Dames Fight Harder

by M. Ruth Myers

  Lamont’s rectangular white office building had a CLOSED sign on the door when I arrived. The space marked off by railroad ties was empty of cars and the fenced area with supplies was padlocked for the night. On the unfenced side of the building a worn down dirt track led around to the back. I followed it. Lamont’s car was there, the one I’d perched on when I lay in wait for him after his business luncheon. The only other vehicle was an old gray pickup.

  My initial reaction was relief. Rachel’s car wasn’t here. Then I remembered that Joel had confiscated her keys. She’d called a cab from the beauty salon where she’d had her hair done. Once she got in, it would have been simple to have the driver bring her here instead of her home address. Sliding out of the DeSoto, I closed the door with minimal noise except for my heart pounding.

  How did I play this? Once I got inside, should I call “Yoo-hoo” to distract her? I didn’t think she’d shoot Lamont in front of me. If I was in time. But if she looked around at the sound of my voice, Lamont, as scared as he was, might lunge for her gun.

  Ridiculous. She didn’t have a gun.

  Or did she? Rachel was a woman of secrets. I crept to the back door.

  The door opened easily when I tried it. At first all I heard was silence. Then I caught the murmur of voices in Lamont’s office. Two voices. Both of them male. Whoever was here, it wasn’t Rachel.

  I frowned. Trowbridge? Could he have slipped out somehow? Did a road or access of some kind that I hadn’t noticed squeeze between the railroad siding and the back of his lumberyard?

  Because I hadn’t had time to practice with my new Smith & Wesson, I’d put it under a pair of coveralls I kept in the trunk of my car, resolved to leave it there until we became more familiar with each other. Meanwhile, the automatic I kept as a backup was in my purse. I took it out, set my purse in the hall, and edged along the wall to Lamont’s office.

  The door stood open a foot, but I couldn’t see anything. The voices had stopped. A radio, maybe? Keeping the gun out of sight at my side, I nudged the door open. My breath stopped. Winfred Lamont sprawled sideways with his head on his desk and one hand reaching toward the telephone. There was a bullet hole in his forehead.

  “Ah, the clever Miss Sullivan. If you were a dog, I’d be impressed by your performance as well as your form,” said Phil Clark stepping into my line of vision. He leveled a gun at me with steady confidence.

  As he spoke a vise caught my shoulder, smashing me against a file cabinet so hard I lost my grip on the automatic. I snarled as anger followed pain.

  “Another yell like that or any fast moves and your friend in the closet gets a bullet,” Clark warned. “A painful one. I won’t kill her until Dougie has some fun with her. He doesn’t like her much.”

  I didn’t need to see the man who was pinning my arms and clamping a hand across my mouth with force enough to snap my jaw. It was Hawkins. Both of them being mixed up in Lamont’s swindle and whatever else he was guilty of made no sense.

  And then it did.

  Clark was fueled by ambition, by the need for success. So much so that he hadn’t been able to stand it when the woman he was dating bested him on a bid. He hadn’t cared about taking over Foster’s project. He’d wanted in on the scam with the two grades of lumber, a scam which would give him an edge. Or maybe just leverage in securing a source of lumber as military construction commandeered the bulk of supplies.

  And Hawkins? Hawkins was the cousin he’d mentioned. The one who’d kept him from getting roughed up when they were kids.

  “Take your hand off her mouth,” Clark ordered. “She’s got brains enough to know I meant what I said about her friend, and it looks better if she doesn’t have bruises.”

  The departing twist Hawkins gave my lips made my eyes water.

  “Let me see Rachel. How do I know she’s still alive?”

  Backing up half a dozen paces, Clark half opened the door to Lamont’s coat closet. I saw a pair of legs, tied at the ankles. They kicked.

  “Bring her here and use the rest of that rope to tie her up like the other one.” He nosed the gun in his hand toward the closet a couple of times, his eyes on mine. “Don’t forget what I said about shooting her.”

  With a gun between me and Rachel and her trussed up, I couldn’t see any options. Given Hawkins’ size, it might take more than one shot to bring him down. Odds were against such an opportunity.

