Snatched

by Pamela Burford

  “Well, maybe it was a good thing he showed up when he did. I’ve had second thoughts.”

  Will was going to kill the man. He was going to crash the International Beauty Show, hunt down Archie Esterhaus, and turn him into four hundred pounds of well-marbled hamburger.

  “Lucy.” He stroked her thighs. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you just came out of a long, miserable marriage. You’re afraid of getting hurt.”

  “That’s not it at all,” she said. “I’ve got nothing against casual sex.”

  “So let’s have some.”

  “It’s not my expectations that are the problem here.”

  After a moment he said, “Okay, you lost me.”

  “I’m a lot older than you are.”

  “A lot? Six years. Five and a half. So?”

  “And I’m so much more . . . settled. Twenty years in the same steady, monogamous marriage.” She pulled a face. “Did I say ‘monogamous’?”

  “What’s your point, Lucy?”

  “Look who you’ve found yourself attracted to. A middle-aged matron in the midst of an absurdly complicated divorce.”

  “Forty isn’t middle-aged.”

  She shook her head. “You asked what my point is. That’s my point. You could hook up with some hot young thing half my age, but who do you pick?”

  “A dried-up old crone like you. What was I thinking?” Will oozed his fingers under the hem of her sweater, slick as a Times Square pickpocket. Perhaps not so slick as all that, considering her expression of exaggerated patience as he groped her. It was a look that said, Whenever you’re finished . . . ?

  So much for distracting her. “I’m not attracted to you because of your age, Lucy, but in spite of it. Oh shit. That didn’t come out right. What I mean is, the age thing doesn’t matter. What difference does it make who’s got a few years on who?”

  “It’s what you find appealing about me,” Lucy said, “whether you realize it or not. That I’m this mature, maternal—”

  “Whoa.” He backed up a couple of steps. “Peter Pan, looking for a mother? Is that what you think?” Before she could respond, he added, “Because I have a mother, Lucy. What I want from you has nothing to do with mothering, trust me.”

  A disembodied male voice advised, “Go for it, Mom.”

  Lucy yelped as if she’d stepped on a scorpion. She buried her face in her hands as her ears turned purple. “Goddammit. I thought you were at the computer store.”

  “Changed my mind.”

  Will followed the voice to a closetlike room whose door stood ajar. The only items of furniture were a task chair and a compact computer desk supporting a desktop PC and printer. Books, files, and bound stacks of paper littered the floor. One wall was paneled in corkboard and studded with pictures cut from magazines—photos of actors, politicians, models, and just plain folks, each distinctive in some way, each bearing a handwritten caption: Wizard Wize, Gloriandra, Simon Z, Bloot, Johnny S. Characters from the Johnny Sherlock series. Will couldn’t imagine Lucy’s delightful children’s books being crafted in this drab hole, but that was obviously the case.

  The chair was occupied by a slim young man with short, dark, artfully mussed hair. He lounged comfortably with his feet on the desk and the keyboard on his lap. Will glanced at the monitor, which displayed a multicolumn list of song titles and artists. He noticed the iPod hooked up to the computer. “You’ve got some good tunes there.”

  “Thanks.” The kid stretched out his right hand. “John. The son.”

  “Will. The kidnapper.”

  “How’s it going?” John asked.

  “It was going better before we discovered we weren’t alone.”

  “Didn’t sound like that from where I was sitting. Sounded like you were getting the brush-off.”

  “Your mom always overanalyze everything?”

  John nodded. “Always. So you got a thing for old broads or what?”

  “I can hear you,” Lucy called. “Go upstairs, John. Get!”

  “Sure do.” Will answered John’s question in a voice that carried. “I like ’em leathery as an old boot.”

  Lucy muttered something as she clomped up the stairs. It was just as well Will couldn’t make out the words.

  “So you’re down for the weekend?” Will asked. “You go to Cornell, right?”

  In a bored tone John said, “Go, Big Red,” and offered a lazy fist-pump. He had his mother’s coloring, right down to the dark-roast eyes. His mouth and the shape of his face were from Frank.

