The line went dead.
Well, crud.
Cell phone in hand, I cut through the last of the stragglers ultimately abandoning bar stools before Patrizio locked its doors for the night. I emerged into the crisp night air, unimpressed by the twinkles of lights, the fancy cars, or even the stars blinking bright against the cloudless night sky.
I rushed across the parking lot, nearly getting myself run over by a metallic blue Hummer whose driver leaned out the window to yell, “Watch out, you stupid chick!”
By the time I got to my Jeep, my breaths came in a rush; but I hadn’t a spare second to rest. I hurriedly unlocked the door and jumped in, cranked the ignition and shifted into gear. It was all I could do not to smack the bumpers of the vehicles ahead of me, each seeming to move at a snail’s pace as they exited Highland Park Village.
Despite Mother’s warning to drive safely, I hauled ass to Lovers Lane, where the Time Out Tavern sat in a tiny strip mall beside the London Market Antiques Store.
I used to hang out there some during high school, when I was too young to drink but didn’t care and had a fake ID should I get carded. My friends and I used to sit at the picnic table near the door and play quarters, squealing like idiots whether we hit or missed.
In normal circumstances, I’d have been happy to make a return trip to the place. I associated good memories with it.
But nothing about this night was good. As I took a fast corner, racing through the tail end of a yellow light, I glanced in my rearview and saw a flash of red rip through the intersection behind me.
I didn’t think much of it until I pulled off Lovers Lane, sliding the Jeep into an empty parking space in front of the antiques shop.
When I looked into the mirror again as I cut the engine, I noticed the red car taking a slow pass by where I sat. Beneath the street lamp the driver’s pale hair glowed for an instant, and I recognized the BMW Roadster that belonged to Allie.
Anger flooded my veins, rushed heat to my face, and I cursed her as I unclipped my seat belt and scrambled out after locking the duffel inside. I wondered what the hell she was up to; thinking she must’ve been following me since I left home. How else would she know where I’d gone? I certainly hadn’t told her.
I hesitated only a second, watching for her car to U-turn somewhere down the road and turn back. But I only saw taillights.
Please, don’t screw this up, I prayed, rusty at it as I was.
I pulled my jacket tighter around me as I hurried toward the entrance, beneath the white awning, hoping Allie stayed as invisible as Stephen.
What was this? A parade?
All I needed was for Cissy to tail me in her Lexus.
Not funny, I told myself as I swallowed hard and went in.
It was like stepping into a shoe box.
The interior looked just as I remembered; the walls crammed with sports memorabilia. Worn-out sneakers and hockey skates dangled from the ceiling, along with grimy old towels that doubtless reeked of putrefied sweat.
Scattered around the tiny space were TV screens silently flashing some sporting event or another. A jukebox playing an old Van Halen tune served as the backdrop for the sharp click of balls from the minipool table.
Everything inside the Time Out Tavern appeared to have seen better days, but it was a comfortable spot to have a Shiners Blond and hang with pals. Malone and I even dropped in on occasion, though hardly enough to be regulars.
The clientele was diametrically opposite the posers who’d crowded the bar at Patrizio. I glanced around at the grizzled-looking dudes in baseball caps and ponytailed women sucking hard on their Marlboros, and I realized that prettified singles putting on airs and pretensions weren’t a problem here.
A few heads turned to check me out as I stood up front, solo, and I wondered if my friendly kidnapper was in the room, making sure I acted like a good girl and didn’t share a beer with a cop.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to really do anything.
Should I order tonic water that I wouldn’t drink, like at my previous stop?
Should I loll around and not order anything, so I stood out like a sore thumb and gave the impression I was out to score drugs or sex?
Honestly, my Little Miss Manners classes hadn’t prepared me for anything like this, nor had all the lectures on social graces my mother had given me through the years (which hadn’t seemed to stick too well).
I finally decided it was best not to stand near the door, looking unsure of myself, so I headed over to the bar and slid up on a stool.
