Reed Ferguson 1-3

by Renee Pawlish

  “Uh Reed…” Cal’s voice had a quiver in it.

  “No wait, I’m on a roll here.” I rummaged through more stuff. “So the guy, or woman, whoever, comes in here at odd times, that’s why the neighbor saw lights and heard noises. Whoever knew about this had to get things cleared out in a hurry because the house is on the market to sell. Once the new owners move in, there’s no chance of getting to the stuff. Not without a lot more hassle.”

  “Reed.”

  “I've got more work to do, though. I have to find out who Ned told about the collection…” I turned around and froze.

  Cal was standing with his arms over his head, the classical “I’m being held up” stance. Even in the muted light I could see the fear etched on his face. Behind him was the house inspector that I’d seen leaving by the back door a few days earlier. I couldn’t see a gun, but I knew he had one rammed into Cal’s back.

  “Well, well, well.” The inspector pushed Cal toward me. “Looks like the cat is out of the bag.”

  Cal stumbled into me. As I caught him, I set the camera onto a shelf. Cal shook uncontrollably.

  “Give me the flashlight.” The inspector held out his hand. “Slowly. You don’t want to make me nervous.”

  I carefully gave it to him. I waited for him to ask about the camera, but he didn't. In the dimness, he must not have seen me holding it. I hoped it was still recording, but I didn't want to glance at it to find out.

  “I told you we should’ve left,” Cal whispered.

  “You think you’re pretty smart, figuring this all out,” the guy sneered, shining the light in our faces. He had done something to his hair. It was darker. I squinted against the glare, aware of his cold brown eyes.

  “A little late to be doing inspections, don’t you think?” I asked in an even tone.

  “Inspections?” A puzzled expression formed on his hard features. “Oh yeah, the other day.” He shrugged. “You assumed I was an inspector when I left the house, so I went along with it. You know, if you act like you belong, no one will question you.”

  I’d aspired to that philosophy many a time myself, but it had never bit me in the butt like it was now – my ass seems to get a lot of the brunt of my detective work.

  “Okay, you’re not an inspector. Then who are you?” He swung the gun toward me. I swallowed what felt like a sock in my throat.

  “You don’t have this all figured out? You were on a roll there, explaining everything to your pal, I might as well let you finish the story. I’ll just wait for the ending. Your ending.”

  Cal shuddered. “Where’s your gun?” he hissed to me.

  The man tensed.

  “At the office, locked in the closet,” I whispered back.

  The guy relaxed and a smile crept across his face. He snickered.

  “Good place for it,” Cal said, still talking in an undertone.

  “Well,” I shrugged. Now was not the time to get into my lack of gun prowess.

  “I should never have let you talk me into this,” Cal muttered. “I like staying in my house. I don’t need to go anywhere. I’m not like you. I don’t need adventure in my life.”

  “Shut up,” the fake inspector said, raising the gun higher. Still pointed at me.

  “I can work, do everything in the safety of my own home,” Cal continued, oblivious to the warning. His voice rose. “But no-o-o-o-! You had to have help, had to have me come down here. Now look at us.”

  “Shut up!” the inspector and I yelled at the same time.

  Cal blanched, then opened his mouth. Nothing came out, so he clamped his jaw shut, crossed his arms, and alternated between glaring at me and our captor.

  “Let me handle this,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. I silently cursed the fact that we’d broken into the house. If the police came – and how would they since neither Cal nor I were in a position to call them – how would we explain being down here in the first place?

  “Uh- huh,” Cal murmured back. “You’re handling it really well.”

  Little veins were popping out of our captor’s forehead, and he barely controlled his rage. “I told you to be quiet.” He spoke each word carefully, taking a step forward and waving the gun at Cal, who began sweating profusely.

  “You’re a friend of Ned’s, right?” I asked, trying to diffuse some of the guy’s anger.

  He stared at Cal, daring a confrontation, but Cal was too smart, or scared, to move.

