Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required (25 page)

Read Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required Online

Authors: Jennifer Apodaca

Tags: #Mystery: Cozy - Dating Service - California

BOOK: Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required
10.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
I took my purse and got my cell phone out. I loved my dog. “Hello?”
“Babe? Where the hell are you?”
17
“G
abe!” I said into my cell phone as I looked down at Zoë, who was out cold at my feet. The entire motel room swayed. “Mitch has kidnapped Angel! I have the necklace, but—”
“Sam, I’ve already talked to Barney. He filled me in a bit and told me the motel you’re at. Tell me which room you are in. I’m getting off the freeway right now. I’ll be there in one minute.”
I sucked in a breath. Gabe was there. He’d help me figure this out and save Angel. “I’m in the room right in front of Grandpa’s Jeep on the ground floor.” I didn’t know the room number. I had never looked. “I knocked Zoë out with my stun gun. Twice. I have to take her with me. I can’t leave her here. Mitch might figure out that she had the necklace and kill her.”
Silence.
Gabe was probably debating turning his big black truck around, getting back on the freeway and the hell away from me.
Finally he said, “I knew you wouldn’t stay home.”
Anger surged up inside me. “Yeah, that’s me, always getting into trouble. Can’t learn to stay home and let the man fix everything. Especially when the man is being an ass.” It dawned on me that this might not be the best time to piss off Gabe. I needed his help.
I needed him.
“Open the door, Sam.”
Ali stuck her nose in the door, whined, and wagged her long tail.
I glanced down at Zoë to see that she was still out cold and opened the door.
Gabe filled up the threshold. He turned off his phone and slid it onto his belt. Then he swept his dark gaze over Ali, Zoë unconscious and bound with tape on the floor, and, finally, me.
The impact of his stare made me instantly defensive. “OK! I screwed up and got Angel kidnapped! And now I’m kidnapping the romance fan from hell, except that I can’t figure out how to get her to the Jeep! I know I’m a screwup. But I have the necklace. I can fix this.” My eyes filled with tears. If I didn’t fix this, Angel was going to die.
Gabe reached for me, dragged me into his arms and up against his chest. “I shouldn’t have left you, babe. I was wrong.” He let go of me to look down into my face. “And you are wrong. You are not going to fix this.
We
are. Got it?”
I nodded stupidly. My best friend was in mortal danger, and I was suddenly worried about how I looked. My shirt was stained and torn from the street, my face tear-streaked, and . . . “I look awful.” I took a step back, determined to pull myself together.
He dropped his gaze in a slow search down my pink tank top and black jeans and back up. “This looks normal for you when you’re working on a case.”
I shook my head. “We don’t have a case.”
He flashed a small, smug smile. “Actually, we do. The woman who Mitch and Zack stole the necklace from hired me to get it back for her and bring the thieves to justice. Her name is Winnie Lange.”
I blinked. How the hell had Gabe managed that in an hour? “Really? I have the necklace!” I reached into the front pocket of my jeans and pulled the necklace out. It shimmered in cold beauty. “But I have to use it to save Angel.”
“We will.” Gabe rubbed my shoulders. “We’ll save her, Sam, but it won’t be easy. Whoever Mitch is, he’s been very slick as a jewel thief for a while. According to Barney’s research, Mitch has pulled off at least a couple dozen of these jewel heists. Barney also had some information that he said you asked for. That is that the average time between the jewel heists attributed to the Casino Jewel Thief was about three to six months. Then they suddenly stopped for almost an entire year. The police speculated that the Casino Jewel Thief had been arrested on another charge and that’s why the thefts stopped.” Gabe stopped talking for a second and raised an eyebrow. “Why did you ask Barney that? Do you think Mitch has been in jail, or do you have another theory?”
His faith in me, his belief that I could put together clues into a possible explanation, gave me confidence. Both in my ideas and that we would get Angel away from Mitch, safe and alive. I started explaining, “Mitch’s anger got me thinking. When I called Angel’s cell phone and he answered, he said Angel and I would never outsmart him, that he knew women and had made a career out of women like us.”
