“Yes!” I respond at the same time that Beth shouts, “No!”
“We’re not leaving without Jillian,” I tell Claudia, who proceeds to roll her eyes and suck on her teeth with annoyance.
“Are you slow? How many times do you need to be told? Jillian is not here.” Catching us completely off guard, she shoves us out the front door and slams it in our faces in one swift motion.
“What the…” Beth is dumbfounded.
“Hey!” I bang on the front door with my balled up fists. “Hey! Open the door!” I continue to thump on the heavy door until the palms of my hands burn. “Jesus,” I mutter as I turn around, rubbing my hands angrily. “Son of a bitch.”
“Jillian’s really not there? I was certain that she had her. What happened to my baby?” I hear Beth whimper in a soft, child-like voice. I can see her in the faint light of the porch, quivering lips and eyes glistening. Without warning, tears begin to roll down her cheeks.
Beth finally comprehends the severity of this situation. Either Claudia has Jillian and won’t admit it, or someone else has kidnapped her daughter. In either situation, it’s time to involve the police and Beth can’t deny that any more.
“Oh my God, Amy,” she moans as she grips my hand. “What are we going to do? Somebody has my baby!” She shakes my arm furiously as her nails dig into my skin, cutting me even through the fabric of my heavy sweatshirt.
“We’re going to do what we should have done an hour ago. Call the police,” I tell her, the voice of reason. She can’t possibly deny that the police need to be involved now, can she?
“No! Not yet!” Beth answers, turning sharply on her heel and retreating down the front stairs at a rapid pace.
“Wait a minute! What are you talking about?” I wail as I rush to catch up with her. “We need to call the police now, Beth!”
We reach the bottom of the steps and I am huffing and puffing. I click the car door open and climb into the driver’s side while Beth climbs into the passenger seat. “Ok, so are you going to call the police now?” Seriously if we were playing a drinking game where I took a shot every time I said police, I’d have alcohol poisoning by now.
“Just drive,” Beth says impatiently with a dismissive wave. I start the car and roll toward the end of the driveway. As the gate swings open and I pull into the street, Beth grabs her purse, opens the door, leaps from the car, and slams the door shut. All before I can even blink.
“What the hell?”
Beth is dashing back up the driveway, but crouching down alongside the bushes. “God damn it!” I yell as I throw the car into park. I proceed to kill the engine, grab my keys, and reach for my cell phone in the console as an afterthought.
As I am closing the car door, I can see that the gate is shutting. “Shit!” I dash toward the gate, while tucking my phone in my bra, and manage to slip in between the panels just as it shuts. It actually pinches a piece of my fleshy muffin top in the process. If Beth hadn’t been slinking along the driveway I am certain she would have made a comment about my weight.
I am seriously drenched in perspiration by the time I reach my sister. I think it’s a combination of fear and physical exertion. Beth, of course, has barely broken a sweat. She is now peering into the bushes lining the walkway around the side of the house.
“What are you doing?” I pant. “Why would you leap out of the car like that? If you wanted to look in the bushes, why couldn’t you do that before we got in the car?” I crane my neck to get a glimpse of the car parked on the street. It is dark and hidden behind a gigantic bush on the front of the property, making it difficult to see. “And now my car is on the other side of the gate and we are on this side!”
Beth turns to me and rolls her eyes as she scoffs, “Really, Amy? I thought you were the hot shot criminal justice major in the family.”
“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” I am offended as usual by Beth’s comments and biting tone.
“It means that Claudia will see that the car is gone and she will think we have left. And now, we can sneak around the side of the house and look in the windows to see where she is hiding Jillian.”
I gawk at my sister with my mouth hanging open. My gaze moves from her face to the second story windows, high above the ground. I am certainly not scaling the house to peek into those.
“I think that’s a terrible idea. I have a better idea! Let’s go back to the car and call the police!” I chirp in my perky voice that I use when I am trying to get Colt to eat his vegetables.
