by Nic Saint
And soon, as I collected my thoughts, and tried to think this through in a calm and methodical manner, I saw a different angle to the case I hadn’t considered before. And the more I thought along the lines of this new theory, the more the pieces fell into place. And before long, I experienced that familiar tingle I get when I’m on the right track. Though if my instincts were correct this time, we had to hurry—if we weren’t too late already!
Angel had a hard time falling asleep. Even though by her calculations it was the middle of the night, she was still wide awake. If at first she’d figured people were pulling a prank on her, she’d grown increasingly anxious as the day wore on, then turned into night. And as she stared up at the ceiling, she wondered how much longer this ordeal would last. Or if at dawn, like a movie she recently saw, her final hour would strike, and they’d come for her—whoever ‘they’ were.
30
Vesta was up early as usual, and pottering about in the kitchen, when she happened upon a suspicious plastic bottle in the fridge. The bottle contained a yellowish-greenish liquid that looked a lot like apple juice, only when she took a sniff it didn’t smell like apple juice at all. And she was just about to have a taste to determine what it could possibly be, when suddenly Tex stormed into the kitchen and grabbed the bottle from her hands.
“That’s mine,” he said, and stomped off again, as if she’d done him a personal disservice by taking a sniff at his precious bottle.
“You can have your stupid bottle!” she called after the man. But when she opened the cupboard, she noticed that it was filled with jars of mayonnaise, and when she stepped into the pantry, she found cartons of mayonnaise stacked high wherever she looked. It gave her the impression that her son-in-law’s hair loss issue was becoming everyone else’s issue, too, which wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she decided to give him some advice.
Marge, who came wandering into the kitchen looking sleepy, asked, “What’s with all the shouting?”
“Your husband keeps weird bottles in the fridge and when I wanted to take a sip he blew his top. And look at this.” She gestured to the pots of mayonnaise taking up precious space. “How much longer is he going to carry on like this?”
“You’re the one who told him to rub mayonnaise on his scalp, Ma,” Marge reminded her. “So if you want him to stop, you need to think of something.”
“Oh, I’ll think of something, all right,” Vesta grumbled, and stormed out of the kitchen then stomped up the stairs. And she’d just shoved open the bathroom door when she happened upon a strange scene: Tex was in the bath, holding his bottle over his head.
“What are you doing? What is in that bottle?” she demanded.
Tex looked up as if caught doing something he shouldn’t. “None of your business,” he said, and quickly screwed the cap back on the bottle and held it to his chest protectively.
Vesta now became aware of a strange odor in the bathroom. As if one of the cats had peed in there. She dove for that bottle, trying to prise it from her son-in-law’s fingers. Only Tex was faster than she was, and successfully managed to hold it out of reach.
“What is that smell?” asked Marge, who’d also come in. Then she caught sight of her husband in the bath, guilt written all over his face. “Tex—what the hell is going on?”
“He won’t let me touch his bottle,” Vesta lamented.
“This is my house,” Tex declared. “Can’t a man expect a minimum of privacy in his own home?”
“Privacy is overrated,” said Vesta, and eyed her son-in-law keenly. “If you won’t tell me what’s in that bottle, I won’t tell you the secret the cats shared with me last night about how not to lose your hair.”
Tex looked wounded. “That’s blackmail!”
“Call it what you will. That’s the deal I’m offering you, and it’s one of those limited-time deals. In fact it’s going to expire in exactly ten-nine-eight-seven…”
“All right, all right! It’s my urine,” said Tex.
Both his wife and his mother-in-law stared at him in utter consternation.
“Your what?” asked Marge, suddenly wide awake.
“I collected it last night and this morning. I’m supposed to rub it into my scalp, but it’s foul.” He wrinkled up his nose. “Also I’m not sure it’s entirely hygienic, but Malcolm swears by it.”
“Malcolm? Who’s Malcolm?” asked Marge.
“Scarlett’s uncle,” said Vesta, who was still staring at the man, her mouth agape.
Tex nodded. “He told me that the men in Tahiti all have full heads of hair deep into their eighties and nineties, and they all contribute it to their custom of bathing themselves in their own urine. Oh, and they also drink a small sip of their morning pee, but I can’t bring myself to do that.” When his wife and her mom both started talking at the same time, he quickly added, “It’s supposed to have plenty of health benefits!”
“Tex, you’re insane!” Marge said.
“Yeah, you’re a doctor, Tex,” said Vesta. “Would you advise your patients to drink their own pee and take a shower in the stuff? Huh? Seriously, dude!”
“I looked it up on the internet, and it’s a thing. People even claim it cures cancer. Oh, and there was an Indian prime minister who drank his own urine every day his whole life and he lived to be a hundred and accredited his great health to his urine-drinking habit!”
“Tex, honey,” said Marge, adopting a more soothing tone and placing a hand on her husband’s heated brow. “I think you’re overwrought. You’ve been working too hard and now you’re feeling the strain. Give me that bottle, will you?”
But Tex was refusing to hand over his treasured bottle.
“I watched a video last night,” he said in a dreamy voice, “of an Indian farmer who takes a shower in his cow’s urine every morning. Says it’s very refreshing.”
