by Carol Durand
Chapter 16
Tossing her bag in the passenger seat and settling in behind the wheel, Missy didn’t even have time to scream as a small but strong hand clamped over her mouth, while a cylinder of cold steel bumped roughly against her temple. Shaking violently, she heard a distinctive click as the gun was cocked, letting her know that her assailant meant business.
“Don’t say a word,” a voice that sounded vaguely masculine hissed in her ear. “Don’t scream, don’t even breathe, or you won’t live to regret it, Nancy Drew,” the somewhat lispy voice warned her mockingly. Missy’s heart pounded in her chest. She’d never had any experience with violence or criminals and was at a complete loss as to what to do. She instinctively sensed that her best bet for survival was to do as she was told.
“Slowly take your hands off the steering wheel, and put them behind your head,” the sinister voice demanded, still holding the gun to her temple. Missy complied, curbing the impulse to try to knock the gun out of the attacker’s hand. “Don’t move,” the intruder instructed, and Missy heard the familiar rasping sound of duct tape being pulled from a roll. The assailant brought her wrists together roughly and wrapped tape around and between them, even covering her hands, palms together, in layers of the strong, sticky tape. Silent tears slipped down Missy’s face, she’d never been more afraid in her entire life. After blindfolding the terrified woman, stuffing a washcloth in her mouth and securing it with more duct tape, the attacker ordered Missy to move to the passenger seat, and then forced her down into the footwell, where she was instructed to stay. The attacker then climbed into the driver’s seat, placed a cloth briefly over Missy’s nose, causing her to faint and stay in a drugged slumber. Missy’s last thought as she drifted into unconsciousness was that she hoped she would live to see another day.
Missy’s head throbbed miserably. The washcloth had been removed from her mouth at some point, but her throat was so dry that it might as well have been left in place. She tried weakly to swallow and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth at the effort. She was still blindfolded, and even turning her head to the side caused her to feel as though the entire room was rocking, so she stayed as still as possible, listening as intently as her fuzzy head would allow, to try and determine where she was and if she was alone. She was lying on some sort of cold, hard surface, and seemed to be restrained by straps criss-crossing her body. Her hands were still taped together, and her ankles had been secured as well. She attempted to swallow again, wincing at the pain in her throat.
“Trust me honey, this will be much better for you if you just go back to sleep,” an effeminate voice dripping with contempt drawled from a bit of a distance. Missy heard the scrape of a chair being pulled back and footsteps moving toward her.
“Thirsty?” the stranger laughed darkly before splashing a vile liquid into Missy’s unsuspecting mouth. The moonshine burned, and startled, Missy swallowed reflexively, leading to a hoarse spasm of coughing which burned her lungs and seared her throat. The tears began anew as she sputtered against the harshness of the alcohol, wondering how long this crazed stranger would let her live.
“Who are you? Why are you doing this?” Missy croaked, feeling that she had nothing to lose at this point.
The kidnapper chuckled, an eerie sound that chilled Missy to the bone. Her body was wracked with another bout of shaking as she tried to engage her attacker. “I could ask you the same,” the stranger snarled in response. “Everything would have worked out just fine if you hadn’t been quite so good at sticking your nose where it didn’t belong, Little Miss Cupcakes,” the attacker sneered. Missy tried hard to focus on the voice, but she couldn’t place it, couldn’t even tell whether the person was male or female. She had been quite sure last night that the killer was Strawberry Cheesecake, but now her confidence was rattled. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious, and wondered if Ben had noticed that she was missing yet. It could take a while, because she often ran errands in the morning while Ben ran the shop. She didn’t know if it was even still morning, or the same day. The potential hopelessness of her situation struck her profoundly and her tears flowed freely, despite her dehydration.
“Crying will get you nowhere,” the merciless, disembodied voice assured her. “You can cry, scream, throw a tantrum, it doesn’t matter. No one can hear you, and more importantly, no one cares,” her tormentor taunted. Missy’s stomach rolled at the sheer ugliness in both the statement and the tone, but she couldn’t allow herself the indulgence of self-pity, she had to think, and fast, of a plan to escape her current predicament.
“I managed to totally elude those bumbling idiots at the police department after I took care of your sister, and they didn’t have a clue as to who offed dearest Darryl and your sappy assistant’s stupid animal,” the kidnapper bragged, much to Missy’s horror. The reference to her sister made a fierce nausea, coupled with a murderous rage, rise up within her, but she suffered in silence, still unable to even turn her head. “But no, you and Detective “Prince Charming” were getting way too close. You could’ve saved yourself if you had just left well enough alone, and gone back to baking your cupcakes, but you just had to be nosy,” the assailant groused, escalating Missy’s fear. She didn’t trust herself to speak, and even if she had - she didn’t know what to say, fearing that the slightest remark could send this clearly unbalanced individual over the edge. Apparently the attacker had been partaking of the moonshine that they had tried to foist upon an unsuspecting Missy, and the harsh words were becoming a bit slurred. A tongue obviously loosened by the strong drink seemed to be more than willing to divulge events that had been long kept secrets.
