In a voice of hurt dignity and self-righteous demand, Vern said, “What do you want me to do with her?”
“It’s your screwup, you figure it out! And don’t come back here until you’ve got more sense!”
He went inside the hangar, sliding bay doors descended, and the interior was hidden from our view. Vern waited until the doors thudded onto the pavement with a sound of utter finality. Then, in a fury, he started the car, made a screeching K-turn, and sped through the open gate. I couldn’t see them, but I was sure the gate doors closed behind us. I wondered if the man would change the code for opening the gate.
The men in the backseat released their hold on me. One of them turned his head toward me and spoke through the slit in his mask.
“I guess we made a mistake.” He sounded hopeful, as if he thought I might forget the whole thing.
The other one said, “Vern, what’re you going to do with her?”
I wanted to know that myself.
They hadn’t replaced my hood, and in the driver’s dash mirror I could see Vern’s piggy little eyes darting back and forth with the effort of thinking what to do with me. I was pretty sure whatever he came up with wouldn’t be anything I’d like.
His eyes met mine in the mirror. “It’s just your word against ours, lady. If you tell anybody, we’ll say you lied.”
I nodded, trying to look humble, which took an effort. I also tried to look scared, which was no effort at all.
We retraced our route, first along the graveled one-lane road with its twists and turns, then down some streets where the lots were at least an acre, some of them with a horse or two cropping grass. I knew we were on the outskirts of some small town, but the area wasn’t familiar. It didn’t seem to me that Vern had a route in mind, but was driving aimlessly hoping for inspiration.
We finally approached an I-75 intersection where service stations and fast food places clustered in a traveler’s stop. Vern pulled into a vacant parking lot behind a Friendly’s restaurant. With the motor idling, he turned to me.
“Okay, now this is what’s going to happen. We’re going to untie you and let you out here, and we’re going to drive away. You’re going to face the other way until we’re gone, then you’re going to go in Friendly’s and call a cab and you’re going to go back where we got you. And you’re going to keep your mouth shut about this whole business. Comprende?”
I nodded, trying to memorize his face while he talked. He had a long upper lip that covered his top teeth. His lowers were smoker’s teeth, dark at the roots, with magenta gums. When he spoke his lower teeth were bared, making him look like a bulldog. “If you say one word, we’ll come after you and next time it won’t be for a pleasure ride. You got it?”
I nodded again. Faster.
He said, “Okay, untie her.”
Untying really meant cutting through the duct tape they’d wrapped around my wrists and ankles. Duct tape is useless for taping ducts, but it comes in handy for kidnapping people.
I could see the men’s eyes behind their ski masks. They looked embarrassed and scared. They must have been a lot smarter than Vern, who didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. Like every loser in the world, Vern was feeling sorry for himself.
I didn’t make any sudden moves. I was docile as a Ragdoll cat. When they’d got the tape off my ankles and wrists, Vern handed me a fifty-dollar bill.
“You can use this for cab fare.”
One of the other men grunted approval, and they opened the car door and moved aside so I could climb out. As soon as I was upright on the pavement, the limo door closed and the car zoomed out of the lot. Even if I’d disobeyed orders and turned around to look at the limo’s tags, it was gone before I managed to force my body to stop trembling.
Gingerly, I lifted a corner of the duct tape and carefully peeled it off my mouth. It felt as if some of my lip went with it, but it didn’t bleed. Holding the tape between thumb and finger, I held it away from me and walked around to the front entrance of the restaurant. A family came out before I got there, and the father held the door for me. I thanked him and walked directly to the ladies’ room at the back.
As I’d hoped, a paper towel dispenser was on the wall beside the row of sinks. The towels were the smooth brown kind that are useless to dry your hands on, but perfect for preserving latent fingerprints on a strip of duct tape. I pulled a towel out, folded it loosely around the tape, and tucked it in one of the pockets of my cargo shorts. Then I leaned on the counter and shook for a while. Adrenaline does that to you. After I’d got myself more or less composed, I used the facilities, washed my hands and face, and examined my puffy lips in the mirror. Women who want lips like Angelina Jolie should forget about collagen shots and just rip some duct tape off their mouths every few days.
