Fatal Fixer-Upper (26 page)

'I'm afraid so,
ma petite
,' Philippe said. I rolled my eyes but didn't comment.

'So there are two ways out. Through the door we came in, or through the door at the other end. Has Mr. Rodgers come back at all since he put you down here? With food or anything?' If so, maybe we could bash him over the head next time he showed up.

'Not until he brought you,' Philippe said, accompanied by a complaint from his empty stomach.

'Well, he'll have to feed us eventually,' I said.

'I'm afraid not,
chérie
. He didn't feed the other fellow.'

'What other fellow?'

'There's a dead man at the end of the tunnel,' Philippe said, all trace of French accent gone now. I gulped. Yep, that put things into perspective. Philippe wasn't claustrophobic. He just didn't like being locked in here with a corpse, coupled with the knowledge that that corpse might have been living and breathing when it arrived here, too. Pushing nausea and fear aside ruthlessly, I tried to focus on what was important. 'You tried the door, of course?'

Philippe assured me that he had. '
He
did, too. That seems to be what he was doing down there. Trying to claw his way out.'

I swallowed. 'Thanks. That picture will stay with me for a while.' Philippe didn't answer. 'Show me the way,' I added.

Philippe gulped. 'You want to go down there?'

'I don't
want
to. But I know there's no way out through
this
door. If there's a door down there, I want to check it out.'

'There's no way through that door, either,' Philippe said.

'The guy is still here. And he hasn't been dead very long. There's still a lot left of him.'

Another mental image I could have done without. My voice trembled as I said, 'I wonder if it's Martin Wentworth. He was a professor at Barnham College until he disappeared a couple of weeks ago.'

'Unless someone else has disappeared in the last few weeks,' Philippe said, 'that's probably who it is. Or was.'

'He must have been here this whole time. Poor guy.' I shivered. Philippe must have felt the movement, because he reached out and put an arm around my shoulders. This time I didn't shake it off.

It turned out to be a long night. I fell asleep eventually, worn out by fretting. I was sitting on the cold floor, leaning on the cold wall, with Philippe's head in my lap. It didn't seem worth the trouble to tell him to move. I needed to conserve all my energy for getting us out of there in the morning, and I didn't need to waste any on Philippe. As for how I was going to accomplish that feat, I had no idea, but I had to try, because Philippe sure as hell wasn't. He seemed resigned to just sit and starve. I wasn't. I was cold, tired, overwhelmed, and scared out of my mind, but there were too many things I still wanted to do to give up without a fight. I had a house to renovate, a new job to find, and a man to kiss. Because now that I was looking at the possibility of never getting the chance to do it, suddenly I wanted very much to kiss Derek.

The idea that the rest of my (short) life would be a continuation of this moment, stuck in the dark with Phil Albertson, getting hungrier and colder and weaker as time wore on, was depressing. It was also an incentive to come up with a way to get out. About halfway through the night the batteries on the cell phone gave out from being on continuously. There were no tools anywhere, and Mr. Rodgers had thoughtfully removed Philippe's Rolex for safekeeping, so we didn't even know what time it was after that. As the hours passed, I became increasingly disoriented. In the solid blackness underground, it could have been midnight, dawn, or high noon. Mr. Rodgers never did come back with food or anything else, and I never heard a single noise from the rest of the house.

The room we were in must be soundproofed, probably back in the days when Alexander Cooper had been smuggling gypsum, flour, blankets, and other necessities into Maine from Canada and ports beyond. Some of those blankets would have come in handy right now, but no such luck. The door Philippe had mentioned, in front of which lay the body of Professor Martin Wentworth, must lead farther into the tunnel and eventually down to the sea. That would be the best way out, it seemed. I had seen the door we'd have to go through in order to get back into the house, and it seemed impenetrable.

