Land Sakes (32 page)

I handed him the phone, and he dialed a number. “Who're you calling?” Winnie asked.

“Philip. I'm calling Philip Win
chus
ter.”

33

Percival called Winnie's secretary, and she told him there was no way to reach Philip Winchester. He handed the phone to Winnie, and the secretary told her that the day Philip heard the news about the two of us falling overboard, he headed for the mainland but was forced into port by a tropical storm. The news of the kidnapping reached him later, there in Guadeloupe. Right away he authorized his attorneys in the States to negotiate the terms for delivering the ransom and to post the rewards. No sooner had he done that than the tropical storm turned into a hurricane and island communications shut down and were not yet up and running.

Hearing that, Percival said he'd run along and see what he could do about getting us some clothes. To me it seemed too late for any store to be open, but summer days in Alaska are long, and store hours could be longer too.

Winnie took one of the robes and went in to take her bath. I decided to call Priscilla Home.

Nancy answered the phone, and as soon as she heard my voice she shouted, “It's Miss E.! It's Miss E.!”

Hearing somebody calling me “Miss E.” was like music to my ears. I could hear the women running downstairs, sounding like a thundering herd and yelling, “Is she all right?” “Where is she?” “Is she coming home?”

After all we'd been through, I felt like the prodigal son, once lost, now found. “They sound historical, Nancy.”

“They are! I tell you, we've been so worried about you, Miss E. We couldn't do anything but stay glued to the TV, watching the news and praying. Where are you? Are you okay? How's Barbara's mother?”

“We're fine. We're in a motel in Juneau, and Percival is taking care of us. Nancy, we've been through quite an ordeal, but the Lord was with us all the way—tell the women their prayers have been answered. Tell Barbara I'd put her mother on the phone but she's in taking a bath. Maybe she'll call later, but right now we're trying to get ready to meet with law enforcement officers. They're coming to ask us a lot of questions. When things quiet down, maybe I can fill you in on the details. As soon as we can, we'll leave Juneau and head for home. I'll keep in touch.”

“Oh, Miss E., don't hang up. Give me your phone number. Even before all this happened, the Priscilla Home board was trying to get in touch with you. And your friends Beatrice and Carl have been calling here trying to find out anything they could. Beatrice said that if we heard from you to tell you they're camping in Seattle and will stay there until they hear from you. She said Carl
bought a cell phone just so you can call them. Here's the number,” and she gave it to me.

Well, at last
, I said to myself.
Beatrice has got a phone
. “Nancy, call Beatrice and tell her I'm okay. I gotta go. Here's the number of the motel and our suite number.” I spelled it out for her. “You got that?” She had it. “Now, don't give out that number to anybody you don't know. Reporters and cameramen are all over Juneau looking for us. We had to register under phony names in this motel, and we aren't allowed to leave our rooms until the law tells us we can. When you call, ask for our suite number. If that don't work, just ask for the Smith sisters.”

“The Smith sisters?”

“That's right—Mary, Martha, and Magdalene.” She laughed. “What a hoot!”

“Okay, I've got to go. Give my love to everybody and thank them for praying for us. Be sure to call Albert and Lenora and anybody else who's been anxious.”

When I hung up the phone, I tucked Beatrice's number under the lamp for safekeeping. I would call her later.

I grabbed a robe and dashed in the bathroom to take my bath. As I stripped off those wet clothes, I wanted to chuck them for good, but my better judgment told me to hang on to them in case I needed them later. The apron with the jewels was soaking wet, but it had held up good. I needed to rinse it out and hang it up to dry. I hurried back in my room and put the jewels in a pillowcase.

There wasn't time for anything more than a quick shower, but I had to take the time to wash my hair. I had just started blow-drying it when the phone rang. I went in to answer it.

It was Chief Kline. The ABI investigators were with him, and he wanted to know if they could come up. I near about panicked! None of us were fit to be seen barefooted in bathrobes, and with wet hair to boot. I tried to put him off. “Chief, we're not presentable. We're also exhausted and haven't had a bite to eat. Can't this wait?”

Of course, I should have known the answer. “No, this is urgent,” he said. “Tell you what I'll do; I'll check into this restaurant they have here and bring you takeout dinners.”

“Thanks, Chief, but I think a better idea would be for us to order room service while you men stay in the restaurant and have a cup of coffee or something. Give us about an hour and maybe—”

“Well, I don't know about that. Let me ask Rollins. Hang on.”

I turned to Winnie. “It's Chief Kline. He wants to bring the ABI up here to question us.”

When he came back on the phone, he said they'd give us half an hour.

Did I ever fly into action! “Winnie, you heard what I said—I told him we weren't ready, but all he said was they'd give us thirty minutes!”

She was combing her wet hair and trying to get out the tangles. “They can't come up here. We haven't got on any clothes.”

“They're the law, Winnie, and they're coming.” I walked in her bathroom. “What's more important than anything—we got to get our heads together. They'll be asking every question under the sun, and we have gotta
make sure we say the right thing. The way we answer can make a big difference.”

“We'll just have to do the best we can, won't we, Esmeralda?”

“No, listen. If we don't handle this right, they could very well decide Daisy is a suspect—that she was in on the whole thing—and arrest her. What we have to do is convince them that Daisy was not in on it—that those creeps tried to use her but failed. We have to make them understand how she could have saved herself if she'd been willing to leave us stranded, but she didn't, and how she helped us escape. Daisy deserves all that reward money, but she won't get it if we don't stick up for her. You know how things like that go.”

“Okay, Esmeralda. You do the talking, and I'll back you up.”