“Tex!” said Vesta. “You’re not actually thinking of—”
“No, of course not,” said Tex. “Besides, it’s very hard to find a cow in the Hamptons. Though we do have plenty of ducks,” he added musingly.
“Marge, your husband is out of control!”
“Just kidding!” said Tex, and gave them a toothpaste smile that looked slightly deranged. Vesta now took advantage of a lull in the conversation to snatch that bottle away from him and took a sniff. It was pee all right. Yuck!
“He wasn’t kidding,” she told her daughter.
“Give me that,” said Marge, and proceeded to pour the amber liquid into the sink.
“Hey, it took me all night to collect that!” said Tex.
“Tex, listen to me, honey,” said Marge, adopting the gentle tone of a nurse dealing with a difficult patient. “Your hair is fine. Your health is fine. You don’t have to rub mayonnaise on your scalp. You don’t have to drink your own urine. And you most certainly don’t have to take a shower in cow pee!”
“Yeah, Tex,” said Vesta with a shrug, “I don’t know why you get all hot and bothered about your hair—it looks perfectly fine to me.”
“But you told me that I’d go bald as a billiard ball any day now!”
“I was just kidding! Jeez, can’t you take a joke?”
Tex gave her a dark look. “You told me to go and see Dick.”
“I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“And you still haven’t told me the cats’ secret,” said the doctor now. “A deal is a deal.”
“There is no secret. Cats simply don’t lose their hair the way humans do—end of story. Now better get ready. You’ve got patients waiting. Unless you want to give them a sip of your urine?”
“No!” said Tex, horrified. He might be susceptible to quackery, but luckily in his own practice he was scrupulously academic and adhered to recognized medical procedure.
“So what was all that noise last night?” asked Marge. “I woke up in the middle of the night and saw there were police lights flashing and people traipsing all over that field.”
“Oh, that,” said Vesta with a
throwaway gesture. “Some kids had dug up another body and decided it would be fun to put it in Blake Carrington’s field.”
“What do you mean—dug up another body?” asked Tex, who’d stepped out of the bath and was now busily brushing his teeth, presumably since he had taken a small sip of Malcolm’s miracle cure, and the taste lingered.
“Yeah, turns out the same kids that dug up this body also dug up the skeleton they found yesterday. Something about an internet challenge—don’t ask. Kids these days.”
“So that skeleton wasn’t Blake’s son?”
“No, it wasn’t. Just some poor schmuck’s grave they decided to rob.”
“God, I hope they’ll get punished good and proper.”
“Oh, they will. Alec was out here last night, and he was furious. Especially since Blake is a friend of his, and the man is now in hospital because of this nonsense.”
“Will he be all right?”
“Let’s hope so. He took it pretty hard, as you can imagine. Thought it was his boy they’d dug up. But turns out it was just a stupid prank. They didn’t even know the history of the field, and Steven Carrington’s unfortunate accident.”
“What were they hoping to accomplish by digging up a corpse?” asked Tex as he dabbed at his mouth with a towel, then smacked his tongue and went right back to brushing his teeth once more for good measure. Urine—the taste that lingers.
“Well, like I said, they were doing one of those online challenges. You know, if they’re not throwing buckets of ice water on their heads or eating Tide Pods or sniffing glue they’re digging up corpses and taking selfies with them. Pretty gross if you ask me.”
“And criminal,” said Marge, shaking her head. She now studied her roots in the mirror over the sink. “So mayonnaise, huh?”
“Dick Bernstein swears by it,” said Tex as he was now busy brushing his tongue.
“Oh, will you give it a rest,” said Gran. “Dick Bernstein is a fool. I’ll bet the man never rubbed mayonnaise on his scalp. He simply told you what he thought you wanted to hear.”
“So Dick pulled my leg?” asked Tex, staring at his mother-in-law in the mirror.
“Sure! He’s just one of those guys lucky enough to still have all his hair. He doesn’t know why—nobody knows why. Good genes, probably. And definitely not mayonnaise.”
“And now you’ve gone and bought a truckload of the stuff, honey,” said Marge.
Tex gave two of the three women in his life a rueful look. “I really made a fool of myself this time, didn’t I?”
“You did, honey,” said Marge, and gave him a kiss, then made a face. “I think you better brush your teeth a third time. I can still smell it on you.”
Tex licked his lips, then winced. “Strong stuff. I wonder how Malcolm does it.”
“He was probably pulling your leg, too,” said Vesta. She patted the doctor’s back. “You’re all right, Tex. Your hair is fine, and so are you. And now let’s get this day started, folks. Time’s a-wasting!”
And leaving her daughter and son-in-law to get ready for their day, she practically skipped down the stairs. And if anyone would have asked for her secret on how she was still so healthy and vivacious at seventy-five years of age, she would have told them it was all down to the entertainment level she derived from watching her nearest and dearest make absolute fools of themselves. Soap operas and reality shows were all fine and dandy, but nothing beat the real thing—free of charge and available twenty-four-seven!
