Catch as Cat Can

by Claire Donally

  “I’m at Helena Martinson’s,” she told Will when he picked up. “Neil Garret was just here.”

  “What? Why?” he instantly demanded. “I figured he’d be out of town by now.”

  “He stopped off to pick up a pistol from Vince Martinson’s old gun collection,” Sunny told him. “The reason Neil gave Val the slip is because Yancey Kilbane kidnapped Abby Martinson. If Neil wants to save her, he’s got to turn up at Charlie Vane’s ship in less than an hour now.”

  “Neil got a gun.” Will sounded as if he wanted to make sure he was hearing correctly. “I don’t suppose Mrs. Martinson gave him one willingly.”

  “No, he got hold of the gun first, rounded us up, and locked us in the cellar.”

  “Is that where you are now? Should I send help?”

  “No, we got out,” Sunny said. “I’ll save the story of how. You won’t believe it anyway. But maybe you should send some cops to Vane’s boat—try to cut Neil off before he does something stupid.”

  “If he felt that he needed a gun, he doesn’t trust Kilbane very much.” Will sounded worried. “I’ll call it in, but the nearest patrol cars are probably up in outlet-land. Do you have a car model or description I can pass along so we can maybe intercept Neil?”

  “Sorry,” Sunny apologized. “We didn’t see him come up, and we were down in the basement when he left.”

  “Too much to hope for,” Will muttered. “I’m on my way back from Levett, so I’ll head for the dock directly.”

  Alone, Sunny thought. But all she could say was, “Be careful.”

  “Definitely,” Will replied.

  They hung up, and Sunny turned to Mike. “Will’s calling it in—I figured he’d get farther than we would dialing 911. But it’s going to take a while before the cops get there.” She took a deep breath. “I think we need to catch up with Neil—slow him down until some help arrives.”

  She glanced at Helena Martinson’s worried face. “We’ll need to beat the clock, but I’m betting on Will.”

  Sunny unwound Shadow from around her neck and passed the cat to Mrs. M. “Can you take care of Shadow? I don’t want to leave him alone after all of this.”

  Shadow did not look happy, clinging to Helena’s arms and glaring down at the barking Toby. “Thanks,” Sunny said. “We’ll be back with good news, I promise.”

  She headed for the door with Mike in tow. Her dad looked frankly dubious, but he kept quiet until they were out in the street. “Sunny, it’s not a good idea to make promises you might not be able to keep.”

  “I know, Dad. But I’m going to do my darnedest to make sure things turn out okay.”

  She started rushing back to their house, to find Mike speed-walking right beside her. “We’re going to do our darnedest,” he told her.

  They just about flew up the driveway to Sunny’s Wrangler. She got behind the wheel, buckling into her seat belt. Mike did the same. “I suspect it’s going to be one of those kinds of rides,” he said.

  Sunny started the engine, and they were off. She negotiated the local streets at as fast a speed as she could safely manage. Mike glanced at his watch. “He has quite a lead on us. How do you figure on trying to catch up with him?”

  They hit a county road, and Sunny pushed the speedometer a little more. She’d been sorting through options as they drove and had finally decided on one—not the best choice, she had to admit, but the only chance to cut down their travel time to town. “I was thinking of taking Ridge Road.”

  “Ridge Road!” Mike burst out. “Are you crazy? You want to take an unpaved goat track in the dark?”

  “It’s the one shortcut that might put us ahead of Neil,” Sunny said.

  “Yeah, if it doesn’t put us in traction.” He paused. “The last time you tried that shortcut, somebody got killed.”

  “They sure as heck didn’t mean me any good and got what they deserved.” She gripped the steering wheel tightly. The turnoff for the disused road would be coming up soon on their left. “Have you got a better idea?”

  Mike stayed silent for a long moment. “I don’t, damn it. Just don’t go racing downhill. The ruts and washouts are bad enough, but there may still be ice along the way.” He put his hands against the dashboard. “And brace yourself.”

  Sunny downshifted and angled off the pavement onto Ridge Road. One good thing, she told herself, no traffic to deal with. The car dropped heavily into a rut. One very bad thing—there’s no way to see other cars get in trouble —no advance warning.

