The overcast summer day had turned into a chilly night. We could see our breath in front of us, but we couldn’t see what was happening in the parking lot.
I looked at Brenda. This is where things could get dicey. “Are you in?”
She only hesitated for an instant, then nodded. “Okay.”
We crept closer to the lot, staying behind the houses, dashing from one backyard to another and pausing in unkempt hydrangea bushes at each stage to see if we could tell what was happening.
About five houses along, we finally had a good view. We could see Harry’s Lexus parked alone near the tree-lined edge of the lot. There were no lights and no other cars. We settled in to wait.
After a few minutes Brenda tugged at my sleeve. “I’m cold.”
I nodded. “Me too. We should have brought something from the car.” But neither of us wanted to go back. “I forgot the opera glasses too.”
A few minutes later there was another tug. “Charley?”
“What?”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
Damn. I’d been trying to put my own need out of my mind. “Me too.”
“What should we do?” Her voice was urgent.
“Hold it.” But for how long?
A few minutes later: “Charley?”
“What?”
“I can’t hold it.” She looked like she was in pain.
“Then go in the bushes.”
“Here?” she squeaked.
“Not right here,” I said impatiently. “Go over there.” I gestured to what looked like a clump of oleander a few yards away.
“You think?” She seemed doubtful.
“Oh, for the love of God. Stay here.” I dashed to the bushes. I could no longer see the parking lot or Brenda, so I quickly pulled down my pants and did what I had to do, trying to keep it as quiet as possible. I vowed never to drink coffee again.
I was distinctly uncomfortable on the dash back. “See?” I glared at Brenda. “No big deal. Go.”
She looked reluctantly from the bushes to me. “What did you use to—”
“Brenda! I swear to God I’ll—”
“Okay!” She crept off.
She’d just left when I heard a car approaching. It came slowly up the road with no headlights, and I prayed whoever was in it didn’t notice the VW off in the bushes. I could see it more clearly when it got closer, a dark van with no side windows. Was Cece inside? Was she all right? In all my worrying about Jack I’d forgotten that the point of the whole thing was to get my cousin back safely, damn her.
The van slipped into the space between the SUV and the trees that lined the parking lot. In the darkness I couldn’t make out anything except one shadowy figure getting out of the van and one shadowy figure getting out of the Lexus. I strained to make out what they were saying when I heard a sudden liquid sound coming from behind me. I froze as the figure from the van looked towards me. Brenda seemed to go on forever. I had counted to fifteen by the time she stopped. The figure from the SUV—Jack? Was it Jack?—seemed impatient with the other figure’s distraction. He reached into the car and pulled out a bag.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Brenda whispered, and it was everything I could do not to scream. “It took me a while to get started—”
I put my hand over her mouth and nodded my head in the direction of the street. Her eyes widened when she saw the van.
The bag had been exchanged, but now the two figures were arguing. The one from the van made a move to get back in, but the other one pulled him back. “No way!” I heard him say. Was it Jack’s voice?
The kidnapper pushed him away and laughed. I heard the word “choice” and assumed he’d said something like “you have no choice.” In any case, he threw the bag into the van and then turned back. He seemed to be telling the other man to leave. There was a brief argument, but eventually Jack, if it was Jack, got back in the SUV. Before he shut the door, I heard him say quite clearly “If you’re fucking with me—” before the wind took away the rest of the threat. But it had been enough. It wasn’t Jack’s voice. Whoever it was gunned the engine and pulled out of the lot.
The kidnapper watched the SUV until it was out of sight, back down the hill where we’d come from. Then he looked up at the sky, and in both directions of the street, and across the street. Again I had the feeling he was looking straight at us. Brenda gasped softly but didn’t move.
He got back into the van, and I was just starting to breathe again when I saw a shadow high in the trees separate itself from the rest of the branches. A dark figure dropped silently onto the top of the dark van just as the engine started.
“What the—” Brenda began, but I was pulling her up.
