Lilliput Bar Mystery

by Curry, Edna

  Climbing out, I slammed the door and trudged sleepily toward my house and up onto the porch. I’d just put my key in the lock when something hit me on the back of my head. A wave of pain sent shooting stars erupting behind my eyes. Then, everything went black.

  When I came to, I was blindfolded and with my hands and ankles tied, lying on the floor of a moving vehicle. I turned my face and felt metal objects under my cheek. Where was I?

  Music played in the background. A cold chill ran down my back as I recognized one of my favorite piano tunes, Music Box Dancer. How had someone happened to play that? Did they know me? Were they trying to mess with my head?

  I rubbed my blindfold—was it a woman’s silky scarf?--against the metal object beside me and managed to move it up off of one eye. It was dark, but I could see enough by the light of passing headlights through the windows to know I was lying in the back of a van. Dread and fear of the unknown knotted my stomach. I wiggled my hands and tipped my feet up and down to keep the blood moving in my arms and legs.

  Damn it! Someone had kidnapped me again? This was getting ridiculous. No way would the sheriff talk me out of pressing kidnapping charges this time! I’d had enough.

  Was it Bob again? If so, why had he blindfolded and tied me up this time? Maybe because I’d gotten the best of him the last time? Or was it someone else?

  My head throbbed. The blow had given me a powerful headache. Where was he taking me this time? The music moved to one of Enya’s pieces and I realized the music wasn’t coming from the radio but from my own music CD. This had to be my van. I’d probably left my CD player turned on when I parked and it began playing again when they’d started the engine. And the metal objects under my cheek were my car-opening rods. My fear eased a little. At least I now had an idea of my immediate surroundings, for all the good that did when I was hogtied.

  The van slowed and swerved as the driver turned a corner, sliding me tighter against the front seat. The crunch of gravel suggested a driveway. I could see evergreen tree branches brush against the van windows. I struggled to sit up without alerting the driver, but the ropes on my wrists and ankles were too tight. I pushed with my feet against the floor, but froze when tools moved, making noise. Luckily, the person didn’t seem to notice, maybe because stuff had been sliding around on the floor before when she turned corners fast, too.

  The van stopped and the vehicle rocked as the driver got out. I closed my eyes and lay still. Someone opened the side door and reached in to pull me out. Cautiously, I cracked an eyelid to see who it was.

  Not Bob, this time. A slim woman in jeans and a tight tank top, well filled out. A dark, knitted ski mask covered her face, with only her eyes and nose showing through holes.

  She was tall, and I saw long blonde hair on her neck peeking from underneath the mask.

  She dragged me to the edge of the side door opening and dropped my feet outside, then reached to pull me up and prop me against the front seat. I pretended to still be unconscious and relaxed to be a dead weight to make it as hard as possible for her to move me.

  She took off the blindfold, untied my feet and reached out to pull me into a standing position. “Come on, wake up. I didn’t hit you that hard,” she said, slapping my face hard.

  That did it. I suddenly kicked out with both feet and caught her in the chest, bringing out a sharp yelp. I’d managed to knock her over, but with my hands still tied behind me, I lost my balance and ended up falling back into the van.

  I’d heard that voice before, but where? Now that she knew I was awake there was no reason to keep silent. “What do you want?”

  I worked myself back to a sitting position and eyed her, looking for clues to her identity. She wore a dark jacket over the tank top and gloves. The ski mask hid most of her features. Her eyes looked blue when the reflection from the headlights caught them, and her eyebrows were blonde.

  “I need you to open this house for me,” she said.

  “Open a house?” I said incredulously. “Why didn’t you just break in? The penalties for breaking and entering are a whole lot less severe than for kidnapping. Didn’t you think of that?”

  “We tried breaking in. Couldn’t get in. The house has these damned thermal paned double windows and all the locks are deadbolts. So we need you and your locksmith tools to get in. And you just changed the locks on it for the realtor, so don’t claim you can’t,” she warned.