“I loved him,” the voice half-sobbed. “I loved that man for years and he wouldn’t give me the time of day. He kissed me once you know...I’ll never forget it,” the killer reminisced. Missy thought that the words would make sense coming from Strawberry Cheesecake, if it was indeed her holding Missy captive, but the more the attacker drank and talked, the less it sounded like the obsessed florist. The timbre of the voice seemed to deepen a bit, and Missy didn’t remember Strawberry Cheesecake as having a slight lisp. Still, she couldn’t be sure. She was saved the misery of having to listen to any more of the killer’s musings when a slightly damp cloth was placed to her nostrils yet again, and the world mercifully went black.
Melissa Gladstone was alone in a place of complete darkness; all day long she twitched and flailed while battling the demons of her dreams. Dragons slain became surging hordes of monsters, human and inhuman. She had accepted her defeat and her body thrummed with the drum beats that signaled her doom as suddenly she was ripped from her slumber. She awoke, still groggy, with a worse headache than before, to the sound of an insistent pounding. The sound made her head tighten as though it was encased in a vise and she wished that whatever was causing the pounding would stop. Through the residual haze of having been drugged, she heard what sounded like Detective Beckett’s voice and concluded that she must be dreaming.
“Ms. Gladstone, are you in there?” she heard Chas say, as though from far, far away. She smiled at the sound of his voice, glad that her dreams had suddenly become much more pleasant. “Missy! Talk to me!” the handsome detective demanded, concern coloring his words. The fog that held Missy’s mind in its grip parted just then, and she realized that she wasn’t dreaming anymore. The pounding became louder, and Chas’ voice was real. She tried to respond, but couldn’t manage to croak out a response past the dryness in her throat. She tried again and again, but couldn’t call out. Just as she began to cry in frustration, she heard an ear-shattering splintering that sounded like a tree had been felled, and suddenly there were voices and sounds filling the room in which she had been kept.
“Missy, are you okay?” she nearly fainted with relief at hearing the detective’s voice. She wasn’t going to die. Chas was here and he would rescue her. She tried to respond and couldn’t.
“Hang on,” he encouraged her. “I’m going to get you loosed from
all of this tape and we’ll get you taken care of.” She heard him whisper something about an ambulance to someone nearby, as he cut away the multiple straps binding her to the hard slab on which she rested. Taking off her blindfold, he helped her gently to a sitting position. As Missy’s blurred eyes slowly adjusted to being uncovered and adapted to the lights blazing in the room, she saw what seemed to be dozens of police officers and detectives swarming through what looked like a ramshackle cabin. The front door had been utterly destroyed by a battering ram, and she shivered at the chill air seeping in through the remaining slivers of the door. A blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, but didn’t quell the tremors that shook her from head to toe. Quickly, but gingerly, Chas worked a field knife through the layers of tape that bound Missy’s ankles, wrists and hands, rubbing the affected limbs to increase circulation. A uniformed officer uncapped a bottle of water and held it lightly to Missy’s lips, so that she could drink. She felt remarkably better after just a few sips and was able to speak again, though still trembling with shock.
“Where am I? What happened?” she murmured, confused.
“We’ll go over all of that in a bit,” Beckett promised, still working on removing the copious amounts of tape that the killer had used. Missy nodded, too weak to protest. Things got a bit fuzzy after that, and Missy was vaguely aware of being placed on a gurney and feeling a cold blast of air as she was spirited out of the cabin and into the ambulance that waited, lights flashing.
Chapter 17
Missy awoke, afraid to turn her head or open her eyes, fearing that a debilitating headache would strike yet again. She needn’t have worried, however, after a full night’s sleep and several bags of intravenous fluid, she was feeling much more like herself when she at last, courageously, slowly opened her eyes.
Looking to her left, she immediately saw Detective Beckett sprawled gracefully in an uncomfortable-looking mauve-colored hospital chair. He was studying her intently, and as soon as she met his gaze, he smiled softly.
“You’ve had quite a night, Ms. Gladstone,” he observed quietly. Missy just smiled ruefully, indicating her agreement. Chas picked up a cup of ice water and held the straw to her lips. Drinking deeply, the water felt amazing on her still-parched throat.
