The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

"You know what happens if all this gets out?" I said.

  "Holy crap, it's the end of the world," Pedro said, missing yet another chance to demonstrate that he could differentiate between scatology and eschatology.

  "Yeah," I agreed. "Riots in the streets. Total anarchy."

  "2012," said Pedro. "We knew it was coming."

  * * *

  Friday morning at seven o'clock the phone rang. I was awake, trying to psyche myself into enjoying my run, and it was Meg who answered it. She talked for a moment — I couldn't hear what she was saying — then came dashing onto the back deck and handed me the receiver.

  "It's Noylene."

  I took the phone and put it to my ear.

  "Morning, Noylene," I said.

  "Rahab's been kidnapped!" Noylene shouted into the phone.

  "Hang on. Calm down a minute and tell me what's happened."

  Noylene was frantic. "I got up this morning and got ready for work. I didn't bother the baby 'cause I thought he was still asleep and Rosa has the Slab covered until seven thirty. Then I went in to check on him before I left and he was gone! His bed was empty!" She was almost screaming now.

  "Calm down. Calm down," I said into the phone, hoping she could give me the story. "You said 'kidnapped.' Maybe he just wandered off. I've heard of toddlers doing that."

  "He did NOT wander off!" She broke down into sobs.

  "Where's Hog? Maybe Hog has him."

  "He doesn't. He's right here."

  The next sound I heard was the voice of the Rev. Dr. Hogmanay McTavish. He sounded scared. Very scared. "Hayden," he said, his voice breaking, "there's a note. A ransom note!"

  "Put the note back where you found it," I said. "Don't touch anything else. I'll be right there."

  * * *

  Meg called Nancy while I quickly changed clothes, jumped into the Chevy, and headed down the mountain at a dangerous clip. Noylene and Hog lived up on Quail Ridge, five miles on the other side of town from our place. There was no easy shortcut. I had to do the ten miles into town, then the five miles up the ridge on the other side. It'd be a half hour before I got there. Nancy was closer and could get there quicker. I tried to call her as I came flying down the two-lane road, but, like I figured, there was no service. Sometimes I can pick up a signal if I'm lucky. Not today. Nothing about this felt like a lucky day. Meg had yelled to me that Nancy would meet me there as I was climbing into the truck. I'd waved and floored it all the way up the long drive, not taking my foot off the gas until I'd nosed onto the highway.

  Noylene's place on Quail Ridge, as I remembered, was about a hundred and thirty acres. It wasn't uncommon for fourth or fifth generation mountain folk to have huge tracts of land. Land had been cheap, very cheap, and, if the land had stayed in the family, many of these families were land rich and cash poor. That is to say that they lived a hand-to-mouth existence, sometimes living on welfare checks and food stamps while they sat on several hundred or sometimes thousands of acres that, under different circumstances, might afford them comfortable sustenance. But, for these people at least, the land was the thing. Quail Ridge had been in Noylene's family for a long, long time, but unlike many of these mountain families, Noylene had money. How much, I didn't know. What I did know was that she didn't spend any of it on a fancy house.

  I sped through town, considered stopping at the station, but thought better of it, then continued through St. Germaine and took Highway 184 up toward Quail Ridge. When I saw her drive, I braked hard, turned and spun my tires on the gravel, then tore up the mile-long trek to her home. She, Hog, and little Rahab lived in a doublewide trailer set on concrete blocks about halfway up the ridge. I skidded to a stop behind Nancy's Harley and got out of the truck. Noylene's little, red 4x4 Toyota pickup was in the drive next to Hog's big, white Cadillac. Both of the vehicles were older, Hog's being a vintage '94 model, bought back when the Caddy was the choice of evangelists everywhere. Now, I supposed, preachers gravitated toward a Lexus SUV or a Land Rover, but in Hog's heyday the white boat was the thing.

  The doublewide mobile home was anything but mobile. It sat securely on blocks and had eighteen-inch skirting around the bottom. It had recently been painted a powder-blue color. The trim was white and provided some contrast. White plastic shutters had been applied to the vinyl siding on each of the windows that faced the front. The trailer was sixty feet long and thirty feet wide. Eighteen hundred square feet of living space and that didn't include the screened-in porch that Noylene had added to the back. I walked up the front steps and knocked on the door. It opened almost immediately.