  We? Was someone else here with her? That would make it harder to get away. “What house? Where am I?”

  “Cal Downs’ house on Deer Lake. Remember that one?”

  I shuddered and lied, “I don’t like places where people have died. Let me go and we’ll just forget the whole thing.” Glancing around, I noticed another vehicle half-hidden behind the house. In the glow of my van’s headlights, I caught a shimmer of a blue fender.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” the woman said. “You open this door first. After we find what we want, we’ll let you drive off in your van.”

  An old cliché popped into my head: ‘And if you believe that, I’ve got a nice piece of the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you’.

  I’ll probably end up in the river tied up in my van again. Best I try to stall them. “Okay,” I said. “But you’ll have to untie my hands if you want me to pick the lock.”

  “Don’t you just have a key you can give me?”

  “Of course not. Where would I get a key to someone else’s house?”

  “But the realtor said you just changed the locks last week. Didn’t you keep a copy of the key?”

  “No, I didn’t. If I kept copies of every key I made for a house, I’d set myself up for a robbery so someone could get all those keys, just like you want them for this house.”

  “Huh. So you have to pick the lock?” she demanded.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, do it.”

  “Untie me, then. I can’t do it this way.” I turned my back to her, against my better judgment. But she needed me now, didn’t she? She wouldn’t knock me out again until after I unlocked the house. I tried another angle. “The cops already searched the house, you know. They probably took everything of value.”

  “I doubt they took what I want. They wouldn’t even know where to look,” she said with a laugh as she untied my hands.

  I felt bare skin as she did it. She took off her gloves! Maybe, if I live through this, we can get her fingerprints!

  “Don’t try anything, or I’ll use this gun.”

  The rope dropped away and I turned slowly. She did indeed hold a gun aimed at me. No point in arguing with that. Dismay made my stomach tighten and I realized I had little chance of getting away this time. “I need my picking tools and a flashlight.” I nodded to my van.

  “Okay, get them, but no tricks,” she said, stepping back, keeping the gun on me. Her voice was more cocky now that she seemed sure of having the upper hand. I still couldn’t figure out where I’d heard her voice before, but I knew I had.

  I shrugged, slid open the side door of my van, found my flashlight and the bag with my tools in it and started toward the back door of the house, keeping the beam of the flashlight on the ground ahead of me. The lawn was uneven here and still wet from the recent snowstorm.

  “Hey, where are you going?” she demanded.

  “The back door is easier to pick,” I said over my shoulder. “The front has a more expensive lock.”

  “Oh,” she said, following me.

  I dropped my hand to my side to check my pants pocket. Yes! My phone was still there. She obviously hadn’t thought of searching me. Did that mean she was an amateur crook? And if so, did that make her unpredictable?

  Her footsteps crunched on the gravel close behind me as I strode around the back of the house. Even though it was dark, she’d notice if I pulled out my phone. And the light would show, too. I had to wait for a better opportunity before trying to call for help.

  I flashed my light near enough to the car to get a description of it and memorized the lic
ense number. If I survived, I wanted as much information as possible to catch her. Moving to the back door, I played with the lock as long as I dared, pretending to try getting it open. The lock gave with a quiet snick, but I didn’t acknowledge success.

  I continued pretending to pick it, stalling as long as possible, hoping one of the neighbors would notice cars at a supposedly empty house and investigate. Surely they’d pay more attention than usual to this house now, because it was a murder site, wouldn’t they? I heard cars going by on the road, but none turned into the driveway, nor even sounded like they’d slowed down.

  “Hurry up,” she said, coming up beside me. “You should have it open by now.”

  “It’s not as easy as they make it look on TV,” I snapped back.

  She reached out to try to turn the knob and it opened inward under her hand. “It’s open,” she said, pushing me inside.

  “That last turn must have done it,” I said, stopping beside the door and pulling my pick out of the lock.

  She snapped on the overhead light and waved the gun at me. “Sit in that kitchen chair over there by the table.”

