Mother-Daughter Murder Night(52)
She was almost surprised to see the letter of intent just sitting there, sandwiched between copies of the subleases Mr. Rhoads maintained with his tenants. For a moment, she debated whether to take it. But she decided a simple photograph would suffice. Nothing about the letter screamed coercion or foul play to her, but it was strange. It was short, just a page, and didn’t say anything about transferring ownership of the ranch. Instead, the LOI described the potential to form some kind of easement. Even stranger, none of Ricardo and Hal’s correspondence appeared to acknowledge or build on it. The emails between the two men spoke in lofty tones about unprecedented opportunities. There were no specifics. No contracts.
It was time for a bathroom break and a more pointed conversation with Victor about the future of the ranch. But when she moved to stand up, Lana discovered her left leg had gone numb. Great. Now she had a limp arm and a dead leg. She was a pirate joke in the making.
She wheeled her chair back from the table and grabbed under her left hamstring with both hands, shaking her leg to jolt it awake. She used one of the binders to massage her thigh, pressing the hard spine into her muscle to squeeze it back to life.
As pins and needles started moving down her leg, a piece of paper slid out of the binder and floated to the floor.
Lana picked up the sheet of thin-lined paper. It looked like a rough draft, with words scribbled and crossed out in blue block writing.
Dear Victor,
Thank you for all the inspiration guidance you have provided to me. I truly feel honored to have worked with you. But I must take the next move forward on my own. Someone close to my heart has approached me with a bold vision for a project too significa big to live at the land trust. Thank you for setting me on this path.
Lana flipped back through the two binders, looking for something she could use to identify who had written the note. But the block print didn’t match any of the flowery thank-you cards from past donors. Was it from Ricardo? Was he planning to leave the land trust to pursue some other project—a project that got him killed? Or was it from Mr. Rhoads? Could Diana’s intentions have gotten through to her father more than she’d imagined, causing him to change course? Lana got out her phone to take a photograph of the note. Then she glanced at the closed library door and made a decision. She slid the note into her legal pad, stuffed the pad into her tote, and clasped it shut.
Now to find that bathroom. Lana got up from the table, wobbling a bit before distributing her weight across both legs.
The first thing Lana noticed was that she felt much worse than she had before the first aspirin. The second thing she noticed was the door back to the main office was locked. She jiggled the handle. Nothing. She pressed her shoulder against the door. It pressed right back at her: sturdy, implacable, uninterested in her plight.
She heard the pop of a car backfiring outside. The high-pitched whine of an airplane. Everyone was going places except her.
She banged on the door with her right hand. The heavy door absorbed her fist, deadening her thumps and crushing her hopes of being heard. And then a blaring siren erupted all around her.
Lana jumped back from the door, slipped, and fell to the floor. Had she tripped some sort of spy wire? What kind of operation was Victor running?
She used the closest armchair to hoist herself up to standing. All was well. No broken bones. No eco-warrior SWAT team. But still the screeching wail continued, pounding at her skull, making it impossible to think.
Above her, she spotted a red light flashing from a plastic disk tucked into a crossbeam overhead. Fire alarm. Terrific.
She shuffled back to the door and tried to make sense of the situation. Was the door locked or just jammed? There was a keyhole in the door handle, but Lana couldn’t see a bolt in the frame. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t get out. She tried yelling, but she couldn’t even hear herself over the damn alarm.
Lana decided her best option was to return to her chair, press her left ear to the cover of one of Ricardo’s binders, clamp her right hand over her other ear, and wait for someone to make the shrieking stop.
The alarm scattered Lana’s thoughts, shooting off sparks in different directions. Did someone intentionally lock her in? Wait, was that a fire engine?
Lana unclamped her right ear. She could now hear two sirens, the initial screech and a lower tone, overlapping in an earsplitting cacophony. Lana crossed to the window and pulled back the curtain. The air smelled acrid, like a hair straightener left on too long. She couldn’t see any people, but when she craned her neck toward the street, she saw a huge fire truck blocking the driveway to the parking lot next door. When she turned her head the other way, she saw something worse: a bright orange eucalyptus tree behind the building, flames racing up its papery bark.
She needed to get out of there. She could try calling 911. But the fire truck was already outside. Why hadn’t they come to get her? Presumably the firefighters would do a sweep of the building. But if no one alerted them that she was inside, they might not come looking until the fire was out. And that might be too late.
For the first time, Lana found herself wishing she’d said yes when Beth tried to foist one of those “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” emergency responder buttons on her when she first got sick last fall. But even thinking about that sent a surge of adrenaline through Lana. She wasn’t going to die of cancer. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to burn to death in an office of evacuated environmentalists.