  I looked into the face of Brother Hog and was struck immediately by how old he appeared. His color was bad. His usually carefully-coiled coif was stuck in a haphazard way onto his head. He had a day's-worth of white stubble and his eyes were bloodshot and unblinking.

  He opened the door and stood to one side. "Come on in, Hayden."

  Nancy was with Noylene in the living room. I looked around. The layout of the trailer was what designers call "open concept." The kitchen was open to the living room with an island separating the two spaces. A dining table with four chairs sat beneath a glittering crystal chandelier. There were no dishes on the table, but the kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes. I noticed a dishwasher, but it was closed. The living room was carpeted. Nancy and Noylene sat on a green and brown plaid sofa. Perpendicular to the sofa was a matching love seat, and a leather recliner occupied the other corner, all facing a large, flat-screen TV. A wide hallway headed toward the far end. Another, narrower hallway led off the kitchen to the near end of the house.

  "Tell me again what happened," I said, sitting down on the love seat and facing Noylene. Hog walked over and sat down on the edge of the recliner and leaned forward, his feet planted on the floor.

  "Like I told you," said Noylene. "I got up at six and got ready for work. I thought that Rahab was asleep and I didn't want to wake him and I didn't have to be at the Slab 'til seven thirty. Around seven, when I went to check on him and kiss him goodbye, he was gone. The bed was empty."

  "This was on the pillow," said Brother Hog. He held out a piece of paper.

  "I told you to put it back where you found it," I said, looking at Noylene. She shrugged.

  "We'd already handled it and read it," said Hog. "Didn't seem smart to put it back."

  I pulled a pair of latex gloves out of my pocket, took a minute to snap one on, and took the note from his hand.

  We have your boy. We want $75,000 in non-sequential hundred dollar bills. We'll contact you this afternoon. If you involve the police or fail to follow our instructions, we will dispatch the boy. We care nothing for him and are already killers. We have nothing to lose.

  It was obviously written on a computer and printed out on any one of a million generic laser printers that almost everyone had in their homes. The font was a san-serif, nondescript choice that could be found on everyone's computer. Arial or something like that. I turned the paper over. Nothing on the back. Twenty pound copier paper found in every printer in America.

  "Why seventy-five thousand?" I asked.

  Hog shook his head and said, "No idea."

  "Would these people know how much money you have?" asked Nancy.

  "I don't know how," answered Noylene. "They obviously know we have some."

  "You have this much?" I said. "I mean, that you can get your hands on today?"

  Noylene glanced over at Hog, then said, "Yeah. We can get it."

  "It's buried in the backyard somewhere, isn't it?" I said.

  "We ain't saying," said Hog.

  "Somebody knows about it," said Nancy. "They know you. Think! Who did you tell?"

  "We didn't tell anybody anything," Noylene growled. "Did we, Hog?"

  "Not a word," said Hog. "You know we didn't."

  "Yeah, I know," I said. Nancy nodded her agreement. They wouldn't have told a soul. It wasn't the mountain way. I was pretty sure that Noylene didn't even tell Hog everything. And Hog probably had a few financi
al secrets of his own.

  "Let's look in the bedroom," I said.

  "I looked when I got here," said Nancy and we walked down the narrow hall. "Nothing but a broken window."

  Rahab's bedroom was behind the kitchen. It and a bathroom were the only rooms on this side of the trailer. It was a nice large room, with windows on two sides, one facing the driveway, one facing the backyard. It was carpeted in the same beige stuff that was in the living room, and the walls were painted a bright yellow. It was a toddler's room — lots of toys scattered around, a small bookshelf, and a set of wooden bunk beds. Rahab's bedding was unmade on the bottom bunk. A book was next to the pillow. The blue letters on the cover said Baby's First Old Testament. The top bunk was made and had a few stuffed animals on it.

  "Our bedroom's on the other end," said Hog. "Across from the guest room. D'Artagnan stays in the guest room when he's around." D'Artagnan was Noylene's son by a previous marriage. Currently in his thirties, D'Artagnan was a sometime bounty hunter and full-time ne'er-do-well.

