The Chocolate Cupid Killings (25 page)

“Keep it,” Joe said. “So far I'm okay.” He was wearing a flannel shirt and flannel-lined jeans, and he usually wears long johns in the winter. I was afraid his knee had bled badly, since the blood had soaked through two layers before it got to the outside of his pants.

“I guess the crawl space under the bathroom won't work,” I said.

“Nope. I bricked it in solidly.”

The previous summer I had gotten out of the house by crawling under an addition to the bathroom—an addition that didn't have a basement itself, but was connected to the basement we were in by a hole in the wall left for the future convenience of plumbers. From there I had managed to get out through a hole in the foundation. But that addition had been under construction at the time. Now it was complete, and the foundation was solid.

Joe sighed. “I was hoping you'd reveal the existence of a secret tunnel known only to the TenHuis family. If that's out, I guess the windows are the best bet.”

I looked at the windows. They were typical basement windows, small rectangles originally designed to be opened for ventilation. However, somebody among my TenHuis ancestors had decided to fix them in permanently. They could only be opened by an ax or a crowbar. Plus, at the moment they were covered with snow. There were two on the east and two on the west. Each was about a quarter the size of a regular window, and each had three panes.

“I wish the TenHuis family crowbar was stored down here,” I said.

“Yeah. I've been working on one of the windows with my pocketknife, but I think digging under the wall would be faster.” Joe stood up.

I looked around longingly. “How about the iron bed?”

“What iron bed?”

“The one over in the corner.”

“I didn't see that. I guess it was behind the chimney. I doubt it has a sharp end.”

Through all of this, of course, we were still whispering. Neither of us had forgotten that noise could mean death. Motioning for Joe to sit still and keep weight off his knee, I went to the bed frame. I picked up the smaller piece—the foot of the bed. Although it was the spindly kind of iron bed, made with small iron rods and knobs, it still weighed a lot. I dragged it back to where Joe sat.

He examined it. “Maybe . . .” The thing was rickety. Although it was rusty, Joe was able to twist it apart. He yanked off an iron leg, which proved to be a pipe about the length of a crowbar.

But when the leg came off, the larger piece began to fall. I barely caught it before it crashed into the cement wall. The noise could have been—well, maybe fatal.

I crouched on the sandy floor, clutching the bed frame and holding my breath. Joe didn't move either. We were listening for Patricia Youngman's footsteps.

And we heard them. Moving over our heads, crossing the living room floor.

“Quick! ” Joe slid to the floor, taking the position he'd had when I ran down the stairs. I dragged the bed frame around under the stairs. Then I knelt beside Joe, prepared to weep, wail, and beg Patricia Youngman to call an ambulance.

I've never been as relieved in my life as I was at the next sound I heard from upstairs.

The television set came on.

I leaned close to Joe's ear. “Sarajane said she was one of those people who always want the television set on.”

“Good for her! It might help cover any noise we make.”

We waited for a moment, listening for more footsteps, footsteps that would mean Patricia was walking into the kitchen and back hall, coming to check on us.

“We left the light on,” I whispered.

“That's okay,” he murmured back. “I'm the only one who's supposed to be unconscious. It would look fishy if you hadn't turned on the light.”

Joe got up, protecting his knee. I could see that it was painful, but I didn't say any more about it. I didn't have an ice bag or a splint or even a Band-Aid, so there was no point in talking about it.

Joe hobbled over to the west wall, holding the pipe he'd wrenched from the bed frame. Now I saw that before I came down he'd been digging out the mortar at one of the windows. He picked up the pipe and examined just how it could be used.

“I wish the end were sharper,” he said. “Maybe I can make a bigger hole with my knife, then use the pipe.”

Luckily, Joe's pocketknife wasn't one of those wimpy little penknives. It was more on the Swiss Army Knife pattern, with two strong blades, a nail file that could tear a fingernail to shreds, and a corkscrew.

“I never needed this corkscrew before,” Joe said.

“What do you need it for now?”

“I could use a drink. If we get out of here, my next project will be to put in some wine racks.”

I chuckled appreciatively and quietly. If I was going to be imprisoned in a Michigan basement, it was good to have a fellow prisoner who tried to keep my spirits up.

Joe kept digging at the wood of the window frame. We could both see that it would take days to make any headway with only a pocketknife and a one-inch pipe. Plus the window frame was screwed to the foundation. Even with the piece of iron pipe from the bed frame, we weren't getting out of that window anytime soon. We couldn't tear the window out quietly. And if Patricia Youngman heard us, she'd be down that stairway in a second, spraying bullets in all directions.

In the meantime, Joe was standing on one leg, his head back at an awkward angle, working at a task that was higher than his head. He had to be in agony.

I moved close to him. “Can I take a turn?”

“Maybe later. Look around down here and see if you can find any other useful objects.”

I blinked away a couple of tears. I knew Joe was merely giving me a job to keep me busy. We were at Patricia Youngman's mercy. I moved over to the old storage shelves, partly because turning away kept Joe from seeing that I was crying.

The shelves were nearly empty. Aunt Nettie and I had cleared out the TenHuis collection of china cups with no handles, a dog dish for a long-ago pet, an electric percolator with a frayed cord, and other junk. We'd actually dusted the shelves. To prove it, we'd left the dust rag.

