3 Swift Run

by Laura Disilverio

  For the first time, Dreiser looked uncertain. “How about in there?” he asked, pointing to the utility room, where the hot water heater and furnace were. “Open it.”

  I did. An unpleasant musty odor drifted out, and a scuttling sound made me jump back so I bumped into Dreiser. He shoved me away.

  “You’ve got mice,” he announced with satisfaction.

  Yuck. “I’m not going in there.” I don’t like rodents. Their long, whiskery snouts make my skin crawl. I’d never let Dexter have the rat he wanted, even though Les was okay with it. I knew who would end up cleaning the rat cage, and I knew Dexter and his friends would let the rat loose accidentally-on-purpose to scare Kendall and her friends. It was one of the few times I put my foot down.

  With a put-upon sigh, Dreiser shouldered past me, banged around in the utility room for a moment, and came back looking frustrated. “He’s not in there.”

  “Told you.”

  “He must be upstairs.”

  “He’s not! He’s not anywhere. Not in this house, anyway.” I did not want Dreiser anywhere near Dexter and Kendall with his knife and his bad attitude. I tried to think of a way to keep him down here, or better yet, get him to leave. There was a phone in the bedroom, on the far side of the bed. If I rolled across the bed … No, I couldn’t grab it and dial 911 before he stopped me. I’d noticed the back brush hanging from the showerhead, but it was plastic, and it would probably only make him mad if I swatted him with it. A Gorman statue of a firefighter stood on a pedestal beside a bookcase in the rec room just to the right of the hall opening. I didn’t know what it was made of, but if I could get Dreiser to go ahead of me, I could pick it up—I hoped—and dent his skull with it. The thought made me feel sick, but it was the only plan I could come up with.

  I half-jogged toward the end of the hall.

  “Hey! Where are you going? Stop.” Dreiser snagged the back of my sweater and pulled me back. I gagged and coughed but felt a flicker of triumph when he said, “I’ll go first.”

  He stepped from the hall into the rec room, and something hurtled into him, knocking him sideways. I gasped and froze. Curses and the sounds of a struggle pulled me forward. I came out of the hall to see Les atop Dreiser, trying to mash his face into the carpet while keeping him from wriggling away. Dreiser was trying unsuccessfully to buck Les off his back. He was having trouble shifting Les’s weight. Good thing he hadn’t lost his paunch.

  “Knife,” Les wheezed when he saw me.

  I looked around and spotted it under the Ping-Pong table. Skirting the struggling men, I ducked down and reached for it. That didn’t work, so I had to crawl under the table. My sweater snagged on one of the metal supports, but I pulled it loose and kept going. “Got it!” I yelled.

  Neither man answered. I backed out and saw that they were tangled together like Adam Bomb and Moondog Manson from the WWE. “I’ll call the police.” I started toward the phone.

  “No!” both men gasped.

  I chewed my thumb cuticle.

  “Mom? What’s going on down there? Sounds like an elephant stampede.” Kendall’s voice came from the top of the stairs.

  Both men stilled, and their eyes swiveled to me. “Uh, just moving some furniture around,” I called up to her. “You know I never liked the poppy couch in the middle of the room.”

  “Oh.” Kendall lost interest. She didn’t offer to help, I noticed, grateful for her self-absorption for the first time. We watched the ceiling, following her footsteps with our eyes. Les took advantage of Dreiser’s distraction to wrench his arms behind his back.

  “Give me the knife and get the duct tape, Gigi,” he said. He was sweating, and his breath came in little puffs, but he looked determined.

  Staying out of Dreiser’s reach, I gingerly handed the knife to Les and found the roll of bright pink duct tape Kendall had used to decorate her T-shirt for the first dance of the school year. I peeled up the edge with my fingernail, pulled a length free, and bit it off with my teeth. I handed it to Les. “Here.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll hold the knife on him, you tape his hands.”

  “But—”

  “This is kidnapping!” Dreiser objected loudly.

  “Ssh,” Les and I said together.

  Reluctantly, I stepped behind Dreiser and began to wrap the tape around his wrists. It kept getting tangled and stuck on itself, and I had to use half the roll, but I finally got it done. I pffed hair off my forehead. “Now what?”

