Necessary Evil (34 page)

All that remained of the house was the
stone-lined root cellar and the remains of the granite fireplace. The timber
used to build the house had long since rotted away. Leaves, the trunk of a
fallen tree, and other debris had collected in the place that once stored a
family’s winter food supply and, much later, hidden a little girl desperate to
be alone. Looking at it that night, I marveled at how the younger me once had
the courage to sit in such a deserted place.

Greg’s voice broke the silence.

“You think it’s in here?” he asked.

I nodded, uncertainly. “Yes.”

“It’s not on Chase property.”

“I know, but…” I shrugged. “I just had a
feeling.”

He played the light about the remains.

Thinking the treasure was here was a long
shot – and it was getting longer the more I thought about it. For Alexander to
stash the money here meant that he assumed the Hills wouldn’t touch this place
while he was gone, a risky assumption. But Avery would surely never come across
this by accident. The clue fit better, too: Alexander would have said, “
in
the basement” rather than “foundation,” if he’d meant the
family home. And if he’d meant the basement, why did the farm hands testify
that he’d gone out of the house to bury the treasure?

They could have lied, of course, just as
Alexander could have said “foundation” when he meant the family basement. But I
didn’t think so, and there was only one way to find out.

Greg was saying, “We ought to wait until
morning…”

I jumped into the foundation.

My landing was unsteady, the floor made
slippery by fallen leaves, but I didn’t lose my balance. I recovered and lifted
the lamp triumphantly.

“If you think I’m going to wait for a
little thing like daylight, you’re crazy,” I said.

He stared. Then, through the night air, I
heard him laugh, and the sound made my heart skip a beat.

“You know, Madeleine,” he said, and then
he jumped into the pit beside me. My lamp light caught the smile on his face as
he landed. He steadied himself and continued. “I always knew you were a
treasure hunter at heart. Just like me.”

He was standing a little too close, his
presence just a little too much. My angry words came back to taunt me:
It’s
always been Tremonti.
He’d looked so crushed then, so excited now. Could he
have recovered so quickly? Or, like me, was he just trying to put it behind
him?

It didn’t matter.

“Let’s start looking,” I said.

“Let’s,” he nodded. “Flip you for the
south wall.”

“As if you knew which one it was.”

“As if it
mattered
,” he returned
cheerfully.

We separated and went to opposite walls. The
hole was not as deep as memory or shadow indicated. My eyes were almost level
with the ground, a fact which greatly lessened the trapped feeling I had. I
lifted the lamp and moved closer to the rock-embedded wall.

The debris under my feet made an unsteady
platform, forcing me to move slowly and carefully. I walked around the
perimeter, checking the walls for scratch marks or loose rocks, or maybe an “X”
to mark the spot. I didn’t know what to look for and I felt rather foolish – an
amateur doing what a professional could do better, but I didn’t stop.

The walls had held up pretty well over
time. There were a few loose stones, but I hesitated to pull them out to
examine what was behind them, worried that I might find more insects than
treasure. The walls had caved in a few places, loosened by rain and time, the
rocks now partially buried under the debris. I felt the softened, root-threaded
earth, but found nothing to indicate that there had been anything buried there.

Every once in a while, during my brief
examination, the sounds of the woods seemed to change. There would be a snap,
like someone stepping on a twig. Or the tree frogs would momentarily hush, as
though silenced before a looming threat. I would freeze in response, my nerves
taut, my mind roving through possible explanations - all of them
life-threatening and most of them absurd. Once, I swore I heard slow-moving
footsteps through the leaves, but it ceased almost before I identified it. I
looked to see if Greg noticed the sound, but he seemed absorbed in his
examinations.

Relax, Maddie.

I focused again on my search and found
that I was back to where I started. I lowered the lantern and sighed in defeat.

“Maddie!”

The sound made me jump, and the note in
Gregory’s tone quickened my pulse. I ran to where he was bent over.

He pointed to a spot. “Put your lamp
there.”

I did as he said. He handed me the
flashlight and knelt in front of a pile of fallen stones. He began to throw
them to one side, almost recklessly.

“So loose,” he muttered to himself. “Can’t
have been here long, but…”

That’s when we saw the box.

