“How can you be sure?”
“Because this is her other kid,” I sneered. This idiot was seriously pissing me off.
“Well, she’ll need to pay for the model. And if she can’t afford to pay for it, then I will be forced to call the police,” she snipped.
I rolled my eyes and turned away. This woman was coming close to deserving a bitch slap, and before I did anything stupid I figured it would be prudent to walk away. I decided to head over to the window with Mikey and look for Cat. Across the mall I spotted someone who looked very familiar. A man with dark, scruffy hair walked quickly through the mall, several packages in hand. He looked around shiftily, and something about him made the hair on my arms stand up on end. Then I had it: It was the man who had kidnapped Hadley Rankin. Setting Mikey down quickly, I reached inside my purse and pulled out my cell. Just as I snapped it open, Cat, Mathew and the other salesgirl came back in, all three out of breath.
Before Cat could even say a word to me I gently pushed Mikey at her and dashed out the door. Running toward the man who was very near an exit door, I hit my redial button and put the phone to my ear. “Come on, Duff: pick up!” I said as I closed the distance between the kidnapper and me. Just as Duffy’s voice mail clicked on, the man turned around, obviously hearing my booted footsteps. As he spotted me barreling down on him he bolted through the mall’s double doors.
“Son of a bitch!” I swore as I followed close on his heels. “I know who you are!” I yelled as he flew through the foyer, heading toward the parking lot. Still holding on to my cell, I tried to dial 911 into the display, but I couldn’t do that and keep up with the scumbag I was chasing. I had no idea what I’d do if I caught up to him; I just knew I needed to keep him in my sights.
Suddenly the kidnapper flung one of his bags at me, catching me in the face. “Ugh!” I said as my head snapped back. “You bastard!” I yelled, my adrenaline kicking into overdrive, and I put on some serious speed. My feet were screaming in those heels, but I was determined not to lose this guy. Just as I was within grabbing distance, he hit the brakes and I slammed into his back. In one horribly quick move he had me by the scruff of the neck and plowed me head-first into a car.
I tumbled over the hood and onto the pavement, landing hard on my back. I barely had time to gather my wits when I looked up to see the creep reaching down to grab me with one hand, while pulling back with the other as he got ready to punch my lights out. At that exact moment someone right behind him yelled, “Hey! Leave her alone!”
Distracted, my attacker looked over his shoulder for a split second, and it was all the time I needed. Using every ounce of strength I had, I kicked up with my booted foot as hard as I could and got the bastard right in his jewels. He sank to his knees, clutching his johnson. In a flash I was up and throwing all of my body weight on top of him, pushing him to the pavement. I heard him moan as his cheek hit the ground, but couldn’t care less if he ended up scratched and bruised. Wasting no time, I quickly sat on his head and reached for his arm. Yanking it up and back, I yelled, “If you move, I’ll break your friggin’ arm!”
My Good Samaritan squatted down beside me as I held fast to scumbag’s arm. “You okay?” the young man asked.
“I’m fine,” I puffed, slightly out of breath. “My cell is over there. Can you grab it and call the police?”
“On it!” he said, and ran to retrieve my cell. Coming back to me, he sat down on the fugitive’s butt, giving me a small smile as he dialed the police.
Mall security was the first to arrive, and they had the man handcuffed and sitting in their Jeep until a Denver deputy showed up. While I was giving my statement, Cat’s stretch limo passed by and came to a screeching halt as Cat realized I was at the center of the commotion. Rushing out of the car, she pushed her way through the small crowd that had gathered at my side. “Abby? What’s going on here?”
“Just wrapping things up, Cat. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Cat waited while I gave the rest of my statement to the deputy, and just then Duffy drove up. “Hey, Calvin,” he said as he got out of his squad car.
“Hi, Sheriff,” the deputy in front of me said. “We’ve got the suspect in the back of my car. This young lady says she knows you.”
“Duffy?” Cat said from over my shoulder. “Is that Duffy McGinnis?” she asked.