Gabe lifted an eyebrow and glanced down at Zoë.
OK, he believed in me but he also knew my tendency to get in over my head. “Gabe, Zoë’s crazy. Don’t untie her. I can’t reason with her. She kicked me in the stomach after I’d stun-gunned her to get the necklace back. She didn’t care that it was stolen; she’s convinced that the necklace would be a turn-on for R. V. Logan.” I had to keep him from untying her. We didn’t have time to deal with Zoë’s antics, and I had no idea how far she would go.
He nodded, and returned to the subject of Mitch and his certainty that he could handle women. “But you’re not like other women. You or Angel.”
Did he mean that in a good way or bad? “Right. I think under normal circumstances we would annoy him, but now we’re driving him to a rage.”
“Go on.” He watched me with his dark eyes.
I wanted to frame this right, to make Gabe see what would be at stake for Mitch if I was right. “Well, what if Mitch took on an accomplice because he suddenly developed a disability that prevented him from getting close enough to the women to steal their jewels—but he didn’t want his connected friends who buy the jewels from him to know about his disability?”
Gabe’s face stayed blank. He reached down to pet Ali, who was sitting beside him. “You think that’s why he took on an accomplice?”
I nodded. “Yes! He felt he had to so that he could keep up his reputation as a jewel thief. And the sideline of sex toys also fits his disability in a way.”
Gabe reached out and touched my shoulder. “You’ve thought this through. What do you think this disability is? And why do you think he has it?”
A rush of nerves skittered through my chest. But I had to know what Gabe thought. If I was right, maybe it would help us save Angel. “Well, at Angel’s house, Mitch was furious on the phone. He basically said that any man with a functioning dick could fuck the mark.” I spit it out fast. “We know that Mitch’s method was to charm and seduce older women, probably get them drunk and wear them out with sex. Then when they were in a sated and alcohol-induced sleep, he walked out with their jewels. It was clean and simple, and I think it fed some superiority complex he has about women.” I met his gaze. “But what if one day he couldn’t get it up anymore?”
Gabe winced. “Ouch, babe.” He let go of my shoulder and paced to the bathroom area and back. “You could be right. Impotence in someone like you describe might send him over the edge. And that would explain the year of no activity of the Casino Jewel Thief.”
But how could we know for sure? “Gabe, the woman you just talked to, do you have her number?”
He nodded.
“Call her, let me talk to her. We know she slept with Zack the night her necklace was stolen. But maybe Mitch tried before Zack.”
Gabe’s dark eyes narrowed. “And he failed.” He pulled his cell phone out and rolled through his address book. Then he put the phone to his ear. “Winnie? This is Gabe Pulizzi. I have a solid lead on your necklace, but I have to ask you a question.”
I waved at him. “Give me the phone.”
“Better yet,” Gabe said into the phone. “I’ll let my associate ask you. Her name is Samantha.”
I took the phone. “Winnie? I’m Samantha Shaw. I need to ask you if you dated a man who looked a little like Richard Gere that you met at the Daystar Casino anytime in the last few months or so.” I went on to describe Mitch as best as I could remember him.
Winnie said, “Well yes, a couple of months ago. It didn’t end well.”
She sounded like a nice lady. “I’m sorry to ask you this, but was he impotent?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“We’re still putting it together. Was he angry?”
“I had to insist he leave. I had a room at Daystar and threatened to call security.”
“Thank you, Winnie. You’ve been a huge help. We’ll tell you more as soon as we have solid information.” I said good-bye and gave the phone back to Gabe. “It was him! He couldn’t get it up and Winnie had to threaten to call security. She was staying at Daystar. So now we know he’s impotent. And that he tried and failed with at least one woman. He reacted angrily.”
Gabe slid his phone back onto his belt and prowled the motel room, keeping an eye on the unconscious Zoë. “So he comes up with a solution by taking on an accomplice. He hires a younger, more virile man to compensate, but Zack screws up. Now he has another problem, because he’s told Zack enough for him to be dangerous to his connected friends. And, hell,” Gabe stopped in front of me, “he might have hated Zack for being able to do what he no longer could. It would explain the rage and his compulsion to finish the job, to get the necklace.” He fixed his gaze on me. “To beat the women screwing up his carefully laid plans.”
