3. Vendetta

by Fern Michaels

  “We are going to the country where Mr. Li resides. There is no need for security. I, too, hate to have people watching my every move. Ah, now we are clear of the crowds. Tell me, which is Mr Li’s car?”

  “Now, how would we know that?” Yoko snarled. “All the vehicles look alike.”

  Nikki tried to squelch the panic that was threatening to engulf her. Where was Charles? For that matter, where was Li? She could feel the weasel behind her breathing on her neck. And then she saw both men. Charles had his cellphone to his ear and Mr. Li was smoking a cigar. They were walking toward them. “Thank you, God. Thank you, God,” she said silently.

  Six

  Jack looked around the crowded barn. “Son of a bitch!” he snarled when he saw a rat scurrying past him. In all his life he’d never seen such a pile of junk. Why would Myra save the ancient Duesenberg with the four flat tires? To cover the floor, of course. Obviously the car wasn’t going anywhere. Neither was the wagon that was loaded with hundred-pound bags of rock salt. The bags were stacked up under the wagon, too. He estimated two hundred bags in total. He could try to move the bags, but where the hell would he move them to? He shone the flashlight on a tractor lawnmower that was just as rusted as the Duesenberg.

  Jack debated calling Conway, Garrity’s replacement, but nixed the idea almost immediately. If there was a secret trapdoor in this barn it was going to stay a secret unless he had a warrant to move everything out. He’d need a crew of at least ten men to clear this junk pile.

  His options had just run out when his cellphone chirped. He growled a greeting. “I’m in the barn, Mark, and there’s no way in hell I can move any of this crap. I’m going to give the house a shot.”

  “Jack, don’t even think about breaking into the house. You’ve been lucky so far. I told you, we don’t have enough money in the bank to post bail for you.”

  “Listen to me, Mark. When am I ever going to get another chance at this place? It’s like goddamn Fort Knox. If that gizmo you gave me opened the gate, why won’t it give me the code for the inside alarm system?”

  “I don’t know that it will and I don’t know that it won’t. At best you would probably have forty-five seconds to get in and disarm the system. If you aren’t successful, all the bells and whistles will go off and they will rupture your eardrums. You willing to take that chance?”

  “Hell, yes. If that happens, I can be out of here in five seconds and over the fence to the forest. I hid my car. It will take the cops at least ten minutes to get here, maybe longer. C’mon, buddy, show me some support here.”

  “Jack…OK, OK, but leave the line open. Where are you now?”

  “I’m on the back stoop where the kitchen door is. I can see the alarm from where I’m standing. I can pick this lock with no problem. OK, I got it open. The alarm is beeping.”

  “You ass, turn on the gray box.”

  Jack did and waited. He had a feeling he knew the code, Barbara’s birth date. He wasn’t surprised when the numbers flashed green on the gray box. Jack pressed in the numbers and the high-pitched beeping stopped. He was in and he was safe. “I’ll call you back, Mark. Oh, wait, what’s the story on the architect?”

  “My guy disabled her car. That’s not to say she won’t rent another one, but for now you’re safe. Conway is up in the tree and has his eye on you. Don’t forget the dogs arrive at five. You have to turn the power to the gates back on before the guy gets there.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jack said, clicking off the phone. He looked down at his watch. Hell, he had hours.

  Jack made himself at home by making a pot of coffee. While he waited for the water to drip through the filter, he picked ham off a bone that was in the refrigerator. All the while his brain raced. There would be no way to the tunnels from the second floor, so he had to concentrate on the first floor. He’d start with the basement. He tried to remember what Nikki had told him about the tunnels. She’d never said anything about a secret opening. She’d also never said how she and Barbara got to the tunnels. Through the basement? How else?

  Jack poured black coffee into an oversize mug and carried it with him when he opened the cellar door. He turned on the light switch and made his way cautiously down the steep flight of narrow steps. He walked around, trying to figure out where a trapdoor could possibly be located. If one of the tunnels led to the barn, the opening should be right about where he was standing. The only problem was, he was standing on a concrete floor that had no cracks and nothing that could pass for a trapdoor.

