Countdown

by Fern Michaels

  “I see it. Okay, everyone, take a deep breath. What time is it?” Ted asked as he crawled along at five miles an hour over the unpaved, potholed road that would take him to the Sandford farmhouse.

  “Holy cow, look at those lights!” Dennis shrilled from the backseat. “Would you look at that! Damn if it doesn’t look like Disney! She wasn’t kidding when she said the light show was spectacular! Not that I’m thinking this is spectacular but ... but . . .”

  “It’s a nightmare light show,” Abner said, as the van inched closer to the residence. “They must have bought out some electric factory to light the place up like this.”

  “Espinosa, you getting all this?” Ted asked, rolling down his window to get a better look at the reindeer dancing across the roof of the farmhouse. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, were LED-lighted wire snowmen, wire Santas, wire elves, wire Christmas trees, wire sleighs filled with wire gift boxes. All the lights were multicolored. The ancient oak trees surrounding the driveway were all lit with blinking lights. Even the thick, round trunks were wired with the blinking lights. “Makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?” Ted cackled. “Wait till you see the inside. Just wait.” He continued to cackle.

  “I think we’re here. I only see a Maybach off there on the side. Was that car here the day you and Espinosa were? Or is it the lieutenant governor’s car?” Jack asked.

  “There weren’t any cars here the day we came. Mrs. Sandford said she gave all her staff time off for the holidays, so I’m thinking it must belong to his nibs, the lieutenant governor himself. The kids aren’t home, so it can’t be one of theirs plus it’s a Maybach, and you know what those babies retail for. It’s gotta be his. Mrs. Sandford probably keeps hers in the garage, and I’m thinking they were in a hurry when they got home and just left it outside. At least we know they’re home. Place is lit up like a Christmas tree, no pun intended,” Ted said, bringing the van to a complete stop behind the black Maybach. Everyone exited.

  As one, the group’s jaws dropped as they gaped at the front porch, which was ablaze with flying, LED-lit wire angels holding trumpets. From somewhere, probably the side of the house, tinny sounds of Christmas carols could be heard.

  “Now I’ve seen it all,” Jack said, his voice ringing in awe. “Even Vegas isn’t as honky-tonk as this.”

  “And this woman wins the first prize every year for the best Christmas decorations?” Maggie all but snarled. “I’m not getting it. Are the judges blind?”

  “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!” Abner said. “What’s not to get? Her husband is the lieutenant governor. He’s filthy rich. He is in line to be the next governor of this fine commonwealth. It’s called kissing ass. But for all we know, the judges might really be blind. The good news is that this is the last year she’ll be winning anything. Wonder who will get to take all this stuff down?”

  “Who cares. Will someone please ring the damn doorbell,” Ted said, “so we can get this show on the road.”

  Harry reached forward and punched the doorbell. Then, for good measure, he raised the prancing stallion on the door knocker. They all blinked when they heard the scratchy Christmas song about Santa coming to town playing inside the house. Maggie rolled her eyes. “Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable!”

  “Wait!” Dennis said. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  The door opened wide. Fiona Sandford stood there, resplendent, in a billowing lemon and lime skirt with a bright orange top. She rustled when she moved. Her hair was done up in a tight pile of curls on top of her head. Long lime green earrings, possibly jade, Maggie thought, dangled from her ears. Matching bracelets clanked on her wrists. The bee-stung lips were covered in crimson gloss, and a bit of food was stuck in the left corner of her mouth. One plucked eyebrow was longer and darker than the other. Maggie looked away so she wouldn’t laugh out loud.

  “Mr. Robinson!” Fiona gushed as she stood aside to let the little group into the foyer of her home. Then she backed up a step, and asked, “Who are all these people and why did you bring them here? I don’t think my husband is going to like this. Not even one little bit. He was against my allowing you to come out here to begin with. Well . . .”

  “They’re the judges. We need a picture of you with the judges. I thought I explained all that to you when I was out here earlier.”

