Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (30 page)

“Yes, Miss
Sarah, we’ll take care of her. You can depend on it.”

~~~

When you try to rescue someone who doesn’t want to be rescued, the cops sometimes call it kidnapping. Especially if her name is Veronica Newfield, and you snatch her from her bedroom and drive off with her in your pickup. Mack didn’t have any delusions about that. He also didn’t bother to give it a second thought. The note from Sarah said, “Dorthea murdered Aunt Judith. Veronica in danger. Get her out of here. Meet at my house.” Along with the details provided by a white faced Mr. Perkins about Sarah almost getting arrested before getting kicked off the property, Mack didn’t need to know anything else. Something stank at Sunny Slope Manor.

He grabbed his keys, asked Perkins where in the house he might
find a spoiled heiress, and then drove his truck up to the circular driveway and parked by the front door—a spot his lowly truck hadn’t seen since the day Judith Newfield had hired him some six years earlier. He jumped out of the truck and bounded up the front porch steps—to a locked front door locked.  A knock on the door would only alert Dorthea, so he grabbed his left fist with his right hand and rammed his left elbow into the stained glass which bordered the side of the doorway. The glass and lead crumbled. He reached into the breach and unlocked the door.

Before
he’d taken three steps into the house, though, Dorthea came out of the sitting room where Mrs. Newfield had always conducted her business. Except for the eyes, she looked like her two sisters. “Stop where you are or I’ll call the police,” she said. He ran past her, down the long hallway, until reaching the stairway at the end. Up the first flight of stairs, then the second, he reached the third floor hallway and started counting doors, just as Mr. Perkins had instructed. He barged through the fourth door on the right, through the sitting room, and into the bedroom, where he found Veronica on her bed, fully dressed, head slumped against the headboard.

She stared with groggy
eyes. “If you send me to boarding school, I’ll just run away,” she said.

“You know
Mack would never do that to you.”

“
Mack? Did you come to visit me?”

“
Yes…and Cousin Sarah, too. She asked me to get you. She wants to talk with you.”

“
Forget it. I don’t talk to backstabbers.”

“Then how about if you and I talk? Will you talk
to me?”

“Maybe.”

“But not here. Let’s talk down at the barn, just like we used to.”

“I can’t. I’m waiting for Dorthea. She’s got something for me.”

“Ok then. How about if we play a game while we wait? It’s called a hundred pounds of oats and you get to be the oats,” he said, as he grabbed her by the waist and threw her over his shoulder.

“I don’t like th
is game! Put me down! Put me down!” yelled Veronica.

Despite the unruly cargo,
Mack made it down the first flight of stairs without tipping over, then the second, and had started toward the front door when he saw trouble. There, with a raised handgun, blocking the exit, and his getaway, stood Dorthea. Mack froze well short of her.

“Kidnapping is a serious crime young man,” she said, as she pulled back the hammer and aimed, “so I’m sure nobody will mind if I shoot you.”

“Can someone get me down from here?” said Veronica, as she continued to try to squirm her way off of Mack’s shoulder.

The gun wobbled in
Dorthea’s hands and Mack figured he stood a good chance of getting safely past her. On the other hand, delivering Veronica with an accidental bullet in her butt—or somewhere worse—didn’t exactly sound like what Sarah had had in mind. Fortunately, another option presented itself when Mack heard something to his right and saw Perkins in the hallway that ran crossways. He partially hid behind a door and had a handful of keys thrust in Mack’s direction. Car keys!

Mack veered toward the keys at the very instant that Dorthea fired the gun. The loud, echoing
explosion rumbled down the hallway and rattled pictures and tables and wooden wall panels. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed Dorthea’s white face, calm as a Sunday picnic, peering through a veil of blue gun smoke. The lady had nerve, probably crazy like a loon, but she had nerve.

He
snatched the keys and ran down the hallway. A second shot then rang through the corridors. He craned his neck to the right and looked for a way out, but didn’t dare stop at any of the closed doors which might be dead ends. Perkins always parked his brown Pinto in the guest carport behind the tower, next to the hedge. He just needed to find an exit or hallway that led in that direction.

He ran the entire length of the long hallway and
found nothing, except the library, a dead end.

“Perkins!
Tell Dorthea that Sarah’s sending me to boarding school in Switzerland and I need her help,” yelled Veronica.

