Nothing Is Negotiable (24 page)

Pete called Bonnie’s red cell phone.

“It’s about time.” Bonnie sounded pissed.

“Okay, we’ll let Luke go. Where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter where I am. Did you listen to my message?”

“Yeah, we did. We’ll meet you at the Park Hill Cemetery? It’s just off Highway 2 east of town.”

“Are you out of your fricking mind? I’m not meeting you anywhere like that,” Bonnie shouted. “You’ve already tried to kill me once. I’m not going to let you have another shot at me.”

“Okay, then where?”

“The mall.”

“The mall? Now you’re out of
your
fricking mind. Your picture is all over the news. You want to risk being seen in public?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Okay, hold on,” Pete said as he pushed the mute button on the phone and looked at Sonny. “Just like you expected, she won’t go to the cemetery. She wants us to drop him at the mall.”

Sonny considered it and nodded.

Pete said, “Okay. Give me two hours.”

“Call me when you get there and I’ll tell you where I want you to drop Luke.”

“Okay,” Pete said. He pressed the end button on the phone and grimaced, gently holding his hand over the wound in his arm. “She’ll be there in two hours.”

“We’ll need your help pulling this off. How’s his arm?” Sonny asked.

Rita said, “It was a clean shot. Bullet went through. I’ll give him some painkillers and he should be okay.”

“I’m fine,” Pete said. “A little sore but nothing I can’t handle.”

“Okay,” Rita said, looking at Sonny. “Give me five minutes and I’ll turn on the computer.”

“Okay.” Sonny held up the bottle of ammonia and said, “We’ll need to use the van to get to the mall. I’m going to take the magnetic signs off the side and clean up all the blood.”

“Will it take all three of us?” Rita asked.

“Definitely,” Sonny said.

“Then Rosemary will need to take care of Olivia.”

“How far is she from here?”

“About ten minutes. She lives in Heritage Arms Apartments, remember? It’s where I lived when we started dating?”

“Of course I do. When we leave we’ll take the Winnebago over there and she can watch Olivia.”

Rita nodded and Sonny stepped outside. When he opened the side door of the van he saw a pool of blood on the seat where Pete had been sitting and unrolled a wad of paper towels. But the mention of Rita’s old apartment sent Sonny’s mind back to the day this whole thing got start.

When Rita and Sonny started dating she lived in Kalispell, almost two hundred miles southwest of Cardston. Their relationship moved fast and he tried to convince her to move back to Cardston, but her job at St. Luke’s was too good to give up.

She worked as a vocational nurse on the third floor and had plans of becoming a Registered Nurse. If she worked hard, she knew she could pull it off. In the fall Dr. Tammy Owens started bringing Olivia to the hospital for her treatments. To get to the dialysis unit they walked through the area where Rita worked, and before long, Rita and Tammy became friends. On several occasions she even met Olivia’s mother, Kim Townsend.

Shortly after the first of the year, Dr. Owens told Rita she needed to hire an assistant, and she should consider applying for the job. The idea of working in Mrs. Townsend’s mansion and traveling on her private jet was the dream of a lifetime, she told Sonny. Rita felt she had a lock on the job since Dr. Owens had suggested she apply, and they were friends.

But after a deeper background check, they found that Rita had not been truthful on her job application. She failed to mention she was arrested for cocaine possession in Canada ten years earlier. The case had been thrown out on a technicality, but it was enough for Kim. Rita didn’t get the job and Kim insisted she not be in contact with Tammy or Olivia. Soon after, she was fired from the hospital. With that, any hope of going to nursing school also vanished.

Rita was devastated. Embarrassed and humiliated, she left town and moved to Cardston to be with Sonny. She hated Dr. Owens and Kim for giving the information to the hospital and swore that someday she’d get even.

Shortly after she moved to Cardston, Rita went to Austin, Texas to visit her grandparents. When she returned, she told Sonny an amazing story. After spending a couple of days at her grandparents’ house, she and a couple of cousins slipped away for some fun. Their foray took them to The Pecan Street Festival, an arts and craft fair in downtown Austin. They found themselves in a booth admiring some beautiful framed photographs of the Texas Hill Country.

Looking up, Rita couldn’t believe who she saw: It looked like Dr. Owens standing in front of her. Right there in Austin, Texas. But the nametag revealed the woman’s identity to be Bonnie Wakefield, a photographer, and it was her booth they were browsing. The resemblance between Bonnie and Dr. Owens was unbelievable.

She wanted to ask Bonnie if Dr. Owens was her twin sister, but there were too many customers and her impatient cousins pulled her away before she had the chance.

When she got home she told Sonny about Bonnie. After an exhaustive research on the Internet, they found some amazing information about Bonnie Wakefield and Dr. Tammy Owens. Both women shared the same birthday—August 3, 1970.

