Sin And Vengeance Read online

  Hearing this, Deirdre erupted in a constant high-pitched scream.

  Charlie ignored his own nudity and moved closer to the man on the floor. His head lay twisted with his face tucked under his arm in a way no breathing person would endure long. Guilt hollowed Charlie’s chest and visions of a filthy French prison bombarded him as Deirdre continued her high-pitched assault on his eardrums. His instinct told him to get in the car and go, to leave Deirdre and Randy to sort out their problems, but his eyes were locked on the twisted figure at his feet.

  “God damn it! Help him!” she screamed again.

  Charlie looked at her dumbfounded. Henri was obviously dead, but Deirdre wouldn’t stop screaming until she had proof. She might not stop even then. Reluctantly, he kicked aside dozens of the green packets to make an even cushion over the wooden floor. Still unsure what he could accomplish, he kneeled down and felt Henri’s neck for a pulse. His skin felt damp and rubbery and he didn’t respond to the pressure on his neck. No pulse. No movement of any kind.

  Charlie lifted the muscled shoulder and rolled Henri onto his back. His hand flopped down and his knuckles smacked the wooden floor. The pain would have been intense for a conscious man, but Henri didn’t react. His neck lifted easily, head back, airway open. When Charlie lowered his cheek to feel for escaping air, he was eyeball to eyeball with Henri’s last gruesome expression. His eyes bulged as if the wine bottle had thrust them forward in their sockets.

  Charlie turned his head and watched the man’s chest lay placid. Seconds passed. No breath, no pulse. Charlie pinched his nose and delivered two forceful breaths. The chest rose.

  Deirdre finally quieted and Charlie could hear Randy tearing at the wall.

  The irony of the situation struck Charlie queerly as he delivered two more breaths. He wondered what someone coming in would think. Here were two naked men in a room with an attractive woman strapped to the bed. One is working on a construction project and the other is kissing a man on the floor.

  “Shit!” Randy pulled a long splinter from his finger. He shook his hand violently then inspected it for blood.

  Charlie located the xiphoid process and placed his palm two inches above for a chest compression.

  “What are you doing? You bring him back and he’ll be so pissed we’ll have to kill him again.”

  Charlie grunted between compressions. “You, going, to, help?”

  “Bury him, yeah. Revive him, no.”

  Randy wasn’t certifiably insane, but he managed a convincing appearance. He was wildly unpredictable; intense fun wrapped around big trouble. Charlie watched him work at the wall as he alternated delivering compressions and breaths. The side of Randy’s face was caked with dried blood and he was completely naked except for his sunglasses. He bent a wallboard with all his strength until it finally snapped. He jumped back in pain as new splinters sliced into his hands, but promptly forgot them when the rush of green packages tumbled from the wall. Randy soothed his fingers in his mouth then hopped over to assail the next section of the board like a junkie in search of his next fix.

  Charlie eyed Deirdre when he could. She was quiet while he delivered CPR, but after ten minutes, Henri wasn’t responding and Charlie couldn’t kneel any longer. Charlie sat and checked for a pulse one last time. Nothing. He held his fingers there awkwardly, his head too heavy to lift and face Deirdre. He’d known his effort had been more about appeasing her than saving Henri, but his failure to revive him compounded his guilt for the tragic mistake they’d made.

  Charlie stood up, walked to the bed, and wrapped a blanket around her. “I’m sorry. He’s gone,” he said and squeezed her shoulders.

  She cried quietly, still bound and unable to dab her own tears.

  Charlie considered loosening the belts, but he’d only known this woman thirty minutes. She might run home for a gun or the police.

  Charlie left her there, dressed, and joined Randy at the wall. He needed to keep himself together and demolition work was the ideal release for his confusion. His sneaker smashed through a board on the first strike. One more kick broke open a wide hole. He continued shattering boards one after another, ignoring the money behind them and the throbbing in his knee.

  “Finally came to your senses, I see.”

  “Don’t be such a heartless bastard.”