  “Finishing the story?” he finally said to me. The gun dropped a little, still menacingly aimed at us, but not as aggressively. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, I’ll play along. I knew Ned.”

  “You’re…” I said, scrambling to find the name, “Dominic Saunders. The second buyer for this house.”

  The surprised look told me I was right.

  “It's Dom,” he said. “How’d you figure that out?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I said. “You’re the only one, other than Ned, who stands to benefit from Garrett Owens losing the contract on this house.”

  “Who?” He genuinely appeared to not to know the name.

  “Garrett Owens,” I said. “He lives in the same apartment complex that you did, Mountain View Apartments, and he was the first buyer for this house.”

  “Never heard of him,” Dom said.

  “It was just coincidence that two buyers for the same house lived in the same apartment complex?”

  Dom shrugged. “Guess so.” But we both knew he was lying. He locked eyes with me. “You know, you’re smarter than you look.”

  Cal made a sound between a cough and a laugh.

  “Thanks,” I said automatically, not sure if Dom meant to compliment or insult me.

  “I should’ve finished you off when I had the chance.”

  I didn’t like the edge in his voice. My hands grew damp with sweat. “At the office,” I said, realization dawning on me. “You’re the one who attacked me.”

  “You were getting too close. I couldn’t have you screwing things up.” He paused. “Like you are.”

  “How did you know who I was, or where to find me?”

  “Do you remember when you were at that movie shop the other day? I saw you in the back.”

  It had only been a little over a week ago, but it seemed like forever.

  “I came in with some stuff I took from here, and I went to the old man to appraise it. While we were talking, I saw the poster you were looking at. The Maltese Falcon. Hell, I didn’t even know about the movie before I saw this stuff, but Ned researched all that crap. And I could tell by the old wooden frame that Ned had stolen it from here, because it's like all the others from the collection. I’d told Ned to leave everything here until we got ready to sell it, but he wouldn’t listen. And then here’s this guy,” he gestured with the gun at me, “you – the same guy I’d caught snooping around this house, with Ned’s poster at that shop. I had to know how you got your hands on the thing. At first I told myself you might be someone who knew about Frank Gray. No big deal. But that didn’t explain how you got the poster. You had to be connected with Ned somehow. So I followed you.” He let out a gruff laugh. “Man, was I surprised when I found out you were a detective. Just my luck. I saw Ned's brother with you, so I figured you were looking into Ned’s death. Once I saw you around here, I knew I had to get rid of you before you ruined things.”

  “You attacked Henri,” I guessed again.

  “The old French guy? He called me and accused me of having a stolen Oscar,” Dom said, clearly irritated. “I thought since it was damaged, it would be worthless. How the nutty old guy knew I’d stolen the thing…” his voice trailed off.

  “So you tried to get rid of him.” I felt fury competing with my fright.

  Dom nodded. “He was going to call the police. Too bad. He really knew his stuff.”

  “And you killed Ned, too.” Cal spoke with an anger I hadn’t heard before. Fear was doing some strange things to the man.

 
; “Getting rid of Ned was easy,” Dom grunted. “He was such a wimp. Whining about how much his life sucked. How he missed that bitch of an ex-wife. Why someone would weep and moan about a selfish little tramp like that?”

  “You’ve known Ned for a long time,” I said, trying to piece everything together, at the same time trying to find something in the room that might help us escape.

  “A few years. Long enough to know that he was better off without Samantha.” Dom smirked. “C’mon, if she would sleep with me while she was married to him, what kind of a wife was she?”

  “What kind of a friend were you?” Cal spat out.

  “I never said I was Ned’s friend,” Dom said, eerily calm. “I said I knew him. I knew Samantha better.” He leered at some passionate memory of Samantha. “Man, she was easy. Problem was, she thought she’d fallen in love with me. Yeah, right. Way too high maintenance for me, always going on about how Ned screwed her over, how he still had stuff of hers, stuff that meant something. Man, I got tired of that.”