  “Yeah, now what, Goldman?” Dreiser asked in a hateful tone. He’d wiggled into a sitting position with his back against the wall. Rug burn left a red smear on his cheek, and his dark hair stuck out wildly, as if Les had pulled it.

  Les flapped his hand. “I’m thinking.”

  I watched him anxiously. “How did you know he was here? I was never so glad to see you before in my life.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dreiser barked out a laugh.

  I looked from one to the other, confused. “Were you already down here?”

  “No,” Les said. “I was hiding in the shed. After you called the cops on me, which I never thought you’d be vindictive enough to do—” He glared.

  “I didn’t! It was Dexter.”

  “Dexter? Why would he do that?” He paused, but then continued, “Anyway, I hid in the Klamerers’ hot tub—pretty smart, right?” He puffed his chest out.

  I eyed him. He didn’t look wet.

  “It’s been empty for two years,” he reminded me. “Remember it sprang that leak during their Fourth of July party and the water drained out and we were all sitting there naked?”

  Did I ever. I’d never been so embarrassed. I blushed at the memory.

  “That Janet!” Les shook his head admiringly. “Anyway, Albert’s too cheap to fix it.”

  “This is all very entertaining,” Dreiser said sarcastically, “but can I leave now? I’ve got to take a leak.”

  Les ignored him. “So after the police left, I came back here and hid in the shed, planning to sneak out tonight and borrow the Hummer. I saw this dickhead jimmy the window and creep in. I was worried about you, so I followed him.”

  “Oh, Les.” I felt quite warmly toward him since he’d saved my life. Of course, I realized a second later, my life wouldn’t have been in danger if Les hadn’t ripped off Patrick Dreiser. “What are we going to do with”—I lowered my voice—“im-hay?”

  “Stop with the pig Latin,” Les said, exasperated. “I can’t stand it when you do that.”

  “I’m right here,” Dreiser said. He rolled his eyes. “I can hear every word. Even the pig Latin ones. I’ll tell you what you’d better do with me, and that’s turn me loose right now. Otherwise, I’ll slap a lawsuit on you so fast your grandchildren will be eighty-five by the time you’re out from under it.”

  “You broke into our—my—house!” I told him. “You can’t sue me.”

  “Wanna bet?” A wide, oily smile cracked his face and made me wonder if he was right. Hadn’t I read somewhere about a burglar suing the people whose stuff he was stealing when he broke a leg on their stairs or something?

  “I’ll disappear. You call the cops,” Les said to me. “Tell them Dreiser broke in and you caught him.”

  Dreiser laughed again. “Oh, right. Like any cop’s gonna believe Mrs. Pink Marshmallow here overpowered me.”

  I was starting to dislike this guy—again—even though he’d said I was pretty. I turned my back on him and told Les, “He’ll tell the police you were here. In fact, I’ve got to tell them you were here or they’ll arrest me for harboring a fugitive. I can’t go to prison, Les; I’ve got the kids to think about.”

  “Okay, then,” Les said decisively. “We’ll lock him in the storage room. Just until I can get away. Then you can take him to the police and it won’t matter what he tells them.”

  “There are mice in there.”

  “All the better.”

  Dreiser looked slightly nervous for the first time. “Hey, I wouldn
’t really have hurt her. The knife was just for show. C’mon, Les, we were partners for a long time. You can’t turn on me like this.”

  “It’ll only be for a few hours, Patrick,” Les said. “Until I can get some papers together and disappear. I’ve got contacts here, people that can get me ID. I can’t leave until I’ve got them.”

  “You mean like a new identity?” I stared at him. Charlie and I had worked a case not long ago that involved a ring of identity thieves who created new identities for criminals.

  Les continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “As soon as I’m on my way out of the country, Gigi will take you to the police, or let you go, or whatever she wants. For now, get up.” He gestured with the knife. Les wasn’t very good with knives. The way he hacked the turkey up on Thanksgiving was a neighborhood joke.

  “No.” Dreiser thrust his chin forward mulishly.

  “Then we’ll drag you. Gigi, take a foot.”