  Jack picked up a broom handle and started tapping the wooden walls. They all gave off the same sound. No false doors. He focused on the shelves, where he could see jars of home-canned peaches. Maybe there was an opening behind the shelves. He gave up that idea when he saw the thick cobwebs and dirt. Everything in this basement had layers and layers of dust.

  It was like any other basement, full of junk and odds and ends. Still, he wasn’t giving up. He continued to poke and shove. He moved an ancient ice box — nothing. Maybe Myra was a pack rat and couldn’t bear to part with her junk. It was unlikely that any of the clutter was being kept for sentimental reasons.

  An hour later, Jack stomped his way back upstairs to the kitchen. He didn’t bother to look back. If he had, he would have seen the footprints he left behind. He closed and locked the cellar door before he poured himself a second cup of coffee, then called Mark to report his lack of progress.

  “Check out Charles Martin’s room, Jack. Listen, I really don’t know much about old slave houses and the like, but doesn’t it stand to reason they wouldn’t have an opening in the basement? Wouldn’t that be the first place one would look? I’m thinking it’s probably some kind of secret opening. Try tapping the walls. That’s what they do in the movies.”

  “This isn’t a movie, Mark. I’m watching the time. I’ll call you back.”

  This time Jack left his coffee on the table. He galloped up the staircase to the second floor. He’d been here before but for some reason the house now looked more lived in. He smelled perfume as he walked from one room to another. He looked through everything, trying to figure out who slept where. He knew where Nikki’s room was. She’d shared it with Barbara when they were kids. She still slept here from the looks of things. He moved around but didn’t touch anything. He opened a closet and saw many garments he recognized. Nikki must be using a new perfume these days. He closed his eyes and let his senses and his memory go astray. He forced himself to move out of the room. His eyes burned unbearably. Must have been all that dust in the cellar.

  Myra and Charles’s room. So neat and tidy. King-size bed. Triple dresser, double walk-in closet. Two bathrooms. His and hers. Well, why the hell not? When you had money you could have two bathrooms back to back. The bathrooms here were bigger than his bedroom in the apartment he shared with Mark.

  Everything was luxurious, the carpeting lush and ankle deep. The draperies were a rich champagne color and were drawn across the windows. A fire was laid in the huge fireplace. Two deep matching recliners sat next to the fireplace with small folding trays beside them. The old folks probably ate breakfast or had late-night snacks while they watched the news. On the opposite wall a giant television screen waited to be turned on. A person could literally live in this room.

  Jack moved to the dressing room, which was lined with mirrors. Nothing there. He looked behind the pictures hanging on the walls. No wall safe anywhere. Nothing in the bathroom or the linen closet. He moved over to Charles’s closet. Clothes, shoes, winter wear, summer wear, luggage. Nothing personal. Not even a check book or a receipt of any kind. He pawed through the dresser drawers. Underwear, socks, tee shirts, pajamas. Nothing underneath. No false bottoms to the drawers. Zip. His shoulders sagged as he went through Myra’s things, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to find anything.

  Back on the first floor, he called Mark again to report on his lack of success. He expected some kind of harangue and was surprised to hear him say, “Think about it,
Jack. Don’t you find that weird? Where is his personal stuff? Put yourself in his place. Where would you stash your past life? It’s a given that you wouldn’t totally discard it. I suppose he might keep things in a safe deposit box, but for some reason I don’t think so. A man like him, with his past, he’d want to keep it close to his chest. My advice is to keep looking and watch the time. Is there an office anywhere in the house?”

  “No, but there’s a library. No desk, though. Which makes me wonder where they sit down to pay their bills.”

  “They probably do it electronically. Keep looking, Jack. ’Bye.”

