by Paisley Ray
Katie Lee’s eye lids rested at half-mast and her head drooped.
“Someone must’ve drugged you. Is your head fuzzy?”
“Feels like cotton between my ears and my throat is dry. I need water and some fresh air.”
Holding the flashlight under my chin, I used the paperclip to poke holes in the tape that covered her wrists so I could tear it. Once I put a small tear in the tape, I was able to rip it. Katie Lee’s arms had gone white and she winced when I freed them.
“Was there a voice? A smell? Anything you remember?”
“What are you getting at? I don’t know who did this? My God, Rachael, can’t you move faster, they may be coming back.”
I worked as quickly as I could on her feet, but the adhesive was wound all around her tennis shoes. “I found paintings in your closet. Pretty sure they’re genuine.”
“What were you doing in my closet?”
“Looking for a clue as to where you’d gone.”
“They aren’t mine.”
“Who put them there?”
“How the hell should …” she threw a hand over her mouth. I stopped for a moment and gazed up. Our faces locked in an ah-ha ….
“Nash’s at it again. You’re ransom bait. Whoever kidnapped you needed something to convince your boyfriend to return the stuff he stole.”
“He’s not my boyfriend, just a good friend, and he wouldn’t.”
Concentrating on unbinding her feet, I didn’t argue.
“Maybe this is just a stupid college prank.”
“I don’t think so.”
A click resonated behind me.
Katie Lee shrieked.
“Don’t move.” a bogus German accent ordered.
Icy cold paralyzed my mind. I’d been up for ages and my reflexes weren’t their sharpest. Katie Lee’s feet were still immobile and if I ran, I guessed the gun whose chamber snap I heard would sink a bullet into me before I reached the door. Still squatting low, I rotated on my toes and flashed my light in the face of the creep who’d done this.
Shielding his face, his elbow blocked my view. “Turn thast light off.”
I pointed my mace and squeezed. Nothing. The damn safety was on and Phony German Accent took a quick step forward, kicking it out of my hand.
The shadowed figure in a grey suit stepped back. His hands were full. One pointed a handgun and in the other, he clenched a wad of Schleck’s matted shoulder-length hair. Her hands were cuffed behind her back. “Rachael?” the professor murmured, her eyes avoiding mine.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
It took effort to summon more than a blink. “Professor,” I choked.
“A student?” he said in the crackpot European accent before he shoved Schleck toward me. My mentor landed in a sideways heap at my feet and moaned.
The asshole flicked a light switch that illuminated some hanging fluorescents above us.
“Professor Schleck?” Katie Lee whispered. “What are we doing here?”
The professor sobbed. “Hans, why are you doing this?”
Schleck’s lipstick had smeared toward her cheeks and her eye makeup had blended with her mascara, creating mud puddles around her eyes. As if a weight pulled her features flat, her stoic face was clad with a veil of despair. I didn’t know what this man had done to her, but she’d entered a dark place.
Pointing the gun at Katie Lee, and dropping the fake accent, he spoke. “Rachael O’Brien, it’s about time you woke up.”
Wait, what? He thinks Katie Lee is me? Idiot. My hair was longer and dark brown, hers was shoulder-length with highlights. And Katie Lee was half a head taller than me.
“Once again, you’ve managed to make this complicated. I only had the supplies for two and now we have three. I should’ve taken care of you when I last had the chance. The Mississippi would have been ideal, but the Savannah will have to do.”
Beads of sweat glued my bra to my chest. It was him. Jack Ray.
From a dingy corner, he snapped a fold out chair apart and shoved it next to Katie Lee. Your company is unexpected. Sit!”
I did as I was instructed.
“How did you find this place? Are you alone?”
Fear silenced my vocal cords.
While keeping the gun pointed at us, he pushed a ratty office chair on wheels toward Schleck. Grabbing her upper arms, he lumped her in it. With the gun barrel touching the back of my neck, he removed another set of handcuffs from his pocket and one-handed he locked my wrists behind me. “You like being handcuffed?”
