Dana Mentink - Lost Legacy

“My father was kicked out of three colleges before he struck out on his own, so he has little room to talk,” Victor said.

Brooke heard the warmth in Victor’s voice when he spoke of his father, a sharp contrast to his coolness and efficiency. They had that in common anyway. The doors groaned open, exhaling a waft of cold air.

“Pipes here are disconnected?” Victor said.

“Yes. Otherwise we’d be walking into a sauna right now.” Lock put on his hard hat, and Brooke and Victor followed suit.

Brooke tried to give Victor back his jacket, but he refused.

“I’ve got more body mass to keep me warm,” he murmured in her ear, sending tickles up and down her spine as they moved forward.

If it weren’t for the meager light provided by a rickety setup of overhead lightbulbs, the darkness would have swallowed them up completely. The tunnel was damp, the walls clammy with moisture. Along either side of the tunnel were long webs of jointed pipes, heavy with rust. The space was so narrow the three of them had to crowd together, and Victor’s height left a scant few inches between his head and the light fixtures. Grit scraped under their feet as they shuffled along.

“You see what I mean?” Lock said. “This is the last place anyone would come to hide a painting, especially a valuable one. The conditions in here would destroy a piece immediately.”

Brooke felt her heart sink. He was right. Colda would never have risked concealing a Tarkenton in the tunnel. Humidity? Rodents? Water? Any one of them would ruin an oil painting. No one who knew the Tarkenton’s value would risk those dangers. It was inconceivable, like throwing the crown jewels into the ocean.

Victor looked around, keeping his head bent to avoid cracking into the pipes around him. He glanced at Brooke as if trying to read her thoughts. She wondered what was going through his mind. If her search ended, he might lose the chance to find out if there was any connection between the missing painting and his wife’s death. There wasn’t, she was sure, but for some reason having him there was comforting in spite of his distrust of her father.

“Does this tunnel lead to any others?” Victor asked.

The dean pushed on. “You’ll have your answer in a few minutes.”

They pressed on, and the chill seemed to leach out from the pipes into Brooke’s spine. Her hands were cold, skin goose-pimpled. Unless the conditions changed significantly, there was no possibility that the painting was housed in the damp tunnels.

Her hard hat clanked against an elbow of pipe that jutted into the space. The farther they pressed into the chilled darkness, the more on edge she became. “How much farther?” she asked.

Lock stopped. “This is what I wanted you to see.” He pointed a gnarled finger ahead and eased back so Victor and Brooke could move closer.

Brooke found herself staring through an old rusted metal grate. She pressed a hand to the iron mesh. Beyond was a ruinous pile of twisted pipes and jagged blocks of concrete. It was completely impassable. The floor was obscured under several inches of murky water.

“Take a look at the padlock,” the dean said.

Victor fingered the heavy rusted piece. “Hasn’t been opened for a long time.”

“Since five years ago when the tunnel collapsed. Wouldn’t be any point in going in there anyway.”

Brooke suppressed a groan. She’d been so sure that the tunnels held the answers. Proof that the Tarkenton was real, that her father had found a treasure that would obliterate his rocky past and provide a secure future for her brother. In her mind it was a tunnel of light, of hope.

Ahead she saw only ruin.

Victor put a hand on hers, fingers warm against her cold skin. “We should go now.”

She nodded, unable to trust her voice.

Dean Lock squeezed past her. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Ramsey. It really would be incredible to think there was a buried treasure here, but as you can see it’s just not possible.”

The pity in his tone was worse than the disappointment stabbing through her. “Thank you anyway,” she forced herself to say. Chilled and numb with discouragement, she followed him on the way out.

Victor fell in behind her. “I’m…sorry,” he said.

Sorry that her father wouldn’t get a second chance? Or sorry that Victor had lost the chance to prove her father was a criminal like he’d always suspected? She did not want to find comfort in his large palm pressed to her back, but nonetheless she did. Must be the impenetrable darkness that made her feel so weak.

She willed her legs to move faster, to get out of that dank place so she could think, but she had no time to do so.

There was an audible snap.

Without warning the lights went out.

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