I raised the mic to my mouth. “She insists you shut up, Gurn. And as she’s pointing a gun at Reed and me, I’d appreciate you doing what she says.” I turned back to Delphine. “If you’ve been on the boat the whole time, what took you so long to show yourself?”
“There was nothing for me to do but come out now. I usually have a backup plan, but regarding you and the boy, it took me awhile to come up with something. Should I kill you? Or leave you alive as my hostages? As long as the boat was on autopilot, heading for Chili, I stayed in the shadows. But now your upcoming rescue has ruined everything.”
“Working for Felicity Llewellyn was your cover. You were Manning’s silent partner.”
It wasn’t a question on my part, but a statement. She shook her head slowly, a grin crossing her face. I felt Reed shudder, as he leaned into me. My new nemesis went on.
“Not his partner, his boss. I’m the second in command of the entire operations. Manning worked for me, took orders from me. Although it was his idea to plant the voodoo doll in your brother’s car.”
“Nice touch.”
“We thought so.” She laughed heartily.
“You’re going to be laughing out of the other side of your face when you find out you’ve been blown,” I said. “Manning was turning State’s evidence before a Grand Jury day after tomorrow. Then he decided to screw the both of you and make a run for it.”
She thought for a moment, eyebrows furrowed. “Ah! We knew there was a leak somewhere.”
“I liked you better when you were a housekeeper.”
She threw her head back and let out a derisive laugh, straight out of a bad horror movie.
“Thanks to Manning and Llewellyn, I have a fortune waiting in a place where the law can never touch me, once I get there. Felicity Llewellyn,” She repeated the name with a scoff. “It was a pleasure to be rid of her.”
“So it was you who killed her. Manning did look a little surprised when I told him about her being dead.” I mused for a moment. “I thought her death a little cold-blooded, even for a lowlife like him. His were crimes of passion. Yours, more thought out.”
“Thank you. I pride myself on planning things well, as a rule. Yesterday I told her he’d phoned and needed to see her right away at Colbert’s Motors. I didn’t want to kill her at her home. It tied in too closely to me. The bunker seemed ideal. When I met her there instead of him, she was shocked. The idiot actually thought she and Manning were in a legitimate business together, making all that money through second mortgages. Not that she really cared, as long as she got laid. But her lust for him had gotten out of hand.”
“I can see that. She should have never given Manning’s wife an overdose thinking she might have him all to herself. Attracts too much attention,” I said.
“Exactly, so I took care of her. I didn’t think her body would be found for several weeks, but your finding her like that changed my plans for a leisurely departure for places unknown.”
“The best laid plans of mice and men.”
“Yes, I’m in the position of having to improvise now. I followed you here to take care of Manning. Thank you for getting rid of him for me. I saw him fall overboard from the deck below. Of course, there’s the next order of business. That would be getting from here to my island. And that’s where you two are going to help me.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise.
“Fat chance,” I said. “I’m only going to help you into a jail cell.”
“Cocky like all the rest of the Alvarez. But you aren’t unintelligent; I’ll give you that. I’ve learned a lot about your family by listening in on your conversations. Of course, Lila stopped revealing anything day before yesterday. I think your bitch of a mother suspected the house was bugged.”
“Hey! Don’t you be calling my mother a bitch.” That’s my job.
“Delphine, what makes you think you can get away with this?” Gurn’s strong voice sliced through the air like a knife. I had almost forgotten about him, but I’d kept my thumb on the button, so he heard every word. He went on with great authority. “We’re listening to every word you say. If you give yourself up now, we can work out some sort of deal. You can turn state’s evidence. I’m authorized to offer you the same deal given Manning. Or --”
“Shut up, Mr. Hanson. Here’s what’s actually going to happen. You are going to back the chopper off and let me take this boat to Chile or I’m going to kill this woman and boy right here, right now. You understand me, Mr. Hanson?”
There was a moment of silence, where just the sounds of the wind, rain and water could be heard. I guess Gurn was weighing his options, which were damned few. He finally spoke.
