Snatched

by Pamela Burford

  Meanwhile, if Lucy and Anne Marie ever found out about each other, Narby’s life would be in the toilet faster than you could say, “Next on Eyewitness News: Shocking Bigamy Scandal!” How much would the man be willing to pay to keep his multi-family lifestyle out of the headlines?

  Through the lacework of early spring foliage he was just able to make out the action at Kitchen’s place. The redheaded man with Lucy Narby had to be one of the three who’d grabbed her on Friday night—the coolheaded one in the hoodie. That dark blue Camry was the same one he’d followed. He figured this was Wilbur Kitchen.

  There was definitely something hinky going on here, Wesley thought as he watched the victim smile and chat with her kidnapper. The two settled into the car, and the boy sprinted back to the house.

  Wesley focused his scope on the duo conducting their own little recon. He didn’t dare abandon his perch while they were nearby. Fortunately they began to retrace their path as soon as the vehicle drove out of sight.

  Snippets of conversation drifted to him as the two men neared him. He sat as still as a corpse, despite the big-ass spider that chose that moment to crawl onto his right hand, the one holding the scope.

  “. . . bitch . . .” Wesley heard in that whiny voice he remembered from Friday, and “. . . payback . . .” The older one counseled patience. Then he asked the younger one something.

  The kid said, “That dickwad Will’s on my shit list, too, Hal. One way or another, I’ll get you in there.”

  They were a few feet from Wesley’s tree now. The spider paused on his knuckle and assumed a contemplative pose, as if pondering whether to indulge in a venomous bite. The damn thing tickled.

  “Don’t get cocky, Mick,” Hal said. “Something tells me your uncle’s no dummy.”

  So. This little turd was Wilbur Kitchen’s nephew.

  “Yeah, well, he’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” Mick said. He stopped in his tracks, smack-dab under Wesley’s tree. Wesley stopped breathing.

  The spider’s head moved. Wesley bit the inside of his cheek, braced himself for the bite, and almost stroked out when a buzzing tingle shot through his left nipple.

  His cell phone. It was set to vibrate when a call came in. Correction: It was set to vibrate for a few moments and then play the Flintstones theme song at maximum volume. Joe, probably, asking him to pick up eggs on his way home.

  Bzzz.

  Directly below him, Mick scratched his ass and glanced around. “Did we come this way?”

  Wesley kept one eye on Mick and Hal, and one eye on the spider. He struggled to maintain his precarious balance as his left hand relinquished its death grip on the nearest branch and tugged on his jacket’s brass zipper pull. The ratchety whisper of metal on metal sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness of the woods. Thankfully, Mick and Hal didn’t seem to notice.

  Bzzz.

  How long did the damn phone vibrate before the tune kicked in? Five seconds? Eight? Droplets of sweat congregated on Wesley’s upper lip as his left hand contorted itself to grope under the left side of his jacket where the cell phone was jammed deep in the breast pocket.

  Hal turned to Mick. “What do you mean, did we come this way? Weren’t you ever a Boy Scout?”

  So not the father, Wesley thought, if he had to ask. Plus, Mick called him by his first name.

  Bzzz.

  “Yeah, I was,” Mick said. “Well, a Cub Scout. Till they kicked me out. What of it?”

  Wesley’s fingertips teased open the pocket. He braced himself for “Flintstones! Meet the Flintstones!” His fingers burrowed deeper. Where was that goddamn phone?

  He watched the spider execute a languid turn and make its way up the outstretched middle finger of his right hand. Yeah, screw you, too, my friend.

  “Just remember,” Hal said, “we’re talking about two million bucks. Don’t jump the gun on this business with the Narby woman.”

  Wesley’s nape prickled. Lucy Narby. In that instant one lone fingertip made contact with the smooth case of his cell phone.

  Bzzz.

  He’d been hoping to extract maybe twenty thou from Narby for keeping mum about the missus and the missus. Now here was this yahoo mentioning Lucy Narby and two million dollars in the same breath.

  Wesley’s damp fingers snagged the phone at last. He hauled it out of his pocket and pressed the disconnect button just as the first note of “Flintstones!” began to chirp. Fortunately, Hal’s voice drowned it out.