  “What happened, Clark? Did you start to worry the cops weren’t buying the idea Rachel killed Foster so you dragged her here and killed Lamont to pin this on her too?”

  “What happened was you — your sniffing and meddling. If you’d drowned the way you were supposed to, I could have calmed Lamont down. When he called this afternoon in a panic because the man supplying the lumber for their scheme had gotten a call about invoices, I knew the spineless twit presented a risk.”

  Hawkins jerked me around and started tying my hands behind me.

  “You’ve killed the Golden Goose, though.”

  “Not necessarily.” Clark’s smile was unpleasant. “If Lamont’s arrangement with the man supplying the lumber—”

  “Trowbridge.”

  “Of course. You had to know his name to call him, didn’t you? There’s no reason to think the police investigating Lamont’s death will discover their scheme. Trowbridge may decide it’s in his best interest to enter into a similar arrangement with me. Either way, I have two competitors out of the picture.”

  “And either way, you get the satisfaction of having evened scores with Rachel. You punish her for beating you fair and square when she got that contract.”

  “That ain’t true!” Hawkins yanked the rope around my wrists and spun me to face him. “Wasn’t anything fair and square about it! That bitch has had everything given to her, just like all dames. Phil’s fought to get where he is — fought every step of the way! Dames don’t have to fight for what they get. You don’t even know how to. All you know how to do is strut around and give orders and act important. But you’re not giving orders now, are you, huh?”

  He raised his hand to belt me.

  “Don’t!” Clark said sharply. “I told you I don’t want any marks on her. I need you to keep your temper now, Dougie, so I can think.”

  The childish form of address for the hulk holding me made the whole ugly scene bizarre.

  “She’s thrown a wrench in things coming here,” Clark told his cousin. “We’re going to have to change plans. Get a gag in her mouth and finish tying her. Then put her in with the other one. Make sure those knots are tight, too.”

  “Other people already know how Foster cheated with the lumber,” I said. If Clark started to worry he couldn’t knock enough dominoes down to make himself safe, he might cut his losses and run.

  “They know Foster did, maybe. No reason they should connect anything about it to me. Or to Trowbridge.”

  Hawkins stuffed the pressed and folded handkerchief from Lamont’s jacket into my mouth. I tried not to notice the speck of blood on it. He secured it in place with another cloth of unknown provenance.

  “When you’ve finished with her, go get her car and park it somewhere down the street. By that bar we noticed.” Clark was thinking aloud. “I’ll move Lamont’s car and meet you at the truck. We’ll wait til it’s dark to come back for them.”

  “What do you mean come back?”

  “Weren’t you listening? I just told you we have to change plans.”

  Hawkins tied my feet, running his hand up the length of my thigh for good measure. Then he carried me across the room like a rolled up carpet and dropped me into the closet, fully aware that tied as I was, I had no means of breaking my fall.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The closet door banged. I lay in darkness. I’d landed on something softer than floor, but uneven. Several seconds elapsed and I realized it was Rachel, lying on her side with knees drawn up, maybe in an effort to cushion my fall. I eased off her and we both slid back to sit on opposite sides of the closet so
we could see each other.

  On the other side of the door, Clark told Hawkins to look for my purse, and something about the car. Their voices started to fade. They were leaving. Or pretending to.

  I nudged Rachel’s knee with mine in reassurance. After a moment, she nudged back. In what little light leaked in beneath the office door, I could see her eyes were glistening. They had tears in them. As petulant and vile tempered as she’d been that morning, Rachel wasn’t one for self-pity. The tears were for me. For getting me involved.

  When enough time had passed for me to believe we were really alone, I drew up my knees and tried to get my chin against them to scrape my gag off. Rachel caught on and tried the same move. It soon became apparent neither of us could make sufficient contact with our knees for long enough to succeed.

  Blocked on that idea, I searched my mind for another. I thrust my shoulder forward and nodded at Rachel. She frowned. I repeated it and she understood. Scooting forward, she angled her shoulder toward me.

