Jennifer Estep - Web of Lies

Lights blazed in several of the first-floor windows. I stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the front door.

“Hmph?” Sophia grunted through the heavy wood.

“It’s Gin.”

A lock clicked, and the Goth dwarf opened the door.

Sophia clenched an aluminum baseball bat in one hand.

Her black eyes flicked over my oversize clothes, and she stepped back to let us inside. Sophia crooked her finger at us, and we followed her deeper into the house. For a moment, I felt like I was coming home to Fletcher’s after a long day at the Pork Pit. Because the inside of Warren T. Fox’s house could have been an exact duplicate of Fletcher Lane’s. Same sort of well-worn, overstuffed furniture, same clutter of knickknacks, same piles of odds and ends that made a house a home. I blinked, and the illusion vanished.

The others were in a large den. Violet huddled on the sofa, a heavy textbook in her lap, a notepad and pen by her side. Studying. Jo-Jo perched on the other end of the sofa and flipped through a beauty magazine. Several more sat stacked at her bare feet. The dwarf had come prepared.

Warren rocked back and forth in an oversize recliner that made him seem older and more frail than he really was. The television was tuned to the Weather Channel.

Warren’s brown eyes focused intently on the storm-front graphics on the flickering screen. Finn relaxed in a similar chair, which he’d reclined all the way back. His laptop drowsed on his lap. Finn was doing the same in the chair itself. Soft snores drifted out of his open mouth.

I went over, put my hand into Finn’s broad shoulder, and shook him awake.

“What? What?” he mumbled in a sleepy voice. “I didn’t touch her, I swear.”

“Relax, Casanova,” I said.

Finn blinked a few times before his green eyes focused on me. “Oh, Gin, it’s you.” He frowned. “Why are you wearing a T-shirt that says Ashland Police Department on it?”

I sighed. “It’s a long story.”

Once Finn was more or less awake, I filled the others in on what Donovan Caine and I had found in Tobias Dawson’s office. The detective e-mailed the cell phone photos he’d taken to Finn, who started pulling them up on his laptop and going through them.

“Anything happen on this end?” I asked Sophia.

“Quiet,” she rasped.

“A couple of folks came in for sodas and cigarettes, but that was it,” Jo-Jo agreed.

“Usual customers,” Warren cut in. “Even Dawson can’t scare off folks when they need their tobacco.”

“Those papers you found inside the safe,” Jo-Jo said.

“What did they say? Anything interesting?”

I shrugged. “Ask Donovan. It was dark. I didn’t really see them.”

All eyes turned to the detective, who also shrugged.

“Like Gin said, it was dark. We only used flashlights inside. They mostly looked like schematics to me. We’ll have to wait and see what Finn says.”

“You’re going to have to give me a few minutes,” Finn said, typing on his laptop. “I’ve got to sort through and read some of this. It doesn’t make much sense to me either. Not to mention that the photo quality isn’t the best I’ve ever seen.”

“Sorry,” Donovan sniped. “I was a little more worried about flashing too much light around and getting caught than taking perfect pictures for you.”

We lapsed into silence while we waited for Finn to read and decipher the documents. But I had a pretty good idea of what they’d say. So I leaned against the wall and started thinking about what came next — getting close enough to Tobias Dawson to kill him. Because that was the only way this thing was going to end, if my suspicions were correct.

Sophia stood beside me and twirled the baseball bat in her hand like it was a metal baton.

After about ten minutes of reading and clicking, Finn frowned. “That’s weird.” He looked over at Warren. “Did you know Tobias Dawson has recently started construction on a new, separate mine shaft?”

Warren nodded. “That’s the rumor the miners have been spouting. There’s been more activity at the mine lately too.”

“What kind of activity?” Donovan asked.

Warren shrugged. “More blasting, more drilling. Sometimes, we can feel the tremors down here. Once they were so strong, they knocked over some sodas in the store. Made a big mess.”

“They feel sort of like small earthquakes,” Violet added. “They’ve been going on a couple of months now.”

“Well, according to this, Dawson is pouring most of his money and manpower into the new shaft these days,” Finn said.

“Why would he do that?” Violet asked.

Finn read some more. His frown deepened. “That can’t be right,” he muttered. “It’s not possible.”

“What?” Jo-Jo asked. “What’s not possible?”

“What Dawson is drilling for,” Finn said. “According to this, it looks like that shaft isn’t to get more coal out of the mountain. It’s for—”

“Diamonds,” I said in a soft voice. “He’s found diamonds in the mountain.”

Silence. For a moment, everyone looked at me. Then they all started talking at once.

“Diamonds?” Sophia rasped in surprise.

“That’s not possible,” Violet Fox said.

“Darling, anything’s possible,” Jo-Jo replied.

“So that’s why Dawson wants the land so badly.” Donovan shook his head.

“I wonder how big they are,” Finn said in a speculative tone.

Warren T. Fox was the only one who didn’t say anything.

Instead, the old coot stared at me, his eyes dark, pinched, and worried in his brown, wrinkled face. He knew what the diamond find meant as well as I did. Disaster.

For him and the mountain.

If the diamond I’d found in the safe was any indication of the size and quality of the others Tobias Dawson had discovered, the dwarf would tear the whole mountain apart to get every last gemstone out of the ground.

And it wouldn’t end there. Word would eventually leak out about the diamond find, and then, well, it would be worse than the California Gold Rush around here. Everyone would be bulldozing and blasting the area, hoping to find diamonds on their own land and get rich themselves.

They’d destroy the whole mountain in their hasty greed — and Warren T. Fox’s house and store lay at the epicenter. He’d go under first. The knowledge flashed in his eyes, steady, weary, certain.

Unless I did something to stop it.

I’d never considered myself to be any sort of environmentalist, but these mountains were as much a part of me as they were of Warren Fox. I took the same sort of pride in their beauty he did. If Tobias Dawson’s current mine was any indication of things to come, it would be a public service to stop this now. And there was only one way to do that — by killing Tobias Dawson.

Oh, I had no doubt that the dwarf had told a few of his most trusted men what he had found, like those two giants who’d come to the office to investigate the robbery tonight. But without Dawson around, without his mining expertise and know-how, it would be that much harder for his flunkies to do anything about the diamonds.

Even if they did make a move later on, I could always take them out too. No, killing Dawson was the key here. Eliminate the dwarf and the rest of the monster would more than likely die along with him.

Besides, the store, the land, the house. They were all that Warren and Violet had ever known. They were simply home. I knew Fletcher Lane would have done whatever he could to help his friend. The old man wasn’t here, but I was. And I was going to protect the Foxes — no matter what.

Warren raised his dark eyes to mine, asking a silent question. I nodded. Question asked and answered. Jo-Jo Deveraux saw the exchange. An emotion flickered in her pale gaze. It looked like relief — mixed with a spark of anticipation.