  “What’s your number?” Hal flipped open his own cell. Mick recited seven digits, which Wesley punched into the keypad of his phone, storing the number in the phone’s memory as Hal did the same. Meanwhile the spider had reversed course and was preparing to crawl under the cuff of Wesley’s jacket sleeve.

  “That’s my mobile,” Mick said. “The house number—”

  “Forget the house number.” Hal stowed his phone. “That’s all I need, is to get your mother on the line.”

  “Relax,” Mick said. “She won’t be back from Bermuda till next week. What’s your number?”

  “I’ll call you. The road’s that way. Come on.”

  Wesley waited until the two men were out of earshot, then flicked the spider onto the tree trunk and smeared it under his mini scope. He clambered down the tree as fast as his stiff knees would allow and trailed Hal and Mick at a discreet distance.

  The visit to Narby could wait.

  Chapter 11

  25 years earlier

  WAS HE ON a boat? That was what it smelled like, that diesel smell like when Grandpa Will took him deep-sea fishing. Also a sour tang, like mildew and stale beer. But there was no movement. If Ricky were on a boat, he’d feel some rocking, wouldn’t he, even if the boat was docked. And not a whiff of fish. A truck maybe? Trucks ran on diesel. But what truck was carpeted? He felt matted shag under his butt, which did nothing to cushion the hard floor he’d been sitting on for over two days now.

  And the shivering. It would stop for a second or two, then start up again, worse than before. He’d never known your whole body could ache just from shaking so much. It was from fear, but it was from cold, too, a damp March cold that penetrated the air, the floor, his entire body. Wherever he was, it was unheated, and all Ricky had on was jeans, sneakers, and a thin Rugby shirt.

  The jeans had taken forever to dry. He was so scared at first, he’d wet himself, to his immense shame. Where he was now, there was a toilet a few steps away in a tiny bathroom. That, too, reminded him of a boat. The “head,” he called it in his mind. Twice a day the man unlocked the chain around Ricky’s waist and let him use the head, still blindfolded. Until then, he had to hold it, and he did. Ricky refused to pee himself again, no matter how scared he got.

  The man had hit Gabby on the head with his gun. She collapsed against the vending machine where they’d gone for snacks during a break in shooting the show. There was so much blood, Ricky knew she had to be dead. Gabby was more than a nanny to him, she was like another mother. He’d known her for nine years, his whole life. He tried not to think about what the kidnapper did to her.

  Or what he almost did to his co-star Quint as the bird lay wounded next to Gabby, screeching at full volume, struggling to right himself with one wing bent at a crazy angle. The man pointed his gun at Quint, and Ricky knew he was going to shoot him, he could see it in his face. He knew from the movies that the chunky thing on the barrel was a silencer. Even unmuffled, a gunshot would make less noise than Quint.

  So he begged. He blubbered like a little kid, pleading with him not to kill Quint, promising he’d do whatever the man wanted. What he wanted was for Ricky to go with him. Numbly, he had.

  Ricky tried to shift his weight; his tailbone hurt worst of all. When he wasn’t thinking about Gabby, he thought about his parents, especially his father, Richard Baines, Sr. Ricky had always been afraid of his dad, though he’d never admitted that to anyone, not even Gabby. He had a feeling she knew, though.

  Had his kidnapper called his parents? It
had been more than two days. He must have gotten in touch with them by now, right? He’d want money. They always wanted money when they kidnapped someone in the movies. Sometimes in the movies, the family paid the money and the kidnapper killed the person anyway. Something else Ricky tried not to think about.

  His dad had a lot of money. Ricky hoped it would be that simple. The man names a price, his dad pays it, Ricky goes home.

  One good thing: The man hadn’t molested him. Not yet, anyway. Ricky knew stuff like that happened, though he was hazy on the particulars.

  He felt, more than heard, a distant door opening. The floor quaked with the man’s footfalls as he came toward him. Ricky’s shivering got worse. What was his kidnapper doing here? His next bathroom break was several hours away. And the remains of his last meal—another peanut butter sandwich and a plastic cup of water, same as always—still littered the floor in front of him. It was hard to eat and drink with his wrists taped together. He could have reached up and pulled the blindfold off anytime, but he never knew when he was being watched. And anyway, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to look into the man’s eyes.

