“This has nothing to do with you,” he said and took another step toward the door.
But it did. What happened at the Cummings house had everything to do with us. Grace had been there. Someone had seen her, and might still consider her a threat. Until we knew who that was, we were still very much involved.
Cynthia pressed on. “You don’t want to call the police, but you think you can barge into people’s homes and they won’t dial 911?”
He had the door open, then raised a hand high and placed it on the jamb, leaning into it.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” he asked, his back to us, his voice breaking. I could see his body heaving with each exhausted breath.
“Give us a minute,” I said, then touched Cynthia’s arm and led her into the kitchen, past Grace, still sitting on the stairs.
“What?” she whispered once we got there. I closed the door so Vince, as well as Grace, could not hear what I was going to say.
“I can’t believe I’m thinking this way, but maybe we should help him,” I said.
“The only way we can help him is to call the police.”
“I don’t know about that. You were saying, what happens if he goes to these houses and someone’s home? What’s he going to say? ‘Hi, I hid money in your attic. You mind if I come in and get it?’ For sure that’ll get him arrested. But the alternative, going to the cops, that may not work, either. He needs to be able to get into those houses and get the money if he’s got a shot at saving Jane.”
Cynthia wasn’t certain. “But if he explains things to the police, makes them understand, quickly—You remember that detective? The woman? Rona Wedmore?”
“I remember.”
“If Vince talked to her, if we talked to her with him, maybe they wouldn’t waste a lot of time worrying about Vince’s business. They’d worry about Jane.”
“It’s not just about Jane,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want anything to happen to her, but there’s more at stake than just her.”
Cynthia looked at me blankly for a second, but then she got it. “Grace.”
“Yeah. Once this whole can of worms gets opened, everything’s going to come out. Including the business about our daughter breaking into that house. And there’s the matter of who was there, who may be worried that Grace got a look at him.”
She was shaking her head. “But nothing that bad even happened in the house. Grace has heard from Stuart. Those texts. He’s okay. If we call the cops, Grace may not be in as much trouble as we first feared, and we’ll be helping Jane at the same time.”
I wasn’t so sure.
I decided to try another tack with Cynthia.
“That man out there, I know what he is. He’s a thug. I get that. But I still feel I owe him. For how he helped us before. If he hadn’t come with me that night, I wouldn’t have found you—you and Grace—in time. And like they say, no good deed goes unpunished. He nearly died.”
Cynthia’s eyes softened. “I don’t feel any different. I know the sacrifice he made. But what can we do? Jesus, Terry, what the hell can we do?”
“I have an idea how we can get into those houses so he can get the money. Any house where there are people.”
“How?”
“Mold.”
She blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Mold,” I repeated. “Your latest project. Mold infestation in houses. In damp attics. Health risks. Fucking spores floating around in the air getting into people’s lungs.”
“I’m not following.”
“Get your purse,” I said.
She didn’t ask why. Instead, she went out into the hall and was back in ten seconds.
“They’re talking out there,” she said.
“What?”
“Vince and Grace. They were talking, and then stopped when I came in.”
I couldn’t care about that right now. “Get out your ID.”
“What ID? My driver’s license?”
“No. From the health department.”
Something sparkled in her eyes. She knew what I was thinking. Cynthia dug into her bag, pulled out her official ID from the Milford Department of Public Health.
“That’s what you’re going to show when they answer the door,” I said.
She nodded. “I tell them we’re checking homes in the area. That there’s some kind of mold epidemic.”
“Has there ever been a mold epidemic?” I asked.
“Not that I know of,” she said. “But I’ve got pamphlets on household mold in the car. It outlines the risks. There’s pictures in them that’ll scare any home owner to death.”
“We tell them we need to see the attic. That that’s where it grows.”
“We?”
“You tell them,” I said. “But I’ll be with you. With a ladder. We leave Vince in the car because he’ll scare the hell out of people.”
“It’s beyond crazy,” Cynthia said.
“I know.”
I could tell she was considering it, though. She said, “If you thought you had mold in the attic that could make you sick, wouldn’t you want to know? We get in, we get up in the attic—that can be your job—you get the money, and we get out.”
“Yeah.”
I thought I’d won her over to the idea, but then she shook her head. “No, it’s too crazy, too risky. I want to help Vince—I really do—and I want to help Jane, but the best way to do it is to call the police. And with Stuart alive—”
On the other side of the door, Grace let out a mournful wail.
We found her in tears, her back leaned up against the wall, standing across from Vince.
“He’s dead,” she told us. “Stuart’s dead. They made it up. The texts, they were all bullshit. Vince told me.”
Vince looked at us with heavy eyes. “I needed you to stop nosing around. But we’re past that now. There’s no sense lying about any of this anymore.”
Through tears, Grace said, “He says I didn’t shoot him.”
Vince nodded wearily. “Last night, I was using the gun as leverage. But Eldon’s gun, the one Stuart gave your kid, it hadn’t been fired. Full clip.”
Cynthia turned and said to me, “I’ll get the pamphlets.”
FIFTY-ONE
SHE had no idea where she was.