“Catherine Cooper, as I live and breathe. You look fabulous, girl!” Duffy said as he reached over and gave Cat a hug.
“Thank you. My secret is eight glasses of water a day and a good Pilates trainer. You look amazing; how’ve you been?”
“Can we catch up with each other later?” I complained. I wanted to tell Duffy that I’d caught the kidnapper.
“Sure, sure,” Duffy said with a chuckle. “So I heard over the scanner that this is the same guy you pegged for the Rankin kidnapping?”
“He’s the guy.”
“How sure are you?”
“One hundred fifty percent,” I said, looking him in the eye.
“He carrying any ID on him?” Duffy asked the deputy.
“A Kansas license as Warren Biggins and some credit cards that identify him as Mark Hopskins and Joel Nelson. I’m running those right now to see if they come up stolen.”
“They will,” I said, feeling my intuition chime in.
“Cal, haul him back to the station and take his prints. See if you can get a rush on a comparison to the ones we pulled off that knife yesterday from the Rankin assault.”
“On it,” Calvin said, and closed up his notebook.
After he’d gone and the crowd began to disperse Duffy pulled me aside and asked, “Did I really hear you took him down?”
“Got him right in the testes,” I said with a grin. “That’ll teach him to target women.”
Duffy grinned and shook his head. “Abby, what the heck were you thinking? That guy knifed a woman yesterday; he could very well have done the same to you.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ve just got a bad case of really sore feet. These boots were not made for walking.”
“I can rub them for you later,” he said, and I blushed.
“Ohmigod!” Cat squealed from behind us. “You had sex with Duffy McGinnis!”
“I want to play sex!” Matty called out the window of the stretch. “Mommy, I want to play sex!”
I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment as several people in the parking lot turned to observe a five-year-old using the S-word. “Uh, Duffy?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I possibly get a ride home with you?”
“Not up for explaining yourself to your sister, huh?”
“What gave it away?”
A few minutes and one very short explanation later, I was riding shotgun in Duffy’s squad car, thankful to have left Cat and the twins behind. Don’t get me wrong; I love my sister and my nephews dearly, but the only way I can maintain that kind of devotion is in small doses.
“You up for some lunch?” Duffy asked as we drove.
“I could eat,” I said.
“Great, you like pizza?”
“Who doesn’t?”
On the way to the pizza joint I recounted for Duffy exactly what’d happened at the mall. I had him in gales of laughter as I told him about my nephew and his bolt out the door with an expensive model car. “Sounds like your nephew has a stubborn streak,” he said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said, shaking my head in mirth.
“Reminds me of his auntie when she was little.”
“Oh, he’s so much worse than I ever was,” I said.
“Sure, sure,” Duffy said with a wink and a grin. “That’s what they all say.”
We landed at the pizza parlor and headed inside. The eatery was a quaint little dive with checkered red-and-white tablecloths and the smell of dough, sauce and cheese coating the air with an aromatic scent. We found a booth in the back and sat down. The first thing I did after sitting was to unzip my boots and take my feet ou
t for a much-needed break.
As I rubbed my right foot, Duffy asked, “Why do women wear shoes that hurt their feet?”
“The same reason men splash on aftershave. It may hurt like a bitch, but there’s no denying the opposite sex likes it.”
“Got it,” Duffy said, giving me a wink. Under the table I felt his hand at my calf.
“What the…?” I asked.
“Give ’em here,” he said gently, and pulled my foot out of my hands. Before I could protest, his magic fingers were returning feeling to my battered soles. By the time the waitress came over, I was in serious heaven.
“Oh, my God, Duffy, that feels so good,” I said after we’d given our order.
“You can return the favor anytime,” he said with a mischievous smile.
“Sure,” I purred. “Bring your aftershave over to Viv’s tomorrow and I’ll slap some on for you.”
Duffy chuckled, giving my feet a final squeeze. “Or you could spend the night at my place and help me shave in the morning.”
I ignored the invitation and put my boots back on. Going for a change of subject I asked, “Have you heard from your sister?”