  "You don't think that D'Artagnan had anything ..." I started, but Noylene cut me off.

  "No, he did not!"

  "Is he around where we could talk to him?"

  "I'm telling you he had nothing to do with it," said Noylene. "He knows that if he did something like this, it'd be the last thing he ever did." This was not an idle threat from Noylene, and I'd bet that D'Artagnan knew it. "Besides," she continued, "D'Artagnan's been in Tucson since last week."

  "You sure he's there?"

  "That's what the Pima County assistant district attorney said. Asked me if I wanted to post his bond. I said no, thanks, let him stay in there for a while."

  I grunted. Noylene said, "The note was there on the pillow," then pointed to the window on the back wall. "That window's been busted. Last night, I guess. The glass is okay, but the hatch has been sprung. Somebody busted it, slid it open, and took Rahab. There's a bottle missing, too." She started crying.

  "Let's see if we can get some prints from the window," I said to Nancy. "And call the FBI. They've got more experience and resources than we do."

  "Don't you dare!" barked Noylene, her tears drying up as quickly as they started. "No FBI! I only called you by mistake. I panicked."

  "They said they'd kill the boy," said Brother Hog. "You read the note."

  "They always say that," said Nancy. "Our best bet is to find them and find them fast, and the FBI can help us with that."

  "No!" said Hog. "No FBI!"

  Noylene looked at me, a pleading look coupled with great sadness. She started chewing on her bottom lip, then said, "I don't want anyone to know about this. You tell Meg that she is not to tell anyone. We'll wait and hear what the kidnappers have to say."

  "Can we tap your phone at least?" Nancy said. "We might get a trace we can use. Maybe a location if we're lucky. It'll take me a couple of hours to get it set up, but I can do it from the office."

  Hog nodded, but didn't say anything.

  "You'll let us know as soon as they call?" I asked. "We're involved now, whether you like it or not, but we don't have to call the FBI unless Rahab's taken across state lines."

  "Yeah," said Noylene with resolve. "We'll let you know."

  "It would be good to copy the serial numbers of all the bills. It won't take two of you a few hours. Seven hundred fifty hundred dollar bills. You want some help, I can get someone over here. Dave, maybe."

  "No, thanks," said Noylene. "We can do that ourselves."

  "Call when you hear from them," I admonished again. "We can help you."

  "We'll call," said Noylene. "I'll tell you this. The first thing we're going to do is get Rahab back. The second thing is to find whoever did this. When we do, they won't be doing it again."

  * * *

  Nancy went back to the office to set up the phone tap. I stayed and dusted for prints. There were none. None, as in not any. The window had been completely wiped down. I got in my truck and headed home for a shower thinking that this was not going to end well.

  Chapter 14

  It took Nancy about forty minutes to set up the tap with the telephone company and she was finished by the time I showed up at the station. Now she could log in to her computer or iPhone and trace the call in real time. We could also listen in and record the call. If the phone used to call Noylene was on a land line, and if an address was attached to it, the trace was easy and she'd have the address in short order. If the phone was a mobile and had a GPS chip, she could get an exact fix on the location, then follow it if it moved.

  "Do you want Dave to go babysit the Faberge-Dupont-McTavishes?" she asked. "I called him and he's coming in, but he could just as easily go on up to Quail Ridge."

  "I don't think it'd do any good, and probably just make them nervous," I answered. "I'll drive up and check on them around noon and see how they're doing with those serial numbers."

  "You think this is connected to Johnny Talltrees? It'd be a heck of a coincidence if it wasn't."

  "Yeah," I answered. "We operate under the assumption that there are no coincidences. But right now we have to concentrate our efforts on getting the boy back safely."

  "I agree," said Nancy.

  Meg opened the door to the station and walked in. She looked worried.

  "What's the news?" she asked.

  "No news," I said. "All we have is the ransom note. No prints, no identifying marks, no bad grammar, nothing. The kidnappers say they're going to call this afternoon with instructions."

  "Oh, I hope he's okay," Meg said.

  "I'll bet he's fine," said Nancy, taking the note from my hand and reading it again.

