A vineyard spring, p.12
A Vineyard Spring, page 12
“Is there any record of Rhett Barley and Mr. Butler’s relationship?” Steve asked.
“No,” Rina said. “My guess is that Rhett works for him somehow, but Franklin Butler’s no idiot. He has no contracts citing Rhett as one of his employees. Obviously, he had Rhett doing something at least slightly illegal and didn’t want it to trace back to him.”
“What kind of things?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. Men like Franklin Butler make money in all kinds of ways, and they know how to hide it.”
“They hire people like Laura to hide it,” Steve remembered.
“Yes, well. Your wife was smart enough to get out when she did,” Rina said. “Unlike many, she didn’t relish the chance to make a lot of cash working for a criminal.”
Steve felt very quiet. Before him, Rina paced back and forth, exasperated.
“I went to Rhett’s apartment building today to try to ask him a few questions,” Rina said. “I knocked several times, but I heard nothing.”
“Maybe he took off?”
Rina shrugged. “I wouldn’t blame him. He got himself involved in something very bad.”
Suddenly, Steve turned to watch as Isabella’s car snaked up the road. What was going on? The day had suddenly erupted with chaos. Steve stepped out of the way as she drove up and parked alongside Rina’s Prius. For a split second, Isabella glowered at Rina, but her expression was soon replaced with one of shock and fear. She hurried out of the driver’s side and gasped. It was clear she had something to say.
“Honey, are you okay?” Steve reached out to steady her.
Isabella's eyes darted between them. She looked out of her mind. “I—I don’t know how to tell you this. And I know you’ll think it was wrong, stupid, and reckless.”
Rina and Steve exchanged glances. Rina grabbed a bottle of water from her backseat and urged Isabella to drink it. As Isabella tried, her arms shook.
“It’s Rhett,” Isabella whispered as she dried her face.
Steve’s heart jumped into his throat. “What are you talking about?”
“Rhett Barley and I are sort of friends,” Isabella explained.
Steve’s anger mounted. Had Isabella been friendly with that guy since he’d come to the auto shop? He couldn’t stand it.
“I saw him yesterday,” Isabella went on, “And he confirmed he’s been working for Mr. Butler. I explained everything we know about Mr. Butler, and he was shocked. I mean, he had no idea Mr. Butler was so awful.”
“Why was he working for him in the first place?” Steve demanded icily.
But Isabella shook her head, not wanting to dwell on it. She gasped for breath, then said, “I asked Rhett if he and Mr. Butler are still on good terms, and Rhett said they are. It’s because of Mr. Butler that Rhett got out of jail in the first place, so Mr. Butler thinks Rhett owes him.”
Rina and Steve exchanged worried glances.
“Anyway, Rhett went back to work at the Butler Estate today,” Isabella continued. “And he said he’d dig around a bit to see if he could find more evidence.”
“Isabella!” Steve cried. “No.”
Isabella nodded. “He said he was going to text me from inside the grounds, but I haven’t heard from him at all in over four hours.”
“Oh my gosh.” Rina looked very pale.
“All my calls to him go straight to voicemail,” Isabella whispered. “I think there’s something really wrong. And I don’t know what to do.”
Chapter Nineteen
Work was out of the question for the rest of the day. Steve flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED and called a few clients about a “hold-up,” promising their vehicles would be complete by tomorrow. All the while, Rina and Isabella sat in Rina’s Prius as Isabella wept into her folded arms. Occasionally, Steve watched through the window of the car as Rina placed her hand gently on Isabella’s shoulder to try to console her. Isabella shook with sorrow and fear, and Rina’s face was scrunched with worry. Steve thought about Rina’s desire to be a mother and how it had never happened for her. He hoped she didn’t feel inadequate now. He hoped she knew just sitting next to someone in your sadness was sometimes enough.
Steve’s emotions were complicated. On the one hand, he was very angry Isabella was “friends” with Rhett Barley. Weren’t there other nice, handsome boys on the island— ones who hadn’t recently been arrested for Mandy Dolores’ disappearance? On the other hand, he was terrified Isabella suddenly had such an understanding of the evils of the world. She was twenty-three now, and there was no way to keep her safe and out of harm’s way forever. But that didn’t mean a part of Steve didn’t want to tell her to go home and stay there until Mr. Butler was behind bars— even if it took ten years.