  As small as the coat closet was, it didn’t take much maneuvering on either of our parts. It was barely wide enough for us to sit with our legs stretched out and deep enough for us to fit in side by side. I could get the top edge of cloth down over my mouth but I couldn’t work it down any farther. Hawkins had done a dandy job with that assignment.

  Suddenly Rachel pulled away and began twisting and grunting. She rolled onto her knees. Unable to balance or push with her hands, she braced her head and shoulder against the closet wall. With sheer determination as much as anything else, she managed to totter onto her feet. While I sat wondering what in the name of sense she was doing, she began to ram her head into hangers and lift until she knocked a few down.

  As soon as she got it across to me what to do, her idea proved its cleverness. She maneuvered a hanger until I could clamp it between my drawn-up knees. Then she tilted her head, worked the edge of her gag over the hook of the hanger, and pulled and tugged. There were setbacks, most notably when the hanger slipped free of my knees, but after fifteen minutes we were free to talk.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with her first breath. “All the things I’ve said to you, getting you into this to begin with—”

  “It’s okay, Rache. What happened?”

  “I was at the beauty shop. When I came out I hadn’t gone ten feet before I met Phil. Clark. He came up like he meant to wish me well or some such and stuck a gun in my ribs. Told me very pleasantly that they had Cecilia, and that if I didn’t come with him, her kid wouldn’t have a mother.”

  “They don’t have Cecilia. Mo talked to her when they started hunting you.”

  She told me the rest. Hawkins had been behind the wheel of Clark’s car in a nearby alley. Clark knocked her over the head. When she woke up, she was bound and gagged. They bundled her into the trunk and brought her to the meeting he had scheduled with Lamont.

  “Poor Lamont. He thought he and Phil were going to be putting their heads together to find a way out of the mess they realized they were in after your phone call. When he saw Hawkins and me, he knew something was off and was terrified. Phil kept asking him what he’d told you. Lamont kept saying nothing, that he didn’t know how you’d learned about Trowbridge. After five minutes or so of that, Phil shot him. No warning, just ... shot him.”

  As she talked, we’d both been working to loosen the ropes that tied our hands. There was no way we could help each other with that task. The fibers of the rough rope scraped into my skin like sandpaper as I picked and pulled with my fingers and seesawed my wrists, but I began to feel a small gap. It might amount to only a quarter inch, but once I could work my thumbs under, I could make serious progress.

  “They were about to shoot me, make it look like suicide in a fit of remorse, when they heard you drive up outside.”

  “If Clark had been fast on his feet, he would have shot me then and there, made it look as though I’d walked in and found you with the gun in your hand.”

  “Allow me to say I’m quite pleased he didn’t.”

  “Me too. He’s a planner. I don’t think he’s good at making things up as he goes.” It might be the one advantage we had. “He thought he could pin Foster’s murder on you because of the argument the two of you had, and the rumor Foster spread. What makes him think the cops would fall for the idea of your killing Lamont?”

  “My volatile nature.” Her voice was bitter. “He said everyone I’d had dealings with knew how quick-tempered I could be.”

  “Ah.” There was no disputing that part. “How close are you to freeing your hands?”

  “Not very. I can wiggle my wrists, though.”

  It was dark in the closet now. I had no sense of time. Clark and his enforcer could come back any minute.

  “Unless he’s changed plans, it sounds like he plans to take us both elsewhere to dispose of us.”

  “Agreed. If I were in his position, I’d try to maintain the fiction that this was all somehow related to Foster’s death, in which case I’d take us to either my office or the Drinkwater site.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. He’s smart enough to know we’ll be easier to control if he separates us. He’ll either make two trips with my car or he’ll use Lamont’s too.”

  “To make it look like I killed Lamont, used his car, and lured you wherever.”

  “Yes.”

  I told her about the .38 hidden under the dirt stained coveralls in the DeSoto. If they used my car twice and I didn’t get a chance to use the gun, she might.

  Hawkins was wrong in his estimation of women, and not just in the slighting term he’d used, either. When something that mattered to them was at stake, women fought.

