Safe and Sound

by Fern Michaels

  Ben stood at the washer and debated about separating the clothes, white versus colored, the way he usually did it because he’d seen his grandmother do it that way, but decided he no longer cared if his underwear turned colors. Time was what was important. He turned all the dials to the right arrows just as the doorbell rang. He banged down the lid of the washer and raced to the front door as he dug in his pocket for the twenty-dollar bills Connor had given him.

  The transaction completed, Ben reached for the pizza and was happy to see that it was still steaming. With his hands full and his thoughts on nothing but the delicious pizza, he forgot to lock the front door with the newly installed locks.

  Ben dived into the pizza and, before he knew it, he’d eaten the whole medium-size pie and consumed half the bottle of soda. He had no room left for the antipasto and put it into the refrigerator. He couldn’t remember anything being as good as what he’d just eaten. Satisfied that he hadn’t made a mess, he carried the box out to the garage and put it in the trash can. He closed the soda bottle and set it in the refrigerator alongside the antipasto, then checked the washer. It was down to one minute on the last spin. He waited patiently and transferred his clothes to the dryer. The time on the clock in the laundry room said it was seven o’clock.

  The long night loomed ahead of him. What to do? He wished he had a dog or a cat, but Connor said that animals made Natalie sneeze. And that was the end of that.

  Ben had one foot on the steps leading to the second floor when he stopped and looked around. He was alone. The house was empty. In a nanosecond, he knew exactly what he was going to do. He turned around and ran down the hall to what Connor called the study, which was off-limits to him.

  Inside the room he was forbidden to enter, he walked around, wondering what the big deal was. Why wasn’t he allowed in here? Shelves with wall-to-wall books. A fireplace. Two chairs and a sofa. A desk, closer to what was called a secretary. Probably his mother’s. All the furniture and other stuff was from the house on the Circle. Nothing new in here. He knew for a fact that all the books on the shelves were his mother’s books, because his grandmother had told him so. There had to be more than a thousand books, maybe more. He wished he knew if his mother had read them all. His grandmother said she thought so, but she wasn’t sure.

  Ben poked around the desk, hoping to find something interesting. He went through the desk slowly and methodically, the way he did everything. Stacks and stacks of unpaid bills. Legal papers. Notices with big red stamps on them saying utilities were going to be turned off. Receipts for the sales of Connor’s pottery and glassware. Ben found himself grinning like a monkey when he pulled out a thick wad of credit-card bills. Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Saks. He did a quick calculation and came up with $82,000, and that didn’t include the American Express bill for $33,433 and a Visa bill for $19,987. He laughed out loud when he saw that the accounts were in Connor’s name and not Natalie’s. Yep, an idiotic moron. Natalie was off the hook, and Connor was on the hook for the bills. No wonder he wanted Ben’s mother’s money.

  Ben kept rummaging until he found what he was looking for. A record of the amount of money Connor received for Ben’s upkeep. He finally found it. He gasped at the amount, $12,000. Each month—$12,000 a month, and he had to eat peanut butter and jelly, ramen noodles, and whatever else he could scrounge up. Time to do something about that. He needed some new clothes: His jeans were pretty worn, with holes in the knees, his socks had holes, and his underwear was too tight. He was also going to need a new winter jacket. He giggled to himself as he thought about how he would confront Connor and how he would threaten him by telling him he was going to file a complaint at the Institute that would then get back to his grandmother’s lawyers. And, with any luck, would provide them with enough ammunition to return to family court to get the decision to grant custody to Connor reversed, so he could go live with his grandmother on the Circle.

  His jubilation was short-lived when he heard a sound that sent chills up his spine. The front door opened, and the robotic voice announced that someone had opened the door. Every door on the first floor was rigged to alert the owners that someone had opened a door. In a flash, he remembered not locking the door after getting the pizza.

  He was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing in a room he wasn’t supposed to be in. Connor would skin him alive. Where to hide? There were no hiding places. No room under the spindly secretary desk. Behind the sofa? He ran across the room just as he heard Natalie’s screeching voice. “Yoo-hoo, Connor, your sweet baby love is back. Come out, come out wherever you are! I’m sorry. Come on, sweetie, let me make it up to you. I know you missed me,” she trilled as she made her way to the study, in which Ben was desperately trying to make himself invisible.

