Bones of a Feather - Carolyn Haines [112]
“Call off the dogs, Sarah Booth,” Barclay said.
I hated to, but I did.
“Monica, Eleanor, up against the wall.”
“You both think you’re so smart.” Eleanor was furious. “You won’t inherit a thing, Barclay. Harm us, and you’ll never get Briarcliff.”
Inheritance was the last thing on my mind. Tinkie was the only thing I cared about. While Barclay held them at gunpoint, I gathered the things I’d need to go for Tinkie.
The cavalry was on the way.
25
Even if Coleman flew on the wings of Mercury, I couldn’t wait for him. I helped Barclay tie up the twins before I gathered the three dogs, a gun, the maps, and a flashlight. Tinkie was underground—and I couldn’t stand the thought of my partner and my friend alone in a dark, dank place.
“I should go after Tinkie, Sarah Booth. You guard the sisters,” Barclay said.
“No.” I couldn’t trust this job to anyone else.
“Then be careful. Remember, another person is almost certainly involved in this,” Barclay reminded me. “He could be down there, waiting.”
“Make Monica and Eleanor give more details of where Tinkie is?” Briarcliff’s underground maze could have me wandering about for hours. “If you find out anything, call me.” I picked up Monica’s cell phone. Where she was going, she wouldn’t need a phone.
“How hard should I try to force information from them?” Barclay had a hard glint in his eye.
“They’re your relatives.”
“After years of dreaming about confronting my mother, this is what I get.” He gave a snort of disgust.
“It would help if I knew which tunnel they left Tinkie in.” According to the maps, the tunnels led directly to the river, but branches forked off and led to numerous cul-de-sacs where Barthelme had undoubtedly stored his stolen goods, including slaves. The old river pirate had constructed an amazingly complex grid of underground routes. Tinkie could be anywhere.
I left Barclay checking the bonds on the sisters. At the front door of Briarcliff, I realized that while we’d been inside, the fury of the weather gods had been unleashed. The threatening storm had broken, and the wind howled up from the cliffs. Rain fell in sheets while lightning popped all around, as if Briarcliff were a rod. The place was evil, down to the bedrock.
I jogged to the rose garden, where the trapdoor to the tunnels could be found beneath a mulch bed. Jerome had known about the tunnels all along. And he’d known that Monica was the horsewoman. He’d pretended ignorance, but a fourteen-hundred-pound horse living on the estate could not have escaped him. How much else had he known?
Jerome was the Leverts’ confederate. It had to be him. Maybe I could bargain with him for Tinkie’s whereabouts. I took shelter in an old gardening shed filled with tools and pots and the tender shoots of new plants. Jerome’s number was in Monica’s cell phone. I dialed and waited. To my surprise he answered, but then Monica’s number would have shown up on his caller ID.
“Is Eleanor okay?” were his first words. Which meant he was in on the whole kidnapping scam. And how much else? The murder of Millicent? The attack on John Hightower? The Levert girls had woven quite a web of deceit, and Jerome was trapped in the center of it.
“Depends on what you consider okay,” I said evenly. “Eleanor is alive and unharmed, but she’s going to jail, Jerome. And you might be, too.”
A curse came out on a whisper. “I told the sisters this wouldn’t work.”
“What wouldn’t work?” I wanted him to say it.
“The insurance scam. The fake kidnapping. I knew it would backfire. I tried to stop them.”
So he wasn’t a willing participant, as he told it, but he’d known what the sisters were up to. “They’ve taken Tinkie hostage and are holding her in the underground tunnels. Where is she?”
“There’s no good to come from a twisted deed.” His voice sounded thin and tired. “Try the main tunnel until you come to a right-hand turn. It leads to an opening about a hundred yards upriver. There’s a room Barthelme used as a holding area for the slaves he stole. It’s