She smelled a faint aroma of some sort of night flower. These exotic flowers were amazing. The building superintendent had a night-blooming cereus beside her door, and the redolence was lovely. “Joe?” she called without turning. “Do you know what that aroma is? It smells like, er…” She had to think. Chloroform was the only thing she could think of and surely that wasn’t it. From behind her, Joe wadded a rag over her nose and mouth. What was he
“Mmm. Mmmm!” Bridgid’s mouth was sealed shut with what felt like duct tape. Her wrists were taped behind her, her ankles taped together. She remembered nothing except the odor of chloroform and that she heard Joe behind her as she climbed the steps to their apartment. Where was she? What was happening?
Thin carpeting against her cheek, a mound pressing on her ribs, darkness but some lights going by occasionally all told her she was on the floor of the back seat of an auto. The vehicle was in motion. She was being kidnapped. You read about these things and see them in the cinema, but this was real. Or was it?
With her birthday so close at hand, almost certainly it was some of Joe’s friends pulling what they undoubtedly thought was a jolly prank. When they arrived wherever they were going and set her free, were they ever going to get an earful! Jolly? Hardly! It was not their ribs getting battered by this center hump. It was not they finding it difficult to breathe. She had a headache and felt nauseous, down here on the floor unable to get up. She was livid, and her fury grew and grew as the minutes passed.
And Joe was in on it! He must be, because he was right behind her in the apartment carport. How could he be so callous?! She tried to shift to give her ribs relief, but with all the binding, she could not.
The vehicle slowed, perhaps stopped. She heard an unfamiliar grinding noise. The car moved forward and stopped. Again that grinding noise.
Lights came on outside the car, steady lights, so they were no longer moving. The door at her feet opened and the tape binding her ankles was cut. Roughly, a hand grabbed her forearm and the tape around her wrists was cut. She used her new freedom first to lift herself off that hump, then to pull the tape off her mouth. It nearly took her lips with it. They burned painfully.
Carefully, stiffly, she scooted herself to the car door, twisted around, and climbed out. This was a two-car garage, it looked like. The grinding noise was probably the garage door opening and closing.
She opened her mouth to excoriate these bastards but stopped short in utter, incredible horror.
Her captor was standing there grinning at her. “I bet ye remember me, aye?”
For a moment she could not find words, so stunned and terrified was she. She gathered her scattered thoughts and managed to say, “Aye, I remember ye. Mr. Applegate’s employee. Hello, Mr. Stover.”
Chapter 9 Vernon Applegate
Her brain had skidded to a halt.
She stood stunned at a moment when she must have every wit about her. She needed time. “I…I am nauseous. I must sit down.” She crossed to one of two chairs at a little table and plopped down.
“I don’t believe ye. We use chloroform on the ponies when we work on ‘em, and they never vomit.”
“Horses and ponies are physically incapable of vomiting. Ye work with ponies daily. Ye should know that.” She held her aching head in both hands and forced herself to think.
Was he planning to kill her? Quite probably. Was he sane? No. He was stronger than she and had no compunctions about harming another person. He certainly would not listen to reason. But she had one advantage. When she was trying to find ways to help her Mum’s imbalance, or at least cope with it, she had read every book there was on deviant mental attitudes. She knew him far better than he knew her. She might be able to manipulate him.
She took a few deep breaths and looked around. They were in what appeared to be a two- or three-car garage. The car was parked on that side of the garage. A twin-size mattress bare of linens lay on the concrete floor on this side. Along the wall were a table and two chairs, and a one-metre-high mini fridge. A microwave took up half the table space, and on the microwave sat what Joe called a boombox, a combination radio, tape deck, and CD player.
Over on that back wall was a windowless door. And for some reason, Stover had hidden her shoes somewhere.
“I see ye eyeing the door.” He held up a coiled rope. “This goes on your ankle so ye cannae run away.”
“Do nae bother. I cannae use that door. I know not where it leads. Possibly to another building; possibly it might dump me out into an industrial area with no other people close by to help. I do nae know the city, and truth be told, we may not even be in the city anymore. Besides, the pavement in this city is far too hot to tread upon barefoot. And I do know this: if I run away and ye catch me, y’ll kill me.”
