Chapter 394: Closet Skeletons

It isn’t the restaurant safe where they keep the checks and cash.

It took her a lot of tries to finally get the thing to open. Inside was indeed a keyring with a lot of keys. She then pulled out a piece of paper with a list of names on it, and they looked familiar. Too familiar.

I got my phone to start putting in the names to use my custom search engine that I knew would find them. I didn’t like what I found.

“Irene?” I asked. “Can you look at these pictures and tell me if you have seen any of them before?”

When she got to one, she dropped my phone.

Yet another time that my inhumanly fast reflexes found a use.

I looked at the picture, which I thought was possibly tied to whatever happened here.

“Hey, it is ok,” I told Irene. “You are safe, and I won’t let anyone hurt you, not even me. Would the detective have told you to trust me if he didn’t know I was the safest person for you to be around?”

She gave me a slight nod. When I opened my arms, she had hers wrapped around me and then started shaking in fear. It took her a while to calm down before she could step back from me.

“I need to make a quick call. Please don’t freak out,” I told Irene and then called Corwin.

“David?” she asked in one of the specific languages that only the heads of her families use. “You’ve never called me, and you shouldn’t be able to call me on this phone. What is wrong?”

I took a breath before I asked if she could get her mom on speakerphone with us. I needed to ask something, and I think her mom could help.

Once she had her mom on the phone, I spoke the family language of Corwin’s mom’s family. Irene turned pale and pushed herself as tightly into a corner that she could.

I asked Corwin’s mom, “Do you know if one of the restaurants near my home belonged to your father? I found out that this restaurant is supposed to have a locker room and private showers. None of the workers have ever seen them, and when I started to speak to you, the assistant manager who gave me a list of names went pale. She is scared shitless.”

Now Corwin’s mom cursed. It was loud enough that Irene heard it, and she started shaking in pure fear.

“Hey. It is ok, Irene. I speak a lot of languages. I’m talking to the mom of one of my close friends because I think her dad, or someone in her family, may have owned this place before I got it,” I told her.

Like that is going to help anything, but she does want to know what is going on.

“That cunt,” Corwin’s mother swore. “Of all the properties to include in paying annual payment to Darren, my sister had to pick that place. What a conniving little bitch. I know she did it once she learned about Darren giving you all his wealth. She had to have done it while my little sister flew to your house to give it to you. If you made the connection from the names on the laminated list, you know something is off. I don’t have any details, but you aren’t in any danger if it involves who I think. Well, not your staff at the restaurant. Can you give the phone to Irene? If she is hearing you speaking my family language, she must be close to catatonic.”

I could hear Corwin and her mom talking to Irene. She kept looking up at me every few seconds.

Whatever they are telling her is calming her down quickly.

After about ten minutes, she put my phone on speaker.

Still speaking in their family language, Corwin’s mom explained, “Those on the list Irene gave you are my older brothers and a few uncles. They were fucking psychopaths into pain and disfigurement. It is what got them off. That restaurant is where they brought their victims after Korea, and then Cambodia became unfriendly to their perversions. My bastard older brother completely went off the deep end back almost eighteen years ago. Instead of one of them coming every few months for a few hours when the business was closed, he was there a couple of times a week. Soon the others began joining him and not always when the restaurant was closed. They picked the wrong little boy and girl to bring to their sick parties. It went badly for them. The list Irene gave you are those who weren’t there or managed to be somewhere else when a very pissed group from the two children’s families came to claim their family members. My older sister is the one who brought them right to the door of my father’s restaurant at a time she knew would cause him the most trouble. I know for a fact that none of my brothers or cousins would ever think of even whacking off to the idea of showing her their perversions. She scared the shit out of them. Those found in that locker room hurting their victims learned that they were amateurs in their art. Over the next few days, my older sister delighted in watching them discover just how little they knew.”

