Apple Turnover Murder

Chapter Twenty-Eight

He was gaining on her, which was no surprise. Hannah chided herself for one fleeting moment about not keeping up her exercise regimen at the gym, but kicking herself mentally would do no good now. Perry was ten years younger and about a thousand times more athletic than she was at her best. Her only hope was outsmarting him.

Hannah darted around two weeping willow trees. The selection was quite appropriate for a cemetery, but she certainly didn’t stop to dwell on that thought. She emerged from the green canopy that had hidden her for a few seconds and dashed across the road that divided the historic section of Spring Brook Cemetery from the resting place of the more recently deceased.

Of course he’d seen her. She’d expected that. But since it was physically impossible for her to outrun him, it might be possible for her to lose him among the crumbling old mausoleums and huge statuary.

She knew this part of the cemetery fairly well from her bicycle trips to the edge of town as a child. Hannah recognized the Ezekiel Jordan mausoleum with its four colors of granite and its grouping of seraphim artfully arranged by the steps leading up to the door. Since it hadn’t been erected on a hilltop or even a gentle rise of land, the first mayor of Lake Eden had been laid to rest in a structure with a floor built of granite slabs that were three feet thick.

No place to hide in the first mayor’s crypt. It would be locked anyway. The city preserved the graveside of its founder and the key would be under lock and key.

The key would be under lock and key, her mind repeated as she ducked under another weeping willow and jumped over a low crumbling wall. Hannah gave her mind a piece of her mind, which earned her another censure from her grey cells as she darted around a massive statue of virgin and child. This was no time to criticize her use of English. It was a time to look for a hiding place…and fast!

The Pettis family mausoleum was directly in front of her. Hannah remembered a missing block of granite at the back, providing access to the crypt itself, where brave kids used to hide in games of Hide and Seek. Hannah had not been a brave kid. But she wasn’t being chased by a killer back then, either. She raced around the building, heading for the farthest corner, and stopped dead in her tracks. The hole had been repaired. She couldn’t hide here.

She peeked out cautiously and saw him standing about a half-block away, looking toward the west and shading his eyes from sun. Had she lost him? Should she stay here as quiet as a mouse and wait until he gave up and walked back to his truck?

Who are you kidding? Hannah’s mind said, and this time she agreed that it would be a bad decision. He’d search this whole area for her and find her huddled here. And then he’d pull out the knife, perhaps even the same one that he’d used on Bradford, and make sure she never told anyone what she knew.

Hannah shuddered. She wasn’t quite sure what horrified her most, the idea that he would kill her or the thought that she’d be stabbed with Bradford’s knife. In any event, she wasn’t going to hang around to find out.

Carefully and quietly, she began to work her way west, hoping the bright sun that was midway between its apex and the horizon, would blind him to her presence. She’d passed the second mausoleum when she saw it, a way that she could hide from Perry. It was the Henderson family mausoleum. She knew that because Bud Hauge had repaired the metal walleye and attached it to the front of the structure. But it wasn’t the walleye that had caught Hannah’s attention. It was the door at the side of the structure. The padlock that normally secured it was open and the door was very slightly ajar.

She really didn’t want to go in. There was nothing less appealing than a dark final resting place furnished with cold granite slabs that were decorated with spider webs and slithery, slimy things, and inhabited, if you could call it that, by dead mouldering bodies. Hannah swallowed hard, repressed a shiver, and corrected herself. The only thing less appealing than the inside of the Henderson crypt was being cornered by the man who intended to make her into one of those same mouldering bodies!

Hannah pulled the door open. It took all the courage she had to step inside, but she told herself that the dead could hurt her a lot less than the living and to get on with it.

Once she’d shut the door behind her, Hannah felt faint with fear. She stood there breathing heavily for what seemed like hours until she heard another sound, a sound that made her blood run cold. It was the click of a padlock closing outside the door. Perry had discovered her hiding place and locked her in!

A sudden dizziness came over her. It made her lose all sense of direction. She knew her feet were resting on the floor…or were they? Was up really up? Was down really down? It was the sort of total disorientation people must feel in a sensory deprivation chamber.

She had to sit down and get her bearings. But where? Even though she’d been here for several minutes, her eyes had not adjusted and it was still as black as a tomb inside. Black as a tomb? her mind asked. Just where do you think you are?

Of course she ignored it. Her mind wasn’t being very helpful at the moment. She had to concentrate on the positives in her situation. Yes, she was locked in, but she wouldn’t think about that. She was alive and unhurt, and that meant she had options. She couldn’t see, but she could still feel.