  They thumped and bumped down the incline. Even though Sunny was sparing with the gas, they picked up speed. The jouncing view in the headlights looked like the surface of the Moon. Great pools of darkness hid potholes that seemed to go to China. Sunny tried to stay in the ruts, following the route where generations of teenagers had gone joyriding. So far, so good.

  Then they hit a washout, and the truck went airborne. Sunny gripped the wheel as they landed heavily, her body flung against the restraints of the seatbelt. But she managed to guide them back onto what was left of the road.

  The hillside steepened, and they picked up more speed. Sunny carefully applied the brakes. No racing, she told herself. You don’t want to bottom out.

  Even so, they suffered a couple of bone-jarring rattles and crashes. Beside her, Mike grit his teeth as he tried to keep his grip on the dashboard. Every once in a while, she saw his foot pump in the air—trying to use a nonexistent set of brakes.

  Maybe I should have put Dad behind the wheel, Sunny suddenly thought. He was the professional truck driver.

  Mike stifled a gasp—or was it a groan?—as they took a bump that pitched them far over to one side.

  On the other hand, Dad’s also the one with the heart condition.

  But it was a little late to be considering that. She had to devote all her attention to keep them from flipping onto their noses or their sides as the Wrangler battered along, bucking like a live thing. The frozen ground was unyielding, and they took quite a pounding. We’ve got to be three-quarters of the way down . . .

  Their nose flew up again, landed heavily, and rebounded. The bouncing cone of illumination from their headlights showed something Sunny hadn’t encountered before on this thrill ride.

  Somebody had abandoned a car in the middle of the ruts. The old beater must have bottomed out and died in a sort of hollow along the route and apparently had just been left to rust. Now Sunny had to gun the engine and get the Wrangler out of its ruts, or they’d end up rear-ending the dead car. She managed to get the Jeep up and out, only to discover that the depression had also collected a pool of ice.

  The Wrangler was going sideways almost as fast as it was going forward. Sunny yanked her right foot back, fighting the instinctive response of tromping on the brakes. That wouldn’t work if the tires couldn’t get traction. She gripped the steering wheel until her hands hurt, but she didn’t try to yank them into some sort of course correction. Most likely, that would send them spinning out. Her breath seemed to freeze in her throat. Was this what her mom had gone through in the last instants before that fatal crash? All she could do was hang on.

  Their skid seemed to last forever, but it had to be only seconds. At last they slowed as they came out of the sunken area, Sunny gently working the steering wheel to get the tires set in the direction she wanted to go. Pebbles rattled under them, and Sunny cautiously gave the engine a little gas. Two of the tires bit into dirt, slewing them around a little, but then they were out of the ice patch.

  Sunny picked her way around the derelict car, slid as gently as possible into the ruts again, and proceeded down the rest of the way. The incline slowly leveled out, with only a few more bumps to rattle everything loose in the car—not to mention their teeth.

  Mike let out a long-held breath as Sunny finally climbed onto the pavement of a county road. “Good driving,” he said, and then, “Well,
I can see where your raise for this year is going to go—to Sal DiGillio.”

  Mentioning their mechanic after she’d just given the shocks such a workout should have annoyed Sunny. But in the exhilaration of having survived the wild ride and the skating pond experience, she laughed. “Like you never took a hot rod down this way,” she told her dad.

  “Not in the middle of winter,” he replied. “Those ancient days might have been a time when men were men and seat belts hadn’t been invented, but we weren’t out-and-out stupid.”

  They continued onward towards Kittery Harbor’s old downtown area with Sunny crowding the speed limit and sometimes going well past it. If there were cops around, we’d have heard the sirens, she told herself as they barreled along. It was well after the town’s version of rush hour, and traffic was thin.

  The dock area, when they got there, was pretty much deserted. Fishermen were early risers—and just as early to bed. There weren’t many cars on the street or even parked. The only sign of life was the Dockside Diner with its broken neon lights.

  “Keep going,” Mike directed as they rolled past. “That’s the pier where Charlie used to tie up his boat.”

  “Not exactly in heavy use,” Sunny muttered.

