Bernie straightened up. “Okay. There’s only one thing left to do.”
“Commit hara-kiri?” Libby asked.
Bernie snorted. “No, Libby. I was thinking more along the line of using the phone. You know, that thing that’s replaced smoke signals. Give me yours, and I’ll call Amber and tell her to prep the veggies and the salad and see if, worst comes to worst, she and Googie can run everything down to the Blitmans, after which I’ll call Brandon and have him come and get us out of here.”
“Why can’t we use yours?” Libby demanded. As the words came out of her mouth, her guts started to twist, because of course she knew why they couldn’t use Bernie’s phone. She’d just conveniently forgotten about that small detail for a moment.
“Because it’s in the van, drying out, remember?”
“I forgot,” Libby lied. Then she added, “You’re not going to like this.” Which had to be the most massive understatement she’d ever uttered.
“I’m not going to like what?” Bernie asked impatiently. All she wanted to do was call the shop and then get in contact with Brandon, or Marvin, if she had to, and get out of here. This was just a blip, she told herself. No big deal. They’d be down on the ground in no time at all.
Libby had the grace to lower her voice. “I left mine in the bathroom at home.”
Bernie stared at her. She didn’t want to believe what she was hearing. “What did you just say?”
Libby repeated herself. “I said I left my phone in the bathroom at home.”
“Tell me what you’re saying isn’t true,” Bernie pleaded.
“It’s true, all right,” Libby replied, giving a sickly little grin. “I guess we can kiss our business good-bye,” she said mournfully.
“The Blitmans will understand,” Bernie said, even though she thought that there was a good chance that they wouldn’t, considering this was a dinner in honor of their parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary.
“No they won’t,” Libby retorted. “I certainly wouldn’t, and neither would you.” She bit her lip. “I just don’t understand how the door got stuck,” she said, saying what Bernie had been thinking. “There was nothing for it to get stuck on.”
“Not that I saw,” Bernie said.
“So maybe it’s not stuck. Maybe it’s locked.”
“That would be bad on several different levels,” Bernie observed as Libby turned around and studied the door.
“Yes, it would,” Libby agreed, brushing a drop of rain off her nose. She could see a few small wet spots on the roof.
“On the other hand, there’s no sense leaping to conclusions,” Bernie said. “Maybe the door really is stuck. Maybe that’s why William Moran didn’t want us up here. Maybe he was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get back down, and he didn’t want to call attention to the fact that the door needed to be fixed.”
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” Libby said. “Give me one of your credit cards.”
“Any particular one?”
“Somehow, I don’t think the door is going to care,” Libby informed her.
“Fine. Just asking. No need to get snippy,” Bernie said as she reached in her tote, took her MasterCard out of her wallet, and handed it to Libby, who slipped it in the space between the door and the frame and slid it up to the lock. The card wouldn’t go any farther.
“Yup, the door is definitely locked,” Libby said after she tried to move the card by the lock a couple of more times.
“The lock is a dead bolt,” Bernie said, apropos of nothing, as she visualized the mechanism.
“Who cares what kind of lock it is?” Libby cried. “Lock, smlock. The result is the same.”
Bernie nibbled at her cuticle. She really didn’t want to believe this. “If it’s true . . .”
“It’s true.”
“Then the question becomes, who did this and why? This was not an accident. This was deliberate. Someone knew we were going upstairs, waited until we got up on the roof, and locked us up here.”
“Gus Moran knew we were coming up here.”
“He didn’t really. We didn’t say we were.”
“He could have heard our footsteps.”
“Now, that’s stretching it,” Bernie said, having rethought her original statement. “The door probably malfunctioned. You heard what Gus Moran said.”
“It’s a pretty convenient malfunction, if you ask me,” Libby retorted.
“Why would Moran do something like that?” Bernie asked.
“Because he’s what Penny said he was.”
Bernie shook her head. “I just don’t buy it.” Although, really, at this point she didn’t know what to think. Then a bolt of lightning split the sky, and she forgot about wondering who had put them in this situation and started concentrating on how to get out of it.
A moment later she and Libby heard a loud boom. Thunder. The storm was announcing its arrival. As Bernie looked around, she realized it had gotten very quiet all of a sudden. She couldn’t hear the crows cawing or the birds singing. So this was what the expression “the calm before the storm” meant. She’d thought the expression was a metaphor, but it wasn’t. It was the literal truth, and while she was thinking about that truth, another truth occurred to her. She realized that the person she wanted to kill right now was her sister.
Chapter 24
The wind was getting stronger. Libby watched the treetops bending up and down as another streak of lightning cleaved the sky. The storm was almost on top of them. It would be beautiful if they were indoors, Libby decided. Sadly, they weren’t. It was only a matter of minutes before they were going to be drenched to the skin. She was about to say something to that effect to Bernie when she caught the look in her sister’s eye.
“Well, how was I supposed to know we’d get locked on the roof?” Libby demanded before Bernie could say anything to her. “Or that you’d drop your phone in a puddle?” Both of which, she thought, were valid points. She couldn’t have known. After all, she wasn’t gifted with ESP.
