by Nora Kane
“There’s no reason we can’t talk this out,” Margot told him. “Let’s be honest, if I’d really wanted to kill Dave, I could have had it done long before you arrived.”
“So, if I lower my gun, you lower yours?”
“You first.”
Dave said, “Go ahead, Chuck. She could have shot me anytime if that was really what she wanted.”
Chuck lowered his rifle. “Sorry, that path up to the back of your house takes longer than I thought.”
Margot did the same and then asked Dave, “What makes you think Lori was kidnapped?”
“The fact that whoever did it sent me a picture of her all beaten up and shit and asked for a damn ransom.”
“I can confirm that,” Chuck said.
“I’m going to take my phone out of my purse and show you a picture. Nobody get trigger happy.”
Margot got out her phone and pulled up the picture that Gale had sent her. She handed her phone to Dave. “Is this the picture?”
“Yeah, it sure as hell is. Where’d you get it?”
Margot kept that quiet and instead asked, “Are you sure you didn’t do this to her?”
“Why would I do that to Lori?”
He sure sounded sincere, but in Margot’s experience, they always do.
“Maybe the same reason you keep her trapped out here without a car or a phone.”
“Trapped out here? She likes to live out here. I’ve got an hour commute to work each day. I’m the one always wanting to move. Who told you I did that to her?”
Margot again decided not to say.
“So, if you’re not one of the kidnappers, who are you?”
“I’m a private detective. I was hired to get Lori out of an abusive situation.”
“Who's the dude sleeping in the backseat of your car?”
“That’s a long story I’d rather not tell right now.”
“Who hired you?”
“That’s confidential. Tell me about the kidnapping.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I might be able to help. My job is to get Lori out of an abusive situation and her kidnappers sound abusive.”
“They said no cops.”
“I’m not a cop and I already know about it. You can’t untell me.”
Dave and Chuck looked at each other. Before they could decide what to do, there was a gunshot up the road and they all heard Stone yelling for help.
Margot jumped in the Prius and started driving.
She reached the end of the road and almost ran over Mal, who was standing there pointing a gun at a crawling Dean Stone.
Chapter 8
“Mal, what the hell are you doing?” Margot asked as she got out of the car. She was still holding her pistol.
“Get back in the car and go get Lori. This will only take a second and then everything will be over.”
“Answer my question.”
“He’s going to kill me,” Stone said. “Judging by the marks on his wrists, I’d say they got to him.”
Mal kicked Stone in the gut and then he looked back at Margot. “Go back inside.”
“So, you didn’t bang your hand on your weight bench?”
“No. Go back inside.”
“What did you do to Rick?”
“You mean Radcliff?”
“Answer the question.”
“He’ll live.”
“Good to hear, but what did you do to him?”
“He tased him,” Stone said, earning another boot to the stomach.
“He’s right. The choirboy is sleeping. I’d rather I got this done before it was witnessed by a homicide cop.”
“I can’t let you do this.”
Stone started to say something, but Mal kicked him again before saying to Margot, “You don’t have a say in this one.”
Margot let him see she had her gun. “I think I do.”
“I’m doing this for you too. They said if I took him out, they might leave us both alone.”
“Might?”
“Yeah, might. It wasn’t like I was going to get a better offer.”
“Come on, Mal, you’re not a killer, not like this.”
“No, you come on, Margot. You know that I’m a killer and I’m a killer just like this.”
Margot wanted to argue with him, she wanted to believe the best of him, if only because she didn’t want to see herself having her mother’s and sister's poor judge of character when it came to the men in her life. Deep down, however, she always knew who Mal was.
Instead of trying to convince him he was something else, she said, “Stone said he could fix it for all of us. He can’t do that if you kill him.”
“He’s a lying piece of shit. He can’t fix a damn thing. I’m only going to ask you one more time and then you’re going to have to watch.”
“No, not this way. Put the gun down.”
Mal looked up at her and smiled. “Or what? Come on, Margot. We both know you aren’t going to shoot me.”
Margot started to raise her gun but Mal was quicker. He kept the gun in his right hand on Stone while he drew the Glock he took from Radcliff from behind his back. He had his pistol up, cocked, and pointed at her before she got her arm halfway up.
She froze in place as he said, “Don’t even think of pointing that thing at me. We both know you aren’t going to shoot me anyway.”
“How about me? Do you think I won’t shoot you?” they both heard Radcliff say.
“That’d be hard without your gun,” Mal said without looking away from Margot and Stone.
“Yeah, it would. I always heard that, despite everything else, you were thorough. But you didn’t notice the big pistol weighing down my coat pocket?”
“What pistol?” Mal asked as he shifted his eyes enough to get a look at Radcliff.
“The one I took from Stone.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? You’ve got the drop on me.”
“I don’t want to kill you in front of Margot.”
“Why not?”
“I feel like we’ve got a good thing going and I don’t want to ruin it.”
“So, if you two weren’t seeing each other, you’d already have shot me?”
“Yep.”
“Aw hell,” Mal said as he lowered both guns and let them drop to the ground.
“I bet you never thought Rick and I being an item would save your sorry ass,” Margot told him.
“What now? You going to arrest me?”
“No, he’s not,” Margot said. “If he did that, he’d have to explain why Stone is out here instead of in custody.”
Radcliff shook his head. He wanted to argue, but Margot had a point.
Stone worked his way to his feet. The gunshot wound he had suffered earlier was starting to bleed again.
“No hard feelings?” Mal asked him.
Stone reached into Mal’s back pocket and produced the taser Mal had used on Radcliff.
“No, we’re cool,” Stone said before he shocked Mal into unconsciousness.
He reached down and took Mal’s keys.
