"I know just what you mean," I said, remembering my own experiences after the cat dancers case. This probably explained the slight limp I'd noticed when I was checking out those lovely legs.
"You'll have to tell me that story sometime," she said, "but as to a secret passage and someone messing around, it's probably some local teenagers checking out the new guy."
"What, no ghosts?"
"Trust me, Mr. Richter. By six tonight you will definitely have a ghost out here. Now let's go see what Tim found out about the wiring."
She was wrong about that. I went into town around five to get some groceries and ran into David Oatley in the Food Lion. He stopped me in the cereal aisle and wanted to make sure that the presence of a ghost would not affect the sale of the property. He seemed sincerely worried about it, so I told him that the wailing and howling from the old well didn't bother me much, and as long as it didn't come across the backyard with that big-ass flaming torch and the dead baby again, I'd go through with the deal. I watched his eyes go round. See what you think of that one, Carol Pollard, I thought. As it turned out, what she thought of it was that it would be harder to get certain contractors onto the project.
Ah, well, I thought, screw 'em if they can't take a joke.
The next day we went though the same drill with a heating and air-conditioning guy and then a plumber and the local well digger. After they left I still had a few hours of daylight, so I went exploring again with the shepherds, this time down the service lane behind the big house to the barns and equipment sheds. It was another clear spring day with a brisk northerly breeze coming up the hill from the river. The smell of thawing earth and new vegetation was strong, and I reminded myself to pursue the leasing of the big fields.
There were two ancient tractors, dating from the 1930s, up on blocks in one wooden shed, and some rusting agricultural equipment littering a long shed that had only a roof and a back wall, no sides. It was pretty obvious that no one had been down here for years, if not decades. So I was surprised when the shepherds suddenly started nosing around the ground and sniffing hard. There was obviously an interesting scent trail back here.
"Find it," I said. Frick put her nose to the ground, circled once, and then set off on a semistraight line through the weeds. Kitty followed, watching Frick. The dogs went about twenty feet, stopped at an area of discolored ground, walked around it, and then went over to explore what looked like a hatch cover. I saw a flash of red and then realized there was a ball cap wedged under the wooden platform. The shepherds, noses to the ground, hadn't seen it yet, so I went to retrieve it. Thinking that the discolored ground was probably the remains of an old manure pile, I went straight for it.
Big mistake.
Suddenly I was falling amid a small avalanche of dirt, sticks, and a brown tarp straight down into black, icy cold water.
I didn't have time to even squeak, or, for that matter, take a deep breath. I went under for what felt like several hundred feet and frantically clawed my way back up to the surface, scoring my knuckles on the rough stone wall of the well. I surfaced underneath the wet tarp, which didn't help my nearly paralyzing claustrophobia. When I finally got the tarp off and my breathing stabilized, I looked up to see two shepherd faces staring down at me from about twenty feet up against the late afternoon sky.
I was treading water in a stone-lined well, probably hand-dug back in the eighteenth century, from the looks of it. Close on the realization that I was trapped down here was the news that someone had set that trap, someone who knew I'd have the dogs with me, and what they and I might do when we saw the ball cap. The dogs had stepped around the discolored earth, and I'd missed that cue. What I had thought was the hatch cover was probably the well cover. I remembered Valeria warning me about abandoned wells.
Frick barked at me, as if trying to encourage me to get the hell out of there. I couldn't agree more, but there was the little matter of twenty vertical feet to overcome. The good news was that the walls were made of rough stones, not smooth concrete. That gave me a fighting chance.
I assumed the inchworm position in the water. There was barely room, and the first time I tried to move, my tennis shoes slipped off the mossy, wet stones. I kicked them off and then began heaving myself up the walls, pressing against my back and walking my feet up six inches, then pressing against my feet and shoving my back up six inches, while trying to stabilize my body with my hands. It's harder than it looks, especially when you get some daylight between you and the water below, and the rocks start making road-rash on the back of your shoulders. The problem came when I got to the top. There was nothing to grab onto.
I wedged my body and took a breather, while both shepherds panted impatiently for me to finish the job. I knew that if I tried to flip my body around and grab for the lip of the well I'd probably fall. I should have come up the walls belly down and not up, but even if I had, I wasn't sure I had the strength to do the final pull-up that would be required to get my center of gravity over the lip. There was nothing to grab.
Kitty solved it for me. She leaned over the lip and licked my face. Frick, ever the jealousy queen, came around to join in. I let go of the walls and grabbed a dog collar in each hand.
Both shepherds were surprised and almost came over the lip, but then they dug in. If you've ever played tug-of-war with a hundred-pound German shepherd, you know they can pull you over if they want to. The two of them were pulling hard, but with nothing on which to brace themselves, they began losing the war. As I was about to let go of them and drop back down into the water, Cubby Johnson's face appeared over the hole. He grabbed my right arm with both hands. I still had a hold on Kitty's collar, so between the two of them, they pulled me out. I skinned both knees and both elbows and was delighted to do it. Cubby ended up sitting down hard on the ground.
I flopped down on the ground myself and did some deep breathing exercises while massaging my legs, which had started to cramp up. Cubby explained that Ms. Valeria had told him to see if there was anything I needed down at the cottage. He said he found my vehicle, but not me or the shepherds, so he'd walked over here. He'd heard the dogs barking frantically and had come to investigate.
"Somebody set a trap," I said.
"Say what?"
"There was a tarp pulled over that well, weeds and shit put on top of the tarp. The real cover's over there."
He looked over at the wooden hatch cover in surprise and then back at me.
"Any idea of who or why?" I asked.
He shook his head. "This place been empty for a long time, 'cept for the old lady, Ms. Tarrant, and she bein' housebound and all. We got kids now, come out to the country, mess around on some of the big farms, but this here-this was nasty."
I started shivering, so I got up and walked around to restore my circulation. Nasty was the word, all right. If the dogs hadn't been with me I might have simply drowned down there once the cold water worked its lethal magic. Then all the trapper would have to do was pull the cover back over and declare victory.
Victory over what, though? The candlestick business had felt like the opening chapter in a head game of some sort. This was quite an escalation. I'm going to make you go away, interloper, one way or another. I got the message, but I couldn't think of anyone I'd met so far who'd been anything but friendly and encouraging about the project. Even the Auntie Bellums across the way seemed disposed to let me proceed without objection.
It was starting to get dark. It had been a spring day but not a warm day. I was cold, wet, and in my stocking feet. I had walked over from Laurel Grove, and now I was going to have to walk back on the gravel drive. I went over to the hatch cover and, with Cubby's help, tipped it end for end back over the dark hole in the ground. I put the ball cap in my belt. If nothing else, I'd acquired some physical evidence of my intruder. Tomorrow I would come back over here and see what the mutts could scare up in the way of a trail.