Dangerous Deception

by Peg Kehret

  I hoped the caller was Mom. If she used her phone, she would see the text I had sent. Of course, the person calling might also be Lauren or Uncle Josh or any one of a dozen other people who often called me.

  “Ignore it,” he said.

  About fifteen minutes later, it rang again.

  “Turn the phone off,” he said, “and give it to me.”

  “It’ll be my mom. If I don’t answer, she’ll know something is wrong, and she’ll call the police.”

  “No, she won’t. Not yet.”

  I should have set the phone on vibrate so he didn’t hear it ringing. Too late now. Reluctantly, I punched End and handed him my phone, knowing he was right. Mom would worry if I didn’t answer or return her call, but she would assume I’d forgotten to turn my phone on when school got out, or had let the battery run down. She wouldn’t call the police until she got home and discovered that our house had been burglarized.

  I wondered if he really had a gun or if he had been bluffing. I had not seen a gun. If he wasn’t armed, I might be able to get away. I could run for it as soon as he stopped the truck. But how did I know for sure? If I took a chance that he had been lying and he actually had a gun, I felt sure he would use it.

  Soon I recognized the street we were on. He was taking me to his apartment. If I could get away from him long enough to pound on Mrs. Spangler’s door, Mrs. Spangler would let me in. I thought about Mrs. Spangler, moving slowly with her walker. What if she didn’t get to the door in time? I didn’t know who lived in the other first-floor apartment, but maybe I should go there instead.

  The truck passed a young couple pushing a baby stroller. I longed to roll down my window and scream, “Help!” but I feared his reaction. I wished I knew whether he really had a gun.

  When we got to Sophie’s apartment building, he drove the truck up across the curb, over the grass, and stopped beside the front door.

  “You are going to sit right where you are while I unload this stuff,” he said. “Don’t bother yelling because nobody will hear you. The apartment next to me is empty and the old woman who lives downstairs is deaf as a fence post.”

  I didn’t say anything. I planned to wait until he was partway up the stairs with the TV or the computer console in his arms. Then I would jump out of the truck and run. With him inside the building, I wouldn’t be able to go to Mrs. Spangler’s apartment or to the other one on the first floor, but I could run between Sophie’s building and the next one. I could hide behind the Dumpster, or I could keep running until I flagged down a passing car on the next street over, and got help.

  He opened the front door, and propped it open with a rock that was in the back of the truck. Obviously, he had done this before.

  He stepped inside and briefly stood by the door to apartment 2, across from Mrs. Spangler. What was he doing? Maybe he was listening to make sure no one was at home who might hear him carrying the goods up the stairs.

  He hurried back to the truck, watching me the whole time, and put the tailgate down. When he picked up the microwave, I positioned my hand on the door handle, ready to open it as soon as he got to the top of the stairs.

  He carried the microwave inside, glancing back over his shoulder at me every few feet. To my surprise, he did not go up the stairs. Instead, he turned left and went into apartment 2! I realized he had not been listening to see if anyone was home in apartment 2. He had been unlocking the door.

  No Help must rent two apartments in this building. I wondered if the police knew that. Had they searched the second apartment or was it still full of stolen goods?

  He quickly set the microwave inside and returned to the truck, then carried in the TV and the other items, looking back at me every few seconds. He was never more than a few feet from the truck, and he was aware of me the whole time. If I jumped out of the truck and ran, he would be after me immediately.

  When he finished unloading the truck, he closed the tailgate and opened the door next to me. “You’re next,” he said.

  As I slid slowly out of the truck, I stared at his pockets, trying to tell if one of them looked lumpy enough to contain a handgun. I couldn’t be sure. I could tell his pockets weren’t empty, but people carry many items in their pockets: keys, candy bars, gloves, money. I knew for sure my cell phone was in one pocket. I wanted to scream for help, but I didn’t dare. What if one of the bulges in his pocket was a gun?

  He reached behind the seat of the truck, removed a coil of white rope, and looped it over his arm. I did not want to think about how he intended to use it.

  As we passed the front of the truck, I read the license plate number. The number would be important information to give to the police if I got away. No, I thought. Not if I got away; when I get away.

  A43883J

  I repeated it to myself, and made up tricks to help remember it. A is the first letter of the alphabet. Dad is forty-three years old. There are eighty-eight notes on a piano. Three. I couldn’t think of anything special for three but J could be for the blue jays that my grandma sees at her bird feeder. I visualized three blue jays.

  Mentally I went through the list: A to start the alphabet, Dad’s age is forty-three, eighty-eight piano keys, and three blue jays. A-43-88-3J.

  We went into the building, and he pointed for me to go up the stairs. In my head I screamed, Mrs. Spangler! Help! Open your door and see what’s happening! Call the police!

  Mrs. Spangler couldn’t hear my thoughts.

  He followed me upstairs to the apartment I’d photographed. We went inside. The room contained only a card table and two folding chairs, an air mattress and sleeping bag on the floor, and a couple of empty pizza boxes. A laptop computer sat on the card table.