Duffy nodded his head and avoided my eyes. “Yeah, she called me right after I dropped you off. She’s still pretty upset.”
“I wish I could take it back,” I said moodily.
“Abby, it’s not your fault. You got a message and she needed to hear it. You were doing your job, and I think it’s great that you didn’t filter, because she obviously needs to know. I, on the other hand, am starting to feel a little guilty about running a background check on her fiancé.”
“Has anything come up yet?”
“Nope. Zippo. Like I thought, Eddie is clean as a whistle.”
“Is there anything new in your hunt for Gina?”
“Only that she didn’t board a plane the night she left her car. When she called in her reservation she paid by credit card. I’m trying to get the credit card number just to confirm it was hers, but no boarding pass was issued under her name. Her parking ticket was left in the car, and it’s stamped February twelfth.”
“So the whole thing’s a setup.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re being tossed a bunch of red herrings here. We’re being made to believe Gina left of her own free will, and might still be alive. I’m not buying it.”
“I know, me either. But I still can’t rule out that Gina wasn’t grabbed in the parking lot of the airport. If she didn’t drive her car there, who did?”
“Any word from the neighbors?”
“Yes, actually. Both of them tell the same story. On the night she disappeared, they didn’t see or hear anything suspicious. Neither one has seen her since last Tuesday, and no one has seen anyone else enter or exit the property on a regular basis. When I asked if she’d had any male visitors lately, they mentioned a guy coming around a month or two ago, but depending on the exact dates, it could have been Yeats or her boyfriend, Mark, right before he left for California.”
“We’re missing something.”
“Count on it. On the plus side, I spoke with Hadley Rankin this morning.”
“You did? How is she? Will she be okay? What did she say?” I asked in rapid-fire succession.
Duffy laughed as he held up his hands in a timeout signal. “Whoa, there, girl! She’s doing remarkably well. Even though it looked bad, there wasn’t too much internal damage and she can be released as early as tomorrow. As for what happened, she said that she came home from her part-time job and there was a knock on her door. When she peeped through the eyehole no one was there. Curious, she opened the door to get a better look, and that’s when her assailant jumped her.”
“Biggins,” I corrected. I just knew we’d caught our man.
“Probably. Anyhoo, she and he wrestled around for a bit; then he told her that if she didn’t cooperate fully with him he was not only going to kill her, he’d wait for her husband and kill him too.”
“Bastard!”
“In a word,” Duffy agreed. “So she’s forced into her own car and told to drive. She also said that she was convinced her kidnapper knew where he was taking her, but he wouldn’t share their final destination. She said she knew the moment she got in the car with him that he was going to kill her, but she cooperated because she didn’t want her husband to die as well.”
“Men like that need to be strung up by their gonads,” I said, unfolding my napkin and setting it in my lap as the waitress approached our table with a big pizza platter in hand.
“Don’t worry; he’ll get his,” Duffy said, and my right side felt light and airy, so I knew he was right.
“So when do we tell Ellie?” I asked as the pizza was set on the stand and Duffy used the spatula to cut me a piece.
“I’m still going with when we know for sure.”
“When ‘we’ as in you and me, or just you? ’Cause I’m already sure, Duff.”
Duffy let out a sigh. “I know, I know,” he said. “I just can’t break her heart right now, Abs. Hell, she’s been through enough this week. Let’s just let her get past the rehearsal dinner tonight and then we’ll talk, okay?”
“Okay,” I said as I took a bite out of my pizza. It was so hot that I had to do a Coke chaser, and I fanned my mouth as I complained, “Jesus! This pizza’s on fire!”
Duffy grinned as he blew on his slice before taking a bite. Then something seemed to occur to him and, setting his pizza down, he reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and, after looking thoughtfully at it, showed it to me. I saw then that it was the sketch that I’d drawn in Gina’s apartment when Duffy asked me where her body was.
“See this?” he asked me, pointing to the section on my sketch where I’d drawn the shape of a fan and labeled it “heat.” “Do you think that could be a fire?”
