Murder on the Rocks (25 page)

“So basically you trusted your employees and the local floozy enough to let them in
on the secret, but not me.”

“You’re blowing this way out of proportion,” I said, feeling my anger rise. I turned
and went back behind the bar to pour myself a beer from the tap. But when I pulled
the handle all I got was foam, telling me I needed to switch out one of the kegs in
the basement.

“I don’t think I am,” Zach said. “You’ve been stringing me along for months now, Mack,
and I think it’s time for you to be honest with me about where we stand.”

“Zach, please, I explained to you long ago that I needed some time to—”

“I’ve given you time, Mack. Now I need some answers. Am I wasting my time here? Because
if I am, tell me now so I can move on.”

“I need to go downstairs and switch out the beer kegs,” I said, knowing I was avoiding
the question and praying my diversion would work. It didn’t.

Zach stood, walked over to the bar, and slapped down some twenties. “That should cover
our dinners. Keep the change. And if you ever decide you’re ready to move on, you
let me know.” With that he turned and stormed out of the bar, slamming the door behind
him.

Tears welled in my eyes and a barrage of synesthetic reactions swarmed over me. I
swiped irritably at the tears, grabbed a flashlight from beneath the bar, and headed
for the basement, trying to stay focused on the task at hand. Focus is the one thing
that sometimes helps me rein in the synesthesia when emotion or stress makes it go
crazy. Mustering up all my determination, I went into the beer closet and disconnected
the empty keg, rolling it out into the main area of the basement. Then I grabbed a
new one and rolled it into place. The balancing act required to move the kegs while
trying to hold a flashlight, and the concentration needed to switch the connections
while still holding the light, gave me just enough focus to bring my synesthesia under
control.

When I was done I stood in the middle of the basement smiling, proud that I’d managed
to control things so well. And then I heard the air handling unit kick itself on and
knew the power had come back on. I walked over to the closest wall switch and flicked
it, flooding the basement with welcome light.

Now that I had let my synesthetic guard down, the reactions started up again stronger
than before. The odor of must was strong and that’s when I noticed the big puddle
of water on the floor beneath and in front of my father’s worktable. The rain had
started up again—I could hear it pinging on the windows—and my first thought was that
the rain had caused enough water to accumulate outside that it was leaking into the
basement. But then I realized that the wall where the workbench was located wasn’t
an outside wall.

I turned the flashlight off and set it on the edge of the worktable. Something niggled
at my brain and as I stood in front of the workbench area, staring at it and the puddle
of water that appeared to be spreading, I switched gears and let my synesthesia take
over. That cloying feeling returned and it was so strong it felt like I was wearing
a heavy, wet shawl. I looked over at the wall with the boxes, where everything had
been covered with cobwebs. A faint linen smell hit me, like just-washed cotton, and
I remembered how the feel of the cobwebs on my skin had triggered a taste like biting
into a towel. The linen smell had the slightly surreal feel of a synesthetic reaction
and I guessed that it was my mind’s interpretation of the sight of the cobwebs. I
turned back to look at the workbench, noticing how the tools on top of it also had
cobwebs stringing them together, and the linen smell wafted a little stronger. But
when my gaze drifted to the wall behind the table—a wooden structure covered with
pegboard where more tools hung—the linen smell dissipated.

A synesthetic vision of waves crashing against a shore hit me and I remembered how
it had done so the last time I was down here. What was triggering it? The hairs on
my arms and head rose, and at first I thought I was simply creeping myself out. But
the sensation came and went and I realized that what I was feeling was the faintest
hint of a breeze. And it was coming from the area of the workbench.

Then it hit me. I turned and scanned the basement with more of a focus and realized
now that every item and structure in the area that wasn’t used regularly had cobwebs
on it . . . except for the wall behind the workbench. I walked over to the side of
the worktable, tiptoeing through the puddle, and examined the edge of the back wall
board. I probed its surface with my fingers and pushed and prodded along its edges.
Then I went around to the other side and did the same thing. When that didn’t reveal
anything, I ran my hand along the bottom side of the table and found the lever right
away. It was almost flush against the bottom of the table but there was just enough
room to get my fingers between it and the table and pull the thing down. I heard something,
a mechanical noise, and it took me a few seconds to determine that it was a real sound.
I stepped back and waited but nothing else happened. I stared at the wall and table
for a moment before grabbing the edge of the table and pulling it forward. The whole
unit—table and back wall—rolled forward with surprising ease, leading me to suspect
the table legs had some sort of hidden casters.