The deeper they delved, they found more interesting facts. Both women claimed to be only children. According to Bonnie’s website, her mother died of breast cancer shortly after she was born, and she was raised by her father. The information they found on Dr. Owens said her father was killed in Vietnam, and she was raised by her mother.

Sonny compared the pictures of Bonnie and Dr. Owens they found on the Internet. In his mind, there was no doubt these two women were twins who were separated by their parents shortly after they were born. They theorized the parents had split up and each took one of the twins. For some reason, the parents came up with this strange story about the other parent being dead.

Sonny and Rita weren’t sure why the parents would do this, but they found the information intriguing, and knew there was some way to use it to their advantage.

They spent hours brainstorming, looking for just the right idea to use it for their own revenge—and financial gain. Finally, one night, after a bottle of tequila, they came up with the perfect plan.

The first part of the plan required that they get Bonnie to Montana. That proved easy. Bonnie’s website said she was available for speaking engagements. Rita and Sonny were involved in the photography workshop that was being held at Glacier National Park in July. One way or another, they’d have to get Bonnie on the program. To do that, one of the speakers had to cancel or not be available for some reason. They knew neither fate nor luck was on their side so they took matters into their own hands. And, amazingly, a gas leak and a lit cigarette caused an explosion that killed one of the speakers. A few days later, Bonnie was asked to fill in for the dead speaker. Of course, she was excited to be asked, and more than willing to come.

Sonny and Rita planned copiously until every detail was discussed and every option was outlined. The ransom they would demand would be huge by historical standards, but would be insignificant to a billionaire.

“Sonny,” Rita called out from the open door of the Winnebago. The sound of his name brought him back to the present.

“What?”

“I got the computer running. Are you ready to contact Kim?”

Bonnie felt much better after the hot shower, but the water couldn’t wash away the memory of two people being shot. She prayed they would both be okay.

After she toweled herself dry she opened the door and found a shirt that Lauren had left for her hanging on the towel rack. She held it up and saw the logo for The Sportsman’s Outfitter above the right breast pocket. After she put it on she stepped over and saw Lauren was flipping through the channels on TV.

“Has there been anything on about the shooting yet?

Lauren looked over at Bonnie and said, “Just before a commercial they said, ‘Shooting at Kalispell Hospital. Details on the five o’clock news.’”

Bonnie pulled a brush out of Lauren’s makeup case and started brushing her hair. She walked over and sat on the bed and thought about a comment Lauren had made earlier. “You said you felt guilty about some advice you gave Luke. What was it?”

Lauren explained how she told Luke he could trust a photographer he met.

“Are you serious? Who are you talking about?”

“His name’s Sonny Diamond. He’s—”

“An asshole. We met him in St. Mary. Does he have a store in Cardston too?”

“Yeah. They aren’t his stores. They belong to an old friend and Sonny runs them for him.”

“How did Luke figure out he was involved?”

“I don’t know, but his girlfriend Rita is the nurse at the clinic.”

“She is the one who contacted me to be a speaker at the photography workshop,” Bonnie said, her voice trailing off as she thought. She stood up and started to pace. “I gave my talk from twelve to one, and when I finished there was a line of people who wanted to order my book. By the time I finished, lunch was over and the food was gone. But Rita had saved a plate for me. It was some kind of a chicken dish and it was probably tainted with something because a few hours later I was puking my guts up.”

“Being a nurse, I’m sure she knew just what to do.”

“And isn’t it a coincidence,” Bonnie said, slapping her forehead. “She told me she worked at the only clinic in the area and gave me her business card, just in case I needed anything. Of course, I did get sick. I went to the clinic the next morning and when I was about to leave she said the doctor wanted to talk to me... again. She took me back to his office and told me to wait for him there. I sat down and she pulled out a needle and said she was supposed to give me a tetanus shot, which she did. A minute later, I remember starting to feel lightheaded, like I was going to faint. Next thing I knew I woke up, locked in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with no memory of how I got there.”

“It all makes sense.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“I’ve got an idea, but it’s going to put us in a dangerous situation.”

“Okay, but we’ll need some way to protect ourselves,” Bonnie said.

“You mean like a gun?”

“I wish I had taken that one at the hospital, but it’s too late now. Can we go buy one?”

“I don’t see how. It’s against the law for Canadians to walk into a gun shop in Montana and buy a gun. And even if you
were
crazy enough to show your face in public, you wouldn’t be able to buy one because you need a driver’s license, and the only one you have is Dr. Owens’.”

Bonnie sighed, “You’re right.”

Lauren’s eyes lit up. “I might have a way to get one. I just remembered. I have a friend who lives here. Give me my cell phone.”

