by Hannah Reed
“What are you doing to Story?” he asked Eugene.
“I caught her snooping in the back of the van. She’ll have to come along. Help me put her back in.”
I tried to warn Noel, tell him to run, but all I managed was gibberish.
“Are you okay?” Noel ask me, which of course I couldn’t answer, then to Eugene, “This wasn’t part of the deal.”
“It’s her fault. What could I do?”
“Let her go.”
“I will just as soon as you take care of your end of the bargain. And remember, one false move and I turn in your grandfather for murdering Ford Stocke.”
“After I do what you want, you’ll go away? Right?” Now Noel sounded like a twelve-year-old. Young, inexperienced, and wanting to trust.
Stanley had killed Ford Stocke? No way—but it was apparent that Noel believed it. This was worse than I thought. Eugene wasn’t wearing a mask to conceal his identity, which wasn’t a good sign. How did that saying go? Dead men tell no tales? Or in this case, add in boys and women.
They hefted me back into the van. Eugene anchored the ropes somehow so I couldn’t do a repeat, and they got in the front seat.
“Shouldn’t we wait until dark?” Noel said.
“Nobody will suspect a thing in broad daylight. We’ll drive in the back alley. Everybody will think we’re a service truck. And I verified that the owner is gone for a few hours. This is perfect.”
Then I remembered what Mom said, about going into Milwaukee with Tom. The coast was clear for a robbery.
I hadn’t seen or heard any other Petrie family members. That implied that Eugene was working alone today. I wondered where Bob, the telescope thief, was at the moment and how he fit into all this.
I also struggled with the ropes binding me without any success and thought about broad-daylight burglaries. When I lived in Milwaukee, they happened more than nighttime robberies. People were at work during the day. And neighbors didn’t know each other that well. So even if a moving truck pulled up and hauled away every last piece of furniture, the neighbors probably wouldn’t even get suspicious.
I couldn’t see that working as well out here. Although going in through the back alley was a smart move. He might actually pull it off. Especially with a storm coming. The residents of Moraine would be hunkered down, preparing for bad weather.
After what seemed like forever, the van turned sharply, the road beneath it roughened, and the vehicle came to a stop.
Forty-three
The sound of thunder was much nearer now. The town’s tornado siren went off, extra loud and extra long, announcing a tornado warning, meaning a funnel had been spotted. Eugene couldn’t have planned it any better. The streets would be deserted.
The back door of the van swung out and Eugene’s ugly mug peered in at me.
“Get what you need, kid,” he ordered Noel, pulling on a pair of gloves.
Noel looked like he wanted to cut and run. Eugene noticed and brought him back with a reality check. “Your grandfather? Remember him? You want to start visiting him in prison?”
Noel crawled in next to me and gathered up the thing with all the wires and a few containers I couldn’t identify. I tried to talk to him with my eyes. Run for it, they said. Forget the threats. They don’t mean a thing. Plus, I was 99.9 percent sure Eugene was bluffing. He didn’t have anything on Stanley Peck.
But Noel, just like any twelve-year-old, wasn’t listening to my eye-talk. He believed he had no choice, that his grandfather’s freedom depended on his performance.
“I should wear gloves, too,” Noel pointed out.
“Not necessary,” Eugene said, confirming my suspicion about witnesses and their future health.
Then Eugene closed up the back of the van, quietly this time, no slamming, and I was left alone with my thoughts. Which weren’t pleasant. Nightmarish really. Sweat ran down my face, my heart was murmuring, and hope was vanishing.
While I was considering death and dying, the front driver’s door opened. I strained to see what Eugene was up to now but couldn’t get myself positioned right. Was he going to kill me even before the explosion? I struggled hard to get loose, expecting a bullet in the brain at any second.
Heard him coming through from the front.
Saw his feet.
Wait a minute.
Those shoes looked strangely familiar.