  Ben thought he was going to faint. He hugged his bony knees to his chest, and under his breath muttered, “Shit shit shit,” knowing if his grandmother ever heard him, she’d put soap in his mouth. He mentally apologized to her as he suddenly got a whiff of Natalie’s overpowering perfume. Secretly, he thought her stinky perfume was what reduced Connor to the state he was in when he was around her because he had to fight to breathe.

  “Okay, Connor, enough is enough. Where the hell are you? We need to talk.”

  Dummy, didn’t you see that his car is missing? Ben wanted to shout at her. Just go already. Go, go, go! Ben pleaded suddenly.

  “Well, you’re going to pay for missing my homecoming, you louse,” Natalie raved and ranted as she started to stomp around the room.

  Please don’t look behind the couch, please, please, please, Ben begged silently.

  The minute Ben heard her heels tapping their way to the door, he relaxed. And then he started to shake. He had to get out of the room, but first Natalie had to go upstairs in order for him to do so safely. He crawled out of his hiding place and crawled toward the door, careful to hug the wall that gave him a view of the stairway. She was halfway up, her suitcase thumping on each step. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, before he made a run for it, straight to the laundry room, where he saw that the dryer had eight minutes to go until it shut off. He struggled to take a deep breath, slid down on the floor, and hugged his knees. His fervent hope was that if Natalie decided to check the downstairs rooms, she’d see him waiting for his clothes to dry. Nothing for her to get excited about. When the dryer pinged, he sighed again. Wait, or open the dryer and fold his clothes? As far as he could tell, there was no other option.

  The front door opened again. Connor was home.

  “Shit, shit, shit. And shit again,” Ben muttered under his breath. “I know, I know, Grandma, and I’ll voluntarily put soap in my mouth, but not now, later.”

  Ben waited. For what, he didn’t know.

  He listened to Connor’s footsteps. Please, don’t let him come into the kitchen. Please, please, please. Just to be on the safe side, Ben inched across the floor and pushed the door almost closed. He sat back down and waited for whatever was to come.

  Ben was trying to decide what to do, which was basically no decision at all. He was stuck in the laundry room. He watched with one eye through the crack in the door. Connor was unpacking his dinner, Chinese food. Ben knew what it was the minute Connor opened the cartons. Firecracker shrimp in a hot sauce, pork fried rice, and egg rolls. He didn’t even bother setting the table and just started to eat out of the cartons. He twisted the cap off a bottle of Chinese beer from a six-pack just as Natalie appeared in the doorway.

  Ben stared with his one eye and was pleased to see that Connor turned as white as the winter snow. Natalie’s face was full of hate. She snatched the beer out of his hand and threw it at the refrigerator. “I can see you really missed me!” she snarled.

  Connor recovered and yelled, “How did you get in here?”

  “How do you think I got in here? I opened the door and walked in. I live here, too, you know.”

  “I changed the locks. I asked you a question. How the hell did you get in here? Did Ben let you in?�
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  “You changed the locks! Is that what you said? No, no, no, you see that does not work for me. I want a key. Ben did not let me in. I don’t even know where the little snot is. Don’t you ever do that again, you bastard. Do you hear me?” Natalie shrilled.

  “Shut up, Natalie. Just shut your trap. I’m sick and tired of your telling me what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. You packed up and left. Or did you forget that? You’re not staying here. I can’t afford you. I want you out of here right now. This very moment. Go!”

  Natalie advanced into the kitchen until she was leaning across the table and right in Connor’s face. “You must be suffering from deep, deep memory loss. You asked me to marry you so you could get custody of that little snot and all his money. You promised me the moon and the stars. You got the little snot, but I haven’t seen the moon and stars yet. Not by a long shot. I can’t live on twelve thousand dollars a month. I won’t live on that. You need to make other arrangements. If you don’t, I’m going to go to the kid’s grandmother’s lawyers and tell them what you did. You’ll be living in a tent before you know it.”