Not wanting to be any more conspicuous than I was—a lone woman in black with pink high-tops, clutching her cell—I ordered a beer. A pair of whiskered and not-sogently creased men halfway down the bar shot me grins that were a mite too friendly for my taste.
Did they think I was a badly dressed hooker? I wondered.
Or just a desperate chick sorely in need of male attention?
I tried to give them discouraging frowns in return and leaned toward my left, where a middle-aged female in leopard print played some kind of videogame while she alternately inhaled her cigarette, took tequila shots, and mumbled, “Well, shit.”
Obviously, Cissy’s doppelganger.
Ha ha.
A nervous smile touched my lips, but quickly faded. I had my hand on my cell, willing it to ring. With the other, I fingered the neck of my Shiners before I began my bad habit of picking off the label.
I felt the sudden puff of breath against my hair before I heard a voice rumble, “Hey, pretty lady, can I buy you a drink? You all by yerself? What a shame.”
A scruffy-looking fellow with an unshaven jaw and brown chunks of hair hanging over his eyes planted a palm on my right and greeted me with a full-on leer.
“No, I’m not alone,” I shot back, and the dude glanced at Leopard-Print Smoking Lady on my other side. I realized where that was going, and I shook my head. “I’m not actually with anyone, but I’m waiting on a call from”— how best to put it?—“someone close to my boyfriend.”
Scruffy Dude squinted. “So I can’t buy you a drink?”
“No.” Besides, I already had a full Shiners plunked squarely in front of me, and I wouldn’t even have time to drink that. I squinted back at him, wondering suddenly if he wasn’t part of the kidnapping posse, making sure I was flying solo. Though I think he mistook my narrowing my eyes on him as a sign of interest.
“Maybe I could meet you later?” He bent nearer so I could smell the tobacco and beer on his breath, not to mention the manly-man scent of one-hundred-percent perspiration. “I’ve got a six-pack on ice in the cab of my Silverado, right in the parking lot.”
I’ll meet you when hell freezes over, cowboy, I wanted to say, deciding he was just a loser out looking for love in all the wrong places—well, at least on the wrong bar stool— but I didn’t get the chance to open my mouth.
My cell chimed its silly musical ring at just that moment, and I elbowed the guy in the gut—for which, ungraciously, I did not apologize—as I snapped the phone to my ear.
“Yes?” I said and hunched down over the bar with palm pressed to my other ear, trying to hear, ignoring all else around me.
“The IHOP on Northwest Highway, on the way to the airport. It’s your final destination. Be a good girl and drop it behind the Dumpster in back. You got that?”
Wait a dad-blamed minute.
Was that where the mumbling kidnapper had been phoning me from all along? So he could’ve directed me there in the first place, instead of jerking me around?
Grrr.
I was far less sure at this point that anyone from Team Bad Guy had been watching me. They’d probably strung me along all this time, merely to keep me in line and make sure I behaved.
A tactic surely Cissy would envy.
“Did you hear me?” The muffled voice sounded impatient, and I detected the vague buzz of white noise in the background. It sounded like traffic.
<
br /> “Loud and clear,” I said.
“And come alone,” the bad guy reminded me, as if I’d forget something like that, “or he’s chopped liver.”
“I’m alone, for Pete’s sake,” I snapped into the phone, but the line had already gone dead.
I dug in my back pocket, tossed ten bucks on the bar, and ran out of there faster than Carl Lewis in his prime.
When I climbed in the Jeep, the clock on the dash showed eleven-twenty.
I hadn’t been playing this ransom game for an hour yet, and it felt like an eternity.
I put the Wrangler in gear and took off in a screech of brakes.
My cell rang again, not long after I’d reached Northwest Highway, heading west. If it was the kidnappers, changing plans, I was going to throw up.
But it wasn’t.
It was only Stephen.
“You all right, kiddo?” he asked, and I quickly told him where I was going and that I’d be dropping the bagful of his old pal’s fake dinero.