“Why don’t you ever have your phone on you?” Bernie countered.
“Duh. Because you always have yours with you,” Libby told her. Which was also true.
Bernie looked daggers at her. “You could have said something, Libby.”
“You didn’t ask, Bernie.”
Bernie threw her hands up in the air. “I give up. There’s no talking to you when you get this way.”
Libby could feel her face flushing. “All I’m saying is that this is not my fault. And, anyway, having my phone up here wouldn’t make any difference. We’d still be up here.”
“Yes, we would be,” Bernie agreed, working very hard not to call her sister a moron. “That’s true. But at least we wouldn’t be marooned up here. At least, we could have called Brandon or Marvin and had them come get us. Now we have to figure out how to get out of here by ourselves.”
“I know,” Libby said, looking utterly woebegone. “I’m sorry.”
Looking at the expression on Libby’s face made Bernie feel guilty. She reached over and gave Libby a quick hug, her anger vanishing as quickly as it had come. “It’s okay.”
“Too bad we don’t have a parachute,” Libby observed, taking a step back.
“Isn’t it, though?” Bernie said. “But in lieu of that . . .” And she started going through the possibilities. “We could rappel down to the ground.”
“Maybe you could, but I can’t,” Libby said. Just the thought of it induced stomach churning. “Anyway, we don’t have a rope.”
“We could jump,” Bernie suggested. “Hopefully, we’d land in the bushes. Two stories isn’t that high.”
Libby raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t that low, either. And we could break our legs—if we’re lucky. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“I read somewhere that cats can jump from seven stories and land on their feet,” Bernie replied.
“Need I point out we’re not felines,” Libby replied. “But if you want to try, be my guest.”
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br /> “It’s too bad Cindy isn’t with us,” Bernie mused. “We could attach a message to her collar asking for help.”
“And throw her off the roof?”
“No. Of course not,” Bernie quickly replied. “Never. I was just going through hypothetical possibilities. Anyway, the cats survived only if they fell out of windows seven stories or higher. Any lower and they didn’t have time to right themselves.”
“Michelle would do something like that,” Libby noted, not having forgotten or forgiven her dad’s fiancée for letting their cat out of their flat.
“Yes, she would,” Bernie agreed. “But then, Michelle wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.” She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Okay, we’ll just yell to attract attention. Someone’s bound to hear us.”
“It might be a while.” Libby gestured at the empty parking lot. “Most everyone’s at work.” She consulted her watch. “And it’s going to be a good two hours before people start coming home.”
“I was thinking of the people in the building,” Bernie said.
Libby shook her head. “Probably not. Mrs. Randall is a little deaf, and as for Gus Moran . . . somehow or other, I don’t think he’s going to hear us . . . even if he does.”
Bernie didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel like arguing the point. “There may be other people here. We don’t know that there aren’t.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try,” Libby allowed.
So they did. Five minutes later, their throats hoarse from screaming, they took a brief break. Then they tried again. The result was the same, so they quit.
“I don’t think we can compete with the thunder,” Bernie said after a minute of waiting to see if anyone would appear. No one did. She clutched her raincoat more tightly around her while she pondered what to do next. In truth, she was running out of ideas. “Last thoughts. We could try to throw a brick through Mrs. Randall’s window.”
“And give her a heart attack?” Libby said. “I think not. Anyway, that would mean one of us would have to lean all the way over the wall while the other person hung on to them by their legs so that they could throw the brick. The person throwing the brick would be suspended upside down. Who do you want to be? The person throwing the brick or the person holding the person who’s throwing the brick? Frankly, I don’t think I’d like to be, either.”
“Okay. Scratch that,” Bernie conceded, rethinking the practicality of her last idea. “My last thought. We can jump up and down. Maybe the noise and vibrations will attract the attention of someone on the top floor.”
“This is a pretty solidly built building,” Libby pointed out.
“At least let’s try,” Bernie urged. “Anyway, the exercise will keep us warm.”
“Works for me,” Libby said as a clap of thunder sounded directly overhead. A flash of lightning turned the sky white. Lord preserve me, she prayed as she started jumping up and down around where she figured Mrs. Randall’s apartment was. Two minutes later she stopped. “I feel like a moron,” she told Bernie. “And my ankles hurt.”
“But you are warmer,” Bernie said, trying to look on the bright side of things.
“Yeah, I’m sweating,” Libby replied. “Which means my sweat will freeze, and I’ll be even colder than I was before.”
“You’re always so negative,” Bernie replied.
“No. I’m realistic.” Libby went and huddled by the doorway. At least that would provide a minimum amount of shelter from what was to come. “Let me tell you—it’s going to be a long two hours up here, especially if we’re going to be out in the freezing rain. By that point, we’re going to be Popsicles. We’ll probably be suffering from hypothermia.”
“Come on,” Bernie said, trying to jolly her sister along. “So you’ll get wet. So what? It’s not as if we’re marooned at the North Pole.”
“Maybe that’s where we’ll have to live since we will have lost our business. The Blitmans will tell everyone what happened, and no one will want to hire us.”