  I was too tired and confused to argue. I grabbed Dreiser’s left foot, and Les put the knife through a belt loop—making him look like a middle-aged, paunchy pirate—and grabbed the other one. We yanked. Dreiser slid down the wall and his head banged onto the floor. “Ow,” he complained.

  “You had your chance,” Les said. We dragged him down the hall. It was harder than I’d have guessed, especially since Dreiser was kicking. It was tough maintaining a grip on his leg, and one of my fingernails broke when it snagged on his bootlace. That pissed me off. Manicures weren’t free.

  “We need to tape his ankles, too,” Les grunted. He dropped the foot he was holding, headed into the rec room, and returned seconds later with the duct tape. He wrapped it several times around Dreiser’s ankles and then kicked open the door to the storage room.

  I stopped him. “Can’t we at least put him in the guest room?” I couldn’t stand the thought of making anyone sit in the storage area with the mice.

  “Oh, all right, if you want to be a bleeding heart about it.”

  Together we rolled Dreiser into the guest room and then sat back on our haunches, panting. Securing a prisoner was hard work. “We need to tape his mouth.” Les returned to the hallway for the duct tape, and Dreiser immediately started in on me.

  “You don’t want to do this, Gigi. Kidnapping is a federal crime, a felony! It won’t be Les the cops nab, because he’ll be in Guadalumbia or some place. It’ll be you. If you let me go right now—”

  “Shut it,” Les said, coming in in time to hear the last bit. He slapped tape over Dreiser’s mouth. “There. The cops won’t be arresting anyone except you, Dreiser, when Gigi calls them and tells them you broke in and threatened her with a knife. Come on, Gigi.” He pulled me out of the room while Dreiser mumbled angrily behind the tape.

  “He can breathe, can’t he?” I asked, giving a worried glance over my shoulder as Les shut the door.

  “Of course he can.”

  I felt a hot flash coming on and flapped the hem of my sweater. I’d have pulled it off except I knew Les would misinterpret.

  Kendall’s voice floated down the stairway again. “Mom, did you die down there?” She sounded irritated at the idea. “You didn’t, like, have a heart attack or anything, did you?”

  “Coming, sweetheart,” I called back. I gave Les a flustered look. “You can’t come up,” I said. “I don’t think the kids should be involved.” Could minors be charged with harboring a fugitive? I didn’t want to find out.

  “I’ve got to meet someone,” Les said. “A guy who can help me. Get me the Hummer keys, will you?”

  “Dexter’s shoveling the driveway.”

  “I’m not going now! I’ll watch TV or something until it’s dark.”

  Biting my lip with indecision, not quite sure how I ended up with my fugitive ex-husband and a prisoner in my basement, I slowly climbed the stairs.

  35

  Refreshed by another shower and a change of clothes, Charlie climbed into her Subaru to return to the office. It was good to have the steering wheel beneath her hands again; being driven around by Dan or Albertine made her feel like an invalid, and she wasn’t one. Not anymore. A strong sun was melting the last of the slush in the roads, and by tomorrow you wouldn’t be able to tell there’d been a snowstorm. That was one of the pluses of living in Colorado Springs, she thought, getting out of the car: It might get cold or snowy for a day or two, but you could always count on the sun shining before too long. No seasonal affective disorder for folks living in Colorado Springs.

  Two Motrin swallowed with a gulp of Pepsi had dulled the ache in her ass, and she was able to ignore it as she used a database to find a phone number for Parnell Parkin in Oklahoma. There was no Parnell listed, but there was a P. Parkin in Enid and another one in Stillwater. Dialing the first number, Charlie reached a Pamela Parkin and apologized for disturbing her. A man answered at the other number.

  “Parnell Parkin?” Charlie asked.

  “Yes. If you’re selling—”

  She explained who she was before he could assume she was hawking time-shares and hang up.

  “A private investigator? That’s cool.”

  Too young, Charlie thought. Maybe she had the wrong number. As succinctly as possible, she told him about her search for Heather-Anne’s real identity and the woman’s habit of marrying men, bilking them of their money, and possibly killing them or trying to kill them. “I understand that at one point she was married to a Parnell Parkin of Oklahoma,” Charlie finished. “I don’t suppose that’s you?”

