One second it wasn’t there, the next it was, filling the kitchen window.
It sounded unhealthy. The engine and muffler sounded at the brink of disintegration.
A furry cow dog shape ran back and forth in the truck bed until Uncle Bob came to a full stop. Then Mojo went berserk, barking, waiting for her owner to get out and open the tailgate so she could jump down to the ground. The tailgate down offered a more merciful height obstacle for her aging doggy bones.
I went outside. Mojo’s butt wiggled. At sight of me it wiggled even more. It nearly wiggled enough to make me forget everything.
“Aw, Jesus, Lucy. I’m glad to see you.” Uncle Bob hugged me his usual quick hug and then started focusing on Mojo rather than look at whatever people might be standing right there with him. He was always a nervous guy, more so with women then men, the chief complaint of the few lady friends he’d ever managed to make.
Mojo hadn’t brought her ball so I told her to go get a stick.
“Stick, Mojo, stick.” She ran off at full speed. Those sticks didn’t have a chance.
Jack and Uncle Bob waved. Jack remained at the property line, pacing, occasionally picking up rocks and tossing them. It reminded me of a scene from one of his least successful movies, Utterly Devoted, a romantic comedy made prior to his run of action movie successes. He played a doctor whose dad, a former US Senator, is battling Alzheimer’s, and while dealing with that, Jack manages to fall in love with a leukemia patient at his hospital. Jack’s character was big on beach walks and flinging rocks into the waves. All that we needed here was transforming the scrub grass to the Pacific Ocean.
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Uncle Bob. “Poor son of a bitch.” He knew about Maddy vanishing.
Dad came outside.
“Senate,” said Uncle Bob. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I was wanting to talk to you about the folks moved into the Winks place.”
Dad’s brow cramped up. “Oh?”
“Yeah. It’ll just take a minute.” He smiled at me. “Sorry. It seems trivial I know with all the horrible things going on here, but…”
Dad walked and pointed at the same time, like they should move off away from me before getting into it. I was too fragile to hear about unhappy renters.
Mojo, stick in mouth, scooted over the dirt, hurtling towards me at something approaching warp speed. She dropped the stick at my feet and then stared at me, imperceptibly moving, like the stick throwing about to occur had to be studied carefully.
Dad and Uncle Bob continued moving to the far corner of the yard, moving slowly, Bob occasionally looking back towards the house like he was waiting for someone to come join him and his older brother in their discussion.
“Go get Jack,” I told Mojo. “Go get him.” I threw the stick in Jack’s direction, but it wasn’t quite the same as throwing it at or to him. Mojo had come up with a pretty skinny and light piece of kindling. It could only go so far even if I muscled it.
Aster came outside, her right arm sticking out ahead of her, a cell phone grasped in her hand. Her eyes briefly shifted to Mojo. Aster made a face. I swore Mojo kind of returned the favor.
“It’s for you. Dina.”
Aster handed me the phone and immediately turned and headed back inside the house. She moved quick like she feared Mojo might try and get her to throw the stick.
Dina and Trent were back up at the Ogden’s cabin, looking for clues to Maddy’s disappearance. Supposedly Horace knew a LA based high-powered investigation agency. A team was on its way here, but they wouldn’t arrive until sometime early tomorrow. Until then, Dina and Trent were taking a crack.
The phone connection wasn’t the greatest. I had to shout to be heard. I imagined Dina doing the same on her end, probably giving squirrels and owls cause for concern.
She asked me what I remembered about the room. We’d gone over it before. I remember the darkness, being on a bed, some noises, and no real memorable or clue worthy odors.
“There’s no evidence of anyone using the cabin,” said Dina. “No food other than a few canned items. There’s no electricity. There’s a generator in a shed, but it doesn’t look like it’s been run in years.”
“You got in?”
“Yes. We got in.”
I was awake enough to understand it probably meant they’d broken in.
“You don’t think I was held there?” I asked.
“I don’t. But I’m not an expert. The team coming tomorrow might have a different opinion.”
“How long are they supposed to look?”
“As long as it takes.”
“What about Maddy?”
A pause.
I said, “What’s happening to her the whole time the ‘team’ is looking and maybe looking for nothing that ends up being usable evidence? I mean…” I sighed. “I don’t know. I’m worried.”
“I know.”
“What’s the cut off for going to the cops? There has to be one right?”
Jack was walking towards me. Mojo, massively pained by my defection from stick throwing, nabbed her toy with her teeth and scooted for Jack.
Dina said, “I don’t know. Soon.”
“How about now?”
She sighed. “I don’t think it’s that easy.”
“Because Horace doesn’t want to?”
“Because we haven’t heard from these people since Maddy went missing.”
Jack knelt and scratched Mojo’s ears. She dropped the stick and Jack picked it up and flicked it to his right. Mojo lunged and ran right over the stick before correcting course, turning and scuffling back to nab it with her teeth.
“But you’re right,” said Dina. “I don’t think we can wait much longer.”
She’d hung up by the time Jack was almost right next to me.
