by Laura Alden
“Then don’t lie.” Claudia opened one of the many boxes labeled CHRISTMAS COOKIE CUTTERS, looked inside, frowned, then slapped the lid back on. “My kids know they’re going to catch big trouble if they lie to me. Guess your mother didn’t teach you as good as I teach my boys.”
“How can you possibly know if I’m lying?” It was almost a shout. “You hardly even know me.”
She made a pfft noise. “I’ve known people like you all my life. People like you think a college education makes you better than people like me. Well, you’re wrong, dead wrong.”
I stared at her. My grandmother, who had been one of the smartest people I’d ever known, hadn’t even graduated from high school. I had many vices, but educational snobbery wasn’t one of them. “You have this all wrong. I don’t—”
“See, there you go, telling me what to think.” She stalked over to the basement’s dark corner and crouched down to peer at the underside of the stairway. “I don’t know where you get off, telling me I’m wrong. My feelings are just as real as yours.”
“But they’re based on erroneous information!”
She made a gagging noise. “Erroneous. Puh-leese. No one talks like that. Or no one should.” She stood and walked to a relatively new furnace. Looked behind that, looked behind the hot water heater, looked behind a folded-up Ping-Pong table, looked behind the washer and dryer. “And you’re not even from here,” she said. “That bookstore has been in Rynwood forever. Why you think you should be the one to run it, I don’t know.”
“Probably because I’m the one who paid for it,” I said dryly.
“Oh, sure,” she huffed. “Now you’re throwing all your money in my face.”
“All what money?” A discussion with Claudia was an exercise in exasperation. “Where do you get these ideas?”
“Please.” She faced me, arms crossed. “You live in that great big house in the nicest part of town. You own that bookstore. You dress nice. Your kids dress nice. Your car is nice. Why is it that people who have money always want to pretend they don’t?”
I had no idea what people with money did, because I certainly wasn’t one of them. “What are you talking about? If I look as if I dress nicely it’s because I take care of my clothes since I can’t afford to buy new. The clothes my children wear are mostly purchased by their grandparents. I only live in that house because my ex-husband pays a big share of the mortgage, and there’s a huge loan on the bookstore.”
I was waving my arms around and shouting. “Do you know the last time I went on a vacation anywhere but to my mother’s? Before Jenna was born. Do you know the last time I bought a new car? Even a new used car? Seven years.”
Her mouth opened, but I was in full rant mode and didn’t let her get a word in.
“We go out to eat once a month, and that’s usually for pizza. We don’t get anything more than basic cable television, and our Internet access speed is slower than molasses in February. Soda is a treat for us and I only buy store-brand cereal!”
A male laugh whirled me around. Standing at the bottom of the stairs was Kirk Olsen.
And he was pointing a gun straight at me.
“Store-brand cereal,” he said, chuckling. “That’s practically cruelty to children. You’d think those kids would rise up in revolt.”
Claudia let out a squeak. “He’s got a gun! Beth, do something!”
Though I’d had a gun pointed at me before, that experience wasn’t making this one any more comfortable. “Do something?” I asked. “Like what?”
“You’re the smart one,” she snapped. “Or so they say.”
“Sorry,” Kirk said. “She’s going to do what I tell her.”
“Why’s that?” Claudia asked.
“Because I’m bigger and stronger than either one of you. And,” he said, smiling, “because I have a gun. Beth, there’s a roll of string on that shelf over there. Claudia, put your hands behind your back and let Beth tie your wrists together. Slowly, now.”
I didn’t move. “They’ll catch you, you know. Someone’s bound to have seen you.”
“Not a chance,” he said confidently. “I followed you both here, then found a nice dark spot a couple blocks away. It’s cold and windy, and I didn’t see a soul. And even if I had, with my hood up not even my mother would have recognized me.”
“Marina knows,” I said.
He laughed. “Not the most credible source, though, is she? She probably had this one as a suspect,” he said, gesturing to Claudia. “Now, tie her up already.”