  “Sit here,” he said.

  I sat on a folding chair.

  “Put your hands behind you.”

  I obeyed.

  He wrapped the rope around my wrists, binding them together and then tying them to the chair. Next he tied each of my feet to a chair leg.

  “You’re going to sit here while I move my truck,” he said.

  I heard him run down the stairs, heard the truck door close, heard the engine start. I wiggled my hands, trying to loosen the rope, but I only chafed my wrists.

  “Help!” I screamed. “Mrs. Spangler! Help!”

  I heard nothing from the apartment below me.

  I tried to make the chair slide forward toward the door, thinking if I yelled out the open door Mrs. Spangler might be able to hear me, but the chair didn’t move. However, I discovered that I could push with my feet and make the chair slide backward, toward the window. I tried to make the chair slide sideways and turn gradually, so that when I pushed, it would go toward the door. I had turned only a couple of feet when I saw an open pizza box on the floor. There were still two pieces of pizza in it. A small green jackknife lay beside them.

  The knife was open. Pizza sauce covered the two-inch long blade, but it looked sharp enough to cut through the rope.

  I backed the chair until my hands were above the box. Then I leaned sideways until the chair toppled over. A sharp pain jolted my shoulder when I hit the floor. I waited until it subsided before I moved my hands.

  My fingers felt frantically across the box. I touched cardboard. Tomato sauce stuck to my fingertips, but I didn’t feel the knife. I tried to make the chair move again by shifting my shoulders, but without having my feet on the floor, I couldn’t get any traction.

  I heard a faint sound from outside. The truck door slamming shut? The front door closing?

  The side of one leg touched the floor. When I pressed that leg down as hard as I could, the chair slid far enough that my fingertips hit metal.

  I strained to pull the knife toward the palm of my hand, but just as I grasped it, I heard his footsteps running back up the stairs, and I knew it was too late. Even if I could somehow pull the blade across
the rope without also cutting myself, I didn’t have enough time to cut through the rope.

  I closed my fingers around the knife’s handle, hoping he wouldn’t notice that I had it.

  He came into the room, stopped, and stared at me. He closed the door behind him, and then walked over to where I lay helplessly on my side, still tied to the chair. He put both hands on my shoulders and lifted my chair until it was upright again. I gritted my teeth from pain when his hand gripped the shoulder that had landed on the floor, but I managed not to cry out. I didn’t want him to know I’d been injured.

  He frowned at the empty box. Then he looked behind me at my hands, and his expression changed as he saw the knife and realized what I had done. He slowly shook his head.

  “That was a bad idea,” he said as he pried open my fingers and took the knife away from me. He wiped the blade on his pant leg to remove any traces of pizza, folded up the knife, and put it in his pants pocket.

  He sat backward on the other chair with his hands crossed on the chair back, leaning toward me. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me about your deal with Max.”

  “I told you, I don’t know anyone named Max,” I said. “There is no deal.”

  “Then why did the cops come poking around here with a search warrant?”

  “How would I know? The only times I came here were to bring food to Sophie and to look for her cat. After she moved, I had no reason to return.”

  He appeared to be thinking about what I’d said.

  “Maybe you should be asking Max your questions, instead of asking me,” I said. “It sounds to me as if you’ve been double-crossed.”

  “I think you’re lying. It’s too much of a coincidence that I catch you looking in my apartment and then the cops show up, asking questions.”

  “When did the cops come?” I asked.

  “Wednesday.”

  “I haven’t been here since last week. If I had seen something suspicious and gone to the police, don’t you think they would have investigated sooner?”

  He did not reply.

  “So is Max the only other person who’s seen your apartment?” I asked. “No other visitors?”

  He slapped his hand on the card table, making me jump. “Gunther!” he exclaimed. “The last time Max was here, his kid brother, Gunther, was with him. He asked a bunch of questions about how much things were worth, and I got mad and told him to wait for his brother outside.”

  No Help stood and began pacing around the room. “Gunther turned me in,” he said. “That little toad! He probably thinks he’ll become Max’s new partner. Oh, he is going to be sorry he did that. He is going to be very, very sorry!”

  For a second I thought, Poor Gunther. I’ve sicced No Help on him and he won’t know why. Then I remembered that Gunther knew about Max and No Help’s burglaries and had apparently done nothing to stop them.

  “Now that you know it wasn’t me,” I said, “can you please untie me and let me leave? My mother will be home from work by now and she’ll be worried.”

  He stopped pacing and looked at me as if he had never seen me before. “You,” he said. “What am I going to do about you?”

  “You don’t have to do anything about me. You don’t even need to drive me home; I know where to catch the bus.”

  “I can’t let you go home. You’ll call the cops the second you’re out of here.”

  “No, I won’t. You have my phone.”

  “There are people with cell phones everywhere.” He began pacing again. “I might get off with community service and a fine on the burglary charge but not for this. Not for taking a kid.”

  “I won’t tell anyone about you.”

  “And I’m the next president of the United States.”

