Miz Scarlet and the Holiday Houseguests (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery #3) (12 page)

I did as he directed, my fingers
trembling as I punched the button. Taking a deep breath, I let it
out slowly before I spoke, mentally preparing myself. “Yes, Ms.
Rivera. What can I do for you?”

“I wonder if you could help me out.
Apparently, I think I left my bank card on the dresser in my room.
Is there any chance you could go in there and check for
me?”

Max grabbed my arm and squeezed, before
he leaned over and whispered into my ear. “Tell her you’ll be happy
to look. Then put the phone down and walk out the door. Make some
noise.”

I followed his instructions. Max met me
in the butler’s pantry. “Okay. When you go back in there in a
minute, you ask her if it’s a Bank of America card. When she says
yes, you tell her you have it. Got that?”

Why did it matter if it was a Bank of
America card? I started to ask, but Max shook his head.

“Just trust me, Scarlet.”

A moment later, I made a very loud
approach into the kitchen, with Max softly on my heels. As he
hovered, I spoke.

“Ms. Rivera? Is it a Bank of America
credit card you wanted?” There was a long pause before Larry
responded.

“Why, yes. Yes, it is. Did you find
it?”

“It was on your nightstand.”

“Great,” Larry told me. “I’ll be right
over to pick it up. I’m having dinner with a friend of mine tonight
and I promised him I would treat.”

“Okay,” I replied, feeling a sudden
rush of panic for the safety of my friend. What if this was the
last conversation she ever had? What if the creep who was holding
her captive didn’t bring her to the Four Acorns Inn? “Get here in
one piece.”

“Excuse me?” I could hear
the worry in her voice. Had I just put her in greater
danger?
Think, Miz Scarlet. Say something
logical.

“Be careful. The roads are icy
now.”

“Right,” said the experienced homicide
investigator, sounding relieved. “We’ll be there in about ten
minutes.”

I barely had time to hang up before Max
grabbed my arm and steered me out of the library and down the hall
in the direction of the living room.

“We have to put the ladies somewhere
safe,” he told me. “Is there a closet we can use, somewhere that
won’t be searched by Larry’s abductor?”

“Better yet, what about the carriage
house?” I countered. “Bur’s got a heated workshop in the garage.
Will that help?”

“Absolutely!” Max let out a long breath
of relief. “I’m going to need your mother’s wheelchair.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have time to explain
now.”

Three minutes later, bundled up against
the cold, the ladies were escorted out to the tiny workshop at the
back of the building. Max had to lift the wheels on my mother’s
motorized chair over some of the patches of ice on the driveway,
but we managed to get her there in one piece. Tapping the switch
for the automatic overhead door, my heart pounding, I counted the
seconds until it rose. Time was of the essence. There was no
telling when Larry and her kidnapper would show up. Hurrying
inside, I led the trio past my car, all the way to the door of the
small room in the back of the carriage house, where I flipped on
the overhead fluorescent light, and searched for my brother’s
favorite flashlight. With the blue Maglite in hand, I turned on the
thermostat for the electric baseboard heater. Then I retrieved two
plastic patio chairs from the corner and set them on the floor in
the corner. Max and I lifted my mother to her feet and helped her
into one of them.

“Here,” I handed Lacey the heavy
flashlight. She groaned under its weight. “It’s heavy, I
know.”

“We don’t have much time,” Max informed
them. “Stay here. You’ve got your phones?”

“We do,” Lacey told him. I could see
the Googins girls were terrified.

“We’ll come and get you as soon as this
is over. Keep the light off.” I hugged my mother, kissing the top
of her head, and then I threw my arm around Lacey’s shoulder. “Be
safe.”

“Scarlet, come on!” Max had the
wheelchair and he was standing in Bur’s open bay. I flipped off the
ceiling light and shut the door to the workshop, following in his
wake. That’s when a pair of headlights flashed in the driveway.
“Crap!”

“What are we going to do?” I cried. I
started to run for cover, but then the horn honked. It was a
familiar horn. Looking up through the glare, I saw the SUV had New
Jersey plates.

