The de Vere Deception (David Thorne Mysteries Book 1)

by Loy Ray Clemons

  As Kelly took his arm, Thorne remembered the foul breath of the young man. “Hello, Sweet breath. Beat up any innocent bystanders lately?”

  Kelly smirked and said sourly, “Only those who need it.”

  Inside the van, Thorne sat between the two men, turning his head to avoid the stench of Kelly’s breath. He took out the two badges and handed them to Brent. “All right, I’ve brought you the badges. Now what?

  Brent said, “We wish to return with you and get a few of the documents you have on display. I assume you’re authorized to take them from the castle?”

  Thorne didn’t answer. Then he said, “Another thing, how do I know you have Gweneth Bada?”

  “I’ll take your silence as a yes—and yes, we do have Miss Bada. You just have to trust us, unless you want to take a chance on her life.”

  Thorne said, “All right, I’ll take you to the castle and get the documents. We leave together, I assume?”

  ”Correct. You know, you’re smart. You already know how it’s supposed to work.”

  Kelly took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it. “All right, this is what we want,” he whispered to Thorne. “Get one of your people to help you with the glass tops and put all of the documents listed here, in your briefcases. And remember, that cute little girl we got sure would like to see you again—Ha Ha.” Kelly laughed at his little inside joke.“

  “What about Miss Bada? When do I get her back?”

  Brent said, “Soon enough. Let’s take it one step at a time.”

  The young man at the desk smiled as Thorne came through the front door, The two men arrived a few minutes later. “May I please have your names and badge numbers?” he asked. Both men handed their badges to him and waited.

  He checked the list of authorized visitors against their badges. “Thank you, Mr. Jones, Mr. Baker,” he said as the two men went through the door to the Great Hall.

  Brent and Kelly strolled around casually, nodding and smiling at the others as they pretended to be examining the documents. Kelly followed closely as Thorne and an assistant picked out the documents listed on the sheet of paper furnished by Kelly.

  After replacing the glass panels, Thorne organized all of the documents neatly into various stacks on his desk and placed them in separate plastic folders. He then retrieved two large briefcases from under his desk and loaded the documents into them.

  Brent and Kelly watched Thorne from across the room as he loaded the briefcases. Neither paid attention as Thorne put lip salve on his lips, and then with his hands under the desk, slathered the salve on both wrists.

  He nodded to the young man at the desk as he carried the two briefcases through the doors and into the Foyer. “I’ll be out for the rest of the day,” he said as he went out the front doors into the courtyard. Brent and Kelly came out a few minutes later, and the three walked slowly out the main gate to the waiting van.

  Chapter 83

  When they reached the van, Kelly pushed Thorne up against the side, away from the view of those entering the castle. “Hands behind your back,” he barked.

  Brent took the briefcases from Thorne and moved behind Kelly. He blocked the view of anyone passing by as Kelly wrapped four turns of duct tape around Thorne’s wrists. Thorne fidgeted as the tape was wrapped around his wrists He knew if he was to have any chance of getting loose, he would need a little slack in his bindings to go with the lip balm he had smeared on his wrists.

  Kelly backhanded him across the face. “Keep still.”

  Brent loaded the two briefcases in the rear of the van and pushed Thorne toward the passenger’s door.

  The three sat in the front seat with Thorne in the middle. As Kelly pulled out of the parking lot, Brent put a strip of tape across Thorne’s eyes and pulled down the cap they had placed on his head. After ordering Thorne to drop his head as if he were asleep, Brent said, “Let’s go to the safe house. Be sure to take the back road.”

  Inside the safe house, Brent ripped the tape from Thorne’s eyes and motioned with the automatic pistol. “Sit in that chair.”

  “I’ve got to go to the toilet,” Thorne said.

  Kelly took a folding knife from his pocket and cut the tape from his wrists. Brent motioned in the direction of the back room. “Come with me.”

  As Thorne passed through the narrow hallway, he glanced into the bedroom and saw Gweneth in the wheelchair. Her head drooped, and she was still.