  Ricky flinched as something fell onto the carpeting right in front of him, something small, by the sound of it. The man didn’t say anything, but that was nothing new. He hadn’t spoken since he’d tossed Ricky into that van. Ricky smelled mild BO as his kidnapper yanked off the blindfold. Ricky squeezed his eyes shut, but a slap across the cheek snapped them open.

  A plastic mask loomed over him, a smiling dark-haired princess mask with a crown, the kind a girl might wear to go trick-or-treating. The man had blond hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. There was a large bandage behind his ear. Ricky realized he must have been wearing a dark wig when he pretended to be a security guard at the studio. This was the same man; he had no doubt about that. The mustache had probably been fake, too. He stared now at that princess mask, eerily lit by a lone utility lamp dangling over their heads. The only part of the man’s face he could see was the one he didn’t want to: a pair of pale gray eyes, partially visible through the little eye holes.

  The BO smell got stronger as the man shoved him onto his back and pinned him to the floor with his knees. He picked up what he’d dropped before: a wood-handled hunting knife, the kind Grandpa Will used to gut bluefish.

  The man slammed Ricky’s bound wrists onto a scarred plank of wood. He clamped his fingers around all of Ricky’s, except for the pinky finger of Ricky’s left hand, which he pressed to the plank. He positioned the knife and waited, watching, as Ricky screamed and sobbed and pleaded, bucking under the man’s unyielding weight. Ricky’s face was drenched in tears and snot, his body bathed in icy sweat.

  The princess mask turned from Ricky’s face to the plank. The man reared up. His knees dug in harder. Ricky squeezed his eyes shut. Pain exploded in his finger. His head filled with a pulsing energy he only dimly recognized as his own screams. Wet warmth flooded his pants. Dark spots obscured his vision.

  It wasn’t over. The man examined his handiwork, muttered a curse, and put his weight into the task. The dark spots spread and coalesced, and Ricky let the blackness take him away.

  Chapter 12

  “HOW DID YOU end up with Quint?” Lucy asked. “That has to be the same parrot from the show. He’s got all the lines down.”

  Will changed lanes as the exit sign for Crystal Harbor came into view. “He and I hit it off on the set. I really enjoyed working with him, and I didn’t have any pets at home. My dad wouldn’t allow an animal in the house. Anyway, Quint’s broken wing ended his TV career, so when my mom offered a generous sum for him, he became mine.”

  She hesitated before asking, “That happened when you were kidnapped, right? His broken wing? I remember that from the news stories.” The kidnapping of Ricky Baines had dominated the news for days.

  “Quint got KO’d,” he said, “but not before taking a chunk out of the guy’s scalp. The two of them tried to protect me, Quint and Gabby. She got pistol-whipped.”

  Lucy winced. Will had already explained that his parents had hired Gabby as a teenage au pair shortly after his birth; the two of them had always been close. “So your dad finally said okay to a pet?”

  “No.” His smile was grim. “It was one of the few times Mom stood up to him. Her child was hurting and she was determined to soothe that hurt any way she could. Plus the old prick had shown his true colors by then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the ransom demand came, he refused to pay.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened. “Why? He had the money, didn’t he?” That was another detail she recalled from the news coverage back then. The young star’s folks were loaded.

  “Pride. He had no intention of forking over a million bucks to some punk just because he snatched his kid. Even the authorities advised him to pay, but he thought he knew better, thought he could bully and threaten the kidnapper into giving me up.” Will shrugged. “Bullying and threatening had worked pretty well for him up till then.”

  “But the kidnapper didn’t give you up.” Lucy’s gaze strayed to his left hand.

  “When the package arrived at the house—” he wiggled the stump of his pinky “—my mom went berserk. That’s what I’ve been told. They had to pull her off my dad. She demanded he pay—threatened to hold a news conference, tell the world what a self-involved, penny-pinching bastard he was, reveal all his shady business dealings. By then, the ransom demand had doubled. It was understood that every finger my parents received would cost them another million.”