  Charlie ripped away a series of broken boards and the little avalanches tumbled down. “Holy crap. How much did this guy have in here?” Charlie wondered aloud.

  “Hey, nice work with the sneakers.” Randy paused to pull on his black jeans and boots.

  Charlie had kicked his way to the opposite corner when Randy arrived back at the wall with a crash of his heel. Soon they had stripped two boards from the length of the twelve-foot wall. Charlie ventured into the closet and discovered a trim board, gouged with hammer marks. He pried it off and found a narrow hole that had been sawed across the length of the wall. Someone had been dropping money in through the hole and using the trim board to cover it afterward. Charlie made a quick tour of the house. This was the only board that had been disturbed. He broke open a few other walls to be sure, but found nothing and gave up.

  Back in the bedroom, Charlie thumbed through one of the little packets. The bills were all hundreds, fifty, sixty, maybe eighty. No, there were a hundred hundreds in each. Ten thousand dollars to a packet and they were piled almost knee-high. Thousands of them! Millions of dollars lay heaped on the floor. This was the kind of money he would have made playing pro ball.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Charlie said.

  “Not yet, we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

  “What are you talking about? Let’s take the money and go.”

  Randy motioned Charlie back to the wall. The two boards they had ripped off opened a six-inch strip from the corner to the trim around the closet door. Charlie reached in and pulled out packets one after another until he couldn’t reach any lower. They had torn open the wall at waist height where Henri’s head cracked the boards. The lower portion was still full of money! The mound that covered Henri and spread over the floor was only half of the fortune they’d stumbled across.

  They decided tearing the boards loose by hand would take too long. They split up: Randy headed to the barn to look for boxes, Charlie to the cellar to find a sledge hammer. On his way out of the room, Charlie stopped beside Deirdre. She stared into the bedspread oblivious to his attempt to comfort her. He patted her through the blanket and reassured her that she’d be safe. He hoped they all would be.

  As Charlie lowered himself down the stairs, his mind whirled with thoughts about the money. He figured the final pile would be two feet high in the middle, five feet across and ten feet long. He flicked on the light and started down the cellar stairs. When his feet touched the dirt floor, his best guess was two thousand packets.

  Twenty million dollars!

  He found a sledge in a jumble of tools, turned, and lugged it up the stairs. Deirdre was where he left her, wrapped in the blanket, quivering like a snared rabbit that sees the hunter coming. Charlie reassured her again as he carried the sledge to the wall and set to work. The bottom two wallboards splintered easily under the sledge and soon all the money was heaped next to Henri. Still no sign of Randy.

  “Hey, I need to use the bathroom,” Deirdre called from the bed.

  Charlie realized she probably couldn’t remember his name and he preferred it that way. She looked calm, but he worried about what she’d say tomorrow. Letting her go was risky, the alternative unconscionable. “You promise to behave?”

  “Come on. I have to go.”

  She avoided Charlie’s eyes and shied away as he approached.

  Charlie paused with his fingers on the first buckle. “I’m trusting you. We’re going to figure this out together. We’ll get one story and we’ll all stick to it. Ok?”

  She nodded. Tear tracks stretched down her cheeks, well beyond the reach of her bound hands. Charlie unraveled the belt from her right wrist. It was red
and swollen from a half hour of struggling. She freed the left one herself and rubbed the irritated skin. She didn’t slap him and she didn’t try to run. He was relieved, but kept himself between her and the door knowing if she got a twenty-foot head start, he’d never catch her.

  He helped with her dress and led the way downstairs to the bathroom.

  Charlie sat heavily next to the sink.

  Deirdre looked up indignantly. “What? You’re staying?”

  “What’s the difference? You’ve been naked the last hour.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she protested.

  “Definitely not.” He stayed firmly rooted, facing her from the vanity.

  Deirdre finished quickly in spite of her audience and went back upstairs without a struggle. She sat vacantly on the bed while Charlie loaded stacks of money into a bed sheet.

  Randy finally walked in with two large cardboard boxes in one hand and a bright red can in the other. “Someone’s feeling mighty gracious today.”

