Crystal Clear

by Jane Heller

  “Wait,” Will cautioned as we were all about to bolt out of the Jeep. “I think we should go slow, stay very quiet, try to move inside the house without attracting Dan’s attention. I say we surprise him, throw him off balance, make him vulnerable. The more vulnerable he is, the better our chances of getting Jean and Annie away from him.”

  Terry considered Will’s strategy for several seconds. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll go the sneak-attack route. I’ll unlock the front door, and then we’ll slip inside, nobody saying a word, nobody making a sound. Not until we figure out what’s going on in there. Agreed?”

  Will and I nodded. Amanda whispered, “I’ll be so quiet you’ll forget all about me.”

  Would that I could, I thought.

  We exited the Jeep, followed Terry toward the house, and waited while he let us in through the front door. And then we tiptoed over the threshold and began taking our silent inventory. We moved stealthily from room to room, our dread mounting as we discovered that a coffee table had been overturned, a lamp shattered, a mirror cracked. Trouble.

  There was no evidence of Annie or Jean or Dan anywhere; there were only the broken furnishings and the violent behavior that must have led to them. Terry’s jaws clenched as we crept deeper into the house, past the living room, into the den, where the TV set was blaring even though no one was there watching it. On screen were ABC’s political pundits Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson—two of Annie’s favorite Sunday commentators, I suspected. The sight of them made me want to cry out, to shout, to yell: “Annie? Where are you, honey?” But Terry placed his forefinger over his lips, reminding me—reminding each of us—to stick to our plan, to hold our emotions in check, to keep absolutely still so as not to tip Dan off that we were in the vicinity.

  We were making our way past the television set, en route to the kitchen, when Amanda let out a shriek—a scream loud enough to wake the dead, let alone tip Dan off.

  “Good Lord!” she squealed, pointing at the TV screen. “It’s my old friend Arianna Huffington! She’s being interviewed on that show!”

  The three of us were paralyzed by her outburst, completely taken aback. Was the woman so self-absorbed that she could foil our agreed-upon rescue mission without batting a mascara-ed eyelash?

  “Arianna and I used to travel in similar social circles,” she explained, nodding at Mrs. Huffington’s image on the screen. “Now she’s too busy for parties—she’s promoting the Grand Old Party on network television, of all things.” Amanda paused, as if an actual insight had been visited upon her. I could almost see the lightbulb go on. “That’s it!” she squealed, louder this time. “I’ve changed my mind! Why be spiritual when you can be political?” She clapped her hands, applauding her brilliance. “Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll throw myself into the political arena, just like Arianna did. I’ll become a lobbyist of some sort, or maybe a diplomat to one of those darling little countries we’re still friendly with. I’ll make appearances on ‘Crossfire,’ I’ll sleep in the Lincoln bedroom, the sky’s the limit! Who needs an article in Personal Life when you can have the cover of Newsweek! Oh, think of it. I’ll get my own clothing line after all!”

  Terry looked as if he wanted to throttle her, but Will persuaded him that there were more pressing issues.

  “It is Annie and Jean who matter,” Will told him. “Better to save your strength for them.”

  Terry nodded, shaking his fist at Amanda, who seemed perplexed by his anger.

  That was when we heard the ruckus. Apparently, our own little ruckus had brought Dan out of hiding.

  “He must be outside!” Terry said, gesturing toward the backyard, tightening his grip on Dan’s kitchen knife.

  We left Amanda in front of the television set, to plot her political future, and made a mad dash to the rear of the house, afraid of what might have happened before we arrived, afraid of what we might find, afraid that it was taking the police an eternity to show up.

  We opened the screened door and rushed outside.

  There were Dan and Annie rolling around on the lawn, engaged in a bizarre sort of wrestling match. He must have had her in his grip, I speculated, been distracted by the commotion we were making, and allowed her to wriggle out of his control, momentarily. Now she was fighting to escape from him, kicking him, trying to beat him off. She would get free for an instant, then he would recapture her.

  Horrified by what he was witnessing, Terry was poised to attack Dan—only to be stopped in his tracks.

  The man had a gun.