In a room, of course. In a house, somewhere. Felt cool, so she was guessing a basement. Duh. They did walk her down a flight of stairs once they got her here. They’d driven into a garage, and then she heard the noise of the door rolling down once they were inside.
They’d kept the cloth bag on her head since the moment they’d grabbed her, except for a few seconds after they’d thrown her into the car, when someone pulled it up just far enough that they could slap some tape over her mouth. Then they’d done a loop of tape around the bag at her neck so it wouldn’t fall off, which scared the hell out of her at first. She thought they intended to strangle her. But they hadn’t made that tape so tight that she couldn’t breathe. They bound her wrists together behind her back, and ended up roping her ankles, too, when she started kicking wildly. They kept her down on the floor of the backseat, two of them, because she could feel the weight of two pairs of feet holding her down. One pair on her back, the other on her thighs.
Reggie, the so-called life coach, was driving. She wasn’t saying much. It was the two men in back who were making sure Jane stayed down on the floor, who were doing most of the talking. And most of that was about how much money they were going to get.
“You got any idea how much it might be?” one asked.
“It’s gonna be a lot,” the other said. “Probably more than a mill. Reggie, you think it’ll be more than a mill once he empties out all the houses?”
Reggie: “We’ll see.”
They did talk about some other matters. About the call they had to make to Vince, how this really was a better, quicker way to do it. All that other energy they’d wasted, hiding GPS tracking devices in the bags with the cash, trying to figure out which houses, w
hen it made more sense to let Vince just bring everything to them.
She guessed it took ten minutes tops to reach their destination. So they were probably still in Milford, although they could be almost to New Haven, or Bridgeport, or even up to Shelton, if the traffic wasn’t bad. But she didn’t think they’d taken any highways, so Milford was most likely.
She wondered how long it would be before anyone at work noticed she wasn’t there. It wasn’t likely she could count on Hector, that little shit, to call the police. Her failure to return to the office would be his opportunity to speculate to the rest of the staff that she’d fucked off for a very early, and very long, lunch.
Would anyone even make the effort to notice that her purse was still there? That her Mini was in the parking lot?
Jane wondered whether she should have made more of an effort to get on Hector’s good side.
Lying on the floor of the car, her bagged face pressed against the mat, Jane had wondered whether they were going to kill her. And even if they didn’t, she was wondering what they might do with her in the meantime, because one of the guys in the backseat was giving her a very bad feeling.
He was exceedingly creepy.
“She’s pretty, don’t you think?” he asked. “Nice ass.”
“Stay focused, Joseph,” Reggie said. “Logan, control your brother.”
“He’s just admiring the scenery,” said the other one, whose voice was deeper.
Joseph and Logan. Brothers.
“Whaddya think?” Joseph said quietly. “Be nice to have a bit of that.”
“When we get the money,” Logan said, “you can buy yourself the best piece of ass in the country. You don’t have to settle for what’s thrown in front of you.”
“Yeah, but still. It’s right there.”
Jane felt a hand on her butt and tried to shift her position, to shake him off.
“Now, now,” said Joseph. “I bet she’d be a wild one.”
As much as Jane wanted to get a look at these fuckers, she wondered whether being blindfolded was a blessing. If they were going to kill her, they wouldn’t want her to see their faces. But then again, she’d seen Reggie. And they were calling one another by their names. It didn’t sound as though they were struggling to remember fake ones. Wouldn’t it be kind of stupid to use their real names if they were going to let her go? Wouldn’t they figure she’d tell Vince, maybe even the cops, their names once they’d let her go?
Which made Jane think, no matter how things went down, they weren’t going to release her. They’d put a bag over her head to make her more docile. It had nothing to do with protecting their identities.
When they’d pulled into the garage, Logan had said, “We’re gonna untie your legs so you can walk in. Don’t start kicking or anything.”
Jane moved her head up and down.
“Okay, then. Free up her legs,” he said to his brother.
“Just let me get out my knife,” Joseph said. He leaned over, put his mouth close to her ear. “It’s a mighty sharp knife.” Then she felt tugging at her ankles as he cut through the rope.
“Okay,” Joseph said, and she felt his hand graze along her thigh. It was like having a tarantula crawl on you.
Logan got her up into a sitting position, helped her work her butt over the hump, and her legs started extending out the open back door.
“I’ll lead you in,” Logan said.
They walked slowly around the car, their footsteps echoing on cold concrete. There were two steps up into the house, maybe ten paces down a hall. Then they stopped.
“Stairs down,” the man said.
She took them one at a time. They were just wide enough for two, which allowed the man to walk down with her, a hand at her elbow the whole way.
“Now turn left here. Okay, turn around—you can sit down. There’s a soft chair here.”
She sat. There was a cushion on the seat, but the back was wood. It felt like a kitchen chair.
“Okay, well, we’ll be in touch,” Logan said.
She sensed his retreat, then heard the sound of a door closing. She didn’t know whether he’d left a light on. The bag on her head didn’t allow any light through, although the weave was not so tight as to keep out air. Good thing, too, since she had only her nose to breathe through.