The steel that rang in his voice compelled me to do his bidding, but the stubbornness in my spine kept me from moving. “No,” I said. “Claudia and I are going to walk out of here. Killing us won’t help.”
“Guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree about that.” Kirk took two swift steps toward me. I ran, tried to run, tried to stay out of his reach, but he was too big, too fast, too tall. His free hand grabbed hold of my wrist and twisted it up behind my back.
I cried out in pain, then hated myself for the pathetic bleat.
“You’ll do what I say,” Kirk said pleasantly. “Won’t you?”
People who say they can ignore pain either have a much higher threshold for pain than I do or they’re nuts. All I wanted was to end the agony that ran hot through my shoulder, back, and arm. “Yes,” I gasped.
He released me, and I stumbled forward into Claudia’s glare. Her expression intimated that I was stupid, incompetent, and going to get us killed. I wanted to tell her to jump right in with her own bright idea to save us, but didn’t. Couldn’t, really, because I was still gasping from pain.
“Tie her up,” Kirk ordered.
I grabbed the string and started to formulate a plan. Tie Claudia’s hands together. Take the scissors that were also on the shelf and move as if to cut the string, but drop the string on the floor. Kirk’s eyes would be distracted for a moment. I’d stab his arm with the scissors, he’d drop the gun and I’d pick it up. Beth saves the day, Claudia is forever grateful, and my children go on to live happy and fulfilled lives.
“Make it good and tight,” Kirk said.
So much for tying Claudia loosely, giving her a chance to escape.
I held her wrists together, her skin cold under mine, and wrapped the string around and around.
Something prodded me in the back. Since I was still wearing my coat, I was able to pretend it was his index finger. “Tighter,” he said.
“You know, you’re just making this worse.”
“Not a chance.”
He said it calmly, which gave me the willies because how could anyone sound so normal when holding a gun practically to someone’s head? How could he sound normal when he was obviously planning to kill us?
I shook my head. “No, this is much worse. With a good attorney, you could have passed off Cookie’s death as an accident. It’s hard to see how bullet wounds in people with their hands tied behind their backs could be anything except murder.”
Claudia squeaked again.
“If you’re not stupid,” Kirk said, “there won’t be any bullets in anybody.”
“She’s the stupid one.” Claudia moved her head around to glare at me. “If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
How she figured that, exactly, I wasn’t sure. So much for the solidarity of sisterhood in the face of danger. “I like the idea of no bullets, but I like the idea of living even more.”
“Sorry about that,” Kirk said, chuckling.
“Are you sure? We can’t negotiate on this?” I tied a square knot and made a show of looking for something to cut the string with. “Surely we can work out some sort of arrangement,” I said, reaching for the scissors. “It’s always worthwhile to talk, don’t you think?”
Kirk snatched the scissors away from the tips of my fingers. “Women,” he growled. “Always talking when it’s the doing that’s important.” He brandished the scissors and opened and closed the blades with a loud snick. “Like Coo
kie. If she’d kept her mouth shut, none of this would have happened.” He snipped the string, put the scissors back on the shelf, and grabbed the ball of string from my hand.
“Turn around,” he ordered, giving me a shove of encouragement.
Always eager to oblige someone holding a gun, I turned around. Claudia was staring at me, eyes wide, face pale. I tried to give her a smile of encouragement, but all I could manage was a pathetic, trembling effort that wouldn’t have fooled a two-year-old.
I winced as Kirk wound the string around my own wrists. “What did Cookie say?” I asked. “What didn’t she keep quiet about?”
“Like you don’t know.” He tied a knot in the string, wrenching it so tight that my fingers were already tingling. “She comes to me for investment advice, and then she’s too stupid to take it. Not what you’d call an ideal client. She kept wanting to invest in funds that were meaningful.” He snorted. “A nosy nut case, that’s what she was. And you’re following in her nosy footsteps.”