“Come on! We have to follow it!” I ran for the car, Brenda following. The van had pulled out by the time we got to the VW, but we’d both seen where it had gone. The onramp to the bridge. The van was heading for Marin County and I was sure Jack was clinging to the top of it.
“What’s happening? Do you see them?” Brenda had floored it getting onto the bridge, but didn’t want to draw attention to herself by speeding once we got into traffic. I looked at my watch. One o’clock in the morning and there was traffic on the bridge. And they say New York is the city that never sleeps.
I was scanning the taillights in front of us, looking for higher, wider-set lights that could indicate the large van. “There!” I pointed ahead. “In the fast lane just going into the tunnel!” Brenda sped up and we got close enough in the lighted tunnel to see that it was the dark van. But I didn’t see anyone on top. Was it just the angle or had he fallen off? Had we passed him, crushed and bruised on the side of the road, and not even known it? What if…
“Charley!” Brenda yelled, “he’s taking the Stinson Beach exit! We’ll never be able to follow him on that little windy road without being seen!” She was right, we’d never be able to make it over Mount Tamalpais without the kidnappers realizing they were being followed.
“Keep going! They may turn off before then.”
They did, taking the road to Mill Valley. Brenda fell back as far as she dared. There didn’t seem to be anyone else headed for the woodsy little town at this hour. I knew we were passing isolated houses, and I wondered if Cece was being held in one like them, too far away from neighbors to yell for help.
“Charley?” Brenda asked. “Do you think they still have Cece? Why wouldn’t they have brought her?”
“I don’t know.” But I could think of a million reasons. All of them bad.
The van slowed and Brenda quickly pulled her car off to the side of the road. We saw the van turn into a long driveway and cut the headlights. We were too far away to tell what happened then, or to hear doors.
Brenda looked at me. “Well?”
Well. Cece was probably in a house up there. And—if he wasn’t dead in a ditch—Jack was probably there too, looking for a way to get her out. “Let’s get closer.”
For the second time that night we left the car quietly. For the second time we forgot jackets and opera glasses. We crossed the street and I blessed the tall trees that obscured the moonlight, brighter on this side of the bay where there was less fog.
We made our way to the van. It was at the corner of an L-shaped driveway, pointed toward the road as if for a quick getaway. It was about twenty yards from a large house, where either the lights were out or there were very effective blackout curtains. I couldn’t see or hear any activity. We waited in the shelter of the van for a while, eyes and ears straining.
Finally I couldn’t take it any longer. “Stay here,” I hissed to Brenda. “I’m going to see if I can peek in a window.”
“Charley—” but I put my finger to my lips and moved away from her.
I stayed under the trees for as long as I could. I was eyeing the open space between the last trees and the house when I heard a crunch behind me. Like a footstep. I turned, but not in time. I heard a wooshing sound, then there was a moment of splitting pain, then nothing.
Chapter 10
I woke up in a rush of adrenaline, trying to escape the attack I hadn’t seen coming. Unfortunately my hands and feet were tied and my sudden frenzy of motion only succeeded in launching me out of a chair and onto the ugliest carpet I’d seen since 1979.
I looked around, my brain catching up with my body, and tried to make some sense out of the situation.
“Hey Charley, glad you could join us.” It was Cece’s listless drawl, and coming from behind me. I flopped around on the floor, trying to turn around. “I see you’re still as graceful as ever.”
I rolled onto my back, and from that position managed to sit up. Cece and Brenda were bound, as I was, with crossed ankles and hands behind their backs. They, however, had managed to stay seated on a pair of violently flowered vinyl dinette chairs. “Cece,” I said, “are you all right?” She looked thinner than usual, if that was possible, and her blond hair was held back in a stringy ponytail. There were dark craters under her eyes, but no visible bruises.
She shrugged, as much as she could in her current position. “I’ve been better.”
“Are you okay, Charley?” Brenda spoke.