Tentatively, Hannah reached out into the darkness. Her left hand encountered a hard slightly-rounded surface. It was only a bit above chair height, and she sat down. It was a lot better than sitting on the floor with the spiders and the other crawly things, and it would be fairly comfortable if she removed the object that was jabbing her from her rear pocket. What could it be, anyway? She’d left her purse in Perry’s truck, and the only thing she had with her was…

Her cell phone! Hannah stood up in a flash and retrieved her cell phone. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? It was her salvation, her escape from danger, her passport out of here. She flipped it open, glanced at the display, and gave a moan of dismay. There were no bars, and the screen read No Signal. Spring Brook Cemetery was in a dead zone.

The cemetery is in a dead zone, her mind repeated, how appropriate. Hannah had to admit it did make sense. Why would they install a cell phone tower in the cemetery? It wasn’t as if the residents would be making many calls.

She couldn’t sit here and do nothing, hoping that someone had seen her get into the truck with Perry and would ask the right questions to track her to Spring Brook Cemetery. She was responsible for her own survival, and that meant she must find a way to get out of the mausoleum. She needed to explore her surroundings and find something she could use as a weapon if Perry came back. And if he failed to come back, she had to look for something she could use to force the wooden door open.

If only she had her flashlight! Hannah thought about it longingly for a moment, and then she remembered the cell phone in her hand. It wouldn’t make calls, but there was a light on the display. The light stayed on for only a minute and then it went off, but it would go on again every time she closed the phone and flipped it open again.

The search began with the area to her immediate right. Hannah flipped on the phone and used the lighted display to shine a dim light on a red wool hunting jacket and a hunting cap with earflaps. For a moment she was puzzled, but then she remembered that she was in Winnie Henderson’s family crypt, and Winnie had told Delores that she’d buried her husbands with their sporting equipment.

Too bad there weren’t any guns, but Winnie hadn’t been that foolish. Three might be knives though. Hannah re-flipped her phone to look through the hunting coat pockets and came up with a hunting knife in a leather sheath. It was a weapon and she would use it on Perry if she had to, but it might also be useful as a tool to carve her way through the wooden door.

Her next discovery was a drawstring pouch. Hannah had just pulled several cigar-shaped objects from the pocket when she heard a car enter the cemetery and drive up the road.

It was a warm summer afternoon. Unless the driver had air-conditioning, the windows of the car would be rolled down. If it was Perry’s work truck, calling out for help would do no harm since he already knew her location. If, on the other hand, it was a carload of teenagers looking for privacy at the cemetery, they might hear her and come to her rescue.

The car pulled up and stopped. Hannah waited a moment and then she called out. “Help! I’m locked in the Henderson crypt! Help me, please!”

There was a moment when nothing happened, and Hannah was just wondering if she should call out again when she heard a young female’s panicked voice. “I heard something from that grave over there! Turn around quick! Let’s get out of here!”

Hannah uttered a series of phrases she hoped her nieces would never learn from her, and sighed as the engine turned over, the tires squealed, and the driver burned rubber on his way to the gates.

They hadn’t heard her words…only the sounds. And they’d fled rather than attempt to find out what it was. What if no one heard her, and no one came? Hannah shivered and goose bumps peppered her arms. The light on her phone would give out eventually, and then she would be entombed here in the dark. Alone. Forever.

Visions of someone, years from now, opening the mausoleum to bury another member of the Henderson family and finding her body jolted Hannah into action. She picked up the knife and used the display on her cell phone to light her way to the crypt door. She worked for long minutes, twisting the tip of the blade this way and that, attempting to carve a hole in the wood, but the door was too thick to penetrate easily. She tried again with more force, slamming the blade into the wood, when she heard something snap. She’d broken the blade! It had probably rusted over the years and now it was useless to her.

How long will it take to starve? Hannah’s mind asked, presenting the question like a numbered item on a multiple choice test. One month, two months, more than three months, or none of the above? Her mind listed the lettered answers.

“None of the above,” Hannah answered aloud, startling something with wings that flew up toward the ceiling. It could have been a bird, or perhaps a bat, but she really didn’t want to know. “I’m going to get out of here or die trying!” she said. And then, when the words echoed back to her, she warned her mind, “Don’t you dare make a joke about that!”

It was then that she heard a second car approaching. She made her way to the door, put her mouth close to the place she’d been attempting to pierce with the knife, and prepared to shout at the top of her lungs. But as the car drew closer, she heard a low boom, and then another boom, followed by several others in an unmistakable rhythm. They were listening to music, and the windows were closed! Hannah cursed the day the car stereo had been invented as the rhythmic booming of the bass faded away in the distance and her hopes dwindled with it.

She was about to sit down again and try to think of something she could do to call attention to her plight, when she remembered that Herb would be patrolling the cemetery. His cruiser had no air-conditioning, and Lisa had told her that he never listened to music when he was on patrol. Herb’s windows would be wide open and perhaps she could call out to him as he drove by. But what if he didn’t hear her? What then? Somehow she had to make sure he knew she was here.