It was tucked into a hole in the wall
behind the stones: a plain tin box, with a handle so rusted that it had molded
back into the side of the box.

“Gregory!” I gasped. “It’s…”

He was already scraping away the
imprisoning earth. “Help me, Maddie.”

I kneeled beside him, and between the two
of us, we dug enough out to start pulling at the box. It took a bit of effort
to move it, because it was heavy and the ground had fallen in around it.
Looking back, we probably should have waited, should have documented the site
better. But we were both fueled with impatience, and nearly tore the box apart
in our combined urgency.

“Is it really…?” I asked.

He said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

The earth suddenly gave way, and we fell
backward, taking the box with us. I, still holding the flashlight, rolled to
one side as he rolled to the other.

As I did so, the light shifted, exposing
another part of the ground, and something else caught my eye - something that was
so out of place that it was enough to take my mind off of the long-lost
treasure for a moment.

It was buried under branches, faded with
time, and so coated in dirt that I could barely make it out. It was a plaid
horse blanket. Only someone who had been at Chase Farm for more than seven
years would have recognized it. Uncle Michael himself had decided to change out
the old plaid horse blankets for the more modern weave in a stylish gray color,
giving away all the plaid to a recycling plant.

I pushed aside some of the debris and
assured myself that this was, indeed, the Chase Farm blanket, but what was it
doing here? Had I brought it here one time and forgotten it? That would have
been most unlike me. Had someone else? But who?

Greg interrupted then.

“Maddie, bring the light.”

He was kneeling in front of the box,
brushing off the dirt. I crawled around the front of it, telling myself that it
could be anyone’s box, that it needn’t be Alexander’s. It could just as well
belong to the Hill family. Judging from the tense look on Greg’s face, he was
thinking the same thing.

“There’s something stamped here,” he said,
gesturing to the top of the box and squinting in the dim light.

I lifted the flashlight and the light fell
across the top, where it had been stamped with one word:
McInnis.

We’d found it. Here, on the wrong piece of
property, the McInnis treasure, after 150 years, was sitting right in front of
us.

 “Oh my God…”

My voice echoed in the empty darkness. I
stared, my heart pounding. Here it was, the answer we’d all been waiting for,
the treasure that Uncle Michael had been so sure existed. This box proved my
uncle right, even while it disappointed his hopes that Alexander was a
righteous, misunderstood man - if, that is, the box contained the McInnis
family fortune.

Greg was shaking his head, brushing the
dirt off of the top of the box.

“I can’t believe it,” I muttered, and he
looked at me. “I just can’t believe it. After all this time… It’s here. It’s
really here.”

“It is,” he said. “And you found it,
Maddie. You figured it out and you knew where to look for it. After only a few
weeks with me, you’re getting to be quite the detective, you know. If you ever
give up horses, you might want to consider this as a new career.”

His voice was an odd mixture of tones and
implications, and I flushed with pleasure before I remembered the argument that
had me charging out into the dark by myself.

How different everything seemed now.

The feeling of triumph was short-lived.
Looking at him across that trunk, I realized that the end was coming. Now that
the treasure was found, he’d be leaving for good. Our collaboration would be at
an end.

I couldn’t let him go after that terrible
argument. But what could I say?

I looked at the box.

“Aunt Susanna,” I said. “We have to tell
her.”

“Better than that,” he said, springing to
his feet. “We’ll show her. Give me a hand.”

We dragged the box back to the edge of the
foundation; then he sprang up, climbing the walls easily, surprising me with his
agility. I tossed the flashlight up to him. Then he laid flat on the ground as
I tugged and grunted, and lifted the end of the box to him. He pulled it up
easily.

“Need a hand?” he asked.

“I forgot the lantern,” I said, and turned
to retrieve it.

It was then that I heard a snap, echoing
like a gun shot in the night air.

Startled, I jumped, and then I stepped
back. My foot caught on something. I twisted and went falling forward on my
face. I threw my hands in front of me and they plunged into the debris, my left
hand tangling in the branches, the other protecting my face.

“Maddie! Are you all right?”

Something moved past my face, and I jerked
back instinctively. As my left hand moved, it tangled in a mess of fibers that were
whispy and rough, like grass - only much finer. It freaked me out and I pulled
it back hard, scraping the back of my hand on some of the undergrowth and
bringing a handful of dirt and grass that wove its way around my fingers.