I nodded. “Because he wasn’t going to let Angel and me, mere women like those he is used to seducing and manipulating, get the better of him by getting away with the necklace.”
“What about the sex toys? Are they supposed to replace his limp dick?”
I cringed at his word choice, but I had been thinking that. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s his backup plan. He trains Zack to take over as the Casino Jewel Thief, and to the connected people he steals for, it looks like he just wants to retire. Then he will need another job—selling sex toys. And who does he try to sell the sex toys through? Another woman that he thinks he can manipulate—Angel.”
Gabe’s dark gaze locked onto me. I felt the tension of those long seconds, a connection between us, a bond. Then he shifted slightly and said, “It fits. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was setting himself up to eventually demonstrate sex toys to more wealthy women and make off with their jewels.”
A someone-walked-over-my-grave shiver pulsed up my spine. Two things, then, were driving Mitch: deep anger over his impotence and a deep drive to go back to what he loved: stealing jewelry from women. He was a man desperate to keep his identity. The kind of desperate that fueled rage and violence, and Angel was at his mercy. “We’re out of time. I have to call him.”
Gabe put both hands on my shoulders. “Which brings us back to Mitch’s plan. He means to get that necklace back, then he has to kill both you and Angel. He’s a very pissed-off man.”
I could see the threat of danger to me stripping away the veneer of civility in Gabe. He was struggling with the animalistic urge to drag me to his house and handcuff me there where he could keep me safe. I tried to use a little of Grandpa’s magician’s diversion technique. “Maybe I can use his problem to talk to him. Be understanding, blame all the women for his problem, something to buy time.” I took a breath and addressed his needs. “Time for you to get in there and save us. You know, like a hero.”
He grinned. “Clever way to stroke my ego, so I won’t notice you putting yourself in danger.”
I shrugged. “Did it work?” I was going to save Angel. I just hadn’t worked out the details so that Angel and I would get out alive.
His grin flattened. “No. But we’ll figure out a way to get Angel. First, we have to find out where she is. I have a call into Vance. I’m assuming you didn’t call him?”
I looked up at Gabe. “I called you. I told Hugh to call the police, specifically Vance, to tell him all that he knows. Including that Angel was kidnapped. I figured Vance was more likely to believe Hugh.” I looked down at my watch. “We’re running out of time.” It had been fifty-five minutes.
He nodded. “Call Mitch from your cell. Tell him you have the necklace and ask where he wants to meet you to exchange the necklace for Angel. Be very compliant and anxious to please, except that you insist that Angel better be alive and well when you get there. Tell him that if it looks like Angel’s been harmed, you will bolt right to the police with the necklace.”
Fear churned up my stomach. I didn’t want to screw this up, but I had to do it. I went back to the bed, sat down, and picked up my cell phone. Gabe sat on my right to listen in. I dialed Angel’s cell phone, then both Gabe and I listened.
Mitch answered, “Do you have the necklace?”
“Yes.”
Please let me get this right.
“Ten minutes. You have ten minutes to get to the abandoned movie theater on Mission Trail or I start hacking off parts of Angel.” His voice was low, slightly angry but confident.
He was sure he had me under control. “Wait!” I frantically tried to remember what Gabe had told me. “How do I know Angel’s alive?”
“Hold on.”
I heard a ripping noise, then, “Ouch, you stupid prick!”
My insides turned a sick liquid.
Gabe covered the mouthpiece of the phone and mouthed, “Tape.”
Oh. Tape pulled off Angel’s mouth. My stomach calmed down.
Then Angel came on the phone. “He’s got a knife, a gun, and a problem with women.”
“Angel! Hold on, I’ll—”
Mitch came back on the line, “You’d better bring the necklace. Alone in ten minutes, or I’ll start with that bitch’s tongue. Come to the boarded-up door on the side of the theater.”

Other books

Tortured Souls (The Orion Circle) by Wheaton, Kimber Leigh
If the Shoe Fits by Amber T. Smith
The Rainmaker by John Grisham
The Hairdresser Diaries by Jessica Miller
North Fork by Wayne M. Johnston
Repairman Jack [05]-Hosts by F. Paul Wilson
Last Reminder by Stuart Pawson
Alamut by Judith Tarr