Revenge: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 4)

by M. Glenn Graves

  “Know what?” Saunders said.

  “Know that you have found what you are looking for.”

  “That’s stupid,” she said.

  “That’s detective work.”

  Saunders pulled the thin string hanging down from the ceiling fixture.

  “Well, let’s see what there is to see here in this little closet. Shall we? We can do this together.”

  I was lying on top of the metal can and the screwdriver, but both were out of sight. The two ends of the broken mop were coming out from underneath my backside. I wanted everything under me to stay under me until I had some privacy and could retrieve the screwdriver. I could also move the broken mop handle as well. I had an idea.

  “Would you mind moving this broken mop from behind me? It’s rather uncomfortable,” I said. This was the old Burr-Rabbit ploy.

  “Oh, I am so sorry that you have experienced some discomfort from a broken mop handle. It must be causing you some severe discomfort, that and everything else that has happened to you recently. I think we should let it stay there. Perhaps it will remind you that you should behave yourself when you are in someone else’s home.”

  I forced a smile and was rather proud of myself. The last thing I needed was for Saunders to discover the screwdriver on the floor underneath me. Burr-Rabbit strikes again.

  Dooley returned and was holding his black club and a folding chair. Armed and ready.

  “You want I should hit her ever’ once in a while just to remind her that she’s our prisoner?” he said.

  “No, I do not want you to hit her unless she tries to escape. Then and only then you can poke her in the ribs or bash the side of her head. But listen to me carefully, Dooley. Do not kill her. I want her alive and suffering. Is that clear?”

  “Yeah, that’s clear. But if she tries to escape, I can club her, right?”

  “Just enough to leave a nice bruise or break a bone or two. Nothing more serious. If you kill her without my say so, then I will kill you. Clear?”

  “I got it,” he said. He opened the folding chair and placed it in the open doorway of the closet. When he sat down, most of Dooley was inside the closet.

  “Dooley, move the chair. I don’t want you sitting inside the closet with her. I want you on the outside, sitting there listening for anything which might be a no-no for her.”

  “But if I can watch her all the time, then I know she won’t try anything.”

  “Then put your chair there,” she pointed to a place in the hallway outside of the closet. Leave the door open and sit there. You will have no trouble seeing her and hearing any sounds she makes. Call me if you need anything,” Saunders said as she walked past him and up the stairs to the main part of the house.

  I assumed that she was heading back to bed since it was still late at night or early in the morning. I knew it was after midnight, but my cell phone was in my front pocket and my hands were incapacitated.

  I was now faced with a new challenge – escape with Mr. Dooley sitting in a chair inches outside of the door to my now smaller prison cell. And he would be watching me. Clancy Houdini at her best. Life is full of great challenges.

  Chapter 11

  I must have fallen asleep at some point because I now found myself waking up. Brilliant deduction, ever the sleuth. My nose had finally stopped bleeding but the pain had not subsided. My eyes immediately went to Dooley in his chair outside of closet. His eyes were closed. He was snoring softly. I deduced that he was asleep. More sleuth work.

  The light in my closet was still out and this afforded me some slight measure of secrecy. Dooley was breathing rhythmically, and this provided me with sufficient incentive to move along with my plan of escape. That all sounds impressive, but the fact was I was making up the plan as I went along. Usual fare.

  I used my cuffed hands to push against the floor in order to raise my body to an upright position. I leaned against the back wall to rest. It was slow going for a multitude of reasons, most of them had to do with my pain. More than once I wanted to groan just to state my dissatisfaction with the whole ordeal. No one ever accused me of being stoic when it came to showing the world that I hurt. I managed to refrain from doing so largely to keep from waking the slumbering monster. The idea of accumulating more pain was not part of my ever-developing escape plan.

  The light from the hallway aided my cause. I could see that there were now containers of various shapes and sizes on the floor with me where before I was there by myself. I thought back to what had happened, and I concluded that when Saunders entered the closet just as I turned out the light, she hit me with the gun stock which caused me to pass out for a few seconds. She must have knocked off some of the items from the shelves when she attacked me.

  After I sat up I searched for the screwdriver behind me. I had no idea what I was going to do with a screwdriver behind my back, but it helped to pass the time and the notion contained a glimmer of hope. In my sightless search, I discovered another item which I had not seen in the room before. It felt like a utility knife. I was able to place it in both of my hands and open the blade. There was a single edged razor blade inside the knife. My fortunes were improving. It was better than a screwdriver if I could free myself with it without cutting my wrists and committing suicide.

  After dropping the utility knife several times and cutting the palm of my left hand twice, I decided that I needed to rethink this avenue of escape.

  Studying the situation, I deduced that if I could get my hands in front, I then could use the tool to cut the clothesline cord which bound my legs together. Easier said than done, I can assure you. Besides all that, I had to do it without making any noise. The ever present slumbering giant was sitting less than ten feet way.

  I tried to think through the process of moving my hands to the front. I moved to a kneeling position with my legs pointing to the back wall underneath me. I leaned back, slid my cuffed hands over my feet and then gradually move my hands toward my knees and to the front of my body. It was a brilliant plan except for the pain it caused my injured legs and rib cage. I reluctantly suffered through it in silence. I admit I groaned inwardly.