The only thing left to do was pull my cellphone from a pocket and call Guidry.
4
I didn’t go into a lot of detail, just told Guidry I’d been grabbed by some guys in a limo and driven somewhere near Bradenton and put out at Friendly’s.
He said, “Are you all right?”
I said I was, and he told me he’d be there in thirty minutes.
I left the ladies’ room and went to sit at a table by the window. Adrenaline shakes from my harrowing experience had morphed into hunger shakes from going a lot of hours without eating. When a waitress brought a menu, I asked for immediate coffee. She not only brought me a full mug but stood by ready to give me a refill.
I winced when the hot coffee stung my lips, and the waitress looked distressed.
I said, “My lips are chapped.”
She nodded, but I could tell she knew they were more than chapped. I thought about explaining that I’d lost a layer of lip skin when I ripped tape off them, but decided against it. Instead, I ordered a cheeseburger and extra-crispy fries.
The waitress must have realized I was so hungry I might start gnawing on the table, because she said, “It’ll just take a few minutes. We’re not real busy yet.”
She topped off my coffee and scurried to turn in my order. I sat looking out the window reviewing all that had happened. Some woman had been the target of a kidnapping, but the kidnappers had been so dumb they’d nabbed me instead. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to know the intended woman had been Ruby. Vern had said, “I followed her from the old man’s house,” which had to mean Mr. Stern’s. Furthermore, even though I was a good ten years older, Ruby and I were both pale-skinned blondes, both about five-foot-three, both about a size six.
I had seen Vern’s face and could identify him if I saw him again. The other two men had worn ski masks that hid their faces, but they had not worn gloves and I may have got good latents from the duct tape they’d put on my mouth.
Latent prints are only valuable if they match prints on file in IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the FBI. The file contains millions of prints taken from criminals, people fingerprinted in conjunction with job applications, and a large percentage of military officers and enlisted personnel, especially those taken after 2000. If the guys who’d bound and gagged me in the limo didn’t have criminal records, had never worked for an employer who required fingerprints, or had not served in the U.S. military, their latents wouldn’t help identify them.
While I thought about all that, the waitress brought my cheeseburger and fries. She poured another cup of coffee, hovered a moment as if she were afraid I might stuff the entire burger in my mouth at one time and choke to death, then gave me a motherly smile and left me alone.
The burger was good, with honest yellow mustard, a square of American cheese, tomato, lettuce, and a slice of onion that brought tears to my eyes just to smell it. Being as I had a man in my life and had to consider my breath, I removed the onion slice.
Mustard and salt burned my raw lips, but I finally got the hang of pulling my lips back so only my teeth touched the food. I’ve seen horses do that. Maybe their lips are tender too. The waitress ref
illed my coffee mug after I polished off the last fry. I cradled the mug with both hands and thought some more until I saw Guidry walking toward me.
Most homicide detectives wear polyester suits with drip-dry short-sleeved shirts and scuffed brown lace-ups. They wear ties either too wide or too narrow for the current style, and the buttons on their shirts are always straining against ten pounds put on since the shirt was new. Guidry wears cool unlined linen jackets with linen trousers that don’t match. The jackets hang from his shoulders in a way that makes you know they were made by some Italian with an attitude. The sleeves are pushed up his bronzed forearms. The trousers are wrinkled just enough to make you think of fibers spun from grains that grew under Egyptian suns. His shirts are knit, probably of silk or some threads spun by insects I don’t even know about. His bare feet are shoved into woven leather sandals. Good leather, not that cheap cardboard-like stuff. He does not wear ties, but lets his shirts lie open at his throat. His throat has a little hollow between the bones that my lips fit into perfectly. It smells of clean skin and honesty.