And then, with
crazy Dorthea and her smoking gun bearing down, Mack remembered the table on the back porch where he’d once seen Sarah reading a book. There had to be a way onto the porch from the library. Past the bookshelves he ran, away from the line of fire, to the back of the room, where he saw, on the other side of the window, the table he’d remembered, but no doorway leading to it. But then he saw, next to the table, a stairway that led from the porch up to the second story verandah. He whipped back his head and saw the library’s second story walkway. That was it! He needed to go up and then back down.

He q
uickly found the library stairs, took a good grip on his cargo, and charged up the spiral staircase. He then ran through the second story doorway, down the balcony steps, and onto the back porch, just in time to see Dorthea’s twisted white face through the library window.

“You made Dorthea mad,” stuttered Veronica, as
Mack hustled down the porch steps. “If you put me down, I’ll tell her to be nice.”

Mack
found the car in its usual spot. God bless Perkins and his unwavering little habits, thought Mack. He dropped the “sack of oats” into the rear hatch, hopped behind the wheel, and screeched away.

He made it as far as the front gate. Less than that, really. That’s just where
he got handcuffed, frisked, and thrown into the back of a police car. The game ended, for all practical purposes, several hundred yards before the gate, when he saw, through the trees, all the flashing red lights that waited for him at the bottom of the driveway. He thought about turning around and crashing through the back gate. Then he looked in the rearview mirror and saw more flashing lights on top of the police cruiser that had tucked up close to his rear bumper.

Sunny Slope Manor always did get the best service. Even from the police.

After a short fight with the stubborn lock, Sarah pushed open the front door and felt the jarring embrace of cold air—the house never did hold any heat—and the familiar smell of childhood. If, as they say, every house has its own aroma, this one definitely leaned toward the bleach and bacon grease category.

She d
ropped her purse onto the entryway table and eyed the dreaded wall heater located between the living room, family room, and front entrance. Closer inspection revealed a thermostat needle pointing to a chilly fifty seven degrees. She flicked the lever to the right, listened, and nothing happened, as usual. Did she want to grind cartilage by trying to light the pilot from her knees, a position that rarely worked? Or did she want to get her clothes dirty by lying on the floor, a position that did work? Or did she feel like getting a coat from the closet?

Opting for door number three, she opened the closet
door and saw an orange garment glowing like a road worker’s safety vest. It was her mom’s sweater, a thrift store reject that she had stubbornly worn most every day for the last ten years of her life, no matter the occasion. As a teenager, nothing had painted a red face on Sarah faster than seeing her mom show up in this threadbare disaster. She took it off the hanger, held it to her face, and breathed in the lingering scent of her mom’s perfume. And then she put it on.

She then went to
retrieve an address book from her purse and noticed a piece of paper that someone had slipped under the front door. She picked it up and read:

Dear Friend, That's good news about your invitation to the party tonight. You are definitely moving up in the world. Get to know some bigwigs, especially the one who will be important tomorrow. This is a date people will read about for years to come. Yours Truly, F. Prince. 8 July, 1932.

She turned it over and found a grocery store receipt. Great, she thought, a note dated 1932 written on a receipt dated 1972. Already up to her ears in nonsense, she absentmindedly dropped the note into her purse and grabbed the address book. She carried the book and the entryway telephone around the corner to the family room—trailed by the long phone cord—where she plopped down on the lumpy green sofa.

She’d
been blindsided. Knocked flat. She’d grown up listening to jokes about “Aunt” Dorthea’s sordid reputation and now, with shocking swiftness, she’d learned firsthand that not even the darkest, foulest reputation came close to describing the true evil of Dorthea Railer.

Proving that she’d murdered
