Thanks to the secret passage, they’d never caught Blue—or any of his men—at the tavern.
The door to the passage was covered with a grating now. Before, it had been hidden under wooden planks that matched the rest of the floor. Now it was a curiosity and guarded by chains, a locked metal grate and the robotic Blue Anderson. Blue was set up beside the grate, and diners loved to have their pictures taken with him.
Abby stood up, then walked down the hall to the storage room. The lights remained on as they always did during business hours. She moved silently along the rows of modern chrome restaurant equipment and boxes to the back of the room.
Halfway there, she paused.
Her heart seemed to rise to her throat and catch there.
Blue! She could see him. He was standing right by the winding iron stairs. He beckoned to her and went down them.
She might have been a kid again, frozen there. For long moments, she wasn’t sure she was even breathing.
He only comes when he’s needed, Gus had told her.
Abby came to life. She sprinted across the room and to the stairs.
A chain stretched across the iron railing of the landing here; it was in place as it should have been.
Abby slid underneath it and quickly followed the winding steps to the main floor.
A few diners lingered, but she’d been quiet and hadn’t been noticed. The grating was in place. She knelt down—and saw that the lock was open.
Heedless of anyone who might see her, Abby lifted the grating. It was dark below. There were lights, but Gus kept them off except for the ones directly by the grate. She hurried down the stairs, calling his name. “Gus!”
She reached the bottom and the dank tunnel that led out to the river.
“Gus!”
Someone seemed to be ahead of her. A shadow moving almost as one with the darkness.
She followed.
And then, ten feet along the tunnel, she found him.
Gus.
She fell to her knees at his side. “Gus, Gus, Gus!”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t feel her touch when she felt for a pulse, for any sign that he was breathing.
He was so cold!
Yes, cold, she realized, horrified and heartbroken.
Stone-cold dead.
2
Augustus Anderson was laid to rest a week after his death at the city’s incredibly beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery.
Abby’s family had a plot there, a group of tombstones that ran the gamut from the mid-1800s, when the cemetery was founded, to the last burial before this one, when her father had passed away. A lovely low fence surrounded the small plot. The number of people who’d come to the church ceremony and now to the cemetery to honor Gus was almost overwhelming. The crowd didn’t fit into the actual plot area and many waited on the other side of the fence, listening to Father McFey as he spoke his final words over the coffin and Gus was left to rest in peace.
Abby barely heard the service. Despite the fact that he’d been gone a week, she was in no less a state of mental turmoil. Friends had sympathetically reminded her of his age and that he’d died quickly and hadn’t suffered a long and debilitating illness, which would have mortified him. She didn’t need to be told. She knew she was blessed that she’d had him for so many years—and that he’d been lucky to have led such a robust and healthy life.
All of that was true.
But it wasn’t right. What had happened wasn’t right.
Gus, she was certain, had been murdered.
Making the suggestion to the police had merely brought her more sympathy.
Gus had been as old as the hills. She’d recognized the looks that the officers who were called to the scene had given her.
Poor girl’s lost her only living relative. She just came out of the academy at Quantico, and she can’t accept an old—old!—man dying, so she had to turn it into a mystery.
An autopsy had revealed that he’d died because his heart had given out.
She believed that. But his heart had given out for a reason.
Gus had expected her; he’d been anxious to see her. Gus never got up and suddenly decided he needed to go down into the old pirate tunnels—he hadn’t been down there for years. To ensure that the tunnel remained safe and supported the structures above, he sent workers down every few months. He maintained the tunnel because of its historic value. It wasn’t a place he went for exercise or to commune with his ancestors or anything of the kind.
She’d tried to be logical. Gus had been very old. She’d heard of a number of cases like his, cases in which someone had led a long and healthy life, and just dropped dead. Young runners occasionally dropped dead, for God’s sake.
She couldn’t forget how and when it had happened. Couldn’t forget what he’d said.
Come home. I need you.
She wished now that she’d insisted he talk to her over the phone, that she’d demanded he provide some sort of explanation.