Behind the table was a large, concrete-walled room.

A
ceramic light fixture with a bare bulb hung in the center of the room but when I
tried to turn it on with the old-fashioned push-button switch on the wall beside me,
nothing happened. There was enough ambient light from the basement behind me to see
across the room to the opposite side, where I spied a closed wooden door. Unfortunately
the floor between me and that door was covered with water—the apparent source of the
leak in my basement. I assumed the water was coming from whatever was on the other
side of that door and even if it wasn’t, my curiosity demanded that I at least try
to open it. A flash from the basement windows behind me followed by a loud boom of
thunder punctuated my decision. Knowing the power could go out again at any time,
I realized it would be foolish to venture any farther without the flashlight, so I
backtracked to the basement worktable to get it. The weather gods showed me how smart
my decision was by sending down another crack of thunder on top of a flash of lightning.
The walls shook and the power once again went out. I turned on the flashlight, shone
it into the hidden room, and proceeded to slosh my way toward the door on the other
side. I was almost halfway there when the ground disappeared beneath me. My feet floundered
for a few seconds as I tried, unsuccessfully, to stop my forward momentum. I sank
into cold water and when my flashlight went under, darkness swallowed everything.
The unexpected cold and my fear combined to trigger a wild array of synesthetic responses
and I flailed about until I realized my feet had found purchase on a bottom that felt
like small rocks and dirt. I stood a moment to catch both my breath and my wits. I
was blinded but seeing crazy images. I tasted weird flavors, felt strange sensations,
and heard things that might or might not have been real. As some of the synesthetic
responses faded, I stretched my arms wide and let them swing forward and back as I
took a tentative baby step, then another. I felt a rough edge in front of me and realized
that I’d fallen into a water-filled crater that was approximately three feet deep
and a bit more than my arms’ length in diameter. I crawled out onto the concrete floor
on what I thought was the side where I had fallen in.

I got to my feet and put my hands out in front of me, again taking tiny baby steps
and waving my arms like a bug’s antennae. When my fingers touched the cold, hard concrete
of the wall, I followed it to my right, hoping to reach the open doorway into my basement.
Instead I felt the frame of a closed, wooden door and I realized I’d climbed out of
the hole on the wrong side of the room. I moved my hands over the door until I found
the knob. I expected it to be locked, but it turned easily and I opened it and felt
around on the wall on the other side in search of a light switch of some sort. There
wasn’t one and it didn’t matter now anyway with the power out, but it would have been
nice to know there was a source nearby if it came back on.

I stood there a moment, trying to figure out what to do. Going back across the room
didn’t seem like a good idea given that I already knew there was a big, water-filled
hole in the floor, but without knowing what lay ahead of me, going forward didn’t
seem appealing either. I decided going back made the most sense and if I hugged the
wall and went slowly, I thought I should be able to skirt the water pit in the middle
of the room.

Before I could commit a single step to this plan, a new visual display began. A beam
of light from the direction of my basement appeared, creating a white ball of light
on the wall to my right. The ball slid rapidly across the wall toward me and when
it hit my eyes and blinded me, I knew it wasn’t one of my brain’s manifestations.
I raised an arm up to block the light and turned my face away. When I did, I caught
a blur of motion over my shoulder in the area behind me, but before I could figure
out what it was, I felt a rush of air and the white ball of light rushed at me like
the headlight on an oncoming train. In the next instant something hit me hard alongside
my body, knocking me off my feet. My head smashed into the door frame and just before
I hit the floor I heard an explosive sound and saw a bright burst of what looked like
a flame. Then all sensation—real and synesthetic—faded into blackness.