  “Gwen!” he said.

  She raised her head slowly and stared into the distance. “David? Is that you?”

  “Don’t worry, Gwen, everything is going to be all right.”

  Brent said, “Hurry it up. I’ll be right outside the door.”

  Inside the small windowless bathroom, Thorne looked for what he might use—a towel bar or curtain rod. Nothing. After he finished, he washed his hands in the dirty sink and dried them on his shirt. He removed the tube of lip balm from his pocket and rubbed it on his wrists.

  Back in the kitchen, Brent motioned with the pistol. “Hands behind your back,” he said as he replaced the strip of tape over Thorne’s eyes.

  As Kelly wrapped his wrists with the duct tape, he said, “Hold your hands still. Stop moving around.” The big man pushed him into a small chair. He put his mouth close to his ear and said, “The sooner you accept what you’re getting, the better off you’ll be.” Thorne’s upper body was encircled with five or six wraps of duct tape, then his ankles were wrapped. Two short strips of tape were added over his eyes. A wad of tissue paper was stuffed into his mouth before a strip of tape was placed over it.

  Kelly looked in Brent’s direction. “Now what?”

  Brent said nothing, but went into the back room where Gweneth was bound in her wheelchair. He smiled benignly and said softly, “Don’t worry, dear, we’re not going to hurt you. Just remain calm.” He gave her another injection and returned to the front room.

  “Check that back door again,” he ordered. “Make sure it’s locked.”

  Kelly tried the knob on the door. ”I guess you know what you’re doing, but I thought we were going to—”

  Brent frowned and shook his head. “I’ll fill you in later,” he said as he took the packet with syringe from his pocket. He injected the drug into Thorne’s upper arm and massaged the spot where he’d punctured the skin.

  “Let’s go,” Brent said to the perplexed Kelly.

  As they went to the front door, Kelly stopped Brent and asked, “Do you want to fill me in now on what’s going on? I thought we were supposed to get rid of Thorne. Take him out and—”

  “All in good time. That’s not your concern. He’ll be out for at least an hour. I didn’t give him a heavy dose because I’ll need to move him around later, when I finish the job.”

  Kelly said, “Look, I’m involved in this, too. He’s seen my face. All those people at the castle saw my face. How are you going to do it? I thought we were going to take him out and make him disappear. I need to know what you’re going to do.”

  Brent said patiently, “I can tell you this. It’s just as easy to give two people a heart attack as it is to put them to sleep. Do you understand? They’ll both be found on a cot in the back room and— well, you get the picture, don’t you? And besides, we may need him later after everything else is complete.

  “All right,” Kelly said in exasperation, “I just need to get up to speed on this.”

  A smile crossed Brent’s small fat face. “All of this has created a small change in plans.” I need you to call your boss and tell him we’re both coming to deliver the material.”

  “But—”

  “Where can we meet him? We need a public place—noisy, yet where we won’t be noticed, but where we could be alone. Maybe a private meeting room. I don’t want to go to his home or office.”

  “The R and G would be a good place.”

  A large truck roared by and Brent stepped back inside the house and asked in a loud voice, “The R and what?”

  “Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern’s. It’s that busy tourist place up the road from the bar where we first met. It’s always crowded with tourists, and we’ll go unnoticed there. They have a private dining rooms. He’s used it before for meetings.”

  Brent looked at his watch. “Let’s have lunch first. Call him, and tell him to get a private room and meet us there in an hour. We’ll drop off the material to him, then I’ll come back and take care of the rest of this business here.” He patted the big man on his shoulder again. “And don’t worry so much. You’ll be out of it soon,” he said as he locked the deadbolt with a key.

  Thorne heard the roar of the passing truck and the voices in the distance, but the mild injection of the sleep-inducing drug was slowly beginning to take effect. He felt as if he was swimming in whipped cream. Then everything slowly went black.