  The bee-stung lips went into full pout. “Yes, yes, you did. I am so sorry. I totally forgot. My manners are atrocious. I’m Fiona Sandford. And you are,” she said, pointing to Jack and on down the line, with each person stating their name in response.

  “Can we get right to it, Mrs. Sandford? We have a deadline, and we do have to drive all the way back to the District. I’m sure you and your husband have things to do this evening since it is so close to Christmas. It’s up to you, do you want to share your ... ah . . . glory with your husband? If you do, he has to be in the picture.”

  “Well, the truth is,” she whispered to Ted, “I’d rather he wasn’t in the picture, but he said he wanted to be in it, so what can I do. Like you said, this is my moment. I shouldn’t have to share it with him, but he is my husband. I think he gets his picture in the papers often enough. It’s my turn. He likes to be photographed wearing his ascot. He’s such a . . . never mind. Come along people, we can do this in the den, where the big tree is.”

  She turned to Espinosa, and said playfully, “Make sure you get my good side, and you won’t hurt my feelings one little bit if my husband’s image is on the ... blurry side.” She reached up and tweaked Espinosa’s cheek to make sure he got the point.

  With a straight face, Espinosa said, “What side would that be, ma’am?”

  “Oh, you little rascal! Did you forget so soon? You said my right side is my best side. Capture me completely now. Ah, here we are!

  “Tyler, I’d like you to meet the people I’ve been telling you about.” Introductions were quickly made.

  “They have to hurry, Tyler, to make their deadline. We agreed to have the picture by the tree with both of us looking up at the angel.”

  Jack decided right at that moment that he really, really didn’t like Tyler Sandford. He looked like what Jack’s father, a very shrewd judge of men, would have called a slick dandy. It was he and Harry who were going to light up the couple’s life with the Tasers in their pockets the moment they looked upward at the tacky tarnished angel atop the tree. That way, they wouldn’t see what was coming, and there would be less fuss and bother. At the moment, looking at Tyler Sandford, Jack regretted that reducing fuss and bother came at the expense of causing him less terror than if he saw it coming and reacted.

  Espinosa coaxed Fiona to look more to the right, and she happily obliged just as twenty thousand volts of electricity struck home.

  “They call this ‘riding the bull’ in Taser circles,” Dennis said gleefully.

  “Really!” was all Maggie could think to say.

  “Flex cuffs, guys!” Jack said.

  The moment the couple was secure, Ted and Jack hoisted them up onto two tacky Queen Anne chairs covered with red-and-green-striped felt. Sandford seemed to be coming out of it quicker than his wife. He was groggy, but his words were sharp and clear. “Is this a home invasion? If it is, you are welcome to all this crap you see. The truth is, I’ll pay you to cart it off. I don’t keep money in the house. Take the car and leave us alone.”

  “It’s not a home invasion, Mr. Sandford. We’re here to steal your life and all that money you have socked away around the world. We’re also here to make you pay for all those people out in Southeast. That’s number one. All we need from you are your passwords, and we’ll be on our way,” Abner explained.

  Fiona had come around just in time to have heard her beloved husband telling the people they could take all her crap. “Crap!” she screeched. “Is that what you said? You ungrateful bastard! This is not crap, this is my life’s work. What else do I have? Nothing, that’s what. You’re saying my life’s work is crap, which means I’m crap! Well, we’ll just see about t
hat.” She was almost up, bent on attacking her husband, when Ted shoved her back down none too gently onto the red-and-green-striped felt chair.

  “You’ll get your turn, Mrs. Sandford,” Dennis said as he eyed all the junk in the family room. He turned away because it all made him dizzy.

  Abner sat down on a candy-cane-patterned ottoman and opened his laptop. He flexed his fingers and started to type. He clicked on a button and a list of offshore accounts appeared as if by magic. He turned his laptop around and showed the screen to Sandford. “The passwords, please.” His tone was polite.

  “Like I’m really going to give you my passwords. Get real, you clown. And don’t think you can scare me either.” Sandford turned to his wife. “Do not open your mouth, Fiona.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, you jackass.”