  The dock wasn’t totally dilapidated, but it was certainly lonely. About halfway out, a fishing boat lay moored.

  “There’s the Ranger,” Mike said. “People think it’s named after the ship John Paul Jones took out of port here. But Charlie told me his buccaneer ancestor had commanded a ship by that name sixty years before the Revolution.”

  “Nobody around,” Sunny said, coasting to a stop. “No police, and no Neil. You figure he’d have left his car here, and there’s nothing.”

  “This Kilbane fellow picked a pretty good place for a meeting.” Mike peered along the length of the pier. “There’s no cover, and he’ll see anyone heading for the boat long before they get there.”

  “Yeah, we’re a little too obvious here ourselves,” Sunny said. “I’m going to pull back to the diner. We should be able to catch Neil as he passes through there—”

  She broke off as a figure stepped out of the shadows and into their headlights. He was a big guy, bearded, with a thatch of hair receding from his forehead. Only the snub nose and the wild eyebrows gave Sunny a clue to his identity. That, and the pistol he aimed at her.

  It was Yancey Kilbane.

  “Out of the car,” he said. “And don’t try anything stupid, or one of you gets hurt right now.” He moved to cover them both as Sunny and Mike exited the car. “Onto the dock. We’ll join your friend Abby on the boat.”

  Walking onto the pier at gunpoint, Sunny glanced longingly back toward the land. The sign from the diner flashed its mangled message: DOCKSIDE DI E, DOCKSIDE DI E.

  I really hope that’s not an omen, Sunny thought as she walked along.

  20

  “You must be the redhead who came with the cops to O’Dowd’s last night,” Yancey Kilbane said to Sunny from his vantage point walking behind them. “Made me move this up sooner than I wanted to.”

  She could see that Kilbane moved stiffly as he herded them onto the boat. But he had no trouble keeping the gun on them. “So who are you?” he asked Mike.

  “I’m her father,” Mike snapped.

  Gun or no gun, Dad’s not about to roll over, Sunny thought, caught between pride and worry for her father. I just hope he doesn’t get himself hurt.

  But Kilbane laughed at Mike’s feistiness. “Boy, you keep an eye on her, the cops keep an eye on her, it must be hell to date your daughter.” He poked them along up to the bow of the vessel, where Abby Martinson sat slumped behind the gunwales, silver duct tape wrapped around her wrists and ankles and forming a gag over her mouth.

  Her eyes went wide when she saw Mike and Sunny, but all she was able to manage was a muffled “Mmmmmph!”

  Yancey Kilbane tossed a roll of tape to Mike. “You see how it’s done,” he said, nodding toward the tied-up Abby. “Now do the same to your daughter.”

  I’m getting heartily sick of duct tape, Sunny thought as Mike began to wrap the stuff around her ankles. She nervously licked her lips. Especially the taste.

  “Look, Bear—Yancey. You have to realize you’re on borrowed time,” Sunny said as Mike finished with her wrists. Anything to keep from being gagged as well as helpless. “The police are on the way.”

  “Kind of figured that, especially since you know my name.” Yancey took the roll of tape and motioned for Mike to lie down. “And you must have talked to your buddy Neil to turn up here. Why you jumped the gun before the cops arrived, I don’t know. But as long as Neil gets here before they come, I can do what I got to do. When I first arrived down here, it was just business as usual, a two-fer to cut out the competition. But now it’s a question of earning.” He shook his head, a greedy glitter in his eyes. “You won’t believe how much some mob guy out in L.A. will pay for a picture of good old Neil—dead and done.”

  The sprouting, receding hair and the full beard certainly softened Kilbane’s image from the hard-faced biker in his mug shot. But obviously he’d abandoned whatever act he’d put on to win Jasmine’s heart as Bear. He efficiently trussed up Mike and then checked Sunny’s bindings to make sure they’d make her stay put. At least he didn’t gag them—yet. Apparently, he wanted some entertainment as he waited for Neil.

  “So why did old Neil come and tell you about our little meeting? That’s a definite no-no.”

  “He needed money,” Sunny lied easily. “He couldn’t get to his stash when the marshals dragged him off.”