  “How did you meet Ned?” I asked.

  “He’d called me for electrical work, originally on his house – that’s how I met Samantha – then he referred others to me. Then he had me work at some of the houses he had for sale, like this one. And man, did he brag about this place. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut about all this memorabilia.” Dom chewed on his lip thoughtfully. “You know, I wondered why he would tell me about this. I think he knew about Samantha and me, because he kept saying that she’d soon see things differently, that he had a way to make some big bucks. I kept asking Ned what he'd found, and he finally showed me this room. Said he discovered it, but not until after he had a buyer for the home. He needed to get the buyer out of the way, and he offered to share the memorabilia with me if I'd help him.”

  “Why not steal the stuff yourself? Why bother working with Ned?” I asked. Keep him talking.

  “Ned steal? You’re joking.” A crooked smile spread across Dom’s face. “Ned wasn’t about to go that far. No, he figured he could fudge things and get the buyer to lose the contract, and then I could buy the place. Once I owned it, we could clear out this room, and then put the house back on the market. He said he would’ve bought it himself, but he didn’t have the money, and it would look suspicious.”

  “That’s a lot of work.”

  The smile widened. He waved his arm in an arc. “This is a lot of stuff. And worth a lot of money.”

  “But you didn’t plan on your contract falling through,” I said.

  His brown eyes narrowed. “No, I didn’t. Neither did Ned. We talked about what to do, and I said I was going to steal the stuff out of the house, the hell with his plan. I had the combination to the lock box, so I let myself in. But he came by and found me here. We fought.” Dom shook his head in disgust. “Ned yelled and hollered at me.” I thought about the old man across the street hearing the screams. “I backed off and let him think he’d won. The idiot wanted to try and find another buyer who would go along. Like we could chance that. Besides, then we’d have to split things three ways.”

  “And since you weren’t really Ned’s friend, he was expendable,” I continued to prod him, buying time until I could formulate a plan of escape. Given our circumstances, I was going to need a lot of time.

  “You think I’m so stupid I would let him get more people involved? Ned was a fool for telling me about all this.”

  “How’d you do it?” I asked. I was fighting a feeling of despair because I didn’t see any way out. Dom blocked the doorway, and there was no other exit. Our goose was cooked.

  “He came over to discuss yet another plan to steal this stuff and I got him drunk. Spiked a few drinks with some Seconal. I used his car and drove us up into the mountains. He slept the whole way up to the trail head. I talked him into the ride, but he was so wasted I don’t think he really knew where he was.” Dom stopped as if remembering. “The hardest part was helping him keep his balance. He must’ve fallen a dozen times. But I got him to that side trail and pushed him, right over the edge.”

  It was not a pretty thought. Cal shuddered. I winced.

  “I rode on back to the city. Took a while, but I like to ride.”

  “And it cleared the way for you to steal all this memorabilia,” I said.

  Dominic beamed at his resourcefulness. “Well, enough story time,” he said, now all business. “It’s time to take care of you two, and get the rest of this stuff out of here.”

  “What are you going to do to us?”

  “An accident.” Dom thought about this. “Two guys find this great hiding place, but get trapped down here. Buried alive.”

  I heard Cal swallow. Or maybe I heard myself.

  Dom yanked some rope from his back pocket. “What I want to know is how you figured it out,” he said to me.

  “The Oscar,” I said. “Let me show you what I mean.” I carefully moved to the shelf where the two treasured statuettes sat, waiting for the sound of Dom’s gun to explode with each step I took. “Right here,” I said, picking up the Best Supporting Oscar. “You see that?” I held the Oscar up, taking a few steps toward Dom. He moved over and peered down where my finger was resting on the base of the statue.

  “What?”

  “This.”

  I held it up to show Dom something, but instead swung the little gold man squarely at his face. It happened so fast, and unexpectedly, that Dom didn’t have time to move. The marble base caught him right on the bridge of his nose.