Beth shakes her head and stares into the bushes as if she hasn’t heard a word I’ve said. “Look!” She points to the ground behind the bushes. “There’s a path here that wraps around the house.”
I tilt my head and stare at her like she is a deranged mental patient. “That’s nice, but we really ought to not be worrying about paths that wrap around the house. We should be calling the police.” I am now speaking to her in a tone I would reserve for aforementioned deranged mental patients. Running through my head is the statistic about kidnapped children and the first twelve hours being the most crucial. Jillian may be running out of time already and Beth is more concerned with playing Peeping Tom.
“Um, hmmm,” Beth mutters absently while throwing her leg over the side of the low retaining wall.
“Beth!” I hiss. “Will you come back here please?”
Beth ignores me and jumps down onto the path. She pushes aside a large bush that is blocking the route and turns to me. “Are you coming or not?”
I glance around at my surroundings. If I stay here, Claudia is definitely going to catch me. I see the blinking eye of the security camera by the door making its sweep of the front of the property. The only thing out of its sight is the path.
Sighing, I throw my own leg over the wall and hop down onto the pathway with a thud. Beth turns and pushes her finger against her lips. “Shhh! We need to be absolutely quiet,” she admonishes. When she turns her back, I resist the urge to push her in the puddle of mud on the grass.
As we slink along the side of the mansion in the darkness, I am praying that A., there are no motion sensor lights set up to bathe us unexpectedly in a spotlight, and B., there are no wild animals in this neighborhood, like bears…or skunks. Because being doused with skunk scent would really cap my day off.
“Ouch,” I feel something sharp prick the side of my leg while I am contemplating the dangers of the backyards creatures.
“Shhh!” Beth reiterates as we crouch closer to the window.
“I just got stabbed with a stick. I think I may be bleeding. And maybe it wasn’t a stick. Maybe it was something metal. I don’t think I’ve had a tetanus shot lately.”
I try to think back to my last tetanus shot. Hmmm. I remember Roger getting one when he joined that over 40 softball league. He ended up face planting into a rusty chain link fence while trying to be the hero and catch a foul ball. That was a few years back, but for the life of me, I can’t quite remember when I last got one. Great. I’m going to die of tetanus.
“Who cares? We really need to be quiet now,” Beth whispers as she steps off the path to get closer to the window. “Look!”
My eyes follow her finger to the window. It is open a crack and even at five foot three inches tall, I can see into the room. Well, a midget would be able to see into the room; there are floor to ceiling windows, the kind that always seem like a good idea in theory, but would probably be a pain in the ass to clean. Not that Claudia Fox needs to worry about cleaning her own windows. I’m sure she has a maid whose sole purpose is to clean windows.
As I peer into the window, I notice that this room is an office of some type. Or a library. Or a study. Or whatever rich people have in their house to do paperwork and read. Because of course, they need a separate room to do all those things.
Our version of a home office is a butcher’s block island in the middle of the kitchen, with papers scattered all over it, sticking to food that has never been wiped up, and a junk drawer housing p
ens, pencils, broken crayons, an empty tape dispenser, and Girl Scout patches I keep forgetting to put on Lexie’s sash. You would think since Girl Scouts is the only activity she actually participates in outside of school, I would take it a little more seriously, but alas, I don’t. Who has time for that crap when I’ve got to shuttle Colt to soccer, baseball, and basketball, just to help him burn off energy and prevent him from smashing all our breakables in the house with his enthusiasm?
This home office has two entire walls of book shelves, a desk that looks more like a NASA command center with not one, not two, but three computers spread over its vast space, and a marble countertop that runs along one wall. The counter houses a cappuccino machine and a mini fridge underneath with walnut cabinets on either side. There are several plush chaise lounges throughout the room, including one underneath the very window we are gazing into. Thank goodness no one is sitting on it. I feel like I’m looking in the window of a very posh Starbucks or some other uber cool coffeehouse.