Steve walked back toward Rina’s Prius. Rina opened the door, and both Isabella and Rina raised their eyes to look at him.
“Listen. We don’t know anything,” Steve told them. “It’s possible Rhett got caught up doing daily work tasks for Franklin Butler, and he hasn’t had time to check his phone.”
Isabella let out another sob as Rina nodded.
“Honey,” Steve continued, his voice softer, “Isn’t it possible Rhett was lying to you? I mean, we know Mr. Butler sent his own defense attorney to get Rhett out of jail.”
When she managed to speak, Isabella’s tone was icy. “Nobody wanted to hire Rhett, and Mr. Butler knew that. He preyed on him.”
“That doesn’t mean Rhett hasn’t been breaking the law,” Steve pointed out.
Isabella rolled her eyes in a way that would have made her teenage self proud. “Dad, Rhett probably doesn’t even understand the gravity of what he’s done for Mr. Butler. Even Mom couldn’t figure out what he was up to. One thing she was sure about, though, was that he was involved with Felicity Rodgers’ disappearance. Now, we have hard evidence that he’s involved with Mandy Dolores’ disappearance— and I have a hunch Mr. Butler has no qualms about ‘disappearing’ Rhett as well, if only because he got too close.”
Steve’s heart sank. He understood the severity of her words. When he locked eyes with Rina, she nodded subtly and muttered, “Time’s running out.”
Steve felt as though he was somewhere outside of his body. He tugged his phone from his back pocket and stuttered, “We can’t just go over there by ourselves.”
“Rina said the police won’t listen to her!” Isabella cried.
Steve nodded. “True. But if Rhett really is in trouble at the Butler Estate, this is an emergency.” Before he could second-guess himself, he dialed 9-1-1.
“9-1-1, where is your emergency?” A stiff-sounding woman answered the phone.
“Hello. I would like to report an accident at the Butler Estate,” Steve said briskly. “We’ll need an ambulance and a police presence.”
“What is the nature of the accident?”
Steve’s mind raced. “Machinery,” he said. “A malfunction. A potentially fatal injury.” He had absolutely no idea what lurked behind the gates of the Butler Estate, but he wanted enough sirens to wail outside to spook Mr. Butler.
After Steve gave her the address and got off the phone, he waved toward his truck, and Rina and Isabella followed his lead and leaped inside. Rina sat in the back, and Isabella took the passenger seat. The air was very tense, and it was difficult to breathe. Steve started the engine and shot out of the driveway, and in the distance, the first sirens howled.
“I feel like I’m going to throw up,” Isabella whispered.
“It’s going to be okay, honey,” Steve told her, although he had absolutely no idea if that was true. To Mr. Butler, Rhett was certainly a pawn in a greater scheme and very replaceable. Due to Rhett’s previous record and the fact that he had very little family to speak of, nobody would miss him.
But Isabella would miss him, Steve realized. Mr. Butler had calculated Rhett’s value incorrectly. He hadn’t expected him to get close to anyone with a heart the size of Isabella’s. It was the single luckiest thing Rhett Barley had ever done.
Steve hadn’t driven toward the Butler Estate in decades. Twice in the nineties, he’d taken Laura to work due to her car’s malfunction, and each time, he’d had to hover outside the gate and watch as she greeted the guard and wrote her name in the entrance book. It had been bizarre to him at the time that Mr. Butler wouldn’t allow him to drive his pregnant wife up to the front door. Then again, those had been the early days of the pregnancy; they hadn’t even told his mother yet.
“Imagine our lives, Steve,” Laura had told him all those years ago. “If I keep working for Mr. Butler, and you keep building your client base at the auto shop, we’ll be golden. Nobody will be able to touch us. Gosh, my entire life, I’ve been so frightened to become a real adult, you know? With all these responsibilities and bills to pay and children to feed. But right now, I don’t feel so scared anymore. I think it’s because I picked the perfect partner to share my life with.” Her smile had lit up the sky.
