by Ben Rehder
“What happened to your forehead?” Trudy asked.
“Construction accident.”
“Oh, you’re in construction.”
“Eric might do some work for Lester and me,” Vanessa said. “We’re talking about adding on to the house.”
“Is that so?”
“I’ve got some ideas,” I said, playing it by ear. “Take better advantage of the river view.”
“My Lord,” Trudy said. “It’s all glass now. What’ll you do? Dig a hole and put in a window so you can watch the salmon swim by?”
“Hey,” I said to Vanessa. “We hadn’t thought of that.”
“I like it.” She snapped her fingers at the waiter. “More tequila!”
Trudy abruptly excused herself, and I nearly gave myself a hernia, keeping a straight face. Vanessa’s eyes twinkled. We were having such fun—
I got a buzz in my pants. I wrestled my phone out of my pocket and flipped it open.
“Yeah?”
“It’s done.” Rydell’s cool voice. “You can take her home any time.”
“Thank you!” I said brightly. I snapped the phone shut and put it away. Vanessa stared at me. I gave her the slightest of nods.
She wasn’t smiling anymore.
Chapter 43
I drove Vanessa home, though it was a coin toss which of us was less fit to be behind the wheel. The Jaguar handled beautifully, and I regretted being too hammered to enjoy it. Instead, I drove with extreme care, and we arrived intact.
I walked her to the entrance of the riverside house, and waited while she unlocked the door. She took a deep breath, steadying herself, then said, “Come in.”
A tiled entryway opened into a vast living room in one direction and a ready-for-surgery kitchen in the other. Nothing seemed out of place. No sign of anyone.
“Okay,” she said. “Put the ransom note over there by the door.”
“Why are you whispering?” I said in a normal tone of voice.
“Shh!”
“There’s nobody here but us.”
“Just do what you’re supposed to do.”
I slipped the envelope from inside my sport coat and set it on a little key-catcher table beside the door.
“Okay.” She still spoke in a whisper. “How long do we wait until we call?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not long.”
She turned to the kitchen, saying, “You want another drink?”
As I began to give my usual answer, I saw her stiffen all over.
“Eric. Look.”
I peered over her shoulder. Five drops of blood dotted the white floor in front of the fridge.
“They said they wouldn’t hurt him.”
“I’m sure it was an accident,” I said, but I wasn’t sure of any such thing.
“Do you think he’s all right?”
“Rydell said on the phone that everything was fine.”
She stared at the blood for a few seconds, then said, “Our story has to change. We know Lester didn’t just step out for a minute. Blood means something definitely happened here. We need to call Ted right away.”
“We can clean it up,” I said.
“No, leave it. It’s better this way. More convincing.”
She tiptoed around the blood and plucked a cordless phone off a bracket on the wall.
I went into the living room and looked around. No more blood, nothing knocked over. The leather furniture looked fat and soft and the plush carpet was clean. Family photos, including some of square-jawed Ted, hung on the wall. A large portrait over the fireplace showed Lester and Vanessa together. He sat in an armchair and she stood close beside him, her head turned to smile at the camera. Lester looked as if he was listening intently to her breasts.
“Hello?” she said. “Ted?”
I slipped back to the kitchen doorway, but she didn’t look at me. She stood rigid, staring down at the blood. The tremor in her voice sounded real.
“Something’s happened to Lester.”
I couldn’t hear Ted’s side of the conversation, but she said, “I just got home and he’s not here. There’s blood on the kitchen floor. And a ransom note.”
She listened for a second, then said, “No! Don’t call the police. The note’s very clear about that. Just get over here.”
Another pause, then she said, “Hurry.” And hung up.
Vanessa exhaled and let her shoulders sag. She shot me a little smile.
“How was that?”
“I hope you never have reason to lie to me,” I said. “You’re very good at it.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice, being married to Lester.”
“How did Ted sound?”
“Panicked, but I don’t think he’ll call the police. Not yet anyway. He said he’d bring the family attorney. Dwight Cobb.”
I’d met Cobb a few times at local benefits, usually hanging around the bar. People call him “All Right Dwight” because he had the habit of saying “all right” all the damned time. They say Dwight Cobb can mesmerize a jury, just by repeating “all right” until the jurors start thinking everything is, well, all right.
“We can handle them,” I said. “Nothing so far that we didn’t expect.”
“Except for the blood.”
“I’ll call Rydell and find out what happened.”
“Do you think you should? We’re supposed to stay off the phones.”
“We’ve got a few minutes before Ted gets here.”
I went to the windows overlooking the dark, rushing river. Stood with my cell phone to my ear.
“What?” Rydell’s voice, very tight.
“Is everything okay?”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“There’s blood on the floor here at Lester’s. Did Hubert hurt him?”
“The old man put up a struggle, but he’ll live. It’s no big thing.”
“Vanessa’s not happy about the blood.”
“I don’t give a bull’s balls. Just play your roles, and don’t fuck up.”
The phone clicked off. I folded mine up and stuck it in my pocket.
“What did he say?”
“He said everything’s okay. Lester struggled a little, but he’s fine.”
