The Maypop Kidnapping

by C. M. Surrisi

  My heart soars—she’s safe. Wait! She’s in there with the rockers—I have to save her!—and the sisters. I’m drawn in the direction of her voice, but Ella holds me back with a small, sympathetic, “I know, I know. Hang on.”

  A second later, Skullfinger and Stevie open the door.

  I wave at Ella to turn back, and we run for Sister Ethel’s room.

  We hear the keys jangle in the hallway as Skullfinger locks door ten and says, “Bag as fast as you can. We’ll deal with them as soon as we’ve got the all the stuff.”

  Deal with them! I scream in my head.

  “What about Trinka and Bin?” Stevie whines. “They’re supposed to bag the stuff.”

  “Bag the stuff. Now, man.”

  Okay. Think, Quinnie, think! What would Mom do?

  Again, Ella opens the door and peeks in the direction of the solarium. “They’re going in with the plants. I’ll head down to where they locked up the sisters.”

  “Wait, let me look for—”

  I scan Ethel’s room. I think: keys, and my brain responds: envelope. I’m riffling through papers on Sister Ethel’s desk when Skullfinger’s booming voice startles me. I spin around and see—no Ella. She’s gone.

  “Yo, Stevie! The surprises just keep on comin’. Catch her.”

  I dive under the bed as the door to Sister Ethel’s room bangs wide open. A split second later I hear Ella’s voice from down the hall: “Get your hands off me!”

  My ankle hurts like the devil from wrenching it on the leg of the bed. The rest of my body is petrified. As Skullfinger’s boots pass within a foot of my nose, I resort to desperate hoping: Don’t look under the bed. Don’t look under the bed. Don’t look under the bed. He pauses by Sister Ethel’s desk and turns in a circle like he’s looking around. I close my eyes. This could be it.

  “I said get your hands off of me, you creep!” Ella’s shouts are moving in the direction of the solarium.

  “Ouch! Hey!” Stevie shouts. “I could use some help here, man.”

  “Can’t you do one simple thing?” Skullfinger yells as he leaves the room.

  I stay tucked under the bed.

  “Gimme her,” Skullfinger says.

  “Put me down!” Ella yells.

  “Stop kicking!” Skullfinger orders.

  I picture Skullfinger’s arm around her waist, carrying her down the hall like a log. In my mind, Ella’s prying at his arm with her fingers. I hear, “Don’t put me in that room. With. Those. Nuns!”

  Thank you, Ella. She’s telling what’s going on.

  I search my pockets one more time for my phone. If there was ever a time to call 911, this is it. But of course, my phone’s not there.

  New voices—female voices—float up the main staircase. I position my right eye to the door crack and watch pink-haired Trinka and blue-haired Bin walk by.

  “We have to move fast,” Trinka says. “That lobster guy spotted us walking up the beach from his boat.”

  “You let someone see you?” Skullfinger says.

  “It’s a big wide open beach,” Trinka says. “You can’t exactly hide on it.”

  “Shut up and go bag the plants.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Trinka says.

  “Look, if we don’t get this stuff to Martin, we can forget about going back to Moline.”

  The sounds of bickering gangsters and wailing emergency vehicles swirl in my head. Ms. Stillford and the sisters and Ella are hostages, and I can’t call for help because I stupidly lost my stupid phone for a fourth stupid time. If I don’t figure something out, I may never see them again.

  Think, Quinnie, think!

  Sneak out the front door and run for help. Sneak down the hall and somehow break into room ten.

  My mind leaps back and forth. I run to the window and look out toward the fire. The cloud-licking flames are gone. The end of the road is a black billow, and the beach is blanketed gray with ash. My eyes move up the coastline toward—the Blythe Spirit? The boat is anchored about fifty feet from the convent beach. It rolls and bounces. Then I see Owen Loney, too—he’s slipping over the gunwale into the icy water.

  He’s figured it out too. He must have followed Trinka and Bin up the beach.

  But he doesn’t know Skullfinger and Stevie are here.

  36

  I watch Owen Loney swim ashore, scramble up the rocks, and make his way to Our Lady of the Tides. That’s all I can see from Sister Ethel’s window before he disappears. But he’ll be inside the convent soon. If I don’t warn him, Skullfinger will catch him and deal with him too.