  “Yeah, Neil is all about the money. At least he was back when he was Nick. If you know about the marshals, then I guess you know he was Nick, too. Abby here was actually pals with him when he was Nick, back in California.”

  Abby made another noise through her gag.

  “I thought I’d blown my chance when I realized the cops were onto me.” Kilbane shook his head. “I got away from that old bartender broad I was squatting with before the big raid. But when I went looking, Neil’s shop was locked up, and his house was empty. Then I sat in a diner, reading this throwaway newspaper, and I saw a picture that looked familiar. It matched an actress’ head shot in this briefcase full of stuff on Neil that I—picked up.”

  “From Phil Treibholz,” Sunny said. After you killed him, she silently added.

  Kilbane shrugged. “He didn’t need it anymore. And it turned out to be useful. It put me on to Abby here. A nice, quiet town like this, I was able to find a home address for the Martinsons in the phone directory. Then all I had to do was watch until she took Mom’s car out for a spin.”

  “After which you got in touch with Neil.”

  “I found a couple of phones when I went through the detective guy’s pockets, getting rid of his ID. One was obviously a burner, a phone Tribe-whatever had picked up after he arrived here. And there was just one local number on it. Pretty easy to figure out. So I reached out and touched old Neil, told him his little friend here would be in deep trouble if he didn’t get his butt over here.”

  Kilbane frowned. “Now I’ve got to wonder if you gave Neil enough money to skip town and leave me holding the bag here until the cops come.” The look on his face promised that no good would come of that.

  Mike tried to get a look at his watch—impossible, with all that tape around his wrists. But Sunny understood his anxiety. Neil should be turning up soon, she thought, if he’s going to show up at all. Let’s face it, he doesn’t have a history of being a stand-up guy. Like Charlie Vane, he put on a big song and dance about being the victim of circumstances. Maybe he’d persuaded himself that this was just one more circumstance he couldn’t change and moved on.

  She swallowed, hard. The police didn’t seem to be in any rush to put in an appearance, either.

  Boy, wouldn’t it be ironic if we got ourselves killed
trying to save Neil from doing one good deed in his life—because he decided not to do it after all?

  A car came past the diner and rolled to a stop at the foot of the pier. The driver-side door opened, and Neil Garret stepped out. He squared himself up, but it was hard to look heroic in a cardigan sweater.

  He must be freezing, Sunny thought. But then, she realized, he wouldn’t have been able to bring a coat along if he escaped by bailing out a bathroom window.

  “Good old Neil.” Kilbane chuckled. “Somehow I knew I could depend on him.”

  Sunny strained her ears. No sirens. No police. Kilbane was going to kill Neil, and then he would turn on the rest of them. Inconvenient witnesses. Collateral damage.

  She twisted her wrists, testing the duct tape bonds. There was a little give—Mike had managed that much. But she didn’t think she’d be able to get free before this dirty business was all over.

  Kilbane rose from behind the gunwale when Neil was about halfway down the pier. “Hey there, Neil, step right up,” he said.

  Neil stopped. “Not until I see Abby.”

  “Sure, buddy.” The biker leaned down and hauled Abby into view. “Here she is, alive and—well, not exactly kicking. But breathing.”

  Neil took a few hurried steps forward, then stopped. “You’ve got to let her go. That was the deal.”

  Kilbane brought up his gun. “It’s a little late to start negotiating, friend. She’ll go after we finish our business.”

  Neil shook his head. “No. Before.” He managed a smile, even if it was more of a death’s-head grin. “Afterward, I don’t think I’ll be able to protect my interests.”

  “Hey, look. I’ve got lots of hostages.” Kilbane hoisted Sunny and Mike to their feet.

  While he was doing that, Neil suddenly ran forward.

  “Everybody down!” Sunny yelled. She dropped to her knees as Mike and Abby went flat.

  Neil brought up the gleaming gun he’d kept hidden behind his leg. Kilbane aimed his pistol. Their shots went off almost at the same time, a brutal blow to Sunny’s ears. The biker jerked a little, letting out a startled exclamation. But Neil was flung on his back, his borrowed gun clattering on the wooden planking.