“Brenda.” An enormous wave of guilt sloshed over me as I looked at her. “I’m so sorry. Did they hurt you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Charley,” she answered, her eyes filling with tears. “I was just so worried about you. I didn’t know how hard they hit you, and it took you so long to wake up—”
“Oh, for christsakes,” Cece interrupted. “She’s fine. You’re fine. I’m fine. We’re all fucking fine except for being trussed up like goddamn turkeys waiting for who knows who to do who knows what to us.” She blew out her breath explosively, then inhaled slowly, as if she were counting. “Not that it isn’t nice to have a little company.”
Brenda and I exchanged worried glances. “Cece, tell us everything you’ve learned about the people who took you,” I said, doing my best to sound firm and in control. Doing my best to sound like Jack. “Jack!” I yelped. “Brenda, what did you see? Did you see where he went? What—”
“I didn’t see anything.” She shook her head. “I saw you go down before I even saw the guy who hit you, and the next thing I knew there was a bag over my head and somebody holding my arms and pushing me ahead of him until we got here.” Her eyes brimmed with tears again.
“Imagine my surprise,” Cece said dryly. “Hardly anybody just drops in anymore.”
Clearly her experiences hadn’t made my cousin any less bitchy. “Cut the crap, Cece,” I ordered. “Did you see anyone else? Did they bring Jack here?”
“Who’s Jack?”
I couldn’t answer. A knot had lodged itself in my throat. If they hadn’t brought him here with the rest of us it could mean they hadn’t caught him. Or it could mean something I refused to think about.
“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know,” Brenda announced, pulling herself together and putting on a shaky smile. “Charley’s married!”
For just a flash Cece looked genuinely stunned. “Married?” She looked at me blankly, then her lips twitched. “Does Harry know?”
I glared at her.
“Really?” She turned to Brenda for confirmation.
“Really.” Brenda nodded. “And he’s great, he’s just won —”
“All right,” I cut her off. “The point is he’s not here.” There was silence while we all let the various possible reasons for that sink in.
“Oh, Charley.” Realization dawned on Brenda’s face. “He’s just going to kill you when he finds out we followed him.”
For some reason this cheered me. A Jack who was going to kill me for following him was not a dead Jack.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Cece said. “I’m sure these freaks will kill you first.” She gestured toward the door with her head.
Right. Right. I had to put Jack out of my mind and deal with the situation. Right. I addressed Cece. “Who are these freaks, and what the hell—” I looked around the room— “is this place?”
The long rectangular room looked like it had been decorated by the Brady Bunch on ’shrooms. Two walls had fake wood paneling and two had a wallpaper of ugly, uglier, and ugliest stripes of green. The carpet was a deep shag, in a color I had once heard a set designer describe as “burnt orange.” At the far end were two mustardy vinyl beanbag chairs in front of an oak-and-smoked-glass entertainment unit that housed a television set and VCR. A pile of videos was in the corner near it. At the other end of the room, which had two closed doors facing each other in the corner, was a brass-and-smoked-glass dinette set and a fourth of the vinyl floral chairs. A stack of puzzles leaned drunkenly against the wall, and a pile of paperbacks had been dumped on the floor.
The room appeared to be a basement. The only windows were near the ceiling and, unfortunately, painted black. The only light was supplied by a fixture near the table. It consisted of a collection of irregularly shaped green and gold orbs suspended by a thick antiqued-brass chain.
We had been placed in the center of the room, and behind me was a long reddish-brown leatherette couch with pillows and a blanket heaped at one end. Suddenly every muscle I owned was sore, so I butt-crawled over to the couch and scooted myself up until I was sitting on it, facing the two women. It felt a little better.
Cece watched me with undisguised amusement, waiting until I was seated before answering. “This place,” she announced, “is Kay Harrison’s rumpus room.”
The kid had a flair for the dramatic, I had to give her that. “Are you saying,” I asked, “that you know where we are?”
She shook her head. “I just know what this is a re-creation of.”
