The Chocolate Bridal Bash (25 page)

I slipped in the back door behind Lovie and stood in the kitchen, still doubtful.

But then I heard a voice, and it shattered any idea I had that Lovie and I had walked in on an innocent gathering.

“Look at the candles flicker!” a raspy voice said. “Somebody came in!”

Another man laughed jovially. “Don’t be stupid! Nobody could know we brought Sally here.”

And I knew who Ratso was.

“
M
y initials spell a word,” he’d said at the council meeting. “That means I’m lucky with money.”

Raleigh A. Taylor. Retired teacher, city councilman, tightwad, and all-around civic volunteer with a strange smile.

It made perfect sense. Rollie had known Lovie; they’d been student activists at Western Michigan. He’d known Ed Dykstra—also a student activist—through Ed’s mother. Ed had been at the University of Michigan, and so had Quinn McKay. And Quinn and Ed had been childhood friends.

And if Ed, Quinn, and Rollie decided to fake a kidnapping, either to raise funds to fight pollution or just to fight their own poverty, Benson McKay III—head of a company they regarded as a major polluter—would have been a logical person to cough up the ransom.

And they couldn’t have found a better hideout than the McKay cottage, closed for the summer because Quinn’s dad and stepmother were in Europe. Quinn would have had a key, and Ed would have known how to get hold of his father’s key, plus he’d have been familiar with his father’s routine for checking on the cottage.

All this flashed through my mind, and it must have left me as limp as an old sock, because when Lovie put her hand on my shoulder and gently shoved, I knelt on the spot. Obeying her gesture, I ducked down beside a large kitchen range.

I thought she wanted both of us to hide, but Lovie didn’t get down with me. And I was barely on my knees when the light changed, and I realized a door must be opening.

Because of the shutters, it was dark in that kitchen, but I could see that a candle was being poked into the room. It cast weird shadows on the face of the man who held it.

I pulled my head farther back behind the range, something like a turtle retiring into its shell, but I could still see Lovie, standing close to me, in front of the stove.

A gruff voice spoke. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

“I knew you had to be here when I heard that you’d taken Sally,” Lovie said. “Where is she?”

“Sally’s not hurt. But how did you know where we were?”

“Ed told me.”

“Ed? But he’s gone.”

“Ed’s come back! He didn’t know you’d killed his brother!”

“I didn’t kill him!”

Lovie spoke right over him. “Ed didn’t even know Sally had run away! And Sally doesn’t know anything! Or she didn’t! Why did you take her?”

“We can’t take chances.”

“You’re being silly, Quinn!” Lovie raised her hand, then slapped it on top of the range, rattling it as she emphasized her words. “Let Sally go!”

The door swung open wider—I could see the top of it—and a different man spoke. “Well, if it isn’t the one who taught us the three Rs,” he said. “Rioting, rallies, and revolution.”

If I hadn’t already figured out who it was, I would have recognized the dumb joke. The second man was Rollie Taylor.

Lovie spoke again. “I didn’t teach you kidnapping and murder. You got into that for your own reasons.”

“Yeah, and your precious Ed got into it, too.” This came from the man with the big nose—was he really Quinn McKay?

“Ed had nothing to do with murder,” Lovie said. “And Sally had nothing to do with anything. She knows nothing that can threaten you. Let her go. Where is she?”

Rollie laughed. “Sally liked that fancy cathouse bedroom so well—back when she was almost a bride—that we put her in there again. But this time we made sure she couldn’t get to the outside door.”

I could see the top of the door move again. “Come on in the living room,” Rollie said. “We’ve got a little fire. We need to know about Ed. Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Lovie said.

The candle was withdrawn, Lovie went with Rollie and Quinn, and the door closed. I was in the dark, stuck behind the kitchen stove. But Rollie and Quinn didn’t know I was there. Now all I had to do was call the cops, rescue my mom, and escape.

Ha.

