Entangled (13 page)

Davy licked his lips, his eyes wide with
eagerness. “You want to play hide and seek? I know some great
places to hide around here.”

“I bet you do. But I think that game might be
a little one-sided. You don’t want to be stuck hiding all day, do
you? I might never find you,” I said, turning off the coffee maker.
“Why don’t we explore together and you can show me places I haven’t
seen yet?”

“Okay.” He stuffed the rest of the toast in
his mouth and tried to chew, his cheeks bulging with the effort,
peanut butter coating his lips.

I shook my head and handed him a napkin. He
set it down and used his tongue instead. The phone rang and I went
to pick it up. “Hello?”

“Ms. Fredrickson? This is Charlie. I think
there may be a problem over here.”

“A problem?” I asked. Why in the world would
Charlie call me about a problem in the winery? I was still a blank
page when it came to running things.

“You know the locked cellar you were
interested in? Well, it’s been broke into. One of the guys noticed
scrapes in the door and around the lock. Someone took a crowbar to
it, I guess.” The puzzlement in his voice was clear. He didn’t
think there was anything down there worth breaking and entering
for.

“Was there damage anywhere else in the
winery? Anything at all missing?” I asked. The cellar had been
locked for as long as Uncle Jack owned the place. Why would anyone
want to break into that room when there were plenty of things to
steal above ground?

“Not that we’ve found. I had a couple of the
guys take a careful look around but nothing seems out of place or
missing. Do you want me to call the police? I couldn’t say for sure
if anything valuable was stored there. I went down and checked it
out but I can’t imagine Jack hiding anything down there worth a
dime. Unless someone wanted to steal that secret formula he was
always joking about. There were quite a few bottles of wine. Could
have taken a few of those, I guess. But why wouldn’t they just
steal wine from up here?”

I bit at my bottom lip. Should I tell the man
I’d already been in the cellar and cause him to wonder why he
hadn’t been informed, or let him think he was the first? I didn’t
think there was anything down there worth stealing either, but
someone had obviously believed otherwise. Although, calling the
police seemed a bit drastic as nothing appeared to be missing. And
I really didn’t want to go into the whole key inheritance
thing.

“No, Charlie, don’t call the police. It was
probably just a prank of some kind. Kids on a dare or something.
I’ll be over in a bit and check out the cellar myself, but I
wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I’m sure you’re right. I hate to involve the
police and get one of the neighbor kids in trouble for something so
petty, but if they could get in the winery when it’s locked up at
night, they could really do some damage if they had a mind to.”

“You’re right. Maybe we should look into a
new security system. You did make mention the other day that it was
outdated.”

“Yeah. Antiquated is a better term. But Jack
didn’t want to spend the money on security. He said if we tightened
things up it would just make someone think there was something
special worth stealing.”

Charlie’s sarcastic tone made me laugh into
the phone. “I see. Good security gives the burglars incentive,
something to strive for, huh?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, call around and price it out. I’d like
to have it done right away if we could. No sense putting it off any
longer.”

“Will do,” Charlie said, clearly
agreeable.

“Thanks, Charlie. Oh yeah — could you have
them price the house too? I’d feel better if there were a security
system over here as well.”

“You bet.”

I hung up and turned around to find that Davy
had disappeared from the room after dutifully placing his cup and
plate in the sink. I rubbed the kink in my neck. I must have slept
on it at a funny angle or something. A run would loosen things up
but I’d promised to explore with Davy and now to check out the
cellar. Well, the two could be combined and everyone would be
happy.

“Davy!” I called, as I headed toward the
front of the house. “Where’d you go?”

The living room was empty but I heard
creaking coming from one of the bedrooms. I followed the sound and
found the boy jumping on the master bed, his arms held out at his
sides as he bounced. Luckily he’d taken his shoes off or I’d really
have had something to scream about. The kid was driving me
crazy.

“Did Jack let you jump on the beds, too?” I
asked, hands on my hips. I caught a glimpse of myself in the
dresser mirror and nearly died from shock, the look on my face so
like my Mother when she was about to let loose with one of her
tirades. They say that once you have kids, you turn into your
mother, but I just had to be around a kid for a few minutes.
Frightening.

