The Jewelry Case

by Catherine McGreevy

  Leaning back against the seat, she closed her eyes. No point keeping it secret any longer. "One of the props fell on me earlier this evening. The main sail of the pirate ship.

  He sucked in his breath. "That explains it. I thought Shirley got rid of it on purpose. That big piece overwhelmed the rest of the set." He paused. "Why didn't you tell the cast?"

  "I didn't want to disrupt the rehearsal. The kids needed to focus on their lines, not worry about me. 'The show must go on,' and all that." She paused, berating herself. "But I should have spoken up," she admitted. "If someone else got hurt, I'd never forgive myself.

  Maybe Kevin did get hurt. If the car accident is connected, somehow, it would be my fault.

  He glanced at her as the Explorer accelerated, its powerful engine a restrained roar. "No offense, but you're right. For your own sake. Might have dislocated something, or even broken a bone, and here you've been ignoring your injury all night. Could get worse if it's not treated."

  "It's not so bad," she said. "Just a bruise, that's all." But Ray was right. Everything she had done that night was pretty dumb, up to and including leaving the scene of the accident before the search party arrived. How could she have done that? No matter what Ray had told her, they should have stayed. Not only was their moral duty, but the rescue workers might want to question them further.

  Maybe it was not too late to turn the car around. She was about to say so when, she heard a thump behind them. She jumped and craned her neck around, although in the dark she could see nothing through the small window that separated the cab from the trunk.

  "What was that?" she exclaimed.

  Ray flung an impatient look over his shoulder as well and pressed harder on the gas. The car leapt forward. "Got some tools rolling around back there." He reached over and turned on the radio, cranking the volume up. An old country tune filled the cabin, Billy Ray Cyrus singing about his Achy Breaky Heart. "I guess this kind of music isn't your kind of thing," he said, glancing at her. "Sorry I don't got anything more high-brow."

  "It's okay. I enjoy all sorts of music." But she wasn't thinking about the song. That thump didn't sound as if it had been caused by loose tools. She cast another sideways look at Ray's broad face, trying to read his expression in the shadows. It occurred to her he had never offered her a ride home before, had never lingered with the others after rehearsal. But tonight he was being friendlier than usual, very generous with his time.

  She looked out the window just in time to see her house flash by.

  "Ray, you passed my house!"

  "I told you, your shoulder needs to be checked out. The closest emergency room is thirty minutes away, in Davis."

  "But I don't want to go to D—." Paisley bit off the words. They were heading deeper into the countryside, going who knew where? Was he really taking her to a hospital in Davis? How on earth would she know? She didn't know this area, and the truth was, she didn't really know Ray. What she did know was that someone had tried to harm her tonight and, very likely, several times before tonight.

  As Billy Ray Cyrus's repetitive chorus hammered a hole in the side of her head, she suddenly felt a strong counterbeat hit the seat directly between her shoulder blades. This time, with the music blaring, Ray did not appear to notice anything. His thick fingers tapped on the wheel in time with the radio as he whistled along, and she sensed a subdued excitement in him, as palpable as his Old Spice aftershave. Seconds later, a cell phone in Ray's pocket rang and Paisley almost jumped of her seat.

  Ray reached into his shirt pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and swore under his breath. He switched off the radio. Silence settled over the car's interior like a blanket, making his voice seem all the louder by contrast. "Hello there, I was going to call you, but…." He paused and listened for a moment, then grunted. "No, no, don't worry, I'm sure everything will be okay." He fell silent, listening to a faint, squawk emitting from the receiver. "Uh huh. Uh huh. Seriously, it'll be fine. Trust me."

  He snapped off the phone and put it in his pocket and stared into the darkness ahead of them. In the weird light of the dashboard, his rugged face appeared to struggle with different conflicting emotions, and for a moment she thought he had forgotten her. She pondered the fact that he had just contradicted what he had told her earlier about Kevin's chances.

  "Was that Steve?" she asked.

  His voice was gruff. "The rescuers called him before I had a chance to. Poor guy, I knew he'd be cut up when he heard the news. I didn't have the nerve to tell him the truth."