I glanced up to see Patti Dwyre standing over me with the sharpest knife I’ve ever seen. It gleamed right along with her crazy black eyes.
For a few frozen seconds I thought she was in on it with Eugene. That’s how far my ability to reason had slipped. But instead of plunging the knife into my chest, she bent down and ripped off the duct tape across my mouth. I stifled a shriek of pain.
“Now you know how it feels,” she said, with a grin. Like this was all a big joke and it was payback time.
I licked my chafed lips.
Then she went to work on my ropes.
“Where did you come from?” I said, never so happy to see anybody in my life, even if it was Patti. I take that back. Especially because it was her.
“I was in the back of your truck.”
Then I remembered those flashes of motion I’d seen while I was tailing Eugene. “I thought I saw something in the rearview mirror.”
“That was me,” she said with pride. “When the van pulled out, I followed in your truck. You shouldn’t leave keys in the ignition, you know.”
With a few flicks of Patti’s knife, I was free and rubbing my aching arms.
“We have to go for help,” I said, my voice low. “Right this minute. He’s going to leave Noel down there to blow up, too.”
“No time. We’re going in.”
“Where’s your phone?” I asked.
“Battery’s dead.”
Great. Just great. “I don’t know if he’s armed,” I said. “I didn’t see a gun, though.”
“Here,” Patti handed me a can of wasp spray, one of her favorite defense weapons. “I have a few other things, too, including that shovel from the back of your truck. We’re going to take him down, but we have to expect him to put up a good fight first.”
“Okay,” I said, not feeling okay at all. I’d been in sting operations with Patti in the past and they didn’t exactly go off without a hitch. “We better wrap it up quickly, or we’ll all blow sky-high.”
We whipped together a plan that I could only describe as a Plan D or Plan F, not exactly brilliant. The cellar door leading to Tom’s basement was padlocked, just like the utility door below that concealed his safe.
Patti took her position.
Thunder rumbled and the air went deadly still.
I went around to the apartment door and quietly let myself in.
Forty-four
The basement door was wide open. I heard clinking and muttering coming from below.
Outside, I knew Patti had the shovel over her shoulder in attack mode. I had the can of poison. Not exactly a fair fight considering Eugene had explosives, a captive kid who knew how to use them, and Lord only knew what else. From my position at the top of the stairs, I attempted to regulate my breathing, so I wouldn’t hyperventilate, pass out, and fall down the stairs.
Patti started banging on the cellar door with the shovel, making a bunch of racket. “Give it up, Eugene Petrie,” she hollered. “You’re surrounded.”
Through the windows, I saw lightning slice through the air. The earth rumbled with thunder. On a regular day, somebody would have come running to see what the ruckus was about. Right now, they were all in their own basements, hiding from the approaching storm.
Patti repeated the banging and called again for Eugene to give up.
I slunk back from the stairs, concealing myself from view when I heard footsteps coming up. As soon as I confirmed it was Eugene, not Noel, I sprayed the wasp poison in his surprised face. Patti was behind me in a flash and before I knew what was happening, she’d swung the shovel. It connected with Eugene’
s head.
He fell backward down the steps.
“You don’t mess around,” I said, afraid to look at the damage.
Patti was already in the basement, stepping over her victim. I pounded down, too.
The utility door was open. I could see part of the safe. Something ominous was attached to it.
When I ran into the room, Noel was sitting on the floor next to the safe. He was gagged with tape and his right hand was attached to a pipe running along the wall.
I saw that Eugene hadn’t used ropes this time, which was unfortunate for us since Patti had a razor-sharp knife. The guy’s MO said rope. It should be rope. This was chains and a sturdy lock. I felt myself slipping into panic mode. “Where’s the key?” I said to Noel, trying to stay calm.
“No key,” Noel said when I pulled off the tape. His face was the color of chalk. “It’s a combination.”
I turned and stared over where Patti was making sure Eugene was done causing trouble. Based on his condition, he wouldn’t be telling us the combination numbers anytime soon.