  We have your boy. We want $75,000 in non-sequential hundred dollar bills. We'll contact you this afternoon. If you involve the police or fail to follow our instructions, we will dispatch the boy. We care nothing for him and are already killers. We have nothing to lose.

  Nancy said, "This is a close job. Somebody who knows the family."

  "I agree," I said. "Noylene and Hog don't live like they have money, but they do. Someone had to know that."

  Nancy said, "The window hasp was busted, but the glass wasn't broken. It was the only window in the back. Rahab's room. That trailer has four bedrooms so the kidnappers had to know where the kid slept."

  "So at least one of them has been in their house," said Meg.

  "I think it's just one person," I said. "The note says 'we,' but why would 'we' ask for only seventy-five thousand dollars? If they thought that Noylene and Hog had seventy-five thousand, why wouldn't they think they had a hundred? Or two hundred? 'We' is always more greedy than 'I.' He wants a specific amount, and it's not that much in the grand scheme of things. Rather, it's an amount that the kidnapper knows they can get their hands on, and fast."

  "Agreed," said Nancy. "Also, he says 'we' five times in this note. Overkill."

  "Non-sequential bills," said Meg, looking over Nancy's shoulder. "I would have said 'unmarked.' That's what they always say on the cop shows — unmarked bills."

  "Good point," I said. "I'd say that whoever it is is educated. Also, notice that the kidnapper says 'dispatch.' He can't bring himself to contemplate the word 'kill.' Can't even write it. Not since they're talking about a child." I thought for a moment. "You know what? ..."

  "It's a woman!" interrupted Meg. "I know it."

  "I think you're right," I said.

  "Yep," agreed Nancy. "If it is, I don't think a woman will hurt that baby, especially if she knows him."

  "Someone at the Beautifery?" Meg said.

  "Yeah," I said, and mentally ran through Noylene's Purveyors of Beauty. Goldi Fawn Birtwhistle, Darla Kildair, and Debbie Understreet. I didn't know much about any of them. Goldi Fawn was a member of the choir, but other than the fact that she was a Christian astrologer, I had no knowledge of her personal situation. I knew Darla and Debbie even less.

  "Want me to check on Noylene's employees?" asked Nancy.

  "Yes, I do," I said, and named them. "We
should probably look at Pete's employees, too. Noylene works at the Slab almost every day." I thought for a moment. "Let's review Hog's acquaintances, too. Could be that the link is Brother Hog instead of Noylene."

  * * *

  The next couple of hours passed slowly. At noon, I decided to drive back up to Quail Ridge and see if Hog and Noylene had recorded the serial numbers of the bills — this presuming that the two of them had seventy-five thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills stashed somewhere in or near the trailer. I was pretty sure they did. I'd talked to Meg a couple of times after Noylene 's call early in the morning, filling her in on our progress, or rather, lack of it. Now, driving back up the mountain, I called her again.

  "Anything?" she asked, worry clouding her voice.

  "Nothing yet," I said. "I wish we could call in some pros. I don't like this one bit."

  "Let's just hope we're right and that whoever took him won't hurt him."

  "Yeah," I said, then lost service as the road wound through a holler surrounded on both sides by sheer rock faces. I called back a couple of minutes later, but the call went straight to voicemail.

  The trailer was just as I'd left it. The Caddy and the Toyota pickup hadn't moved since we'd left. I glanced at the tire tracks as I walked by to see if the vehicles had gone and come back. Nope. I walked up onto the porch and knocked on the door. Hog opened it almost immediately and beckoned me in.

  "How's the recording going?" I asked as I wiped my feet on the mat inside the door.

  "Takes longer than I thought it would," said Hog. "We're more than half finished, though. Noylene keeps getting up to have a smoke."

  "Nervous energy," I said.

  "Yeah," said Hog. "C'mon in."

  He ushered me into the dining room, where stacks of hundred dollar bills were placed around the table. Noylene was sitting at a chair, a lit cigarette hanging from her lips, diligently copying the number of each bill onto a yellow legal pad with an old half-finished yellow pencil that had been sharpened with a penknife. The knife was on the table beside her, open, and a small trash can was at her knee. She saw me looking at it.