He looked calm as ever, but the lines around his lips seemed deeper and his gray eyes were stormy. He slid into a chair opposite me and studied my face.
He said, “Are you really okay?”
I nodded. “They put a hood over my head and wrapped duct tape around my wrists and ankles, but they didn’t hurt me.”
“Your mouth is swollen.”
“They put tape on my mouth too. I saved the tape for prints.”
“You know who they were?”
“There were three of them. The driver’s name was Vern. Caucasian, about forty, broad shoulders. I didn’t see him standing up, but he looked tall in the seat. The other two were also Caucasian, medium height, medium weight, wore ski masks. I heard one of them speak, but there wasn’t anything distinctive about his voice.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘I guess we made a mistake.’ ”
Guidry raised a no-shit! eyebrow.
I said, “They meant to kidnap a different woman.”
“What different woman?”
“I’m pretty sure they thought I was a woman named Ruby. She’s the granddaughter of a man who has a cat I’m helping him with. He tore his bicep muscle. The man, not the cat. The cat is a big orange Shorthair named Cheddar. The man’s name is Mr. Stern.”
Guidry’s gray eyes took on the bleak look he gets when I talk about animals.
I said, “They took me to a man named Tuck. He has a big hangar next to his house, with a landing strip for a private jet. Tuck walked out to the limo and I think he was expecting me. Vern said, ‘I got her,’ but when Tuck saw my face he said, ‘That’s not her!’ He was mad at Vern, and told him to take care of me without anybody getting hurt. He apologized to me, said he hadn’t had anything to do with it and didn’t know anything about it, but I think he did.”
“Where were you when they grabbed you?”
“The Village Diner parking lot. They drove in and parked right beside me.”
“They’d been following you?”
I hesitated, embarrassed to admit I hadn’t been paying attention. “A limo like theirs was behind me earlier, but traffic got between us on Higel. I didn’t see them back there when I turned on Ocean, but they must have been.”
“Where were you earlier, when you saw them behind you?”
I told him where Mr. Stern lived. “The limo was a couple of houses down the street when I left Mr. Stern. It pulled behind me and stayed on my tail until I turned on Higel. Vern told Tuck he’d followed me from ‘the old man’s house,’ as if they both knew who ‘the old man’ was. I think he meant Mr. Stern’s house.”
I touched my sore lips. “Ruby doesn’t live there, but she has a bedroom with a crib in it so she must have spent a lot of time with Mr. Stern. She’s been gone someplace, but she came back this morning while I was there. Ruby’s at least ten years younger than me, but we look a lot alike. She has an adorable baby named Opal. She’s about four months old.”
Guidry got the same expression he got when I talked about pets. “You know Ruby’s last name?”
I shook my head. “Mr. Stern said she might or might not be married to a drag racer named Zack. He seemed to think Ruby might have lied about being married to him.”
“Zack Carlyle?”
The way he said the name made it sound as if Zack Carlyle was somebody famous. I guess he could tell from my blank face that I’d never heard the name before.
He said, “This guy Tuck, was his place east of Seventy-five?”
I nodded. “It’s that super wealthy area where all the homes have private landing strips and hangars.”
“Tuck is probably Kantor Tucker. Richer than God, flies his own big jet, has lots of important contacts.”
I’d never heard of him, either. Once again, I realized that I was ignorant about a lot more things than I was smart about. I hate when that happens.
Guidry looked down at me and quirked the corner of his mouth. “So Vern and his boys drove you here and let you out?”
“Vern gave me fifty dollars for cab fare.”
“Vern’s all heart.”
“I ate a cheeseburger and I’m going to use Vern’s fifty to pay for it. You want one?”
He grinned and refused, his smile a white flash that never fails to make my toes tingle.
With tax, my hamburger and coffee were a little over ten dollars. I left the rest of the fifty for the waitress.