“Madeleine?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him.

I sat up, but as I brushed the dirt from
my hand, I realized that there was something more than just grass dangling from
it. Something cool and hard bumped against my arm, and it was too dark to
identify it. I reached out and touched it, intending to pull it away, but the
feel of the smooth stone brought me up short.

“Hurry up,” he said. “I want to get this
thing open.”

“Sure…” I said absently.

The lantern was glowing just out of reach
in the little hollow where it had fallen. I crawled over and pulled it up,
casting a bright light across my left hand.

It wasn’t grass that was entangled in my
fingers: it was hair. Long, dark, wavy hair. Human hair. The dangling stone I’d
felt was oval, in a Native American setting, hanging from the remains of a
badly decaying leather cord. I recognized it at once.

I jumped up with a sound that was
somewhere between a gasp and a squeal.

“
Gregory!”

Gregory was standing with the flashlight playing
over the trunk. He flashed it in my direction, blinding me as I stared at my
arm.

“What is it?” he asked.

My breath was coming fast. I couldn’t tear
my eyes from my arm as I lifted it up to show him. I felt like I had a mouthful
of sand as I spoke.

“I’ve found Allison Winters.”

“
What
…?”

He barely finished the word.

Something flashed through the night air,
close at hand - and Gregory folded, dropping to the ground like a dead man.

The flashlight fell as the sound of the
impact hit my ears. I screamed, probably his name, and jumped forward to grasp
at the wall.

Another beam of light hit my eyes. Someone
was standing over Greg’s prone body. The same someone who’d laid him out.

I froze, blinking, unable to see.

A familiar voice sliced through the night
air.

“Hello, Maddie,” Joe Tremonti said,
shoving back the hood that obscured his face. “Fancy meeting you here.”

I gaped up at him.

“Joe!” It was a sound somewhere between a
gasp and a scream. “Joe, what are you doing here?”

Joe had lowered the light to bend over
where Greg had fallen. For a moment, he was clearly silhouetted in the
moonlight, and I saw the outline of the backpack he was wearing - and the spade
that he bore like a spear in his free hand. It was new and shiny and it
glinted, knife-like, in the moonlight.

I still couldn’t grasp what had happened.

“Is he all right?” I asked. Begged, more
like. “Joe, is he all right? What happened?”

He turned then, and stared down at me from
the edge of the pit, his figure looming up in the night and casting a shadow
over me.

And I
still
didn’t get it. I didn’t
want to.

“Help me up,” I commanded, lifting my
arms. “Lift me up. Please. Quickly.”

He didn’t move. He just grinned at me.

“Isn’t it a little late for a dig, Maddie?”
he asked.

“Joe! Help him!”

“Oh…” he said softly, almost crooning.
“Yes. Your houseguest and blackmailer, the man you thought you could handle.
You don’t have to worry about him, Maddie. He won’t be bothering you anymore.”

I stared up at him.

This is insane. This is
Joe
.

 “What did you do?” I whispered.
“Joe, what did you
do
?”

He hefted up the shovel again. “I took
care of a problem. Now I have only one.”

With a sharp movement, he thrust the
shovel into the ground beside him. The force cut through the hard-packed,
root-lined ground so deep that it stood quivering on its own, and I realized
then just how strong he was.

“You
are
alone now, aren’t you,
Maddie?”

Alone…

He’s killed Gregory.

I thought I knew what pain was. After all,
I’d had enough experience with it. But what I was feeling now was as powerful
as a full-on collision with a freight train, a dizzying, heart-stopping sort of
pain that nearly drove me to my knees.

Secondary realization spread like a
wild-fire through me, sucking the air from my chest and shrinking the world to
a pin-point of awareness. I stared at him, unable to speak, rage building up in
me. But even then, I thought,
This
is crazy.
That’s Joe. You know him. You know him.

“Maddie,” he said, watching me as one
would watch a caged pet. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you? Why did you
come out here tonight? Why couldn’t you stay at the party, like you told me you
would?”

“Joe,” I said, and my voice was
surprisingly steady. “Is Gregory all right?”

He sighed and hunkered down to look at me.

“You’re all alone now, Madeleine,” he
said. “Just you and me.”

