.s.s of thick seaweed surrounded her, trapping her. The water wasn't knee-deep, as she'd hoped, or even waist-deep. s.h.i.+vering 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 ma.s.s 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.

Then she remembered the flashlight, checked her pocket, and found it. Not that it would still work. Or that it would do any good, even if it did.

She fumbled it out, thumbed its switch. To her astonishment it went on, just as she spotted the lights out on the water.

Running lights, red and white. She swayed, nearly losing the flashlight, but caught it just in time and aimed it out at them, praying that whoever was on the boat out there would see And that they knew Morse code. Spasms of s.h.i.+vering palsied her hand over the flashlight's lens as she covered it.

And uncovered it. Dot-dot-dot. Dash-dash-dash. Dot-dot-dot. SOS, the universally known distress signal ... but only if they saw it. She sent it again.

Each time she let go of the rock, she nearly slid off into the waves. But it took two hands to hold the flashlight and cover the lens.

A wave rolled in suddenly, its bulk blocking the light beam, its rogue height first confusing her, then pinning her in terror. In the next instant it was on her, spinning her, twiglike. Up and down, time slowing to a stretched-out instant ...

Impact. Like slamming a wall. Everything in her stopped. No pain, just an astonished feeling ...

Alive. She lifted her head. Blood smeared the rock beneath her, thickly gleaming in the light from ...

No pain yet. Cautiously, she peered around. The wave had carried her sh.o.r.eward, toward the tall bank of granite riprap along the sh.o.r.e at the edge of the boat basin.

And there it had dropped her. Saved her, really.

So far. Slowly, drenched and iced right down to the center of her bone marrow and feeling her wits still engaged in the very uncertain process of gathering themselves together, she got her arms and legs straightened out underneath her and began pus.h.i.+ng herself up.

CLAMBERING PAINFULLY UP AND OVER THE GRANITE RIPRAP TO the walkway between the harbor and the boat basin, Jake made herself forget everything except making it that far.

Next came a short, steep path between two of the old brick buildings that fronted on Water Street. She took it on hands and knees, at last hauling herself upright on the sidewalk directly in front of the Artful Dodger.

Still no one on the street. She could try to find someone, but the moments she would spend doing that and then explaining might make all the difference to Bella and Ellie.

If there was still any to be made. The Artful Dodger's door stood open; gazing wildly around for a pa.s.sing car once more and seeing none, she went in.

The light behind the bar was still on but the cell phone was gone from its stand under the mirror. In the alcove by the restrooms, the pay phone's receiver lay with the cord yanked out.

She hurried through the darts area and past the karaoke machine, s.n.a.t.c.hing one of the darts from the dartboard as she pa.s.sed, gripping it in her fist. Across the small stage to the stairs ...

Silence. And if he had any brains at all, Roger would be far away from here by now.

But then, good old Roger hadn't demonstrated a lot of brain power recently, had he? He'd gotten himself neck-deep in all this already. So he could still be in here somewhere.

With the dart raised to eye level, ready to jab with it, she hurried down the stairs. "Bella? Bella, if you can hear me-"

No sound came from the end of the hall. She raced to the trap door; the ladder lay beside it. By now the room below must be flooded... . How long had she been on the rocks?

She didn't know, but now a terrible suspicion struck her that it was longer than she'd thought-maybe a lot longer. Flinging herself at the trapdoor's lid, she yanked up on the iron loop.

The heavy lid rose. At last it swung high. A strong smell of sea-water rose from the open hole. No sound came from it.

She shouted, still heard nothing, wrangled the ladder's legs into the hole and lowered them, then clambered down into the dark water.

The chamber was flooded, the water over her head. No voices, no cries for help, came from anywhere in it. But there had been nowhere else for the trapped women to go.

So they were still down there. And Bella couldn't swim. Holding her breath and with her eyes clamped shut against the gritty, acidly burning salt water, Jake swam to where she thought she'd left them, fingers searching blindly ahead.