If we got out in one piece, I was going to rip Patti into a bunch of very tiny pieces for braining Eugene like that. If she had left him in a conscious state…
“How long do we have?” I asked.
Noel glanced at the safe. “Ninety-one seconds,” he said.
“Can we stop it?”
“Maybe. If you knew what you were doing.”
“I’ll try,” Patti said, and I had to give her a teaspoon of credit for not bolting up the stairs and leaving us to our fate.
I was already over by Tom’s tool bench looking for something useful. I’d spent enough time at Grams’s house and in her barn when she had a working farm, so I knew my tools.
By now, the storm had hit full force. The wind howled and rain slammed against the root cellar door.
I had no idea how much damage the blast was going to do, but I couldn’t ask. Because Noel was talking to Patti, instructing her, his voice the only calm thing in the room. Tucked in a corner behind the bench, I found a chain saw, but I’d only end up removing Noel’s entire hand with that. And a hacksaw, which would take way too much time. Then I spotted tin snips, grabbed them, and went to work on the chain, willing my hands not to shake.
“I’m not going to make it,” Patti said, sounding almost as panicked as I felt.
“How much time?” I said.
“Forty seconds,” Noel said.
I threw down the tin snips. “I need your help, Patti.”
She didn’t hesitate, just got up and followed me over to the wall next to the tool bench where Tom had stacked sheets of plywood.
Between the two of us, we hauled one of the sheets over.
“Twenty-nine,” Noel said, watching the thing attached to the safe.
We wedged the plywood between Noel and the safe.
“Nineteen… eighteen…”
And scrambled onto the other side next to Noel.
“Ten… nine… eight.…”
We huddled together.
Just then, at the count of five, the cellar door blew in, and the world turned upside down. Wind howled into the basement, whipping objects into the air, and battering at the utility room wall.
I’ve never been great at physics, but there’s something about wind shear—its speed, direction, and magnitude—and the way it met up with the force of the explosion that apparently saved my life.
While I sprawled on the basement floor, I counted my blessings in hundred dollar bills that rained down on me. Before I passed out, or maybe after, Hunter’s handsome face gazed down on me. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
Forty-five
I woke to familiar voices surrounding me, and an enormous tongue slurping my face.
“She’s awake,” I heard Grams say. “Good job, Ben. Let’s get a picture. Everyone crowd together.”
I opened one eye. The room was fuzzy. And all white.
“You’re in the hospital,” Hunter said. He was holding my hand. “You have a concussion.”
I looked around at my visitors—Ben, Carrie Ann holding Dinky, Mom, Grams taking pictures, Holly, even Stanley was beaming at me. And Tom Stocke, too.
“Noel?” I managed to croak.
And there he was, right in front of me, notebook and all, several bandages on his head and face.
“I got the better end of the deal,” he said to me. “You should see you.”
A nurse came in and said, “No animals in here. This is a hospital.”
“Ben’s a service dog,” Hunter explained. Carrie Ann hid Dinky under her arm.
The nurse didn’t like it, but she left, taking Noel away with a promise of ice cream from the cafeteria.
“How long have I been out?” I asked.
“Awhile,” Mom dodged.
“I’ve been managing the store for you,” Carrie Ann said.
Now that I had more time to assess my body, it didn’t feel so good. “What happened to me?”
“You were caught right in the center of the tornado,” Hunter said.
Oh right, I’d been in Tom’s basement. The last thing I’d remembered seeing was… “Eugene? Did he make it?”
“He’s dead. A tree branch crashed through the cellar door and crushed him.”
A moment of silence ensued while I absorbed that awful news, thinking about the impact it would have on the Petrie family. There could have been even more grieving families if Eugene had had his way. While I was surrounded by friends and family, Hunter filled in some of the blanks.
“Bob Petrie didn’t play a big part in the overall plan,” he said. “He was really just a gopher for Eugene, but he knew what was happening every step of the way. Once we arrested him, he gave us the whole thing.”