  I obeyed, not daring to argue with a pistol. She grabbed a dishtowel from the rack and used it to tie me to the wooden chair. She’d apparently left the ropes outside.

  She disappeared down the hall to a bedroom. I could hear her opening and closing drawers and doors and cursing. I worked on trying to get loose, but she’d tied me too tightly. At least she hadn’t blindfolded me this time. I hated not being able to see what was going on around me.

  Pretty soon, she came out, carrying a box and a large bag that had ‘sunflower seeds’ written across it in large black letters. She glanced my way as though to reassure herself I was still there, then went outside, pulling the door shut behind her.

  As soon as the door closed, I began hitching the chair toward the kitchen cupboards. Maybe I could find a knife in a drawer or something to get loose.

  For a while all was quiet. Then I heard a motor start and a vehicle roar away. It didn’t sound like my van, so I was pretty sure she’d taken the blue car. Good, but…

  She’d left me here, tied up. So much for saying she’d let me leave in my van. At least she hadn’t shot me.

  Had the other person gone with her? Or had there even been another person? Had she merely stashed the other car here earlier?

  Still, she would have needed an accomplice, to drive her here, leave the car, and then take her to my house to kidnap me and my van. So where was the other person now?

  What had she been after? And what was in the box she’d taken? Why take a bag of birdseed? Or was it something else in a birdseed bag?

  Then I smelled smoke. Oh, no! She’d started a fire before she’d left. Fear tightened my throat and sweat trickled between my breasts. Images from the house fire from my childhood popped back into my mind, bringing cold panic with it.

  Where was the fire? What was burning? Had she started this house on fire and planned to get rid of me using the fire to destroy the evidence that I’d been tied up?

  I struggled frantically to loosen my binds. They gave a little, but not enough to get them over the top of the chair back. I could move, now, but couldn’t get free of the clumsy wooden chair.

  Then I realized the range next to me used gas. I could see the pilot light burning, so they hadn’t yet turned off the utilities here. If I could just reach the knob…Yes. The front burner flared on!

  Working my shoulders, I managed to get the dishtowel closer to the top of the chair and tipped the side of the chair against the stove. At first it was too far away, but gradually, by throwing my weight to that side, I got the chair to lean over the flame and the towel along the side of the chair caught fire. I swallowed the lump in my throat. Would it burn through before it caught my clothes on fire and burned me? Or before the fire she’d started outside set the house on fire? The towel burned hotter, making me wince and cringe my head away from it as far as I could while still keeping the towel near the flame.

  Yes! The towel was giving. Yanking myself away from the heat, I broke the towel the rest of the way. It dropped to the tile floor behind me and I was free!

  I ran to the sink, grabbed a pitcher from a shelf, turned on the faucet. Yes, the water was still on, too! I filled the pitcher and quickly doused the remains of the burning cloth on the floor, then turned off the burner.

  Dashing to the door, I looked outside. Smoke and red cinders flared from a metal barrel at the side of the graveled drive. Glancing around, I couldn’t see anything else burning. Relief ran over me. Thank goodness she hadn’t set the house on fire. My van still sat in the drive, but the other car I’d seen was gone.

  I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and called 9-1-1. Then I ran back to the kitchen, got more water and took it out to douse the smoldering box in the barrel, hoping to salvage enough to see what she’d wanted to destroy. It looked like a box of old papers and black and white snapshots, mostly loose, and a couple of albums with pictures pasted in them. Why burn them? What was she trying to hide? Who was she anyway? If only I could remember where I’d heard her voice before. I knew I had, but she must have thought I wouldn’t recognize it, or she wouldn’t have spoken to me as she had.

  ***

  Chance and Ben sat in Ben’s office, assessing what Bob and Sue had told them.

  “You have enough to hold them,” Chance said. “Bob for murdering Frank and Sue for fraud. Those tapes clearly show her buying the expensive tv sets and laptops. And the credit card bills show she charged them to Frank and Martha’s credit card.”