Aunt Judith, however, didn’t dominate Sarah’s thoughts as she sat there with a spinning head. Instead, she tried to focus on Veronica, who’d been tricked into accepting Ernest’s so called marriage proposal without having a clue about what it really meant. As soon as she married Ernest, the manor became community property, and her life became worthless. Less than worthless. Willingly, or unwillingly, Veronica had to be removed from Dorthea’s presence. And while Sarah had confidence that Mr. Perkins had given the note to Mack, and that Veronica’s rescue had already begun, she also knew that Dorthea rarely lost at an endeavor that mattered to her. Win at all cost; that had always been her reputation. Sarah had seen it herself that very morning when she’d called the police with evidence of murder, only to be threatened with handcuffs and run off the property like the real criminal. Every expectation existed for Mack and Veronica to come walking through the doorway but cold reality demanded that other plans be made in case they didn’t.

As Trustee,
Sarah had the right to be at Sunny Slope. Two minutes in front of a judge and she’d have a court order and a police escort, but going to court took time, too much time. She planned to skip the court order and go straight to the police escort. This time, though, instead of talking to a dispatch operator, she’d talk to the police chief himself, a close friend of her aunt and uncle.

She dialed his direct office number, waited for an answer, and then said,
“Hello, this is Sarah Evans, Judith Newfield’s niece, calling to speak with Chief Bolton.” The lady on the other end picked up on the blatant name drop and told her, with a certain courteous reverence, to hold for just a moment. As a sleepy, instrumental version of
Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head
spilled into her ear, Sarah thought about how her mom had hated it when Sarah got special favors by throwing around her Aunt and Uncle’s name. And now she’d done it again and, if need be, she’d keep right on doing it.

Sweet Caroline
followed
Raindrops
and Sarah still waited on hold. Half way through the song, she decided to hang up and call back, but then the lady came back on the line. She didn’t apologize for the long hold and now sounded anything but courteous. “Chief Bolton isn’t available,” she said. “He suggested you contact the appropriate department.”

S
arah, confused by the obvious change in tone, stammered for a few seconds. This transgression got her put back on hold and back into the top forty dunking tank. This time
Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree
provided the listening pleasure. She slammed down the phone but almost immediately it started ringing. She picked it up and said, “What!”

“Miss
Sarah, is that you?” asked the sheepish caller.

“Yes, Mr. Perkins, I’m sorry…it’s been a bad morning.”

“I’m sorry, Miss, especially since I have more bad news. The police have arrested Mack.”

“What for?” asked
Sarah, even though she probably could’ve guessed the answer.

“Kidnapping,” said Mr. Perkins.

After a moment’s silence, Sarah said, “And what about Veronica? Where is she?”

“She’s back up in her room, Miss.”

“Ok…ok…thank you Mr. Perkins….” She put down the phone and tried to gather her thoughts but couldn’t shake the feeling of being some sort of a lab rat stuck in a treacherous maze. Mack had tried and failed. That part she understood. Dorthea had proven her control over Sunny Slope Manor even before Sarah had asked for Mack’s help. It made sense. But what about the other things, the obstacles that had tripped her up all morning? She’d reported a murder to the police and nothing had happened. She’d been evicted from Sunny Slope based upon a completely bogus court hearing. And now, the simple act of telephoning Chief Bolton, a family friend, had ended in pointed failure. Did Dorthea really have that kind of power? Sarah didn’t want to believe it, but all the doors being slammed in her face had started to take a toll.

In the midst of this confusion,
Sarah did see one thing clearly, though: she’d gotten Mack into a great deal of trouble. Something had to be done about that. She picked up the phone yet again and dialed Roger Millington, her aunt’s attorney, finding him at his office in Santa Marcela. First she maneuvered around an understandable amount of surprise and disbelief on his end, and then she arranged to tell him the rest of the story when they met at the county jail, where he also agreed to do his best to help Mack.

Still wearing her mom’s orange sweater
over the summery outfit she thought would never see the light of day, she grabbed her purse, hurried out the door, and jumped behind the wheel of her green Mustang. She jabbed the key into the ignition and then stopped. Something was wrong. She smelled something. And then she heard something. Her eyes darted to the rearview mirror and saw a terribly deformed face looking at her from the back seat. She screamed and lunged toward the open door. Her purse tumbled out of the car. Before her body could follow, though, he clamped her head into his arms. She tried to scream again, but he jammed a cloth hard against her mouth and nose. Then everything went black.