“Excuse me,” Brenda asked, “but who is Kay Harrison?”
Cece ignored Brenda and eyed me coldly. “You didn’t know her, did you, Charley? I was ten when I met her, and you were gone that year. Which boarding school was it?”
I sighed. I hated it when Cece played the let’s-walk-down-memory-lane game. But I knew her well enough to know that I’d have to humor her if I was going to get her to tell me anything. “If you were ten I’d have been fifteen. That was the year in Vermont. As I recall I had to freeze my ass off in the middle of the woods so I wouldn’t be a ‘corrupting influence’ on you.”
Cece nodded. “You know, I always felt bad about planting my stash in your jewelry box.” She paused, considering or remembering, I couldn’t tell which. “But not too bad.”
Enough of this. “Cece? A little focus please? Can we talk about our current situation?”
Brenda hadn’t lost sight of the pertinent question. “Who’s Kay Harrison?” she repeated.
Cece acknowledged her this time. Her voice took on the tone of someone beginning a well-worn fairytale. “When I was ten years old Kay Harrison was my best friend. And what’s more,” she continued, “she was the only friend of whom my father, Harry—” she rolled her eyes— “approved.”
She seemed to have finished, lost in a pleasant memory. It crossed my mind that perhaps she wasn’t just being her usual pain-in-the-ass self. Maybe the strain of her captivity had taken a toll on her mind. Brenda gave me a worried look. I shrugged with my eyebrows. She turned back to Cece. “And…” she said encouragingly.
Cece’s head slowly pivoted to her. “And he shouldn’t have.” A fond smile played across her face. “My God, the things we got up to in her rumpus room.” She sighed deeply. “First time I did coke, first time I did speed, first time I did pills of any sort, really.” She looked around the room absently as she continued. “First time for hash, not the first time for booze, of course, but the quantity….” She trailed off.
“You were ten?” Brenda squeaked.
“Hmm?” Cece seemed to come around in some way. “Yeah. Anyway, the point is, this room is pretty much an exact recreation of the scene of the crime, or crimes, or whatever.”
“Oh, Cece, you poor—” Brenda began.
“Fuck that,” Cece said sharply. “And fuck you.”
<
br /> I could tell Brenda’s feelings were hurt but we didn’t have time for that now. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s just look at the facts here. Someone…who? Who would have…? Who could have…? And why?” My head was throbbing.
Cece cleared her throat. “Well, I’ve had some time lately to think about that.” She looked at me and smiled weakly, her defenses for one moment down. “The why gets complicated, even though it’s basically simple, and the who.…” She hesitated just for an instant. “Is Tom Nelson.”
“Who’s Tom Nelson?” Brenda and I said together.
Cece’s face became bitter. “My boyfriend.” The words left a sting in the air. When neither of us spoke she continued. “I met him in rehab.” She grimaced. “The last one. The program was mostly group therapy. He was in my group.”
“Oh,” I said as realization dawned, “and you talked about Kay Harrison.”
“Bingo.”
“And you continued to see him after you got out?” Brenda asked.
“Yep. Of course it was against the rules but what the hell, you know? He was great.”
I struggled not to make the obvious comment regarding evidence pointing to the contrary.
Cece continued. “He wanted to know everything about me. It was part of the therapy to talk about specific details. He wanted me to describe my bedroom as a little girl, and my college dorm room.…”
“And this room,” I finished.
She let her head fall back and closed her eyes. “Ain’t love a kick in the head?”
After a moment Brenda spoke up. “Um, Cece?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the why? You said it was simple and kind of complicated?”
“Why don’t you ask my cousin? She’s the one with the brains in the family.”
Brenda looked at me. “What’s the simple part?”
“Money.”
“Oh. Of course.” She waited a moment, then prompted, “And the complicated part?”
I didn’t answer. I was watching Cece as she slowly raised her head and opened her eyes. “He.…” Her voice came out in a croak and she swallowed forcefully, then began again. “He wants to fuck with my head.”
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