“Kenny! What is he doing
here?” Relief flooded over me like a big, warm wave of pure,
unadulterated love.
Kenny to the rescue. My
hero. Everything will be okay now.

“Say what?” Max was stunned. We stood
there as the car rolled down the driveway towards us. “His timing
is perfect!”

“You’re telling me!”

Thirty seconds later, Kenny’s Ford Edge
was safely ensconced in the garage, out of sight. The three of us
sprinted back to the house with the wheelchair in tow, even as Max
and Kenny were plotting strategy.

“You call the state police....” The
former homicide investigator barked out orders, giving Kenny the
contact numbers to get the ball rolling. “If you hear me say ‘rock
and roll’, Ken, that’s your cue to burst in.”

“Got it.”

“You armed?” Max wanted to
know.

“You bet. And I can be dangerous when I
need to be.”

The two men put the wheelchair down in
the hallway and Max settled into it. “Do you have a lap blanket for
me, Scarlet?”

“Sure. There’s one in the living room.”
I went to fetch it. The soft whir of the motorized machine told me
the anxious investigator was hot on my heels, giving it a test run
before the action heated up. He got stuck on the lip of the
threshold, as one of the wheels spun, and had to back it up and try
again. “Make sure you go over the threshold with the full force of
the motor behind you, Max.”

“Front wheel drive, huh?”

“I guess so. Here’s your blanket.” I
laid the Black Watch tartan over his knees. “What do I
do?”

“You act like you don’t know Larry.
You’re just an innkeeper and she is a guest, just like I
am.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “What about the
credit card?”

“Take mine.” Max pulled out a Bank of
America credit card and handed it over to me. “Put it in your
pocket, but don’t hand it over unless it’s absolutely
necessary.”

“They’re here!” Kenny popped his head
into the living room to warn us. He finagled with the mantle
greenery, tucking something behind it. “This is a wireless camera.
I’ll be able to monitor the action in this room. I have a couple
more set up in other rooms, just in case.”

“Oh, where is Huck?” The Yorkshire
terrier wasn’t on his sofa.

“I put the dogs are on the sun porch,
so they won’t be in the way. I’ll be in the library. State cops are
en route. ETA is ten minutes.”

“Roger that,” Max told him. “Okay,
people. It’s show time! Don’t rush to answer the door, Scarlet.
We’ve got to use up as much of that ten minutes as we can, so
stall, stall, stall.”

“Right.” My hands were clammy and cold
as I stood in the hall. I rubbed them briskly together, trying to
warm up. When the doorbell rang, I forced myself to count to one
hundred before I slowly made my way to the front door, stopping to
turn on lights as I went along. The foyer was brightly illuminated
by the time I opened the front door to invite Larry and her
abductor in.

“Hi,” I said in an overly cheery voice.
“You made it here safely. How’s the driving?”

Larry’s face was a study in tension.
Her normally alert eyes looked hollow and empty, and for a moment,
I wondered if she had been sexually assaulted. I caught sight of
the elbow that poked into her side, prompting her to respond to my
question. The man beside her was definitely controlling her
movements. Who was he and what did he want with her?

“The driving was fine, Ms. Wilson. I
wonder if I could get that credit card now....”

“Gee, it’s a shame you have to run off.
Are you sure you two wouldn’t like to stay for dinner? I’ve got a
roasted chicken that is about to come out of the oven,” I smiled. I
forced myself to be friendly to the man holding my friend. “There’s
plenty.”

“We’ve got a reservation,” she answered
woodenly. “If I could just have that card, I’d appreciate
it.”

“Hold on a minute,” said her companion,
a man in his forties, as he stood behind her. Just over six feet
tall, wearing a gray North Face jacket with the hood drawn tight,
he seemed to tower over Larry. His eyes were green and narrow,
cat-like; he eyed me like I was a canary. This man was definitely a
predator. “There’s no reason to be hasty. Let’s not rush
off.”

