In Death's Shadow (20 page)

She nodded, looking pale.

I piled two more seed bags around her for good measure, then the van took off and I slid back toward the cargo doors.

Where the hell were they taking us?

I cast a desperate eye around the van. A canvas bag containing gardening tools dangled from a single handle, its contents jingling and clanging like pie tins. I crawled across the floorboards and dumped the bag out: a cultivating fork, some pruning shears, a bulb planter. I set the Garden Weasel mini-claw aside, thinking it might come in handy later, grabbed the trowel and crawled back to the cargo door. Kneeling, I used the trowel to scrape at the paint covering the window.

"It's coming off, Naddie!" A peephole began to take shape. I scraped some more, enlarging the opening until it became a nickel, a quarter, a silver dollar. I put my eye to the window.

Traffic was light, but then, it was Sunday. I counted three cars behind us, and then four. Chet was traveling fast, passing everyone in his path. We sped past a highway sign, but I could see only its back side.

We were on an expressway, though. I shifted my gaze to the right, across the median to the other side of the divided highway. A green sign announcing the Route 50 split for Annapolis and Washington, D.C., was receding into the distance. "We're heading north on I-97," I told Naddie.

I started in again with the trowel. I'd made a hole about six inches in diameter when Naddie said, "Listen!"

It was the first of the sirens.

The van slowed. Chet must have heard it, too.

I cupped my face and put it to the window, searching the road behind us for any sign of a police car. The siren grew louder. The van slowed again, but I couldn't see any flashing lights.

"Come on! Come on!" I chanted. "Where the hell are you?"

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A two-tone blue cruiser pulling a U-ey, pitching and yawing over the median strip, siren
whoop-whoop-whooping
and blue lights flashing.

"Naddie! They're coming! Oh, thank God, thank God!"

But Chet wasn't planning to wait around for the Anne Arundel County police. The van lurched and I was thrown against the cargo door. As the van sped up, I crawled forward, pounding with my trowel on the Plexiglas partition that separated us from the driver's compartment. "Slow down, you idiots! You're going to get us all killed!"

As if they cared. They had seat belts, after all.

I turned to check on Mrs. Bromley. "You okay, Naddie?"

Looking small and frightened between the seed sacks, Mrs. Bromley nodded.

I crawled back to my peephole. The cop car was still behind, easing into the fast lane. He was going to force Chet over.

Then the cop drifted back. In a moment I saw why. A funeral procession, headlights blazing, had been crawling up the slow lane. Model citizens all, they tried to get out of the way, but some had pulled to the shoulder, some to the median, others, in confusion, still clogged the slow lane. Chet barely slowed. Like a stunt car driver gone berserk, he threaded his way between the mourners, horn blaring.

We passed the exit for BWI Airport. In a few minutes, I knew, we'd reach the Baltimore beltway. The cop was still behind, but his lights were receding. Had he determined that the chase was an unreasonable risk to innocent bystanders? Had he given up? Damn! If he didn't catch us before the beltway, Chet could go east on I-695. He could go west. He could drive north through the Harbor Tunnel. Unless the cops called in a helicopter, we might never be found.

I needed to stop Chet. But how?

Still holding the trowel, I crawled around the van, searching desperately for a weapon. I banged into buckets and flower pots, muddy work gloves and boots, a compost pail and a rusty wheelbarrow. It was like crawling through a minefield. Then I saw it, like a beacon in the night: a yellow canister strapped to the wall with a bungee cord. I tucked the trowel into my waistband and, pitching and weaving drunkenly, made my way toward the canister, thinking it would make an excellent bludgeon. Bracing myself against the wall, I unhooked the bungee cords and pulled the canister down. I checked the label. Insecticide.
Oh, ho, ho, better yet
, I thought as I tucked the canister under my arm. Some painters' masks hung on a peg nearby. I snatched them as I passed and staggered forward.

"Here, Naddie, put this on."

I fastened a mask to my own face, then, dragging the canister, made my way clumsily toward the front of the van.

I studied the sliding window. It had a lock, like on a jewelry display case. It didn't look too sturdy.

I pulled the trowel out of my pants, rammed it into the space between the sliding panels and pulled back, hard.

"What the hell?" Pottorff was pounding on the window with his fist. "Get back there!"