  I assume Trinka, Bin, and Stevie are in the solarium bagging plants, but I don’t know where Skullfinger is lurking.

  I look around for something that will help me break into Ms. Stillford’s room. A stool. No. A lamp. No. A basket. No. A picture. No. A bottle. No. An umbrella. Yes. That will have to do. A big black umbrella with a hard rubber handle.

  I open Sister’s Ethel’s door with my left hand and squeeze the umbrella with my right. I can feel the metal ribs of the umbrella shift inside the folds of its slippery cloth. I poke my head into the hall and stop. There’s music coming from the solarium. A recording of a woman’s voice—singing “Trouble.” It’s the song the sisters and Ella sang in the driveway—when was that? A million years ago.

  I start down the hall. All alone. To the locked room. To save my friends.

  I flatten myself against the wall, but it doesn’t matter. If any one of the gangsters looks down the hall, they’ll see me. I just hope that shoving leaves—is it that maypop stuff?—into plastic bags to the tunes of Ella Marvell keeps them occupied. When I reach number ten, I hear muffled voices behind it. When I jiggle the handle, the voices go silent.

  I drop to my knees and look in the keyhole. Something’s blocking my view. I lean down and put my fingers under the door, but something blocks them too. It feels like a towel.

  I put my lips to the crack between the door and the frame and whisper, “Ella?”

  “Quinnie?” Ella says in a low voice.

  “Is Ms. Stillford in there?” I whisper.

  “Yes. Yes, she’s here and she’s fine.”

  “Quinn?” It’s Ms. Stillford! Something flips in my belly when she says my name. “We’ve filled the key hole and blocked the space around the door so they can’t get in. We’re safe. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re safe here. You just go for help. Get out of the convent and go for help.”

  “But Owen Loney is somewhere close. I should warn him!”

  “Owen is here?”

  “Yes. Somewhere.”

  “Get out, Quinnie. Owen can take care of himself.”

  She says that, but she hasn’t seen Skullfinger.

  I readjust my grip on the umbrella and crawl to the solarium doorway. Trinka, Bin, and Stevie are busy in the middle of the room, ripping vines from their pots and stripping their leaves. They’ve shredded their way through half of the gigantic sea of plants. I hear snatches of their conversation.

  “He can be crazy-crazy,” Trinka says.

  “I think it’s a bigger sin to kidnap nuns than regular people,” Bin says.

  “Shut up,” growls Stevie.

  “Remember that girl, Bin?” asks Trinka.

  “What girl?” Bin says.

  “The one from that café with the lobster fries. The one with the green eye shadow.”

  Stevie butts in: “Oh, we got her too. She’s locked up with the nuns and that other one.”

  “What other one?”

  “There’s some other lady in there.” He laughs. “I have no clue who she is.”

  “How many people you got locked up?” asks Trinka.

  “A bunch.”

  “I wonder if that girl’s got that eye shadow with her. I’d like to try it,” Bin says.

  “Right. You could become, like, friends,” says Stevie. “And you could show her how to turn her hair green or something.”

  I almost d
rop the umbrella. These people are definitely not Einsteins. Ella Marvell starts to sing a new song. “You’re my one, my one and only . . .”

  “I like this one,” says Trinka. “Turn it up. Turn it waaaay up. Go figure that those nuns would have some good jams.”

  I can’t leave Owen Loney alone here with these creeps. That lobsterman thinks I’m a fool girl, and maybe I am, because I’m going to try and warn him, and my best chance is to get from the solarium to the back stairway and head him off in the kitchen.

  So I start crawling through the table legs and tubes and wires. There’s a new smell in the solarium. It’s more odorific than Ben’s stinky old running shoes. Three sets of gangster feet are tapping their toes to Ella Marvell as I sneak past them. I check out Stevie’s feet to see if they’re the source of the disgusting aroma. Then I remember the leaves I smelled last night. When I’m almost there, my hip smacks into one of the tables and some of the plants rustle above me.

  “Hey. What was that?” Trinka says over the music.

  I don’t move a muscle. Ella Marvell sings, “Till you walk out on me . . .”

  “Probably a rat,” Stevie answers and laughs. “Want me to go catch it for you? It’d make a good pet.”