Some of this made sense . . . but not really. “What are you talking about? I barely knew Cookie.”
“But you have her insurance.”
“Her . . . what?”
Kirk jerked my hands up and backward. I did my best to keep from crying out in pain. Didn’t do a very good job.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know about the box.” His voice bounced off the hard floor and walls, pounding my ears with words I didn’t want to hear. “I know you have her box. She told me about it, said it was her protection against people like me, said if anything happened to her, it would go to someone who would know what to do with it.”
Stupid. I was truly stupid. Why hadn’t I studied the box more thoroughly? Why had I let myself be creeped out by its contents instead of using it as a tool to find Cookie’s killer? “You don’t know that she was talking about me.”
Kirk used his size and weight to push Claudia and me into the far corner of the basement, back where the furnace lived. “Right. Everybody knows how you’re the one who figured out who killed Agnes Mephisto. And Sam Helmstetter. And all those others. You were the obvious choice, so I’ve been keeping a watch on you.”
My insides went wavery. He’d been watching me? Eww.
He kicked at the backs of our knees and forced us to collapse to the floor. He hauled us around so Claudia and I were back-to-back, and started wrapping the string around our bodies. Then he cursed. I turned my head just enough to see that he’d run out of string. Hallelujah! With nothing left to tie us up with, he’d have to—
“Got it,” he muttered, destroying my surging hopes. He took two fast steps to a shelf that held a long length of inch-wide webbed strap. After he’d attached it to the furnace and around our upper bodies, he grunted, and said, “When I saw what’s her name, that girl who drives the UPS truck, stop and hand you a box that obviously wasn’t heavy with books, I had a feeling. So I flagged her down and made up some story about expecting a box just that size, and was she sure it wasn’t for me from a Van Doorne, and she said I had the right return name, but it was for Beth Kennedy.”
Truth. If I told him the truth, surely he’d believe me and let us go. “Kirk, honestly, I don’t know what’s in it. I mean, I opened it, but what’s inside doesn’t make any sense.”
“Don’t lie to me!” he shouted. “It’s not in your house. I know it’s not because I looked, so it must be in your store. If you hadn’t installed that stupid alarm, I would’ve got hold of the box days ago. It’s your own fault you’re in this mess.” He loomed over me. “Where is it?” he demanded, pointing the gun at my chest. “In your office, isn’t it?”
Fear beat at me with a hot, searing breath. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, yet I was such a horrible liar that I couldn’t lie and be believed. On the other hand, there was a partial truth that could work. “Yes,” I whispered.
“What’s the security code?”
I swallowed and told him.
Claudia, who’d been uncharacteristically silent, let out a shriek that came near to piercing my eardrums. “You have to let us go!”
He crouched down and grinned at her. “Actually, I don’t.” Whistling, he stood and fiddled with the furnace.
“What are you doing?” Claudia asked, her voice pinched and high. “Beth, don’t elbow me. I want to know what he’s going to do.”
He chuckled. “Beth knows. Don’t you, Beth?”
I’d known ever since he dragged us to this side of the room. “It’s a gas furnace,” I said tonelessly. “He’s going to let the gas escape into the basement.”
Ten percent, I’d read. All it took was ten percent of the air in a building to be replaced with a combustible fuel and it would be at the explosion point. “When . . .” My mouth was too dry to talk. I worked up some moisture and tried again. “When the furnace turns on again, there will be a spark, and the spark will combust the gas.”
“Bingo!” Kirk laughed. “Turns out that it’s true what they say, that no knowledge is ever wasted. Here I thought all those summers my dad made me work for his heating-and-cooling company were pointless, but by golly, I was wrong.”
He made a few rattling noises, whistling all the while. “Well, I think that will do it.” Then, hands in his pockets, he stood there, looking down on us. “With you out of the way, it’ll be easy enough to get that box. Get rid of that and I’ll be home free.”
A smile lit his face. “Happy landings, ladies,” he said, winking. “Thanks for making this so easy for me.”