“That’s a relief,” Vanessa said. “What else did he say?”
“He reminded us not to fuck up.”
“Helpful.”
“I thought so, too. Drink?”
“Think we should? With Ted and Dwight on the way?”
“Normal reaction at a time like this. A bracer for your nerves.”
“Okay. But no more tequila. That stuff made me dizzy.”
“Right.”
While I stepped around the blood to reach the booze, I told her to go handle the ransom note.
“Why?”
“It needs to look a little rumpled.”
“What about fingerprints?”
“We want your fingerprints on it. You’re the one who found the note.”
She went to the door and opened the envelope and gave the note a good crumpling. She held it at arm’s length to read it.
“You misspelled his name,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s ‘Davies.’ You wrote ‘Davis.’”
“Oh, I did not.”
She held it up as proof, as if I could read it from across the room.
“Well, shit.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’ll steer suspicion away from us. Nobody would suspect you’re illiterate.”
“Come on. It’s a typo.”
She dropped the note and envelope back on the table and peered out a window. Headlight beams caught her in their glow.
“Ted’s here,” she said. “Act terrified.”
“No problem.”
Chapter 44
Ted strode through the front door like he owned the place. He skated to a stop in the entryway, and Dwight Cobb, right on his heels, nearly walked up his back. Dwight was Ted’s opposite in every way. Ted was tall
and fit with a manly chin and perfect teeth. Dwight looked like a bald gopher, buck-toothed and squinty. Both wore after-work jeans, sneakers and golf shirts. Worry on their faces.
“Have you heard anything?” Ted asked.
Vanessa shook her head. She started to say something, but Dwight said, “Where’s the note?”
She pointed, and he whirled to the table. The note was lying face-up, and he leaned over and read it without touching it.
“They misspelled his name,” he said.
Everybody’s a critic.
“Idiots,” Ted said as he read over Dwight’s shoulder.
“All right,” Dwight said. “All right. Show me the blood.”
Vanessa pointed into the kitchen with both hands, like a game show model. Ted and Dwight squeezed into the doorway and looked at the red drops on the white tile.
“Jesus.” Ted looked a little pale. “We’d better call the police, Dwight.”
“Just hold on. All right? Let’s think about this first. All right?”
So we stood around thinking. Ted’s gaze settled on me, and he said, “Who are you?”
“We’ve met before,” I said. “Eric Newlin?”
He looked puzzled.
“Bart Honeydew’s son-in-law?”
“Ohhh. Right. Now I remember. What are you doing here?”
“I was having dinner with Vanessa at the country club,” I said. “We had a few drinks. I drove her home and this is what we found.”
“You were having dinner.”
“Talking business,” I said. “Possible renovations to the house.”
Ted cocked an eyebrow. “Dad didn’t saying anything to me about that.”
“It was just an idea,” Vanessa said brusquely. “It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that Lester’s been kidnapped!”
“Right,” Ted said. “Plenty of time later, to sort everything out. We can leave the questions to the police.”
“No police,” she snapped. “You saw the note. I’m not taking any chances with Lester’s life. If they want a million dollars, we’ll give it to them. We’ll give them anything they want to get him back safe.”
Ted and Dwight looked at each other, then back at her. Dwight awkwardly patted her shoulder and said, “All right. We’ll get him back. It’ll be all right.”
She led them into the living room and gestured them onto the plump sofas. I hung back, unsure what to do.
“Can you help me get the money together?” Vanessa asked.
“Sure,” Ted said. “Dad probably has that much sitting in his safe deposit boxes. But is that what we want to do? What if it’s a trick?”
Dwight sat forward, blinking. “We’ll take every precaution, all right? But we ought to assemble the money first thing in the morning. We might decide to take the matter to the police, but it’s better to be ready. All right?”
Vanessa nodded, then looked past them, like she’d just noticed me standing there.
“Eric, you don’t have to stick around while we work out the details. You’re probably exhausted.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “If I can do anything to help—”
“Take my car back to the country club,” she said. “I’ll get it later.”
“Are you sure? Maybe I’d better stay—”
“I think it’ll be all right if you go,” Dwight said. “If it turns out we need you later, to talk to detectives or something, we’ll call you. All right?”
I brushed my palms together, stalling. Was leaving the best play? Did Vanessa need me to insist on staying? I couldn’t read her expression.
“All right,” I said, then cursed myself. “You’ve got my number, Vanessa. If you need anything, just call.”
She thanked me and I said I’d show myself out. I looked back as I went through the door, and saw she was huddled with Ted and Dwight. She seemed to have the situation well in hand.
I stepped out into the warm night air. Heard the river’s shush and a distant dog yapping. Fatigue washed over me. I slumped into the Jaguar and keyed its velvety engine and drove away.
Chapter 45
The sun was a white hole in an empty blue sky by the time I finally went outdoors Tuesday. I’d awakened as Cody left for work, then hung around his trailer all morning, drinking coffee and feeling restless. I couldn’t stand being cooped up anymore.
