The metal latch in the extension mechanism clanked against the rungs as I pulled on the rope. The ladder grew toward the window like Jack’s beanstalk. I heard the lock snap into place and tied off the halyard. Then I hung my cane on one of the rungs and gripped the sides of the ladder. My hands were so sweaty they slipped.
I am, unfortunately, acrophobic. An accident involving me and a rickety tree house when I was eight. I wiped my wet hands on my skirt and looked up. The windows seemed to float above me. I shook my head and blinked hard until they finally stopped moving. Then I put my foot on the first rung—and climbed. After a couple of rungs I hooked my cane over my arm so I wouldn’t keep bumping against it. I’d made it to the fifteenth rung before the cane hit the side of the ladder. It slipped, ricocheting off one of the steel tanks before clanking on the concrete below. I rested my head against one of the rungs and sobbed.
CO2 pools in low places. The top of the ladder was better than the bottom and I was nearly there. There was no climbing down to get the cane. I counted four more rungs, then I was at eye level with one of the windows and moonlight was glinting through the caked-on grime. I rubbed the glass with my hand even though I knew there would be nothing to see except a field leading to the woods. This was the far side of the building. Anyone who strolled by below was somewhere they didn’t belong.
My head ached. Concentrating was a chore. Open the window. That’s all I had to remember. Just one thing.
I banged on the glass with my fist but it might as well have been steel. Nothing moved. I tried the joint between the glass and the frame, running my finger along the caulked seal.
The caulk was old and brittle and there was a piece missing. I dug at the hole with my fingernail and another long chalklike piece fell out. My breathing was more labored now but I kept pulling at new ragged edges, as more and more caulk broke off. CO2 poisoning is supposed to leave an acid taste in your mouth. By the time I finished mine tasted of blood from biting the tip of my tongue.
I pushed on the glass again, willing it to move. It was stuck as firmly as when I’d started. The window was caulked on the outside, too.
I thumped the glass again with my fist, this time beginning in the lower right-hand corner and working my way around the perimeter of the window. If there was one spot where the caulk had fallen out, maybe I could shove the glass out of the frame. I heard a small crack and something gave way. I pounded some more.
The glass swung like a hinge, about two inches out of the frame. I put my mouth and nose to the opening and gulped fresh air. My head throbbed and my heart felt like there was a vise around it, but at least I wasn’t going to die yet.
In the distance, music from the jazz concert floated across the sultry stillness and the cicadas sang to me. There were no other sounds. I was alone.
Unless whoever kicked that brick away from the door was still around. If I called out now he’d know I was alive. Then he’d come back and rattle the ladder until I landed like Humpty Dumpty on the concrete floor below.
I clung to the window ledge and listened to a jazz riff that sounded like someone trying to sound like Mangione. All I had to do was stay here until morning when Quinn or Hector opened the door to the barrel room and discovered me perched atop the ladder like a bird in a treetop. Guarding a warm room filled with tanks of very expensive vinegar.
I hooked one arm through the rung of the ladder and held on to the windowsill with the other. And waited.
The voices came after what seemed like hours. At first I thought I was dreaming them. Then they grew closer. Coming my way.
“I can’t imagine what happened to her.” Kit, sounding worried. “We agreed to meet at the villa at eight- fifteen.”
“Hey!” I shouted. “Look up! I’m here!”
“Why in the hell don’t I hear the air conditioner and the equipment?” Quinn was with her. “Something’s wrong. I’ve got to get inside and find out what’s going on. Come on! Let’s go!”
Their voices grew fainter as they moved away from under the eaves. I saw—or maybe hoped for—darker shadows in my line of vision that meant they had moved to where they could finally see the sliver of my barely opened window.
Quinn’s voice again. “Holy shit, look up there! There’s a window open. Someone’s in there. With the power off the place will be full of carbon dioxide. Run!”
“Yes,” I shouted uselessly. “I’m in here. Please come get me!”
I suppose, in retrospect, Quinn did the right thing taking care of the wine first before he got to me. The lights came on and the air-conditioning started with a roar. The fans began whirring and I blinked in the hard, sudden brightness.
The door opened and I heard Kit scream my name.
“Kit! Don’t move,” Quinn ordered. “Let the CO2 clear out first.”
The ladder shook as Quinn climbed toward me. I clung to it, white-knuckled, too scared to look down where Kit stood twenty feet below, praying I wouldn’t fall off in the process of being rescued after the near-death miracle of surviving poisoning by carbon dioxide. He stopped just below me and put an arm around my waist. He smelled of perspiration and something tropical, like coconut. “Are you strong enough to climb down on your own if I stay right here with you? I don’t think the ladder’s sturdy enough for me to carry you and I don’t want to find out the hard way.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Take your time.”
We went down slowly, and then he jumped off a few rungs from the bottom and reached up and pulled me into his arms like he was grabbing a sack of potatoes. “Let’s get her out of here,” he said. “She looks like a ghost.”
He carried me outside and set me down on the grass.
“Is she going to live?” Kit asked.
“She’ll be okay, but she’s probably got a headache the size of Pittsburgh.”
“Why are you talking about me in the third person?” I mumbled. “I can hear what you’re saying.”
“Hush,” Kit said. “We probably ought to get her to the hospital.”
“She doesn’t want to go to the hospital,” I said. “And she means it.”
“Don’t be silly,” Kit said. “You’ve got to let someone check you out.”
“No! I’ll be fine.”
“Well, then, you’re coming home with me,” Kit said.
“No, she’s coming home with me.” Quinn stood up. “Keep her quiet. I’m going to call Hector and get him to stay here tonight in case there are more equipment problems.”
“Lucie,” Kit said urgently after Quinn left, “do you know how lucky you are to be alive? Jesus Lord. What are the odds that your power and your backup would fail at the same time?”
I tried to sit up on my elbows but my head felt like Fourth of July fireworks exploding and the ground started to spin so I lay down again. “They didn’t. Someone shut down the power and the generator. Then they put the lock through the hasp so I couldn’t open it from inside.”
“Oh my God.”
“Where was Quinn when you found him?”
“You don’t think Quinn…? Oh, no. Not him.” She put her hand on my forehead, checking apparently for a fever or signs I was delirious. “I ran into him as he was coming back from the Ruins. I’d been looking for you for a while. I saw the look on his face when he realized what had happened. He was trying to calculate how long it had been since he was last there, when he knew the power was on. It wasn’t him.”
I tried to sit up again and groaned.
“Lie down,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Unless I roll away. I get vertigo just being two inches off the ground.” I lay on my back again. “When you called you said you had something to tell me.”
“It can wait.”
“Maybe not.”
“I found out who tried to buy the vineyard from your father.”
