Marcia Muller - Locked In

Tom Peeples’s lined face crumpled and he put his hand over his eyes, but he made no effort to comfort his wife.

At last Julia could step into the situation. She went over, put her arms around Judy Peeples’s bent body, and helped her into a chair.

After a moment, Tom Peeples stood, his lined face resigned, and laid a rough hand on his wife’s shoulder. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s just so hard for me to accept it.”

She looked up at him, eyes streaming.

“I’ll do anything you ask, if it’ll bring Larry back to us.”

“… Thank you, Tom.”

To Julia, Peeples added, “Please excuse our quarreling. We’re not ourselves today. Haven’t been in six months, actually.”

“No problem. You’ve been dealing with stuff I can’t even imagine. Will you show me the money now?”

“Yes. Come with me, please.”

He led her into the hallway, through an informal dining room and a kitchen that Julia would have killed for. All this money, she thought, all this land, but these people were broken. The loss of an only child, the uncertainty of what had happened to him-that made every material thing meaningless.

If Tonio vanished without a trace, she would spend her life searching-and grieving.

Peeples led her along a lighted graveled path through an oak grove.

“My wife thinks this money will lead you to some magical solution to our son’s disappearance.”

“But you don’t.”

“No. I’m not doubting your abilities, but I think if Larry disappeared voluntarily he’s hidden himself where no one can find him. Or else…”

“Yes?”

“Foul play.” Peeples’s voice was choked.

Hombre pobricito . He couldn’t bring himself to use the word dead .

They came to a big white barn. When Peeples opened its doors, the smell took Julia aback, and she hesitated.

“You afraid of horses?” Peeples asked. “They’re all confined to their stalls. They’ll get restless when we go in, but settle down pretty quick.”

“I don’t know anything about horses,” she told him, “but the smell…”

“Well, yes, they’re stinky buggers. I’m not crazy about them myself, but my wife, she loves them. We’ve got six. She gives free riding lessons to the vineyard workers’ kids.”

Julia started liking the Peepleses a lot more.

Peeples turned on a light. At first it blinded Julia, then she started, face-to-face with a blond horse that had a white star on its forehead. It whinnied, but its brown eyes were gentle.

“This way,” Peeples said.

The tack room was to the right. It was small, with saddles on stands, its walls covered with riding apparatus, none of which Julia could identify. Until tonight she hadn’t been any closer to a horse than the ones the police rode in the city parks.

Peeples said, “I was moving some things around in here this afternoon, trying to consolidate them. There was a loose floorboard under one box that I’d never noticed before.” He went to the far side, pried up the board, and lifted out a small leather travel bag.

“One hundred thousand dollars,” he said in a hollow voice. “Small bills. I’ve counted it twice.”

He held out the bag and Julia looked into it. Rows of bills banded together. More money than she’d ever seen in one place.

Peeples looked down at her, his tanned face slack and aged beyond his fifty-some years.

“I can’t believe our son stole this money and hid it here,” he said. “But how else could he have gotten his hands on this much cash?”

Right, Julia thought, how else?

“Do you have a safe?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s put it there until I figure out what to do about this.”

The late supper Judy Peeples had promised her had been good, their guest room was super-comfortable, but it was too damn quiet in the country. She could sleep through the wail of sirens and the grumbling of buses and people shouting on the city streets, but here in rural Sonoma County, where the only sound was a rooster that kept crowing all night, she tossed and turned. Weren’t roosters supposed to crow only at dawn? What was wrong with the thing?

Around three in the morning she got up and sat on the window seat looking out at the oak grove between the house and the stables. She focused on the slight movement of the branches in the breeze, and after a while she felt sleepy. The bird had finally shut up. Maybe she could-

Motion under the oak trees.

Julia tensed up. An animal? What wild kinds did they have here? Deer, raccoons, opossums. For all she knew, coyotes and mountain lions. Well, she was safe inside…

But this shape didn’t move like an animal, it moved like a human. Larry or Judy Peeples, going to check on the horses? No, she’d have seen them or heard the back door close if they’d left the house.

The dark figure kept moving. In the direction of the stables? She got up quickly, pulled on jeans, and tucked her sleep shirt into them. Went out into the hall. A night-light burned there, showing her the way to the stairs. She crept down them, guided by another light on the first floor, then felt her way back to the door off the kitchen.

The night air was warm and felt like silk against her skin. Something tickled her nostrils, and she had to stifle a sneeze. From her second-floor bedroom the night hadn’t seemed so dark because of a scattering of stars, but out here it was inky. She started toward the oak grove, and the damn rooster went off again. Nearly made her jump a foot.

She moved through the grove, keeping to the path, wishing she’d thought to put on shoes.

Estúpida . When will you learn?

The stones cut into her soles; a couple of times she had to hop on one foot. Finally the stables came into view. Dark, but the horses sounded restless.

So here she was-barefoot and unarmed. Unarmed because after all the violence she’d seen growing up on the streets of the Mission district, she hated guns and had opted out of getting firearms-qualified. And suddenly scared. What had she been thinking of, coming out here like this?

Movement by the stables-slow, stealthy. A bulky shape slipping off to the left. Unarmed or not, Julia took off running in pursuit.

The person-she couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman-plunged into the vineyard that bordered the stables, heading toward the road. Feet pounded the dirt between the plants, branches snapped and rustled. Julia followed through the rows of gnarled old vines.

After a moment she stopped to get her bearings. The person she was following must’ve stopped too: there was no noise except for the distant cry of the rooster. Then another bird joined the chorus. No one moved among the vines.

Julia wiped beads of sweat from her forehead, looked around. Blackness, crouching shadows. Narrow paths stretching in all directions. Then, off to her left, a faint rustling. The intruder was on the move again.

She went toward the sound, took a path, and ran down it, kicking up clods of dirt. The intruder’s footsteps now sounded uneven, labored.

Julia was gaining, gaining-

Then in the darkness something slammed into her. An upright grape stake. Pain erupted on the bridge of her nose, and she fell to the ground, the gnarled vines scratching on her way down. She lay there stunned for a few seconds. By the time she regained her senses and her feet, a car’s engine had started up in the distance.

Lost them, whoever he-or she-was.

Mierda .

She put her hand to her nose, felt blood welling. Injury to insult. This was a great beginning to her day.