  “Stay away!” Dan shouted at us as we stood there helplessly. “My first plan went bust but I’ve got a new plan—with a new victim. How much will you pay me for your cute little girl, Mr. Jeep Tour? Huh?”

  Terry was stunned, his face draining of color. “The police will be here any second,” he bluffed, undoubtedly praying they would be. “I won’t have to pay you a cent.”

  Dan responded by pointing the gun at Annie’s head. “You want me to shoot her? Is that it?” he sneered.

  “No!” Terry backed down. “I want you to let her go. I’ll pay you whatever I’ve got.”

  Dan laughed at Terry’s change of heart, then grimaced—Annie had just kicked him in the shins.

  Good work, I praised her silently. Just keep kicking the son of a bitch until the police get here. Stall him for a few more minutes and you’ll be in the clear. We all will be.

  Astoundingly, as if Annie had read my thoughts, she dealt Dan another blow to the shins, wounding him enough to weaken his grasp and provide her with an opening.

  “Yeah, I’ll stall him!” she cried triumphantly, sprinting not into her father’s arms, which, she sensed, would have put his life in danger, but onto the nearby trampoline!

  What happened next was the stuff of dreams, of miracles.

  “Annie! What in the world?” Terry shouted at her. He was about to make another try for Dan’s throat when the Reiki huckster waved the gun at him.

  “Wait,” I whispered to Terry. “Annie’s great on that trampoline. It’s possible that she knows exactly what she’s doing.”

  “She’s only ten years old,” he said, nearly choking with fear and frustration.

  “Since when was she ‘only’ anything?” I reminded him, thinking of her specialness, of the precocious, eccentric little girl who had flourished in spite of her rocky beginning, of the sick child Jean Singleton had helped to raise.

  Jean!

  Suddenly, I realized that we hadn’t seen her anywhere!

  I glanced around and discovered that Will was gone, too! He must have slipped away to search for his wife. I only hoped he’d find her inside the house—alive.

  “Shit!” Terry cursed. “Dan’s climbing up there after Annie! And he’s not letting go of that gun!”

  Sure enough, Dan had hoisted himself up onto the trampoline, refusing to let Annie get away. But he was no match for her. As she bounced up and down, up and down, he kept falling down and getting up, falling down and getting up.

  “I could shoot the fucking kid if she’d just stop jumping!” he moaned, unable to hold the gun steady.

  You can’t shoot her unless she stops jumping, I thought, admiring Annie’s ingenuity. She had made herself a moving target. The perfect stall.

  “Come on, jump!” she taunted Dan as she bounced higher and higher, tugging on an overhanging tree branch each time she reached high enough to make contact with it, like a kid on a merry-go-round, grabbing for the brass ring.

  As Terry and I watched in absolute awe, she continued to thwart Dan’s ability to aim the gun at her, bouncing him around so that he had no control of his own jumps. He had become her puppet, his movements utterly dependent on hers. The higher she jumped, the higher he was catapulted—a passive player in one of the strangest athletic contests I’d ever seen.

  “I’ll shoot. I swear I will!” Dan yelled as he struggled to take charge of the situation, much less of his own body.

  “I don’t think so!” Annie shouted at
him. It was like observing two people on a seesaw—as one went down, the other flew up—but it was Annie who was running the show.

  The longer the trampolining went on, though, the more nervous Terry and I became. Out of control or not, there was always the chance that Dan could simply fire the gun in the midst of one of his jumps and hit Annie on her way up or down.

  “Where’s Whitehead?” Terry demanded at the precise moment that the detective finally appeared, along with reinforcements.

  “Freeze!” Detective Whitehead barked, as he and four uniformed officers surrounded Dan, their guns drawn. “Did you hear me? I said, ‘Freeze!’”

  “Freeze?” Dan whined as he continued to jump involuntarily. Boing! Boing! Boing! “How the hell am I supposed to freeze with this kid bouncing me up and down?”

  “Annie!” Terry called out to her. “Let the police handle things from here.”

  “Sure, Dad,” she said. “Just one last jump for Dan, okay?”