  “Shut up, Stevie,” Trinka and Bin say at the same time.

  Stevie makes another wisecrack, and Trinka and Bin sing along with Ella Marvell to drown him out. I take the opportunity to scurry to the back stairway and scoot down the five steps to the landing.

  The back staircase isn’t big and beautiful like the one at the front. It’s dimly lit, and the walls are close together all the way to the bottom.

  Each board creaks even though I step carefully.

  Each step brings more of the kitchen into view.

  When I’m four steps from the bottom, I still can’t see it all. A cupboard stands in front of me, piled high with newspapers and empty egg cartons. Someone upstairs turns up Ella Marvell to full volume. “And when you’re gone, my one and only is me. Yeah, yeah. My one and only is me.”

  As I take the last step, the full kitchen comes into view, and I scream.

  37

  Skullfinger is waiting for me. Smiling. I’m paralyzed, except for the fact that my heart’s snapping like a sail in a forty-knot wind.

  “Well, if it ain’t another one.” Skullfinger looks at the umbrella in my hand. “You expecting rain?”

  He beckons me to come all the way into the kitchen. I take small steps on wobbly legs. Skullfinger watches my every move.

  My nose prickles from a briny smell. Next to the sink, there’s a bowl of shucked clams, a bucket of clamshells, and a few potatoes. A half-shaved big Maine potato is turning brown on the cutting board. Next to it, there’s a peeler and a few strips of potato skin. Chowder, mid-making.

  As I inch farther into the kitchen, my brain races. I can rush to the sink and grab the potato peeler. Or, if he goes after the potato peeler, I can bonk him on the head with the handle of the umbrella. No. That won’t work. He’s a big guy. He probably flipped Ella off her feet like she was a broomstick.

  Maybe I can talk my way out of this. They haven’t harmed anyone yet. Just locked them in a bedroom.

  Skullfinger nods like the wheels in his head are grinding too. “I suppose that boy’s here?”

  Where is Ben right now? School? The Abbotts? I hope he stays safely out of this mess.

  “What’s your name?” I ask. I try to sound calm and interested.

  “What’s my name?” He laughs. “What’s your name?”

  Okay, maybe a conversation won’t work.

  In the corner of my eye, I catch movement across the room. The handle of a green wooden door next to the fridge is turning slowly. It must be Owen Loney. It has to be Owen Loney. Please be Owen Loney.

  I look away quickly and send mental messages to the lobsterman: go slow, stay quiet, sneak up behind Skullfinger.

  “You can drop the umbrella,” Skullfinger tells me.

  No way. This umbrella is the only thing standing between me and his big tattooed arms. Skullfinger lunges at me, and I jump sideways. My eyes shoot to the green door, which isn’t opening fast enough. Then, with one big adrenaline rush, I go all Mary Poppins and burst open the umbrella in Skullfinger’s face. He tries to swat it down but I bop around, spinning it and thrusting it at him. Owen Loney finally throws open the green door with an “auyaahhhhhhhhh,” leaps across the room, and jumps on top of the big man.

  Skullfinger spins the lobsterman around and struggles to free himself, but Owen Loney hangs on with his feet off the floor. I close the umbrella and start smacking Skullfinger’s legs with it. Toppled chairs skid around the kitchen. The big table’s legs scrape the floorboards as it lurches in the struggle.

  I hear the rush of footsteps, lots of them. I can’t tell what direction they’re coming from. I grab the bucket of clamshells and whirl around, looking for a clear shot at Skullfinger.

  As I draw back for a throw, a cat runs in between my legs, and Ben bursts into the room. He scans the situation for a nanosecond then leaps into the fight. The clams pitch out of the bucket and onto the brawling bodies.

  Amidst the grunts and the crunch of shells, more cats arrive. Dozens of them spill into the kitchen, jumping on the table and the counters. They investigate the stove, the clams, the clamshells. Spiro is snaking between my ankles.

  Owen Loney wrestles Skullfinger to the ground and mounts his chest. Ben struggles to subdue the big man’s thrashing legs. I slip-slide around them, frantically searching for anything I can use to hog-tie him.

