Me? I wouldn’t dream of it. I turned on the range and heated up a heavy, copper-bottomed sauté pan. I dropped a big glob of butter in the pan and it sizzled happily. I had a vague plan that I could somehow use this hot frying pan as a weapon. How I would get it close enough to him without arousing his suspicion and getting myself shot in the process, I had not yet worked out. Plan B was to get a shovel from the gardening shed under the pretense of digging up the treasure, then smack him over the head with it. “You want this on toast or English muffin?” I called out.
“Toast. None of that fancy wheat stuff either. White.”
“Sure thing.” I dropped four eggs, one by one, into the pan, and put yesterday’s cooked bacon on a layer of paper towels into our high-powered microwave to warm up. Four slices of bread went into the toaster, two white and two homemade wheat. I had just begun to flip the eggs when a knock sounded at the kitchen door. We both looked up.
“Who is it?” Russ demanded.
“I don’t know. I’m not expecting anybody here this early.”
“Go see who it is and get rid of them.”
“The eggs are going to get overcooked if I leave them.”
He paused. “Come in!” he bellowed as he got up and stood behind the armchair, holding the gun low so it was not visible.
The door swung open and Brenda Jones walked in. Her hair was combed down and back into a frizzy ponytail, and she had inexpertly applied some makeup. She looked as nice as I’d ever seen her, and she was sober to boot. “I’m here for breakfast,” she announced.
I forgot I’d invited her. “The restaurant isn’t open yet, Brenda, but I’m just making some bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. You can either come in and have one with me and Russ, or you can come back in a couple hours.” The invitation might get me shot, but I was betting on the fact that Russ wanted the treasure more than he wanted me dead, and he thought I knew where it was. He wouldn’t want to take the chance of shooting either Brenda or me and giving the other the chance to escape. Russ glared at me, and I went back to flipping eggs.
“Russ, you handsome dog, you,” she cooed at him, fingering the neckline of her turquoise tank top. She turned to me. “I think I’ll take one of those egg sandwiches too. Russ, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around lately.”
While she flirted I made a few more pieces of toast and assembled the sandwiches, giving Russ two eggs, and one each to Brenda and me. I set the plates down on the counter. “Should we eat in the dining room?” He wouldn’t take the gun with him and tip off Brenda.
“No! We’ll eat right here.” He patted the back of the armchair. “Just set it right here. And where’s my Coke?” That demanding tone was annoying me. I was definitely going to fire his sorry ass when this was all over. In fact, he could consider himself fired, effective immediately. I handed him the plate and a can of Coke from the fridge, which he set on the narrow shelf next to the chair.
“Brenda, would you mind going out into the hallway and getting us a couple of those folding chairs?”
After she had left, he whispered, “Don’t try nothing. I still got my gun back here.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Brenda came back in and set down the chairs, which she arranged next to the armchair.
“Come on out from behind there and sit with us,” Brenda suggested, her voice hopeful.
“Naw, I’m fine right where I am.”
“So whatcha doing here so early?” she asked, cutting her darkly mascaraed blue eyes at him.
Russ didn’t answer, just took a big bite of the sandwich. Brenda looked at me and shrugged.
At that moment the back door flew open. Russ dropped his sandwich and shouldered the gun, faster than I would have thought possible for someone at his level of physical conditioning. “Who the hell is it now?” We all froze, Brenda in midbite, and turned to stare.
“Ma?”
“Russell Riley, what the hell are you doing? Put that gun down. Now!” Dolly strode toward him unafraid. He attempted to maneuver out from behind the chair, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked while still holding the gun, and he bumped one hip against the chair. It moved and blocked his way, slowing him down long enough for me to grab the waist-length tail of his mullet and yank him off balance. I hooked my ankle behind his leg and pushed. Brenda grabbed the gun away from him as he sat down hard in the chair. She trained the weapon on him.
“You can put that gun down, Brenda,” Dolly said. “He ain’t going nowhere till he tells me what he’s been doing. Now, mister.” The morning light sparkled on the jewel pasted onto her long hot pink gel nail as she poked it into his chest. “You want to explain to me how come I just got a phone call from the tattoo man telling me to get over here because you were doing something stupid? Huh?” She jabbed him again and he winced. It looked like it hurt.
Brenda sat rapt as the harangue continued.
“I had to go over to your house this morning and take care of that damn barking dog of yours, since you apparently decided not to come home last night. I thought you were in that car wreck out on Route 12 a couple hours ago, you dumb son of a bitch.”
Inky, bless him, had phoned Dolly rather than the police. It was a genius move, really, since the police had to be looking for us. What had Dolly said, though? There was a car wreck? That would explain why Detective Hawthorne and the rest of the local police force weren’t knocking at my door like everybody else this morning. Yet.
I ran out into the hallway and downstairs. I tried the door to the secret stairs but remembered when the handle wouldn’t turn that Russ had the key. I ran back up, breathing more heavily than I would have liked. “Russ, give me the key.”
“You know something,” he spat back out at me. “I quit.” Fine by me. I wouldn’t have to sign off on his unemployment in November.