Rage flooded my system. Grief took over,
and I lost control. I charged the wall, scrambling up it, wordlessly screaming,
determined to hurt him. I came within inches of his smug face and he, without
flinching, put his hand on my forehead and shoved me backwards into the
darkness of the abandoned foundation.

I fell hard and unprepared. My head
bounced off the ground and something jabbed at my rib cage. My arm hit a rock
or a log, and Allison’s stone broke free, disappearing into the night. I don’t
know what happened to the lamp, but it must have shattered against something,
for I was plunged into sudden darkness.

Pain spread through my side and I laid
there, panting, fighting sobs.

Joe’s voice reached me through the night
air.

“I’ve come for the same thing as you,
Maddie,” he said, lightly. “And I’ve come to get Allison. As you’ve just
discovered, you’re laying right on top of her. I know because… Well, I put her
there.”

Groaning, I rolled into a crouch,
clutching my side. I was shaking, my teeth chattering, and his words filled me
with a nameless dread.

“No,” I whispered. “This isn’t happening.
You didn’t kill her. This is a joke. Tell me it’s a joke. You couldn’t – and
Greg…”

I had to stop as his laughter rolled over
me, smothering me. When I looked up, he was crouched on the side of the pit, a
predator sizing up his prey.

“Would you really believe me now, if I
said I didn’t?” he asked. “You may be a little on the weak-minded side, Maddie,
but you aren’t stupid. You don’t really believe that I’d come out here in the
middle of the night, under the cover of darkness, and kill a man just because I
thought there might be a treasure around here somewhere.”

The last time I saw her was at that epic
party your folks threw for our last dig day with that delicious Professor
Tremonti
.

Drink to my health, friends,
Joe had said, when
he was making the wedding announcement. It was a memory seared into my conscious
by keen disappointment; and I could see now, as clearly as then, Joe’s white
complexion and the way his hands trembled as he lifted his glass to toast.

It was then that I believed him. Funny how
easy the admission was, as though it was the last piece in a puzzle that I’d
long wanted to finish. Joe had killed Allison, and now Greg.

But this was no time for grief. I had to
stay alert. I had to keep him talking. It was the only way I had a chance to
stay alive – and see to it that he got caught.

If I could get out of this pit, that is.

Get him off guard, Maddie.

“You killed her the night of the dig
party,” I stated, my voice a monotone.

Joe cocked his head at me, surprised.

“You remember it,” he said. “That was ten
years ago. You were there, following me around with that adoring expression on
your face. First crush, I think, but I didn’t mind you hanging around. You were
just a kid.”

“So was
Allison
,” I snapped. “What
was she, twenty-one?”

“So she was,” he said. “Allison Winters
was attractive, and she knew it. She was helping me with a research project for
my first book. That’s when she found out that
I
…”

He broke off and looked at me sharply.
While he was speaking, I had gotten to my feet, slowly, carefully, trying to look
as though I was defeated. I was in the middle of the foundation, which was
still only inches away from his reach, surrounded by softened earth that was
chest height or higher, and there was no way I could get out and run before he
caught me.

Joe saw my position, and guessed my
intention; but he knew, like me, that I was fairly trapped. He got to his feet,
and in a display of nonchalance more terrifying than any open threat, he
sauntered around the perimeter. He seemed bigger then I remembered, and his shoulders
moved in sync with his steps: easy, relaxed, completely at ease.

“I might as well tell you,” he said
conversationally, like we were discussing his new book over a cup of coffee.
“We’re already here, after all.”

He paused and turned his back to me, his
hand on his chin, as though he needed to recollect. But his purpose was to show
me the handgun tucked into the waistband at the small of his back.

My knees went weak, but I was determined
not
to give in. When Joe turned back, he found me where I had been.

“You were about to tell me,” I said, “that
Allison was going to expose you as an intellectual thief.”

He looked startled, but he quickly
recovered and his grin widened.

“Why, Madeleine Warwick,” he said, mocking
me. “Who knew you’d turned detective? Now how, I wonder, did you discover
that?”

“It what you accused Gregory Randall of,”
I said. “We usually accuse other people of the things we’re guilty of
ourselves. What you said about Gregory wasn’t true at all, was it?”