I don’t know how long the blackness lasted but when I next became aware of my surroundings,
they confused me. I saw moving light and shapes; I heard musical tones, discordant
noises, water splashing, and human grunting. After pushing myself up into a sitting
position, I tried to focus and sort out the synesthetic manifestations from the real
ones. I tasted blood and felt the very real pain of a split lip. I realized the grunting
and splashing sounds were coming from people who were struggling nearby. At first
I thought maybe they had fallen into the crater, but as I felt the nearby doorway
and oriented myself, I realized the sounds were coming from behind me, from beyond
the secret room. Also behind me was a beam of white light on the floor spinning around
and around, creating a strobelike effect.

As the beam washed over the walls I saw I was in a tunnel of some sort and that there
were two men locked in a struggle. With the next flash of the spinning light I recognized
the men. One was Riley Quinn, the other was Gary Gunderson, and they were wrestling
over what looked like a gun. Darkness then light again, just in time to see the gun
get knocked loose and skitter off into the shadows to my left. The spinning flashlight
was losing its momentum, and then one of the men kicked it and the light went out
completely.

In the ensuing darkness, I heard the two men continue to struggle. I became certain
that the explosive noise I’d heard earlier was the sound of that gun being fired because
I could smell the sharp tang of gunpowder in the air. It triggered tiny hot spots
on my skin, a sensation I remembered from when my father used to take me to the shooting
range, and I used the strength of those tiny burns like radar, crawling and groping
around on the floor until my hand settled on the cold metal of the gun. I grabbed
it and ran my hands over it, familiarizing myself with the piece. Then I aimed it
in the general direction of the two men and yelled into the blackness.

“I have the gun and if you two don’t stop, I will fire it!”

My voice echoed inside the concrete tunnel and my threat had the desired effect. The
sounds of the two men struggling ceased, and all I could hear was heavy breathing
from them both. I tuned into the sound of that breathing as best I could to try to
determine where the men were. My best guess placed them both in front of me, one on
the left side of the tunnel, which I estimated was about six feet wide, and one on
the right.

I heard Gary’s voice coming from the left side. “Mack, are you okay? Did he hit you?”

The question stymied me. Did
who
hit me? Then I heard Riley’s voice.

“Mack, don’t let Gary near you. If he comes close, shoot him.”

I started to say I would, but then Gary spoke again. “Mack, don’t listen to him. Riley’s
the one who had the gun. He’s the one who was going to shoot you. I saw him aiming
at you when I shone my flashlight in here. That’s why I leapt at you and knocked you
down. If I hadn’t, you might be dead.”

My mind immediately dismissed such a ridiculous claim. Riley wouldn’t hurt me. Hell,
my father had assigned him the job of watching over me. I shifted my aim more to the
left so that if I was forced to fire, I’d have a better likelihood of hitting Gary
rather than Riley. Just to make sure, I said, “Riley, stay against the wall.”

“I will, Mack. Thanks.” His voice seemed closer, but I couldn’t tell if it really
was, or if the acoustics inside the tunnel just made it sound that way.

“Mack, don’t listen to Riley,” Gary pleaded. “Please, you have to believe me.”

“Why should I, Gary? You’ve lied to me right from the start.”

“Only about the prison thing and I told you why,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d keep
me on if you knew I’d done time. And I swear to you, Mack, I didn’t commit the crime.”

Riley scoffed and said, “Yeah, nobody in prison is ever guilty.”

This time I was certain Riley was closer. I got to my feet and feeling behind me with
one hand, I backed over the threshold into the secret room, hugging the wall and keeping
the gun aimed down the middle of the tunnel.

“Ginny knew I was innocent,” Gary went on, speaking fast and sounding desperate. “That’s
because her son knew who had really done the crime. Unfortunately his word wasn’t
enough to get me exonerated, but it was enough for Ginny to talk your dad into giving
me a break by offering me a job. He thought it best to keep my past a secret so it
wouldn’t bias people against me.”

“If you’re so innocent, why have you been hiding?” I asked him.

“Because it’s pretty clear the cops think I killed Ginny and I already know that innocent
people get convicted. I don’t want to go back to prison again, Mack, especially for
something I didn’t do.”