  Charlie ignored the jab. “What’s with the gas?”

  “I figured we take the money and torch the place. We all get a share and we all keep our mouths shut.”

  The thought to destroy the evidence hadn’t occurred to Charlie, but he was relieved Randy hadn’t suggested burning Deirdre along with her husband. She looked terrified. She might keep quiet for a while, but whatever happened, Charlie was going back to Massachusetts fast.

  He turned to Randy. “The gas won’t do. Any decent fire inspector will spot it.”

  “Like they could find one out here in nowheresville.”

  “Why risk it?”

  “You have a better idea, Mr. Chemistry Expert?”

  “Put the gas back where you found it and get your car loaded. I’ll be back.”

  “Quick trip to the winery?”

  Charlie glared at Randy. Deirdre had known nothing about him, but in ten seconds, Randy told her Charlie was a chemist from a local winery. When he returned in just fifteen minutes, she’d know the winery was close. This was careless even for Randy, especially after smacking Henri with that bottle. If he planned to let Deirdre go, he wasn’t being smart about it. Tomorrow, she’d be meeting with the police and Randy was all but telling her how to find them. Charlie vowed to get himself back to the States immediately. He wondered how he’d explain his quick departure to his father and what Randy could possibly be thinking.

  “Get the money packed while I’m gone.” Charlie turned for the door without waiting for a response. Randy rarely answered a direct question, no less an order, even when he intended to comply.

  Charlie rushed down to his car and backed down the driveway with the lights and the radio off. The branches overhead blocked the moonlight. The only guide to the road was the gap in the dark silhouettes of the trees. His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. If he looked up, he could follow the trail of the road against the sky, but when he tried it, he drifted onto the shoulder a few times. He slowed down and went back to peering straight ahead at the trees. When he emerged into the fields around the winery, the moonlight lit the road and he sped up to forty. He drove by one dark house and then another. The quiet passing of the car drew no attention in the middle of the night, but the lights may have.

  The winery was quiet. Still, Charlie parked a hundred yards from the house and walked over the grass to the cooper’s woodshop. He slipped inside, hoisted three large plastic bags, and slipped out again. He drove back quickly and parked between a rickety old sedan and the farmhouse steps. He checked his watch: two o’clock. He’d have to make his next trip even faster if he wanted to get safely home before the commotion began.

  When Charlie got out of his car, he noticed two overfilled boxes resting against Randy’s rental. He assumed the trunk was full, so he toted them over, cursing Randy for parking so far from the house. He slid the boxes deep into his trunk and left it open for whatever money remained upstairs. Hoisting the plastic bags, he stepped inside to the quiet kitchen and dropped the bags in a corner.

  He took a fat red candle down into the cellar and placed it on the third step from the bottom. Before he lit it, he eyed the old fuse box nervously. He wished he could shut the power off. One spark in the old wiring and the whole place would go with him inside, but he needed electricity to run the vacuum, so he’d have to take the risk. He left the candle burning, walked upstairs, and checked the seal of the cellar door carefully. Satisfied, he grabbed a plastic bag and headed upstairs.

  When Charlie walked into the bedroom, he sensed trouble. Deirdre was bound to the bedposts again and there was a hint of red across her face in the shape of two fingers. She wasn’t struggling, but her posture was taught and angry. She glared accusingly at Charlie when he entered and he wondered if setting her free was the right thing to do. Randy was on one knee, tossing bills into the bed sheet.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. This is the last load,” Randy said casually.

  Deirdre twisted herself toward Charlie. “Bullshit nothing! Why’d you leave me here with this psycho bastard?”

  “Come on Randy, what did you do?”

  “Me? What did I do? Look over there. This is her fault. She led that whacko here. I’m lucky he didn’t rip my head off.”

  “You didn’t have to…” Deirdre stammered.

  Randy exploded. “Listen, you got what you came here for. Now you can stay here and burn or you can take the money and keep your damn mouth shut.”