He came to a sudden stop, and plopped on his
bottom, the look of a burgeoning trial lawyer in his eyes. “Nope.
But you didn’t say I couldn’t.”

“Great — semantics from a six-year-old,” I
said, crossing the room and standing over him. “Has Uncle Handel
already been instructing you in the nuances of the law?”

He pushed blonde hair back from his forehead
and glared up at me. “I’m eight, not six!”

“All right then. And I suppose
eight-year-olds are immune from prosecution because their brain
cells haven’t yet matured to the point of knowing the difference
between jumping on their own beds and jumping on a neighbor’s.”

“Uncle Handel likes you,” he stated in a
singsong voice and then ran from the room, leaving me standing
there like a kite knocked from the sky, impotent against the
teasing wind. Boys were obviously an unknown species even before
they turned into men. I picked up his tennis shoes and trudged
after him.

*****

With Davy at my heels, I followed Charlie
through the winery. The rubber soles of his worn work boots made
very little sound but the corduroy pants he had on whistled with
each step, causing Davy to break out in uncontrollable giggles. I
turned to put a finger to my lips as we stopped before the cellar
door.

“I’m sorry this happened Ms. Fredrickson. I
really don’t know how the rascals even got into the winery. The
other locks are fine.” He scratched his head, his eyes scrunched up
in thought. “There is a back window that can be pushed open if you
climb up a ladder, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go to just
to break in here.”

I nodded, a commiserating smile on my lips.
“It’s not your fault, Charlie. And once the new security system is
up and running, we won’t have to worry about it happening
again.”

Charlie bent and ran a hand over the scraped
up wood of the door. “You want me to have someone replace this lock
and sand down the door?” he asked.

I bit at my thumbnail as disappointment
flooded through me. This cellar would no longer be my personal
secret. Others would go down to check out Jack’s subterranean
exploits, marvel at the eccentricity of his life underground, and
cough on the same dust particles I had privately harbored away just
yesterday. Giving up my private cellar felt wrong somehow.
Possessing the only key was like pulling up the rope ladder on a
childhood fort, running the show, being the boss of something. I
needed that. Between managing a law office, and controlling my own
television remote, my life still felt contrived. I didn’t really
run anything, decide anything, or control anything. I became a
lawyer because my mother thought I would be good at it. And I was,
but that didn’t change anything. I watched the history channel and
PBS because I wanted to sound intelligent when I went to parties.
And last but certainly not least, I was here because an uncle I
barely remembered was manipulating me from the grave.

“Ms. Fredrickson?”

Charlie’s voice intruded on my thoughts.
“Sorry, I was thinking. Umm, yes, have the door repaired and a new
lock put on. And I’ll hold a copy of the key, if you don’t mind.” I
stepped around Charlie and pushed the broken door open. “Davy and I
are going to explore. See if any Leprechauns buried a pot o’gold
down here,” I said in my best Irish brogue.

Charlie chuckled and patted Davy on the top
of his blonde head. “Have at it. Maybe you have the luck of the
Irish. All I found down there was a pot o’ junk.”

I smiled. “Its all in the eyes of the
beholder, Charlie. I bet Davy and I will find us a treasure.”

Davy clomped down the stairs, eagerly leading
the way. “It’s dark down here, Billie,” he called up from the
bottom. Now we were on a first name basis. When did that
happen?

“I’ll get the light, kid. There’s a string,
but you probably can’t reach it,” I said, before I realized my
innocent statement was actually a sort of confession.

Charlie’s brows drew together in a frown, but
he didn’t call me on it, just turned and walked away, his cords
whistling briskly with the rhythm. I hurried down the stairs. Davy
stood making popping sounds with his lips as he waited, a pent-up
bundle of energy.

I pushed open the door to the cellar, tried
to delete the creepy-crawly phobia from my brain, and carefully
made my way to the middle of the room where I knew the cord to be.
The darkness seemed to shift and ebb as my pupils dilated. I raised
my arm and blindly grasped for the string, giving it a yank when it
came in contact with my fingers.