  She felt raps between her shoulder-blades again. Three quick, three slow, three quick. She didn't need to know Morse Code to understand what they meant.

  Outside, it was pitch dark outside except for a sprinkling of stars and the bright moon. She was convinced now they were not heading for a hospital, but deeper into the country. Fear squiggled inside her, like a worm, not just for herself, but for whomever it was tapping her seat behind her. "Ray." She made her voice as firm as she could. "Please take me home. Really, I insist. I feel fine."

  "Sorry. Can't do that." Without warning, Ray twitched the wheel and the SUV lurched off the main road and bumped down a dirt path barely wide enough for the wheels. He must have known where the dirt road was, because it was virtually invisible. Outside the windows, she could see nothing but blackness; a cloud cover must have moved over the sky. The stars had disappeared.

  "I don't think this is the way to the hospital," she said, trying to sound calm although a sinkhole seemed to have formed in the region of her stomach.

  He didn't bother to respond. Instead he pulled the car to a stop near a large prairie oak tree, turned and faced her. The shadows had the eerie effect of making his broad face look as if it were melting off his bones. He rubbed his forehead as if it were aching. "Look, Paisley, we've got to talk."

  She edged closer to the side of the door. "Oh? Why here?" she said, fumbling covertly for the latch. How she wished she had paid attention to its location earlier. Why did every car have to be built differently?

  He ignored her question as irrelevant. "Where did you put them?"

  "Put what?"

  A rumble in his chest sounded like a German Shepherd growling. "Let’s not pretend any more, okay? Did you know I went to school with Jonathan? I was one of the neighborhood kids who used to poke around the yard with shovels when his grandmother wasn't looking. The other kids finally decided the jewels were just a myth, like Jackalopes, or the Sasquatch, or one of those stories they tell around a campfire. Even Jonathan. But not me. I knew those rubies were around somewhere, waiting for the one who didn’t give up. The one who deserved the treasure."

  She listened with half an ear, wondering how far they were from the main road. Somewhere she had read that one should never allow a kidnapper to take one into a quiet deserted area, yet she had stupidly done just that.

  As rapidly as possible, she tried to think what her options were. She’d discovered that the door latch was electronically locked from the driver's side. Even if she somehow managed to get out of the car, Ray was faster and stronger than she was; she could hardly hope to outrun him. Besides there was that unknown person behind her. Could she really just take off and leave whoever it was behind, at Ray's mercy?

  Maybe, if she could keep him talking long enough, she could think of a plan.

  Fortunately Ray needed no urging. He was a natural-born "ham" in search of an audience. "When that other old lady died," he was saying conversationally, "I thought, well, why not try looking again? Maybe I'd have more luck this time around. By now, I really needed the money. Things didn’t go too well for me in the Army. Whenever anything went wrong, I was blamed. Pilfering, unnecessary violence...." His voice trailed off in self-pity, and his beefy hand clenched on the wheel. She shrank back in her seat.

  Then his fingers relaxed and he resumed his narrative, although his voice had an edge to it now. "But after the dishonorable discharge, things really went down the drain. And after everything I'd sacrif
iced!" He looked at her as if seeking sympathy. "Life isn't fair, Paisley, is it? But you know that, don't you? I got home and couldn't find a job... debts piled up ... Then my wife left and took half of everything that was left. The worst part of it was that all the time I knew those jewels were buried somewhere nearby. A fortune, just waiting to be found! No one else cared enough to look for them. That made them mine by rights, didn't it?" His voice grew plaintive, an odd-sounding mix of menace and self-pity. "None of the surviving Perlemans wanted them, not until you came along. But I was here first. You're the interloper."

  "Uh huh." Her automatic sound of agreement meant nothing. She was busy thinking hard. Ray must have spent the summer hoping she would lead him to the jewels, but he couldn't possibly have watched her by himself. His office was across town, and his big black Explorer would not have gone unnoticed.