  As her father and I looked on, as Detective Whitehead and his officers looked on, Annie propelled herself as high up off the trampoline as she could, reaching out to touch the tree branch and then coming down onto the mat for a big landing—a landing that shot Dan straight up in the air, boosting him so high that the sleeve of his “There’s No Place Like Om” T-shirt got caught on the tree branch and hooked him.

  “Look! He’s stuck up there!” I shrieked with relief as Dan’s gun fell to the ground.

  Terry rushed over to Annie, while the police let Dan twist in the wind, literally, his arms and legs flailing in all directions, his face purple with rage, exasperation, and, very likely, exhaustion.

  Annie climbed off the trampoline to embrace her father. Wanting to give them a private moment together, I strolled over to the tree from which Dan was hanging and peered at him.

  And then, because I couldn’t resist, I cupped my hands around my mouth and called up to him. “Hey, Dan. You’re in a bad space,” I said. “A really bad space.”

  He muttered something unprintable, but I just laughed. Eventually, the cops untangled him from the tree, handcuffed him, and took him away.

  “See what happens when the government is soft on crime?” Annie said, nodding at the departing Dan. “You get repeat offenders back out on the street. This guy told me he’s been in and out of jail five times.”

  I hugged her, stroked her hair, wiped the sweat from her brow. I was so glad she was safe, so glad she had come into my life.

  “You’re very brave and very smart, Annie,” I told her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “It’s funny. You don’t really know you’re brave until you have to be.”

  I smiled. The kid had a way about her.

  Detective Whitehead was in the midst of explaining to us what would happen next in the case when Will emerged from the house, his arm around a healthy but visibly shaken Jean.

  “Where was she?” Terry asked his friend.

  “In a closet,” said Will. “Bound and gagged, just like Mrs. Reid was.”

  “Are you all right?” I asked Jean Singleton, touching her arm lightly. She was as taciturn and unexpressive as her husband, but, like him, she had a quiet dignity.

  “He didn’t hurt me,” she said of Dan. “Mostly, he made me angry. Especially when I realized that he was the one who had brought Will and me such unhappiness.” She glared at Detective Whitehead, who was unapologetic.

  “We had a job to do, that’s all,” he said. “We thought your husband was a guilty man. We pursued our theory. We were wrong. It happens.”

  “I only hope it does not happen to anyone I care about,” said Will, showing his first flash of anger since the ordeal began.

  Detective Whitehead shrugged and said he’d better get back to the police station to file his report. As he was leaving, Amanda trudged out of the house, joining us on the lawn.

  “I never expected all this to take so long,” she complained. “The man who kidnapped me is in police custody, is that correct?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Reid,” Detective Whitehead replied, slipping effortlessly into his unctuous public servant mode. Amazingly, he was showing respect for a woman who didn’t deserve any, while he barely gave Jean Singleton the time of day. “We’ve apprehended the perpetrator now. He’s on his way to the lockup.”

  “Well then, why hasn’t anyone telephoned my husband to pick me up and deliver me to my hotel?” Amanda demanded. “I understand he’s in Sedona, awaiting word of my condition.”

  “We can contact him from my car phone, but I’d be honored to escort you to your hotel,” said the detective. “The question is, which hotel? You were staying at Tranquility, Mrs. Reid, but your husband is booked at L’Auberge de Sedona.”

  “Oh, my,” said Amanda. “That is a dilemma. Which hotel do you think I would prefer, Detective Whitehead, given the trauma I’ve suffered?”

  The detective answered quickly. “I’d go to L’Auberge, since your husband’s there,” he said. “It’s a nice, romantic place—perfect for a reunion.”

  I thought of Steven, of our reunion at L’Auberge, and wondered if I’d ever run into him when I got back to New York. At a Pakistani restaurant, maybe.

  “How’s the food at this L’Auberge?” asked Amanda, speaking of restaurants.

  “Excellent,” said Detective Whitehead, cop-turned-food-critic.

  “Is there a manicurist on staff?” she inquired.

  “I’m not sure, Mrs. Reid,” he admitted.

  Amanda pouted. “There was a divine girl at Tranquility,” she recalled. “She was so skillful I was ready to bring her home with me.” She paused, clearly conflicted. “I’ve decided that we’ll have Mr. Reid move his things over there,” she said finally.