31
Angel Church was fed up with this nonsense. She’d been in that cramped little room for twenty-four hours now, or even more, and enough was enough. The food wasn’t bad, though a little on the greasy side for her taste, but she missed home, and she missed being able to move about freely and do the things she loved. But most of all she missed being able to take a long hot shower!
So when the man with the mask entered the room and placed another tray on the table, this time containing breakfast, she demanded, “When are you going to let me go?”
But the man didn’t speak.
“I asked you a question!” she said. “How long do you plan to keep me here!”
The man turned to walk out again, but this time she was so fed up with this whole situation, that she felt a wave of white-hot anger take control, and as she uttered a low growl, she picked up the tray, dumped its contents on the floor, and accosted the man with it, hitting him over the head as hard as she could. Her warden uttered a sort of startled squeak, then went down and didn’t get up!
She stared down at the victim of her sudden outburst, a hand to her mouth in surprise and shocked at her own strength, then glanced over to the door. And she was about to take that leap to freedom, when the second man suddenly materialized, saw what had happened and said, “What did you do!”
But she was so overwrought, and determined to end this ridiculous situation once and for all, that she found herself streaking forward, and attacking this man, too!
Unfortunately for her, this opponent had anticipated her maneuver, and was ready. He quickly turned her around, then marched her back to the bed in the corner and forced her to lie down, then found nothing better to do than to sit on top of her, pinning her down.
“Now you listen to me, and you listen carefully!” she said, as she tried in vain to wriggle out from under this man. “You let me go right now! Or there will be hell to pay, mister!”
“You’re not going anywhere, princess,” said the man as he lit up a cigarette, then took out his phone.
“Let. Me. Go!”
“Yeah, it’s me,” the guy now spoke into his phone. “We’ve got a situation. Yeah, you better come down. She knocked out… our mutual friend. What? No, he’s on the floor, unconscious.” He disconnected and glanced down at his prisoner, who was still wriggling frantically. “Stop squirming, princess.”
“You can’t keep me here forever!” she said.
“And we won’t.”
“So when are you going to let me go?”
“Soon,” he promised. “Very soon now.” He glanced down at the remnants of breakfast, now splattered all across the floor. “Now look what you did,” he lamented. “That took me a long time to prepare, princess.”
“Well, boohoo,” she said viciously.
The man got up, but wagged a finger in her face. “Are you going to behave? Cause if you won’t…”
“Then what?” she said defiantly, sitting upright again and massaging her painful arms.
“No more food for you,” said the guy after a moment’s hesitation.
For some reason she had the impression these were not professional kidnappers. In fact they both reeked of rank amateurism. The way they’d allowed themselves to be surprised by a mere slip of a girl told her everything about their preparedness. “I’ll behave,” she promised. “And I’m sorry about your friend. Will he be all right?”
The other man now stood bent over his friend, and said, “What did you do to him?”
“This,” she said, as she lifted the same tray and this time let it come down heavy on the second guy’s head. He immediately crumpled into a heap, on top of his larger and burlier buddy, and she watched with satisfaction how she’d managed to eliminate not one but two of her guards. The door to freedom once again beckoned, and she hurried out of the room, then slammed the door shut and turned the key in the lock. And she probably would have managed to escape this time, if not a third man had suddenly materialized, and leveled a very dangerous-looking gun in her direction.
“Not so fast,” said this person. And suddenly she thought she recognized the voice. She couldn’t immediately place it, but there was something very familiar about this person.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she demanded. “I don’t understand.”
“Get back in there,” the man growled, and reluctantly Angel did as she was told, and opened the door of her prison cell again. She’d had a chance to look around, and saw that she was in some kind of cabin—and she ev
en thought she recognized it. She’d been there before!
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re not getting away with this,” she said as she entered the room, and stepped over the prostrate figures of the two men.
“What did you do?” asked the third guard. A note of admiration had inadvertently crept into his voice.
“I knocked them out,” said Angel simply. “And if you don’t stop this nonsense right now, I’ll do the same to you.”
But the man was holding onto that gun, and Angel had the impression he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.
“Back—step back,” said the guy, and gestured to the bed. Another black-clad and masked person had walked in at this point, and Angel had the impression this was a woman. “Help me carry them out,” the guy ordered. And together they carried first the smallest man, then the biggest one out of the room.
And since they were busy, Angel saw an opportunity and decided to grab it with both hands. So she accosted the woman, giving her a hard shove that sent her flying to the side, and then she was on her feet, racing for the door of the cabin. She had been here before, and she knew exactly where she was now, and who was holding her. The only thing she didn’t know was why. And she’d just made it to the door when another person materialized in front of her, held up a hefty club, and knocked her over the head with it.
And before she passed out, the last thought that passed through her mind was that she wasn’t going to make it out alive—these people meant business: deadly business!
32
“Are you sure about this, Max?”
“Well…” I said, hedging my bets. I have to confess that I’d lost some of my self-confidence since my last theory had proven a bust. I actually felt sorry now for suspecting Father Reilly. The man sat in the car with us, and so did Marigold. Chase was behind the wheel, and Odelia rode shotgun as we raced along the road out of town, once more to that wooded area where Angel had gone missing more than twenty-four hours ago.