Joe nodded slowly, then sighed.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t. Quite the
opposite, actually. You won’t find a man less interested in glory than he is in
truth.” He paused and, with malicious delight, said, “I should have said,
than
he
was
.”

I glared.

He began to pace again. “I was worried when
I learned Randall was here. His reputation exceeds his actual ability, but he
is still a decent historian and he’s almost as persistent as you. I knew that
if anyone could find the McInnis treasure, it would be him. And I couldn’t
allow that.”

“You knew where it was?”

“Of course I did,” he snapped. “I
practically tripped over it the night I left Allison here. I didn’t know what
it was then. I had… Other things on my mind.” He waved his hands impatiently,
as though to stop me from getting ahead of him. “You see, like you, I didn’t
believe in the treasure. My only interest was finishing that course with my
class and getting back to California to start my real career. The east coast
was a dead-end, as far as I was concerned. My life was out west – that’s where
my career was, my wife…” He shook his head, as though driving off a bad memory.
“Allison knew that. She was just a summer thing. We were adults. She
should
have known. But when she found out about Amber and me, she became emotional.
She didn’t want to listen to reason and she threatened to tell the truth about
the research.”

“And you couldn’t allow that,” I said.

“No. I couldn’t. It didn’t matter, really.
The man who’d done the work was dead - suicide - and not really in position to
publish or protest. But she kept insisting that he deserved the accolades, even
though it was I who’d discovered the work and I who finished it.”

“So you finished her.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “I did.”

He started pacing again, and I looked
again for an escape. Nothing seemed promising – I would not be able to out-run
him and fighting him off would be difficult, if not impossible. He had at least
seventy-five lean-muscle pounds on me and he had a gun. My only weapons, if you
could call them that, were my lamp and whatever I could find on the ground.
That he would kill me wasn’t a question.

I needed more time, and the only way to
buy it was to keep him talking.

So I said, “You buried her here, then
what? How did her car end up in another state, when you were on a plane to
California?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “That was
easy enough,” he boasted. “I knew that she was taking a road trip and I wasn’t
supposed to leave until the morning. I had to change planes anyway, so I left
the night of the party in her car. I drove it all the way to somewhere outside
of Chicago, ditched it, and caught a bus to the airport. I made my connecting
flight with about fifteen minutes to spare and no one put two and two together.
It was genius. As long as no one discovered where the body was, I was safe.

“I had stumbled across the treasure box
when I was covering her up, but I didn’t realize what it was. It’s not on Chase
property, and I didn’t believe in the story anyway. It was only when Mark
Dulles’ special came on that I had second thoughts.”

I remember thinking that if I ever met
Mark Dulles again, I’d probably punch him in the eye for all the trouble his
special had caused.

Joe had continued. “But even then, as long
as the search stayed on your property, I was safe. No one would look on the
Winters
property, I thought, and I was right, as long as it
was the professionals looking. Then, when the amateurs started, I got nervous.
They have no method or discipline. They wouldn’t necessarily know where the
property lines were.”

He was pacing again, his hands behind his
back, walking in circles around me. I still hadn’t found a way out, and was
cursing myself for having left my cell phone at the house. I wondered again if
Greg was really dead or if he was just hurt, bleeding out into the ground as
this insane stand-off continued.

Oh, please…

Joe stopped and turned to me.

“Then your uncle died,” he said simply.
“And I knew I had to do something to stop the searches before they found her.
As you just have.”

A chill washed over me. I forced myself to
speak, to break the moment: “You must have known that someone would find her
eventually, even if they weren’t looking for the treasure.”

“Oh, I knew that,” he nodded. “But it
isn’t easy to dispose of a body, you know, especially when you don’t live in
the area. I needed to put it off for as long as possible. After all, evidence
erodes. And I had – and have – no intention of letting anyone else find the
treasure. It was my discovery, and I would reap the benefits of it. That’s when
I came up with the Beaumont Letter.”

“A stall,” I said, and he nodded.

“A stall. Even though I knew you didn’t
believe in the treasure, I wasn’t sure you’d go for it. But you fell for the
scheme, hook, line, and sinker. You bought me, what, four more years, Maddie?
I’m grateful.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said through gritted
teeth. Bad enough that I’d made my uncle a laughing stock – I’d gone and aided
a murderer as well.