“Let’s not overstate,” Bernie told her. “I think we have enough drama to deal with at the moment, don’t you?” Another zigzag of lightning lit up the sky, interrupting Bernie and making the air smell like their toaster had when it had shorted out. “But on the other hand,” Bernie said as she realized that the strikes were now too close for comfort and the roof didn’t have a lightning rod, “this might not be the best place to be in a lightning storm.”
“No kidding,” Libby said as she huddled against the door.
“You do know what that door you’re leaning up against is made of, don’t you?” Bernie asked her. “I’d move away from it if I were you.”
Libby sighed. Oh well. She guessed it was better to get wet than fried. As she was trying to figure out where she could go, she turned and saw what had dug into her back. An idea began to form. This could work, she thought as she reached out and tapped her sister on the shoulder.
“I think I may have a way to get us out of here,” Libby told her.
Chapter 25
“You want to take the door off the hinges?” Bernie asked after she’d listened to what Libby had to say.
Her sister nodded. “How hard could it be?”
“Not hard at all if you have the right tools,” Bernie said. She vaguely remembered watching a YouTube video on the subject with Brandon. “Which we don’t.”
“Maybe we can improvise,” Libby said.
“I sure hope so,” Bernie told her as she went over and inspected the door.
It was connected to the door frame by three large hinges, and Bernie knew enough about the hinge mechanism to know that they’d have to take all the hinges off in order to remove the door. Bernie extended her hand and tried to screw off the ball that was holding in the bolt on the middle hinge, but she couldn’t get the dratted thing to budge. Then she took a closer look and realized that the ball wasn’t threaded, so it wouldn’t twist off. You had to pry it off.
“So what do you think?” Libby asked as she looked over Bernie’s shoulder. “Can we do it?”
“I think we have a shot,” Bernie replied as she thought about what she was going to need to get the job done. “Get me one of the bricks we saw,” she instructed Libby as she took her metal nail file out of her tote.
“What do you need it for?” Libby asked.
“You’ll see,” Bernie told her. While she waited for Libby to come back, she placed the end of the file underneath the ball—she was sure it had another name, but she didn’t know what it was—that was holding the bolt on the hinge. A moment later, Libby was back with the brick. Bernie took it, placed it underneath the file, said a silent prayer, and began to tap the file with the brick, applying even pressure all the way around.
Libby leaned in closer to watch, her hair brushing Bernie’s cheek. “Do you think that’s going to work?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Bernie replied as she continued tapping the nail file with the brick.
“Why don’t you hit it harder?” Libby asked.
“Because I don’t want to damage the file. Now, could you give me room to work?”
“Sorry,” Libby murmured, taking a few steps back.
Bernie nodded and returned to her task. After a minute, she could feel the metal ball moving a miniscule amount. Little by little, it began to come up. Then Bernie slid the nail file into the quarter-inch space she’d made and began levering the ball up. A couple of moments later, it came off with a pop and landed on the rooftop.
“Excellent,” Libby observed.
“Yeah.” Bernie pointed to the bolt holding the two hinge plates together. “Now all we have to do is get that thing out of there, and we’ll be good to go.” She tried using the point of her nail file to work the bolt up and out, but the file was too wide. She needed something long and thin.
“Now what?” Libby asked.
“A screwdriver would be handy,” Bernie said. “Too bad we don’t have one.”
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�Would a pen work?” Libby asked.
“Do you have one?” Bernie asked.
“No, I don’t. I was hoping you did.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Libby looked around. There had to be something they could use. Then she had it. Bernie’s stilettos. “We can use those,” she said, pointing to Bernie’s shoes.
Bernie took a step back and crossed her hands over her heart. “You’re kidding, right?”
She loved her shoes. They were her new favorite thing. They made her smile every time she put them on. She’d stalked them online for two months, finally paying four hundred dollars for them on sale, which was one hundred dollars more than she wanted to, and they were worth every cent. She loved them to death—especially the line of pink leather bows down the center of the shoe.
“No, I’m not,” Libby said. “Those heels are long enough and skinny enough to get into the opening and push the bolt up.”
Bernie slipped out of her stilettos and inspected their heels. She had to admit that Libby was right. Unfortunately.
“Would you rather be stuck up here?” Libby demanded.
“I guess not,” Bernie allowed. “My feet are freezing.”
“The faster we get the door open, the faster you can get your shoes back on.”
Bernie sighed. Maybe Pete the Shoemaker could fix them, and if he couldn’t, there had to be someone down in the city who could. “Fine. But the business is paying the repair bill.”
“Agreed,” Libby said. At that point she would have given away her firstborn—if she had a firstborn—to get out of there.
“And I don’t want to hear another word about how impractical my shoes are, like, ever,” Bernie told Libby.
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“And I agreed.”
Bernie sighed. There was nothing for it. It was time to get to work. “Forgive me,” she murmured to her shoe as she turned it upside down, placed the heel underneath the bolt, and pushed up. At first the bolt didn’t move, but after a few more pushes, it did. When it was three inches above the hinge plate, Bernie grabbed it and pulled.
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