“Give her what she wants. Now. And watch your mouth.” Dolly put out her hand, palm up, and Russ reluctantly offered up the key. She handed it to me. “Sorry, Georgie, about this dumbass boy of mine.” She gave him a slap on the side of the head.
“Thanks, Dolly.” I raced back to the wine cellar and up the narrow stairs to the triangle room.
“Inky, that was brilliant! How did you think to call Dolly?”
“I had her in my phone book because she came in for a tat a few months ago—you know, the butterfly on her ass?” Well, I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know any more about that. “And I always keep the numbers for my local customers handy so I can make follow-up calls later, you know, see if they’re healing all right, or if they’re ready for another one.”
“Has Spiro come to yet?”
“No,” he said sadly. “He must have had a pretty good dose of whatever he’s on; plus he’s weak from lack of food.”
“Let’s get him to his room and lay him down where he’ll be comfortable.” Inky nodded. I steeled myself for the physical exertion ahead. We were going to have to carry his limp body down these back stairs, then up to the main floor through the cellar, then through the hallway and up and around the circular staircase. It would have to be done, though. There was nowhere downstairs to put him. “I’m ready.”
Inky picked Spiro up under the arms. His unconscious head lolled to one side. I went for his feet, bracing myself against the wall. It moved. Huh? I pushed back again and the wall moved again. “Inky, did you see that?” I looked toward the sharp corner opposite the door. A gap had appeared. Inky set Spiro down again and we both walked toward the corner. Inky pushed on the wall and the corner separated farther.
“Check this out! We only have to move him a few feet. There’s his bedroom right there.” I peered through the opening at the pale blue walls and antiseptic cleanliness of Spiro’s room.
“The walls must have some kind of pivot points back here.” He pointed behind us. “In this position, they can only be moved from this space. If you push on t
he walls from the bedroom side, nothing will happen because they have a common point, here in the corner.”
I sort of understood. As long as the bedroom was a perfect rectangle, the walls wouldn’t move from that side. They could open out from the triangle room, but not in from the bedroom.
We both gave the wall another shove and made an opening large enough to bring Spiro through. Inky picked him up in the fireman’s carry again, and I went ahead and pulled down the comforter. Inky laid him down and we covered him up. “I’ll stay with him till he wakes up. If it looks like he needs an ambulance sooner, I’ll call.”
“That might not be too long. Russ was no doubt here to give him another dose as well as to bother me, so he must be close to coming around.”
“What are we going to do about Russ?”
I’d been wondering the same thing. “Somebody’s been paying him to kidnap Spiro and to look around this house for whatever’s hidden here. Or whatever somebody thinks is hidden here. He doesn’t know who it is. I’m tempted to lock him up in that room after I ask him a few more questions.”
“Not a bad plan. We definitely need to find out if he knows anything else, and I’m just itching to give him a piece of my mind too. But if we lock him up over there, he’s gonna make a hell of a noise, and that’s going to disturb Spiro. Plus, he’s healthy. He could push the walls open after we close them, unless there’s some sort of locking mechanism.” He stroked his chin, where a light stubble had appeared since I’d first seen him hours ago. “We could leave him to Dolly.”
“She’s tough and smart, no question, but he’s bigger than she is. I’m going to have to think about this.” It was just a matter of time before the police got involved, and rightly so. But there was one piece of this puzzle missing, and for the sake of my family, I was going to find out for sure who that piece was.
Back downstairs in the kitchen I found Brenda helping herself to coffee. Had she made a pot on her own? She stirred in several spoonfuls of sugar as she listened to Dolly going to work on Russ, who had started to squirm.
“Dolly.” She didn’t even notice me, just kept on him. “Dolly,” I repeated, a bit louder this time. I tapped her shoulder and she turned to me.
“What?!” she snapped, then apologized.
“No problem. I just need to talk to Russ for a minute.”
She moved aside and I took her place in front of him. I could see the gun leaning up against the prep counter within arm’s reach, so I moved to block it from his easy access.
“Who’s been paying you?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“How are you communicating with him?”
“He sends me e-mails.”
“What have you been drugging Spiro with?” I might need this information if he didn’t come out of it soon.
“Beats me. The guy left a bunch of pills in my mailbox and I been crushing them up and putting them in the water I give him.”
“Where’s Spiro’s Mercedes?”
“In my garage.” He looked up at me spitefully. “It might have a few scratches on it. I been driving it after-hours.” It probably reeked of cigarettes too. I could see a pack of Chiefs in his shirt pocket, so he’d gone back to smoking. Spiro would be trading in that car sooner than he’d planned.
“Where’s his cell phone?” Jack Conway had said he didn’t have it, not that I believed him.
“In the car.” His tone implied that the rest of that sentence was, “stupid.” I restrained myself from slapping him. “Hope he had unlimited minutes.”
I turned. “Dolly, is Harold working today?”
“Naw, it’s his day off.”
“Russ has been storing Spiro’s car in his garage. Do you think Harold could drive it over here; then you could give him a ride back home? I’ll pay you,” I added.
“Sure. He was coming into town today anyway.”
“Brenda, what have you got planned?”