“I’ve got your back,” he reminded me, “though I don’t think I’m the only one tailing you, Andy. There’s a red BMW Roadster that’s been behind you for a while.”
“Allie Price,” I hissed. It had to be. I wasn’t about to believe the kidnappers drove the same kind of car as Brian’s ex-girl. That would’ve been one coincidence too many.
“The red car belongs to Malone’s colleague,” I told him. “I told her to stay out of this, but she can’t.”
“Well, er, neither could your mother, apparently,”
Stephen said, though he sounded reluctant to have dropped that particular bomb.
“What does that mean?” I did my best to keep from yelling, but I felt close to exploding. It was all I could do to keep the Jeep on the road and talk at once.
“Now don’t get upset, Andy, but I do believe she’s following me, following you. I spotted her beige-colored Lexus with the tinted windows.”
My mother had joined my ransom drop parade?
Was he kidding me?
“You have to make them stop, Stephen,” I said, feeling a rush of sheer panic. “What if someone sees?”
Namely, the kidnappers.
If Stephen had noticed I had a red Beemer and a champagne-hued Lexus on my tail, wouldn’t Malone’s captors, who’d arranged this whole run-about-town so they could make sure I hadn’t called the police?
Could Cissy and Allie have spoiled everything already?
“Oh, God,” I moaned, trying to keep my eyes clear and on the road, when I wanted to pull over and weep.
“Just stay cool,” he told me in that unwavering way of his. “If they suspected anything, they would’ve called off the drop by now. I have a feeling this whole setup was more of a scare tactic than anything, which adds to my suspicion that these folks aren’t pros.”
Aren’t pros?
What did that mean?
Amateur kidnappers?
Well, that was reassuring.
“Just continue to follow their instructions, Andy, and we’ll go from there,” Stephen said. “We’ll pin ’em down with the GPS, find out where they live. Then, once we’ve got Brian safely home, we’ll call the police.”
“Okay.” That sounded great to me.
“Good girl,” he remarked before he hung up, and I shakily set my cell in my lap, returning both hands to the steering wheel.
Good girl.
There it was again.
I scrunched up my forehead, overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu.
Those were the very words the kidnappers had used, and not just in this last phone call. I forced my mind back to what they’d said earlier and tried to figure out why the phrase nagged at me.
Be a good little girl, and he won’t get hurt, okay?
Be a good girl and drop it behind the Dumpster in back.
Got it?
As hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t nail down the connection.
If I hadn’t been so distracted by the satchel full of counterfeit money sitting on my backseat or the thought of rolling along Northwest Highway with a caravan behind me, I might’ve been able to retrieve that lost information more quickly. It’d be one of those things that popped into my head in the middle of the night or during an unrelated conversation, one of those “Eureka!” moments that’s so annoying, because it’s always on a time delay.
I fixed my eyes on the road, watching the same landmarks pass that I’d seen out the window the night before, en route to The Men’s Club with Allie.
The Walgreens, the Jack Daniel’s billboard, the Family Dollar store, the Jaguar dealership, and the Best Western.
And then the edifice I’d been seeking appeared on my left.
Violà!
The International House o’ Pancakes.
Complete with blue roof and grimy whitewashed walls.
My pulse cranked into overdrive, and I prayed my mother and Allie would be smart enough not to pull in right behind me, even though it was late and the place looked damned near vacant. Surely, whoever was waiting for me to dump the cash would have some kind of surveillance in place.
For all I knew, the bad guys were inside, peering out a window, or slouched down in one of the three other cars in the lot. Regardless, I felt eyes on me as I searched for the best place to stop. In the process, I spotted the pay phone, from which Señor Kidnapper had made all the calls to my cell.
So what next? How was I supposed to do this?
I gnawed the inside of my cheek, fearing I’d make a fatal misstep.
If anything I did triggered an adverse reaction, I would fail and Malone would be left at the mercy of the knife-wielding nut balls who quoted movie lines and worshipped Paris Hilton.
