Peter didn’t understand the man’s words, but he knew there was a threat implied somehow. As he watched, Reeves started the car, revved the engine, and slid out, slamming the door and giving his captives a wry grin.
“See y’all sometime,” he said and lifted one hand in casual salute. Without looking back he strolled across the floor, stepped into the shop beyond, and slid the bay door closed behind him. It snapped shut, leaving just the seductive purr of the Isotta’s engine behind him. The danger didn’t register with Peter at first; just for an instant he didn’t realize what Reeves had done. Then it hit him. The bay was virtually airtight. The car engine was running. Soon the room would fill with carbon monoxide and the three people trapped inside would be breathing it. Reeves had set up a murder by automobile, and unless one of them could get free to shut off the car, nothing would prevent the plan from succeeding.
Bathed in cold sweat, Peter struggled to break the cord binding his wrists. Jerking the cord again and again, he felt it bite into and scrape away skin as blood trickled down his arm. He cursed and jerked again. No matter how he wrenched and pulled, the bindings only drew tighter. Consumed by his efforts, Peter didn’t hear the garbled sounds Nina was making. At last, something reached him and he looked across at the bound girl in the opposite corner.
“I’m trying, sweetheart, I’m trying to get loose.”
“Nhhnahhh!”
He looked up again and saw her shaking her head. “No?” He waited. “No, don’t try to get loose?”
Nina nodded.
“We have to try, Nina. Otherwise...” He couldn’t finish the thought.
Nina shook her head. As he watched, his panic subsided. Nina knew what she was doing. She pulled up and caught the cord binding her. In a deft twist she wrapped it around her hands. As Peter looked on, unable to touch her or even offer advice, she began to swing her legs, those long, athletic legs that had spent years running for bases, chasing after exuberant fourth graders, and climbing up trees and down hills. Using the leverage she gained swinging from the rope like a gymnast, Nina raised her feet higher with each swing until she could touch the conduit above her. She caught the tubing with one leg and held on, wrapping first one leg, then the other around it. By inches she rolled her body over until she lay horizontal on the cylinder that ran only inches from the ceiling.
“Nina, that pipe,” Peter called, his heart in his mouth. “It’s shaking like it could break loose,”
Nina nodded and inched forward until her hands were level with her mouth. Cautiously she slipped a finger up till she could reach the gag and remove it.
“I can do this, Peter.” Her voice, little more than a croak, reassured him.
“She’s half monkey.” The slurred whisper from the wheelchair made him look again at the third captive in the room.
Peter was relieved to know Lassiter was beginning to rally, but he didn’t spare a second glance for the older man. Nina had freed herself from the gag and now was trying to loosen the knotted cord with her teeth.
“It’s too tight, no play in the knots. I have to cut them,” she gasped.
Peter looked at the area around her. Nothing, not a single useful object was within her reach.
“I can get it.” Nina sounded calm and assured. Stretching one leg forward until she had executed a perfect gymnastic split, she extended her fingers and worked her skirt up high above her knees. With careful, tiny movements, using fingertips and her nails, she tugged her bonds down the pipe till she could touch her knee. Twisting the garter that held her ragged stocking just below her knee, she eased two fingers under the garter and triumphantly pulled loose Danny’s tiny red-and-silver knife.
“Nina, careful!” Peter held his breath as the girl fumbled to release the catch on the small blade.
She shook her head, ignoring him, and forced the blade into the knot of the cord binding her. It didn’t give, and she sawed at it frantically.
“Nina!” Peter kept his voice level, but his alarm came through. “Sweetheart, that duct is beginning to sag.”
“I know,” she answered but didn’t look up. “I’ve almost cut through the first knot.”
Peter risked a look at Lassiter and saw the man was fighting to maintain attention. The carbon monoxide will probably get to him first. Nina and I are higher up, and we aren’t fighting the effects of drugs. Concern for the older man warred with his worry for Nina. Was she going to get free before that pipe fell? Mouth dry and pulses pounding, Peter looked again at the girl above him.