Also, there was the small matter of Graham Rodgers on the other side of it. I hadn't seen the door to the tunnel, although if Martin Wentworth hadn't been able to get through it, I didn't know how Philippe and I would manage. Still, it seemed we'd have to try. Otherwise, we were looking at being another kind of SOL, one I hadn't mentioned to Wayne earlier: shit outta luck. I contained myself until Philippe woke up, and then I told him the plan. He wasn't impressed. 'The door is locked, Avery. Bolted. Chained. And there's a corpse lying in front of it. I'm not going back there.'

'Fine,' I said. 'I'll go.'

'You can't go down there by yourself!'

'It's either that or sitting here. You can do what you want, but I'm going to find a way out.' I got to my feet, wincing, and shook out my stiffened arms and legs. 'I don't suppose you have any idea what time it is?'

'Six o'clock?' Philippe suggested. 'Seven? Eight?'

'Thanks.' He obviously had no clue. I started feeling my way toward the other side of the room, trailing my fingers along the wall as I went. Eventually I smacked up against the opposite wall and found the door. My hand fumbled for the handle, and I pulled the door open, only to stop on the threshold, gagging, as the reek of death wafted up from beyond, sweet and strong. 'Oh, Lord!'

'Told you,' Philippe's voice said from several feet away.

'You did. Thanks.' I shook my head from side to side in an effort to dispel the dizziness. There was nothing I could do about the stench, unfortunately. Pulling my shirt up over my nose helped a little, but not enough. 'I'm still going down there. And if you had any backbone, you'd come along instead of letting me go alone.'

'I've already been down there,' Philippe said. I sniffed and regretted it immediately. 'Suit yourself. If I don't come back up, you'll know I found a way out. By then, maybe you'll have developed enough guts to follow. If you're not dead by then.' I took a deep breath and plunged into the tunnel. Philippe stayed where he was, the bastard. The passage I had entered was narrow and sloped down toward the ocean. I could keep one shoulder brushing the wall on one side, and the fingers on the other hand touching the opposite wall, with one hand stretched out in front of me to make sure I didn't walk into anything. Still, it was slow going. The smell of decomposing flesh became stronger as I walked on, but it also became more bearable, as my nostrils got used to it and my brain shut down to the fact that there was a rotting corpse up ahead.

To distract myself, I thought about Derek. If Philippe's internal clock was right, even marginally, Derek had either just come to work, or he'd be getting to Aunt Inga's house soon. What would he do when I didn't come down to open the door for him? Kick it in? Call Wayne? And when he realized I wasn't there, what would he think? That I'd packed my bags and hightailed it back to New York, petrified of commitment and the idea that he wanted me to stay in Waterfield? Or would he realize that I hadn't gone willingly? That I wouldn't leave without telling him? Would he try to find me or write me off without a second thought? Would I ever see him again, or would my last memory of him—and his of me—be my turning down his offer to spend the night?

Cheery stuff. I shuffled on, in stygian, smelly darkness, until my toes touched something squishy while simultaneously my hand met the cold metal of another reinforced steel door. I jumped back. That was too close. The next few minutes were some of the most unpleasant I've ever lived through. Going through the pockets of a dead man isn't ever much fun, and this dead man wasn't even fresh.

It was worth it, though, because Martin Wentworth turned out to have all sorts of things about his person. Mostly useless, true, but not entirely. There was a cell phone with a battery as dead as mine. There was an assortment of pens and scraps of paper—notes, perhaps, but unreadable down here. There was a set of keys; I doubted they'd be of any help, but I pocketed them anyway. There was a wallet, and if we ever got out of there, that would help to identify him; it was either that or his teeth, most likely. As Philippe had said, there was quite a lot left, but what there was was probably past the point of being useful. There were coins, a half dozen little screws, a paper clip or two, a sealed square of what felt like a wet wipe; in short, the usual array of odds and ends that people keep in their purses (women) and pockets (men).