“Aye and ye got that right. One of y’r girlfriends at the wedding said y’d planned it all and ye always like to think things through. Sounds like y’r thinking now.” He sat down across from her. “That scar on your neck. What’s that?”
“Hooligans gang-raped me and cut me throat; left me for dead. Tis only by the grace of God I survived. Me private parts were torn so badly they had to repair me surgically.”
“Oh.” He eyed her warily. “They didn’t sew ye shut, did they?”
Did he actually just ask that?! “No, no they did not.” She must proceed carefully here. “Ye know I am furious with ye. I surmise that ye injured me husband. I cannot easily forgive that.”
“He was in the way. But y’re going to have me instead, and I’ll be so good that y’ll forget about that Spic.”
“What did ye do to him?”
“Hit ‘m with a hammer, I did.”
Her stomach leapt. Oh God… “Why!?”
He shrugged. “He was far too dangerous. Ye cut the throat of some puny fellow, a weakling, and nothing comes of it except he dies. Almost too simple, really. But y’r policeman there was dangerous. I could nae just cut his throat. He was strong and fast and trained how to fight. Death does not come swiftly enough that he would nae turn on me and kill me before he died. Sure and I know that much.”
“Wait. Wait!” Her brain was adding things up. Terror engulfed her. “That poor Bram Wilkie was a fellow slight of build, and mild. And his throat was cut…” She was breathing heavily and sweating; she could feel the panic rising in her. “Twas y’rself who murdered Bram Wilkie! Did ye murder Bram Wilkie?”
“That I did, and ye best be good to me or I’ll kill y’rself as well. Not that it matters in this country. No one here cares, not when ye be a foreigner. Hellbegone, no one cares in Ireland either. Not about him, the little pansy.”
“Why?! Why did ye do it?”
“Applegate was sending him to America. He would find ye, Wilkie would, somehow. And there I’d be, stuck back in Clifden with a barn full of stinking ponies, out of the picture. Applegate refused to take me along. I wanted to be the one to find ye, and I did. Now tis I who loves ye, not him, and ye’ll learn to love me.”
Panic was engulfing her. She must resist! She must think. “Wait! No! Ye killed a sweet, harmless fellow and then hit me husband with a hammer and ye now expect me to love ye? I think not!”
“Oh, y’ll change y’r mind once the loving starts.” He tossed the rope aside and stood up. “Let’s have dinner. Y’ll see how much I love ye when ye see how much I did for ye.”
The last thing in the world she wanted was dinner.
He swung the fridge door open. Frozen dinner boxes were stacked there, but they were not in the tiny freezer portion. “Aye, y’ll forget ‘m soon enough,” he boasted. “I’ll take such good care of ye, fear not. I plan well, just as y’rself does. I shall take such care of ye. See, we’ve all this food; we can eat like kings.”
He pulled out the top two and poked the microwave door open. “A couple minutes and we have a feast. Oh, I’ll take good care of you.” He set the two packages in there unopened and fiddled with the number panel until the light came on and it began to hum.
&nbs
p; She must keep her wits. Allay the panic. “Ye want love, am I not correct?”
“Aye, of course. Very good. Call it love. Aye.”
“And ye know, I’m sure, that love is far more than just sex. Me husband once said that he and his first wife mistook sexual compatibility for love and they be not the same thing. Certainly ye can rape me, but that is not love. Love is when two people know each other well, and then when they come together sexually it has deep meaning. It brings far greater joy than simply sex with a stranger.”
“No, the sex is first, and then the love comes.”
“We should at least get to know each other, aye? For example I’m going to guess that ye did nae like your job much. Twas a job like any other and ye did nae get all mushy about ponies the way that other lad did.”
“Too right.”
“And ye be far more complex a fellow than ye appear. Ye know how to game the system, as they say.”
He was grinning now.