I wanted to phone Rydell, see if everything was going according to plan, but we were under orders to keep calls to a minimum. The more we communicated, the better the chances of someone making a connection between us.
Same problem with Vanessa. I could’ve played considerate friend, calling to make sure she was holding up okay, but I couldn’t bring myself to dial the phone. What if the police were onto us? What if Chief Drake answered?
Sweating in the unforgiving sunshine, I followed a winding deer trail through the skinny pines and waist-high manzanitas behind Cody’s place. I could hear the creek before I saw it, the water singing its song over the stones. I stepped through a stand of reeds and there she was, a burbling beauty of a brook running over a bed of round rocks. The far bank was a six-foot-tall wall of carved mud that threw a shadow over a dark pool. Trout would hide in that shade.
My hands itched for a rod, but I hadn’t asked Cody to rig one up, and I wouldn’t dream of going through his fishing gear while he was at work. I’d take a sport coat from his closet without asking first, but not a dry fly from his tackle box. A man’s got to have rules.
I kicked off my loafers, cuffed up my jeans and tiptoed into the stream. The water was so shockingly cold, it made me grit my teeth. I peeled my damp T-shirt from my back and let the water-cooled air sweep up my spine. Ahh.
Careful of my footing on the colorful jumble of stones, I walked along the edge of the water, grabbing onto tree limbs for balance. I made my way to a granite slab that jutted into the creek in the shade of a spreading cottonwood. I sat and stretched out my legs and let my cold feet air-dry.
Insects danced over the water. Squirrels skittered through dry leaves. Gangs of bickering birds threw insults around the forest, claiming turf. The world went on about its business, uninterested in the kidnap drama playing out at Vanessa’s house. But I couldn’t keep my mind off her.
I kept drifting back to our dinner at the country club, the warm flush of the booze and the sexy way Vanessa dabbed at her lips with her napkin. I’d felt a real connection with her, a powerful magnetism like nothing I’d experienced in a long time. Had she felt it, too, or was I just part of her act? Maybe everything was part of the fucking act.
I closed my eyes and pictured her as she’d looked the night before. Lipstick and long legs, the flash of her green eyes, the dark beckoning of cleavage. Damn.
Better to fixate on Vanessa than on the mesmerizing menace of Rydell Vance. Better than worrying about how Hubert and Wayne were keeping themselves amused in my garage with Lester. Better than wondering whether Ted Davies had gone to the cops.
So much could go wrong. A slip of the tongue, a curious banker, a nosy neighbor. So much was riding on the next few hours. And what was I doing? Warming on a rock beside a creek, like a fat turtle. I gathered myself and waded back upstream to where I’d left my shoes.
The only cure for my obsession was to go see Vanessa. I’d stop by, just long enough to express my “concern,” and I’d size up the situation while I was there.
It was a risky move. Rydell probably wouldn’t like it if he found out. Ted might be there. Me showing up might raise suspicions, might even blow the whole damned scheme. I might not learn anything I didn’t already know.
But I’d get another look at Vanessa, even if only for a few seconds. She was worth the risk.
Chapter 46
A minute passed after I rang the bell. Then the front door opened and Vanessa stood there, breathless and beautiful. Her gaze flitted past, checking to see whether I was alone. She came back to me, and a slow smile spread.
“Selling encyclopedias door to door?”
“Vacuum cleaners.”
“You’d better come in and give me a demonstration.”
She sashayed back into the house. As I watched, the crotch of my jeans grew uncomfortably tight. I baby-stepped behind her, looking around the huge white room.
“I take it we’re alone?”
“You take it right,” she said, turning to face me. “How about a drink?”
“You got orange juice?”
“I’ve got anything you want. Lester insists that we stay fully stocked at all times. What if some visiting ambassador needs his special favorite?”
“That’s me,” I said. “The visiting ambassador.”
“You probably shouldn’t be here,” she said, as I followed her into the stark kitchen. The blood was gone. “People might wonder.”
“I’m your concerned friend,” I said. “I’m worried about Lester.”
“You’re so thoughtful.” Into glasses of ice, she poured orange juice and vodka in equal measures. Just the way I like it.
We shuddered over our first sips, then Vanessa directed me to a sofa in front of the brick fireplace. She sat across from me, her legs crossed. She wore a black skirt today, black pumps, a slippery blue blouse. Dressed for a business lunch or a meeting with bankers.
“Are they getting the money?” I asked.
“I’m expecting a call anytime, telling me it’s ready to go.”
“Ted’s playing along?”
“So far, but I don’t trust him. He’s the type to run to the authorities with every little problem.”
“A million-dollar kidnapping is hardly a little problem.”
“Lester can make a million in a single day, just by signing the right papers.”
That was no exaggeration. I thought of the four-hundred-acre deal he’d discussed with my father-in-law. Lester stood to make several million off that land alone.
“I’ll be happy to get my piddling fifty grand,” I said. “That’s enough for a new start. That’s all I’m after.”
She smiled at me over her drink.
“You work cheap,” she said. “I was thinking earlier how it’s a shame we’re not all making more off this deal.”
“A million’s not enough?”