Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons (24 page)

I had to have light to find Opal. With my big flashlight still resting on my shoulder so it pointed down, I thumbed the switch to make a wide circle of light. The room’s dark periphery where Cupcake and the man fought was now a lighter shade of black.

I moved the light along the wall to my right, where a double bed with a mussed yellow chenille bedspread was shoved against the wall. In the center of the room was a sagging sofa, a reclining chair with white stuffing spilling through cracks in the fake leather upholstery, a card table, and some folding chairs. No crib, no playpen, no sign of a baby.

In the far corner beyond the bed, an apartment-sized range and refrigerator made a kitchen area, along with an abbreviated countertop with a sink. A gathered plastic skirt hid the pipes under the sink. A door was ajar at the edge of the kitchen area. I imagined the door led to a bathroom, but I’d have to pass through the fighting men to get to it. Sweeping my light slowly around the room to illumine every inch, I scanned the room with mounting panic. When I moved the light across the spot where Cupcake and the man continued to thrash and grunt, I saw two straight chairs pushed against the wall behind them. Myra Kreigle was in one, Angelina in the other. Both women were bound and gagged, with duct tape over their mouths like Vern and his goons had put over mine. Myra’s eyes were furious and demanding. Angelina’s were terrified and pleading.

I had to make a decision, and I had to make it fast. The women’s presence meant the plans Myra and Tucker had made had gone terribly wrong. The man fighting Cupcake was stuck with Myra as a hostage and Angelina as a witness to a host of crimes. If Vern’s buddies were outside watching Zack, they knew Cupcake and I were inside, and any second might find them up the stairs and holding guns on us. We could end up as trussed and helpless as Myra and Angelina.

To get to the bathroom door and look behind it, I’d have to pass through the fight. To get to Angelina and set her free—setting Myra free was not an option—I’d also have to pass through the fight.

In the nanosecond that I weighed choices, my light caught Cupcake’s eyes and caused him to stumble backward against the venetian blinds. In the bright light, his nose streamed blood, and his eyes had the astonished look of a Goliath realizing that a smaller man might best him. Taking advantage of Cupcake’s momentary loss of balance, the other man’s hand dipped toward his ankle in a move that made me spring forward. My flashlight’s handle made a satisfying crack on the back of his head, and he sagged to his knees.

Cupcake surged upright and gave me a dimpled grin. “You got some jiggy moves, girl.”

I pulled my .38 from the back of my jeans and pointed it at the man’s head.

It was Vern. He recognized me at the same time I recognized him.

Dazed, he sputtered, “Who? Wha…?”

I said, “Cupcake, he has a gun in an ankle holster. Get it. He may have a knife too, so pat him down.”

The look Cupcake gave me was probably the look a man in a bar gets when he realizes the woman he’s been flirting with is his sister in a wig.

Vern was even more confused. “Who the hell are you?”

I said, “Long story, Vern. Where’s the baby?”

His swelling eyes took on a sly look. “What baby?”

I spun away from him and pushed open the door to a miniscule bathroom. No tub, just a metal shower enclosure. No baby inside it.

Zack had stopped yelling, which either meant he had seen the light behind the blinds or that somebody had grabbed him and silenced him.

I ran to Angelina and grabbed an end of tape covering her mouth. I said, “Sorry, but I have to do this.”

Tears sprang to her eyes when I ripped the tape off her lips. I knew exactly how she felt.

I said, “Where’s the baby?”

She began to weep in earnest. “I do not know! I hear baby cry, but is dark and I do not see!”

Behind the tape on her mouth, Myra made a guttural sound of demand and jerked her head and shoulders side to side.

I said, “Cupcake, you got a knife?”

He grunted and moved to Angelina’s chair. While he cut through the tape holding her hands and feet, I turned back to Vern. He was getting his wits back, no longer swaying with dizziness.

I put the barrel of my revolver against his temple. “Here’s the deal, Vern. As far as I’m concerned, men who harm babies should be strung up by their gonads and left to turn slowly in the wind. I could do that. Or I could kill you and save somebody else the trouble. If I kill you, the cops will pin it on the guy you left here today with the baby. They’ll think he waited until you came back and then he shot you in the head. So if you have any interest in staying alive, tell me where the baby is, and I’ll think about letting you keep breathing.”