I couldn’t let myself consider that or I’d panic. I was on the verge of hyperventilating already.
The only thought that filled my mind as I slowly angled around the IHOP’s nearly vacant parking area was:
Where’s the Dumpster?
I peered ahead and spotted a hulking shape behind the building, where a light had gone out, leaving the rear in shadows.
Great.
The thud of my heart filled my ears as I drove the Jeep closer and closer to the giant bin. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to cut the headlamps when I parked, figuring if I did, I wouldn’t be able to see a thing.
I left the lights on and the Jeep running, tugging the satchel from the backseat into my lap.
As I gripped the handles and prepared to get out, worries flooded my brain. What if the dye packs went off too soon? What if the Bad Dudes realized the bills were fakes? What if they ditched the sack with the GPS before we found them? What if nothing went wrong, yet they decided not to let Malone go?
What if Brian turned up as dead as Trayla Trash, aka Betty Wren?
What would I do then?
Stop it, Andy, I told myself, as it did me no good to keep wondering “what if ” when I had a mission to accomplish.
I looked around as I slid out of the Jeep, but didn’t see a soul. Beyond the noise of my pulse, I could discern the whoosh of cars driving past the restaurant on the busy road that led to the airport.
The stench of garbage hit me smack in the face as I approached the Dumpster, my sneakers shuffling on asphalt, and I wondered where the best place was to leave the bag.
Mr. Mumbles hadn’t told me anything specific, such as “toss it in the bin” or leave it next to the empty syrup carton.
I didn’t want to set it in plain sight of the IHOP, where an employee or patron could spot it. I hadn’t gone through all this trouble just to have some stranger take the booby-trapped loot.
I meant a nonkidnapping stranger, of course. So I tucked the bag around the back of the smelly green
receptacle; hidden from prying eyes but surely locatable if one were looking for it.
As I rose from my crouch, I felt motion behind me.
I turned in time to catch sight of a f
igure in black . . . tried to look at the face but saw only as far up as his neck, as an arm came around my chest and another pressed a cloth hard to my face. I threw up my hands, swinging at him, but mostly hitting air.
I inhaled the most awful smell, something like paint thinner, before I stopped fighting. I vaguely felt my eyes roll up into my head, and the rest of me went limp.
After that . . .
Zilch.
Chapter 19
I smelled Joy.
And I don’t mean happiness or pleasure. The way my head throbbed, I felt a whole lot less
than ecstatic.
The Joy I inhaled was French perfume.
My mother’s scent.
“Wake up, pumpkin. Please, wake up for Mummy.”
When I could finally force my eyelids apart, it was Cissy’s face I blearily focused on, hovering so near above my own it was hard to differentiate between the tip of her nose and the tip of mine.
“Andrea, thank goodness! Darling, can you hear me?
Are you all right?” Her normally smooth as silk drawl ran over itself, fast as the staccato clip of a carpetbagger. “Did you fall? Is anything broken? Should I call an ambulance?”
I managed to squeak out, “Nothing broken.”
At least I didn’t think so.
“Up,” I croaked and felt hands at my back, helping lift my shoulders from the ground, and I heard Stephen’s voice, saying, “That’s right, sit up, good girl.”
Good girl.
Hell’s bells, there it was again.
Good girl, good girl, good girl, good girl.
I shut my eyes as my thoughts came unscrambled, as if my unconscious mind had been waiting for just the right moment to connect all the dots. In this case, post-knockout.
Like clouds abruptly breaking after a storm, allowing shafts of sunlight through, I recalled clear as day where I’d heard those words before, besides my one-sided conversations with the mumbling kidnapper.
I’d seen them uttered on the television at Mother’s.
During the news segment about Trayla’s murder.
I could hear them spoken as vividly as I remembered the face of the woman from whose mouth they had emanated.
She was such a good girl, really, no matter how tough she acted. In some ways, she was like a sister to me.
Night of the Living Deb Page 20