  “Whatever you want, ma’am,” Whitehead bowed.

  Amanda turned her attention to us. To Terry, Annie, Will, Jean, and me. To the people who, essentially, put their lives on the line for her.

  “Well, now,” she said. “It was quite an experience we all shared, wasn’t it?”

  “Quite an experience,” I said.

  “Perhaps I’ll return to Sedona in the years ahead,” she said, “as a visiting politician.” She chuckled, visions of Arianna Huffington dancing in her head, no doubt. “Who knows? The next time you see me, I could be the governor of someplace or other!”

  “Nope,” said Annie. “The next time we see you, you’ll be growing organic vegetables or breeding King Charles spaniels or developing property in Vietnam. You’ll be playing Follow the Leader, like always.”

  Out of the mouths of babes, I thought.

  Amanda was mortified, of course. She demanded that Terry reprimand his daughter for her “insolent remarks.”

  “Try and have a nice life, Amanda,” he said instead and ushered her and Detective Whitehead off his property.

  Chapter Thirty

  Later that night, we celebrated with a chicken and ribs barbecue at Terry’s. The Singletons were there, and Cynthia Kavner and her two daughters, and everybody had a wonderful time, the sort of time you have after you’ve survived a harrowing event and the adrenaline’s still pumping. After dinner, the girls scampered up to Annie’s room, where she regaled them with tales of her heroics. In the living room, the adults traded opinions of the circus Amanda Reid had so cavalierly set in motion, amazed that the whole sorry episode had happened at all. By eleven o’clock, we were bleary-eyed, our jubilation having been replaced by serious fatigue.

  The Singletons were the first to rise from their chairs.

  “Time to go,” Will said, helping his wife up. “My lids are heavy.”

  “You’ll be here for a few more days, won’t you, Crystal?” asked Jean as we said goodnight.

  I hesitated. Terry and I hadn’t had any further discussions of when I would leave Sedona or if I would leave. As a result, I didn’t know how to answer Jean’s question, particularly with Terry standing beside me. My flight back to JFK, the return portion of my round-trip ticket, was scheduled for Thursda
y, four days away. I was fairly sure I’d be on it, but I hadn’t come out and said as much, not in so many words.

  “A few more days,” I replied finally. “I hope we’ll see each other again, Jean.”

  “I’d like that,” she said, shaking my hand warmly.

  “The same goes for me,” Will added. “You supported me through my trouble, Crystal. I am grateful.”

  I smiled, a lighthearted thought crossing my mind. “How grateful?” I baited him.

  “Very grateful,” he said.

  “Grateful enough to cleanse my aura?” Well, that was one of the reasons I’d come to Sedona, wasn’t it? Because Rona had told me mine was dirty? I had to have it cleansed before I left town—and I wasn’t about to place it in the hands of a shyster like Dan, either. Will Singleton was the only one I could trust with such matters. “If you’re not too tired, that is,” I said.

  I glanced at Terry and Jean and Cynthia, to get a sense of whether my request was kosher under the circumstances. For all I knew, you didn’t invite someone over for dinner and then ask the person to cleanse your aura. Maybe it was considered a social gaffe, like asking the doctor you meet at a party for free medical advice. But they indicated that I was on solid ground, etiquette-wise.

  “I am not too tired. I am honored to do the cleansing,” said Will. “Or, as we Native Americans call it, the ‘smudging.’ It would be best if you stepped outside with me, Crystal. We will do the smudging there, just the two of us.”

  I looked at the others again. “Here goes,” I said, and followed Will out of the house, wishing Rona could see me now.

  We walked to his car. When we got to the Pontiac, Will opened the door on the driver’s side and reached down onto the floor for his black bag. He retrieved it and pulled out what appeared to be a long, cylinder-shaped object.

  “It is sage and juniper, rolled together and tied with colorful thread,” Will explained. He fished around in the black bag for a matchbook. “Now I will light the ends of the sage.”

  He lit the match and held it against the leaves, the tips of which quickly blackened and began to smoke. The aroma was pungent and sweet and reminded me of my college years, those wild and crazy days when smoke from a different type of leaf filled the dormitories on a regular basis.