“I’ve got it, Peter! Just a second more and I’ll be loose.” He saw Nina tug at a bit of cord, and then she waved an arm. “I’m nearly there, Peter. Nearly!” Her movement jarred the flimsy tubing and it bent at an alarming angle.
“It’s pulling free, Nina!”
Nina, engrossed in her task, seemed not to hear his anguished cry. She pulled, wiggled, and strained to cut the cord. Peter could only watch from the side and pray she’d get free in time. A grating sound all but stopped his heart. The cylinder creaked under her weight and had swung completely free at one end, with Nina dangling by one wrist, her feet still above the concrete floor. Certain the pipe would fall and she’d be trapped under it, Peter struggled once more to break his own bonds. Just as the pipe shuddered and gave way, Nina got free and slid down the pipe feet first to the ground. The pipe thudded harmlessly beside her.
“Peter!” Nina coughed and waved away the dust settling around her. Eyes streaming from the irritation, she careened across the floor and wrapped her arms around him. “I’ll get you loose as soon as I shut down the car, hold on.”
“Shut down the car, but don’t open the door!” Peter put all the force he could into the words. “Reeves probably headed for the paint shop as fast as he could when he left us. He won’t hear the car engine stop, but if he left the outside doors open, he might see the lights. He’s got a gun. He’d come back if he thought one of us got loose. Shut off the lights before you get the bay door open.”
Nina nodded, comprehension clear in her face, and ran to the car. The engine stopped. She turned aside to the work area along the wall.
With mounting concern Peter watched as Nina scattered loose items over the workbench, her fingers searching among the tools. He prayed Reeves had left the building. The man might feel compelled to use that gun if he heard the Isotta’s engine stop or the noise of the falling pipe. Nina freed a heavy pair of shears. Peter nodded.
“Good enough, Nina. Give me the shears and run for a phone. I’ll get your uncle out of here. You call the sheriff. Tell him Reeves has the Corvette and is leaving town with it.”
Nina tugged her uncle’s chair forward. Standing on the footrest, reaching over her head, she cut one of Peter’s hands free and pushed the curved handle of the shears into it.
“I’ve got them.” He squandered a second to kiss her. “Get the sheriff, sweetheart, and I’ll take care of things here. Don’t worry—and Nina, remember, don’t turn on any lights, not even in the office.”
Nina sidestepped the wheelchair and hurried to the bay doors. With one hand on the handle and one on the light switch, she sent the room into darkness again. Peter listened for the grate of the opening door. At first she seemed unable to move the heavy slab. He heard the sounds of Nina struggling against its mass, but then the rattle of the door sliding against concrete reassured him. The shop was a black cavern outside the enclosed bay. He saw only her shadow as Nina put her shoulder to the door. She gave one more push, a wider fan of deeper black appeared, and she lurched into the gloom beyond.
****
Though it took everything she could muster, every drop of courage she could find, Nina tore herself from Peter’s side and stepped into the darkness. The floor was gritty under her feet, and she flinched at the thought of what might be lurking along the path to trip her. Pushing images of lost nuts, stray screws, and dislodged nails from her mind, she made her long legs stride for the hall to the office. The hallway had never seemed so end
less.
There, that’s it. That’s the doorway. And Uncle Eldon’s phone will be on the desk; I don’t need a light. Uncle Eldon never moves anything in the office.
Nina stumbled into the corner of the desk and reached across. The telephone, just a blacker blot on the slick surface, shifted as her groping fingers found it. It took a moment for her shaking hands to dial zero and ask the operator to connect her to the sheriff’s office. Using both hands around the receiver to hold it against her ear, she tried to listen above the pounding of her heart. The rasping burr of the connection reassured Nina, and on the second ring, the sheriff himself answered.
“It’s Nina, Sheriff Hayes,” she stammered. “I’m at the museum. Ron Reeves is the car thief, and he has the judge’s Corvette. He’s planning to leave town—may have already left—but if you hurry you might still catch him.”
“He’s what! You sure, Nina?”