  Chapter 84

  When Thorne awoke he didn’t know how long he’d been out. He couldn’t see, and then he remembered the tape that had been put across his eyes. He was bound to the chair and tried to move his taped wrists. He gradually recalled Kelly’s foul breath as he bound his wrists. He had purposely tried to move his hands around as Kelly had bound his wrists, and the lip balm residue had prevented the duct tape from adhering to his wrists. Now he was able to move them around inside the tape. He pulled hard and rotated his wrists for fifteen minutes until they were free.

  Jerking his body violently from side to side he loosened the tape wrapped around his upper arms, and after a few minutes, it loosened enough to move his hands around to the front. He reached up and grabbed the tape that encircled his upper body, and alternating his hands, pulled it upward over his head until he was free. He winced as he slowly removed the tape that clung to his eyebrows and mouth. The tape wrapped around his ankles came off easily

  He ran to the back room where the unconscious Gweneth was slumped in her wheelchair.

  Her hands were tightly bound and rested in her lap. He slowly removed the tape from her mouth, and loosed the cords wrapped around her small body. When she started to fall forward he caught her, and secured her to the wheelchair by loosely re-wrapping a length of tape around her upper body,

  She was still unconscious as he pushed the wheelchair through the house to the front door. He turned the deadbolt from the inside of the door and cautiously looked out. There was no one there. He pushed her out onto the porch, and scanned the neighborhood

  The small house was evidently a guest house set to the rear of a larger house nearer the street. The large house appeared to be empty, and there were high weeds in the back yard. The next house was over two hundred feet away, and he headed in that direction with the wheelchair.

  Gweneth began to regain conscious as he knocked on the side door of the next house. With a hand placed a hand on her shoulder, he said softly, “Don’t worry, Gwen, it’s David. You’re safe now.”

  “What happened?” she asked groggily.”

  “Just know you’re safe. The others have gone.”

  A small man wearing a cardigan sweater and smoking a pipe opened the door. “Hello,” he said cheerfully as he looked down at Gweneth. “How can I help you?”

  “We have an emergency. May we come in?”

  “Of course. Is she all right?”

  “Yes. I’ll try to explain later. In the meantime could she have a drink of water—and could I use your telephone?”

  The man tamped out his pipe. “Righto. She does look a bit done in,” he said as he went to the kitchen

  Thorne dialed and waited. “Inspector Hammersmith, this is David Thorne. Gweneth Bada and I have been kidnapped. We’re free now, but I need to have you come over and pick us up immediately. Can you do that?”

  Hammersmith said, “Yes. We’ve been notified that Gweneth Bada had been kidnapped. Give me the address.”

  Thorne turned to the man who was now giving the glass of water to Gweneth. “Can you please give me your address?”

  Thorne repeated the address into the telephone, and Hammersmith asked, “Do you know who they were?”

  “Only one of them. I’ve had an encounter with him before. I’ll fill you in later. They kidnapped Gweneth and forced me to remove documents from the castle. I’ll tell you more about it when I see you. Also, could you please contact Gilbert Bada and tell him Gweneth is all right?”

  Hammersmith asked, “ Do you know where they may have gone?”

  “No, I only heard one of them, a small blonde man named Brent who appears to be in charge, say something about the ‘R and what’. They gave me a sedative and I must have drifted off at that point. I didn’t hear anymore.”

  Hammersmith said, “That must be the R and G. That’s the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern place east of Bridgetown. It’s a restaurant and bar—and a well-known tourist trap. Don’t worry, I’ll send plainclothes people over to the R and G to wait for us and make sure no one leaves. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

  “Good. Please send an ambulance. Gwen should go to a hospital.”

  Chapter 85

  Carrying the briefcases with the documents, Kelly and Brent threaded their way through the crowd at the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bar room to the private back room. Inside the darkened room, they saw a man sitting at a table at the head of the small conference table

  “Don’t turn on the light, Kelly. Bring the briefcases over here.” Kelly set the briefcases on the table, and sat down. “What is this, Kelly? I thought I told you to come alone.”

