TWENTY-TWO

“Oh, my God!” Inky rushed past me and knelt over the body. Spiro. His olive skin had taken on the bloodless, greenish pallor of a mushroom and his classically beautiful face was as still as an ancient Greek statue. My heart sank. Inky put his ear to Spiro’s chest and breathed a sigh of relief. “He’s alive!”

His arms were bound behind him, and his ankles were also tied together. Inky pulled out his pocketknife and set to work on the ropes. Spiro made some soft, incoherent noises, but seemed unaware of our presence. Inky gingerly pulled back one of his eyelids. “Drugged,” he pronounced.

“Where are we?” I tried to orient myself in the house. We were on the second floor, but there was no stairway opening into any of the bedrooms corresponding to this room. I thought about the weird triangular shape of this space and I understood. The bedrooms were all regular rectangles. The house, though, was octagonal. That meant that each of the bedrooms had a space just like this on the other side of the wall. I doubted I would find three more secret stairways, but the configuration offered some interesting possibilities as far as additional closet space.

This explained why I was hearing ghostly noises from Spiro’s room and from Sophie’s room, but hadn’t been able to locate the source. Poor Spiro had been up here for days. No way of telling whether he’d been fed, but several empty water bottles and some bent straws littered the floor, so it looked as though he’d at least had some water. I did not know, and didn’t want to know, how he had relieved himself. My missing bottle of Ouzo, now empty, lay on its side in one corner. Looked like somebody had been having a few shots while he kept Spiro sedated.

“Who did this to you?” Inky spoke softly to him, but Spiro didn’t answer. Inky looked at me. “We have to get him out of here.”

“Let’s get him to his room and then call the EMTs.” Inky nodded and hoisted him up in a fireman’s carry. Inky was made of some strong stuff. He turned and faced the top of the stairs, then sucked in a breath.

I whipped around to see what had startled him and felt my heart jump into my throat. A figure stood in the doorway, brandishing a gun.

Russ Riley pointed the gun at Inky’s chest. “Put him down. Now.”

“Russ, what the hell are you doing?” I was too shocked to be frightened. Russ? I’d known him since he was a kindergartner, gave him a job every year, and looked the other way when he stole from me. Now he had turned on me and my family?

“Shut up, Georgie.” He grinned his crooked jack-o’-lantern grin, which I’d always thought was cute in a redneck sort of way. Now it just looked evil. His smile looked different for another reason as well. Was he missing a couple more teeth? “I always wanted to say that! Now put him down, or I’ll shoot all three of you.” He gestured with the deer rifle and Inky obeyed, laying the still-unconscious Spiro gently on the floor. “Now put your hands up. Both of you.” A hideously mottled green-and-purple bruise covered the left side of his face, and he had quite a shiner.

We complied. “You, Snakeman.” He pointed a finger at Inky. “You are going to stay here, and you are going to keep your mouth shut.” Inky pursed his lips and didn’t say a word, but cut his eyes to me.

“You, boss, are going to get them valuables for me. Now.”

“Russ, I am telling you the absolute truth when I say I don’t know where the valuables are. Or what they are.”

“There’s money in this house. I’ve heard it all my life and I’ve looked for it all my life. You got it hid somewhere, and you are going to take me to it. Now.”

So he was the one who’d been snooping around and had ransacked the bedrooms. Ewww. His sausage-like fingers, the ones with the homemade tattoos spelling out “H-E-L-L” and “Y-E-S,” had been through my underwear drawer. I was going to throw out everything and buy new stuff posthaste.

He poked me with the barrel of the gun. “Watch it,” I said, my temper flaring. Shooting a deer was very different from shooting a human, and I didn’t think he had it in him. A sudden vision of Big Dom’s corpse floating on the river came to mind. Had Russ killed Big Dom? It was possible. But he couldn’t be working alone. Unless I’d grossly underestimated him all these years, he was simply too . . . simple to be a criminal mastermind. He was working for Jack Conway. I’d bet on it.

I moved toward the top of the stairs, Russ prodding me along with the gun. I looked back at Inky, who nodded at me. Russ locked the door behind us when we reached the bottom.