  “Good school.” Will leaned against the wall. “You have a major yet?”

  “Classics.”

  Will offered a polite nod.

  “Don’t say it,” John warned. “I like tending bar.”

  “You could always teach.”

  “I guess. Maybe I could teach bartending. The Cocktails of Ancient Greece and Rome.”

  Will looked the kid in the eye. “That wasn’t cool, you know. Listening in on us.”

  “What would you have done?”

  Will would have sat utterly still and eavesdropped, of course. At least John had made his presence known before things got too “frisky.”

  From upstairs, a burst of female laughter, muted by the floorboards. Will asked, “What do you think of Anne Marie?”

  “She’s all right. None of this is her fault. She didn’t know about us, either.” John gave him a speculative look. “So you were a child star, huh?”

  “I was in a show called In No Time. Ran for two and a half seasons.”

  “I’ve caught bits and pieces channel-surfing,” John said. “Time-travel, right? Kid goes into the future?”

  “Into the past. Twenty-five years. He’s from, well, now,” Will said. “Finds himself stranded in the eighties. Him and his parrot.”

  “Oh yeah. ‘I’m having conniptions.’ Isn’t that from your show?”

  Will nodded. “The parrot learns all these uptight phrases from the mom in the family they live with.”

  “Weren’t they worried about changing the course of history, all that stuff?”

  “History, schmistory.” Will shrugged. “It was a vapid sitcom. Can the laughter and sell the cat food.”

  The one thing everyone knew about In No Time, if they knew nothing else, was why it suffered sudden cancellation. Lucy’s son had been brought up well. His gaze never strayed to Will’s left pinky.

  Lunch was Caesar salad with wild salmon prepared on Lucy’s fancy indoor grill. Everyone partook of the pinot grigio except Anne Marie, who sipped Pellegrino and had a double helping of fish. By the time Will pulled into his driveway it was nearly four. Cuba was waiting for him in the foyer.

  “I’ve gotta talk to you.” She glanced around to make sure they were alone.

  Will brought her to his office upstairs and closed the door. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s about Keith.”

  His nape tingled. “What about him?”

  “I wasn’t gonna say anything, but . . .” Cuba fiddled with the X-ray vision specs adorning the bust of Einstein on Will’s desk.

  “Cuba.” He looked her in the eye. “Has he done something to you? Tried to do something?”

  Her brow creased in confusion, but only for a moment. “No, no.” She waved away the notion. “Nothing like that. He’s not the type.”

  Will didn’t think so, either. “Then what?”

  “Well, it’s probably nothing.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” Listening to himself, Will did a mental eye-roll. All he needed was a cardigan and a pipe. At least he hadn’t called her “young lady.” “What happened, Cuba?”

  “Well, I went to the Goo while you were gone to see if I could help out with the client. I know, I know.” She raised a palm to forestall a lecture.

  He sighed. “I’ve had some ideas about that. We’ll talk about it later.”

  Her face lit up. “Let’s talk about it now. Can I, Will? I was so good as Clarice. You sho
uld’ve seen.”

  “I said we’ll talk later. And it all depends on how much your math improves.” Before she could get permanently sidetracked, he steered the conversation back to Keith. “So you went to the Goo and what? Keith was with the client.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “and the place was, like, a total mess. He pulled everything out of the cabinet.”

  “Keith did?”

  Cuba nodded. “All this shit was lying around.”

  “Where was the client? Justin.”

  “He was in the corner. Tied to the cart. He was all right.”

  This didn’t sound so odd to Will. He’d been to the room since then; any mess had been cleaned up. “I really don’t think there’s any—”

  “So I’m, like, what’s all this shit, Keith? And he’s, like, I’m looking for something.”

  “For what? Did he say?”

  Cuba shook her head. “Something to make Jason’s stay more exciting or something like that. The thing is, he was acting nervous. I kinda surprised him. He was looking in this suitcase and he, like, slams the top down when I come in.”

  Will frowned. “The green suitcase? He was going through that?”

  Cuba nodded. “What’s in there?”