“Very well. We’ll do it, as long as you promise not to hurt anyone. Then what?”
Not to be outdone, I put in my two cents. “How do we know you won’t kill us once this boat gets to Chile? You already said that was your plan.” I put a protective arm around Reed. “That’s saying we manage to make it through the other side of this hurricane.”
“This is only a category one hurricane.” Delphine shouted her words to me with another laugh. “I’ve been through two of them and on a smaller boat than this. As for killing you, that was the original plan, but it’s changed. You’re worth more to me alive. You’ll have to trust me on that.”
Something in her eyes told me I could trust her about as far as I could throw Laura’s Folly.
“If she kills us, she wouldn’t have any hostages to use to get away,” Reed, who up to now had been silent, said looking at me.
Delphine nodded toward him appreciatively. “Smart boy.” Louder she said, addressing the microphone in my hand, “Mr. Hanson, we’re going to keep the coordinates of the original settings off the coast of Chile. We three aboard are going to go there on this boat. Once there, I’ll be met by friends of mine with a waiting seaplane. I’ll fly to my small island, where the United States has no extradition rights whatsoever.”
“You own an island?” I was stunned.
“The kind of money I make can buy you a lot of real estate in this economically challenged world of ours, Ms. Alvarez. As I said, once I get to my island, Commander, my friends will give you the lady and the boy back, unharmed. How’s that?”
“Well, that’s good enough for me.” I leaned back and rested the wrist of the hand holding the mic against the throttles.
“Oh, my arm,” I said aloud, feigning weakness. Not much of a feign, really. I leaned into Reed who was hovering by my side.
“Hold on to something,” I whispered. He was surprised, but gave me an imperceptible nod.
I let go of the mic and pushed the throttles forward to the max with one quick thrust. I could barely grab the lip of the station with my good hand, and brace my left leg against the seat of the chair, before the boat leapt ahead like a jackrabbit being chased by a hungry fox. Reed held on, but was jerked to the full extension of his arms.
The frontward momentum threw Delphine backwards. Arms flailing in the air, she instinctively searched for balance and stability. Her body slammed against the starboard door, knocking the wind out of her. The gun went off somewhere in the ceiling with a shocking report.
Before she could regain herself, I ran to her then pivoted around. Aiming the heel of my little purple jelly shoe at her knee, I kicked as hard as I could. There was a sickening crunch, cartilage doing something bad. In a protective gesture, Delphine bent over toward her knee, just enough for me to reach up and twist the gun out of her grasp with my good hand. I clipped her one behind the ear with the butt of it. Hard. She went down like a rock.
Shaking, I leaned against the sidebar breathing hard, having expended more energy than I had to give. I held on for dear life, as the boat raced to God knows where at what felt like the speed of light. Maybe Antarctica?
“Reed! Reed, throttle back to under a hundred miles an hour, would you?”
I looked over at the boy still frozen in place. At my words he turned around and grabbed the throttles,
the noise in the pilot room taking a decided nosedive as the speed of the craft lessened. Only then could I hear Gurn’s voice yelling over the radio.
“What’s going on? Report back! Report back. Over.”
I wobbled toward the front of the pilothouse and fell into the pilot’s chair. “I need to sit down. I really do. Reed, grab that rope over there. Think you can tie her hands and feet, while I watch?”
“I won two prizes for naval knots in Boy Scouts. I’m on this like white on rice.”
I had to laugh. He ran over to the wall, retrieved a coiled rope, and managed to roll the unconscious woman over on her stomach. Then he tied her hands and feet together faster than I’ve seen a cowboy tie a doggy at a rodeo, impeded very little by the storm. If I’d had a sign with the number ten written on it, I would have held it up.
“Laura’s Folly! Do you copy? Answer me.” Gurn’s voice sounded frantic.