  “And where do you think you’ll be living, Natalie? Not in my tent, that’s for sure. Do whatever the hell you want, just get out of my sight, and this time, take all of your crap with you. If you do not, I will donate every single bit of it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. I’m sick of you, Natalie, and your phony everything. Do you hear me? I’m sick of you!” Connor roared so loud that Ben stuck his fingers in his ears to stifle the sound.

  Ben felt his heart start to beat so fast he thought he was going to pass out when he saw Natalie sit down at the table. He watched as she picked up an egg roll and crunched down. “We both need to calm down here,” she said, backpedaling. “We need to talk this through. I’m prepared to be reasonable if you are.”

  “Define reasonable,” Connor said coldly.

  “All right, I admit I was a little over the top when I stormed out of here. I’m sorry about that. The problem is, Connor, you have not kept your promise to me. I trusted you to come through. I did what you asked, I married you so you could keep control of the kid. You even admitted to me that it was all about the money and that you weren’t father material. I’m not mother material, either, and I admit it. I even told you that. I was honest and up front, but I went along with you. And yet here we are, with that snot-nosed kid neither of us wants. But the judge gave you custody and the kid’s money because I, meaning me, presented such a compelling argument about the family unit. I did that for you, Connor. For you, and don’t you ever forget it. So think twice before you threaten to kick me out. Plus, sweetie, I have it all right here on my cell phone. Your ardent plea to me to help you, so we’d both be rich.”

  Ben almost reared back when he heard Connor bellow, “You recorded all that!”

  “Well, yeah, sweetie. I kind of figured this day might come. Call it insurance.”

  “That’s blackmail!” Connor roared.

  “Like I said, sweetie, call it whatever you want. I call it insurance. Now, are we going to talk, or are we going to continue to fight with each other?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Connor grumbled. “This is the third month with no money for Ben’s upkeep. We’re operating on a shoestring. The utilities are going to be shut off. You racked up a couple of hundred thousand dollars in bills. I’ve just been paying the interest. When that information finds its way to Eleanor Lymen’s lawyers, what do you think the outcome will be? Back to court, and I lose custody of Ben. You and I are out in the street or in that tent you mentioned earlier. Assuming that we avoid going to prison.”

  “We need to go talk to that judge or at the very least a lawyer. A court order is a court order.”

  “Sometimes you are so stupid, I can’t stand talking to you, Natalie. The lawyers told us that Eleanor divested herself of all her assets. She sold the Circle and the Institute to Rita and Irene. There is nothing to gain by going to the lawyers. There is no money. We might have won in court, but Eleanor won in the money department. She left, and no one knows where she is. This was her plan all along. And she did it before the court order came down. The key word here, Natalie, is before. She outsmarted us. Don’t you get it?”

  “Actually, you jerk, I do get it,” Natalie snarled. “You were the one who once told me, early on, that Rita and Irene named Diana and Ben as their only heirs. I assume that Eleanor transferred everything to Irene, Rita, or both. So that has to mean all of Eleanor’s money is now theirs and will find its way to Ben since his mother died. We get a lawyer to freeze their assets. There has to be a paper trail somewhere, and did you forget those monster insurance policies Eleanor took out on Ben and his mother?”

  “That’s apples and oranges, Natalie.”

  “You really are stupid, you know that!” Natalie exploded. “Think, Connor! If we do away with the little snot, you collect his insurance. That money will tide us over until the big payoff. Then you become the only heir. It might take a while, but with that kind of money involved, the courts will do double time making sure it gets to you. The best news is that those three women will spend their remaining years in jail. How cool is that?”

  Ben could hardly believe what he was hearing. He started to shake and had to hug himself so tight, he could barely breathe. He started to pray, saying all the prayers his grandmother had taught him as tears trickled down his cheeks. He didn’t want to die. Sometimes he thought he did, when things were going badly, so he could be with his mother. But right now, he did not want to die.

  “No! No! He’s just a kid. How could you even think such a thing? You’re deranged, Natalie.”