I pulled even harder. The lock turned out to be sturdier than the Plexiglas it was attached to. The Plexiglas crackled, then cracked, then split in two.

Pottorff's hand shot through the opening, but I whacked it with my trowel. "God damn!" he yelled, hastily retracting his paw.

I picked up the insecticide, aimed the nozzle into the cab, pulled the trigger and sprayed. I sprayed right and left, up and down, I sprayed until the canister was empty.

Pottorff coughed, he gagged, he tore at his eyes.

Chet stared straight ahead, but his eyes were streaming; he swiped at them with his shirtsleeve. The van swerved, hit the rumble strip, then pulled back onto the highway.

"Stop!" I screamed. "Stop now!"

Chet was aiming for the exit to I-695 when the cop car appeared outside his window. Chet swerved, accelerated and tore up the ramp, but was going too fast to make the turn. The van hit the Jersey wall, scraped along it, gradually slowing. Just when I thought we'd be okay, my head crashed into the ceiling as the van jumped over an object on the shoulder and shot across the ramp to bounce off the Jersey wall on the opposite side.

In the cab, Chet was wrestling with the steering wheel, struggling for control. With the cop crowding him on the right, Chet kept to the shoulder, still driving like a madman. Up ahead, a disabled vehicle blocked his way. "Look out!" I screamed, and ducked, covering my head with my arms. By the time Chet saw it, though, it was too late. He slammed on the brakes, sending the van into a slow skid. It screamed along, teetering on its right-hand tires, tipped and toppled on its side with a sound of breaking glass and shredding metal.

Suddenly everything was quiet.

I opened my eyes. I was lying on what had been the right side of the van, and I had the headache from hell.

I struggled to my knees. "Naddie! Where are you?"

"I'm over here."

Wiping at my eyes, I crawled to her. Secure in her corner, cushioned by seed sacks, she had survived the crash fairly well, but she was pinned in by the lawn mower, which had become unattached from its moorings.

"Are you okay?"

Naddie clutched her arm to her chest. "I think I've broken my arm."

"Anything else?"

She sucked in her lips against the pain and shook her head. A tear rolled down her cheek. "I don't think so, but the arm hurts like the devil."

"I'll have you out in a minute."

I'll
have you out? That was a laugh. I poked my head through the window. There was no one in the cab. What I saw in the side view mirror was the backside of Chet and a brown blob that was Pottorff, crawling over the guardrail and hightailing it off into the underbrush, heading, I presumed, for nearby Arundel Hills Park.

"Help!" I screamed to anyone who might be listening. "Help! Get us out of here!"

There was the wail of more sirens. "Reinforcements!" I cheered. I crawled back to the cargo door and began flailing at it with my feet.

Suddenly the door was wrenched open. With "Thank God!" on my lips, I launched myself forward, falling into the arms of a very surprised Anne Arundel County cop.

"My friend," I muttered into his uniform. "Her arm's broken."

The officer held me at arm's length. He looked puzzled, as if I'd been speaking Greek. Where had all that blood on his uniform come from?

"Ma'am?" he said. "Are you all right, ma'am?"

The next thing I remember was sitting in the backseat of the police cruiser holding a compress to a gash on my forehead, watching as Chet and Pottorff, handcuffed, shuffling and staring at their shoes, were assisted into the backseat of a second cruiser.

"Please, check out my friend in there. I think she needs an ambulance."

"You both need an ambulance," the officer said. "It's on its way."

I shivered. "My friend. Is she okay?"

The officer smiled. "She's fine. Just a little beaten up. We've made her comfortable. Don't worry."

A blanket appeared from somewhere and I pulled it over my head and around my shoulders. "What took you so long?" I complained. "I called 911 and told them where we were."

The tips of the officer's ears reddened. "Do you know how many blue vans All Seasons has?"

Under the blanket I shook my head.

"Six. And one of them was parked on Rowe Boulevard in front of the Hall of Records. The crew was weeding the median." He grinned. "We had a very surprised driver and his assistant spread-eagled among the pansies when your call came in. By the time we'd realized our mistake and got around the corner to the construction site, you were gone."

Although it wasn't particularly funny, I smiled. "So near and yet so far."

"Something like that"

"They took my cell phone," I said.

The officer immediately got my drift. "Is there somebody we can call?"

