“I agree.” I turned on the flashlight. The panel gave repairmen access to the wiring and the sprinkler system. The lower ceiling was only made up of two-by-fours and Sheetrock. I hefted myself up. Kind of. I mostly stacked boxes on the top shelf and made myself a ladder. “But all change, even good change, puts stress on our bodies and minds.”
“True. Wait, why are you doing this again?”
“Mr. V is out sick.” I scanned the entire length of the buildings with the flashlight and found what looked like a cutout in the dividing bricks about fifteen feet from me.
“I don’t think we should be taking advantage of his illness by breaking into his store.”
“He’s the one.”
“Which one??
“The one I told Bobert about. The one being held hostage.”
“Janey, really?” she asked in alarm. “And you’re breaking into his store because?”
“I need to see exactly what they’re doing.” With only about two feet of clearance, navigating the claustrophobia-inducing space was proving tricky. “Also, I need to figure out where his cabin is. Do you know?”
“I have no idea what they’re doing, but I feel awful for Mr. Vandenberg.”
I placed a knee on one board, then a hand on another, crawling forward at a snail’s pace. My break was going to end before I got halfway.
“No, I mean do you know where his cabin is?”
“Oh, no. But Robert could check into it.”
Oh, yeah. I didn’t think of that. I made it to the opening. Sadly, it was the size of a credit card. I swiped at a few spiderwebs, then slid through. It was touch-and-go where my ass was concerned. Took a little while and a lot of wriggling to get her through. Mr. V’s ceiling was exactly like the café’s. His access panel was closer to the opening, thank goodness.
The muffled tones of Cookie’s voice wafted up to me, but I didn’t respond. Partly because I couldn’t understand her, but also, I didn’t want to have to shout loudly enough to be heard. From what I could tell, the opening was somewhere above Dixie’s office. I doubted she’d appreciate my creeping about her attic.
I army-crawled to Mr. V’s access panel, ignoring the pain in my knees and rib cage where I lay across the boards. Who knew the edges of a two-by-four could be so painful? Prying the panel up proved to be harder than planned, but I finally got my fingernails under it and lifted one corner slowly.
It was still dark inside his store, so I lifted the panel and set it aside. Then, with the stealth of a drunk ninja, I lowered myself through the hole. Sadly, Mr. V didn’t have any shelves conveniently placed under the panel for me to climb down, so I had to drop several feet to the floor. The second my feet hit the ground, I looked up and wondered how I was going to get back.
I’d worry about that as soon as I figured out exactly what the captors had been up to. Using Cookie’s flashlight, I wound my way around antiques of every size and nature. There were simply too many breakable things. I’d never be comfortable working in a store that carried so many breakable things.
The plasma cutter sat on the side of Mr. V’s desk. It was connected to an extension cord, so either they’d already used it or they planned to soon.
I finally found the door to the back room, held my breath, and opened it. If they had set some kind of guard to watch over their handiwork, I was dead. I could live with that. Thankfully, it was just me and a gaping hole.
The entire floor had been torn out. The whole thing. It was a small room, more like a closet really, but still. I felt they got a little carried away. The dark hole lurking beyond the battered floor was my main concern. More tiny spaces. Great.
I got onto my hands and knees and was shining a light into the tunnel when I heard a growl. A low, deep grumble right behind my left ear.
I turned slowly and came face-to-face with a snarling set of teeth. The Vandenbergs’ German shepherd. He growled and snapped at me. It was the cutest thing.
“Hello, pretty boy,” I said to him. He was beautiful. “Aren’t you the prettiest thing?”
Despite the growls, I raised a hand to pet him. He whimpered instantly and licked my face instead of ripping it off. We played tackle-and-roll a bit, and then I asked, “Do you know what they’ve been doing down here?”
He barked, then offered an apologetic whine.
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault. We’ll figure this out together, okay?”
He barked again, and I took Cookie’s phone and climbed down the rabbit hole.
15
I don’t understand your specific kind of crazy,
But I do admire your commitment to it.
—T-SHIRT
Barely wide enough for one good-sized man, the tunnel extended only about ten feet, then stopped under another rabbit hole. Just as I thought, they were tunneling into the dry-cleaning business.
I reached up and felt the cool smooth texture of metal. The plasma cutter. They were going to use it to cut their way inside. Two questions came to mind immediately: Why would a dry-cleaning business need a metal floor¸ and what could they possibly be keeping in there?
Was it a vault of some kind? If so, it had to be massive. Like a bank vault. Or maybe it was a panic room. Or an old bomb shelter, though the metal had glistened a bright silver. It couldn’t have been very old.
GS, for lack of a better name, whimpered again when I started to back out. He picked his way through the dirt, then bounded up into the shop. I didn’t bound, but I did hoist myself up using the brute strength God gave me. And the frame of the door. My fingernails would never be the same.
GS and I searched Mr. V’s desk for some clue as to where the cabin might be and found nothing. I glanced at all the pictures again, examining them closer this time, reminiscing about Mr. V’s wonderful kids while looking for a house number or a street sign. Nothing again. Sadly, I just didn’t know the area well enough for any of it to look familiar. Those pictures could have been taken in Nepal for all I knew.
Giving up, I took one of the pictures out of its frame, ran my fingertips over the kids’ mischievous faces, then folded it and put it in my back pocket. Then I turned to the next challenge. How to get back up to the access panel. The answer presented itself by means of a massively tall ladder, the kind that looked like it would topple over at any moment.
After positioning it under the panel, I climbed it the way I imagined I would climb to my execution: slowly and reluctantly.
When I made it to the top, I clutched the opening and had little choice but to jump as hard as I could. The ladder would surely fall, but I had no alternative. I simply wasn’t strong enough to pull myself up from that distance.
“Bye, sweetheart,” I said to GS.
He barked and disappeared through an old chest on the wall opposite me.
With one final prayer, I shoved off the ladder as hard as I could and pulled with everything I had. Sadly, everything I had wasn’t going to be enough. I heard the ladder crash into a myriad of fragile things. Mr. V was going to kill me. Now I had antiques to pay for along with my hospital bills. I’d never get a phone. And my arms were beginning to shake.
When I heard a bark above my head, I glanced up to see GS standing over me, his tail wagging as though we were playing a game. But my arms were giving out. I kicked to try to heft myself up, to no avail. Then GS took hold of my shirt at the shoulder and pulled.