The thing about making threats to low-life people is that they only believe you if you really mean what you say. At that moment, I meant every word. I don’t know if I would have carried out the threat, but when I said it I thought I would. I wanted to do Vern serious harm, and he knew it.

He licked his lips. He shifted his eyes back and forth. His Adam’s apple bobbled.

He said, “Under the bed.”

Behind him, Cupcake was helping Angelina stand, and she was stamping her feet to get life back into them. Myra squealed with fury and flashed her dark eyes. The bitch expected us to rescue her, set her free, have compassion for her. Tough titty.

I ran to the bed, dropped to the floor, and raised the ratty chenille bedspread to peer under it. All I saw among the dust bunnies and dead spiders was a small cedar chest, the kind southern women store their woolen sweaters in. With my heart pounding, I dragged the box out and opened it.

Surrounded by a putrid odor of old urine, Opal lay atop a skimpy bed of rumpled T-shirts. Her eyes were closed and her breath was so shallow I was afraid at first that she was dead. Tenderly, I scooped her up and clutched her to my chest. Then I stood up and ran down the stairs and outside. I was almost to the front of the house when I heard Cupcake’s thundering footsteps and Angelina’s whimpers behind me.

Zack materialized out of the gloom, his pale face grim and rigid.

I said, “I have Opal!” I didn’t add that she was sleeping with a stillness that could only come from drugs.

He said, “Come on!” If he noticed Angelina, he didn’t say anything.

With Angelina’s soft cries and Cupcake’s heaving breath behind us, we raced across the sandy yard, floundered across the ditch, and thrashed through weeds like rogue elephants on a rampage. At the road, we ran like hell. Or at least Zack and I did. Angelina was slow and Cupcake hung back to steady her. Halfway to the Bronco, he flung Angelina over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

A crack of rifle fire sounded behind us. I hollered, “Fan out! Serpentine!”

Zack said, “What?”

Cupcake wheezed, “Zigzag!”

As we reached the Bronco, I heard a car engine start. I was sure Vern didn’t intend to chase us in his heavy limo, but Myra’s car was light and available.

Zack yelled, “I’ll drive!”

No argument from me. I said, “Keys are in the ignition!”

Setting Angelina on her feet and slinging open the back door so she could crawl inside, Cupcake wrenched open the front passenger door, helped me maneuver in with Opal in my arms, then flung himself in the back. Angelina’s face was wet with tears, but she looked relieved.

Zack started the engine and moved the car slowly forward. Headlights flashed behind us. Zack turned on our own lights and goosed the Bronco through the sand as fast as he dared. More rifle shots sounded.

Cupcake said, “I sure hope he’s a bad shot.”

I said, “If he hits us it’ll be pure dumb luck. But it might be a good idea for you and Angelina to hunker down so your heads aren’t sticking up.”

Zack said, “You do that too. You and Opal.”

I slid to the edge of the seat so I wasn’t such a good target. Nobody spoke the fact that Zack’s head was sticking up in clear outline. Preoccupied with driving and muttering instructions to his friends on the highway, he probably didn’t even think about it.

29

We made it down the bumpy sand road to Gator Trail without being shot. Vern drove too fast and too erratically to get off a hit. He even managed to get stuck for a minute in the same furrows he’d made with his limo. Vern was a perfect example of a man who never learned from his past mistakes.

Zack drove carefully until we turned onto Gator Trail, and then it seemed to me that we were going faster than my Bronco was meant to go. But Zack held the wheel with such a sure touch that I decided we must not be going as fast as I thought. Then I looked at the speedometer and realized we were going even faster. Cars must recognize the touch of an expert driver and pull out all their reserves.

Vern slewed onto Gator Trail behind us, and fired off another couple of shots. The idiot must have thought he was in a movie. At the juncture with State Road 72, Zack slowed to let Vern get closer, and then at the last moment cut the Bronco hard to the left. As he did, a line of clunker cars appeared out of the darkness to form an L-shaped barrier that forced Vern to make a sharp turn to the right.

Tires screamed. Metal screeched. The BMW slewed, slammed broadside into the railing over Horse Creek, lifted on one side for a moment, and then rolled over the railing.

I said, “Vern went into the water.”

Zack said, “Too bad.”

Cupcake sighed. “Pull over, man.”