“Not particularly,” I said, surprised to have found my voice.
“That’s a shame. Silvia was quite found of them in the bedroom.”
I could’ve done without that piece of information.
Katie Lee’s head jounced and she bit a corner of her lip. “Have we met before?”
Didn’t she realize this wasn’t a meet and greet?
“New Orleans?” She asked, her strength rallying.
She was going to get us killed.
Silently I willed my roommate to close her trap. Information was power and I didn’t want to admit I, we, knew this psycho who’d initially gone by the nickname Lucky in New Orleans. Sick-o. The less he knew we knew, the better.
Jack Ray quickly secured Schleck to her chair, before stepping back to admire his handiwork. The sleazy, Bayou art con had dropped forty pounds, dyed his hair, grown a goatee, and pretended to be a Baron with a laughable German accent. It was a complete transformation, complimented by the immaculate tailored three-piece suit.
“You’re Jack Ray, Billy’s cousin!” Katie Lee blurted.
Even dead, Billy Ray still haunted me. I started to worry. Did Jack Ray think I’d killed his cousin? Had he tracked me to take revenge for his kinfolk’s fate?
He busied himself rummaging through a paper bag. Cupping my thumbs into my palms, I tried to slide them out of the handcuffs, but they were clamped too tight. Removing a new roll of duct tape, he began unraveling a piece. “It’s me, Katie Lee Brown from The Bern. Billy’s daddy, Jimmy, must be your uncle.”
Jack stared.
Schleck’s head rolled. “He is the Baron Hans von Richthofen.”
“Baron? Since when? Don’t you remember, we drank Hurricanes at Pat O’Briens on Bourbon Street? You showed Rachael how to eat crawfish.”
“What?” Schleck looked confused.
Jack began to laugh.
So much for my play dumb, buy-time, don’t-agitate-the-crazy-man tactic.
His head swiveled from Katie Lee to me and he rocked his index finger like a metronome.
“Rachael is like a sister to me.”
“Rachael?” he repeated and pointed to me.
“I didn’t know,” Schleck said. “When he found out you were my intern.”
Jack Ray leaned toward the professor. Using the back of his hand, he whapped her across the face.
“You’ve lost your southern.”
“Katie Lee,” I warned.
She ignored me. “No gentleman would treat a lady like that. You just wait until I tell my …”
Before she finished her sentence, he re-wrapped her wrists in the sticky adhesive.
Lowering himself down in front of me, he stroked the skin below my capri jeans then proceeded to take his time duct taping each leg to the chair. His touch sent pin pricks along my veins. “I thought I’d brought you here, but it seems, Ms. O’Brien, that kismet has done it for me. Why don’t you tell me about the buyers you found? Are they clients of your Daddy’s restoration business back in Ohio?”
Jack Ray had lost his marbles.
He finished wrapping tape around my feet then left the room.
“Professor, what’s going on?” I asked.
“How do you know the Baron?”
“He’s no Baron. That’s Jack Ray.” Katie Lee said.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“The guy who was busted for running a painting forgery business a few years back. Liz Stein
at The Weatherspoon gallery had been hustled by him.”
“You must be mistaken.”
“She’s not,” Katie Lee said.
“What’s the scheme this time?” I asked.
“He said he loved me and that we would move abroad.”
“Jack Ray calls himself Lucky. At least he did when we met him. Lucky Ray’s a con man and he’s smuggling art through your office.”
Professor Schleck’s back stiffened. “It’s poster art and it’s legit.”
“The Alfa Romeo Spider, the new office antiques, designer purses, and weekly massages,” I said.
“You’ve been snooping?”
Silvia Schleck had three degrees under her belt. An accomplished professor, she managed to enlighten the minds and harden the resolve of hundreds of students each year. I always suspected she was mental, but not stupid. Did she really think I’d believe that she had been fooled in all this?
“Professor Schleck, you’re a smart woman, and none of us are in a position to make believe that what we shipped out of your office were only posters.”