Since her mind seemed to be perfectly empty of any suggestions on just how to do that, Hannah picked up the last treasures she’d found and shined her cell-phone-turned-flashlight on them.

The first cigar-shaped object was a duck call. It said so right on the side. Hannah blew it once to test it and the thing near the ceiling fluttered again. She reached for the second, larger tube. This one was also marked, and it read Moose Call. That wouldn’t really do her any good since it was highly unlikely a moose would hear it and crash through the door to the Henderson family mausoleum. The third object, the smallest of the three that was shaped like a whistle, intrigued her. It was not marked, but Hannah picked it up and blew.

Nothing happened. She blew it again and still there was no sound. She was puzzled for a second or two, but then she knew what it was. She couldn’t hear the sound because it was too high-pitched for human ears. It was a dog whistle and it was the most important discovery she’d ever made.

Hannah used her phone light to check her watch. Herb should be driving into the cemetery in less than five minutes. She moved near the door, where there might be a slight crack that would make it easier to hear, and prepared to blow Dillon’s code on what she prayed was a dog whistle.

The minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. What if Mayor Bascomb had called off Herb’s patrol for some reason? What if Dillon had a stomach upset and Herb left him at home? What if the dog whistle was broken? Since she couldn’t hear it anyway, how would she know? What if no one ever found her and Norman married someone else? And Mike married someone else? And Delores, Andrea, and Michelle grieved for a while and then treated Hannah’s disappearance like an old mystery, a cold case that no one was able to solve? What if…there he was!

Hannah heard the car crunch across the gravel at the cemetery gates. It drove in, very slowly, and Hannah listened to the sound of the engine approaching. When she thought it was directly opposite the Henderson family mausoleum, she raised the whistle to her lips and blew three short blasts. Then she paused for a couple of beats and blew two more blasts. And then she waited.

“Dillon!” she heard a faint cry in what sounded like Herb’s voice. “Get back here!”

Hannah raised the whistle to her lips again. Three short blasts, a pause, and then two more. And no more than ten seconds later, she heard paws scrabbling frantically at the mausoleum door.

There was another shouted cry from Herb for Dillon to come back, and Hannah knew she’d better make sure he didn’t return to his master. She gave another three blasts on the whistle, waited the required several beats, and blew two more.

“Dillon! What are you doing?” Herb shouted, and this time his voice was much closer

“Help!” Hannah shouted. “Help me, Herb!”

“Hannah? Are you in there?”

“Yes!” Hannah shouted, almost dizzy with relief. “I’m locked in!”

“Hang on, Hannah! I’ll get you out! I’ve got bolt cutters in the cruiser. I’ll be right back.”

Hannah knew Herb had to leave for a minute or two in order to rescue her, but she still felt abandoned. The fearful feeling began to come back, but it was quickly dispelled by a little sound outside the door.

“Dillon?” she called out, and she was rewarded by an answering bark. “Stay with me, Dillon,” she said, and she heard him paw at the door.

“I’m back,” Herb shouted out. “Just a second, Hannah. All I have to do is…there we go!”

Hannah heard a loud snap and a moment later, the heavy wooden door creaked open. Sunlight poured in, and for a few moments she was confused. It was still daytime! The sunlight was so bright it hurt her eyes, and she blinked like a mole coming up from its hole. And then a little white dog barreled up to her and she caught him in her arms.

“What happened?” Herb asked, as Dillon licked Hannah’s nose.

“Perry killed Bradford and he locked me in here. Call it in, Herb. He’s crazy and they’ve got to catch him!”

“I’m on it,” Herb said. “Can you get back to the cruiser by yourself?”

“Yes. Go!” Hannah smiled as she received another doggy kiss on her cheek. She kissed Dillon back on the top of his head and stuffed her lifesaving cell phone back in her pocket. And then she stepped out into the light with Dillon following closely behind her.

They hurried through the cemetery and up to the cruiser where Herb was making the call. Hannah opened the passenger door and patted her lap for Dillon to jump up. When he did, she gave him another nuzzle on the head. “Good boy!” she said.

“Dispatch found Mike,” Herb reported, turning to her. “He was heading straight out to the college apartments anyway.”

“Why?”

“Michelle called him on his cell phone when you didn’t come back from the concession stand. She said she didn’t know if it was important, but she remembered where she’d heard Kyle Williamson’s name before. Sherri Connors introduced him as her boyfriend when they were rehearsing the Christmas Follies at the college. Mike was heading out there to interview Sherri about him.”

“So I was a step ahead of Mike,” Hannah said, not sure if that was a bad or a good thing.

“That’s right. Mike said to hang tight, he’ll catch up with you later at home to take your statement.”

“Good,” Hannah said, and then she turned back to Dillon. “You’re such a good boy, Dillon. When I get back to the condo, I’m going to bake a special cake just for you!”