I thought about Paul. If he had already gotten home, he must be frantic. "My husband." I gave the officer our number. Then I ticked the others off on my fingers. "And my brother-in-law, Lieutenant Rutherford with the Chesapeake County Police. And Officer Mike Tracey. He's one of you. He's working on the case this is related to."

"Ma'am," the officer said with a broad grin, "are there any cops you
don't
want me to call?"

I smiled. "It runs in the family."

"Do you mind if I ask?" the officer said after a moment.

"Ask what?"

He tapped the painter's mask that still dangled from my neck. "Why this? Your friend has one, too."

"I'll show you," I said.

He followed me over to the van, where I pointed out the yellow canister. "I sprayed 'em with that."

"What's in it?" he asked, picking it up and hefting it in his hands.

"Nothing now," I grinned. "But it used to be insecticide."

"'Kills chewing, sucking, and other hard-to-kill insects,'" the officer read off the label.

I thought about Pottorff in his beetle-brown suit. "Sounds about right to me."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The next time I saw Officer Mike Tracey, I was perched on a gurney in the emergency room of Anne Arundel Medical Center, and the plastic surgeon was humming "I've Been Working on the Railroad" while sewing six stitches into my noggin.

Tracey had been leaning against the wall, silently watching the doctor work. "That's quite a gash," he said as the doctor moved aside and the nurse began to apply a bandage.

"I'll live. How's Mrs. Bromley?"

"She's just a few cubicles away. Why don't you ask her yourself?"

Holding my head stationary, I waggled a hand at the doctor. "Almost finished?"

The doctor nodded, smiling. "Call my office and make an appointment. I'll want to see you in five days." He pulled a prescription pad from the pocket of his lab coat, scribbled something on it, tore off the page and handed it to me. "This is for Percocet, if you need it for pain. My phone number's there, too."

"Thanks, Doctor." From the throbbing going on in my forehead, I predicted I'd need to corner the market in Percocet.

The nurse put the finishing touches on my bandage then took us to see Naddie. She was in a nearby cubicle, lying on a gurney. "We've given her a light sedative," the nurse told us. "And we're keeping her overnight for observation. Don't tire her out," she said before slipping out.

I approached the gurney from the side and gazed down at my friend. Mrs. Bromley's eyes were closed and her breathing was slow and regular. "How peaceful she looks," I whispered to Officer Tracey. "I can't believe that I put her life in danger like that."

Mrs. Bromley's eyes fluttered open; she turned her head in my direction and smiled. "Hi," she said groggily.

"Hi yourself," I said. "How are you, Naddie?" Mrs. Bromley usually wore a headband, but sometime during all the excitement, it had disappeared. I smoothed the snow-white hair back from where it tumbled over her forehead.

"I could use a drink," she said.

I filled a blue plastic cup with water from the sink and supported her head with my hand while she drank it. When she was done, Naddie relaxed against the pillow, looked up and seemed to notice my bandage for the first time. "What happened to you?"

I touched my bandage gingerly. "A bump on the head. A few stitches." I smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, I'll be just fine. How about you?"

"They just read the X rays," she said. "My arm's broken in two places. They're going to set it. Ouch! I'm really looking forward to that! And I'll have to wear a cast."

"Casts come in a full range of designer colors, I hear."

Mrs. Bromley's face clouded over. "But my art show? It's next week!"

"Don't worry, Naddie. I'll help you with your show. You just relax, now. Everything's going to be fine."

"Do you ladies feel up to answering a few questions?" Mike Tracey extracted a notebook from his pocket and flipped it open to a blank page. When we agreed, he disappeared into the hallway, returning a few moments later, dragging a couple of chairs.

After we were comfortably seated, Mrs. Bromley launched with surprising enthusiasm into her version of our recent adventure, while I offered my two cents' worth about Jablonsky, Pottorff, and Steele. We had begun to describe the house where we'd been held prisoner when Paul burst into the cubicle, with Dennis only a few steps behind.

"My God, Hannah!" Paul fell to his knees in front of my chair as if he were about to propose marriage. He touched my bandage with his fingers, took my face gently in his hands and kissed me softly on the mouth. "What on earth am I going to do with you?"

"Why didn't you call me?" Dennis's scowl said it all.