“David, until today, only my older sister and I knew that the travesty started on the day you were born. In fact, it started almost to the minute of your birth. I see now that she is ever the sick bitch that gets off on fucking around with people’s heads. There is only one way you would have walked in here today to ask about the locker room. I didn’t lie when I said those who worked here knew of the locker room. It was my first task to make sure they forgot about it. I did the best I knew how to do back then. Just know that they are happy where they live now,” Irene told me. “You walk in with those with Mandi and Carla walking on air. I know all about their troubles, but I couldn’t do anything to help them directly because of my responsibilities here. I paid off the various schools to let them shower and give them clothes. At first, I felt terrible when I gave them a job here, no questions asked. Damn, if they aren’t the hardest workers that I’ve ever seen, and they love waiting tables. I always made sure they were paid in cash to keep them from having a paper trail, as we do for a few others. I didn’t need your ID to know who you were, but I needed a reason to call the detective after you asked about the lockers. I thought all was a coincidence until you called Corwin. Few can speak her language, much less do so better than my sister, her mother. Then you switched to that of my family. It is even harder to learn this variant. My mother only taught it to my brothers, sisters, and Corwin. Do you know the improbability of that happening?”

Putting the phone on mute for a second, I answered, “A lot higher than my surviving that accident back in eighth grade and never waking from my coma.”

There is no way you didn’t know all about that already.

“What do I need to know if I go in there?” I asked.

Corwin’s mom said this was Irene’s responsibility and hung up.

Irene took me out the back door and used the keys to open a door leading into the sprinkler room. She unscrewed a ring around a pipe that she then twisted out of the way at the back. A key unlocked a door that swung inward. The door looked like a solid concrete wall. When closed, it was impossible to tell that it was anything different. She closed it behind us before reaching over to flip two switches. One turned on the lights, and the other an exhaust fan.

“You will want to wait a few minutes before we go any further. It has been a long time since anyone has been back here other than me, and that was years ago. I only went in this far,” Irene told me.

When we headed toward the door in front of us, she did reach down to hold my hand. Once the door opened, I found dozens of rat bodies. All that was left were the bones. When we turned a corner, we could see where the rats had gnawed a hole through the door.

Were they trying to get in or out?

Inside we came to yet another fake wall door into the locker room. This one was made at the same time as the locker room. It had a row of lockers on the other side.

“Your restaurant has skeletons, just they are in the locker room, not the closet,” Irene said, trying to joke to break the tension she was feeling.

When I turned on the light, I found that she wasn’t kidding.

I counted thirty-two toothless skulls.

I’m not going to count the teeth scattered all around the room.

There was no longer any smell. Only the skulls and spines to indicate these were once humans or humanoids, at least. No other bones were intact. Those not broken had been sawn in half, many times. All the bodies still had their left hand when they died but were missing their ring finger. The inches of dust showed no one had been in here for a long time. All I could see was that someone came in to screw metal panels around where the rats got into the room. The only things that had come in here since then were bugs.

I went to open the door going back into the restaurant when Irene stopped me.

She said, “We don’t want to do that. The plans show that this will open the stainless-steel wall section between the stove and fryers. Plus, it will cause a lot of problems, as you can imagine.”

“What should we even do with this tomb?” I asked her.

She looked me in the eyes and said, “Nothing. We can’t, not without the wrong people learning about this area being available for use again. I’ve seen camera footage of people coming into the sprinkler room only to find a wall here where there wasn’t when my brothers and uncles were using this as their playroom. I do have another suggestion.”

After locking everything back up and turning off the fan, she used the keys to open the door next to the sprinkler system access one. This one had signs of her footprints in the dust, but that was it. Using the place in my head, I saw the locker room and showers backed up against this hallway. When we came to where this building met the concrete wall of the one next door, there was a door going in toward the restaurant.

“We will need to do some renovating, but there are six, four-bedroom apartments back here. They were to keep the activities separate from the restaurant, but that didn’t happen. I don’t know if someone forgot these were here or not. I’m the only person to step foot in here since they were built. We had water running out under the door one day, so I went to see if any of the keys opened this door. I followed the water and found everything back here. The valve to one of the sinks had deteriorated to the point of failure. I cut off the water and only come back to check on things once every few months,” Irene told me. “From the blueprints that I drew up of the area, we could double the size of the restaurant seating area. The rest of the space will allow us to build a large, shared locker room. It won’t have a door and will connect to the existing breakroom. We can easily set up truck-stop style shower areas, but only big enough for one medium-sized adult to keep two from going to tango. Someone can try to sue us for not having a wheelchair-accessible shower, but these are not work requirements, only an optional perk if they choose to use one.”

