“Don’t say that!”
“It’s an expression. It doesn’t mean anything.” He looked at my stricken face, put an arm around me, and drew me to him. “I’ll put on that deadbolt today.”
“Thank you. And I think it’s time to tell Gus what’s going on. It’s just too creepy.”
Chris let me go and nodded his agreement. “Yes. Tell Gus.”
“Last night Binder said he and Flynn are getting an early start this morning. I’ll go to the station first thing. Luckily the original photo is still at the yacht club.”
At least I hoped it was.
Chapter 21
Chris took off to pick up his fare, and I went downstairs in search of coffee. Gus was in the restaurant getting ready to open. He’d turned on the lights, and the warm scene made me feel better instantly.
Gus grunted softly when I took the tray of maple syrup dispensers and set them on the tables. Mrs. Gus’s pies were still in their wooden boxes, so after I finished distributing syrup, I reverently opened the boxes and put each one on a shelf in the glass case, my mouth watering in delicious anticipation as I did. Apple, pumpkin, chocolate peanut butter, pecan. I went behind the counter and poured a cup of coffee from the pot Gus had already made. “Want a cup?”
“Why not? We have time.” Gus came around the counter and sat next to me. “You and your boyfriend left the kitchen door unlocked again last night.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “We didn’t. I’m certain. Chris locked it while I watched him, to make triple sure.” One time might have been carelessness—Chris’s not locking the door or my mislaying the gift certificates—but two times was two too many. “Gus, someone’s come into my apartment twice and taken things.”
His blue eyes opened wide, black pupils contracting. “Taken things. What things?”
The answer to that was only going to lead to more questions, so I said, “Nothing valuable.”
His look was skeptical, which I didn’t take personally, because that was one of his most common looks.
“Chris and I have locked the door every night, I swear. I think the kitchen door is unlatched in the morning because whoever is coming in doesn’t have a key, so they can’t lock it from the outside when they leave.” I paused to make sure he understood. He nodded for me to go on. “Is there any other way into the restaurant besides the front door and the kitchen door?”
Gus’s expressive features rearranged themselves from annoyed to surprised to comprehending. “Did I ever tell you what this building was before it was a restaurant?” he asked.
“You told me it was a warehouse. Why?”
Gus went behind the counter and grabbed a powerful flashlight and a putty knife out of his toolbox. “So I never told you what was stored here in the old days?” He headed behind the newly installed bar. I followed. He felt around with his foot. “Here it is.”
“Here what is? I don’t see anything.”
“Patience. This was meant to be hidden. They knew how to build things back when it was put in.”
He bent over and used the putty knife to pry open a trapdoor. I peered into the murky darkness, listening to the surf lapping on the harbor rocks.
“During Prohibition, like lots of warehouses along the Maine coast, this building was used to store alcohol smuggled in from Canada until it could be trucked to the railroad and shipped to Boston and New York City. This place used to be filled top to bottom and side to side with illegal booze.”
I stared into the darkness. “Where does it go?”
“That’s the interesting part. Come see.” Gus dropped down into the hole below.
“Be careful!” No one except Mrs. Gus knew how old Gus was, but for certain he wasn’t young. The boulder below looked slippery. I followed him. The trap door slammed closed behind me, echoing off the surface of the rock.
Gus ducked under the floor joists of the building, walking between the pilings.
I looked around. Through the opening between the restaurant floor and the giant boulder on which it stood, dawn gave the sky a rosy glow. The only way out, that I could see, was straight over the boulder and into the harbor. At high tide you’d get soaked. At low tide, you’d either break a bone on the rocks or get stuck in the muck at the bottom of the harbor. “Now what?” I asked.
“C’mon.” Gus was spry, I had to give him that, and in a sort of hunched-over duck walk, he made straight for the place where the boulder met the bank that carried the road above. And disappeared.
“Gus!”
“Right here,” he called, sticking his head back out of the opening in the rock wall and shining the flashlight under his chin. If it was an attempt to reassure me, it didn’t work.
“What is this?”
“Mostly it’s a natural cave, although there’s a manmade part at the other end. C’mon,” he repeated.