The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [69]
“Mr. Bachmeier?”
“Oh—sorry, ma’am! And I thank you, but I’ll keep working.”
“If you change your mind, just tell me,” Clarissa called. Her voice rang from the limestone walls.
Albrecht sighed. He had gambled. He hoped that for once, he might win.
He grabbed his shovel again, and shoved it into the earth with his boot. They’d passed through fifteen feet of clay, and he was now excavating a hard layer of gravel and clay cemented by oxide of iron. He dumped the blade-load of rubble into the bucket, and scrabbled through the soil and rock.
Nothing.
Well, nothing yet, he told himself. If there was one topaz, there could surely be another. Perhaps even bigger. Even more valuable. Most important, even prettier. And if there was, he wanted to be the one to find it.
Albrecht paused for a quick swig from the sweating jug he’d brought down with him. Then he got back to work.
Chloe placed the two remaining rag rugs on the floor and lay down. She might as well try to get some sleep.
Ten minutes later she jumped up, grabbed the rug draped over the window sill, and added that to her makeshift pallet. “This is absolutely miserable,” she muttered, thrashing around. She tried not to think about how filthy the rugs were, but she couldn’t get away from it. Her mind flashed slides of a thousand visitors walking on them. Visitors who had all trekked through chickenshit and cow poop before entering the sauna.
OK, fine. She’d sit up all night.
Chloe shoved the rugs into one corner and sat on them, trying to find a comfortable way to lean against the wall. God, her bruised shoulder ached. The scrapes on her hands had probably opened again. They’d get infected now, no doubt. And … geez, was that a crick starting in her neck? Once, on a camping trip with Ethan, she’d gotten a terrible crick in her neck after sleeping wrong. She hadn’t been able to turn her head for days.
She shifted again, and felt a tiny stab in her bare arm. Well, lovely. She’d just gotten a splinter. A splinter she couldn’t see to remove in the darkness. It would sit there all night, and fester.
“This sucks!” she yelled, and exploded to her feet. It was bad enough that she was facing the most humiliating morning of her life, which would give plenty of fuel to the bonfire Ralph Petty had been methodically laying around her feet. It was bad enough that she couldn’t check on Dellyn again this evening, and that Olympia—sweet little Olympia!—was probably sitting on a living room windowsill right this minute, watching the road, wondering why Chloe hadn’t come home to feed her and play with her and cuddle her. But crippling herself as well? That was just too freaking much. There had to be some way out of here.
Moving gingerly in the dark, Chloe crept back into the sauna and sat on one of the benches. She closed her eyes, trying to capture some of that feminine Finnish strength. It was still there. She just had to calm down enough to feel it. She didn’t expect a voice to whisper in her ear. She didn’t speak Finnish, anyway. Still, it couldn’t hurt to start round two of thinking in a good place.
Her thoughts circled back to that dressing room window, now open perhaps six inches. She couldn’t fit through. Stones, firewood, the dipper, the rug—none of those were going to solve anything either. The only other movable things in the building were the two benches in the dressing room …
“Oh!” Chloe cried. She stumbled back to that open window. She grabbed the bench closest to the window, and tipped it up and sideways. “Ow-ow-ow!” she gasped, struggling to raise the heavy piece with her bruised hands and aching shoulder. She couldn’t lift it high enough, though, and finally she had to let it drop.
“I can do this,” she insisted. No way was she giving up again. No frickin’ way.
Five minutes later