As she sat there in her own world of darkness, she struggled to free her wrists, but the rope was tight and cutting into her skin.
Jane could hear voices upstairs.
There had to be a kitchen or living room directly above her. The voices sounded almost tinny, as though they were reaching her through a heat vent.
“I think he’ll deliver,” said someone. A man, but it didn’t sound like either of the two men who’d been in the car with her.
“I think Wyatt’s right,” Reggie said. “He’s not gonna let the girl die.”
Wyatt. The husband. The one who’d bagged her head and pushed her into the car. He must have driven here separately. So there were at least four of them. Reggie, Wyatt, Logan, and Joseph.
For a while, she heard nothing other than footsteps occasionally going by overhead. Then, from another part of the house, someone talking angrily, but no one was responding. Jane figured he had to be on a phone.
The door opened.
“Hey.” Reggie. “Your dad, or whatever the fuck he is, wants to hear your voice.”
She unwrapped the tape around her neck so he could lift the bag up far enough to get at the tape on her mouth.
“Hang on,” Reggie said into the phone. “Here she is.”
Jane shouted, “Vince, don’t—”
Reggie slapped the tape back into place, let the bag fall down. She left the room without taping the bag around Jane’s neck, and closed the door.
She thought she’d heard Vince say something, even though the woman hadn’t put the phone to her ear.
One word.
Baby?
Had he ever called her that before? Sweetheart, maybe. Honey. But never Baby.
Jane wanted to cry. She wanted to panic, too. But she kept herself from doing either.
She had to be tough.
She’d always been tough. She’d always known how to look after herself. She had to figure a way out of this.
They were going to kill her. She was sure of it. Didn’t matter whether Vince delivered or not.
They’d probably kill him, too, unless he had some brilliant plan to outsmart them.
She heard the door open again. Someone was entering the room.
Jane made a noise from behind the tape. “Mm, mm, mm?” It was the best “Who is it?” she could manage.
Whoever was there said nothing. But she could hear breathing.
They’d sent someone down to kill her. They’d convinced Vince she was alive, and they didn’t need her anymore. She bent forward and shook her head, trying to get the bag to fall off, but it stayed put.
“It’s okay,” a man said. “I just thought I’d come down and talk to you for a while. Keep you company. Help you pass the time.”
Joseph.
FIFTY-TWO
TERRY
VINCE took less convincing than I might have thought. Cynthia showed him her Milford Department of Public Health ID, with photo. “This’ll persuade a home owner to let us into the attic without you having to threaten to blow their brains out.”
“I guess that’s better,” he said. The man seemed to be in a fog. He had to be thinking about Jane. I knew I was.
I went to the garage and returned with a stepladder and four short bungee cords with hooks at each end. I tipped my head back, as though looking through the ceiling to our own attic, and said to him, “We’ll start here?”
Vince hesitated. “No. I haven’t got much time, and the other houses have more cash in them.”
So I carried the ladder outside and strapped it to the roof rack of the Escape with the bungee cords. It made sense that we all go in one car, and that included Grace. We didn’t have anyone to leave her
with, and we certainly weren’t going to leave her at home after the terrifying events of this morning.
Once we were all in the car—Cynthia offered Vince the front seat next to me, not so much out of courtesy, I figured, but because she didn’t want him sitting in the back with Grace—we had to first go by Vince’s body shop headquarters. He had to collect any keys he’d need, plus a small notebook with addresses and security codes, that would get us into any house where no one was home. Also, he had to pick up what Bert and Gordie had already retrieved from their various hiding places around Milford. He’d stuffed it all into a couple of reusable eco shopping bags from Walgreens.
“We’ll—actually, Cynthia—will do the talking,” I said to him, glancing in the mirror in time to see him scowl. “And if you can tell me where exactly the money is in each house, I can scramble up there and get it.”
“You better not be thinking of ripping me off,” he said.
I was about to go after him for that, but held back, figuring Cynthia would tear a strip off him.
But it was Grace who said, “Wow, what a totally asshole-ish thing to say.”
Vince shifted in his seat to get a look at her.
“Yeah, that was me,” she said. “Look at all the shit your problems have put me and my parents through since last night—and yeah, okay, I screwed up big-time, too—but this was your bright idea to hide money in people’s homes and it’s all gone to shit and now my mom and dad are trying to save your ass and Jane’s, and you accuse them of trying to rip you off? Excuse me and all, but if that isn’t being a dick, I don’t know what is.”
Vince turned his eyes on me and said, “How long’s she been hanging out with Jane?”
“Long enough to learn how to talk to you, evidently,” I said.
He turned his head, stared straight ahead through the windshield. Without looking at any of us, he said, “Just what I need. Two kids busting my balls.”
At the first house on the list, we got off easy. The driveway ran all the way to a two-car garage that sat behind the house. We parked alongside it; then Cynthia and I walked around front to ring the bell. When no one came, we went back and told Vince, who got out, key in hand, and went around to the back door. The property was well shielded with trees and tall bushes along the property line, so we felt reasonably confident we could get in the house unseen.