“Go on upstairs to the kitchen,” he ordered. “Unless it’s down here somewhere.”

“Uh, no, it’s not down here. So,” I said conversationally, trying to buy some time, for what I wasn’t yet sure, “how come you have Spiro tied up?”

“I don’t. Well, I do. But it wasn’t my idea. Wish it was. I’m getting paid, a helluva lot more than I get paid for being a dishwasher.” I should hope so, if he was taking this kind of risk. Kidnapping was a felony and he was facing serious prison time when this was over.

“Who’s paying you?”

“Nice try. But guess what? I ain’t telling. Now, where is it?”

“Uh, okay. I do know where it is.”

“I thought so. Now, get it, so I can give it to the guy paying me and I can get my cut. Then I’m blowing this town. I’m going to Florida. And I’m stayin’ there. Girls in bikinis on the beach. And no more damned snow to shovel.”

“Do you even know who is paying you?”

“Well,” he hesitated. “No, I don’t. But as soon as I get this thing I’m gonna take it to him. Then I’ll find out.”

“How much have you gotten paid already?”

“None of your damn business. But a lot,” he said. Now I knew where the money had come from to build that gargantuan garage and to buy that giant gold necklace Dolly had been sporting.

“Look, Russ,” I said. “I’ve been up all night, and I’m hungry and thirsty. How about I make us an egg sandwich and then I’ll go get it? It’s outside,” I added, “and it’s going to take some work to dig it up.”

He considered. “You got bacon to go on that? And American cheese? Extra American cheese. And make sure I got ketchup on the side. And a Coke to go with it.” He sat down in Sophie’s armchair by the cash register, still pointing the gun at me as I gathered ingredients from the cooler. “Start cookin’. And don’t try nothin’ funny.”

Me? I wouldn’t dream of it. I turned on the range and heated up a heavy, copper-bottomed sauté pan. I dropped a big glob of butter in the pan and it sizzled happily. I had a vague plan that I could somehow use this hot frying pan as a weapon. How I would get it close enough to him without arousing his suspicion and getting myself shot in the process, I had not yet worked out. Plan B was to get a shovel from the gardening shed under the pretense of digging up the treasure, then smack him over the head with it. “You want this on toast or English muffin?” I called out.

“Toast. None of that fancy wheat stuff either. White.”

“Sure thing.” I dropped four eggs, one by one, into the pan, and put yesterday’s cooked bacon on a layer of paper towels into our high-powered microwave to warm up. Four slices of bread went into the toaster, two white and two homemade wheat. I had just begun to flip the eggs when a knock sounded at the kitchen door. We both looked up.

“Who is it?” Russ demanded.

“I don’t know. I’m not expecting anybody here this early.”

“Go see who it is and get rid of them.”

“The eggs are going to get overcooked if I leave them.”

He paused. “Come in!” he bellowed as he got up and stood behind the armchair, holding the gun low so it was not visible.

The door swung open and Brenda Jones walked in. Her hair was combed down and back into a frizzy ponytail, and she had inexpertly applied some makeup. She looked as nice as I’d ever seen her, and she was sober to boot. “I’m here for breakfast,” she announced.

I forgot I’d invited her. “The restaurant isn’t open yet, Brenda, but I’m just making some bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. You can either come in and have one with me and Russ, or you can come back in a couple hours.” The invitation might get me shot, but I was betting on the fact that Russ wanted the treasure more than he wanted me dead, and he thought I knew where it was. He wouldn’t want to take the chance of shooting either Brenda or me and giving the other the chance to escape. Russ glared at me, and I went back to flipping eggs.

“Russ, you handsome dog, you,” she cooed at him, fingering the neckline of her turquoise tank top. She turned to me. “I think I’ll take one of those egg sandwiches too. Russ, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around lately.”

While she flirted I made a few more pieces of toast and assembled the sandwiches, giving Russ two eggs, and one each to Brenda and me. I set the plates down on the counter. “Should we eat in the dining room?” He wouldn’t take the gun with him and tip off Brenda.

