Too Far Under (33 page)

He walked over to the counter, grabbed a long
sharp knife, and brought it over to my chair. I panicked. My entire
body trembled and my teeth chattered uncontrollably. Was he going
to stab us? But didn’t he say he wasn’t going to kill us? And why
would he stab us when he had a gun?

“I didn’t kill Mirabel and I’m not going to
kill you, but your spirits are trapped—tied up as tightly as your
arms are right now. I can free your arms but only you can free your
spirits,” he said, slicing through a piece of the rope on my arms
and unwinding the rest of it. He threw the knife on the table then
ran for the front door and was gone.

I quickly freed Lacey and Angelica, gave them
each a quick hug, then grabbed my cell phone. But I remembered the
Scientologists had it tapped. They probably had Lacey’s tapped as
well. “I guess we’ll have to find an uncompromised phone to call
the police,” I said.

“No, wait,” Lacey said, as we all rubbed our
wrists to restore circulation. “If we call the police, Dad and
Judith will find out all about this and they’ll bring charges
against you for having Angelica here and especially for exposing
her to this dangerous maniac.”

“But he pulled a gun on us and destroyed your
mother’s new will,” I said. “We have to report him.”

“Wait,” she said. She ran to the front window
and looked out. “He’s gone. Let’s take a walk outside, get some air
and think about this.”

A strange suggestion perhaps under the
circumstances, but the outdoors always helps me clear my mind. The
day had cleared and the sun was shining, so I couldn’t see any
reason not to take a short walk before we called the police and all
hell broke loose.

We stumbled out and onto the short path from
my house to Settler’s Park. The trees and bushes were a mosaic of
yellows, browns, and golds. I looked up at the red rocks at the top
of the trail and felt my inner-self click into alignment.

“Let’s walk up the path to that big tree,”
Lacey said, pointing to a tree about fifty yards away. When we got
there, she looked around carefully. “I wanted to be somewhere where
we could be sure we could talk freely,” she said with a smile.

“You look happy,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Brian only thinks he destroyed the will,”
she said.

“I know,” Angelica agreed with a grin. “Can
you believe it?”

“That wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Being the topnotch lawyer that he was,
Grandad had Mom sign two copies of her will. He may have been
forgetful, but he was still a pro. Both copies were exactly the
same, both signed and witnessed. The other one is in my car. We may
not be able to prove the Scientologists murdered Mom, but at least
we can keep them from inheriting. I’m going to take that will
directly to our lawyer.

Angelica frowned and held her hand up in
front of Lacey’s face. “No, wait. Don’t take it to the lawyer yet.
Let’s at least take another day to be sure we want this new will to
take the place of the other one.”

“We need to have the new will where it is
safe,” Lacey said. “And surely you don’t want the Scientologists to
inherit after what just happened.” She sounded exasperated. “If we
don’t turn in the new will, the Scientologists win.”

I was watching Angelica. She looked hopeless,
like she had slammed into a wall. “But if we do turn it in, Judith
wins,” she said, “Dad will get all the money and she’ll marry him.
Judith is a nasty rotten woman. I don’t want her and Dad to have
any more of Mom’s money than they’re already getting.” Angelica
dropped to the ground, sobbing.

Lacey and I immediately sat down and put our
arms around her as she cried out the pent up grief, anxiety and
stress that must have been building inside her. This little girl
had been so centered and so strong for so long that I had been
expecting a breakdown at some point. Even Indigo children have
their limits.

Lacey rubbed Angelica’s back with a soothing
motion. “It’s all right, Angelica,” she said. “I won’t take the
will to a lawyer yet. What’s one more day? You and I can talk it
through tomorrow when you’re feeling better. Come on, let’s go
home.”

We stayed on the ground for one more group
hug, then got up and walked slowly back down the path to my
house.

As soon as Lacey and Angelica left, I headed
over to the Verizon store to see what I could do about getting my
phone untapped. Oops—they said the tap couldn’t be stopped by doing
anything to my phone. Apparently, the way someone taps a cell phone
is by intercepting the signals the phone is sending out. As long as
the person tapping it has my phone number they can keep listening
to my conversations. It’s illegal, of course, but that’s a
different issue.