I grabbed the mic, depressed the talk button, and spoke into it. “Sorry for the delay in responding, R.P.M. Lusitania, or whatever. We’ve captured Delphine Robochaux and we’re trussing her up like a Thanksgiving turkey. You can come get her along with us. Nobody’s hurt except her. She may be walking with a cane for a few months.”
“Good, good,” Gurn said, expelling air into his microphone. He quickly went on, “Lee, how are you doing? Over.”
“I’d like to get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini. Ow!” The boat rolled from side to side and my bad arm struck the back of the leather chair. My jaw hurt from being clenched so tightly, but not as much as my arm. Nothing had ever hurt as much as my arm.
“I’m glad to see your sense of humor is intact.” Gurn’s tone changed back to official. “Let’s take care of this autopilot problem now. Are you ready? Over.”
“Yeah, ready. Let’s do it.”
“Depress the autopilot by holding it in to the count of three. That will shut if off. Tell me when you’ve done that.”
I did and the light changed from blue to green around the autopilot.
“It’s off.”
“Reed, you still there, son?”
Reed came back to the console and leaned over the mic. “Yes, sir.”
“What is your speed?”
“It’s between ten and twelve knots, sir.”
“Good. Put your hands on the wheel and keep it steady until we can put the autopilot back on. Think you can do that? Over.”
“Yes, sir.” Reed grabbed the wheel like he had done it all his life.
“Okay, I don’t want to scare either of you, but we need to get this done as soon as possible and put it back onto autopilot. Lee, there should be an icon for a keyboard somewhere beneath the screen.”
“Yes, there is.”
“Press that and tell me if a small keyboard comes up on the computer screen.”
“Yes.”
“Good. One line should say the word longitude and below it, latitude.”
“Yes, both lines are there.”
“Start putting the numbers in. Just be sure to put in the plusses, minuses, and periods exactly where they should be. Say everything out loud to me as you put them in. Over.”
We got hit portside by a powerful wave and it took me two tries to get the numbers in correctly. I was having bouts of uncontrollable shaking coming at me faster and faster, while Reed fought to control the wheel. But finally, we managed to boot up the autopilot again.
“Mission accomplished.” I slid back in the chair, exhausted. “We’re getting hit from the portside now as well as the front. Is that bad?” I pulled at Reed’s arm and he sat beside me.
“The boat has slightly altered direction, but you’ll be coming into the waves at an angle, so there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Glad to hear it. So are we done?”
“Not quite,” said Gurn, his authoritative voice filled with regret. “Reed, my man, you still there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You should be in the eye of the hurricane in less than ten minutes. It will be calm. At that time, you are to pull back the throttles to five knots, no more, no less. That will keep you in the eye for as long a time as possible and prevent stalling. The helicopter should arrive approximately five minutes later and we will execute the rescue at that time. Do you copy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. As soon as you are locked into five knots, go out to the foredeck and await our arrival. Understood?”
“Understood,” Reed and I said in unison.
“Reed.” Gurn’s voice hesitated. “Reed, take care of Ms. Alvarez.”
“I will, sir.”
“Then over and out.”
“You don’t look so good, Lee.” Reed said after a moment, looking into my face. “And I have to take care of you.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re doing a fine job,” I said through chattering teeth. “I’m just a little cold.”
“I’ll warm you up.”
He wrapped a thin arm around me and leaned into my chest. I gave him a hug.
“Mama Biggs sent me, you know. She loves you and she’s sorry she slapped you.”
He looked up at me with a faint smile and nodded.
“I shouldn’t have run away like that. I wanted to show her I could be a detective, so I rode my bike to old Colbert’s place to look for clues. When I got there, that man was coming out of the front of the building. He grabbed me and said ‘You’ll do’ or something like that.”
“Did either of you go around to the back, where the boat trailer was?”
“No, he grabbed me in front. I tried to fight him off, but he put me in his car and brought me to this boat.”
“Did he…hurt you, Reed?’
Reed shook his head. “He hit me once, but then he locked me up in the room below. I didn’t see him again until you came.”