Thanks to the shutters on the windows, the kitchen was pitch-black. The kidnappers were in the next room, and nothing but an old-fashioned swinging kitchen door separated me from them. If I made a noise, they’d hear me. The back door was unlocked, but if I went through it, the draft would make the door swing and the candles flicker, just as it had when Lovie and I came in. So if I went out that way, I’d have to run like heck, through deep snow, on a bright, sunny afternoon. I could almost guarantee that Quinn and Rollie could run me down before I could get to the road. Unless they had a gun. That would make it even easier for them.

Lovie had kept Quinn and Rollie from knowing I was there, but she’d also left me in an impossible position. I had to get out of that kitchen and it wasn’t going to be easy.

I stood up slowly. The bad guys’ candle, which had almost seemed to glare while Quinn was sticking it through the door, had dazzled me. Now my eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness, and I realized that it wasn’t as complete as I’d first thought.

There was a soft glow around that swinging door, for one thing. And one of the shutters didn’t fit exactly right. A line of light showed down the side.

If only that light would shine on a telephone.

I realized that a kitchen might well have a telephone. And I knew that most people who had summer cottages didn’t bother to disconnect the telephone for the winter; they’d simply have to pay to hook it up again in the spring. I began to look around. Was there a phone sitting on the counter? A phone hanging on the wall?

I spotted it. It was a vague shape on the wall, near the swinging door. I moved across the kitchen floor slowly, carefully, praying that my wet boots wouldn’t squeak. Lovie was haranguing Quinn and Rollie loudly. I realized she must be trying to cover any noise I might make.

I reached the phone. Oh, wonderful instrument. It could connect me with Aunt Nettie, with Hogan, with rescue. I eyed it hungrily.

It was a portable phone.

Damn. While the standard, old-fashioned phone is independent of the source of electrical power, this one wouldn’t be. It relied on electricity. And the electricity had been off in this blankety-blank cottage for months. There was no point in even picking that phone up.

I turned around in disgust and headed back toward the stove, still creeping along slowly, carefully. My eyes had adjusted to the gloom now, and as I got to the range, I saw something on its top.

A key. It was the key Lovie had produced, the one she’d planned to use to get in the back door. When she’d whopped her hand on the top of the stove, she must have left that key.

That was nice of her. But what the heck good would it do me? I didn’t want to lock anybody inside the darn cottage. And the back door was already unlocked. I could go out any time I was willing to cause a draft.

But if I could get outside, I realized, I could go in another door—such as the side door, the door off the deck, the door to the room where my mom must be a prisoner.

But how could I get out of the kitchen and around the corner to that door?

Then I remembered I’d seen another door as Lovie and I came around the house. A cellar door. The old-fashioned kind used when farmers carried potatoes or apples into the basement for winter storage.

And cellars traditionally were also accessible from kitchens.

I spotted a door at the back of the kitchen. My heart began to pound. Could it be my escape hatch?

I tiptoed back there—the argument in the living room was getting louder and louder—and I carefully opened that door, peeking around it to see what was inside.

Something flew out at me.

It was instinct that made me put up my hand, some primitive instinct that I was about to get hit in the head and should try to avoid the blow.

I gasped and realized I was standing there holding a mop handle. I’d opened the broom closet, and the mop had nearly fallen out.

My heart was beating so loudly I felt sure Quinn and Rollie would hear it in the next room. It took me at least a minute of deep breathing to get my nerves calm enough that I could move.

When I was able to command my muscles again, I opened the door a bit wider and tried to see what else was in that closet. It might hold something useful. Like a flashlight.

I didn’t find a flashlight, but I did see an odd white stick—right in front of me, at eye level, lying flat. Thanking my tall Texas and Dutch ancestors, the ones who handed me the genes that made me tall enough to see what was on that shelf, I touched the white stick gingerly. It was a candle.

It was beside a cheap star-shaped glass holder. And right beside the holder was an old peanut butter jar. Hope began to sing. I took the peanut butter jar out and held it in the light coming in around the shutter, and my heart gave a leap of joy. It held a box of matches, sealed inside the jar to keep out the damp.