“Well, today’s the day the pirates come in on the tall ships, remember?” No, I had forgotten that. “So it’s one of my biggest days for collecting returnables. But I don’t start until late afternoon.”
“How’d you like a job?”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, with Dolly’s blessing (“It’ll teach him a lesson, the goofy bastard”), we had herded Russ at gunpoint up into the cupola. We tied him up to Basil’s old flowered armchair and told him to keep it quiet. I locked him in and installed Brenda outside the door with the rifle. I didn’t want him running off and e-mailing the mastermind, putting us all in more danger.
“Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to.” She nodded, serious. “I’ll bring you up something to drink in a few minutes.”
Back in the kitchen, Dolly was prepping for the day as if nothing had happened. We opened for breakfast on the weekends, and Dolly cooked the breakfast orders. She was cracking eggs and mixing them up in a pitcher so they’d be ready to pour onto the griddle when a scrambled egg order came in. I was not doing any more business with Sunshine Acres, not that Hank would probably want my business anyway after Inky’s and my little nighttime escapade. So we were going to have to make do with what we had until I could get another supply of perishables in from Watertown. I thought if I begged and pleaded and paid a premium, I could get them delivered before eleven.
Sophie came in looking fresh as a daisy. “You look very bad,” she scolded me.
“Spiro is home.” Her face lit up and she headed for the hallway. I put out a hand to stop her.
“He’s not feeling too well. And he’s sleeping right now.”
“I will leave him to rest, then,” she declared. “I’ll go see him later.”
“Yes, that would be best.”
“And then I’m going to wring his neck until he tells me where my money is!”
I went into my office and checked my e-mail. There was the one I’d been expecting, the one from the unknown sender. The instructions were to bring it (still no clue what “it” was) to Riverfront Park at eleven this morning. I was to wait at the picnic table closest to the soda machines, and someone would contact me for the handoff. I was done with this business. Spiro was back, a bit worse for the wear, and as soon as he woke up I planned to pry the whole story out of him. The kidnapper, however, probably didn’t know that I had both his leverage and his henchman, so I had no intention of wasting any more time trying to figure out what the treasure was. I’d go down to the police station and turn myself in, and make a complaint against Jack Conway this afternoon. First I would try to keep my restaurant running for the next couple of hours.
I considered trying to grab a quick nap, but decided against it. I was already up and oddly alert, so I decided to leave well enough alone. My backup supplier in Watertown agreed to get me enough vegetables and dairy for the weekend. I sent off an e-mail to Cal and told her that her father was a little under the weather but that he would call her soon. I reiterated my admonition about being careful. The reservations for the evening meal were processed in record time. Upstairs, Brenda seemed to be enjoying herself. I handed her a trashy celebrity gossip magazine and a bottle of water and reminded her to stay alert in case Russ tried to make a break for it. He was being relatively quiet, but that might have had something to do with the gag we’d tied around his mouth.
I descended to the second floor and gave two other bottles to Inky, who had set up camp in the side chair and was watching Jerry Springer on the flat-screen TV with the volume turned low. “It’s research,” he informed me. A lot of tattoos were showcased on that program, and he was always looking for new ideas. He’d called in one of his artists from the shop near Fort Drum to watch his store downtown so as not to miss out on any of the drunk pirate business that would be coming in this afternoon and evening. Spiro had still not awakened, but was breathing deeply and evenly and seemed healthy enough.
I
went to my room and ran a comb through my hair, then splashed some water on my face. I applied a light sunscreen, then put on some lip balm with a hint of color and a swipe of eye shadow and mascara. Looking decent—or as decent as possible after my all-nighter—would give me courage for my upcoming encounter. I dug out a spare purse and dropped in a few essentials. Still no wallet or cell, though. Those would have to be retrieved from the police station later on.
Back in the kitchen, Sophie stared at my shoulder bag. “Where you going?” she demanded. “Today going to be very, very busy.” A look of rapture crossed her face as she contemplated the day’s potential take. “I need you here.”
“Sophie, I’m going out to”—I paused—“run some errands. I’ll be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, you and Dolly can handle things back here, and you can have Lizzie manage the dining room. I think we ought to make her dining room manager anyway.”
She snorted. “Lizzie! What about Spiro? You said he was back?” she asked suspiciously.
“He is back, and he’s sleeping. I want you to stay downstairs and leave him alone.”
She snorted again and turned back to her breakfast.
I exited through the kitchen door and made my way through the short maze of streets to where I’d left my car on Vincent Street. No one seemed to be watching, so I darted over to my little blue baby and slipped inside. I drove it over to the Bonaparte House lot and left it there. If the police did show up, Sophie could truthfully say that she didn’t know where I was.
On foot, I made my way up Theresa Street and up past the tattoo shop and the Windlass Guest House to Riverfront Park. There were already crowds of people milling around, waiting for the ships to arrive. I found an empty seat at one of the picnic tables at the covered pavilion and fished around in the bottom of the large purse I’d brought, coming up with enough change to buy a Diet Coke. I fed my coins into the machine and pressed the button for the lime variety. The machine vended out a cold bottle, the condensation which formed confirming that it was already a hot day, and it was going to get hotter and muggier. I sat back down and waited.
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