Zack grimaced, but he edged the car to the side of the road and stopped. Cupcake hauled himself out of the backseat, hiked back to the bridge, and disappeared down the embankment toward the water. Angelina whimpered under her breath. I imagined she feared that Cupcake would bring Vern back to ride with us, but I didn’t have the energy to reassure her. The other drivers had gathered on the bridge to look over the broken railing. The men on the bridge were silent.

While we waited, I pulled my cellphone from my jeans pocket and dialed Sergeant Owens. When he answered, I spoke tersely.

“I’m in DeSoto County with Zack Carlyle. We have his kidnapped baby. We found her in a house where Vern Brogher was holding her. He also had Myra Kreigle and another woman bound and gagged in chairs. We left Myra in the house. The other woman is with us. She’s a witness to several crimes. Vern Brogher has had an accident in which his car rolled into Horse Creek. Cupcake Trillin has gone into the river to rescue him. Zack and I are going to take the baby to her mother at the Charter Hotel on Midnight Pass Road. I’d appreciate it if you’d have a physician meet us there and examine the baby. She seems healthy, but I think she’s been drugged.”

Several beats went by.

Sergeant Owens said, “Horse Creek. Charter Hotel. I’ll get on it right away.” Owens has never been what you’d call an effusive man.

I ended the call and shoved the phone back into my pocket. I patted Opal on the back. I hummed a little tune close to her ear. Her breath was warm on my neck.

The Bronco’s engine rumbled under the hood as if it objected to sitting still. Zack looked as if he had the same objection. After several minutes, one of the men on the bridge trotted to us and leaned through Zack’s window.

“Cupcake fished the son of a bitch out. He’s alive. Cupcake’s holding him until the cops come. We’ll wait for them. You go on.”

Zack said, “Thanks, man. For everything.”

He revved the engine and pulled back to the highway.

For some reason known only to babies, Opal chose that moment to wake up. Still groggy from whatever Vern had given her, she pulled her head back from my chest and gave me a goofy grin.

Softly, I said, “Hey, Opal.”

As if she understood that she was out of danger, she gurgled a half-laugh.

Zack turned his head and stared at her as if the sound shocked him. Then he laughed too, a rollicking sound of pure joy.

30

Halfway back to Sarasota, we met several speeding green-and-whites from the sheriff’s department. Their sirens were blaring, and I knew they hoped to get to Horse Creek before deputies from DeSoto County arrived there. A little farther on, we met TV vans with uplink dishes sprouting from their roofs like mushrooms. The reporters inside were probably salivating like bloodhounds at the idea of filming the arrest of the man who had kidnapped a famous race car driver’s baby, only to be saved from drowning by a famous inside linebacker for the Bucs. I still didn’t know what an inside linebacker was, but Cupcake was a man I was proud to know.

Opal drifted back to sleep, waking every few minutes with more alert awareness. She smelled to high heaven, and she was so wet that she’d soaked through my sweatshirt. When we got to Sarasota’s outskirts, I pointed to a strip center where a 7-Eleven was open.

“We need to get diapers for Opal.”

Zack looked surprised, as if the idea of diapers was alien to him, but he pulled into the lot and cut the engine.

I said, “Get the Size Two kind. I think they’ll fit. And get a box of wet wipes too.”

“You want
me
to get them?”

“Yeah, Zack. You’re her father.”

A smile flitted across his face. “How about baby food? Should I get something for her to eat?”

“Good idea. Maybe some strained fruit. We can go for other stuff later.”

From the backseat, Angelina said, “I get it.”

She had her hand on the door handle, ready to jump out. I pushed the child-lock gizmo on my door to make it impossible for the back door to open.

I said, “Zack, hurry.”

He must have understood that Angelina intended to run away, because he slid out of the car, slammed the door closed, and went into the 7-Eleven at a fast clip.

I said, “Sorry, Angelina, but you have to stay with us. You must talk to the police, tell them everything you know.”

Wide-eyed with fear, she said, “Mr. Tucker will kill my mother.”

“Mr. Tucker is going to jail, Angelina. He won’t hurt you or your mother. But you have to tell what you know about him and about Myra Kreigle.”

“That man at the house.”

“Him too. The man’s name is Vern. They’re all going to jail, Angelina.”