"I'm always bothering you, Dennis. I thought you'd be proud of me. I called 911, like a good girl." I grinned, to let him know I was teasing. "I would have called you next," I added, "but they took away my cell phone."

"Who's 'they'?" Paul asked.

Mike Tracey leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, notebook still in hand. "We picked up the gardener and a guy named Pottorff when they tried to escape after the crash. Pottorff, it turns out, works for a fellow named Jablonsky. We've picked him up, too. They're so busy pointing fingers at each other it'll be a while before we get it all sorted out."

Dennis turned to me again. "Do you have any idea where you were being held?"

"Yes and no," I said. "I think it may have been Jablonsky's house in Fishing Creek Farm, but there's a way we can find out for sure." I looked around the cubicle for my purse but couldn't see it. Where the hell was it? I'd had it with me in the van, I knew that for sure. Had it gotten lost in the accident? Was it still in the ambulance? Had it been stolen? The warm pride I had been feeling about my coup with the GPS was quickly turning to ice cold panic. "My purse! It's gone!"

Mike Tracey laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry. It's probably back in your cubicle," he said. "I'll take a look."

It seemed like hours, but it was only minutes before Tracey returned with my purse. "Whew!" I took it from his outstretched hand and crushed it to my chest. "If I'd lost it—"

I handed the purse to Paul. "Look in the bottom," I instructed.

His brow furrowed, Paul set the purse on the foot of Mrs. Bromley's gurney, opened it and plunged in with both hands. He came out holding the GPS, still carefully cushioned in bubble wrap. I prayed that it hadn't been damaged in the accident.

"What does this have to do with anything?" Paul asked as he unwrapped the device.

"They may have taken away my cell phone, but they missed your GPS. I hit the M.O.B. button, Paul."

Like my husband, Connie and Dennis were sailors. I watched, amused, as a slow smile spread across Dennis's face when Paul explained to Officer Tracey what the M.O.B. meant.

Lieutenant Dennis Rutherford grinned at his colleague. "Hey, Mike. Ever applied for a search warrant on the basis of a latitude and longitude coordinate?"

They knew where the house was, of course. They'd looked it up.

Mrs. Bromley, the GPS, and I had given them plenty of probable cause, but I was needed to identify the place, positively, once they got inside.

With Paul's GPS mounted on the dashboard, Paul and I rode in the backseat of Tracey's cruiser from our house on Prince George to College Avenue. We turned left on College and right on Rowe, heading due west out of town, rather than east toward Fishing Creek Farm. Well, I thought sourly, that eliminates that creep Jablonsky.

When we made a right turn on Melvin, my heart began to race. At the end of Melvin was the community of Wardour, one of Annapolis's oldest high-rent neighborhoods. But before we reached the Wardour roundabout, Tracey surprised me by steering his cruiser left on Claude. At the end of Claude he stopped; we'd reached a dead end.

Directly in front of us, on a heavily wooded and beautifully landscaped waterfront lot, stood a modern, four-story home built entirely of brick. Tracey pulled into the drive and the GPS began to beep. "We have arrived," Tracey said. I didn't need the GPS or Mike Tracey to tell me that I was staring at a brand new three-car garage.

"Who does the house belong to?" I croaked.

"Somebody you know," Dennis said, turning in his seat to face me. "Mr. C. Alexander Steele, president and CEO of ViatiPro."

Why was I not surprised?

Surveying the house in front of him, Tracey whistled. "The business of death must be good." He opened the door of his cruiser, leaned out and motioned to an unmarked vehicle that had pulled into the driveway just behind us.

"Who—"I began.

"Evidence technicians," he replied.

Mike Tracey himself led the charge up the sidewalk. We stood behind him, like a tag team of Jehovah's Witnesses, while he rang the bell.

A middle-aged Filipina dressed as a maid answered the door. "Mistah Steele, he no home," she replied to Tracey's question. She stared, wide-eyed, first at us and then his badge, before backing away, bobbing at the waist. "I go get Missy Steele, okay? You wait."

A few seconds later a willowy woman dressed in a white tank top, black capris, and leather flip-flops came to the door. "I'm Claudia Steele. How may I help you, officer?" Diamond studs twinkled in her ears.

Tracey introduced the lot of us, then handed her the search warrant. "We're here to search the premises," he told her. "For evidence of a kidnapping."