5
On the way back to Sarasota, Guidry and I were both quiet. I don’t know what Guidry was thinking, but I was thinking that once my kidnapping was reported, it would be a matter of public record. Which meant that local reporters who troll police reports for news would see it. Which meant that my private life would be displayed for the world to see. Again.
In my mind, I played out two options and their consequences. I could report that I’d been kidnapped and go through the law-enforcement process of identifying Vern and his cohorts, or I could keep quiet about the whole thing.
If I could identify Vern from mug shots, and if the latent prints on the tape weren’t too smudged, and if IAFIS had matching prints in their files, the cops could identify the man who had taped my mouth. Those were important ifs, because the tape was the only proof I had that the kidnapping had actually happened. If the tape had no usable latent prints, it wouldn’t be proof at all.
If Vern and his goons were brought to trial, I knew how it would go. Their lawyers would argue the kidnapping hadn’t happened, that even if it had, I hadn’t been hurt, hadn’t been taken across state lines, hadn’t been raped, hadn’t been threatened with a gun or a knife. They would say it wasn’t really kidnapping because nobody had made ransom demands. They’d claim they had simply taken me for a short ride as a harmless prank. They’d pull self-righteous faces and claim that as soon as Vern had realized it wasn’t funny to me, he’d let me go with money for cab fare.
A smart lawyer would make me look like a whining neurotic who took herself far too seriously. Even if a jury believed I’d been taken by force, the penalty probably wouldn’t be very severe.
And then there was wealthy Kantor Tucker, who would surely deny that he’d ever seen me. He was a man in the public eye, and if I said I’d been kidnapped and taken to him, the media would have a field day playing with the fact that Vern had grabbed me for Tucker and Tucker had refused me. On top of everything else, I would look like a kidnap rejectee.
I said, “I’m not going to report it.”
Guidry gave me a quick sideways look. “You have to put an end to that fear, Dixie.”
“Easy for you to say. You aren’t the one who got pilloried by the press.”
I sounded bitter and self-pitying, which bothered me more than memories of seeing myself on TV lunging at a woman reporter at Todd and Christy’s funeral. My face had been twisted in a murderous rage, and if Michael and Paco hadn’t grabbed me, I probably would have choked the woman
right there on camera. She had stuck a mike in my face and asked me how it felt to lose my husband and child in such a senseless way, and I’d gone mad-dog crazy. The next time I’d made the news was when I killed a man. That time I was a heroine, but the slimy feeling I’d had when I saw my name in headlines had been as bad as the first time I’d seen it. I didn’t want to see it again. Didn’t want to read: PET SITTER KIDNAPPED.
But I knew what Guidry was thinking: my reason for keeping quiet about a crime shouldn’t be solely to avoid publicity. If I didn’t report it, criminals would have gotten away with treating a woman like an object to be carted around at their whim. They might feel so invincible they’d commit some other crime against some other woman, and next time they might not stop at nabbing her off the street.
With a defensive whine to my voice, I said, “If I thought bringing charges against them would send them to jail or get them a hefty fine, it would be different.”
Guidry didn’t respond, but I could see by the way his lips firmed that he didn’t believe either of those penalties would happen. One of the paradoxes of living in a democracy governed by laws is that laws sometimes work in favor of law-breakers more than law-keepers. I don’t like that, but I also wouldn’t like living in a country where some dictator made the rules.
We rode awhile longer in silence, then Guidry said the words I should have expected, but hadn’t. “Dixie, I’m a sworn officer of the law. I have to report any crime I have knowledge of.”
For a moment, I felt betrayed, even though I knew he was right. For another moment, I wished I’d used Vern’s money to pay a cab and kept the whole incident a secret. But I knew that would have been wrong, too. I didn’t want my relationship with Guidry to include secrets. Secrets may start out as little cracks between two people, but they end up as chasms a mile wide.
I scootched forward on the seat and dug my Keds into the floor, knowing that Guidry would drive me straight to the sheriff’s office on Ringling Boulevard, where I would look at mug shots of known criminals who matched Vern’s description.
Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons Page 3