  Rachel and I lapsed into silence. We weren’t the type for false assurances. We knew the odds that either of us would get out of this alive were long, odds of both of us making it even longer. Nor did we waste words on declarations of friendship. They were unneeded. Thinking of Rachel’s friendship called up thoughts of Connelly and the raw emotion in his voice when he’d said he couldn’t bear it if anything happened to me. I hoped he would forgive me. I hoped he would see I would never have been right for him.

  Rachel’s voice interrupted.

  “I wish I’d fired that s.o.b. Hawkins six months ago.” Our laughter blended, muted and sad.

  Out in the hall there were sounds. No bugle played, so it wasn’t the cavalry come to rescue us. Instead I heard Clark’s voice.

  I’d managed to work my thumbs under the outer loop of the rope and slip one side over, giving more play. Now I hooked my thumbs around the rope a different way and applied tension. If Clark or Hawkins tested the rope but didn’t look closely, it would still seem secure.

  “Get your gag up,” I whispered to Rachel, then used my tongue to pull the outer band of cloth up a couple of times to a tenuous covering of my mouth. The handkerchief that had been stuffed under it had long since gotten shoved beneath a topcoat knocked to the floor in Rachel’s attempt to get hangers.

  She swore, an indication she couldn’t get the gag up even though I’d made her practice the move half a dozen times. Curling into a ball she turned her face to the wall, hiding her face as she pretended to sleep.

  The closet door opened.

  “Take the detective out first,” Clark ordered. “When she’s in, pull her car away and back Lamont’s car up to the door.”

  Hawkins’ paw wrapped around my arm and jerked me upright.

  “Aw, ain’t that a pity.” He sneered past me at Rachel. “We’re gonna have to disturb Her Majesty’s beauty sleep.”

  FORTY-NINE

  As soon as the trunk lid slammed imprisoning me, I started to work at the ropes on my wrists again. By the time the car was in motion, I was back to where I’d been before. The joints of my thumbs were sore. Hawkins had given the rope a hard yank to test it. He hadn’t noticed my hard-won two inches of slack, but my thumb joints had strained to maintain an appearance of tightness.

  The next part was tricky. I coul
d slip one hand under a single strand of the rope that encircled my wrists several times, but when I tried to pull the other hand free, the loops remaining tightened. On my fourth attempt I succeeded and the rest went quickly. The first thing I did was feel beneath me for my folded-up coveralls with the Smith & Wesson.

  It was still there.

  Tucking it into my waistband, I began to work at the ropes around my ankles. The tips of my fingers were raw. My nails dug into the crevices of the knot again and again, desperate even as I coached myself to stay calm. If I couldn’t free my feet by the time they opened the trunk, I didn’t have a chance. I might put a bullet in one of them, but I’d be a sitting duck for the other one.

  I thought about Rachel and how her family would suffer if Clark’s plan succeeded. They wouldn’t believe in her guilt, but they’d never be able to clear her name either. People they knew, as well as strangers, would believe the worst of her. I, along with a chunk of metal I hadn’t yet tried, was the only hope that they had. That Rachel had. I clawed feverishly at the unyielding knot.

  You’re wrong, Hawkins. Dames fight plenty. Dames fight harder than men because they’ve had to their whole lives.

  Even if I couldn’t free myself, even if I had to do so from the confines of the trunk, I would fight the two men holding us captive. I would shoot whichever one opened the trunk, and when I ran out of bullets I would keep fighting. I would fight them as long as I had breath in my body.

  The knot began to give. It parted.

  The car swayed, turning, and gravel crunched under the tires.

  I kicked and tugged, unwinding the rope. The DeSoto stopped. What mattered now was to be prepared. I eased the .38 into a steady grip, getting a feel for it in my hand. Lighter than my previous one because of its shorter barrel. Agreeable, though.

  As best I could in the cramped space, I positioned myself. When the trunk lid started to raise, belatedly, I realized a loop of rope still clung to one of my ankles. With no time to remedy the situation, I fired at the shape that raised the trunk lid and then fired again. It was Hawkins.