She looked away. “International import tariffs are lower on posters than on antique frames. It seemed harmless. Only the tax man was cheated.”
“Frames?” I asked.
“Yes, frames,” she snapped.
Katie Lee threw her weight and managed to hop her chair closer to mine. “Enough about stupid posters and frames, how are we getting outta here?”
“Sheila’s waiting outside in her car.”
“You’re kidding?”
I shook my head.
“Of all people, Sheila?”
“Hopefully she’s worried about me being gone and has called for help.”
“What do you mean, hopefully?”
“We drove all night. The last leg, she’s been nodding off.”
Katie Lee looked at me disgusted. “Sheila Sinclair is the devil.”
She sounded like Francine.
“She’s come around and is sorry for, you know, being with Hugh.”
Maybe a stretch, but Sheila was human and on some level she had to have regrets.
“She came down here with me in the hopes of making a small step toward a reconciliation.”
The professor’s head tipped back. “This is nonsense. Hans will come to his senses and release us. He’s just stressed with the business.”
“Wake up, professor,” Katie Lee said. “Your Baron boyfriend is a criminal who’s missing some tools from his shed.”
An image of Nash popped into my head. What do they say about the pot calling the kettle black?
“You don’t understand Hans like I do.”
Jack had done a number on her emotions. Even now, with her life in peril, she kept hope for this working itself out.
Katie Lee turned to me. “Seriously, what could’ve possessed you to drive here with the She-Devil?”
So much for thank you.
Under these circumstances, bumming a ride with Sheila wasn’t a point that I felt warranted defense so I downplayed the how-I-got-down-here scenario. “Francine and Jet had left to go home for break.”
“What about Stone?”
I shook my head.
“Agent Cauldwell?” she whispered out of the side of her mouth. “Does he know where you are?”
“Ah, no.”
“I was supposed to meet Nash for dinner.”
Fidgeting my feet, I tried to loosen the tape. “Not happening. After we scoured Schleck’s condo, he dropped Sheila and I off at the house. He made a snack then left to take care of something on campus.”
“You were at my place?” the professor asked.
“In case you were worried, Cat Benatar is fed.”
She sighed.
Katie Lee’s head tipped into her chest. “Oh, Rachael.”
BEING CONSTRAINED WITH TAPE and handcuffs rattled my core. Hindsight drew a straight line from Savannah, where I sat, to Nash. He stole the paintings from Schleck’s shipments, but Jack Ray figured it was me. The irony was that he kidnapped Katie Lee by mistake. Although insensitive, the I-told-you-so had to be said. “Nash stole the paintings. He isn’t happy unless he’s up to no good. It’s in his DNA.”
Katie Lee didn’t offer a defensive rebuttal, which was odd. It gave me the guilts. Maybe this wasn’t the time to ream Nash a new one, but then again was there ever a good time to tell someone the painful truth?
“What paintings?” Schleck asked.
She’d stayed so quiet that I figured she checked out of reality, but she’d been paying attention.
My tongue stroked my eyetooth. Could she really not know about the artwork? Or was she playing me? It all seemed so convenient—Jack Ray, Nash, and the professor. I debated wasting words, but decided I wanted to see her reaction.
“A Klee, Beckmann, and Grosz lay hidden under posters, like the ones you’ve had me packing and sending out from your office all year.”
Her eyes grew wide and I had a hard time deciding if she flashed annoyance or surprise.
A thump, thump noise rattled closer to us and we stopped talking.
Jack Ray used a jigger to roll a pallet loaded with a shovel, a bucket, two sacks of something, and some other odds and ends, like the stuff you’d find in the back of a garden shed.
“Ladies,” he said, and left.
Tired and emotionally spent, none of us spoke. When he returned a minute later, he pushed a yellow barrel contraption on wheels. Under the fluorescents I could see sweat bead on his forehead. Leaning on the gangly piece of equipment, he looked at the three of us, then to the sacks, and shook his head.
Katie Lee managed a few heartfelt words. “Kidnapping across the state line is a Federal offence with minimum punishment doing time in the big house or better, the death penalty, which, for your information, both North and South Carolina uphold.”