In one hand—and I use the word loosely—the corpse had something more useful. Very carefully I took it away from him, used the wet wipe to clean it off (thanks, Professor!), and examined it like a blind person reading Braille. Unless I missed my guess, Professor Wentworth had been locked up still in possession of equipment of some kind. It wasn't a Swiss Army knife, but it was similar. Something with a lot of attachments. Maybe a miniature bicycle tool kit . . . ? Wrenches of various sizes, blades, even a bottle opener and a corkscrew. Most of the blades were broken off, unfortunately, and I surmised that he had been using the knife to try to chisel, pry, or gouge his way out through the door.

Something that wasn't a knife blade was broken, too, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. This attachment was slim and round, not flat, like a blade. Similar to the corkscrew, but not twisted. Eventually it dawned on me: it had been a small screwdriver. And then I remembered the array of tiny screws in the dead man's pocket, and it all made sense. He hadn't been trying to chisel his way through the door; he'd been taking the door off its hinges. Philippe had told me that he'd already checked the locks, and it wasn't that I didn't trust him, exactly, but I checked again, just to be sure. He was right. The door was padlocked, several times, and every padlock was in place. But when I fumbled my way to the other side of the door, where the hinges would be, I had more luck. Almost all the screws were out of the top hinge, and several were missing from the bottom. Perhaps Professor Wentworth had started his work standing up, but as time wore on and he got weaker from hunger and thirst, he'd ended up sitting on the floor, still working to get out. It was horrible, and pathetic, and inspiring, all at the same time.

'How are you,
ma petite
?' Philippe's voice asked from the darkness. His curiosity must have gotten the better of him, to bring him down here after me. His voice was nasal, as if he were pinching his nose shut.

'How do you think I am?' I answered. 'I just rifled the pockets of a dead man. How would you be?'

He wisely didn't answer. 'Did you find anything?'

'Lots of stuff. No magic teleportation device, unfortunately. But I think he'd been working on taking the screws out of the door hinges. More than half of them are gone. If we can take out the rest, we may be able to pull the door far enough into the passage to squeeze through. Or push it out.'

'I doubt that very much,
chérie
,' Philippe said. I rolled my eyes, not that he could see me in the dark.

'Are you always this encouraging? No, never mind. Don't answer that.' Thinking back on the time I'd known him, I realized that yes, he
was
always that encouraging. Or discouraging. Every time I'd come up with an idea for a new piece of furniture or a fun, new fabric pattern, or even a new restaurant for dinner, he'd told me why we should just do it his way instead.

Philippe huffed. I ignored him. 'Help me move the body,' I said instead. He took a step back. I could hear the heel of his hand-tooled boot scraping on the floor when he moved. His voice was stuck somewhere between rebellious and whiny.

'Why?'

I sighed. 'Because he's lying in front of the door. I don't want to have to step around him while I'm trying to get the rest of the screws out.' Or worse, on him.

'I'm not touching him!'

'I can't move him by myself. If I try to drag him, something might fall off.'

'Gack!' Philippe said, and if the situation hadn't been so dismal, I might have enjoyed knowing that I wasn't alone on the verge of throwing up. However, the darkness and the smell were already bad enough without that.

'Sorry,' I said. 'Look, you don't have to touch the body, OK? Just grab his shoes or something. I'll take the shoulders.'

I didn't wait for him to agree, just bent. After a few moments of mutinous silence, he did the same. The process wasn't pleasant, but it got done. We managed to move the late professor ten feet farther up the passage without losing any bits and pieces, and then we returned to the door. I started picking at the screws, improvising with the few attachments left on the Swiss Army knife, while Philippe stood by and made useless comments. When my fingers were bleeding and I had broken half my nails as well as another knife blade, I ordered him to take over, and he did, albeit reluctantly. I sat down on the floor to rest, listening to the tiny sounds he was making, making sure he kept working.

'That guy you were with the other day,' he said after a while.

'Derek Ellis.' I leaned my head back against the cold stone and closed my eyes.

'Are you involved with him?'