He asked, “How you doing?”
“I’m worried about Maddy.”
He nodded. Mojo barked. Jack held her stick and hadn’t made to throw it in a little over 5 seconds. Mojo had rules. Jack spun on heel and fired the stick back the way he’d walked.
“She shouldn’t have gone,” I said. “None of you guys should have. But especially not…”
“Hey, Lucy, don’t say that. She leapt at the chance. She loves you. You’re her only sister. She’d do it again in a heartbeat. I guarantee that.”
Mojo came back, and Jack threw the stick again.
I felt like crying, just thinking about Maddy taking it upon herself to do what the kidnappers demanded. Making Jack stay. Refusing the security details insistence they bug her or the car, somewhere, anywhere.
She sacrificed herself. For me.
Dad and Uncle Bob kept conversing. They’d moved even further away from the house. Dad jabbed a finger emphatically. Making some sort of point. I didn’t know what those renters had done or were asking for, but the message Bob was supposed to take back to them would not be pleasant.
Back inside the house, I used the bathroom upstairs and wandered back into my room. I’d decided it might be time to check in with Sherman. And Kitty. It felt like weeks since I’d seen her. Remembering my coffee, I was about to head back downstairs when Uncle Bob turned over the truck engine.
It wasn’t his normal truck. It was the beater he’d been working on.
I felt tingles spread over my arms and up and down the back of my neck.
I stood in place until I could hear the truck had turned out of the drive in the back of the house and was now bumbling down the driveway towards East Jennings Road.
The whole time I’d been held by the kidnappers was mostly a haze, but there were those few things I remembered.
An engine sound in particular.
Uncle Bob’s truck, the gurgling clinging to life muffler, matched the sound I’d heard.
Not like a faint sound passing a half-mile away, but like the sound of an engine warming
up right beside the dark room where they were keeping me.
Chapter 33
Sherman’s phone was busy.
I could guess the content of the messages he’d left for me. I’d rather hear it all from him live rather than listen to the recording. Plus, he had a tendency to ramble. Cute if he was in my good graces, not so much post-SharDi.
Waiting to try and call him again I listened to the first message Kitty had left for me on Friday.
First.
Several more were left on Friday and Saturday, probably stopping once word finally leaked I’d been kidnapped.
I knew Kitty, but we weren’t close. I didn’t see her outside of the school halls and riding the bus. Earlier in the year we’d worked on a school project and shared our cell numbers with one another.
One call from her was weird enough. I didn’t know what to make of the sudden onslaught.
Lucy. Lucy. I’ve got to talk to you. Right away. I saw…I don’t know…I don’t know what I saw. Lucy. Please. Call me as soon as you can. Please. This is important.
The second Friday message had been sent 12 minutes later. She sounded very much like she was crying.
Lucy. Lucy. It’s me again. Lucy…Nick’s dead. Oh my god. Lucy. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. Please Lucy. Please call me.
I played the message back just to be sure I’d actually heard her words right.
She didn’t answer when I called her.
Figures.
She can’t reach me when she needs to and I can’t reach her when I need to. The universe remaining ever in balance.
I woke up the computer and looked at the Ashmond Tribune on-line. I dialed Sherman at the same time.
Dad had stopped getting the local paper. Problem with that being the Tribune’s on-line content was only available to subscribers. Some of the articles were available to anyone though.
I saw an article on my being kidnapped as well as an update that I’d been found.
Nothing about Nick Verney being dead.
Googling him brought up nothing except for his Facebook account and some Nick Verney’s that weren’t the jerk that I knew.
Or had known.
I gave up on reaching Sherman and killed the phone.
I checked Facebook. I could see some of Nick’s account, but since I’d never marked him as ‘Friend’ what I could see didn’t amount to much.
There was nothing up that confirmed Kitty’s message.
My phone went off. I nearly knocked it to the floor trying to grab it.
“Hello.”
“Lucy.” Sherman sounded relieved.
“Nick’s dead?”
It caught him off guard. “Um. Uh. Yeah.”
“When?”
“Friday night.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I mean they haven’t said.”
I stood and started to walk around the room.
“Kitty called me. Where’s Kitty?”
“Home I guess, I don’t know.”
“She left a message for me. Do you know what happened?”
“Not really.”
“Was anybody else…I mean was it just him? Was it Geoff? Nick’s family?”
“No. Just Nick.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ve heard. You’ve heard all kinds of things right?”
Silence.
Finally he said, “Someone beat him to death.” Another silence. “I mean someone just beat him up to the point he…I don’t know. That’s what I heard.”
“Because of the bomb threat?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t talked to Kitty?”
“No.”
I did the math in my head.
Kitty called when I’d been at the country club. I couldn’t be sure, but she might’ve called right around the time I’d been shot and knocked out and dragged away. Maybe if I’d had my phone with me and been talking on it, it would’ve given the kidnappers pause. Uh huh. Probably a fraction of a fraction of pause. They’d taken me with Sherman right there and a bunch of witnesses nearby.