As they neared the Butler Estate, Steve shook off the memories. There wasn’t time to dwell on the past, no matter how dangerously close it always seemed to lurk.
“Look!” Isabella pointed at the gates of the Butler Estate, where, already, an ambulance and two cop cars sat with their lights flashing. An EMT worker stood outside the ambulance as a cop spoke to the guard at the gate. There was exasperation on the cop’s face.
“I bet Mr. Butler’s told the guard never to let cops in without a warrant,” Rina breathed.
“And the guard is probably telling them there’s no emergency.” Isabella wrapped her hand around her neck and seemed to struggle to breathe.
Behind the gate was the sprawling expanse of the Butler grounds. The main mansion was built in typical Victorian fashion, while the guest house just behind was slightly more modern and connected to what looked to be fifteen garages. Steve suspected they were filled with unspeakably nice cars. Occasionally over the years, he’d seen Mr. Butler in a Lamborghini or an Aston Martin or another luxurious vehicle that should have impressed Steve but just left him cold and angry. Steve wasn’t a violent man, but he harbored a very small desire to smash through one of Mr. Butler’s windshields with a baseball bat.
Now, because of Mr. Butler’s threats toward Laura back in 1996, Steve could have done a whole lot more damage.
“It looks like they’re about to head out,” Isabella whispered.
Two of the cops spoke to one another with their hands on their hips. The guard at the gate had stepped around and now spoke to them through the bars. His face looked annoyed. The EMT worker looked very tired and spoke to another EMT worker through the window of the ambulance.
“Get a little closer, Steve,” Rina urged.
Steve groaned but slowly crept forward. Already, he’d begun to think about his dishonest 9-1-1 call. There would be legal repercussions, that was for sure— and the island would have a field day with that gossip. What would his mother say?
Further, it was possible Mr. Butler would find out Steve had been the one who’d called. What if Mr. Butler decided to whip out his threats again? What if he directed them toward Isabella?
Abruptly, Isabella shoved open the passenger door and stepped out onto the grass.
“Isabella!” Steve cried. “Get back in the truck.”
Laura had been right not to get deeper involved in the terrors of Mr. Butler. Steve needed to get Isabella back home; he needed to lock the door tight.
But Isabella was acting strange. Her entire body had begun to shake. Steve stepped out of the truck, prepared to throw her back in himself, when Rina cried, “Steve! Look!”
Steve hurried around the truck and then froze with shock at the sight. There, on the other side of their stretch of the fence, a figure staggered from the house. He directed himself toward Steve’s truck, his steps labored. Isabella hurried to the fence to grab the bars as she screamed out, “Rhett!” Her voice echoed across the grounds.
Already, the two cops had returned to their vehicles, and the ambulance had begun to wheel away. But Steve knew something was terribly wrong. With all the power he could muster, he sprinted toward the cops and waved his hands wildly. Although the ambulance began to wheel away, the policemen paused. One of them stepped out of his car and called out, “Are you Steve Montgomery?”
Steve gasped for a breath and flailed his hand toward the young man approaching the fence. As Rhett drew nearer to Isabella, he hunched forward and clutched his stomach.
“There’s something wrong with that young man,” Steve called. “He’s injured!”
The cop took a step toward Isabella and Rhett, his eyes widening. At that point, Rhett staggered the rest of the way to the fence and clutched the bars as he gasped. Isabella gripped his hands and spoke to him very quietly as Rhett began to shake with tears.
“He’s bleeding!” Rina called from the fence. “We need the ambulance! Now!”
The cop rushed toward the ambulance, which had stalled to see what the fuss was about. Immediately, the EMT workers reversed back toward the gate, where the guard stood, flabbergasted. He looked toward Rhett with disbelief.
Steve hurried back toward Rhett and Isabella. Too exhausted, Rhett collapsed at the base of the fence yet continued to hold onto as many of Isabella’s fingers as he could. His eyes were glazed.
And just as Rina had reported, his belly was slick with blood.
“Rhett, what happened?” Steve asked. His voice sounded very strange, as though it didn’t belong to him.