“Wow!” Davy said from the doorway as the
light illuminated the room with its decades-old, dust-covered
shelves and boxes. “This is cool!”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” I turned around and
surveyed the room through the eyes of my inner child. The objects
I’d casually referred to as junk when I’d been with Handel,
suddenly seemed mysterious, full of promise, and absolutely cool.
Way cool, in fact. “Hey,” I said, pointing across the room. “Why
don’t you take that side and I’ll take this side. The first one to
find treasure has to run up and get us both a soda from the machine
in the office.”

Davy grinned so wide I thought his face would
split. “One, two, three, go!” he yelled, before I had time to set
any ground rules. He dropped to his knees and started squeezing
through a space no bigger than a few inches, scurrying like a rat
in a maze to find cheese.

I shifted objects aside, climbing carefully
around a rusty machine to get to a shelf that looked promising. A
stack of dusty books leaned haphazardly, hardbacks covering topics
of wine production and sales, mingled with paperbacks dealing in
harvesting, marketing, and insecticides. I glanced at the covers as
I rearranged them in a neater pile and set a couple aside to look
through later.

Stacks of boxes leaned haphazardly in the
corner. Two more lay open on the floor, the contents tumbled out as
though someone had been interrupted in the middle of a search. I
didn’t remember the boxes being open before or rifled through. I
bent down and picked up a keychain that lay in the midst of the
junk. A little emblem dangled from the end with the words, City of
Lights, San Francisco. The back was engraved with the initials, SP.
A tarnished key was attached to the ring. I turned it over in my
palm and frowned, then reached in my pocket and drew out the key to
the front doors of the winery. I pressed them together. They
matched.

“Well now we know how they got in the
winery,” I mumbled under my breath.

“I found something!” Davy yelled from across
the room, not five minutes later, his voice muffled as though he
were talking through one of those string and tin can
telephones.

I turned around and caught sight of legs
sticking out from behind the old file cabinets in the corner. He
had managed to squeeze his head between the cabinet and the wall,
no doubt restricting his brain capacity. As I watched, he wiggled
backward and stood up, his cheeks red and raw looking as though
they’d been in a vise. And I guess they had. In his hands he held a
metal tin, the kind hard candy used to come in. He held it up over
his head and waved it like a flag.

“Look what I found! Now you have to go get
the sodas.” His grin was contagious, and I found myself making my
way back across the room with a matching grin on my face.

“Did you really find that back there?” I
asked. I was sure the cabinets were set too close to the wall for
anything that size to slide between.

He nodded, sitting down cross-legged on the
stone floor to open the tin. “There’s a hole back there,” he
explained absently, his attention focused on the can. The lid was
slightly dented in one corner but it popped off without too much
fuss, revealing a thick crumpled envelope nestled inside. He pulled
it out and looked beneath at the empty container, disappointment
filling his face. “There’s nothing in here ‘cept a bunch o’
papers,” he grumbled with evident disgust.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, bending
down to pick up the discarded envelope. “But the tin is kind of
cool. Maybe you could use it to put rocks in or something,” I
suggested. I pulled the flap open and found myself staring at what
appeared to be a stack of photographs, the top one marred with
fingerprints and smudges from lots of handling, but the images
shockingly familiar.

“Can I get the sodas, Billie? I’m thirsty.”
Davy stood up, rubbing his nose with dirty fingers.

Unable to speak, I just nodded.

“What kind ya want?” he asked, heading to the
door.

“Whatever you like,” I said numbly. I didn’t
want him to see my face. I could feel it hardening, like damp clay
left to bake in the sun, the outer layer brittle and beginning to
crack.

The clumping of his shoes up the stairs faded
away. I stood transfixed to the spot, my gaze on the yellowed
envelope in my shaking hands. I pressed my back against the wall
and slowly lowered myself to the floor, hugging my knees against my
chest as I tried to breathe normally. A feeling of panic filled me
as it had in Handel’s office the day of the funeral, and I wondered
vaguely if I would black out again. Would I wake up to Davy’s wide,
blue eyes peering down at me with childish fear? I couldn’t let
that happen. After sucking in a gasping breath, I closed my eyes
for just a moment and leaned my head against the wall, trying to
calm my agitated spirit.