“No! We’ll eat right here.” He patted the back of the armchair. “Just set it right here. And where’s my Coke?” That demanding tone was annoying me. I was definitely going to fire his sorry ass when this was all over. In fact, he could consider himself fired, effective immediately. I handed him the plate and a can of Coke from the fridge, which he set on the narrow shelf next to the chair.

“Brenda, would you mind going out into the hallway and getting us a couple of those folding chairs?”

After she had left, he whispered, “Don’t try nothing. I still got my gun back here.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Brenda came back in and set down the chairs, which she arranged next to the armchair.

“Come on out from behind there and sit with us,” Brenda suggested, her voice hopeful.

“Naw, I’m fine right where I am.”

“So whatcha doing here so early?” she asked, cutting her darkly mascaraed blue eyes at him.

Russ didn’t answer, just took a big bite of the sandwich. Brenda looked at me and shrugged.

At that moment the back door flew open. Russ dropped his sandwich and shouldered the gun, faster than I would have thought possible for someone at his level of physical conditioning. “Who the hell is it now?” We all froze, Brenda in midbite, and turned to stare.

“Ma?”

“Russell Riley, what the hell are you doing? Put that gun down. Now!” Dolly strode toward him unafraid. He attempted to maneuver out from behind the chair, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked while still holding the gun, and he bumped one hip against the chair. It moved and blocked his way, slowing him down long enough for me to grab the waist-length tail of his mullet and yank him off balance. I hooked my ankle behind his leg and pushed. Brenda grabbed the gun away from him as he sat down hard in the chair. She trained the weapon on him.

“You can put that gun down, Brenda,” Dolly said. “He ain’t going nowhere till he tells me what he’s been doing. Now, mister.” The morning light sparkled on the jewel pasted onto her long hot pink gel nail as she poked it into his chest. “You want to explain to me how come I just got a phone call from the tattoo man telling me to get over here because you were doing something stupid? Huh?” She jabbed him again and he winced. It looked like it hurt.

Brenda sat rapt as the harangue continued.

“I had to go over to your house this morning and take care of that damn barking dog of yours, since you apparently decided not to come home last night. I thought you were in that car wreck out on Route 12 a couple hours ago, you dumb son of a bitch.”

Inky, bless him, had phoned Dolly rather than the police. It was a genius move, really, since the police had to be looking for us. What had Dolly said, though? There was a car wreck? That would explain why Detective Hawthorne and the rest of the local police force weren’t knocking at my door like everybody else this morning. Yet.

I ran out into the hallway and downstairs. I tried the door to the secret stairs but remembered when the handle wouldn’t turn that Russ had the key. I ran back up, breathing more heavily than I would have liked. “Russ, give me the key.”

“You know something,” he spat back out at me. “I quit.” Fine by me. I wouldn’t have to sign off on his unemployment in November.

“Give her what she wants. Now. And watch your mouth.” Dolly put out her hand, palm up, and Russ reluctantly offered up the key. She handed it to me. “Sorry, Georgie, about this dumbass boy of mine.” She gave him a slap on the side of the head.

“Thanks, Dolly.” I raced back to the wine cellar and up the narrow stairs to the triangle room.

“Inky, that was brilliant! How did you think to call Dolly?”

“I had her in my phone book because she came in for a tat a few months ago—you know, the butterfly on her ass?” Well, I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know any more about that. “And I always keep the numbers for my local customers handy so I can make follow-up calls later, you know, see if they’re healing all right, or if they’re ready for another one.”

“Has Spiro come to yet?”

“No,” he said sadly. “He must have had a pretty good dose of whatever he’s on; plus he’s weak from lack of food.”

“Let’s get him to his room and lay him down where he’ll be comfortable.” Inky nodded. I steeled myself for the physical exertion ahead. We were going to have to carry his limp body down these back stairs, then up to the main floor through the cellar, then through the hallway and up and around the circular staircase. It would have to be done, though. There was nowhere downstairs to put him. “I’m ready.”