“I’m going to drive back and get this sewed back up. I figure I can take Enrique’s call on the way,” Stone said. He looked at Radcliff and said, “After we get this punk in the trunk, you can ride with me and even point my own gun at me if you want.”
Radcliff nodded, “I guess that will work.”
He looked over at Margot. “You want to lead or follow?”
“You three go ahead. I’ve got a kidnapping to solve.”
“A what?” Radcliff asked.
“They said no cops,” she said to Radcliff. “So, you two go ahead.”
Radcliff wasn’t sure what to say.
“That works for me,” Stone told her.
Stone and Radcliff loaded Mal in the trunk. Margot drove back to the house, thinking something weird was definitely going on.
Chapter 9
Margot found Dave and Chuck sitting at his kitchen table drinking beer.
“You want one?�
� Dave asked.
Margot did, but she was working. She shook her head and sat down.
“I’m just a used car salesman,” Dave said to her, “but it seems to me whoever gave you that photo is involved. I mean, how else would they get the picture?”
“Trust me, I’m going to ask them about it.”
“Maybe you should tell me. It’s my wife.”
“Maybe I will, eventually, but first tell me everything.”
“No,” Chuck said. “You first. Where did you get that photo?”
“Is that really the way you two want to play this? I can help or I can walk.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Dave said, drawing a nasty look from Chuck. “I came home and she wasn’t here. I got a text after I walked through the door and it was the picture you have.”
“Just the picture? No ransom note?”
“No, they sent it via text,” Dave said as he picked up his phone and pulled it up. He handed it to Margot.
It read:
You have 48 hours to deliver us 100,000 dollars or you never see her again. Text us at this number when you have the money. Don’t tell us you don’t have it. We’ve done our research.
“You must be a good salesman to have a hundred grand lying around.”
Chuck laughed.
“I am a good salesman, but I’m lucky to have a grand lying around at the end of the month.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but then why kidnap your wife? What do they mean by, ‘we’ve done our research?’”
“The only thing I can think of is the coin collection my dad left me. He thought it was very valuable.”
“Thought?”
“Turns out most of it was crap, or I should say, cool coins that weren’t really worth very much. Dad liked coins, but that didn’t mean he was a savvy collector. I got up early the next day after the text and sold all of it, but it wasn’t close to enough. I tried to offer what I had to them, hoping they’d rather have that than nothing. If you scroll down you can see how that went over.”
Margot scrolled down. “You offered them ten grand?”
“That’s what the collection was worth. Everyone was led to believe it was worth a lot more.”
Apparently, the kidnappers believed the same. They replied:
Not good enough. I’ll let your wife know you lowballed us.
Margot read the date on the text, it was two days ago.
“Your forty-eight hours are up.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“Who knew you had the coin collection?”
“Family mostly, though I suppose they could have told other people. It was in the will so our lawyer would have known and his secretary maybe. I started to make a list, but I can’t account for who my cousin might have told about it. It was a point of contention who got it. My brother wanted it, but Dad left it to me. As it turns out, he got the better deal.”
“He doesn’t know that though.”
“He does now. I told him what was going on. I asked to borrow money.”
“Does he have that kind of money laying around?”
Dan laughed. “No, he’s lucky not to be a grand in the hole at the end of the month. I just didn’t have anyone else to ask. I offered to sell this place to get the money, but obviously I’d need more than forty-eight hours. As you can see, they quit replying.”
Margot had already scrolled and knew the last response they had given was the lowball comment. She nodded and saw Dave was tearing up. While she had his phone in her hand and he was distracted, she went ahead and forwarded the whole thing to her phone.
“She’s probably dead,” Dave sighed as Chuck patted him on the shoulder.
“I need you to be honest with me on something,” Margot said. She felt bad asking this while he was crying over his possibly dead wife, but she had to do it sometime. “I was told you did this to her. Has there ever been an incident that would make that accusation credible?”
“Are you asking if I ever hit my wife?”
“Have you?”
“No, never. I would never give the woman I love a black eye.”
Margot noted the emphasis on ‘black eye’ and wondered if that meant he did his damage elsewhere, as Gale had told her. Before she could follow up, Chuck piped in.
“I can confirm that. If she had been walking around looking like she just went twelve round for the welterweight title, I would have noticed. I’ve been around here a lot. I’ve known Dave and his brother Dan a long time and I can tell you, Dave ain’t like that.”
Margot looked both men over, her natural default in these kinds of cases was to believe the women, but she hadn’t heard it from Lori and so far Dave seemed sincere. She felt like there was more she should be getting out of Dave. She could feel her lack of experience in kidnapping cases. Since it was federal crime, she’d never been close to a kidnapping in her time as a cop.
What she did know was time was running out on Lori if it hadn’t already. She couldn’t afford to mess around. With this in mind, she decided she needed to go to the source.
Margot got up. “I’m going to talk to my client.”
“We’re going with you,” Dave said.
“No, you’re not.”
“We’re talking about my wife.”
“Which is why I can’t have you attacking someone who might be a victim as well or wasting time we don’t have.”
“We need to know who gave you that picture,” Chuck told her.
“Not yet you don’t. Try to get the kidnappers to engage, stall for time. Maybe tell them you can get the money.”
“What good would that do? If I can’t get the money, it will only piss them off.”
“It will give me a chance to figure this out.”
“She has a point, Dave,” Chuck interjected.
“Okay, but what should I say?”
“You’re a used car salesman,” Margot answered, “Sell them something.”
Chapter 10
“You lied to me Gale,” Margot said as Gale took the seat across from her at Layla’s West. She’d feel better about meeting Gale if Mal was around to back her up, but she figured that wasn’t going to happen for a while.