“Aggie must have been right in the middle, too,” I said. “The mastermind, I bet.”
Hunter shook his head. “Bob, Aggie, and her daughter-
in-law really were out of town at that antiques show. Aggie says she didn’t know a thing about it, and Bob confirms her story. She’s spouting off about filing a lawsuit over her husband’s suspicious death.”
Holly piped up with a little psychoanalysis. “She’s overly aggressive, that’s for sure. And aggressive behavior breeds aggressive behavior within a species. That’s why the whole family is like that.”
Everybody looked at her. She noticed. “I’ve been reading,” she said.
I made a mental note to recommend a career path for my sister. She’d make a great family counselor.
Hunter continued, “Bob told Eugene about his time in jail with Ford, and it turned out that Ford and Eugene knew each other from their days in the service. Did you know that Ford was a munitions expert back then? That was where they got the whole idea to blow up Tom’s safe, once the Petries told Ford that his brother was a lottery winner, and Ford said Tom always used to keep his savings in his house rather than a bank. Eugene’s the one who connected with Ford and planned the whole scheme.”
“The plan was to steal my winnings,” Tom said. “And split the money three ways. Bob claims he didn’t want anything to do with it, but he didn’t have a choice. Then Eugene started getting greedy.”
“So he killed your brother,” I said.
“But not before he found himself another weapons expert,” Tom added. “Remember when Noel lit off those cherry bombs by Aggie’s booth?
I smiled, remembering. It hurt to smile.
“Eugene decided Noel could handle breaking into the safe, and that way he didn’t have to split anything with Ford. That’s when he decided to rid himself of his partner.”
“But why did he move Ford’s body?” I asked. “Why didn’t he leave him in the cemetery?”
Hunter answered that one. “Eugene needed to buy as much time as possible. If Lori hadn’t gone into the house, Ford’s body might not have been found until after the safe had been cracked. The last thing he wanted was a lot of police activity in the area beforehand. Of course, t
hat’s exactly what he got. He couldn’t have anticipated Lori showing up and complicating his plans.”
“I must have interrupted him right in the act of moving Ford,” I said, a shiver passing through me at how close I’d come to a confrontation with him under a full moon. I didn’t want to think about what might have happened.
Another nurse came in at that point and shooed everyone out. Except Hunter, who used his badge to get a few more minutes.
“Did he strangle Ford with one of Alicia’s scarves?” I had to know as soon as everyone else filed out.
“Why would you think that?” Hunter said, looking surprised. “No, we found a length of rope in the back of his van. It’s a match with the brown fibers found on Ford.”
So a scarf hadn’t been involved at all. Not mine, or any other.
“And Noel?”
“Was being bullied. Eugene claimed he had evidence that would convict Stanley. Noel didn’t see any way out. He felt he had to cooperate. Actually, Noel was trying to lead you and Patti to Eugene the whole time.”
“What?”
“He was the one who left the trail of hickory nuts.”
I tried to sit up, but the effort wasn’t worth it. I plopped back down flat. “What did hickory nuts have to do with anything? They only led me in the wrong direction.”
“Remember that tattoo you saw on Bob’s arm? Well, he and Eugene had matching hickory nut tattoos. Apparently back in the marines Eugene was known as ‘Old Hickory,’ just like Andrew Jackson, because he was so tough. And Bob got one to match his dad.”
“So Noel had been trying to lead us to Eugene, not Bob. And the false hostage report at Clay’s house?”
“Noel again, trying to protect Patti. Eugene was using the house as his base. Patti was a serious threat to his operation.”
Wait a minute. What about P.P. Patti? I’d forgotten all about her. Everything came rushing back—the wasp spray, Patti hitting Eugene with the shovel, watching him fall down the steps, trying to save Noel, the tornado and explosion. “Oh my gosh,” I said. “What happened to Patti?”