I knelt behind the range again, opened the jar, and lit the candle. And once it was lit, I found the cellar door without any trouble. It was around a corner in a little alcove that held the refrigerator.

I crept down the cellar steps and found myself in a Michigan basement, a cellar with a sand floor and stone walls. By that time I was completely turned around, and I had to make a circuit of the cellar before I found the outside door. Then another fear arose. That door ought to be held shut from the outside by a padlock. I might need a hacksaw to get out. Or an ax.

But luck was with me. The double door to the blessed outside was held shut by a bar on the inside. A rugged two-by-four was across the double doors, held at each end by rough-hewn wooden hooks.

Some McKay farmer of bygone days had carved those hooks himself, and the family had never bothered to change the arrangement.

Not that it was easy getting out. Even after I’d taken the bar down, I had to shove on one of the doors like crazy, then dig my way out through the snow. I shoved the door just far enough open that I could squeeze out. Then I knelt in the snow and panted for a minute before I reached inside and pulled out my candle.

I stood up and started for the side deck and the door to what Rollie had called the “cathouse bedroom.”

Before I could get there, someone called my name.

I was completely surprised—I swear I looked up in the trees to find where the sound was coming from. Then I thought I’d imagined it.

But I heard it again. A low sound, almost a whisper, but insistent. “Lee!” When I looked around, I saw a movement.

It was Joe. He was standing at the edge of the woods, and he was motioning to me. I could see his mouth move. “Come! Come!”

I longed to run to him. Right through the snow.

Next I saw another movement, and I realized Hogan was standing about ten feet away from Joe. And through the bare winter trees, down on Lake Shore Drive, I saw police cars.

The police had found out where we were—even though I hadn’t been able to tell them. They were surrounding the house.

I felt a great sense of relief. But it was quickly followed by fear.

My mom was still a prisoner in that house. She would be a hostage. When the police stormed the place, she’d be in desperate danger.

I had to get her out.

Joe was still gesturing. He obviously couldn’t understand why I was just standing on the deck—holding a lighted candle in the bright sunlight—instead of running toward him.

I put the candle on the porch railing. Then I gestured to him. We’d gone to a couple of West Michigan Whitecaps games the summer before, and the entertainment had included audience participation. We’d all waved our arms enthusiastically, spelling out “YMCA” with gestures. Maybe I could remember the motions, and maybe Joe would recognize them.

I stuck my elbows up in the air and clinched my hands on top of my head.
M.
Then I made my arms into a big circle with my hands linked in the air above my head.
O.
Then I made another
M.
Then I pointed to the door behind me. I took Lovie’s key from my pocket and pantomimed turning it in a lock. Then I picked up my candle and moved toward the door.

It might not open anyway, I told myself.

But it did. The key turned easily in both locks—the one in the door handle and the deadbolt. I opened the door just a sliver, and I poked the candle inside.

I saw a movement. My mom was alive.

She was tied to one of the bedposts, and thank God she was gagged. I’m sure I startled her so much that she might have screamed. But she couldn’t.

Putting my finger to my lips, I crossed to the bed. The floor was covered with a thick carpet, so making noise wasn’t such a worry in there.

Then I started trying to get her loose. Rollie and Quinn had used some kind of clothesline to tie her up, and the knots didn’t make any sense at all. I struggled with them.

Mom began to yank her head back and forth, and the light changed. I realized someone had come in the door behind me. It was Joe.

He pushed the outside door almost shut, and he crossed to the bed. I gave him the finger on the lip bit, and he nodded. He took a look at the knots that held my mom; then he reached somewhere under his ski jacket and produced a pocketknife.

It was more beautiful than a diamond tiara.

Joe’s wonderful knife—as a good craftsman he takes care of his tools, so it was sharp—made quick work of the clothesline. We had Mom untied and off the bed in about a minute. We were holding her, trying to help her stand up, and dragging her toward the door, when the noise coming from the living room changed.