Nina felt as if the darkness was closing over her head. She drew a shallow breath. “Sheriff, get out here, will you? I’m sure. He just tried to kill my uncle and Peter Shayne and me. Bring the ambulance. Uncle Eldon isn’t in good shape.”
“Coming!” The phone slammed in Nina’s ear. The receiver slipped from her grasp unnoticed. She’d done all she could. By inches, she crept around the desk and found a chair. The room spun as she sank down, and she was suddenly cold, so cold she was shaking like dried leaves in a high wind. Teeth chattering, half sick, she drew her feet into her chair and huddled in the darkness.
“Nina, Nina!”
She opened her eyes, eyes so heavy she had to force them open. “Peter?” Her fuzzy mind couldn’t hold a thought. She held out her bruised hands and he took them.
“It’s all right, Nina. I’m here, and Eldon will be all right. I got him back to his room just as we heard the sirens, and then the ambulance arrived. Looks like the sheriff wasted no time. Three cars with flashing lights are out on the parking lot, and I think Ron Reeves has just run out of luck.”
Chapter 21
Peter’s assessment of the situation proved correct. The sheriff and his deputies had cornered Reeves in the paint shop as he prepared to drive off in the stolen Corvette. At first he had refused to talk to anyone, other than insisting that the car belonged to a private customer and he was simply doing a little outside work for the owner. If it was a stolen vehicle, he didn’t know it, and he wasn’t involved in the theft, he protested.
The sheriff had been as good as his word and sent the ambulance ahead. When Reeves saw the flashing lights, the ambulance, and people with a covered stretcher emerging from the workshop behind the museum, he stopped talking.
At that point, Tinker returned from an evening in town with his pretty sweetheart. He glanced around, saw the ambulance, and ran for Eldon Lassiter’s office. Peter explained the situation and, before Nina could summon the strength to object, convinced Tinker to get her home and out of the confusion to come.
“You can talk to the sheriff tomorrow, darling, but you’ve had enough for one day.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been here,” Tinker insisted, contrition in every syllable. “I can’t make up for that, but at least let me get you away from here, Nina, so I can feel like I’ve made up for some of the trouble.”
“But Uncle Eldon…”
“Your uncle is going to be okay,” Peter assured her. “He was more worried about you and the Princess than himself. Hearing that we got the Rambler was the best medicine he could have. The ambulance team is with him now, and he’s getting the medical attention he needs. They want to keep him in the hospital overnight, just to be sure. You can go home and get some rest. I’ll stay here and take care of things.”
“I want to know about Ron, what he did,” she protested.
“They have him, Nina. That’s the main thing. We’ll hear all the rest when the sheriff has it, I’m sure. Let Tinker take you home now.”
Frustrated but too weary to argue, Nina agreed. Her pretty flapper dress was in rags, she was barefoot, and her face and wrists were bruised, but her uncle was safe, Peter was taking care of things, and soon she’d have all the answers. She could rest.
Nina heard the details the next morning when the sheriff came to tell her how things stood. “I don’t know, Nina,” the sheriff began. “We can tie him to the Corvette, but I don’t know that we can get him for any of the other stolen cars. There’s nothing to show that any of them were ever in that paint shop of his. I know, as well as I know anything, he took them, he repainted some of them, and he sold them. But as for proving it, that’s another matter. The law doesn’t work on what I know in my heart. It operates on what I can prove.”
Nina, recovering from the aftereffects of shock, fought back the waves of frustration to concentrate on the sheriff’s words. “But he tried to kill three people; we can prove that, can’t we?”
“We can. That’s why he’s willing to make a trade. Says he knows we can’t prove anything much on the car thefts but he’ll tell about it and the people involved, tell all of it, if we don’t press for attempted murder. It’s up to you and Shayne and Lassiter to decide, Nina, whether you’re willing to forego putting him away for what he did to you in order to clear up all the other stuff and get the people involved.”
Nina was silent, then asked, “What do Peter and Uncle Eldon say?”