“How long would it take to get this done, do you think?” I asked.

She smiled and said, “If you have the money to throw at it, I would guess a month. None of the walls are load-bearing, and we can use three of the existing showers for the plumbing. The restaurant expansion won’t take even that long as it is mostly demolition.”

I connected to my implant to ping the man-in-the-machine’s AI to see what it thought. It came up with less time if I allowed an android-based build crew to come in to do the work. They could even “clean up” the old locker room in a way that would make it look like someone bashed through the walls, including getting in via the fire standpipe room.

“Do you think it would discourage any new visitors if we had it look like the locker room and showers got demolished by someone recently? I have a construction company in mind that can, discretely, make it look like someone busted through the hidden door in the sprinkler room and smashed their way through various walls to get into the locker room. Some smoke and mirrors can still have wires popping. Water from the pipes will go everywhere before being turned off. Our detective friend could have the fire marshal discover a busted-up wall behind the sprinkler pipes. We remove all the bones except the rats, and then we have the place beaten to hell,” I suggested. “Another option is that we leave the bones there for discovery too. Have a big news story and the like. As you said, no one working here now knows that there was ever a locker room back here.”

She thought it over a few minutes and then said, “You know what, I like the news coverage. It will piss off my older sister. We would need to make sure that part of the bashing completely obliterates any ability that the door into the restaurant could ever have been used. From the kitchen side, the work done makes it look like it was never there. We will continue working on the apartments as if we had no idea that space was there. I know you suck at lying, but I don’t. It comes with my being from that other world. Plus, you won’t be lying if they ask you about knowing the locker room was there. You came in asking if there was one based on some information regarding the restaurant. When do you think we can have that done? We could use that space to build out the kitchen and provide more refrigerated space.”

I got my phone and dialed a random number. I had my implant direct to the AI at the man-in-the-machine’s systems. I gave a quick explanation and then listened for a minute.

“How busy are we this time of year?” I asked.

Irene thought about it and then said, “I would have to check for sure, but we tend to get by on the business deal crowd bringing customers to lunch to make a deal. Dinner does ok, but we break even for much of the next month. Why?”

I responded, “Instead of going in through the sprinkler room, we have the people bust through the restaurant with some sort of explosives overnight. It will expose the apartments and locker room, bones, and all. The police, fire, and whoever else will show up due to the explosions. They find the bodies and do their thing. No one, not even you, worked here before these guys got killed, so there is plausible deniability. Since the explosions will do a ton of damage, though not structural, if done correctly, it gives us the perfect time to gut the existing and newly-found spaces to renovate. We pay everyone at the new hourly rates. The wait staff and bartenders get more to cover tips they aren’t getting.”

“Nobody does that, David. I know you are new to this business world,” Irene told me.

“That is why I’m going to do it,” I told her. “If you got paid to sit on your butt or work somewhere else while getting paid from here, would you want to come back when we reopened? I think the staff will, given that I doubt any of them could make more anywhere else. If they don’t come back, then they don’t come back. Everyone gets cut off when we reopen. It isn’t like I can’t afford to do it. We won’t even contact the insurance company to see how they respond on their own. As much as we pay them, I would expect them to be here soon after they find out about what happened.”

Irene already had two weeks of vacation on the books set to start on Friday, as she did each year at this time.

While Irene and I had been exploring, Clara and Mandi got cell phones, pre-programmed with my cell phone number. As I was starting to find, these came with a standard pre-paid two years of unlimited data and cell service anywhere in the world. When I thought things out, after we had to close for renovations and repairs, I would send both girls up to the driving school to do the teenager course, paying the full price like anyone else.

I didn’t find these two by chance. I don’t believe that anymore.

Irene was on a plane with her girlfriend to the Bahamas for a week before taking a cruise. I had been sleeping late and then going to see Camden’s house getting built. When I started over on Friday afternoon, I found a four-wheeler waiting. It had a note from Molly telling me to check the mansion reconstruction, and then I needed to go “check” the rest of the property that was supposedly already set up for power, water, sewer, cable, and phone. I had a GPS map on my phone to show me where to go and what to check.