  “Just some old papers. Nothing exciting.” He placed a hand on Cuba’s shoulder. “Thanks for telling me about this.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” She shrugged. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “Probably, but I’m glad you did.” Keith had seemed kind of nosy when he first arrived, which Will supposed was reasonable under the circumstances. When the questions veered in directions that were none of his cousin’s business, Will deflected them easily. It was a skill he’d honed since he was nine. Then again, it worked both ways. Keith had filled in some blanks for Will about Great-Aunt Marguerite and her life after she left New York. But that still left an uncomfortable number of gaping holes. He reached across his desk for his laptop computer.

  “I tried that already,” she said. “There’s nothing on the Web about Keith.”

  “No Web site? Nothing about his personal-training business?”

  Cuba shook her head. “No Twitter, no Facebook. Nada.”

  “All right. Don’t mention this to anyone else, okay? Especially—”

  “Gabby,” she said. “I’m, like, way ahead of you.”

  ______

  THERE ARE MOMENTS in one’s life when one can only wonder why, in the name of all that is holy, one has embarked on a particularly questionable, if not lunatic, course of action.

  No one questioned the fact that something needed to be done about the leaking roof, and indeed, something had been done. Irving had positioned a lobster pot under the cataract pouring through the ceiling light fixture in his third-floor bedroom. As for the water streaming around the nearby window frame, every towel in the house had been pressed into service. That should have been a sufficient temporary solution until the afternoon thunderstorm abated and Will could inspect the damage under sane, sunlit conditions.

  The problem was Ming-hua. Between her compulsive orderliness and her excitable nature, this leak was a disaster to rival the Johnstown Flood. The more her placid husband tried to soothe her, the more crazed she became. Gabby attempted to escort her downstairs for a sloe gin fizz, Ming-hua’s poison of choice, but the old woman wouldn’t budge. It didn’t help that Quint had picked up on the tension in the household and was screeching and ringing his little bell nonstop. With Ming-hua on the verge of a meltdown and the storm showing no sign of letting up, Keith had driven to the local hardware store for supplies.

  Which was how Will found himself on a pitched slate roof in the driving rain, holding a tube of roof caulk. Keith was up there with him, naturally. He was the handy one, the one who knew how to do this sort of thing. Will hugged a chimney and curled his sneakered toes into the ridges between roof shingles as the cold, wind-whipped rain swiped his ball cap and saturated his supposedly water-resistant windbreaker. He tried not to let his gaze drift toward the ground. It was a long way down.

  Keith, meanwhile, appeared perfectly at ease, moving like a cat across the irregular roof, homing in on the source of the leak. The sky lit up with a deafening crack of thunder. Keith didn’t so much as flinch. “Come take a look at this.” He had to shout to make himself heard.

  Shit. Will peeled himself off the chimney and gingerly groped his way over to his cousin. His knuckles were raw; he wished he’d worn gloves.

  “Here’s your problem.” Keith ran his fingers over a strip of corroded copper flashing; he picked at a few flecks of loose slate. “How old is this roof?”

  “Um . . . I’m not sure. Pretty old. We’ve had a few leaks over the years. I figure I’ll need to replace it sooner or later.”

  “Maybe, but an expert might be able to save it. All new slate would cost a bundle. Meanwhile . . .” Keith took the caulking gun from Will.

  “We can really use this stuff in the rain?”

  “That’s what it’s for.” With careless agility Keith shifted position on the steeply pitched slate as the rain pounded and their breath smoked. “You want to do the honors?”

  “Sure.” Like he wanted bleeding hemorrhoids. Will started to ease into the space vacated by Keith when a human head popped into view around the nearby turret, startling him. He lost his balance and started to slide southward. This is it, he thought, fumbling for a handhold. Maybe he’d be lucky and only end up paralyzed from the neck down.

  His descent was interrupted by Keith’s steel-band grip on his forearm, giving Will the precious second or two he needed to get his feet under himself and scramble back up. The pounding of his heart drowned out the rain, the wind, and whatever wry comment Keith made as he thumped Will’s shoulder.