I tried to remember if I’d seen Trent at the country club, and if I had when.
Dina knew. I’d told Dina about Nick’s threat. His prediction.
And then a bomb threat was made at Royal Cinemas.
And based on the information I’d given them, they went to talk to Nick. Or confront him.
And he was dead.
But killing him…Who would give that order?
Maddy? No. Never.
Jack. No.
Horace. Mr. Skull Face?
Sherman said, “Are you all right?”
“Come get me.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“Now,” I said. “Right now. As fast as you can.”
Waiting for Sherman I realized I hadn’t asked how he was.
He hadn’t been kidnapped, but he’d been Tasered. And for a day or so he’d worried about me. At least I presumed he had.
If the relationship demerits against Uncle Bob were lack of eye contact and near legendary shyness then mine consisted of poor to staggeringly poor communication. It was another McCall trait. Stupid Irish-German holding of the tongue. At one point Grandpa had said he blamed it on the sheepherders in the bloodline. Bloody buggers never spoke a word but to their flocks. The habit passed down the line and so the rest of us paid a price.
Downstairs I told Dad that Sherman was coming over. Dad was staring off into space intently.
I thought about asking him if he was all right. It would seem a lame question. What parent would want to endure what he’d gone through since Friday evening?
I hugged him. Just lunged at him and wrapped him up so he couldn’t get up from the chair even if he wanted to.
“We’ll find her,” I said. “You found me.”
He smiled at me, but by the time I’d made it to the door to wait for Sherman outside, the smile had receded. It was like a cloud swimming out from in front of the sun and that moment of daylight almost immediately brought to closure by another cloud clicking into place.
I waited down at the end of our driveway. Soon as Sherman pulled into the driveway I waved at him and got him to pull over to the side of the driveway, about where Ruth had parked her car during Camp Maddy.
I saw his arm work the lock and then I got into the passenger seat.
He stared at me. He put the car into neutral and stared at me.
I said, “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Could we-“
He grabbed me. His glasses jammed into my cheek and he smooched my cheek, my nose, that spot right above my upper lip, my other cheek, and then he got his head tilt just right and applied ample pressure to my lips. No tongue. He was too excited for tongue.
He put his head against my forehead igniting the tender spot. It hurt, but I didn't let on.
“Sorry.”
“It’s ok.”
“I just got. I thought-”
“’Oh, shit. If she’s dead I’ll never get that Game of Thrones book back?’”
He laughed. He sat back and looked at me.
“No. Well.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe, yeah.”
His eyes took in all of me, and kind of jiggered about like he wanted to make sure all the pieces were there. That I wasn’t like a NanoLucy and the bits might alter and skitter away all of a sudden.
“You’re ok?” I asked.
He nodded. “More or less.”
“Did it hurt?”
“The Taser?”
I nodded.
“It was not good.”
He sighed. He put his hand on my arm.
“Just making sure you’re here.”
“I am her
e. At least I think I am.”
He sighed.
“Is it going to upset you to ask for a favor?”
“Name it,” he said.
“I want to go see Kitty.”
“Sure.” He started to shift the car gears.
“We should go…I should tell Dad first.”
“Yeah. Ok.” He shifted into drive and we started towards the house. “How’s Maddy?”
Oh.
Shit.
I forgot about Sherman not knowing.
I sighed. I pointed towards the steering wheel.
“First things first, you might as well kill the engine. Yeah. Here’s good. Yep. Right here. Pull over. And just stop the car.”
He did. He looked at me expectantly.
I knew I ought to ask Dad, but I didn’t want to bother him with it. One more weight, one more thing to consider.
Chapter 34
When I got out of the car at Kitty’s I got an even bigger hug than Sherman had supplied - although you had to factor in his angle of attack had been impeded by a gearshift.
Kitty’s mom was out back weeding the garden. Kitty had been helping, but her mom had excused her once one of Kitty’s frequent headaches reached pounding status.
She didn’t think her mom would be upset, coming to the conclusion that Kitty had faked the headache, knowing people were coming over. Unlike Sherman’s mother, Mrs. Ferguson didn’t have a long history of lies crafted by offspring coloring her perceptions.
Kitty had taken some Ibuprofen and was fine so long as she could rub her temples. She sat on the couch in the Ferguson living room and worked at those temples. Sherman and I watched.
She smiled.
“Nick would see me doing this sometimes,” she said, “like if I got a headache at school and he’d tell me I was going to rub the stain off onto my fingers.”
She looked away from us, embarrassed, like maybe she thought it in bad taste to speak of the dead.
She whispered, “He’d say that I was going to get bloody fingers. Like I was having my period.”
“Classy,” said Sherman.
She shrugged. Then she started to tell us what had happened.
Kitty and Geoff had a thing.
They kept it quiet, mostly because if Nick knew, he’d never let Geoff hear the end of it. Nick would be cruel about it. He’d make even more fun of Kitty and her Port Wine Stain than he already did. Secretly, Geoff thought Nick went after her because Nick wanted her.