  I had once rejected the notion of a friend that I take some yoga classes to fine-tune my muscles. I was now regretting that previous decision. Yoga moves would likely be an asset in my present dilemma. With all the body pains impinging upon me as I tried to do this, this new pain of contorting my limbs and torso was excruciating. Once or twice I thought of giving up and letting Saunders have her way with me. Thoughts of Rosey came pouring into my selfish consideration. The other thing that entered my thoughts was the fact that since I was a young girl, my mother had referred to me as hard-headed while my father used the word tenacious. Both terms fit. There was no quit in me. Never. After a brief respite, I renewed my effort to place my bound hands in front.

  The one advantage which I possess in being a tall woman is that I also have long arms. One fact does not necessarily go with the other, but in my case both facts were true. The drawback to these lengthy limbs is that I can never find a blouse which fits me the way I think a blouse ought to fit. I also have the same problem with sweatshirts, sweaters, and coats. As a result of my lengthy limbs, I have to buy extra tall garments and find ways to hide the garment excess. This time my long arms were a benefit. Finally.

  It took me several minutes to perform this changeover maneuver without waking the sleeping beast in front of me. I succeeded at last, rested a few minutes, found the utility knife and proceeded to free my feet from the cords. Houdini, eat your heart out.

  I stood quietly, placed the utility knife in my pocket and checked the time with my phone. A few minutes after four.

  Moving as quietly as possible, I approached Dooley who was apparently deep in sleep. I stood over him for a moment deciding what to do. A plan developed. I ever-so-carefully bound his legs to the folding chair with the clothesline he had used to bind my legs. I removed the night stick from his belt as deftly as a pickpocket would remove
a wallet without touching the victim.

  Retracing my steps to the garage, I put on my wet sneakers and headed out the side door without knowing where I was going this time. All I knew was that I had to get a safe distance away from Saunders, nurse my wounds a bit, then regroup and find Rosey. Sam and my Jeep were also on that list of items to find.

  Even though the handcuffs in front were an improvement, I was still at a slight disadvantage. Love these challenges. The old jacket I found in the garage was a god-send against the early morning cold and damp November darkness. I managed to drape it around my shoulders and held it place with my cuffed hands. It provided a modicum of warmth. I headed off into the woods without the slightest geographical knowledge of where I was in Virginia.

  Chapter 12

  The early morning light brought to bear a new reality on my situation and what I needed to do. Since I had made my great escape from Dooley Dimwit in the predawn hours when night seems to be at its darkest, I decided to camp near the house-cabin and wait for Mr. Sun before I wandered off into the Virginia woods to get lost forever.

  Despite the coat I had borrowed from the garage during my exit, I was feeling the cold air of November as the dawn approached. Some three hours earlier I had gathered up enough dry maple and oak leaves to provide a makeshift bed covering to help ward off the cold temperatures of the night. I leaned against a tree and waited for some increased light so as to discern my location. I was also listening for any sounds coming from the direction of the cabin which might alert me to potential trouble.

  Sleeping in the woods under a pile of dried leaves is not recommended for campers generally; but, it beats freezing to death and waking up rigid with frostbite or worse. I had chosen this spot earlier in the morning because it gave me a good vantage point. I was about two hundred yards from the location of Saunders and her henchman, and approximately fifty yards into the woods from the paved road which ran in front of the cabin. Any traffic on the road would have easily awakened me.

  As I leaned against the tree while coming to my senses as the sun came up, two thoughts wandered through my maze. The first thought was that I really needed a cup of coffee to handle this misery. The second was that I had no idea what to do next.

  I sat there waiting for whatever heat the sun might provide as it slowly rose over the small hills in front of me. After several minutes of shaking, I decided to stand and move around in an effort to get my blood flowing at a faster clip. I resisted the temptation to return to Saunders’ prison for coffee. Instead, I moved slowly away from the cabin which was on my left towards the road in front of me. After several yards of walking, I lost sight of the cabin completely. I could now walk at a faster clip without having to look back every few steps. I was also comforted with the fact that since I could no longer see the cabin, Saunders could no longer see me, if in fact she had begun to look by this hour of the new day.

  I am not a person generally given to having lots of rules by which to live. In my line of work it is often best to let whatever situation I find myself involved in offer suggestions as to how to get from point A to point B. That’s not to say I do not have guiding principles. Whenever I am bewildered and have no real idea what to do next, a guiding principle is for me to return to the spot where it all began and start over. Call it Clancy’s Crime Stoppers Guiding Principle No. 5. In this case I was moving from point B to point A.

  When I thought it safe, I emerged from the woods and walked along the road. The woods were on the right hand side, so I stayed on that side as I walked along. The other side had open fields no doubt used for planting gardens or growing hay. The cabin was now several miles behind me. The ever-warming sun was up over the distant trees by now and was on my left. That meant I was heading south. Always observant.