  Blood is pounding in my temples as I yank an extension cord out of a wall socket. I pull so hard that when the plug comes out, it sends me sliding backwards over clam juice, onto my butt. I have no time to be stunned. I roll to my knees and scramble over to the tangle of bodies, and while Ben and Owen Loney hold Skullfinger, I bind his hands. He twists and wriggles and tries to shake clamshells out of his hair. Owen Loney rips his belt out of his pant loops and cinches it around Skullfinger’s ankles.

  I turn to Ben and say, “Do you have your phone?”

  He’s already searching for it, but before he can press 9-1-1, Mom, Officer Dobson, and two other police officers burst into the kitchen. Officer Dobson hustles over to Skullfinger and replaces the cord with handcuffs. “I got this bum,” he says to Mom.

  “Tell me quick, Quinn,” Mom says.

  “Upstairs. The other three are in the solarium, stripping the plants. The sisters, Ms. Stillford, and Ella are locked in the bedroom next to it—number ten.” This information fires out of me like the facts in a sheriff’s all-points bulletin.

  Mom and the other two officers bound up the stairs.

  Ben’s breathless, and he has the makings of a bruise on his cheek. “Your dad had the Rook River Police trace your phone when we couldn’t find you during the fire.”

  Oh, yeah. The fire. I remember the fire.

  “This way,” Officer Dobson says to Skullfinger and jostles him out of the kitchen.

  Two more police officers rush in, and I point them up the stairs. I make a move to follow them when Owen Loney says, “Wait, Quinnie.” It’s part concern, part warning, and part order. “I’ll go up first, to be sure they’ve captured the rest of them.”

  Everything in me wants to run past him. I want to be there when the door opens and Ms. Stillford is freed. I want to be the one to see her first. To grab her first. To hug her first.

  “We’ll hang here,” Ben says and touches my arm like he thinks he might have to hold me back. Clam juice is running down his temple.

  “I’ll call down when it’s safe,” Owen says.

  “I was worried about you guys,” Ben tells me.

  That kind of melts my heart. I admit, “Yeah, I was worried about us too.”

  “Come on up!” Owen Loney yells.

  Ben and I kick our feet in gear and take the steps two at a time.

  When we reach the second floor, the two officers who came in after Off
icer Dobson are leading Trinka, Bin, and Stevie out in handcuffs. Mom has smashed through the bedroom door, and everyone is hugging everyone. I push into the crowd and reach for Ms. Stillford.

  I’m squeezing her around her waist, and she’s got her arms wrapped around my shoulders. Somewhere deep down inside me, a knot relaxes, and as it comes undone, I’m sobbing and can’t stop. And thank goodness nobody tries to stop me. Not Mom, not Ms. Stillford. Nobody is saying “it’s okay” or “calm down” or “there, there.” I just let it roll. When I finally look up, Mom’s, Ben’s, Ella’s, and Ms. Stillford’s faces are puffy and red. Even Owen Loney looks kind of choked up. And I love them all a zillion clamshells.

  “I’m so sorry,” I blubber to Ms. Stillford.

  “Hush,” she says and pats my hair. “What do you have to be sorry about?”

  But there are so many things. I’m sorry I didn’t figure out where she was sooner, I’m sorry that I thought Owen Loney was a psycho-killer lobsterman lover, I’m sorry I thought John Denby was dribbling wild rice soup down her chin, but all I can get out is, “I’m sorry I stole Owen Loney’s gaff hook.”

  She looks at me and squints.

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll get it back,” says Owen Loney, who is now standing next to Ms. Stillford.

  Ms. Stillford glances around the room, and her eyes narrow when she spots Sisters Rosie and Ethel. The nuns have inched apart from the group. “Not to worry, Quinnie,” she says. “But I do know a couple people who have some serious explaining to do.”

  38

  I can barely keep up with everything that happens next.

  Officer Dobson and his deputies haul the Skullfinger gang off to jail in Rook River.

  Mom wants to call an ambulance, and Ms. Stillford refuses. The sisters keep saying they are all right. Ella says she’s fine too.

  Mom tells the sisters and Ms. Stillford to come to her office tomorrow to give statements—after they’ve rested and had a chance to calm down. The sisters say they are calm, but they don’t look it. Ms. Stillford takes a deep breath and says she’ll be there. Some detectives who have arrived take pictures of the solarium, bag evidence, and stretch yellow crime scene tape around the convent.