She pressed on. “Do ye know what I miss most since coming to America? A good Irish breakfast. Eggs and rashers of bacon and potatoes and soda bread toast with marmalade, and tomatoes and pudding. Not the streaky bacon ye find in this country; real Irish bacon. And there is no store or restaurant in this whole country that knows what blood pudding is. What does yerself miss most?” She hoped it sounded like yearning, because except for pudding, it was what she and Joe actually ate each morning.
“As ye say, the food. Their porridge ain’t porridge, and about all you can get is oatmeal.” He spat. “I ain’t Scotch.”
“Oh y’re so right! And the heat.”
“Aye the heat. This place has a swamp cooler on the roof, ye can hear it throbbing away up there, but it does no good to speak of. Not like real air conditioning, I’ve since learnt.”
The very thought made her skin crawl, but she must be an actress now, an award-winning actress. She reached out to take his hand in hers, gently stroked the back of it with her thumb as Joe had done with hers, then examined the palm. “Ye work hard, I see.” She looked into his eyes. “That means y’re strong like a man should be.” She suddenly pushed his hand away. “But I still be muckle angry that ye struck down me husband. Tis going to take me awhile to get over that.” Her brain started zigzagging hither and yon, not much help at all.
The microwave went ping. He plopped the steamy boxes out on the table and opened his.
She opened hers. You are supposed to punch a hole in the plastic that covers the mashed potato. That plastic had burst and her mashed potato was splattered all over inside. “Have ye a fork or spoon, Mr. Stover?”
“Y’ll call me Jimmy, aye? And no, I forgot. But we dinnae need it. Me mum always said, ‘fingers were invented before forks’.”
“That they were.” And so she ate a dry pork chop and some shriveled green beans with her fingers. Keep him talking. Get him boasting. “Y’rself be the one who wrote me name on the car boot, aye?”
“Aye, to tell ye I’d found ye.”
“And ye left that note on the windshield, aye?”
“But ye did nae come to the restaurant. I begged ye to come. Did ye not believe that I love ye?”
“I had another engagement we had to attend, or I would’ve.” What to talk about next? “I’ve a question. This America be three thousand miles wide. How on earth did ye manage to find me?”
“I attended y’r wedding, ye’ll recall.”
“Aye. I introduced ye to Joe in the receiving line, and afterwards we chatted briefly at the reception.”
“Good. Ye remember all that. During the wedding, y’r Joe told us why he was late and said he worked for the police department in Phoenix, Arizona. I wrote it down right then and there on a piece of paper that was in a holder on the seat back asking if I wanted baptising, for sometimes I cannae remember foreign words. Police department is the garda, I knew, so when we sold the ponies in Pennsylvania—and for a tidy sum, too—I filched as much of Applegate’s money as I could and bought a bus ticket to Phoenix, Arizona. Took me four days of riding on a bus, it did. That tells ye how much I love ye. Not like that spic, who just flew there in an airplane. Then I hung about watching the back of the police department until I saw y’r Joe come out one day and learnt what kind of car he drives.”
Give the madman credit for persistence. “And followed him to our apartment.”
“That was a few days after. I stole a bicycle when I came to Phoenix, but that wouldn’t be enough, so I rented a car. All I needed was me passport and they let me have it. Well, and a credit card. I don’t have a credit card, but I know the number of Applegate’s American Express and gave ‘em that. It worked.” He shrugged. “Once I had the auto and could follow him to y’r flat, twas easy.”
“That was brilliant, Mist—Jimmy. Beyond brilliant.”
He grinned pridefully. “Silly old Bram would never of thought of all that. He’d still be in Pennsylvania thumbing through phone books.” The grin faded. Now he was studying her lasciviously. “We know each other enough. Take off y’r dress.”
Oh, God. Oh, no. Obediently she unbuttoned it and let it drop.
“And y’r panties.”
She did so. “He frowned at the maxi pad. “Y’r in y’r period, aye?”
“No. Tis to catch leaks. Since the gang rape I have been partially incontinent.”
He stared at her; it gave her a most unsettled feeling. Suddenly he stood up, seized her arm, and dragged her over to the mattress.
Her horrid nightmare was about to become exponentially worse.