  Then she remembered the strange looking metal object in Steve’s Lopez house that had caught her attention that first day, when she had fallen crossing the cow pasture. Suddenly she knew what it. A metal detector. Of course! How stupidly, idiotically blind she had been!

  She cleared her throat, forcing her hands to stay calm in her lap. "So how is Steve involved in this? Is he your, ah, henchman?"

  "Steve?" Ray's heavy brows came together, and his expression looked displeased. "We’ve been buddies since we played football together in high school. He was supposed to keep an eye on you, let me know if anything unusual happened, but he wasn't much help. I've had to do almost everything myself."

  She flinched at the stab of betrayal. "I thought Steve and I were ... well, friends."

  "That was the problem." Ray glanced at her, scowling. "Pretty boy Steve started falling for you, which made him unreliable. We'd agreed at the beginning to force you to leave so we could tear the old Perleman place down wall by wall, looking for the treasure. I knew it had to be there somewhere, especially when I caught you showing that dusty box to that McMurtry fellow.”

  “But they weren’t in the box!”

  “I figured that out eventually. But it meant you were getting close. The fire was meant to scare you away, give us a chance to take over the search on our own, but Steve was right. That proved to be a mistake."

  She thought of her neighbor's stricken face after the fire, when he enveloped her in that hard hug, the look of fear in his eyes. Steve Lopez had been right to worry. He had signed on for a spot of larceny, not murder.

  Murder. She darted a look at the heavy-built man behind the wheel, and her nails dug painfully into her palms. If ever she needed to think clearly, it was now, yet her brain felt sluggish, like swimming through mud.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, still trying to control her voice. “Why would Steve agree to spy on me? He had everything: nice cars, a beautiful house, a successful business.”

  "He did it for the obvious reason. I'd promised to split the booty with him. Hey, that's a pirate term, isn't it, booty?" Ray gave a belly chuckle. "Except in this version, the Major General turns out to be the pirate." He chuckled again, enjoying his joke. "Steve needed money to keep that vineyard going and to pay for those nice clothes and expensive cars." Ray's smile disappeared. "But like I said, he wasn't as helpful as I hoped. Sure, he called me when he saw you showing Ian that dusty box, but it turned out to be a dead end. If I hadn't happened to be leaving Steve’s house tonight just as you were climbing down that tree...."

  So that was how he had known. As Ray went on, boasting about his cleverness in figuring out that she had found the jewels, Paisley discreetly fumbled around for something, anything, that might help her escape. She could not outrun Ray, even if she could get the car door open, and she did not want to leave behind whoever it was behind her seat.

  "What did you do then?" she prompted, reaching under the seat with her fingers under cover of darkness, and feeling nothing but carpet.

  "I waited until you drove away, then searched the place good. You didn’t have much time to hide the jewels, so I figured there was a good chance they’d be easy to find. That's when Ian came hammering on your door, hollering your name."

  Ray slowly turned his massive head and met her eyes straight-on. She felt as if she were in a dream again, this time a real, old-fashioned, scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs nightmare. She hadn't fully understood the danger she was in until now. Now she knew who her mysterious enemy was, and he was sitting right next to her.

  Desperately she tried to remember her message to Ian. Nothing about the jewels directly, she was pretty sure. Then all at once the words popped into her head. They happened to be the California motto: "I have found it." In Greek: Eureka.

  Ian must have known immediately what the message meant. She could picture what happened next: he’d left his thesis and rushed over to share the great discovery, arriving just in time to find Ray searching the house. There’d been a confrontation, and Ray, bigger and heavier, had overpowered Ian, throwing him in the back of the van. It was all her fault. Her stupid fault.

  At least, based on the heartiness of the kicks she had felt, Paisley thought Ian must be in relatively good health. For now.

  Ray's voice roughened. "I still wasn’t completely sure, until you showed at rehearsal wearing that." His eyes flickered to her hands, now folded in her lap. The clouds parted, allowing moonlight to glint off the ring on her finger, the one she had been unable to remove. At some point the band had turned around, and now the ruby glinted in the dim light—all thirty incredible carats of it. She covered it with her other hand, quickly, but it was too late.