  His eyes widened in surprise and pain. The gun exploded, and the room filled with the echo of the blast. At the same time I heard a scream that I wasn’t sure came from Dom, Cal, or me. It might have been all of us.

  The room reeled in eerie shadows as the flashlight hit the floor with a metallic clunk. The room went completely dark.

  “Reed!” Cal shouted from my left.

  Close to my feet I heard moaning and cursing. “You broke my nose,” Dom groaned nearby.

  I fell to my knees, pawing around on the floor, searching for the flashlight and the gun. At the same time I was aware of my sore ribs screaming at me.

  A cool piece of metal suddenly connected with my cheek. I heard a click.

  “Move and I’ll kill you,” Dom hissed at me.

  I froze, knowing that his anger and pain mixed into a dangerous cocktail.

  “Tell your friend to find the flashlight, and if he does anything crazy, you get a bullet right in the face.”

  I had an absurdly comical urge to ask why I should tell Cal something that he had just heard Dom say, but resisted. Fear was doing funny things to me.

  Something like the sound of a whip disturbed the air.

  Thunk!

  In a split instance, I realized a number of things. The cool touch of the metal left my face. At the same time, a thump broke the quiet, and I presumed that Dom had fallen to the floor. Then I comprehended that one side of my face, not Dom’s, was on the floor, and that the left side of my head felt like a hammer had pounded on it.

  I heard the same funny whistling noise in the air and another thump.

  “Ugh,” Dom moaned. Another thump.

  Then silence.

  “Reed?” Cal whispered.

  “Where are you?” I was still immobile.

  “Hold on.”

  Cal scooted around, making shuffling noises as he scoured his hands across the floor.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  A burst of light sprang out of the darkness, wobbling crazily. I let my eyes adjust.

  Cal was on his knees by the door, the flashlight in one shaky hand, and a broken gold statue in the other. Dom was lying on the floor between us, face down, a tiny rivulet of blood running down his right temple.

  “Is he dead?” Cal murmured.

  “I don’t know.” I pulled myself up and frantically scanned the room. The gun was half-under one of the metal shelves. I snatched it up and aimed it at Dom’s inert body.

  “Check him,” I said.
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  “You check him,” Cal retorted.

  “I’ve got to keep him covered. Unless you want the gun.” I touched my head while we talked. A large lump had formed above my ear. Beaned on the head twice in one case.

  Cal muttered threats at me under his breath, but eased forward and touched a finger to Dom’s neck. “There’s a pulse.” He sat back and sighed. “Guess I knocked him out cold.”

  “Take that rope and tie him up,” I ordered.

  This time Cal worked feverishly. He tossed me the flashlight and set to work with Dom’s own rope, trussing him up before he regained consciousness.

  “That was a good shot,” I said after Cal finished. I picked up the damaged Oscar. “Let me ask you, how did you know who you were hitting? I mean, since you couldn’t see anything.”

  “It was dark,” Cal said slowly.

  “Uh-huh,” I prompted him to continue.

  “I heard his voice.”

  “Yes?”

  “And I swung at it.”

  “And hit me.”

  “I swung again and hit him.”

  “I see,” I said. “But how did you know that, even if you did hit him first, that his finger wouldn’t accidentally pull the trigger?”

  Cal shrugged. “I, uh…”

  “I could’ve been killed!”

  “I thought you were him.”

  “Do I sound like him?”

  Cal stared at me. “If I didn’t do it, we probably both would’ve been killed.”

  I burst into laughter, feeling the adrenaline waste out of my body. “Touché. A headache is worth it.”

  “We’d better call the police.” Cal grabbed his cell phone.

  “Uh,” I hesitated. “First, how are you going to get a signal down here? Second, if you call the police, Watson, how are you going to explain why we’re here?”

  Cal groaned. “So what do we do?”

  I contemplated the still form at our feet. “Let’s get out of here, and we’ll call the police later and tell them about Dom.”

  “An anonymous phone call.”

  I nodded. “Not that creative, but it’ll do.”