Page 18 of Ruthless Riches
“Yes.”
“Well, Rick made me realize it was real. But his story wasn’t the only one I heard about the place,” he said. “Like I said before, if you work in the Avalon town planning department for decades, you end up hearing everything about the island.”
“What else did you hear?”
“That others on the island might’ve found an entrance as well,” he said. He stroked his chin. “Another guy I worked with had a brother-in-law who suffered from alcohol-related issues. He used to attend a support group at a church down on Sixth Avenue, and he met a man there who’d lived on the street for a while. One day they got chatting after a meeting, and the man told him he’d met someone while he was homeless. Someone who claimed he’d found an entrance to Satan’s Penthouse. I have no idea if it was the same entrance Rick found, though, because this man never revealed any clues about the location.”
“Why?”
“He claimed it was haunted. Had a whole story about it and everything.” He leaned back on the sofa. “Edith probably mentioned the ghost stories to you earlier.”
I nodded. “Yeah, she did. What was this guy’s story?”
Robert twiddled his thumbs on his lap. “Have you ever heard about the Blackthorne tunnels, and the way the bootleggers converted some of the alcoves into prison cells for informers?”
“Yes,” Alexis said with a slight nod. Guilt stabbed at my guts again. It wasn’t so long ago that she was down there in one of those cells.
“Well, this man claimed that those bootleggers actually got the idea from an old legend about Satan’s Penthouse,” Robert said. “The story goes that the rich man who’d funded it got one of his maids pregnant a couple of years after the project was abandoned. His wife found out, and she was furious. Not at her husband, but at the maid. She tracked down the old project manager for the tunnels and demanded he turn some of the rest areas into cells to make a prison. Her very own dungeon.”
“And he did it?”
“Supposedly, yes. He got a crew together, and they went down there and fitted iron bars and doors onto a few of the alcoves. Then the wealthy woman dragged the maid down there and locked her in one of them. She told her she had to stay there for a couple of days and think about what she’d done. She knew how much it would scare the poor girl to be locked down there in the darkness, so far underground that no one would ever hear her screams.”
“What happened to her?”
Robert’s nostrils flared. “The wealthy woman forgot all about her. Got caught up with her high society events, I suppose,” he said. “After eight days she finally remembered. Went down there and found the girl dead from dehydration.”
“Jesus,” I muttered.
“Anyway, the ghost of that girl supposedly haunts Satan’s Penthouse now, and that’s the reason the homeless man gave for not revealing the entrance he found.” Robert waved a hand. “It’s all a load of crap, of course. There’s no ghost. That man just didn’t want anyone going down to those tunnels.”
I raised a brow. “Why?”
“It’s dangerous down there. One end of the main tunnel was filled in after part of it flooded, so it’s a dead end now. The smaller offshoot tunnels eventually lead to dead ends as well, because the project was never completed. So if you get turned around or lost in there, and you can’t find the entrance you used to get inside in the first place, you could be left wandering around in the dark for days. No one would ever hear you scream for help.” Robert hesitated, and his forehead wrinkled. “I once heard a story about a teenager dying like that. Apparently she went to a party in the Odessa catacombs, and she drunkenly wandered away. Some explorers found her body a month later.”
Alexis shuddered. “What a horrible way to die.”
“Yes, it would’ve been awful, so scaring people away from going down to those tunnels is probably a good idea.”
I tilted my chin. “This homeless man who found the entrance… you wouldn’t have any idea how to find him, would you?”
Robert shook his head. “Not a clue. My old colleague’s brother-in-law was the only one who actually met him and spoke to him, and he died a few years ago.”
Damn.My shoulders sagged with disappointment.
Curiosity flickered in Robert’s eyes. “Why are you two so interested in Satan’s Penthouse, anyway?” he asked.
“I’m working on a history project about the Avalon tunnel system,” Alexis said lightly.
Robert guffawed. “You might’ve fooled my wife with that story, but you can’t fool me,” he said, raising a brow. “See, Edith doesn’t watch the news much. She’s more interested in the past. But I recognized the two of you as soon as I saw you. You’re the couple who took down the Golden Circle, aren’t you?”
Alexis flushed. “Yes.”
“Now you’re looking into this nasty business with the copycat Butcher. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
Robert smiled thinly. “I knew it.”