  "I figured you'd lead me to the jewelry eventually," Ray said, his eyes the cold, hard eyes of a stranger. She could easily imagine him wearing Army fatigues, standing at the other side of a M-16, ready to pull the trigger. "Where's the rest?"

  She didn’t answer immediately. If she told him where the jewels were, then what? He’d hardly let her walk straight to a police station to report what had happened. It was no accident he’d driven her all the way out here, to this deserted spot.

  It was too bad Ray hadn’t been the one to find the jewels, she thought. Finder's keepers. Possession was nine tenths of the law. What you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you. There were reasons for such aphorisms.

  But she hadn't cooperated. She’d shown up in River Bend unexpectedly and interfered with what Ray had figured was a sure deal. His treasure hunt had turned into something else, something deadlier.

  "Okay,” she said. “I'll tell you."

  He looked pleased. The expression was still on his face when she swung down the heavy coffee mug he’d left in the cupholder, breaking it across his skull. It was enough to cause Ray to slump against the steering wheel.

  Feeling slightly sick, Paisley didn't look at the results of the blow. She’d never hurt anyone in her life, not intentionally anyway, and she was afraid of what she would see. Instead, she dropped the remaining bits and poked desperately at the buttons releasing the door, then, when she heard a reassuring click, snatched the keys from the ignition.

  Within seconds she was at the back of the Explorer, hands shaking as she fumbled to get the hatch open.

  "Ian? Ian! Are you in there?"

  The hatch flew up. Paisley was peering and scrabbling in the darkness when a heavy hand grabbed her bad shoulder from behind. She shrieked and whirled. At that moment, the moon chose that moment to come out again, and she saw Ray's big face, his eyes two dark hollows, a streak of some black liquid running down the temple. "You little bitch!" he snarled. "What do you think you’re doing? I asked you, where are they?"

  Paisley wished with all her heart that she had struck harder with the mug. She opened her mouth to tell him what he wanted to know. Why not? she thought dully. It made no difference now. Ray would dispose of her and Ian here, in the middle of nowhere, and most likely no one would find their remains for days or months, maybe not for years.

  Then a large object dropped down on them, something awkward, clumsy, and heavy, and tied up with rope. Ray shouted and
dodged to the side an instant too late, falling heavily at her feet, while the other object collapsed on top of his limp body. Whatever it was was wriggling and making a muffled noise that sounded like her name.

  Paisley fell to her knees and ran her hands over the long form, unidentifiable in the dark, and yet she knew who it was. Everything was there: legs, shoulders, head. It grunted again, louder, as her hands passed over a round part that felt like a head.

  Blubbering with relief, she yanked off the gunny sack and pulled a wet, nasty gag out of his mouth. "Ian! Are you all right?"

  Instead of praising her quick actions, or burbling sweet nothings about how happy he was to see her, Ian croaked, "Ray's pocket. Knife. Grab it."

  Ray was stirring; like before, he was stunned, but not fully unconscious. Hollywood movies made it look easy to knock someone out, and yet, she thought with disgust, she and Ian had barely managed it. Ray Henderson was healthy and sturdily built, and the two of them were too timid to do real damage. Desperately she patted around her opponent’s waistline in the dark, felt the hilt of what must be the knife, and swiftly slid it from its sheath.

  "Hands first, then my feet." Ian thrust his forearms toward her. Paisley sawed through something that felt like thick wire, as fast as she could, as Ray mumbled and tried to sit up. When the bonds around Ian's wrists fell loose, she started on his feet.

  "Here, give me the knife. You take care of Ray." Ian grabbed the knife and continued working at his bonds while she desperately looked around for something to hit Ray with. She had left the hammer in the car. Her hands closed around a rock that fitted into her palm. Feeling queasy, she hesitated, then dropped it. Ray fell again, prone onto the dirt. The sound of shattering glass told her the rock had disposed of his cell phone as well.

  "Now check for a gun. Ray pulled one on me. That's how he got me into the back of the car."