Chapter Eleven
--

“I’m going to have to insist,” Larry
told him firmly. “We have to go or we’ll be late.”

“I don’t want to turn the pretty lady
down, especially when she’s made us such a nice offer,” the
conniving creep responded, pushing his hostage further into the
hallway.

“We have a reservation,” she reminded
him once again.

“We’ll cancel it, sugarplum.” He leaned
over and bit her earlobe. Larry winced, struggling to contain her
disgust. That just seemed to excite him.

A shiver of fear went
through me, so I forced myself to turn away, hoping to hide
it.
It’s a good thing Max and Kenny are
here. And thank God Mickey isn’t.
I could
see the unspoken tug-of-war going on between them as they stood
there, arms entangled. Larry was desperate to grab that credit card
and go. Why? Was her abductor planning to drag her to the nearest
ATM and clean out her bank account? Had he promised to let her go
the minute he had her money? What if he had no intention of letting
her go? She could identify him. And now, so could I. As the
questions pushed their way into my brain, I pushed back, trying to
concentrate on what was right in front of me

“
Well then, how about a
drink?” I suggested as I walked down the hall. “Come on into the
living room. Mr. Talbot is in there. Bernie, it looks like we’ve
got guests for cocktails!”

Behind me, I heard Larry gasp. A quick
glance over my shoulder told me that her companion wasn’t happy
there was someone else, especially a man, in the house, and he was
keeping an even tighter grip on his captive. That would soon be
remedied.

We stepped into the room and found
ourselves face to face with a somewhat disheveled handicapped man
slumped in a wheelchair, a lap blanket covering his legs and his
right hand. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought Max suffered
a stroke. His head was tipped to one side as he looked up at
us.

“Bernie, this is Ms. Rivera and her
friend. I’m sorry,” I turned to the stranger. “I didn’t catch your
name.”

“Del.” He was still cautious, on alert,
listening for anything that might prove threatening to his plan. In
the distance, I could hear some yapping.

“Nice to meet you, Del.” I plastered a
big smile on my face, hoping to convince him that I thought he was
the most fascinating man I had ever met. Larry gave me the stink
eye, aiming that burning rage of hers like a laser beam in my
direction. I ignored it. “Please, call me Scarlet.”

“Scarlet it is.”

“
Mr. Talbot is one of our
very special guests. He doesn’t have the use of his hand any more
because of his recent stroke. Poor dear. Now, what would you like
to drink? Wine? Gin and tonic? Scotch and soda? I can make you just
about anything you’d like.” I pointed to the small bar against the
wall, with its miniscule wet sink and liquor bottles. “Or, if you’d
prefer something like coffee....”

A grunting sound suddenly emerged from
Max’s mouth; we all turned to him at the same time. With his left
hand extended, he wiggled his fingers at me.

“I think he wants something,” Del
remarked, studying the man in the wheelchair.

“My heavens. You might be right.”
Leaning forward, I bent down. “What’s that?”

“Awgh!” Gibberish came out of Max’s
mouth. I pretended to fill in the blanks.

“Oh, did you want a vodka martini,
Bernie?” I asked him sweetly. Another guttural groan emerged from
between his lips. “Extra dry, right?”

As I made myself busy at the bar,
uncapping the bottle of Smirnoff, I happened to gaze up in the
mirror. I could see Larry trying to disengage herself from her
kidnapper, but it was no use. He shoved her down onto the sofa and
sat next to her. Max pretended not to notice, but I could tell he
was, like me, all too aware of what was happening. I popped a twist
of lemon into the drink.

“Here you go, Bernie.” I carried the
martini over to where Max sat in the wheelchair and offered the
glass to him. He took it, grasping the stem tightly, but even as he
did, his hand seemed to tremble more. A moment later, the glass
left his hand and cascaded onto the rug below, the liquid contents
splattering everywhere.

“Oh dear!” I cried, thinking that the
Persian carpet had been in the Googins family for more than a
hundred years. It was a family treasure. “I’ve got to clean that
up!”