I never felt such relief in my life. We rode toward the eye of the hurricane holding onto one another.
Chapter Twenty-nine
You Gotta Be A Trouper
Silence engulfed me and brought me out of a coma-like sleep. Were my ears plugged up? One moment a cacophony of sounds, vibrations, and wild nature assaults you, takes over your life, and then suddenly, nothing. No rain, no wind. Even the waters, while still choppy, were much calmer.
“Reed! Look out there!”
He, too, was looking around him, eyes wide in disbelief. “Man, this is weird. I’ve never been in the eye of a hurricane before. What’s that yellow glow?”
“I think it’s sunshine.”
We heard movement behind us and both turned to see the housekeeper struggling against her bonds.
“She don’t need to bother, you know,” Reed whispered to me. “She’ll never be free. I know what I’m doing.”
“I’ll bet you do,” I whispered back. “But let’s hope she doesn’t untie those ropes, Reed,” I said loud enough for Delphine to hear. “Because I’ll have to shoot her if she does.”
“Now surely, Miss Alvarez, you and I can come to some mutually beneficial terms.” Delphine’s dulcet tones never sounded more charming or seductive, although I could hear a wince of pain due to her swollen knee. “We can work together, you and I. I can pay you a lot of money if you’ll only --”
“Not going to happen, sweetie,” I interrupted her. “I’ve seen what you do to your co-workers.”
She persisted. “That doesn’t have to be the way it goes. I’m sure you and I --”
“Reed,” I interrupted her again, while looking at the boy. “Are you wearing any socks?”
“Socks? Yes ma’am.” Reed looked at me, puzzled.
“Good. I want you to take one off so I can stuff it in her mouth for some peace and quiet.”
“I been wearing them for two days,” he said in a dead serious tone of voice.
“You hear that, Delphine?” I looked behind him at the woman lying on the floor. “You’ve been warned, so shut up.” She did.
The mic was still clasped in my good hand and I
raised it to my mouth, depressing the key. “Hello, HMS….ah….oh, who cares? Are you there? We’re finally in the eye.” My words were drawn out, almost lazy. I’d tried to speak faster, but I couldn’t seem to.
“We’ll be there, Laura’s Folly, in less than five minutes.”
In the distance, I heard the beat-beat of chopper blades. Gurn went on.
“Throttle back to five knots then proceed to the foredeck. Repeat, proceed to the foredeck. Do you copy?”
“Yes, sir,” said Reed, taking the mic from me. He pulled back on the throttles. “We’re at five knots, sir.”
“We see you. The HSM Nine Nine is almost upon you. Over and out.” Gurn said.
“Let’s go, kiddo.” I tried to lift myself out of the chair, but was having difficulty standing.
“What about me?” Delphine’s voice will filled with fear. “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
“You? Not hardly,” I said. “I’m sure there’s a big reward for you out there. And someone has to put this child through music school. It may as well be you.”
“Come on,” Reed said, tugging at me. “Stop talking. We need to get outside. Here, let me help you up.” He grabbed onto my right arm and pulled. I struggled out of the soft leather and stood, more unsteady than choppy waves would cause.
I leaned on the kid against my will, but he was stronger than I expected. And I was weaker. Overhead, I heard the sound of a chopper closing in, invading the relative calm. Once we got outside, we both looked up from the deck, and the blast of wind from the blades almost knocked me over. I stumbled and Reed propped me up against outside wall of the pilothouse. I slid down and sat, legs outstretched, head resting on my chest, while he ran to the end of the deck, waving his arms at the chopper. The helicopter lowered itself slowly until it was almost upon us.
I don’t remember much after that; I think I passed out. I was roused by the sound of Gurn’s voice, bellowing in my ear.
“You got to wake up now, honey. Come on.” He shook me a little as he pulled me to my feet. I hardly recognized him. He wore a black wetsuit, with a helmet and goggles covering his head. If it weren’t for his voice, I would have never known it was him.
DEAD....If Only (The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries Book 4) Page 23