If Claudia Steele was surprised, she didn't show it. While we waited, jockeying for position on the narrow landing, Mrs. Steele flipped quickly through the pages of the warrant. "I'm sure everything's in order here, officer, but I'm confident that you're making a huge mistake."

"We'd tike to begin in the basement," Tracey said.

"Be my guest." She turned. "Please, follow me."

How could she be so cool, so collected? Naddie and I had trashed the place. Did she think we wouldn't notice? She moved ahead of us with such poise and confidence that I was almost ready to believe I'd dreamed up the whole thing, until we stepped into the family room. There was the fireplace, the bar, the humongous TV, and, bless her little painted toes, the
Naked Maya
.

"This is it," I said firmly. "This is definitely the place."

Claudia Steele lounged against the bar while I led the officers to the wine cellar. The door, of course, was locked.

"They keep the key under the chalkboard," I told Tracey.

Once inside the wine cellar, I stared in disbelief. It had been only twelve hours since Naddie and I laid waste to the room, yet not a single bottle was out of place. There was no trace of the wine we'd spilled on the floor, no hint of a stain in the grouting. I looked up. The damage I'd done to the air conditioner had been repaired. I went to the door and looked down: even the carpet was miraculously clean. I felt like a fool.

As I wandered around the wine cellar, muttering, Claudia Steele stood next to the decanting table, holding the key in her hand and glaring at me with ill-disguised contempt. "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, Mrs. Ives. You'd think if somebody had been tossing wine bottles around my cellar, I'd have noticed."

I didn't believe for a minute that C. Alexander Steele had cleaned up the mess by himself, and Nick Pottorff and his buddy Chet had been otherwise occupied. Tracey would interview the maid, I was sure. Perhaps she'd tell a different story.

Mrs. Steele's arms were folded over her chest. "Will that be all now?"

"One more thing," I said, turning to Officer Tracey. "Our fingerprints will be all over the place, of course, but I think I can save you a little time. If you'll look over there? Next to the door?" I pointed. "Count nine bottles up and seventeen bottles over. You should find a bottle of pinot noir."

Mike Tracey started to cross the room, but Claudia Steele stepped in his path, blocking the way. She was used to being in control; my giving orders didn't seem to suit her. Tracey simply stared, waiting her out. "Will you excuse me, ma'am?"

Her face a mask of loathing, Claudia Steele stepped aside.

Tracey turned to a technician. "Gloves?" He snapped them on, then counted the bottles. ". . . fifteen, sixteen, seventeen." He stopped, his gloved finger touching the neck of the bottle, my special bottle. I held my breath as he withdrew it from the slot and set it on the tasting table.

With slow deliberation, Tracey patted his pockets, searching for his reading glasses. Once the glasses were on his nose, he laid the bottle in his palm and bent over it. "'Michael LeBois Pinot Noir,'" he read.

"That's right, 2001, if I'm not mistaken."

"The bottle's been opened."

Claudia Steele's eyebrows shot up.

Mike Tracey wrapped his fingers around the cork and twisted, but it wouldn't budge. He scanned the room, spotted the corkscrew. "Do you mind?"

Claudia Steele shrugged. "Do I have a choice?"

Tracey removed the cork, shook the bottle, then peered inside. After a thoughtful moment, he tapped out the note I'd written to Paul. He unrolled the note, scanned its contents, his face passive, then handed the note to the technician, who sealed it inside a Baggie. "We'll need it for evidence, of course, but after that—" He looked at Paul. "I'll think you'll want to have it, Ives."

"Well," Claudia Steele huffed. "I don't have the slightest idea how
that
got there. I haven't been home. I spent the weekend with my mother in Pennsylvania. You can check."

Strangely enough, I believed her. There hadn't been any cars in the garage when Chet pulled in with the van.

"I have nothing to do with my husband's business, or with his associates," she insisted.

Tracey reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a photo lineup, six mugs to a page. He laid it on the tasting table. "Do you recognize any of these men, Mrs. Steele?"

Claudia Steele tapped Pottorff's face with the tip of a French manicured nail. "That's Nick Pottorff. He's a messenger for MBFSG. My husband does a lot of business with them." She waved a hand. "I don't recognize any of these others."