Gossip Can Be Murder

by Connie Shelton

  “Ms. Parker, this is Cindy at Hudson’s Market? We wanted to let you know that a customer found your wallet out in the parking lot and turned it in. We’ll have it at the customer service desk for you. Thanks.”

  Charlie’s wallet in a parking lot? The hairs on his neck rose.

  Chapter 37

  I fought panic, trying desperately to think, to calmly rationalize my situation and decide what to do. But with duct tape wound around my ankles and wrists, and strips of it over my eyes and mouth leaving only my somewhat stuffy nostrils to grant me a scant amount of musty air, terror loomed right at the surface. I felt about a nano-second from completely losing it.

  The one rational thought that I could conjure up was that I would probably lose all my eyelashes when that tape was ripped off. I nearly laughed at the sad realization that this was suddenly important to me, but I couldn’t even grab enough air for a small chuckle to form.

  Get a grip, Charlie. If nothing else, just take stock.

  I was in the back of a white van—I knew that much. There were two men. I could hear their voices, vaguely sensed both of them, although I’d not gotten a look at their faces.

  Grabbed from behind and dragged into the vehicle, I’d barely had a chance to kick out before the shock of having my eyes taped, then my mouth. One of them sat on me and bound my ankles, adding another wrap at the knees, while the other taped my wrists and then looped that wrap around the one at my knees. I felt like a trussed bird waiting for the ax on the neck. All those sick news stories filled my head with lurid details of women whose bodies were found out on the mesas. Raped, murdered, buried in shallow graves. Hopelessness threatened to simply take over but, instead, the images just made me mad.

  I’m not a victim type. I’m very careful, very aware of my surroundings. Always. I’d not been overburdened with bags nor was I daydreaming when they grabbed me. The horrifying thing was how fast it all happened. The squeal of the tires, the steely grip that disabled me. I forced myself to relax my muscles and pulled in all the air I could get. My head cleared a little.

  The men’s voices seemed far away. They were both up front, while I must be at the back of the van’s cavernous interior. I scraped my face against rough carpeting, trying to catch the edges of the tape. A dozen or more firm brushes and I felt the tug of adhesive on carpet. The tape at my eyes was sticking to the floor so I rolled with it and got it peeled away from one eye. I was right—pulling out the lashes really did hurt like crazy.

  Two solid blinks and I gained a little focus. My guess about the two men was correct. The larger man was driving—blondish or light brown hair haloed by the setting sun outside. We were heading west, and the steady thunk-thunk-thunk made me think of the sound of tires on a bridge. And if that were the case we were probably on I-40, crossing the Rio Grande. They were conversing but the noise level was too great for me to hear them.

  I used the same carpet-rub maneuver to expose my mouth and sucked in deep breaths. Even the combination of carpet fibers, dust, and something like old motor oil that lingered in the air seemed like an elixir. I filled my lungs and exhaled, several times, feeling stronger immediately.

  If only I could get the tape off my hands . . .

  I put my proven method to work again, but we’d now left the evenly-paced speed of the interstate and I had a hard time not rolling side-to-side as the van took an exit ramp a little too fast, sped up for a brief time, then squealed the brakes for a traffic light. I lay very still, guessing that this would be the moment when one of them would look back to check on me.

  I don’t know whether they did. The light must have changed because we lurched into motion again. I pictured the layout of the city’s west side. Coors Road was the most developed area, with many traffic signals and in the late afternoon, bumper to bumper traffic. The fact that we’d already stopped once made me think this is where we were.

  The van turned, stopped, idled. Someone came up to the passenger’s side and they talked through the window. I got a fuzzy impression of some kind of package being passed through, into the van. The third man walked away, we started moving again.

  If they’d been smarter about getting rid of me they would probably have driven farther west, out into more open space. Then again, I could be all wrong, I realized, as the vehicle picked up speed.

  Chapter 38

  “Ron, I need your help.” He knew his voice sounded ragged but he couldn’t seem to control that. He gave about a two-sentence synopsis, although for all he knew he might have babbled for minutes.

  “Okay, Drake, I’m coming right over. She talked to Kent Taylor this afternoon. I’m going to call him on the way and see if he might know anything pertinent.”

  Drake paced the entire house. At his desk in the room he used for an office, he spotted the folder from his investigation, open to the mug shot of Leo Malone. He plucked the photo from the file, glanced around but didn’t see much else that might be of use. It would be dark soon.

  From the garage he grabbed two strong flashlights and a small toolbox that he kept on hand with basics. In the bedroom he yanked a sweatshirt from his side of the closet, then reached into Charlie’s side and got one of hers too. She’d probably gone to the store wearing no more than jeans and a T-shirt on the warm autumn day. While he was at it, he picked up her favorite boots, some extra socks, a blanket that they sometimes added to the bed on cold winter nights. He stuffed it all into a duffle. Into his waistband he jammed his Colt .45, the pistol with which he was most accurate at the target range. Just in case.

  Ron’s Mustang roared up in the driveway. Why hadn’t he noticed that Charlie’s Jeep was gone when he first got home? He could have saved at least thirty minutes, maybe more, if he’d just been more alert.

