Bones of a Feather - Carolyn Haines [113]
Around me it sounded as if the battle for the future of the universe were being waged. Water poured from the roof in a gusher. “What happens in a bad storm?”
“The water comes in from a flaw in the Natchez drainage system. The storage room will fill up with water. I told Monica the tunnel structure had been weakened, but she wouldn’t listen to me. It could be very dangerous down there.”
I felt like a fist had slammed into my gut. “Who else was involved with the sisters’ plan?” I had to know who I might come up against.
“That’s beyond my ken. I swear it. I told Eleanor I wanted no details, nothing to do with her schemes. Monica needed my help with the horse—the feeding and the care. I couldn’t let the poor beastie go without food and water and she had no interest in him except for her midnight rides. I knew she was up to no good, but I didn’t really understand until … it was too late to stop them.”
Thunder cracked overhead so loudly I almost dropped the phone. With each moment, Tinkie’s prison could be filling with water. I didn’t have time to drag information from Jerome.
“Pray my partner is unharmed,” I told him, “because if anything happens to Tinkie, I’ll make sure Eleanor and Monica get the gas chamber.”
I closed the phone and put it in my pocket. The deluge had washed the mulch off the handles of the trapdoor to the tunnels. No wonder Jerome was always puttering around this part of the rose garden. He had to keep the trapdoor concealed.
I pulled it open and stepped down a ladder. Rain pelted me until I pulled the trap shut and plunged into total darkness. Turning on the flashlight, I found myself in a narrow passage that went straight down for ten feet, then opened into a tunnel high enough for me to walk upright.
Lined with handmade bricks, the tunnel had likely been made by slaves. How many lives had been lost in the endeavor to give Barthelme Levert easy access to the river and his nefarious deeds?
When I hit level ground, I jogged. Moisture seeped along the walls and my footsteps echoed. The place was creepy, and I could only imagine Tinkie alone and thinking she would die of starvation. Or drown. Her suffering was unbearable.
Moving through the tunnels I lost all sense of time and direction, except that I was heading down, sometimes steeply. The river couldn’t be too far away, but I’d lost all sensory connection to the outside world. If the storm continued above me, I had no way of knowing.
I moved as quickly as I could, finally coming to the Y in the tunnels that Jerome had spoken of. I followed his directions while my mind pondered the question I had to answer. Who was the Leverts’ partner?
I thought back over the phone calls. The caller had been male with a nicely modulated voice and clear diction. The speaker was Southern. It could have been anyone in Natchez or the surrounding area. There was absolutely nothing distinctive about the caller, which in itself should have been a clue.
In the distance a noise I couldn’t identify made me hesitate. It was best described as a sloshing sound. When it registered what it could be, I gave up jogging and hit a flat-out sprint.
“Tinkie!” The echo in the tunnel mocked me. “Tinkie!”
The sound of a large fish flopping in the shallows drifted from the darkness.
Cursing silently, I ran forward into water that covered my feet and then my calves. The flashlight illuminated a scene from my worst nightmare. Water covered the bottom of the tunnel and lapped hungrily at the walls. What seemed to be an opening gaped to the right, and I slogged toward it and the sound of something big struggling in the rising water.
When I made it to the opening, I saw Tinkie. She was tied to a chair, which had fallen over. She struggled to keep her head out of the water, but she kept going under.
I dove for her and hauled the chair to an upright position. She was gagged, and I removed the nasty bandanna that had been tied around her mouth.
After a bit of coughing and hacking, she finally said, “It’s Eleanor.