  Brent remained standing and said, “I thought you wanted both of us to deliver the material

  —I thought you knew.”

  “I knew nothing of the sort. What about Thorne? I assume he has been taken care of?”

  Brent walked to the other end of the table. “I’ll take care of him after I leave here.”

  Kelly said, “Why don’t I unpack the briefcases for you.” “No, Kelly, I’m only interested in certain portions of the documents. Mr. Brent can deliver the balance to his client.” He placed a small flashlight on the table and went through the stacks of documents in front of him, separating out certain documents and placed portions of the stacks back into the briefcase.

  “This is what I’m looking for. Pack the rest of the documents back into the other briefcase and give them to Brent.”

  As Kelly packed the remaining documents, Brent said, “I’ll relay these to my client, but first I have to go to the loo. I’ll be right back.”

  Inside the rest room, he removed a small metal cylinder from his pocket and screwed the suppressor on the barrel of his automatic pistol. Back inside the room, he held the pistol behind his leg. “It looks like we’re done here.” A mischievous smile creased his face as he raised the pistol level to the chests of the two men at the other end of the table.

  Kelly was the first to respond. He threw a sheaf of papers at Brent. Momentarily distracted, Brent’s first shot swished past Kelly’s head and thudded into the wall beyond. The second caught Kelly in the forearm as he rushed out the door and slammed it behind him. Brent’s third shot thudded into the closed door.

  Brent wheeled around and saw only a flash of the other man’s dark coat and the briefcase he carried. The man pulled a small automatic pistol from his coat pocket as he disappeared into a butler’s pantry at the other end of the room.

  The lock inside the pantry clicked into place, and the man slid out of his dark coat and dropped it on the floor. Clutching the briefcase and gun, he continued through a door into another conference room. The room was being refurbished, and there were drop cloths and cans of paint on the floor. At the other end of the room, a stepladder reached almost to the low ceiling. Still holding the briefcase and gun, he scrambled up the ladder. At the top, he pushed the two by four acoustical tile panel up and climbed into the space above the ceiling. Hoping to conceal his presence, he reached down and pushed the stepladder until it toppled over, folding up and crashing to the floor. It required effort, but he still managed to slide the ceiling panel back into place before easing hims
elf onto the cross member supports.

  He was panting from the over-exertion and he froze, listening for any movement below.

  Chapter 86

  In the rear parking lot, Hammersmith and Thorne met with three policemen. The man in charge said, “I’m sorry, Inspector, but we had no idea who we’re looking for. We do have the entrances blocked off and no one has left in the past twenty minutes. We’re detaining everyone in the main room of the bar.”

  Hammersmith gestured to Thorne. “This man can identify the two who should be in there.”

  Just then, there was a scuffle at the rear of the building as two uniformed policemen led a big man through the rear door. Blood was streaming down the his arm.

  Thorne exclaimed, “There’s one of them!” “That’s Kelly. The other two must still be inside.”

  Hammersmith pushed Kelly against the wall of the building. “All right, where are the other two?”

  Kelly’s face was contorted in pain. “I need to go to the hospital— I think— I think the bone’s broken in my arm. I need help!”

  “You’ll get it when you tell me where they are,” Hammersmith snapped. “Who are they? Give me names and descriptions.”

  “In a back room— the middle room— they’re in a back room—two of them. I can’t think. It hurts, it really hurts—get me to a hospital. I’m bleeding to death!” he screamed.

  Back in the conference room, Brent quickly realized the attempt to kill the other two men had failed, and began to load the documents back into the briefcase.

  There was a commotion in the bar room. A policeman was ordering the people in the bar against the wall. Brent stopped and thought about his predicament. He no longer had any intention of taking the documents with him. No one here knew him. He would just have to abandon the documents and fake it. He wiped his prints from the gun and placed it and the shoulder holster in the briefcase with the documents. Then he removed his black raincoat and tie, and moved slowly toward the door. He took a roll of dark hair from his jacket and unrolled it. He put the wig on and smoothed it down.