My best solution was to buy a prepaid
personal cell phone with a new number. I figured it would be only
temporary until the Townes family mess was cleared up. Most of my
usual business calls were unlikely to be of any interest to Brian,
so I would only give the new number to a few people like Lacey,
Angelica, and Pablo.

I took the new phone out to my car, where I
called both Pablo and Lacey from the new number and left voicemail
messages telling them to use that number to reach me. In Lacey’s
message, I reminded her that my old number was tapped. But Pablo
didn’t know any of that, so I just said I was having some problems
with my phone and he should use this new one for now.

It was dark by then and the air had a chilly
rawness from all the rain that had fallen earlier in the day. I
couldn’t wait to get home to my warm cozy house. Once I got there
and closed and locked the door behind me, I realized I was too
exhausted to think or talk to anyone. I turned off both cell
phones, gulped down some soup, and collapsed into bed. Nothing kept
me awake that night—not spooky dreams, not worries about Gramma,
not Brian’s evil actions, not anxiety over Angelica and Lacey’s
safety. I slept that deep healing sleep that sometimes follows a
traumatic day.

Tuesday morning dawned sunny and breezy,
which matched my energy level when I woke up. The cold front that
had brought Monday’s rain to the Front Range and snow to the high
country had moved on with the help of some gusty winds. I had
clients scheduled back to back until midafternoon so I hustled off
to my office.

For most of the day I forced myself to put
Gramma’s plight and the Townes’ family issues out of my mind so I
could give my clients the attention they deserved. At 3:00 when the
last one left, I grabbed my usual apple and yogurt for a late
lunch, fixed a cup of tea, sat at my desk and turned on my new
phone to check messages. The first one was from Lacey sent at 9:00
a.m. She sounded uncharacteristically cool and collected.

“Hey, Cleo, smart thinking about the new
phone number. Hope you’ve recovered from yesterday. Angelica and I
still haven’t told anyone about what happened or about the new
will. She wanted to stay home from school so we could work out what
to do about the will, but I convinced her that she needed to go to
school because there was no good way to explain her staying home.
So I dropped her off there and I’m on my way to my yoga class. Talk
to you later.”

I was encouraged that Lacey was taking such a
deliberate approach. And this on top of her finessing Brian by
having a secret second copy of Mirabel’s will. Maybe I had
misjudged her ability to remain in control in a crisis.

But it turned out to be the proverbial calm
before the storm.

Before I got to Lacey’s next message, there
was one from Pablo confirming what we’d found on the internet about
the difficulty of prosecuting eBay art fraud. “Sorry babe, but what
I’m hearing is that it’s tough to regulate commerce when the seller
can be anywhere in the world and so can the buyer,” he said. “That
means it’s not clear what regulatory body has jurisdiction. It
looks like it would take years to get any resolution. I’ll keep
looking for the seller and we can try to go after them but it’s not
going to help Martha’s need for cash right away.”

Disappointing, but pretty much what I
expected to hear. I clicked on to the next message, sent at 1:30
pm. Lacey had reverted to her hysterical self. “Omigod, Cleo,” she
shrieked. “Angelica’s school just called here to the house to ask
if we’d picked her up early from school. They said she’s not in
class and no one has seen her since lunch.” Her voice took on an
angry tone as she continued. “Shane isn’t answering his phone and I
haven’t been able to reach Dad or Judith either. What if they took
her out to send her away to school like they threatened to do?” She
paused, and then said exasperatedly, “But if they’d done that,
wouldn’t they be here packing her things? She’s not with you, is
she? Have you heard from her? Do you have any idea where she is?
Call me!”

I called her, but it went right to voice
mail. I left a message saying I hadn’t heard from Angelica or
anyone else in her family.

I didn’t have any more messages on that
voicemail, so I checked my old phone and listened to a few messages
from clients—nothing urgent. Then I sat back to think about what to
do next.