  Lucy’s hand drifted to her mouth. Will’s tone was dry, a matter-of-fact recounting of events. She took a deep breath. “So your father paid the ransom.”

  “Yeah, he paid it—with my money, my earnings from the show. A million three.” He turned onto Lucy’s long driveway. “The old man had to dip into his own funds to bring it up to two mil. Never forgave me for costing him so much.”

  “Wait a minute. I thought he was a millionaire.”

  Will nodded. “Many times over. Made his fortune with a chain of gyms. Empire State Athletic Club.”

  “So . . . he could’ve paid the entire ransom out of petty cash and never felt the pinch,” she said.

  “Hey, you don’t stay rich by giving it away, right?”

  Something else Lucy remembered from the news stories back then: The man who’d kidnapped and maimed little Ricky Baines was never caught. He was still at large, after all this time. She stared at Will’s profile, wondering about his decision to reinvent himself as a designer kidnapper.

  He slowed at the top of the drive. “Is that your husband’s?”

  She followed his gaze. Her stomach sank. “What’s he doing here?”

  Will pulled in next to the gold Mercedes. The two of them silently stared at the third vehicle sharing the parking area at the side of the house: a yellow box truck with Trout Bros. Moving Co. stenciled on the side.

  Will killed the engine. “I’m coming in with you.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s just Frank. Though I have to say, I’m surprised. He promised to respect my privacy when we separated. It’s not like him to just pop in like this.”

  “With a moving van,” Will said. “Looks like he’s done a one-eighty on the divorce issue.”

  Lucy now wished she’d asked Frank to relinquish his house keys. She started to thank Will for the ride, but he was already letting himself out of the car. She got out too. “Really, Will, maybe it’s better if you don’t—”

  “Frank was acting weird last night, Lucy.” Will followed her to the truck. “And he admitted siccing those two pseudo-kidnappers on you.”

  “Well, that was a boneheaded move, but—”

  “It was beyond boneheaded, it was dangerous. You could’ve gotten hurt trying to fend off what you thought were real kidnappers.”

  She gave him a You don’t say look. “Imagine that—being accosted in your own home and not knowing it’s all a charade.”

  L
ucy braced herself as the open rear of the moving truck came into view, expecting to see her antique dining room set, her hand-forged iron bedstead, possibly even—please God, no—her Isamu Noguchi glass-and-wood coffee table, one of the originals from the 1940s. But the truck held only a few tall wardrobe cartons, Frank’s golf clubs, and several boxes marked: FRAGILE. his collection of giraffe sculptures, no doubt. She sighed in relief. “Looks like I got here in time.”

  Will accompanied her to the side door. He placed a finger on her lips when she started to protest. “I’m coming in. This is nonnegotiable.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched as he tried the door and found it unlocked. “You’re off the clock, Buttercup. Nobody’s paying you to boss me around.”

  In the kitchen Lucy’s gaze homed in on the bare counter space previously occupied by the old-fashioned milk-shake machine and the enormous commercial cappuccino maker. Well, that was okay. They were Frank’s toys, after all. She didn’t even like cappuccino. She wondered if he planned to rip out his beloved under-counter wine cellar.

  They found Frank in the library, directing three moving men as they secured padded quilts around the pigskin chair and a half. “Take it through here.” He unlocked the French doors.

  All three movers wore eyeglasses, ponytails, and forearm tattoos depicting spotted fish. One even wore a Phish concert T-shirt. I get it, Lucy thought. The Trout brothers.

  The biggest Trout unwrapped a pink nugget of bubble gum. “What happened in here?” His gaze took in the overturned furniture, the scattered popcorn and broken picture glass. “You guys get robbed?”

  “Something like that.” Frank turned then and spotted his wife and her kidnapper. She saw the gears turning behind his hazel eyes. “Oh. Right.” He addressed Will. “Makes sense she’d tell you to let Lucy go.”

  “You know about that?” Lucy and Will exchanged a dubious look. When did Frank find out about Ethel’s practical joke?

  “You didn’t have a clue last night,” Will reminded him.