Dust rag was the right name for the old towel I saw on the bottom shelf. The fabric was permeated with dust and stained with grease. Gross. I shoved the rag aside.

And under it was a roll of duct tape.

I picked it up. They say duct tape can do anything, but I didn't see how it could get that window frame out without making any noise.

Joe was speaking softly. “It would be a snap to get this window out, if we just didn't have to be quiet.”

“How?”

“Break the glass.”

“What about the frames that hold the panes in place?”

“Those are flimsy. I could yank those out in a heartbeat—if it weren't for the glass. But if I take this iron bar to the glass, the television isn't going to hide the noise when it breaks. Besides, we'd have glass all over the place.”

I looked again at the duct tape. I found the end and scratched at it with my fingernail. What if the tape had been there twenty years and was completely dried up?

I got hold of the end and pulled the tape back. It came loose with a satisfying rasp. I nearly forgot to whisper. “Joe!”

Joe whirled toward me. He stared at the duct tape. He breathed hard; then he hobbled the two steps it took to reach me, and he threw his arms around me. We stood there hugging each other.

His lips were near my ear. “Where did you find that?”

“On the bottom shelf. Under a rag.”

“I lost that roll of duct tape when we were working down here last summer. I looked everywhere and finally went out to the truck and got a new roll. And all the time it was lurking here, waiting to save our lives.”

He hopped back to the window and in three minutes he had each pane of the window plastered with two layers of duct tape.

“Now,” he said. “We have to pray that breaking the window doesn't make so much noise that Patricia Youngman comes down here.”

“How about if I make a commotion? Bang on the door.”

“Too dangerous. If she fires through the door . . .”

“If we can unscrew the rest of that bed frame, I can throw bed knobs at the door.”

I dragged the bed frame over, both head and foot, and Joe and I unscrewed the sixteen iron knobs somebody had thought were ornamental.

Then I positioned myself at the bottom of the stairs. Joe took his place beside the duct-taped window. We counted three. I began to throw the bed knobs at the door at the top of the stairs, two or three at a time, and Joe began to hit the window with the metal rod. Between us, we made a horrible din.

“Help!” I yelled as loudly as I could. “Help! Call an ambulance! Please! He's dying!”

I heard Patricia Youngman's footsteps overhead. She was running through the dining room, into the kitchen. When she reached the back hall—thank God our old house amplifies every sound made in it—I ran around behind the chimney.

When I peeked at Joe, I saw that he had stopped hitting the windows.

Bam! Bam! Two shots plowed through the door. I didn't want to know where they hit.

“Shut up!” Patricia Youngman screamed the words. “I'll be leaving soon. If you stay quiet, I'll slide the bolt open before I go. If you keep yelling, I'll leave you to starve.”

She didn't seem to expect an answer. She tromped back through the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the living room. She didn't turn the television off. I'll swear I heard the couch creak when she sat back down.

Joe was pulling the glass out of the window. As he'd hoped, the duct tape had held it together. Only one or two pieces fell to the floor. I picked them up.

He knocked the glass out around the edges, then used the metal bar to break out the small strips of wood that had held the panes in place.

“Now all we have to do is dig out through three feet of snow,” he said.

“I can do that. You sit down.”

“I'll make you a shovel.”

Joe used his pocket knife to dig two or three nails out of one of the flimsy storage shelves. When I again urged him to sit down, he didn't argue. He went back to the stairs and sat down on one of the lower steps.

We were a long way from out of there. At least three feet of snow was piled up on the west side of the house.

I used the board to drag snow into the basement. Luckily, I had gloves in my coat pocket. But I couldn't reach very far outside the window—I may be nearly six feet tall, but that window was even higher than my head. And there was nothing to stand on.

Or was there?

I eyed the wonderful bed frame again. I dragged the headboard—does an iron bedstead have a headboard? Whatever it was called, it would have been at the head of the bed. I pulled it over and propped it against the wall, sideways. Like a ladder.

I looked around to see Joe silently applauding.

By standing on the headboard as if it were a ladder, I was able to reach farther outside the window and drag more snow inside. In a few minutes Joe came over and insisted on taking a turn. In about fifteen minutes the board pushed through to the outside.

Silently, we did a high five.

I got back up on our improvised ladder and enlarged the hole in the snow. By then it was dark outside. I didn't know if that was good or not. If Patricia Youngman looked out a west window, she might be less likely to see us. But there was snow everywhere. Moving figures would be hard to miss against all that white in daytime or at night.

Joe checked the opening. Then he stepped down. “Out you go. But look around carefully before you get out. Then run straight to the trees. Don't get curious and look in a window to see what Patricia's doing.”

“No way! All I want is to get away from here. But you go first. It'll be harder for you to get away because of your knee.”

“No. I don't want to be a male chauvinist, but my upper body strength is better than yours. I can pull myself out. You'll get out faster if I give you a boost.”

“But—”

He put his arms around me. “I promise, Lee. I'll be right out. Come on. We'll have to use your jacket to pad the frame. There's still some glass.”

I climbed up, took off my jacket, and laid it across the bottom of the window frame. I climbed up the bedstead ladder and put my head and shoulder through. Joe boosted me up, then gave a terrific push on my bottom. Before I could realize what was happening, I was rolling in the snow underneath our bedroom windows. As instructed, I got to my feet and ran across the lawn to the trees. Once among them, I huddled behind a large evergreen and looked back.