  Rusty waited at the door, wanting to go along. Drake debated. Would the dog actually be of help or would he simply get in the way?

  The moment he opened the front door, though, Rusty pushed his way through and ran directly to Ron’s car. Drake grabbed up Charlie’s jacket that hung on the rack by the door, slung the duffle over his shoulder and locked up after himself.

  “Shall we take my truck? We might get off the roads.”

  “Sure.” Ron opened the passenger door and gave Rusty a push toward the small back seat.

  “What did Kent Taylor say?” Drake asked as he started the engine and put it in gear.

  “Gave me some names. Leo Malone, David Ratwill. Is this somehow tied to our crash investigation?”

  “I don’t know. She mentioned that Ratwill was related to that yoga instructor who died out at the spa. She thought he might have had something to do with that.”

  “Yeah, she had me do some background work on several people at that place.”

  Drake had backed out of the driveway and realized that he didn’t have a clue where to go first.

  Ron filled in. “Let’s start with the market where they found her wallet.”

  Five minutes later they pulled into the small parking lot that edged one side of the squarish cinderblock building. No windows faced the lot at all—they were all in the front, facing the street. At the small customer service desk they asked for the girl who had placed the call—Cindy.

  “I didn’t see anything myself,e anythimr she said. “A customer came in with this wallet and said someone must have dropped it in the parking lot. Oh, and there were some keys.” She reached into a drawer and pulled them out. They were definitely Charlie’s and Drake felt his breath catch.

  “Who was the customer? Would he or she still be here?” Ron asked.

  “Oh, Mrs. Baca. She lives on the next street over. Usually walks here to do her shopping. She just picked up some bread and eggs and—”

  “I don’t want to be rude, but we don’t need to know her whole list. We think my wife may have been kidnapped out there.”

  “Can we speak to Mrs. Baca?” Ron asked, his voice more normal than Drake could even hope for right now. “And how about anyone else who was in the store at
the time—which other employees were here?”

  Cindy finally seemed to grasp their rush. “I’m the assistant manager. Two cashiers are on duty.” She nodded toward the busy checkout lanes. “The produce manager and butcher both go home earlier in the day.”

  “I doubt the cashiers would have seen anything outside,” Ron said.

  “You got that right. When you’re checking out the customers you don’t see anything but the groceries and the customer who’s standing right in front of you. “Maybe Randy.” She paged a young man, the only bag boy on the shift. He came forward, giving Drake and Ron a look, probably wondering if they were cops.

  Once they assured him they were not going to hassle him, he opened up.

  “Are you talking about the green Jeep that’s been out there quite awhile? Where Mrs. Baca said she found the wallet?” He shuffled a little. “Well, the only thing I can think of was maybe an hour ago. I was pushing Mr. Guthrie’s cart out for him and this white van just screamed out of the lot. It was near that green Jeep when I first saw it so I don’t know if it’s connected. But, man, that thing just peeled out and laid rubber.”

  “The van. That might be important, Randy. Was there anything painted on it? Signs, logos, business markings?”

  The teen was shaking his head through all this.

  “License plates. Did you notice at all?”

  No flicker.

  “New Mexico, or out of state? Can you picture anything in your mind?”

  “New Mexico, I’m pretty sure. The old fashioned bright yellow ones with red letters. It made a left turn out of the lot, down at the far end, onto San Carlos street, so I got a good look at the side. No design or anything on it. It was just solid white, the kind without windows.”

  Drake was anxious to get moving.

  “Oh, you know, there was one thing. It had two ladders on top of it. Like the cable guys have sometimes, or those installers for satellite TV or something.”

  “But no company logos.”

  “No sir, I’m really sure about that.”

  “The driver? Did you get a look?”

  Randy scratched at his peach fuzz face and thought. “A man, seemed like a big guy. I don’t know what he was wearing—I think a saw a red sleeve, like a windbreaker or something like that. And I think there was somebody else with him, in the passenger seat. I’m not really sure about that.”

  They thanked the kid and the manager and walked outside. Drake felt discouraged by so little information. “So, a plain white van with two ladders on top? Ladders that they could easily dump off anywhere. Maybe one person, maybe two.”

  Ron’s cell phone rang and he snatched it from his jacket pocket. “Parker.”

  Drake watched anxiously as Ron um-hmm’d a few times then relayed what they’d just learned about the van.

  He picked up the pace toward Drake’s truck as he clicked off the call. “Kent Taylor called an APB. It’s the closest thing to an amber alert they can do for an adult abductee. I gave him the info on the van—well, you heard that part. He already knew most of it. Ran registration checks for vehicles owned by our suspects and their employers. The FBO that Leo Malone works for owns a couple of white vans. They’re thinking he may have borrowed one of them.”

  “And . . .? What are they actually doing?”

  “He didn’t say. Probably the best that they can.”

  “Let’s get out to Double Eagle,” Drake said. “We’ve got maybe an hour before it’s pitch dark.”

  The trip to the far west side airport had probably never been driven so quickly. Still, with rush hour traffic and the distance they had to cover, Drake knew there would only be another thirty minutes of light—if they were lucky. He, Ron and the dog piled into the JetRanger and he cranked up.