~~~

After mug shots, fingerprints, and half a dozen cops making smart ass remarks about the dumb kidnapper who’d barely made it out the front door, someone shoved Mack toward a telephone and told him to make a phone call. He called Sarah’s house down the hill but she didn’t answer. That bothered him. She’d specifically said to meet at her house. Her note had already sent up a big red flag—as well as her being run off by the police—and now she didn’t answer her phone. For all he knew, she’d never even made it to her house. He dialed again, got the same result, so he left a message on the machine. When he tried calling up to the manor to see if Mr. Perkins knew anything, the cop who’d taken his prints put his hand over the dialer and said, “One call doesn’t mean three.”

A few minutes later
two plain clothed detectives escorted him to a small interrogation room. They put him in a chair that had been wedged into the narrow space between a desk and a wall. The cops took chairs facing him, one behind the desk on Mack’s right, the other directly in front. They had him cornered and surrounded all at the same time. At first the cop behind the desk made small talk about rodeos and fishing and horse shoeing. Then the frowning cop in front asked if Mack had planned to mail the ransom demand or to telephone it. That’s all Mack needed to hear. He had nothing to hide, and didn’t mind being questioned, but not until after he’d found out about Sarah. “I want a lawyer,” he said. And with those magic words the meeting ended.

The two detectives left
, a uniformed cop entered with a fresh set of handcuffs, some leg irons, and a half hour later Mack found himself in a white van on his way to county jail in Santa Marcela where he’d wait for an arraignment.

To his surprise,
Mack also learned that he had a lawyer waiting to meet with him. He didn’t know a public defender from a public telephone, but getting a lawyer so quickly seemed a little too efficient for government bureaucracy. He didn’t complain. After they booked him into jail, and exchanged his jeans, boots and shirt for an orange jump suit and orange flip-flops, one of the guards escorted him, still in handcuffs, down a long hallway and into a small room with a steel table, two steel chairs, and a wall clock covered with metal security mesh. Nothing sat on the table except two overflowing tin ashtrays and a red button, which looked like some kind of emergency device. The guard shoved him into a chair and handcuffed his right arm to a metal loop on the leg of the table. The guard then left the room. A few minutes later the lawyer came in and sat down in the chair closest to the door, to the left of Mack. Dressed in a nice suit, and with a tan face and perfectly cut salt and pepper hair, he looked better than the usual court appointed lawyers Mack had seen on TV. Before Mack had a chance to wonder at his good fortune, though, the man said that Sarah had sent him. He also said that Sarah wanted to meet with him, and that he’d arrange the visitation after his initial interview with Mack had ended. That’s when, at one o’clock in the afternoon, for the first time since early that morning, Mack allowed himself to relax. He even made a conscious effort to answer the lawyer’s questions with something better than the two and three word sentences he preferred.

The lawyer
plopped his briefcase onto the table, gave the name of Roger Millington, and asked Mack to tell him everything he’d said to the cops. Since he’d said practically nothing, that part went fast. Next, he wanted to hear Mack’s version of events, in sequence, exactly as it had happened. Mack told him everything, starting with the note he’d received about Veronica being in danger, all the way up to the present time. That part also went off without a hitch, except for when Dorthea Railer’s name came up for the first time and Mack thought he saw a change of expression on Millington’s face. But then again, he thought, maybe it had been nothing. Finally, the lawyer asked a long line of questions, mostly to confirm certain parts of Mack’s story. Then the meeting ended. He loaded his briefcase and told Mack to sit tight while he arranged the visitation with Sarah. He pushed the button on the table, the door swung open, and he disappeared.

Ten minutes later he returned
, looking distracted, and said, “Have you spoken with Sarah today.”

“No. You said you did.”

“I did…over three hours ago and she’s still not here. The only thing I can think is that she went to Prospect Park PD instead of here.

“Did you call
them,” asked Mack.

“
Yes. They haven’t seen her.”

Mack
didn’t like the look on his face or the worry in his voice. And even though the man outranked him by a good thirty years, Mack stood up and said, “You need to go find her. Too many bad things are happening. You need to go now.”

The faceoff lasted less than a second before Millington said, “You’re right. I need to find her. I need to
do that.” He pressed the buzzer and left without saying another word.

After that, a
guard put both of Mack’s wrists back into handcuffs, patted him down, and escorted him back down the hallway. They passed back through the area where they’d done his paperwork, into another musty hallway, and through a big, piss colored door that somebody buzzed open. Another buzzing door waited for them just a few steps away, this one guarded by a man behind a thick glass window. This door opened into a giant room that contained three rows of cells, two tiers high. At the head of these rows, near where they now stood, Mack saw some sort of guard station enclosed by a wall that came up to his lower chest. Inside this little corral sat two guards at desks.

“See this red line here?” asked the
escorting guard.