Tunnel of Greed

“Why do you need a sewer camera for a vacant house that’s not yours?” Marco asked his best friend, Andrew.

“Just bring it down to the basement and I’ll explain.”

Marco lugged his plumbing company’s sewer camera normally used to inspect pipes down the creaky wood steps to the basement. Andrew was there waiting on him with a balding gentleman in a blue blazer and penny loafers standing next to him.

“Marco, this is Rick Steele. He’s a real estate agent.” The two strangers exchanged pleasantries, and Marco was even more confused.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Marco said.

“It’s a mystery,” Andrew said. “Rick was showing me around this house — I’m thinking about buying it — and we were just looking here in the basement when I noticed the floor had this circle cut out on the concrete floor.”

Andrew tapped his foot on it to show Marco. He squatted down and pointed. “Then, I noticed this rebar that looks like a handle.”

He pulled the man-hole sized cover out of the floor.

“Whoa!” Marco said. “What the heck?”

“Yeah,” Rick said. “That’s what we said.”

The opening revealed a hole large enough for an average sized man to crawl inside.

“Look at this.” Andrew opened the flashlight app on his phone and showed Marco that the hole is actually a tunnel. “I need your camera to see where this tunnel goes.”

Marco began to prep his camera for a further look.

“The owner of the house was tragically killed in a car wreck several weeks ago,” Rick said. “His closest family members live in Colorado, and they had no interest in coming here to gather his things so we’re selling the house as is — furniture and all.”

“Including a tunnel,” Andrew added.

Marco worked the camera down the hole, and he began feeding the line into the dark as he looked at his viewer with Rick and Andrew watching the screen over his shoulder.

“Looks like someone dug this by hand,” Marco said. “I wonder how far it goes.”

“Looks like it's going across the street,” Andrew said. Marco continued feeding the camera line to solve the mystery until finally it stopped.

“It stopped at 87 feet 4 inches,” Marco said.

“87 feet?” Rick thought. “What’s across the street that’s 87 feet away from here?”

The trio answered together in unison. “Peach State National Bank!”