  “This may be a waste of time,” he told Ron. “But I have to be doing something.”

  Chapter 39

  I didn’t know how long we’d been driving, but it must be close to an hour by now. After the exit past the river, there had been a series of stops and turns, acceleration and then steady, highway driving for a long time. I could imagine that we might be back on Interstate 40 but really, I had to admit that I didn’t have any real idea.

  I continued to sneak blurry, one-eyed peeks toward the two men in front and, except for an occasional glance my way by the one in the passenger seat, they seemed pretty unconcerned about me. I guess they were thoroughly familiar with the wonders of duct tape and felt like I was pretty secure. I let them think that.

  With my hands tied in front of me I could have wiggled enough to reach up and pulled off the rest of the strips covering my eyes and mouth, but that would definitely give away the fact that I was working my way loose. I’d rather they thought I was out of it.

  Meanwhile, I rubbed at the wrist tape, picked at it, rubbed some more. I was making a little progress and from what I could tell by feel, they had only done a once-around loop there. It provided a glimmer of hope.

  If only I had a sharp object. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a single thing on me but my clothing—thank goodness I had that. My wallet and keys and the bag of groceries were no doubt strewn around the parking lot at the market. I latched onto the hope that someone would use that information to come looking for me, not to merely steal my identity. I used my one eye to scan the small portion of the van that I could see, but nothing presented a solution. So I continued to pick.

  The van slowed noticeably. Oh shit. This is one case when the kid in the back does not want to get there any faster. I raised my head a little, trying to hear what the men were saying.

  I caught one word—cops.

  It wasn’t the word they wanted, apparently, because the van suddenly whipped around, squealing and throwing me violently against the wheel well on the driver’s side. I had a really bad feeling that we were headed into oncoming traffic.

  Chapter 40

  Drake was thankful that Ron had so willingly hopped aboard the helicopter with him, knowing that being airborne was not his brother-in-law’s favorite state. However, being on the telephone was Ron’s normal state, and he was handling it quite well. He’d gotten Kent Taylor to talk to someone in charge at APD who allowed them to use the police frequency, so they knew there were extra patrols around the city.

  “Remind them that Leo Malone works in Gallup,” he told Ron, who was currently working at getting APD to alert the state police to the situation as well.

  From the radio chatter, Drake thought they were probably monitoring I-40 westbound, but mere hope wasn’t enough. He’d set a heading to follow the interstate himself. If the white van had hit the freeway immediately and stayed—as he assumed they would—close to the speed limit, they couldn’t be much farther than the town of Grants by now.

  He kept the JetRanger about five hundred feet off the deck and scanned every vehicle.

  Darkness was closing in fast.

  Chapter 41

  Oh. My. God. The van rocked dangerously. Squealing brakes and horns sounded outside. I waited for the impact that would surely kill me.

  The van veered downward and I braced myself as well as possible to avoid rolling all the way to the front. I used the moment of noise and confusion to rip the last of the tape from my wrists, my eyes, my mouth. I was clawing for the ends of the pieces at my knees and ankles as we bounced across the dirt median and up the other side. This time I had no chance to stop myself from rolling out of control toward the back doors. A scream tried to form in my throat but I held it back. If those doors were to come open—I didn’t want to picture the mass of Charlie-hamburger roadkill.

  I kept picking at the tape ends, searching in the almost-complete darkness for a weakness that I could use to simply rip the stuff off my legs.

  The van threatened to roll as it hit the upslope of the eastbound lanes. I gave up any pretense of remaining wrapped up and spread my arms to avoid slamming to the other side of the cargo space again. I was already going to be one big nasty bruise.

  Up fr
ont there was a fair amount of cursing going on. The driver was clearly at the limit of his abilities and the passenger somehow thought that shouting his displeasure would change that.

  I found a decent rip in the tape at my ankles and gave it a hard pull, savoring the sucking sound it made as it peeled away from my jeans. But the sound drew attention from the front. The passenger turned fully in his seat and stared at me.

  It was David Ratwill.

  Chapter 42

  Almost calmly I told myself that I should have known who grabbed me. Ratwill and Leo Malone were really the only choice. All that self-talk about rape and abduction and identity theft seemed a little silly now. Clearly, the whole goal was murder.

  That thought had roughly a tenth of a second to flit through my head before David barreled between the seats and came at me. He only failed to remember that a woman’s strength lies in her hips and legs, and since mine were still tightly bound at the knees, I had a fairly good weapon right there. I kicked out and got him right in the face. His nose gushed blood, his eyes rolled back and he went down hard.

  For good measure, I gave another solid kick to his left collarbone, but he was out cold—limp as a stuffed toy.

  Leo managed to get the van somewhat under control and was standing on the horn to make other vehicles get out of our way. When David’s dead weight landed with a crash Leo turned to look back at the ruckus.

  Bad move.

  The van went squirrely and began to shimmy hard. I rattled around in there a bit, and Leo’s attention went right back to the road.

  Red and blue lights began to flicker in the rearview mirrors.

  I started to offer up a little thank-you prayer, but that turned out to be a little premature.