  “We don’t have time for a family spat,” Jack said. “You can ream each other out later because, believe me, you are going to have nothing else to do. Now save yourselves a lot of trouble and tell us what we want to know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sandford blustered. I told you, I’m not telling you anything. Take my car and get out of here, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

  “Now that’s a lie if I ever heard one. We should forget the way you forgot about that poor family’s children who died because you wouldn’t fix the furnace in the building where they lived? Are you saying it’s okay for little kids to freeze to death? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Abner, show him the list of properties he owns.” Abner obliged, then swiveled the laptop around so Sandford could see the screen again.

  “So I own a lot of buildings over in Southeast, so what? You can’t hold me responsible for what the property-management company does or doesn’t do. My hands are clean on all of that. No charges were ever brought against me.”

  “Because you used your wealth to bribe people, threatened them and made promises you have no intention of keeping. Innocent children are dead because of you,” Jack said as he watched beads of sweat pool on Sandford’s forehead.

  “I told you, I had nothing to do with those deaths. I hired a reputable management company to collect the rents and maintain the buildings. You want to blame someone, go after Lionel Marks and leave me and my wife alone.”

  “We did that already!” Jack said, happiness ringing in his voice. “Would you like to talk to him? Dennis, call Luther and have him put Marks on the phone.

  “By the way, Marks gave you up in a heartbeat. And, wait till you hear this, Mr. Sandford, he has—had—a single one-way ticket to Hong Kong. His flight, which, unfortunately, he is not going to make, leaves at five after six in the morning on December twenty-sixth. He’s truly heartbroken that he won’t be able to make it.”

  “I told you not to trust that scumbag. He oils his hair. You can’t trust anyone who oils his hair. And he takes a bath in that shitty cologne he wears. I called him the other day, and he gave me the runaround. All he was worried about was that our tenants stripped his car to a shell. I warned him. I warned you, too, Tyler, and this is the outcome. I guess this is a stupid question, but why isn’t he going to make his flight?” Fiona asked. Her face was a mask of fear, and her eyes were full of tears as she stared at her husband.

  “I told you to shut up, Fiona,” Sandford growled.

  “And I told you don’t tell me what to do, Mr. Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

  “No more bickering!” Harry Wong roared.

  “You should listen to him,” Dennis said, “or he’ll pull your tongue through your nose and out your ears. He can do it, too.” He looked over at Harry, and whispered, “Did I get that right?” He handed the phone to Jack when Harry glared at him as if he were revealing state secrets.

  Jack brought the phone up to his ear in time to hear Lionel Marks cursing him in every language in the book. “There are rats in here. They keep trying to eat my legs, there’s not enough light, and I’m freezing my ass off. Get me the hell out of here. I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll never say a word. I swear to God, I will never say a word. I’ll go out there and personally apologize to those people. I just did what Sandford and his wife told me to do. I’m their employee. Go after them! For God’s sake, get me out of here! I could die here from rat bites if I don’t freeze first. I’m begging you, whatever your name is.”

  Jack clucked his tongue. “Sorry, Lionel, we already have everything you own, and, like I said, you aren’t going anywhere, so get used to it. I’m going to put you on speaker now so you can tell your clients, that would be Mr. and Mrs. Sandford, the spot you are currently in. Be happy. They’ll be joining you shortly.” Jack clicked on the speaker and held out the phone so Marks’s words could be heard by the whole room. Marks spouted a tirade the likes of which none of them had ever heard before.

  “Wow!” Maggie said. “He certainly is colorful now, isn’t he?”

  “Yep,” Ted said.

  Tyler Sandford listened, then let loose with a volley of profanity the little group had never heard before either. Fiona Sandford fainted as Marks continued to scream and blame Sandford and herself for everything under the sun, ending with, “I hope they do bring your sorry ass here, and you’ll see what living with rats is like. Oh, God, one of them is chewing my shoe!”