I called Daisy, and she came to our suite. In that white terry cloth robe and all nice and clean, Daisy looked downright cuddly. “Daisy, I got to dry my hair. Winnie will tell you what's up.”

Somebody was at the door. I glanced at my watch; our thirty minutes were not up.

Daisy called in to me, “It's Percival.”

I went in the living room, and there stood Percival holding an armload of clothes, a couple of big plastic bags full of who knows what, and a smaller bag. “This is the best I could do,” he said and opened the smaller bag. “I went by a drugstore and got some makeup and toiletries.” He handed Winnie a pair of sunglasses. “There's a big exclusive department store in town, but it was closed. I had to go to the Salvation Army for these things. The
lady in charge looked through several racks of clothes trying to find your sizes but finally decided on three jumpsuits that should fit you.”

He laid the beige jumpsuits on the couch and handed me one of the big bags. In it were some underthings and sleepwear.

“I told the lady at the Salvation Army that I didn't know how to shop for ladies ready-to-wear but that as soon as the stores opened tomorrow I would have to buy whatever else you needed. She was so nice; she offered to go with me. In the morning I'll come by to get your list of what you need, your shoe sizes and everything else.

“Now, I've got to get out of here. I saw Chief Kline downstairs with the ABI agents. He said they're waiting to question you. Want me to go down and tell them you need a little more time to get dressed?”

“Oh, thank you, Percival,” Winnie said. “Thank you, thank you! I don't know what we would have done without you.”

He looked plum worn out, so I told him, “Now, Percival, you have a nice dinner and then take it easy, get a good night's rest. If we need you, we'll call you.”

“Miss Esmeralda, I haven't heard your story yet. If Chief Kline will let me, I'll come up and listen while you go over everything with them.”

After he left we got dressed as best we could. Sorting out the underwear, we found a set for each of us. There was not much fit to the jumpsuits, which was a good thing; loose as they were they covered all our bulges. All the bedroom slippers were alike—blue mule type.

Once we got dressed and had our hair combed, we
three stood before the bathroom mirror looking at ourselves. “You know what?” I said. “If we had parachutes we could join the 82nd Airborne!”

There was a knock at the door; I went to answer it. Percival was standing there with Chief Kline and two men. I let them in.

Before they sat down, the chief introduced the two inspectors from the ABI, Dixon and Rollins, who looked for all the world like J. Edgar Hoover G-men: dark suits, shirts and ties, and shoes polished to a patent-leather shine.

Then we all sat down—we three women on the couch, with the three officers and Percival sitting across from us on chairs.

“Ladies,” the chief began, “we have good news for you. Inspector Rollins will explain.”

Rollins cleared his throat. “About an hour ago the ABI received word that two suspects have been arrested and are now in custody. Seattle authorities made the arrests when the suspects attempted to pick up the ransom money. Arrangements had been made for the ransom to be delivered to an abandoned barn in a field outside the city. Officers had the barn under surveillance when the suspects arrived. One suspect remained in the vehicle with the motor running while the other one went inside the barn. As the suspect was coming out of the barn with the briefcase containing the ransom money, officers arrested him and the one in the car at the same time. They offered no resistance.”

They had to be Pee-Wee and Tony
, I thought.

“In the interest of justice,” the chief said, “we've
got to find all the evidence we can to convict these criminals when they go to trial. Your positive identification is, of course, vital to this case, but we need to know all the details concerning your abduction and any additional information you can give us that will aid the prosecution.”

He placed a tape recorder on the coffee table, and the ABI men took tablets and pens from their pockets.

The room fell silent.

Rollins cleared his throat again. “Perhaps, Miss Esmeralda, you should begin. Just start at the beginning and tell us where and how you were abducted.”

Well, I did start at the beginning and did the best I could. But when the story came to our being held hostage in Daisy's house, I had to make sure Daisy was not incriminated. I asked Daisy to tell them how she got involved.

Of course, that brought up Willie. They didn't know about him, and this bit of information put the ABI agents on the edge of their seats, scribbling like crazy.

“Well,” Daisy said, “that Willie, he don't lack much of being feebleminded. He knows right from wrong, everybody does, but the trouble is, what he thinks is right is mostly wrong. In this case, he got drawed in by thinking gettin' a thousand dollars was right. In his mind, anything go against that—anything come between him and gettin' that money had to be wrong. We couldn't talk no sense into him. He's what you might call a blockhead.”

Officer Dixon pressed her. “But you went along with Willie, didn't you? You expected to get some of that thousand dollars, didn't you?”

I jumped right in. “No, sir, she didn't!” I said. “She was one with us from the day we set foot in her place.”

Then between Winnie and me, we told them the whole story about Daisy saving our lives.

“Now,” I said, “the third man we told you about, the one who piloted the helicopter, he's still on the
Amsterdam
. I don't know as you can call a stupid man a
mastermind
, but, be that as it may, Alphonso Pasquali strikes me as being the leader. I'd say them other two, Tony and Pee-Wee, went along with anything he said and carried out his orders.”

“Excuse me,” Officer Rollins said and flipped open his cell phone.

His call must have been to ABI headquarters, because he told them to get warrants for the arrest of Alphonso Pasquali and Willie Miller.

“Now, mind you,” Daisy said, “Willie is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He won't think nothin' much about gettin' arrested, but he will make hisself sick thinkin' about that money he ain't gonna get.”

Winnie spoke up. “Speaking of money, Chief Kline, you tell the authorities Daisy here deserves both of those rewards. She's told you more than you knew about Willie and those other two, Tony and Pee-Wee. But more important to Esmeralda and me is the fact that she made it possible for us to escape. I have no doubt Daisy saved our lives.”