  Jack prowled and paced, banging walls, kicking furniture, and cursing. He dropped to his knees and crawled around the rooms to check the baseboards, lifted area carpets looking for a trapdoor. He went to the kitchen to look through the drawers in the hope of finding a magnifying glass. He found a small one and was again on his knees inspecting the rosettes on the carved mantel when his cellphone chirped. He clicked it on as he pressed the magnifying glass to his eye. He saw the button at the same instant that Conway barked, “Get your ass outta there, Jack. Company. The man with the dogs. You got two minutes to get that fence back on and outta there. Go, Jack!”

  “Son of a bitch!” Jack raced through the house, set the alarm in the kitchen, barreled through the door and out to the gates where he held up the gray box. He watched as the gates sizzled to life. In the time it took his heart to beat five times, he raced across the driveway and threw himself over the chain-link fence. Disoriented by his fall, he staggered off. He had no idea where he was in relation to Conway until he heard him.

  “Over here, drop down, Jack,” Conway hissed. Jack dropped and crawled through the brush.

  “Those dogs have your scent, Jack. Jesus, will you listen to them? Shit, man, they’re up on the stoop and the trainer is looking around. They know. Come on, Jack, we need to haul ass.”

  They were clear of the property in less than eight minutes. “I gotta get my car outta there. Check out that guy, can you see anything with those binoculars?”

  “No, too much brush. Don’t even think about asking me to climb another tree. We have to get out of here.”

  “I can’t leave my car there. I want to wait till the trainer leaves. I don’t think he called the police. He’s probably checking everything outside. For all he knows a stray cat or even a fox could have gotten in. He’s not going to want to make waves with the cops over something like that. Shhh, I hear a car engine.”

  A black Lincoln Navigator crawled down the driveway, the driver scanning both sides of the road. In the dense underbrush, Jack’s heart pumped furiously. His sigh of relief when the Navigator passed was so loud that Conway clamped his hand over Jack’s mouth.

  Within minutes, Jack had the evergreens thrown aside and was behind the wheel. He backed out to the gravel road and then got out of the car. He looked down at his license plate, gave a mighty tug, and the screws came loose. He threw the plate in the back seat and barreled down the road.

  He saw the Navigator just as the driver spotted him. Jack backed up, thanking God they were the only two vehicles on the road, and stormed away in the opposite direction. The Navigator gave chase but Jack had taken more than one defensive driving course during his stint with the prosecutor’s office. He lost the huge SUV within ten miles by peeling off and going down secondary roads to meet roads that were little more than paths. He was back out on the highway, headed in the opposite direction, before the guy in the Navigator knew what had happened.

  When he finally made it to the store-front office, Jack collapsed into his swivel chair. “Get me something to calm me down. I don’t even care if it’s Valium. You aren’t going to fucking believe what I have to tell you, Mark.”

  Mark handed Jack a frosty bottle of Michelob. “Jack, I believe everything you tell me no matter how unbelievable it sounds. What the hell happened?”

  Jack told him. “I have to go back, but I can’t do it till morning when that guy picks up the dogs. My biggest worry is did he call the cops. I’m inclined to think he didn’t. He did give chase but he didn’t see me. I gotta tell you, Mark, something made me rip off that license plate. Talk about gut feelings and sixth senses. I’d be behind bars right now if I hadn’t done that. The bastard was just out there on the side of the road, waiting.”

  The only thing Mark heard were the words “I have to go back. ” Don’t you think that guy or the cops will be out there tomorrow morning? How do you think you’re going to get in and out again?”

  Jack’s fingers raked his hair. “Not the way I got in today, that’s for sure. I’ll go in the way Conway goes in and jump the fence back by the barn where the ground dips. I can do it, Mark, so get that look off your face. I’m doing it. I found it! I know that button on the carving is the way they go in and out. I saw it through the magnifying glass. I’m not wrong. I was that close and then had to split. That close, Mark. Damn, I’d go back there right now if those damn dogs weren’t there.”

  “That’s definitely not an option at the moment. Let me read up on those directions again. Maybe I can turn off the gates from Conway’s spot or by coming up toward the house from the other side. Maybe there’s a way to modify the gray box. I’m going with you and I think we should take Conway with us. By the way, where is he?”