  Fiona opened her eyes just in time to hear Marks’s last statement. She started to wail and curse her husband. “Rats! Rats! Oh, my God! Do something. Tell them what they want to know. Look at them, Tyler, these people are evil. Evil!” she screeched at the top of her lungs.

  “Who brought these evil people here, Fiona? You did! I had nothing to do with this; my hands are clean. You people will go to jail for this. I’ll personally see to it. And you’ll never see the light of day again.”

  “Wait just one minute here,” Jack said. “Who was just Tasered? Who is tied up at the moment? Whose underling is living with rats with no heat, no water, no food, and blames you? And I’ll never see the light of day again! I think you have that backward, Mr. Sandford. I’m going to ask you one more time. Give us the passwords, or I’ll turn my colleague loose on you.”

  “You’ll have to kill me then because I am not giving them to you. Go ahead, kill me,” Sandford said, his face going from red to white and back to red again.

  “Nah, killing you is too good for you. Once you’re dead you’re dead. You need to suffer, and I mean suffer. Hit it, Maggie!”

  Maggie dragged her duffel bag to the center of the room, but before she could find a clear space to park it, she had to kick away four straw reindeer. Fiona started to cry when a set of ears fell off one of the reindeer.

  The boys formed a circle around Maggie and the Sandfords. All eyes were on her as she slowly unzipped the duffel and drew out a pair of hedge clippers. She held them up, gave a brief demonstration showing how sharp they were by cutting a branch of the tacky white Christmas tree. Fiona couldn’t take her eyes off the fallen branch. She started to wail again. Her husband told her to shut up yet again.

  Jack looked at Maggie. “Maybe you should tell him what you’re going to do with the clippers.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Yeah. Ask him for the passwords, and if he doesn’t come through, then you are free to go to work.”

  “Oooh, I like the way that sounds. Okay, listen up, Mr. Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and you, too, Mrs. Lieutenant Governor of this commonwealth. I’m going to be polite and ask one more time for the passwords, and if you don’t give them to me, then I am going to hack off your nose, Mr. Lieutenant Governor and then I am going to hack off Mrs. Lieutenant Governor’s lips. I will then chop them to pieces so they can never be reattached. I hope you are following me here.” She swung around, dug in her duffel, and came up with two pictures that she had enhanced on her computer. Both were ugly pictures of the Sandfords showing gaping holes in both their faces. Fiona Sandford screamed, then fainted again. Tyler Sandford stared at the picture but remained d
efiant, but not before his face turned as white as the snow outside. Maggie raised the clippers and clicked them open. The room went totally silent as she made clacking sounds with the shears as she advanced on Tyler Sandford, who tried to back away deep into the chair.

  Fiona struggled to awareness and screamed. “I’ll give you the damn passwords if you promise to leave my lips alone. I don’t give a good rat’s ass what you do to his nose, but promise to leave my lips alone. I want your promise.”

  “I promise,” Maggie said solemnly. “What is it?”

  Abner Tookus flexed his fingers.

  Chapter 14

  “She’s lying. I never gave her the passwords,” Sandford bellowed.

  “That’s true, he never did give them to me, so I had to ferret it out on my own. This man is the cheapest bastard in the whole world. I knew the day would come when I’d need a hold of some kind over him. I guess this is it.”

  “Don’t you dare, Fiona! I’m warning you,” Sandford said as he tried to lunge for his wife. Harry reached out and shoved him deep into the chair.

  Abner flexed his fingers again.

  They all waited to see what Fiona Sandford would do.

  “It’s reciprocity. It’s his favorite word, for some reason.”

  “Well, damn,” Abner said as he typed in the word. A blizzard of numbers raced across the screen. “Man, this is more money than I’ve ever seen in my whole life. We are going to have a great time doling this out. A really great time.”

  “I want a big chunk to go to the Wounded Warriors,” Maggie said.

  “I want millions to go to no-kill animal shelters,” Dennis said.

  “I want to fix up the whole Southeast so people are proud to live there,” Jack said.

  “Millions to disadvantaged children,” Harry said.