“Talked to your uncle in the hospital. Fool doctors want to keep him another night, but young Tinker says he’ll be home for dinner. Your uncle’s pawing the walls to see that trophy. Lassiter left it up to you, hon. Said you were the one that got everyone out, ran the risk of falling from that pipe to get all of you loose, so you decide. Shayne, now, he thinks hangin’s too good for the skunk, but he’ll go with your decision, too. ’Course, he still wants answers.”
“I want answers, too, Sheriff. A lot of them. So I’ll agree to let Ron Reeves off the hook for what he did to us providing he owns up to everything else he’s done, tells all he knows. Every single thing.”
“You sure? He’d get more time in jail for what he did to you than for boosting cars. Especially if he’s confessing. We won’t hear all of that story, I’m bound, unless he talks more’n is good for him.” The sheriff’s narrowed eyes implied doubt.
“I know it,” Nina said in a flat tone. “He said something in the shop when he attacked me that I want him to explain. He may think I didn’t hear or I forgot, but I know. If Ron is going to tell the whole story to get out of the attempted murder charge, then that’s the only thing that will make him tell me.”
“What did he say, young lady? Is he involved in something more than stealing cars?”
“I don’t know the details, Sheriff, but when Ron grabbed me in the shop, he said something about how he’d have to improvise since Peter and I came back earlier than he expected. Then he said he’d done it before…and then he mentioned Danny. I think he knows what happened to Danny.”
“Don’t seem likely, but I’ll let you put the question to him.”
It took the sheriff three days to put things in place, but on the fourth morning Nina, Peter, and the sheriff gathered in an anteroom at the courthouse. Nina suggested Marigold be on hand but not in sight, in case information came to light that would ease the older woman’s pain. The sheriff was reluctant to put up with Marigold’s dramatics but finally agreed.
Ron looked older, worn, and a little resigned, as he took the chair the sheriff indicated. “Reeves, you’ve had time to think it through. S’pose you explain how you came to have that Corvette in your possession.” He dropped a stack of papers on the table. “And while you’re at it, tell us how many of these other cars you escorted away from their owners. Give us the names of everybody that helped you along the way. I don’t believe you thought this up and carried it out by yourself.”
“There never was but one other person involved in the business, Sheriff. Just the two of us.” Reeves glanced around until his eyes met Nina’s. “Yeah, I guess it’s about time you know what kin
d of guy you married. You should have agreed to marry me, you know. Once you came into all that money…” He shrugged but didn’t finish the thought. Drawing a long breath, he stretched his legs before him, laced his hands behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling. “Your Danny was a rat, a foursquare, back-stabbing rat. Taking the cars, the fast, fancy sports cars, that was his plan from first to last.”
Nina wanted to protest. The sheriff half rose in his chair. Neither of them could respond before Marigold Wilson stormed the room.
“Danny stole cars?” Marigold’s voice cracked with fury. “That’s a lie! Why would he? He had more money than he could ever spend. He could buy any car he wanted.”
Reeves snorted. “Wasn’t for the money, lady. It was a lark, just for the fun. It was the risk that got Danny going. I was grousing about never having the money to buy one of those babies, or to get the women that a hot car draws, and Danny wondered how hard it would be to pry some of those cars loose from their owners. Not all that hard, I told him. Just a little caution, a good dark night, somebody who could rig the ignition, and you’re in business. No problem to get them, I told him, but the question is what do you do with them once you have ’em. Danny laughed fit to die, like I’d come up with the world’s greatest joke, and said there were a dozen guys who’d plunk down money for one of those cars—not dealer price, but still a healthy bunch of change—if they could put hands on one, with a passable fake title and no questions asked. So we worked it out. Danny would listen around at the various shows and car events. When he located a likely buyer and found out what the guy wanted, Danny would keep his eyes open for somebody who had one. Made himself a regular customer list that he carried around, just like a good businessman. Kept watch on who wanted what. Said we’d have to be careful to take the car from one place and make sure we didn’t sell it back too close to where we got it. So Danny went to the meets, found the customers, spotted the cars, and I grabbed them.”
Half Past Mourning Page 27