  “The longer you keep me, the worse it will be when they catch you,” I said.

  “They aren’t going to catch me. It’s time for me to get out of this dump.”

  He looked out the window and spoke as if he were talking to himself. “I’ll pawn everything, keep all the money, and hit the road. By the time Max realizes I’m gone, I’ll be in another state.”

  He unplugged the laptop and closed it. He glanced around the room and then started for the door.

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “You’re staying here.”

  “You can’t leave me here,” I said.

  “Max will find you when he comes looking for me.”

  I wondered how long that would be. Days? Weeks?

  “I could starve to death before I’m found. Then you’d be wanted for murder.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I’m wanted for because they won’t find me.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I needed to stall him. I had to keep him here until I figured out a way to get help.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Too bad. I don’t have time for that.”

  “What’s your hurry?”

  “I have to load the stuff that’s downstairs, plus I have another full room in a building down the street.”

  “I thought the police took all the things you stole.”

  “Only from this apartment.” A smug smile crept across his face. “The cops didn’t find out about the downstairs apartment or the place Max rents.”

  He put his hand on the doorknob.

  “I have to go really bad!”

  “Not my problem,” he said.

  “You could untie me and lock me in the room. I can use the bathroom while you go get your truck. Then you can tie me up again. It won’t take more than a minute or two.”

  “Forget it. I’m out of here.” He opened the door and stepped into the hall.

  Mentally I scrambled to think of a way to talk him into untying me. Money, I thought. What he cares about is money.

  “Your landlord won’t give you back the damage deposit on this apartment if I pee all over the floor,” I said. “Mr. Winkowski is really fussy about the damage deposit.”

  He turned back, stepping into the room again. “How do you know who the landlord is?”

  “Sophie told me. She said they didn’t get their deposit back because Mr. Winkowski found out they’d had a cat inside when pets aren’t allowed.”

  He walked over to where I sat and glared down at me.

  “Even though Midnight didn’t do any damage,” I added, “Mr. Winkowski wouldn’t refund their money, so you know he won’t give you anything if the room smells like urine. How much was the deposit? Two hundred dollars? Three hundred?”

  He swore under his breath, but he put the laptop on the floor, jerked on the rope ends to untie the knots, and began to unbind my feet and hands.

  I could hardly believe my argument about a damage deposit had worked. Didn’t he realize that in order to get the deposit he would have to tell his landlord where to send the refund check, which meant the police would be able to find him, too?

  He pulled the rope loose. I stood, shaking my hands to get the circulation back.

  “Make it fast,” he said.

  After insisting I needed a bathroom, I really did have to go so I hurried into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned the lock. One look at the toilet and sink convinced me he would never get any damage deposit back no matter what I did.

  “Hurry up!” he yelled.

  I didn’t have time to clean the fixtures. I used the toilet, promising myself I’d take a shower the minute I got out of there. While the toilet flushed I put the plug in the bathtub drain and turned on both the faucets. I did the same in the sink. I hoped that the noise of the toilet flushing would cover up the sound of running water.

  The old fixtures had no emergency overflow drains. It shouldn’t take long for the water to run over the tops of the sink and tub. Then water would soak through the floor, and Mrs. Spangler’s ceili
ng would drip. She would call the landlord. Winkowski Associates would send a plumber out, and the plumber would find me. I hoped the water wouldn’t do too much damage to Mrs. Spangler’s apartment.

  “Come on!” he yelled.

  I slipped out of the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind me. No Help stood beside the chair, holding the rope.

  “Sit!” he commanded.

  I sat.

  I kept talking, hoping my voice would prevent him from hearing the running water. Instead of begging him to let me go, I asked him where he had met Max.

  “He used to work with me, when I washed dishes at Porky’s Pig Palace. He helped in the kitchen. I could barely make my truck payments but he always had money to burn, so I asked him how he managed it. He told me he ran his own business on the side.”

  He grabbed my hands, bound them the same way he had before, then tied my ankles. He was rougher this time, jerking on the rope in his hurry to leave.

  “What kind of business?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. I kept pestering him with more questions until he asked if I would be interested in helping him. Two weeks later we both quit Porky’s. We’ve been partners ever since. Until now.”

  As soon as I was tied to the chair again, he picked up the laptop and headed for the door.

  Hurry, I thought. Get out of here. I wanted him gone before any water came under the bathroom door.

  No Help turned the catch so that the door would lock behind him. Then he stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut. I heard his feet clatter down the stairs.

  When No Help left, any danger of my getting shot went with him. I still had more problems than a stray cat has fleas, but at least an angry thief with a gun was no longer one of them.

  If he planned to pawn the items that were stored downstairs, plus a room full of stolen goods that were stashed somewhere down the street, it would take him a while to get it all loaded onto the truck. Maybe Mrs. Spangler or someone else would notice what he was doing and wonder about it.

  Or maybe not. Mrs. Spangler hadn’t opened her door when he was unloading the truck earlier. She probably wouldn’t look out now. Maybe she didn’t hear him.