Joe felt intensely weary as he crawled out of Tommy’s beetle’s passenger seat and stood erect. It was 11 am. Tom followed him through the kitchen door into the Tempe house.
Inez was at the stove. “There he is! Welcome home!”
Joe opened the fridge door.
Inez warned, “Stay off the Guinness if you’re still on pain meds.”
He closed the fridge door.
She smiled. “I’ll whip you up some hangover juice. A closely guarded recipe known only to a few fortunate Marines, and a surefire cure for headaches. All except migraines. For them you need Imitrex.”
Joe led the way out to the patio and flopped down in his favourite chair, the canvas chaise longe. His head thudded. Yes it was hot out here, but he needed the fresh air. He was not only headachy but nauseous.
Tommy’s phone rang as he plopped down in a canvas sling chair beside Joe. He pulled it out of the belt holster. “Aye?” he stared at the lattice work overhead. “Aye. The very thing! Nae, we just got here. Aye. The patio.” He listened a moment more and holstered it. “Gretchen is bringing by a person we must meet.”
Shit. The last thing Joe wanted to do was meet anyone and make nice.
Inez, relentlessly cheerful, brought out a tall tumbler of something murky orange. “Sip, but sip it all.” She went back inside as Joe thanked her.
Bridgid.
Usually abductions end in murder. Bridgid. He had let her down so badly, through carelessness. He got lazy and wasn’t alert as he should have been. He should have sensed someone behind him. Surely he heard something. The husband is protector. He failed to protect her. Shoulda shoulda shoulda. His head throbbed.
This hangover juice tasted a lot better than it looked. Obediently, he sipped.
Twenty minutes later, he heard Gretchen and Inez in the house. Now he was going to have to be pleasant when he really wanted to just drop an H bomb on the whole world.
Gretchen, Jerry Hocks, and a rather rotund gentleman in a gaudy Hawaiian shirt came out. And Maria Mercado, the staff psychologist, was with them. Now what?
He stood up. “Jerry, Gretchen, Maria. Welcome.”
Jerry waved a hand. “Vernon Applegate, this is Joe Rodriguez and Bridgid’s cousin, Tom Flaherty.”
“Ah.” Joe forced a smile as they shook. “Welcome, Mr. Applegate. If you are the Applegate that Bridgid mentioned fondly, you breed ponies. Please be seated.”
“Aye, that I am.” The gentle
man perched in a canvas chair.
Tommy cooed, “Please accept me condolences on the loss of y’r man, Mr. Wilkie.”
“Ta.”
“Bridgid talked about you in glowing terms on our flight from Ireland to here.”
Jerry sat down. “Good. We’re hoping your conversations with Bridgid can shed some light. Possibly you know helpful things and you don’t even realize it.”
Gretchen settled into an Adirondack chair and explained, “Grace Red Morning got a call this morning. It was Mr. Applegate here asking if we employed a Joe Rodriguez. He heard about Bridgid’s abduction and flew from Pennsylvania to here on the red eye.”
All this was not coming together for him. Was Joe’s brain forever going to work this poorly?
Jerry picked it up. “Mr. Applegate had brought three dozen Connemara ponies over from Ireland to sell at the New Holland horse auction in Pennsylvania. He also brought with him an assistant, James Stover.”
That name Joe had also heard. “I met Mr. Stover at the wedding. He passed through the receiving line and we talked again at the reception.”
Mr. Applegate spoke in a heavy brogue that Joe found difficult to understand. “So that’s where he was! That bugger was supposed to be loading me ponies and returning them from the pony show to the farm, but he did not show atall. Had to find some nice folks to help, volunteers, and I drove the stock truck meself.”
Inez came out with a tray of ice-filled glasses and a big pitcher of iced tea. She went back inside, so Tommy took over as mother of the pot and poured tea around.
Jerry continued. “Immediately after the sale, Mr. Stover absconded with nearly all the proceeds and disappeared. Mr. Applegate sat down with the local authorities, of course, but no leads, few clues. Then one of their detectives found a fraudulent entry on Mr. Applegate’s Amex card, Alamo car rental here in Phoenix. So Mr. Applegate flew out here.”
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