  I had no real reason to be walking in this particular direction. It just seemed like the direction I should be walking. Nothing more substantive than that. I was hoping that something familiar would appear sooner or later. So far, it was new terrain.

  The surprising thing about walking along this road was that there were no other houses or cabins, at least not in the section I was traveling. I was moving at a good clip. I estimated that I had traveled close to fifteen miles, given the height of the sun, my trusty cell phone clock, and my own intuitive pedometer. It felt like fifteen miles. Since I was gradually tiring and each step provided a painful reminder of my recent ordeal with Saunders, it could have been less than ten miles. My goal was at least a hundred. Wishful thinking.

  The battery on my cell phone was dying. I still had the one bar. The clock informed me that it was 11:43. This was the third day since I had arrived at Rosey’s hideaway. So much had happened and yet I knew so little. I could not find Rosey and I had lost Sam in the search. Saunders had tricked me at least twice. I had been her prisoner on two occasions because I had played into her hands. I was now walking along a desolate road in the mountains of Virginia with little knowledge of where I was. This was more than discouraging.

  What was I doing here? Where was I going? What was Saunders hoping to accomplish? As far as I knew, Rosey was still her prisoner. And where was Sam? Was he with Rosey? Was he alive? Was Rosey alive?

  Too many unanswerable questions. I knew things, but nothing I knew provided any substantive information for the things which I did not know. Saunders had been one step ahead of me at every turn. What was she doing? I believed her to be a bonafide lunatic, but I had to admit that she was a rather intelligent lunatic. She was the smartest crazy woman I knew.

  I began to reason with my predicament. It finally dawned on me that in all likelihood Rosey was still alive. It was Saunders’ leverage. She would know by now that as long as she kept him alive, then I would likely return. However, the problem with that logic is that I had no way of truly knowing that he was still alive. Still, Saunders would not let that advantage slip away. She likely had him somewhere and under her control.

  At some point along my mountain road hike, I became aware of a small river running along the other side of the road. I checked the cell phone clock. It was dead. The phone, the clock, everything. How long had it been since I had last checked? I had no idea. I had come another two miles or so, but I had no idea exactly how far I had come.

  I spotted another road up ahead on my right. It looked familiar.

  I stopped walking and checked my surroundings. The scenery was familiar. I turned in circles to be sure. It all seemed familiar.

  I had been here before. Fear gripped me for a moment when I thought that maybe I had walked in a rather large circle and was about to approach Saunders’ cabin, the place I had desperately wanted to escape. When I could not find the cabin in the surroundings, I relaxed. The fear subsided, but it took a few minutes. I sat down next to a tree and listened to the sounds of the river. It was relaxing and the rest helped me to regain a bit of my clarity.

  When it came to me that the familiarity of this spot was due to the fact that this was the direction I had come en route to Rosey’s mountain hideaway, I was nearly euphoric. I had come from the other direction, of course, but the familiarity of it was reconnecting something vital in me. The synapses were firing and sending endorphins throughout my body enabling my tired and somewhat broken body to feel some pleasure for that moment. I was standing at the spot where I had found the road sign hiding behind the trees limbs en route to Rosey’s cabin. My renewed energy allowed me to continue my hike despite my sudden ravenous hunger. It had to be early afternoon by now. Sustenance became a preoccupation. If it were not for the fact that I knew I had only a few more miles to walk to reach Rosey’s place, it would have been much more difficult to continue. That was the good news. The bad news was that those few miles were all uphill, climbing the mountain which now lay in front of me.

  Knowing that I could find food in Rosey’s cabin, I drove myself upward along the dirt road despite my lack of energy and painful injuries. My head was throbbing, likely due to the kiss of Saunders’ rifle butt to my nose.
The left side of my ribcage only hurt when I took a deep breath, which was every other second of breathing. This occurred every other step along my ascent. My back and legs were the least of my pains for the moment.

  I trudged on with one goal in mind. I was fiercely hungry and needed to return to Rosey’s cabin to handle that yet unfulfilled appetite. Once I had some food in me I could then rethink this whole manic operation. I refused to consider the possibility that Marilyn Saunders would get the better of me. I would rescue Rosey and hang Saunders by her ugly hair.

  Chapter 13

  By the time I had found Rosey’s long driveway, the sun had run into some dense cloud cover and the temperature fell a few degrees. The sun’s disappearance made it difficult for me to guess at the time, but I was figuring it to be mid-afternoon, judging the distance from where I first realized my location.

  I had no reason to suspect that Saunders would be waiting on me at Rosey’s place, nor did I have reason to believe that she would not be there. I approached the cabin from the woods rather than the drive. I made my way to the back of the cabin and maintained that position for a short while. I decided against bursting onto the scene to find Saunders waiting there to subdue me once more. Hunger was gnawing at me, but I refused to be fooled yet again by that woman.

  My aches and pains made me keenly aware of my limitations. They also caused me to be more patient as I surveyed the landscape around the cabin. Nothing seemed to be moving inside the cabin. Both vehicles were parked as they were two days ago. I saw no signs of any other vehicle by which Saunders could have arrived. There were no fresh tracks around the place.

  Hunger finally won out over reconnaissance. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.