“Thank you,” Missy reached up and took the cup of water gratefully. “Now that I’m not woozy from whatever drugs that psycho used on me, tell me what happened,” she ordered, continually sipping her water.
“Well, as you might have suspected, we stumbled upon the person who murdered Darryl Davis, and…” the detective frowned slightly, leaving his sentence unfinished.
“...And my sister?” Missy supplied, closing her eyes at the thought.
“Yes,” Beckett confirmed.
“Who was it? Was I right, was it that terrible woman from the flower shop?” she demanded, tears slipping slowly down her cheeks. Chas reached out to brush her tears away lightly with his fingertips.
“No, it wasn’t Amanda Madison. She owns the Fleur de Lis, but it wasn’t her, it was her assistant, Armand Thibedeaux. Apparently he had dated Darryl Davis briefly, prior to Darryl meeting and becoming infatuated by your sister. He tried and tried to rekindle an interest in Darryl, but Darryl was so fixated on Sherilyn that he had eyes for no one else. Even after your sister rejected him again and again, Darryl refused to go out with Armand. We found information in his cabin that indicated he had plotted your death years ago, as a result of the recipe incident. Armand was fiercely protective of Darryl for some reason, and anyone who could be perceived as a threat to him was targeted for destruction.”
“Why did you take my lipstick?” Missy asked, suddenly remembering.
Chas sighed and shook his head. “You knew you were a person of interest. When the lab results came back from the cigarette butt that you provided me, there were trace indications of lipstick. No DNA, just lipstick, so I wanted to do a cross-check that would hopefully rule out the possibility that it was yours,” he admitted, shrugging apologetically.
“Well it doesn’t take much detective work to determine that,” Missy scoffed, “Charles Beckett, you know I don’t smoke!”
“That’s what you had told me, yes, but I had to be certain.”
“So whose lipstick was on that cigarette butt?” Missy was mystified.
“We didn’t find out until later. It seems that Armand had a willing accomplice,” Chas began.
“What? Who?” Missy interrupted, sitting up straighter in the bed.
“Darryl’s sister, Rhonda,” the detective replied, shaking his head.
“But...why? Why would his own sister participate in his murder?” Missy was astounded.
Beckett grimaced, dreading the prospect of what he had to tell her next. “She didn’t help Armand murder Darryl, she helped him murder Sherilyn. The boy that Rhonda loved when she and Sherilyn were in high school committed suicide when Sherilyn refused to go to the prom with him and Rhonda never got over it. She also was next in line to inherit Darryl’s Donuts if something happened to Darryl, despite never having worked in her life, so even though she was unwilling to participate directly, she knew of Armand’s plans to murder Darryl and went along with them.”
“So why was she lurking around my house at night?” Missy wondered. “That doesn’t make sense.” She shook her head trying to take it all in.
“You loved Sherilyn, you raised Sherilyn, and you had the successful life, against all odds, that Rhonda had always longed for but didn’t know how to achieve. She figured that if you were murdered, it would seem as though the murders were related to the food industry or local business owners rather than personal vendettas, so she volunteered to take you out on Armand’s behalf. She’d own Darryl’s Donuts, she would have vengeance for lost love, and no one would be the wiser, but you were beginning to figure things out, so Armand kidnapped you himself to speed up the process.”
Missy sipped her water, stunned. “So...how did you find me?”
“Your neighbor let us in to your house when we realized you had gone missing, and I found the notebook that you’ve been keeping. I read about the Cheesecake lady and the hydrangeas and decided to dig deeper. Amanda told me all about the huge crush that Armand had on Darryl, and I got a warrant to search his apartment. While I was there, gathering evidence that linked him to Darryl’s murder, I received a call from the state police that Armand had wrapped his car around a tree just a few miles from the cabin that he had inherited from his grandmother a few years ago. He was conscious enough to question and admitted that you were being held captive in the cabin. You pretty much know the rest from there.”
“So he’s going to jail?” Missy queried, eyes round with fear, remembering her harrowing ordeal.
“He and Rhonda are both going to jail for a very long time,” he assured her. “You have nothing more to worry about,” he patted her hand gently and smiled. “You just focus on your recovery and let me worry about the bad guys okay?” Missy smiled in response, nodding. “Good - because when you get out of here, I’m guessing you’re going to be hungry for a nice juicy steak.” For the first time since she had known him, Chas grinned broadly, and she was filled with hope.
A letter from the Author
To each and every one of my beautiful readers: I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Let me what you think by leaving a review!
I’ll be releasing another installment in Late February 2015 so to stay in the loop (and to get free books and other fancy stuff) Join my Book club.
Stay Curious,
Carol Durand
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