  Charlie doubted he’d ever know for sure what had happened while he was gone, but his suspicion turned his stomach sour. Whatever Randy had done, Deirdre was terrified. She wouldn’t tell, but her eyes pleaded for help. She believed Randy would let her burn and Charlie did, too.

  “Where’s her share?” Charlie asked.

  “The suitcase.” Randy pointed to an old leather case by the door. “There’s a mil and a half, it’s all she can carry.”

  Randy fished the keys out of Henri’s pocket and tossed them across the room to Charlie. “It’s hers now anyway.”

  Charlie immediately tossed them back. “Put ’em back where you found ’em. No one will believe he walked here and died in a fire. We don’t want the police looking for a killer. Do we?”

  “We leave the car, they’ll ID him in twenty minutes.”

  “They’ll ID him no matter what. Deirdre’s going to help us. She’s going to say the right thing.” Charlie turned to her. “You were out for a few drinks, came home, and Henri was gone. You never saw any of this, did you Deirdre?”

  Deirdre, unable to speak, shook her head weakly.

  “I’m going to bring you and your share of the money back to your car. I need you to wait outside until we’re ready. We’re all leaving together. Ok?”

  Deirdre was shocked pale. He wondered again what she’d say tomorrow.

  “If we wanted to hurt you we wouldn’t be sending you outside. Understand?”

  Charlie hadn’t entirely thought this through. When he agreed to help Randy take care of the house, he hadn’t realized he’d be driving around the outskirts of Piolenc and back in the middle of the night with the fire raging. In such a small town, just being seen out tonight would be suspicious. For an instant, Charlie considered letting Randy handle this on his own, but when he saw Deirdre glaring across the room, he knew everyone would be better served if he drove her himself.

  “Just wait outside two minutes and don’t do anything silly. Ok?”

  Charlie understood that if Deirdre had spoken she would have burst into tears. He unbound her hands a second time and carried her share of the money to the car. Randy slung the sheet over his shoulder and lugged the bulging sack outside. He dumped the disheveled heap into Charlie’s trunk and carried the sheet back inside.

  Back in the kitchen, Randy reached into one of the bags and felt the fine particles. “What’s with the sawdust? We going to pile it up and burn it?”

  “No. Just help me out. Close all the windows and whatever you do, don
’t open the cellar door.”

  “Cool.” Randy rushed away.

  Charlie grabbed him by the shoulder, slowly and deliberately enunciating every word, “If you open that door too soon, we’re both going to die.”

  “I got it. The door stays closed.” Randy scurried about closing the windows on the first floor while Charlie went upstairs.

  With his single window closed, Charlie plugged in the vacuum and reversed the hoses so the air blew out through the metal section that normally attached to the vacuum head. He pushed this into the plastic bag and started the motor. When the airflow hit the tiny particles, they leaped toward the ceiling and billowed along on currents of air. They drifted everywhere, filling the air with a thick tan fog. When the bag was nearly empty and he couldn’t see across the room, Charlie worked his way downstairs coughing and blowing the tiny particles as he went.

  Randy was waiting with a fresh bag of sawdust when Charlie reached the bottom. They fogged the first floor with the final two bags then Charlie reassembled the vacuum correctly, stuck it in a corner, and eyed the door.

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah, for what?”

  “Get the Hell out of here and get Deirdre in my car.”

  Charlie gave Randy a twenty-second head start then opened the cellar door. Immediately the cloud of sawdust began drifting down the stairs toward the candle. It settled on succeeding steps like lightly falling snow.

  Charlie ran out the door brushing off the sawdust as he jumped in his car.

  Randy already had his car running and raced ahead of Charlie’s BMW down the long driveway. They stopped at the street and got outside their cars to watch.

  “Not too exciting there, smart guy,” Randy mocked.

  “Just relax. It’ll take a minute.”

  “The gasoline would’ve worked better.”

  “Too easy to trace. The sawdust will ignite all at once and it’ll be gone.”

  Charlie realized he’d left the plastic bags inside. He hoped they’d melt away to nothing. He was definitely not going back in to get them. Nearly a minute passed and everything was quiet and dark.