It wasn't any of his business, but I answered anyway.

'Not yet. If we get out of here alive, I'll give it serious consideration.'

Philippe didn't answer. The tiny scratchy noises continued. 'Will he realize that something's wrong and come looking for you?'

'I don't know,' I answered truthfully. 'I've only known him for a couple of weeks, so I can't be sure. I think so.' But even if he did realize that something was wrong, would he think to look for me here? Martin Wentworth had been down here for two weeks, and no one had found him.

'Can I ask a question?' I asked a few minutes later, when my thoughts became too dismal to bear considering any longer. Philippe assented, although his voice was wary.

'Why didn't you tell me that your name is not really Philippe Aubert and you're not actually French?'

'Oh. Um . . .' The sounds of progress halted for a few seconds, before he started working again.

'We dated for four months. I thought we were close. I told you private things about myself. Did you think I'd like you less if I knew you were just plain Phil Albertson from Tennessee?'

Well, duh! Of course he had. I actually felt kind of sorry for him. It had to be awful to feel so insignificant that becoming someone else seemed like a reasonable choice. Especially when, I had to grudgingly admit, he did have a real talent and expertise.

'That's the last screw,' Philippe said eventually. 'The top hinge is off the wall.'

I jumped to my feet and grimaced when my knee protested. The cool dankness down here wasn't helping the stiffness at all. 'Maybe we can push it a little bit. Get it to bend.'

'I doubt it,' Philippe said, still he did his best. 'It has a little give, but not enough to open,' he reported. I nodded. I could see a thin sliver of . . . not light, exactly, but a less dense darkness, up above.

'I'm ready to try again. I'll work on the bottom hinge, and you can rest. You did a good job.' He moved, and I settled down on the floor in front of the door and went back to work. It was an almost impossible process in the dark: first I had to locate the head of the screw with my fingertip, then I had to guide a dime from Wentworth's pocket—what we were down to using at this point—to where the screw was, and then try to keep the dime in the tiny groove on the head of the screw while I twisted it. It slipped again and again, and my fingers were soon just as bad off as they had been. I managed to unscrew two more screws, though. It seemed to take forever, and I wondered how many hours had passed since Mr. Rodgers has shoved me in here. Twelve? Twentyfour? More?

'Ssssh!' Philippe said.

I froze.

'Listen.'

He held his breath. I did the same, straining. At first I heard nothing, but then my ears detected noises. Or voices. They were faint and far away, and I glanced over my shoulder up the passage. Was it Mr. Rodgers, coming back to finish us off? Was he on his way down the passage toward us right now?

'I think it's out there,' Philippe said.

'Out where? Outside the door?' I listened again. Maybe he was right. But how could anybody be outside the door? If Philippe hadn't been hearing it, too, I'd worry that I was hallucinating.

And then I remembered my conversation with Wayne Rasmussen at the Waymouth Tavern the other night. I had suggested that Professor Wentworth might have gotten stuck in one of the tunnels, and Wayne had said that he'd talk to the coast guard about having an extra look around next time they patrolled.

'Lift me up on your shoulders,' I said frantically. 'Quick.'

'I don't think that's going to work,' Philippe said, predictably, but he did as I asked. I braced myself with a hand against the wall and put my mouth right up to the tiny crack between wall and door, so close that I could feel cool metal against my lips. An almost imperceptible trickle of fresh air was coming through, and I filled my lungs with it, thankfully. The voices were a little more audible up here, too. I couldn't recognize words, or tell how many people were out there, but at least I could confirm that they were, indeed, voices.

'Helloooo!' I fluted through the crack. 'Is anybody there?'

The voices outside ceased. My heart sank. Had they left without hearing me? 'Hello?' I tried again, into the silence.

'Anybody? Can you hear me?'

I heard noises from outside. Then a voice spoke, closer now. 'I can hear you. I just don't know where you are.'

I smiled. The cavalry had arrived.