  Ben nodded and lit up a cigarette, ignoring Chance’s frown. “I need this to calm my nerves. I know it’s a non-smoking building.”

  “For everyone else, apparently,” Chance said with a smile.

  “Huh,” Ben snorted. “There have to be some perks to go along with this sucky job.”

  “I can think of a few perks,” Chance said, rising and stretching. “Well, I’m heading off to bed.”

  Just then Ben’s phone rang. “Wait a minute. It’s dispatch.”

  The woman working dispatch said, “It’s Cassie Jennings, Ben. She wants to talk to you and Chance. I’ll patch her through.”

  Ben turned to Chance and said, “It’s Cassie.” Ben punched the button to put his phone on speaker mode.

  Chance spun around to listen, fear tightening his throat and making his pulse race.

  Cassie’s voice came over the line. “Ben, I’m out here on Deer Lake at Cal Downs’ house. A woman kidnapped me at my home and drove me here in my van. She made me open Cal’s house, then left. She tied me up, but I got loose. She tried to burn some pictures before she left. I think you need to see them.”

  “Are you okay?” Both men asked at once.

  “Yeah, I told you, I got loose. I called the Wisconsin police, too, since the house is in their area.”

  “We’ll be right there,” Chance said. “Stay put.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now what the hell is going on?” Chance said as they raced to their cars. “I’ll drive separately, in case we need our cars later.” Starting his siren, he sped onto the highway, with Ben right behind him.

  In a few minutes, they pulled into the gravel road around Deer Lake. With a sigh of relief, Chance spotted Cassie’s van parked along the house, a Wisconsin patrol car on the shoulder of the drive and Cassie sitting on the porch.

  She hurried out to meet him, and he wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug, then carefully looked her over. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “A bit of a burn on my arm, but nothing serious,” Cassie said, indicating her forearm, now wrapped in gauze. “One of the officers already wrapped it. A couple of them are trying to get some fingerprints inside, now. I gave them the license number of the car she’s driving.”

  “Good. How’d you get that burn?”

  Cassie first described the woman and then what had happened. “I know I’ve heard her voice before, but can�
�t place it,” she said. “I could see blonde hair through a hole in her knitted ski mask. She had a pistol.”

  “Thank goodness you’re okay,” Ben said.

  “I’m pressing charges this time,” Cassie said. “No matter what they counter charge.”

  “Of course,” Ben agreed. “It couldn’t have been Bob or Sue this time, though, ‘cause they’re locked up. It’ll all be in the papers tomorrow and I’m sure the grapevine is spreading it around town already.”

  “Oh, really?” Cassie asked and listened while Ben explained what had happened earlier that day.

  “Back to what went on here,” Chance said. “So she just left with the bag and box?”

  Cassie nodded. “I saw her carry them out and pull the door shut behind her. A little while later, I heard her drive away and then smelled smoke. That’s when I got desperate to get loose, thinking I was about to be roasted alive. God, how I hate fires!” She described how she’d loosened the towel but couldn’t release it, then burned part of it through to get free.

  “That was taking quite a risk, Cassie. Your clothes might have caught fire before you got free,” Chance said.

  “I know, but I panicked, thinking she’s set the house on fire,” Cassie said, shuddering. “It worked. When I got outside, I realized she’d dumped the cardboard box of stuff into Cal’s burn barrel and started it on fire. I’m sure she thought it would burn up entirely there, but the recent snow had left quite a bit of water in the barrel. So the box soaked through fast and only the top part burned. It was only smoldering when I saw it, and I dumped more water on it to douse it.”

  “Let’s see what she was so anxious to destroy,” Chance said. He got his camera from his car and took a bunch of pictures, then got a garbage bag from his trunk and carefully pulled the soggy box from the barrel and put it in the bag.

  “Let’s take it inside where we have some light and where it’s warm,” Ben said, hunching his shoulders. “This wind is freezing my ass off.”

  “Better yet, let’s take it back to my office and use a hair dryer on this stuff,” Chance said.