Then he left.
Chapter 20
We listened to his heavy footsteps climb the creaky stairs, cross the kitchen, and leave the house. A thousand thoughts rushed into my tiny brain, thoughts that ranged from concern about the tingling in my fingers to a far-from-idle curiosity about the psi in the gas service line.
Claudia shifted in a way that tightened the string around my wrists, immediately changing the tingling to numbness. “What does ‘combust’ mean?” she asked.
New thought: Claudia Wolff was not the person I would have chosen to be tied up with. “Explode,” I said.
She gasped. “You mean we might blow up?”
“There’s no ‘might’ about it,” I said, “not if we don’t figure a way out of this.”
“But I don’t want to die. And I shouldn’t be here anyway. This is all your fault, Beth Kennedy, I hope you know that.”
Of course it was. Nothing bad that happened to Claudia was ever her fault. I hitched myself around to try to add some play to the bonds that connected us and only succeeded in making them cut into me even more.
Claudia began to weep. Noisily. “I don’t want to die.”
I didn’t, either. Maybe someday I’d be ready for the inevitable, but not today, not with so many things left to do. Not with my children still young and needing me, not when a happy future with Pete was waiting.
My companion’s tears turned into shuddering sobs. “I’m not ready to die. My boys need me. I don’t want to die, not here, not in a basement, not with you.”
I stopped my efforts to untie the strap Kirk had wound around us. “What do you mean, ‘not with me’? There’re worse people in the world you could be tied up with, you know.”
“Because . . .” Claudia hiccupped out a sob. “Because you hate me! I don’t want to die next to someone who hates me.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. “I don’t hate you.”
“Well, you sure don’t seem to like me.”
I looked at the furnace. This would be an excellent time to find a sharp corner. Unfortunately, all I could see were the rounded corners of an energy-efficient furnace. Too bad we weren’t tied up to an old octopus-style plant—one of those surely would have had something sharp to cut the string around our wrists. “I’d say the feeling is mutual.”
“I knew it,” she sobbed. “I knew you didn’t like me.”
What I didn’t like was the idea of my children being left without a mother. Especially after I’d sworn off i
nvestigating to prevent that very thing. “Claudia—”
“Of course you don’t like me. You’re so smart and so together and you’re not afraid of anything. No matter what I do, I can’t be as good as you at . . . at anything.” She dissolved into fresh tears.
I stared across the room, seeing the distant tubs of cookie cutters, but seeing nothing.
All these years, I’d taken Claudia’s snide remarks and rude behavior as a commentary on my inability to work well with others, on my shyness, on my reluctance to engage in confrontation, on any number of my personal flaws and failings. All these years I’d been wrong. Beth, the myopic non–Wonder Woman.
“I always thought you were the one who hated me,” I said. “When I hired Yvonne, you picketed my store. For a couple of weeks, I thought I was going to go out of business.”
“That bookstore is my favorite place ever. All I ever wanted is to own that store, but you bought it out from underneath me.” She sniffed. “I hated to see you run it into the ground, making all those bad decisions. It made me so mad that I had to do something.”
My head might explode ahead of the basement. “You didn’t like the Story Project idea. You fought me tooth and nail every step of the way.”
“I know,” she wailed. “I wanted to see you fail at something. Anything! Everything you touch turns to gold. Everything you try just . . . just works out.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She shook her head. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Back-to-back as we were, it was hard to know for sure. “Look at you. Everybody likes you. You’re president of the PTA. All your project ideas make more money than Fort Knox. You could have had that hottie, Evan Garrett. Your kids are smart. The bookstore is doing great. You have a new boyfriend. You even solve murders!”
As she listed my few successes, I thought about all my failures. Then, instead of just thinking about them, I started reciting them. “I have a failed marriage. My relationship with my mother is strained at best. Dust bunnies live under my bed. I can’t bake bread to save my life, and I haven’t the foggiest idea how to change the ring tone on my cell phone.”