Despite the abundance of lighting choices in the room, including recessed lighting along the ceilings, the only current source of light is a desk lamp. At the desk, a heavy set middle aged man is sitting in a comfortable looking chair, feverishly typing away at the computer. He appears to be agitated by something, sighing audibly and nervously running his fingers through his hair as he pauses in his typing. He must do this a lot because even in the dim light, I can tell his hair is thinning at the temples and balding on top. After a moment, he rises to his feet and paces with his hands clasped behind his back. He is dressed unremarkably, except for the fact that his gut is clearly larger than the waistband of his khaki pants. I can tell he is muttering to himself, but I can’t make out the words. He is interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone. He retrieves a cell that is sitting on the desk and after punching a button, places it to his ear.
He’s silent, presumably listening to whoever is on the other end of the phone. He stops in front of the counter and reaches into a cabinet, retrieving a bottle of some sort. The man groans as he flips open the top of the bottle, places what looks like a few antacids into his palm, and then pops them into his mouth. I’m not sure what this guy’s deal is, but I am certain that this must be some relative that they have taken in out of pity. Or maybe he’s their accountant. He definitely has that accountant look to him.
“Beth, that’s not Jillian.” I point out the obvious to my sister. She doesn’t appear to hear me.
“Maybe we should try to get his attention,” Beth whispers to me.
I stare at her for a second as I contemplate having her committed. “No way! Do you want to get your ass kicked for trespassing?” And I’m the dumb sister?
“Don’t be silly! He’s on our side. That’s Kevin,” Beth whispers in a giddy middle school girl with a crush voice. My jaw nearly drops on the ground.
This is Kevin? What the hell is she thinking? Derek is so much better looking than this clown. Not that I think about Derek that way but, oh my God…this guy is almost repulsive.
“Isn’t he handsome?” Beth asks dreamily. Surely she is being sarcastic? I cock my head to the side to look at her. She looks like Cupid has just shot a big ass arrow straight into her butt. Nope. No sarcasm there. I should have known; Beth is incapable of being sarcastic.
I ignore her question because I really don’t want to get into the specifics of her needing to sue her eye doctor. Instead, I just continue to watch our friend through the window. Kevin now has his back to us as the door in the corner of the room is flung open carelessly. Claudia saunters into the room, flicking on several lights and flooding the room in brightness.
Kevin holds up a finger, indicating to his wife to wait a moment. She lets out an exasperated sigh and flops down dramatically on one of the chaise lounges. Unfortunately for us, it is the one closest to the window. Beth grips my arm and I resist yelping in pain.
Finally, Kevin tosses his phone down on the desk with aggravation.
“What was that about?” Claudia questions in a bored voice.
“We have a problem, Claudia. Your brilliance may be backfiring…” Kevin starts to say, but Claudia holds up her hand to stop him midsentence.
“Everything is fine, Kevin. Everything is right on schedule,” Claudia remarks with a dismissive wave.
Right on schedule? I really hope she is talking about the delivery of their Christmas ham and not my niece’s kidnapping.
Kevin indicates his phone. “I just got a very long winded voice mail from Beth.” He crosses his arms over his wide girth. “You maybe want to explain what the hell happened? Like maybe that you lost your ever loving mind and didn’t mean to kidnap Beth Phillip-Katz’s daughter?”
Beth pokes me impatiently, like this is the best part of a movie that I’m missing or something, and I see her nodding out of the corner of my eye. “That’s right, Kevin,” she whispers. “You give it to her.”
“You sent him a voice mail?” I whisper in Beth’s ear.
She nods. “Like an hour ago; before we left your house. I guess the service at your house is bad if he’s just getting it now.” I ignore her dig as I turn my attention back to the scene unfolding before us.
Claudia sighs and even though I cannot see her face, I just know that she is rolling her eyes. “Oh, that,” she replies. “Well the opportunity just presented itself and I really couldn’t resist sticking it to her-”
Kevin picks up a coffee mug and flings it angrily against the wall, causing both me and Beth to jump. Claudia however, remains unruffled.
