Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery R.M. Wild (inspirational books .txt) 📖

using poisoned lipstick and no one else wanted to rent it.

Sometimes, what you don’t know, can’t hurt you. Other times, what you don’t know can be deadly. Which, hopefully, wouldn’t be the result of this particular excursion.

We walked past the scaffolding on the keeper’s house and crossed into the woods on the far side of the lighthouse and climbed over giant rocks and down a slight embankment. The last time I had been here with Eldritch, it had been at night, and I couldn’t remember the exact location.

It took me a few minutes of poking the ground with my foot to find it.

“Here it is.”

“That’s a snake hole,” Mettle said.

“You have to move the rock.”

Effortlessly, he slid the large rock aside. Underneath, was a hole not much bigger than my waist. No jokes, please.

“Now it’s a fat snake hole,” Mettle said. “I don’t think I can fit my massive shoulders through that. What if I get stuck?”

“If you stay up here and wait, go back to the keeper’s house. I heard they were installing a tampon dispenser.”

“Very funny,” he said. “I’ll take my chances down the hole.”

I held out both palms. “Lower me down.”

He took my right hand.

I waved my left. “I said both palms.”

“I need to hold the flashlight.”

“Pass it down afterward. It’s a short drop.”

“What do you weigh? A buck twenty-five? I can curl that in my sleep.”

“Eldritch used both hands.”

“And he’s like ninety-five years old,” Mettle said. “Trust me. I got you. With my pinky.”

He grabbed my wrist and I grabbed his and he squatted and lowered me down into the hole. He didn’t grunt, didn’t strain, not like Eldritch, and it felt like I was being slowly lowered by a machine. I would never give him the satisfaction of knowing how impressed I was and was glad my grin disappeared in the darkness.

“Okay, let go,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

He let go and I dropped down the last few feet. I landed well and grabbed the rock wall to steady myself.

“I’m coming down,” he announced.

I looked up at the mouth of the gray hole above and then stepped out of the way. Mettle dangled his feet, squeezed his chest together, wiggled through, and landed on the rocks beside me and brushed off his shoulders.

“Take it,” he said and handed me the flashlight.

I turned it on. In the yellow beam, Mettle stood there and massaged his chest muscles.

“I told you to use both hands.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I haven’t been able to touch my elbows together since junior high school.”

I gagged. “Spare me.”

“I’m totally serious.”

I rolled my eyes in the dark. “Yes, you are incredibly buff, Mr. Universe. Thank you for wooing my ears with that humble brag.”

I shined the beam ahead and we hiked down the embankment, our feet never quite reaching the circle of light stretching ahead of us. The rocks were slick and shiny and treacherous and we stepped carefully and dragged our hands along the cavern walls for support as we descended.

The lower we went, the colder it got. The dripping got louder and louder as if we had stepped into a massive public restroom full of leaky faucets. I shivered, but more from the memories of the last time I had been down here than from the cold.

Only a few yards ahead, in the yellow light and the fang-like shadows cast by the stalactites, Dimitri had taped me up and left me for dead. I had to swim my way out, nearly drowning. I remembered my guardian caller, the still unidentified person who had called me incessantly before the harbor water turned my phone into a brick.

I rubbed my arms to try to get rid of the goosebumps. “Did you bring your gun?”

“I’m suspended, remember?” Mettle said, his voice echoing in the passage. “But don’t worry, I’ve got a Leatherman on my key chain.”

“What’s a Leatherman?”

“It’s like a Swiss Army knife, but seven times manlier.”

We stopped at the juncture between the passageways. Ahead, each tunnel loomed dark and unknown, like we had crawled inside a giant glove.

“Somewhere around here is where I found Chrissy’s bracelet,” I said.

“Which tunnel do we take?”

I remembered my poor decision when I was bound and hopping. “Not the left, that’s for sure. The other two, I have no idea.”

“After you,” Mettle said.

“You know, there are some times when letting the woman go last is the gentlemanly thing to do.”

“This was your idea,” Mettle said. He suddenly jumped back and grabbed my arm. “Whoa!”

“What?”

“I thought I saw the wall move.”

“Probably a snake,” I said.

“I hate snakes. They only belong in a zoo or in a pair of boxers. Sometimes tightie-whities, but it depends on which sport you’re playing.”

“Gross.”

He exhaled slowly. “There are currently no poisonous snakes in Maine, but the last person to be bitten was a state trooper.”

I pinched his bicep. “Tasty meat.”

“I say we go in the middle.”

“To the right it is,” I said. I took the lead and followed the tunnel deep into the side of the cliff. I had lost sense of which direction we were going and it was impossible to know if we were moving toward the harbor, away from it, or parallel to it.

Soon the dripping stopped and the rocks lost their luster in our circle of yellow light. We kept walking and walking. After a bit, my ankles ached from navigating the jagged floor and I was pretty sure the trek had been longer than the distance between my inn and the lighthouse.

I kept the flashlight trained ahead like I had seen the cops do on TV. “My arm’s getting tired.”

“You’re holding it wrong,” he said. “Reverse your grip.”

“That’s not how they do it on TV.”

“They’re posers,” he said.

“How good are these batteries?”

“I changed them last month,” Mettle said. “It’s protocol. Like making sure your gun is always loaded.”

We walked farther. And farther. We went so far, I thought the cave was going to start getting warmer as we approached the center of the earth.

“Jules Verne has got nothing on us,”