Rhett sputtered, and his eyes searched the sky for a moment before he answered. “She’s okay. She’s still okay.”
Chapter Twenty
Isabella remained at the fence and watched helplessly as the color drained from Rhett’s face. He shook and occasionally managed words, yet mostly his strength went to holding her hand and keeping his eyes open. The blood that soaked his shirt seemed monumental yet also fake, as though Isabella’s mind couldn’t fully comprehend it and therefore made up a fictional story instead. “Come on, Rhett. You’re going to be okay. You have to be okay.”
“What’s taking them so long?” Rina demanded about the ambulance workers and the police.
“The guard is being difficult,” Steve explained angrily. “Typical loyalty to Mr. Butler.”
“What did you say about a woman being okay?” Isabella whispered to Rhett. “Was it Mandy? Did you find Mandy?”
At the gate, the police arrested the guard, and finally, the gate burst open to allow the ambulance to race down the driveway and come to a stop on the perfectly manicured grass. At no point did Isabella think she was experiencing real life.
The EMT workers paraded toward Rhett with a stretcher. Isabella watched in horror as they cut open his shirt with a pair of scissors to reveal the multiple gashes beneath. Who would do this to sweet Rhett?
“Please, back away from the fence!” one of the EMT workers instructed angrily.
“Rhett, tell them what you told me! Is someone else inside?” Isabella called through the bars.
Rhett blinked blearily. The EMT workers looked at Isabella, incredulous.
“Is someone else injured?” one of them asked.
With the last of his strength, Rhett lifted his arm and pointed toward the guest house. “She’s there,” he explained very softly. “Someone, please. Go help her.”
Isabella felt Rina’s hand on her shoulder, drawing her back toward the truck. One of the EMT workers hurried back to discuss what they’d learned with a policeman, who nodded and pressed his earpiece, presumably to call backup. Directly on the other side of the fence, the remaining EMT worker pressed on Rhett’s wound and spoke to him in short and simple language.
“Can I go with him in the ambulance?” Isabella called through the fence.
Beside her, Rina shook her head. “You’re not family, honey. Just let them do what they need to do.”
Isabella crossed her arms hard over her chest and watched as the EMT workers carried Rhett to the ambulance. Once he was safely inside, they snapped the doors closed, clambered into the front seat, and then drove through the grass once more. In a flash, they were back on the road and headed toward the hospital. Their sirens burned through Isabella’s ears.
A sharp wind ripped through them. “Let’s get back in the truck,” Steve instructed.
Isabella forced herself back into the vehicle, but continued to peer through the glass. It was difficult to see much from this distance. Based on what Rhett had told them, the cops hurried toward the guest house and disappeared. Not long after that, another two ambulances wailed toward the house, followed by an army of police cars. They barrelled through the now-open gates and gathered around the main house and the guest house without any care for Mr. Butler’s garden aesthetic. Isabella took several photographs of the scene, wishing she could share them with her mother.
“He’d lost so much blood,” Isabella heard herself say quietly. They were the first words anyone had said in over twenty minutes.
Steve took Isabella’s hand, and Isabella turned to lock eyes with her father. In his gaze, she found strength, love, and safety alongside a tremendous fear. As a child, she’d assumed her father could protect her from anything: the monsters under her bed or the bullies at school or the witches she felt sure would come to kidnap her. Now, she understood that Steve was human; he was fallible. But as her father, he would do whatever he could to help her through this life.
“He’s at the hospital now,” Steve assured her. “But he’s only there because you trusted your instincts, Isabella. You knew something was wrong.”
Isabella nodded, not wanting to state the obvious: that maybe, it was too late.
“Oh my gosh. Look.” Rina leaned up from the backseat to point at the guest house, where EMT workers carried another stretcher.
It was impossible to understand what had happened.
After the second ambulance tore out of the driveway, the cops set up a perimeter. They wrapped yellow tape around the guest house and the main house, taking this idealistic “estate” and transforming it into a crime scene. Meanwhile, the workers in the main house streamed out in droves. The police directed them toward a side area, where several officers took initial statements.