I stared at the sketch as my right side felt light and airy. “Yeah!” I exclaimed. “Duffy, that’s exactly what that is!”
“So, if this is where we can find Gina’s body, then I’m thinking that means someone tried to burn the evidence,” Duffy said.
“Most definitely,” I said.
“Okay, after lunch I’m gonna drop you off at Viv’s. I gotta check out any local fires in the area in the past week.”
“Good thinking,” I said, then began to chow down in earnest. I didn’t want to hold Duffy up.
Shortly after lunch Duffy dropped me back at Viv’s, and I walked inside to find her and three other stately-looking women seated around her coffee table, each with a handful of playing cards and a small stack of poker chips. “Hi, Abby,” Vivian called. “These are my poker buddies, Virginia, Eleanor, and Melba. You up for joining us?”
Now, I don’t like to brag, but with my sixth sense I’m a killer poker player. I hesitated before answering her, my competitive streak wanting to kick some granny tail, but decided against it, primarily because I could just see Vivian pumping me for information about Duffy’s swimmers. “Thanks, Viv, but I’m pretty bushed. I think I’m going to take a nap right now. Maybe some other time?”
“Your loss,” Viv said with a grunt.
“Nice to meet you, ladies,” I said as I began to walk down the hallway toward my room.
From behind me I heard Viv say, “That’s my grandniece’s friend, the one I told you was sleeping with my grandnephew, Duffy. And good thing, that, because I hear if you don’t get regular sex as a fertile man; your swimmers can shrivel up and die….”
Oh, brother. I could only imagine what she’d say about Duffy and me tonight at the rehearsal dinner. I plopped on the bed face-first and lay there for a few minutes wondering how I got myself into such messes. Rolling over, I looked up at the ceiling. I was tired, but not sleepy. I thought about reading, but that meant getting up to dig around in my suitcase, and I was too relaxed for that. Instead I thought I’d check on my puppy, so I reached for my cell and dialed Dave.
“Yo!” he said when he picked up the
line.
“Hi, Dave! It’s me, Abby,” I said, feeling really glad to hear his voice.
Squeeka! Squeeka! Squeeka! came noise in the background.
“Hi, Abigail! How’s it hangin?”
Whonka! Whonka! Whonka! came another set of noises.
“Low and left, pal,” I deadpanned. “What’s with all the racket in the background?”
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
“Oh, that’s Eggy. I bought him a few toys to play with.”
Squiggy! Squiggy! Squiggy!
“A few?” I chuckled. “Geez, Dave. Sounds more like you bought him the store.”
Whonka! Cuckoo! Whonka! Cuckoo!
“Yeah, well, I wanted to take his mind off missing you.”
Squiggy! Squeeka! Squiggy! Squeeka!
“I think you’ve succeeded. How’s your woman holding up with all that noise?”
Thump! “Ruff!” Eggy barked happily.
“Just threw him a ball. He loves those. Anyway, my old lady’s fine with it. She’s away at her sister’s right now.”
“Ah, so it’s just the men this week, huh?”
Squeeka! Whonka! Squeeka! Whonka!
“Yeah, just us guys. Here, Eggy, try this out. Ah, that’s a good boy. He loves those velvet chews. He’ll be munchin’ on that for hours. So how’s it goin’ with your wedding?”
“Uh, it’s not exactly my wedding, Dave. It’s my friend Ellie’s.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. Speaking of which, I saw Dutch yesterday.”
I sat bolt upright. “You did?” I asked, my heart picking up the pace.
“Yeah. Saw him and Milo out at Guzzoline Alley.”
“Did he ask about me?” I said, only then realizing I was white-knuckling the phone.
“Uh…not exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
“Well, he didn’t ask about you.”
My heart sank. “Oh,” I said as a tear formed in my eye.
“But I really didn’t talk to him. Mostly it was pretty loud on account of the Red Wings game, and me and the old lady were seated way away from him and Milo.”
“Dave, it’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”
“It could be worse, Abby,” Dave said kindly.