  The disembodied head belonged to Ming-hua, nosing out one of the turret windows to assess their progress. Her precious perm was protected by one of those clear, accordion-folded rain bonnets. She called out, “You find hole?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Keith said.

  “Where?” She stretched farther out, craning her neck to see.

  “Dammit, Ming-hua,” Will shouted, “get back in there. I don’t need you falling out the damn window.”

  “You no swear at Ming-hua. You fix hole.”

  “I’m fixing it, I’m fixing it,” Will said. “Get back inside. Irving!” he hollered.

  From the first floor Quint screamed, “What!”

  “Ming-hua, we’re on it,” Keith assured her. “We need you inside to tell us when the leak stops.”

  “Okay. I watch. You fix hole,” she told Keith. “Not that schmuck. He no good.” She disappeared and slammed the window shut.

  “Gee, Ming-hua,” Will shouted, “thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Keith offered the caulking gun to Will, who waved it away, muttering, “You do it. This schmuck is no good.” He added, “Thanks for saving my bacon, Keith. I owe you one.”

  “Hey, if anyone owes anyone, it’s the other way around.” Deftly Keith began patching the hole. “After everything you’ve done for me?”

  Will watched his cousin work. “How’d you get so good at stuff like this?”

  “I did odd jobs for a contractor when I was in school,” Keith said. “Picked up a lot of skills. And Mom’s house always needed something done.”

  “Yet you ended up in personal training instead.”

  “Steadier work. Not as seasonal, and not as hard on the back and knees. I started out during the big fitness boom in the eighties. I’ve done okay.”

  “You work for yourself?”

  “Yep.” Keith examined the patch closely, squirted another blob of goo. “I like being my own boss. Give me that putty knife.”

  Will reached into his back pocket and handed it over. “Yeah, I like it, too—working for myself.” Another thunderclap made him jump, but he plowed ahead. “It can be tough getting the word out, though. Do you advertise?”

  “Some.”

  “I get a lot of
business through my Web site,” Will said. “What about you?”

  Keith put the final touches on his repair. “Guess I should think about getting one of those. Back in Seattle, I got so many clients by word of mouth, I never felt the need.”

  After his conversation with Cuba, Will had performed his own thorough search. Even without a Web site, a successful personal trainer who’d been in business that long could be expected to have some presence on the Internet—mentions in fitness boards, blogs, that sort of thing. But it was as if Keith Kitchen, personal trainer, didn’t exist. Not in Seattle, not anywhere in all of Googleville. He wasn’t listed in the yellow pages either.

  Keith grinned through the rain sluicing down his face. “You thinking of changing careers?”

  “When I can bench two seventy-five like you, I’ll consider it, Cuz.” Watching Keith with the free weights was a humbling experience. Will reminded himself never to get on this guy’s bad side.

  He wanted to dismiss Cuba’s concerns as the product of an overactive teen imagination, but for all her “Wednesday Addams on a bad day” posturing, Cuba was one of the most pragmatic, levelheaded people he’d ever met. He’d checked the green suitcase Keith had gotten into, the suitcase whose tinny lock he and Gabby had broken twenty years ago after digging it up and cutting off its plastic shroud. If any of the clippings in the case had been disturbed, Will couldn’t tell.

  Most of the money that had been buried in the suitcase rightfully belonged to him, of course. As for the seven hundred grand his father had been forced to kick in, Will had felt no compunction about keeping that, too, considering what the old man’s miserly stubbornness had cost him. Naturally, he’d tried to split the money with Gabby, who’d suffered plenty herself, but she insisted it belonged to him.

  Which didn’t keep her from accepting an absurdly generous salary as designer kidnapping associate and part-time French tutor for the kids. And he made sure she was well provided for in the event he ever fell under a bus. No one else knew Will and Gabby had found the money—no one but Fergus, without whose help they wouldn’t have known even to look for it.

  Will and Keith made their way to the ladder leaning against the house. Will descended first and held the ladder steady as his cousin swung his weight onto it. The wind shifted, blowing needles of rain into Keith’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut and dipped his head. Will saw him blink several times, rub his eye, and blink some more. “You okay?” he called.