  Natalie laughed, and Ben started to shake even more. He had to get out of here as soon as possible.

  “And you’re Mary Poppins’s husband! You need to get real here. It’s the only solution. If you’re that squeamish, I’ll do it myself.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, no! I won’t lift a finger to help you. I don’t care if I go to jail or not.”

  “That can be arranged so easily, Connor. Or, you could wake up dead right next to your stepson. You made a promise to me, and I counted on it, and now you’re backsliding. That doesn’t work for me. I had great plans for all that money, and I was going to include you in those plans. Well, you can forget that now,” Natalie said coldly. “I’m going to bed. You just sit here and think about this conversation and what you’re going to do. We’ll talk again in the morning, when Ben goes to the Institute. Good night, my sweet, obedient husband.”

  Ben gulped and swiped at his tears. He needed to think. He could outwit Natalie, he was sure of it. Well, almost sure of it. He knew in his gut that Connor would fall into line with Natalie’s plan, no matter what he was saying right now.

  Ben sat frozen in place, waiting to see what Connor would do. Within seconds, he heard the kitchen door open, then the pinging sound, and the robotic words, “Kitchen door open.” Of course, Connor was going out to smoke a cigarette, since Natalie wouldn’t let him smoke in the house. She could smoke, but Connor was not allowed to because she said his cigarettes stunk more than hers did. Seven minutes. Ben had timed how long it took Connor to smoke a cigarette on more than one occasion, and it was always seven minutes.

  Seven minutes for him to do . . . what? Ben’s mind started to race as fast as his heartbeat. It was at times like this when he wished he had a watch. But he was pretty good at keeping track of the time. He opened the door to the laundry room all the way and was about to leave when he had an idea. He turned the dryer to ten minutes even though his clothes were dry, then ran to the family room, where he flopped down on the couch and pretended to be asleep. He started to count down the minutes. When he got to seven minutes, he hopped off the couch and made his way to the laundry room just as Connor opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen. Man and boy glared at one another. “What are you doing down here?”

  “Getting my clothes out of the dryer. Connor, I need some new clothes
. My jeans have holes in them, and my underwear is too tight. My big toe is sticking out of my socks. I need new sneakers and a winter jacket, too. It’s starting to get cold out. Or should I tell them at the Institute? Maybe they’ll get me what I need.”

  Connor did a quick calculation in his head. Two hundred fifty dollars at the most. The winter jacket would set him back the majority of it. He’d given the kid a hundred dollars earlier. That would leave him with about 125 dollars tops. That was every penny he had to his name. “I’ll take care of it this week,” he said gruffly. “It’s almost bedtime, so get your clothes and head on upstairs.” Ben sighed as the dryer gave off a keening sound. Good move, Ben, he congratulated himself.

  Ben scooped his clothes out of the dryer and tossed them into a laundry basket instead of folding them the way his grandmother had taught him. So he would wear wrinkled clothes. Who cares?

  Always polite because he had been taught to respect his elders, even those bent on killing him, Ben said good night and headed for the stairs, hoping he would not see Natalie as he made his way to his room. He lucked out—Natalie was nowhere in sight. Inside his room, he closed the door and started to fold his clothes, just to have something to do while his brain raced all over the place. First and foremost, he had to get out of here. Out of this house. Like now. Immediately.

  Where to go? Yes, he could get into his grandmother’s house, but that was the first place the police would go to look for him. Assuming Connor and Natalie would report him missing. They were both late sleepers. On Mondays, his day to go to the Institute, he was up and out and at the Institute before they even got up. They wouldn’t even know he was missing until sometime tomorrow afternoon. He had to go tonight, but where could he go? Maybe Rita’s or Irene’s house. Maybe he could go in through one of the basement windows. If he could get in there, he could hide out until it was time to meet up with Izzy on Tuesday. Or maybe he could go to Izzy’s office and hide out there. No, he’d be exposed. He needed to be indoors and safe. But then, how would he get in touch with Izzy about meeting her on Tuesday? He’d need a phone for that, and he didn’t have one.