Some Like It Hawk(6)

From the look on Eric’s face, I had a feeling I’d eliminated the danger that he’d try to sneak into the tunnel.

If only I could eliminate my own constant anxiety that all the little cave-ins were warning signs that a great big one was coming. And my not entirely irrational dread that when—make that if—it happened, Rob would get caught in it.

“And the big deal about Fourth of July is that we’re going to replace the trapdoor then,” I said.

“You couldn’t just try oiling it?” Eric asked.

“We do,” I said. “Daily. Doesn’t help much. So we’re replacing it. Actually, the Shiffleys tried once before, but apparently back in the nineteen-twenties someone—possibly bootleggers—did some repair work. The trapdoor doesn’t just sit on the slab—it’s anchored by a whole lot of steel bars going down into the stone and concrete. They figured out they’ll have to hack the whole thing apart with jackhammers and blowtorches. It’ll make a hell of a racket. So they’re going to do it under cover of the college orchestra concert, which will end with a bravura performance of The 1812 Overture, complete with cannons and fireworks.”

“Cool.” Eric perked up a bit at the thought. “There is one thing I don’t understand, though.”

“What’s that?”

“My mom said you and Michael were worried that the Evil Lender might take your house,” he said. “Does this have something to do with that? And how can they do that, anyway?”

My stomach tightened, as it always did when the subject came up.

“It’s complicated,” I said. And then I realized that if Eric was almost old enough to drive, he was also old enough to deal with a few complications. “The short version is that they can’t. But the county might be able to seize our land if they needed it for some public purpose. And right now the county owes the Evil Lender a lot of money. What if the Evil Lender told the county board ‘We won’t sue you, and we won’t make you pay back those millions of dollars—all you have to do is use your power to seize these people’s land and sell it to us’?”

“But the county board won’t do that—right?”

“I hope not. They don’t want to, but what if the Evil Lender backs them into a corner where they can’t refuse?”

“What does this have to do with Mr. Throckmorton?”

“Cousin Festus thinks having him there helps the county’s case.” Festus Hollingsworth, part of Mother’s vast extended family, was representing the county in all of these legal matters. I found myself wishing, not for the first time, that Festus would explain why he thought Mr. Throckmorton’s presence was so useful. Was it only for the PR value, or was there some obscure legal reason? But Festus hadn’t become a respected litigator and one of the top property law experts in Virginia by sharing his strategies with the immediate world.

Or maybe Festus might have enlightened us if he’d had time. For the past six weeks, he and the team of attorneys and paralegals he’d installed on the third floor of our house had been putting in twenty-hour days sorting through the boxes and boxes of papers and diskettes the lender had delivered. “It’s called document dump,” Festus had explained. “In discovery, they’re required to give me all relevant documents. But there’s no rule to prevent them from hiding them in several tons of useless garbage.” Festus was a veteran of many battles against slimy corporations. He knew how to deal with all this—didn’t he?

“Festus is the expert,” Eric said, echoing my thoughts.

“So until he tells us otherwise, we protect the secret of the tunnel,” I said. “And help Mr. Throckmorton stay in place.”

Eric tried to draw himself up to his full height, whacking not just his head, but even his shoulders on the low ceiling—when had he suddenly grown taller than me? He nodded with enthusiasm.

“You can trust me!” he said.

“Of course, protecting it doesn’t mean we have to sit here staring at it,” I replied. “Let’s go out and keep watch. Always peek out before you reenter the tent; never leave the tent unguarded until the junk’s on top of the trapdoor; and if someone catches you going in or out of the crawl space, there’s your excuse.”

I pointed to a mini-refrigerator tucked just inside the entry. I popped the door open to show its contents: sodas, water bottles, juice, fruit, and neatly stacked jars of the organic baby food Rose Noire still made for the boys.

“Our cover story is that I keep this back here because people were eating the boys’ food,” I said. “And drinking my sodas.”