“Then why are you here now?”

“Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running and hiding, either. That’s
no better than being in jail. I came back here tonight to see you and that cop, Duncan,
to tell you the truth, and to beg for my job back.”

“Duncan is a cop?” Riley said. He sounded unnerved by the revelation and I wondered
why. Was it simply because he was angry like the others over being duped? Or was it
something else?

“Yes, Duncan is a detective investigating Ginny’s murder,” I said. “He has the cops
looking for you, Gary.”

“Let them find me. I didn’t kill Ginny. I’ve got nothing to hide and I’m not going
to run anymore.”

Something in the tone of his voice rang true and my mind registered it with a thick,
solid line of blue. And then I leapt to another, bigger question. “Gary, how did you
get in here tonight?”

“I walked in. The bar door was unlocked. I thought you were still open and might need
help with the power being out. I saw the door to the basement was open so I grabbed
one of the bar flashlights and came down here.”

I recalled my argument with Zach and how he’d stormed out of the bar, leaving me behind
to clean and pout and contemplate what had happened. And in the midst of my angst,
I’d completely forgotten about locking the front door. But if Gary had come in through
the bar’s front door, how had Riley gotten to where he was in the tunnel?

“Don’t listen to him, Mack,” Riley urged. His voice was very close now and it created
jagged red lines like lightning bolts that fell in front of me. The sight of them
made me back up a few more steps as I hugged the wall of the secret room. “It seems
pretty clear he killed both your dad and Ginny, and no doubt he’s behind all these
other problems you’ve been having with the missing money, the stolen bottles of booze,
that dead rat . . .”

“But why?” I spent a second trying to summon up a rational motive for Gary to do all
those things, but then my mind zeroed in on what Riley had just said.

“I don’t know, Mack,” Riley said. “I’m guessing he wants to drive you out for some
reason.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Gary snapped. “To what end? It’s not like I gain anything if
Mack closes down. If anything, I lose the one job someone was willing to entrust to
me, a job I like and I’m good at.”

“Your goal is to cover up the fact that you’ve been stealing from Mack and her father
ever since you started your job,” Riley countered.

“I haven’t stolen a single thing from Mack or her father!”

“Think about it, Mack,” Riley said. “He probably used the stolen bank deposits and
those missing bottles of Grey Goose to feed his drug habit.”

I froze, both figuratively and literally as an icy sensation raced down my spine and
my fingers and toes grew cold. My mind scrambled, going back through all the discussions
I’d had during the past week. The missing bottles of liquor were something I’d just
discovered when I started my third quarter inventory last week. And the only person
I’d told was Duncan. So how did Riley know about it? I was sure I hadn’t mentioned
it to him, but had Duncan said something?

“How did you know about the missing liquor, Riley?”

He hesitated for a second or two before answering. “You told me.”

“No, I didn’t. I told you about the watered-down stuff but I didn’t tell anyone about
the high shelf bottles that went missing.”

“Trust your gut, Mack,” Gary said, and his words were punctuated with a bright flash
of lightning that lit up the basement behind me.

Enough light from that flash flowed into the secret room and the tunnel beyond it
for me to catch a brief glimpse of Gary and Riley. Gary was still back in the tunnel
about fifteen feet away, but Riley, as I suspected, had closed the gap between us
and was just on the other side of the door, maybe four feet away.

As darkness descended once again, I spent a millisecond realizing that if I had seen
the men, they most likely had seen me, too. I debated whether or not I had the guts
to pull the trigger and then I heard and felt the rush of someone coming at me. I
thought it had to be Riley and I dropped my arms hoping I wouldn’t hit anything vital.
But that minor adjustment was all it took to doom me. Riley hit me and shoved my arms
sideways so that the gun no longer pointed straight ahead. My finger pulled the trigger
and a shot rang out with a loud bang, pinging off the concrete. The sound echoed painfully
inside the room and once again my synesthetic manifestations went wild as I wrestled
Riley for the weapon. Afraid of firing off another wild shot, I slid my finger away
from the trigger. Then I heard a groan that made me fear my efforts were too late.