Would Derrick and/or Judith take Angelica out
of school without telling the school staff? Probably not. With a
sigh, I reflected on Angelica’s propensity for unconventional
independent action. She had probably left on her own for some
reason. But where would she go? I didn’t know her well enough to
even make a list of possibilities. The school and Lacey and
probably Derrick and Judith, and maybe even Shane were already
looking for her. I was worried about her but what could I add to
the search? I couldn’t think of anything at the moment. And I
really needed to use my time and energy to find a way to help
Gramma.

What I really wanted to do was call my good
friend Elisa and have her help me brainstorm ideas for getting the
money Gramma needed. But I knew if I called her, I’d have to tell
her about what happened with Brian and she’d be all over me about
how she’d warned me about the dangers of helping Lacey and
Angelica, and how I should back off before something worse
happened. I didn’t want to hear that lecture, because Lacey and
Angelica still needed my help and support.

I also knew Elisa would push me to tell Pablo
or the Boulder police about Brian pulling a gun on us and burning
Mirabel’s new will. But Lacey was right that I would get myself in
trouble by admitting that I had been at least partly responsible
for getting Angelica into a life-threatening situation. And Brian
didn’t hurt us or manage to destroy the only copy of the will, so
in the end there was no serious harm done. Of course Elisa would
point out that Brian had tapped my phone, threatened us with a gun,
tied us up and destroyed what he thought was the only copy of the
will. And she’d be right that all of that was illegal and
wrong.

The more I thought about it, the less sure I
was about what to do about Brian. If he was capable of doing what
he did, who knew what else he might do? I shuddered. Could he be
responsible for Angelica’s disappearance? Should the authorities be
alerted?

I sat there holding my phone and feeling more
and more stuck. I needed to talk to someone who could help me
figure all this out. Pablo was the obvious choice to talk this over
with, but I couldn’t call and tell him about Brian. I’d get even
more of a lecture than I’d gotten from Elisa, plus Brian would
probably be arrested and the whole thing would become a public
matter. Lacey and Angelica would be questioned by the police,
Derrick would be informed, and I’d be in big trouble.

I told myself that if I thought it would help
Angelica, I’d be willing to talk to the police about Brian, but I
couldn’t see any reason why he’d be involved in her disappearance.
He’d let us all go yesterday, so why would he turn around and grab
Angelica today?

“Yo, Cleo. You’re stuck in the channel. Can’t
walk home from here. Might as well hit the surf.” I looked up to
see Tyler riding some invisible wave back and forth across the
room.

“Tyler! What are you talking about? Do you
mean I should tell the police about Brian?”

“No, that current is pushing you out into
waves out of your range. You need to take the next one in.”

“What’s the next one? What should I do?”

“When the wave pulls you forward, stand up
and keep your balance. Don’t get blinded by the spray,” he said as
he surfed up to the ceiling and disappeared.

“No, wait,” I yelled. “I don’t understand.
You need to explain.”

But of course he didn’t reply.

I sank back in my chair, closed my eyes and
tried to make some sense of Tyler’s cryptic advice. He had talked
about balance and not getting blinded by the spray. Maybe he was
telling me not to let the Townes family problems get in the way of
thinking about how to get the money Gramma needed. Maybe Gramma’s
situation was the wave pulling me forward—it was already Tuesday
afternoon and I needed to confirm with the Shady Terrace staff by
the end of the week that Gramma would be buying in.

But what to do? I didn’t see any wave to
ride. As my thoughts went round and round, I kept ending up at the
same place. For some reason, Faye wasn’t taking Gramma’s situation
seriously and wasn’t doing as much as she could to help.

Was this because she was ripping off Gramma
by not telling me the truth about how many paintings she’d sold and
for what prices? Should I try to follow up on Shane’s allegations?
And what about Pablo’s thought that Faye might be somehow involved
in the eBay fraud? I’d always liked Faye and trusted her, but
people in desperate financial situations sometimes act rashly. If
Shane was right and Faye had been taking more money than she should
have been from the gallery, she very well might also have been
defrauding Gramma.