  “You want my pop,” the young man said, his voice much cooler. “But you can’t talk to him. He’s been in a coma for twelve years, ever since the accident.”

  Charlie sat up straighter, her spidey senses tingling. “Was he married to someone like the woman I’ve described?”

  “Oh, yeah. Look, can we Skype or something? I’d rather do this face-to-face.”

  Charlie had never Skyped, but she didn’t want to miss the opportunity of finally learning something about the real Heather-Anne before she became Heather-Anne, so she followed young Parnell’s instructions and soon found herself looking at a college-aged man with a Justin Bieber haircut sitting in a room plastered with OSU pennants, baseball trophies, and what looked like newspaper clippings on the walls. An unmade bed sat under a window through which Charlie could see a backyard and a swing set.

  “OSU fan, huh?”

  “Starting shortstop,” Parkin said with a strained smile.

  Charlie wondered if he lived at home instead of in a dorm because of his dad’s situation. “Can you tell me how your dad met … what was Heather-Anne calling herself then?”

  “Annie Bart. I don’t think she was ‘calling herself’ that. It was her real name. The Barts lived next door to us for years.”

  Finally! Charlie felt a surge of triumph. She had worked her way back to the real Heather-Anne. “What happened between Annie and your dad?”

  “My mom ran off when I was only five and my brother was three. My dad raised us alone. I saw Annie around—she lived next door, after all—but she was ten years older than me, and I never took much notice of her until she started coming over to hang out with my dad on the porch after dinner. I remember thinking she was really pretty, with blondy-brown hair that hung to her waist, and green eyes that were … well, really green.”

  Charlie thought she could safely assume young Parnell was not working on a degree in advertising or creative writing.

  “She made my dad laugh. I don’t ever remember him laughing so much.” Parnell sounded wistful.

  “Where were her parents during this courtship? Were they happy to see their daughter hook up with a man so much older?”

  “It was just her mom. I don’t remember ever meeting her dad. Folks said her mom … well, rumor had it that one of the doctors in town bought the house for Annie’s mom as a … well … Anyway, she’d gone off with some man a few months before Annie started hanging out with Pop.”

  “So they got married.”

  Parnell n
odded. “I was best man, even though I was only nine.”

  “Which would have made Annie about nineteen,” Charlie mused.

  “Right. She was nice enough to me and Tim, and we liked her, even though it was hard to think of her as our stepmom. She just wasn’t mommish, you know? Anyway, you’ve got to remember I was only ten or eleven, so I’m sure I missed a lot of the ‘relationship dynamics’”—Parnell put air quotes around the words he’d probably picked up in Intro to Psychology—“but I think Annie got tired of living with my dad, maybe because he was so much older, maybe because she’d felt like there was more to life for a woman as beautiful as she was. By the time he had his accident, she was really beautiful—Megan Fox beautiful.”

  Charlie thought Megan Fox was more trashy than beautiful, but she wasn’t a twentysomething man. “Can you tell me about your dad’s accident? What happened?”

  “No one knows for sure. He was up on a ladder, cleaning out the gutters, and he must have fallen, because when we came home he was on the ground, unconscious.” Strain tightened Parnell’s voice. “We called 911, and they came quickly, but the doctor said he must have hit his head on an exposed root from the old oak tree, because there was a dent in his skull. Subdural hematoma, bleeding into the brain … He’s never woken up.”

  Parnell turned away to look out the window for a moment, and Charlie thought he was hiding tears. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I won’t deny it’s been hard,” Parnell said. “Annie didn’t help at all. She was gone the next morning. Disappeared during the night and just left me and Tim there alone. We woke up and went looking for her, but she was gone: suitcases, clothes, everything. We didn’t know what to do, so we fixed ourselves some Lucky Charms and waited. You’ve got to remember we were only eleven and a half and nine. I guess it was almost noon before we called my best friend and his folks came to pick us up.”

  “What did you do?” Charlie asked, knowing it had no bearing on her investigation, but caught up in the young boys’ plight.