Bonnie pulled the phone out of her jeans and handed it to her. As Lauren scrolled down its internal phone book, she said, “He’s a fishing guide on Flathead Lake just south of town.”

“What are you going to tell him? You have a friend who just kidnapped Kim Townsend’s daughter from the hospital and turned her over to some kidnappers who are holding her husband hostage. And now we’re going to have a shootout with them to get him and the kid back?”

Lauren wrinkled her nose and gave a quick shake of her head. “No, that’s not believable... I’ll just tell him I’m guiding a group in the mountains up by the Canadian border, and I just found out that a grizzly bear has been causing some problems and I hate to go up there without some kind of protection, so I need to borrow a gun.”

“Do you do that? I mean, carry a gun with you?”

“Sometimes if we go too far back in the woods I’ll take a pistol with me, but I’ve never had to use it.”

“So, you can handle a gun?”

“You bet I can,” Lauren said while dialing. “I’ve been shooting since I was a kid. My dad’s a cattle rancher and we had our share of problems with bears and coyotes getting after the calves. And Daddy and I have killed our share of elk and mule deer over the years, too. How about you?”

“I’ve shot my share of guns since I married Luke, but I’m not a very good shot. And I don’t hunt. I tried it but it just wasn’t for me.”

Lauren looked away from Bonnie and said, “Hey Roger, this is Lauren Gray from Cardston. How are you?” She listened and then said, “I’m fine. Is Beau in?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Married? I didn’t even know he was dating anyone.”

After listening a minute she said, “I’m guiding a group up on Lake Koocanusa tomorrow and they’ve had a problem with grizzlies and I wanted to borrow a pistol. I don’t like to bring mine across the border.”

As she listened a frown crossed her face. “Well, heck. Do you have one I could borrow?”

A few seconds later, she said, “That’s okay, I’m sure everything will be okay. Thanks anyway.” When she ended the call she turned to Bonnie, a look of surprise on her face. “Now that’s a weird one. He married a lawyer. He always hated lawyers. But, anyway, they’re backpacking in the Sequoias for the next week and all of his guns are locked up in a gun safe. Roger, a guy who works for him, said he didn’t even take a cell phone with him, so he’s out of touch for a week. And Roger doesn’t own any guns.”

The mention of lawyers pricked a memory for Bonnie. “Hey, I just remembered something, while we were staying at the Red Eagle Lodge in St. Mary, there was a guy and his girlfriend in the room next to us. He said he’s a lawyer from Kalispell. He tried to sell Luke a gun he’d gotten from a guy who couldn’t pay his bill.”

“If we could find him, we could tell him Luke changed his mind? Do you remember his name?”

Bonnie tapped her finger on the tip of her nose and said, “I remember his name was Jack, and his girlfriend’s name was Christina... but I never heard a last name.”

Lauren grabbed the phone book and started flipping through the pages. “This town’s not that big. Let me see how many lawyers are named Jack.”

“One thing I remember about him was his car. It was a yellow Hummer with a personalized license plate that reads ISUE4U.”

Lauren rolled her eyes. “That ought to make it easy to track him down.” She ran her finger down one page, then flipped to the next one and repeated the process. “I see two lawyers named Jack, a few more initial J. and more named John. And some firms that don’t even list the names of the lawyers.”

“In a town this small, I don’t think he’ll be that hard to find,” Bonnie said.

“Especially one who drives a yellow Hummer,” Lauren said. She picked up the phone on the night stand and dialed a number for one of the lawyers named Jack. After two rings someone answered. “Hi. Yesterday afternoon I backed into a yellow Hummer in a parking lot. I left a note under the windshield wiper with my name and cell phone number on it, but I never got a call from anyone. I think the owner is probably a lawyer because the license plate was one of the personalized ones that said—ISUE4U. Would there be someone who works in your office that drives a car like that?” Lauren put her hand over the receiver and said, “She’s checking.”

Bonnie smiled. “You’re good.”

“Most fishing guides are good at making up stories,” Lauren said. She smiled then returned to the phone. “Great, thank you.” She put the phone down and picked up the yellow pages again. “One of the lawyers in her office knows the Hummer—it’s owned by Jack Rosenthal, with Rosenthal and Associates. Want to call him?”

Bonnie thought about it for a few seconds, and then took the phone from Lauren. She dialed, and after a short conversation, hung up. “He’s been in a meeting for two hours, but she thinks he’ll be out in twenty or thirty minutes. The lady who answered the phone said he may have a few minutes before his next appointment.”

“That’s also good, because if he’s been tied up for the two hours, he won’t know anything about the kidnapping at the hospital. I think our best chance is to be there waiting for him when he gets out of his meeting.”