  “I sent him home. He’s spooked. Besides, even with all his body warmers, it’s forty-four degrees outside. Give him a call and tell him to meet us out there at seven.”

  “What if the architect shows up?”

  “Call the guys to make sure that doesn’t happen. All we need is an hour in that house, Mark. We’re going to need a good camera.”

  Mark groaned as he opened a second bottle of beer for Jack and one for himself.

  Jack held his bottle aloft. “Here’s to the word surprise!”

  “Bull shit! Here’s to a prison cell and no bail!”

  “I’m not drinking to that!”

  Mark started to laugh and couldn’t stop. “Then you’re a bigger asshole than I thought you were.” Before they knew what was happening they were both rolling on the floor, pummeling one another, laughing their heads off.

  Seven

  Kathryn Lucas sat across the table from Myra, her thoughts running in all directions as she watched Myra gobble down what Kathryn called truckers’ home-cooked food.

  “This is so wonderful, so tasty. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much grease at one sitting. I can’t wait to tell Charles.”

  Kathryn grinned. “Are you going to tell him you heard your arteries snap shut?”

  “I think I’ll leave that part out. I am so glad you invited me along. I haven’t done anything this exciting in twenty years. Charles is never going to believe I went on this little road trip. You don’t happen to have a camera, do you, dear?”

  “Nope, but we can buy a throwaway one at the register when we pay our bill. Posterity, huh? I’m so glad you’re enjoying the thrill of the open road.”

  “What I like is the camaraderie. You seem to know everyone. Are your colleagues always this friendly?”

  “Yes, and every single one of them would drop what they’re doing to help another trucker. Remember how they blocked the highway that time Jack Emery sent out an APB on me? Believe it or not, Myra, the truckers could bring the country to a standstill if they wanted to. They’re good, hard-working people trying to earn a living to support their families. It’s not an easy life, nor is it a glamorous one. Did you have fun talking to them on the horn?”

  “Absolutely. I wish I could meet them in person sometime. Do you think they’d remember me?”

  “Hey, if you want an invitation to the Truckers’ Ball, I can arrange it. It’s always held in the spring.”

  “I would love to attend. I’ll send back my RSVP the minute I get the invitation.”

  Kathryn laughed. “It doesn’t work that way. We just get on the horn, pass the word and everyone shows up at a designated truck stop. Each year it’s held a
t a different place.”

  “Be sure to count me in as a yes. Can I bring Charles?”

  “Absolutely. Speaking of Charles, shouldn’t he have called us by now?”

  Myra tipped her Redskins cap further back on her springy curls. “I was thinking the same thing. I’m sure he’s calling the house and leaving messages. Maybe his cellphone doesn’t work in China.”

  “Well, hi there, gorgeous!” a jolly voice said.

  Myra and Kathryn both looked up to see a giant of a man towering over them. Murphy was licking at his hand. Myra assumed the comment was made to Kathryn and said, “She is beyond gorgeous.”

  “Not her! She’s too young and skinny for my taste. ’Sides, she’s young enough to be my granddaughter and this dog of hers is a killer, as you can see. I was talking to you, honey.”

  Myra was so flustered she knocked her glass of water over. In her haste to mop up the spill with paper napkins she sent her breakfast plate flying off the table. The giant caught it with one hand that was as big as a ham hock.

  “How about having a cup of joe with me, sweet cheeks?”

  “Why I…That is so…Do you really think I’m gorgeous?” Myra asked boldly, her cheeks flaming pink. Sweet cheeks! She realized suddenly that the giant was staring at her sweatshirt. She tried to hunch her shoulders so he couldn’t read the words.

  “Takes a lot to earn a shirt like that. Introduce me to your partner, Sis.”

  “Was wondering when you were going to get around to that. Stop being so nice to my dog. I saw that bacon you slipped him. Merry Widow, meet Big Bear. Bear, meet the gorgeous Widow.”

  The giant reached for Myra’s hand and brought it to his lips. “This day will stay in my mind forever.” Murphy howled so loud the other diners stopped eating to see what the commotion was all about.