“Oh for God’s sakes, Kevin,” Claudia moans. “Being a little melodramatic, aren’t you?”
Kevin grits his teeth and stares at his wife. “Melodramatic? I don’t think so, dear.” He pokes the air in her general direction. “You’re the one being melodramatic! You had to go and snatch the kid, didn’t you? Now everyone is going to be on the lookout for you.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it…I didn’t know…” Claudia stammers.
“That’s the problem! You didn’t think and acted hastily!” Kevin throws another mug onto the ground. Shards of ceramic fly everywhere. “Why couldn’t you just stick with the plan?”
The plan? What is he talking about? This does not sound good. I try not to look at Beth, but I can feel her trembling next to me.
“The plan was stupid. It worked out fine my way…”
“You got lucky! You were supposed to wait for the aunt to pick the kid up and then we would take care of the sister!”
The sister? Does he mean me? And what does he mean by ‘take care of’?
“Oh potatoes, patahtoes! What difference does it make if we did it this way or stuck with the plan?”
“The reason for the plan was so this wouldn’t be traced back to us! Why couldn’t you just stay out of it like I asked you to?”
I let out an involuntary gasp. But I don’t think that’s what catches Kevin’s attention. I think it’s the muffled scream that comes from my sister’s lips that does the trick. I slap my hand against her mouth to shut her up while pulling her to the ground.
Kevin freezes for a second and then steps over to the window. He leans in, dangerously close to where Beth and I are crouched, and cocks his head to the side.
“Did you hear that?” Kevin asks his wife. I pull my body flush against the side of the house, my arm still holding Beth against the ground. I cannot trust her not to give away our location.
“What? No, I didn’t hear anything,” Claudia replies in an uninterested tone. Obviously all of Kevin’s ranting and raving is boring her.
“Oh. Thought I heard something outside. Like a person screaming.” I hear Kevin’s shoes squeak as he walks away from the window. I relax my grip on Beth as I struggle to my feet.
“It’s probably your imagination, dear.” Claudia practically spits out the last word. “If anyone was outside, the security cameras would pick them up.”
I peek in the window just in time to see Claudia point to the
scores of security monitors mounted to the wall. She runs her hand down the front of her sweater to smooth out the creases, after rising to her feet. Stepping over to Kevin, she pokes her finger into his squishy middle. “And you better not raise your voice to me ever again like that or I will take you down so fast your head will spin. I let you get away with it this time because you’ve had to deal with that lunatic Beth and God knows that’ll make anyone explode.”
Beth stiffens next to me and lets out a little whimper. “But next time, I won’t be so lenient.” Claudia straightens her body and leans closer to Kevin’s face. “Don’t forget where all this money came from to begin with. You’ll lose everything if you tangle with me.”
With a swish of her perfectly proportioned hips and a flick of her silky mane, Claudia saunters out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Kevin gives the finger to her back as he runs his other hand through what’s left of his hair. Then, he throws the same door open and charges through, slamming it angrily behind him.
We can vaguely make out voices arguing in the hall, but cannot decipher the words. Letting out a sigh of relief, I lean against the house. Beth rises to her feet.
“Oh my, I had no idea I was so tense,” she moans, rubbing her neck.
“Yeah, that was quite the interesting conversation,” I remark while widening my eyes at her. “Looks like our friend Kevin isn’t our friend after all.” I’m not trying to be smug, but I have a feeling my statement comes out ‘smuggy’ anyway.
Beth shakes her head. “No, you don’t understand. He’s just acting that way because…well, you don’t know what Claudia’s like. She’s a spoiled brat and she’s constantly reminding Kevin that the money is really hers and that she can throw him out on the street at any time. She waves toward the house. “You just heard it. That’s what she’s like all the time.”
I cannot believe she is still defending him after what we just heard. I grab her by the shoulders and give her a little shake. “Do you hear yourself? You are completely in denial.”
Amy Maxwell & the 7 Deadly Sins (The Amy Maxwell Series Book 2) Page 12