“Hans please. Let us go,” Schleck pleaded.
Swallowing the croak that threatened to disclose my vulnerability, I blurted, “Why don’t you just let Katie Lee and me go while you and the professor sort through your relationship issues.”
Striding in front of me, he tapped my nose with his finger and winked. “Rachael, Rachael.” “If only life were that simple. You see, I think you and I are connected.” He cracked his knuckles, “We travel the same highways and once again, voilà, here we’ve arrived at the same crossroads.”
“How did you discover the art?” he asked. “Did Silvia brag?”
The professor gasped. “You arrogant son of a bitch. You lied to me.”
“Now, Silvia.”
“We were good. Better than good, but you don’t like sharing, do you?”
It was tricky, figuring what he knew and didn’t know. Trying to say the right things to convince him to free us was exhausting and I didn’t answer.
Without taking his eyes off me, he stroked a wayward strand of Katie Lee’s hair, before pinching her ear in his fingers. Her scream churned a deafening pitch. “Don’t make me ask the same question twice.”
“I, ah. The frames were of much higher quality than the prints.”
“Of course,” he said.
“And when did you start skimming my art?”
“I haven’t.”
“It’s very childlike to lie. We are both adults and we both know you have been stealing from me. Now, answer me.”
His question fell under entrapment. If I told the truth, that although suspicious, I was duped until yesterday when I stumbled upon the pieces in Katie Lee’s closet, he’d kill us and go get the paintings. So my only option fell under half-truth and bullshit. Lucky for me over the last couple of years, I’d acquired a knack for tall tales, but I didn’t know if my best work could withstand this nut’s pressure-cooker mood swings.
“I knew you were in town back in August,” I began.
“How?” he asked.
“Liz Stein spotted you at the Sizzler. She told me she was frightened and contacted the FBI.”
Schleck snappe
d to attention. “FBI?” She locked eyes with Jack.
“Shut up, just shut up,” he told the professor. “You’re lying,” he said, which only irritated me.
“A friend of mine, Agent Cauldwell, said he’d look into it.”
“Storm?” the professor asked. “The same man you introduced me to at the gallery opening last year?”
“Rachael and Agent Cauldwell are more than friends,” Katie Lee bellowed. “I’m sure he’s noticed she’s missing. Lucky Jack Ray, you’re so screwed.”
Tilting his head back, he laughed. “Look around. I’m not the one who’s screwed.”
“The FBI knows you drive a BMW, Georgia license plate BVG 169,” I threw out.
Clutching the arms of the professor’s chair, he leaned into her face. The vein in his neck pulsed. “Have they been in your office or your home?”
“I, I don’t think so,” she stuttered.
“Can you be sure?”
“How can I be?” her voice trailed.
“Damn it to hell,” he spat. Moving behind her, he dragged the chair out of the room. Thunder outside boomed and the bump and squeak of the metal chair roller wheels against the weathered floorboards eventually silenced in the distance.
In an effort to break free from my chair I worked the muscles in my legs as though I were going full throttle with a Suzanne Somers’ Thigh Master video. “I guarantee that whatever he has planned for us will not be enjoyable. Can you loosen your hands or feet?” I asked Katie Lee.
“I’ve tried,” she replied.
Despite straining every muscle, there was no escaping.
“I’m scared. Rachael, whatever you’ve done to piss him off, undo it.”
“I haven’t done anything, but Nash may have. Where the hell is Sheila?”
“Bitch probably got tired of waiting and left.”
It didn’t take Katie Lee and me long to exhaust all the rescue scenarios. Sitting in silence for what must’ve been hours eroded our optimism. The unrelenting rain continued to pour and the longer I stayed in a mildew-ridden building, taped to the chair, the more my limbs, especially my dodgy left shoulder, ached. I found myself envious that Sheila had eaten a grand slam when all I’d had was a hot cocoa and hash browns. Though I couldn’t really complain, Katie Lee must’ve been literally starving.