Inky picked Spiro up under the arms. His unconscious head lolled to one side. I went for his feet, bracing myself against the wall. It moved. Huh? I pushed back again and the wall moved again. “Inky, did you see that?” I looked toward the sharp corner opposite the door. A gap had appeared. Inky set Spiro down again and we both walked toward the corner. Inky pushed on the wall and the corner separated farther.

“Check this out! We only have to move him a few feet. There’s his bedroom right there.” I peered through the opening at the pale blue walls and antiseptic cleanliness of Spiro’s room.

“The walls must have some kind of pivot points back here.” He pointed behind us. “In this position, they can only be moved from this space. If you push on the walls from the bedroom side, nothing will happen because they have a common point, here in the corner.”

I sort of understood. As long as the bedroom was a perfect rectangle, the walls wouldn’t move from that side. They could open out from the triangle room, but not in from the bedroom.

We both gave the wall another shove and made an opening large enough to bring Spiro through. Inky picked him up in the fireman’s carry again, and I went ahead and pulled down the comforter. Inky laid him down and we covered him up. “I’ll stay with him till he wakes up. If it looks like he needs an ambulance sooner, I’ll call.”

“That might not be too long. Russ was no doubt here to give him another dose as well as to bother me, so he must be close to coming around.”

“What are we going to do about Russ?”

I’d been wondering the same thing. “Somebody’s been paying him to kidnap Spiro and to look around this house for whatever’s hidden here. Or whatever somebody thinks is hidden here. He doesn’t know who it is. I’m tempted to lock him up in that room after I ask him a few more questions.”

“Not a bad plan. We definitely need to find out if he knows anything else, and I’m just itching to give him a piece of my mind too. But if we lock him up over there, he’s gonna make a hell of a noise, and that’s going to disturb Spiro. Plus, he’s healthy. He could push the walls open after we close them, unless there’s some sort of locking mechanism.” He stroked his chin, where a light stubble had appeared since I’d first seen him hours ago. “We could leave him to Dolly.”

“She’s tough and smart, no question, but he’s bigger than she is. I’m going to have to think about this.” It was just a matter of time before the police got involved, and rightly so. But there was one piece of this puzzle missing, and for the sake of my family, I was going to find out for sure who that piece was.

Back downstairs in the kitchen I found Brenda helping herself to coffee. Had she made a pot on her own? She stirred in several spoonfuls of sugar as she listened to Dolly going to work on Russ, who had started to squirm.

“Dolly.” She didn’t even notice me, just kept on him. “Dolly,” I repeated, a bit louder this time. I tapped her shoulder and she turned to me.

“What?!” she snapped, then apologized.

“No problem. I just need to talk to Russ for a minute.”

She moved aside and I took her place in front of him. I could see the gun leaning up against the prep counter within arm’s reach, so I moved to block it from his easy access.

“Who’s been paying you?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“How are you communicating with him?”

“He sends me e-mails.”

“What have you been drugging Spiro with?” I might need this information if he didn’t come out of it soon.

“Beats me. The guy left a bunch of pills in my mailbox and I been crushing them up and putting them in the water I give him.”

“Where’s Spiro’s Mercedes?”

“In my garage.” He looked up at me spitefully. “It might have a few scratches on it. I been driving it after-hours.” It probably reeked of cigarettes too. I could see a pack of Chiefs in his shirt pocket, so he’d gone back to smoking. Spiro would be trading in that car sooner than he’d planned.

“Where’s his cell phone?” Jack Conway had said he didn’t have it, not that I believed him.

“In the car.” His tone implied that the rest of that sentence was, “stupid.” I restrained myself from slapping him. “Hope he had unlimited minutes.”

I turned. “Dolly, is Harold working today?”

“Naw, it’s his day off.”

“Russ has been storing Spiro’s car in his garage. Do you think Harold could drive it over here; then you could give him a ride back home? I’ll pay you,” I added.

“Sure. He was coming into town today anyway.”

“Brenda, what have you got planned?”

“Well, today’s the day the pirates come in on the tall ships, remember?” No, I had forgotten that. “So it’s one of my biggest days for collecting returnables. But I don’t start until late afternoon.”

“How’d you like a job?”

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later, with Dolly’s blessing (“It’ll teach him a lesson, the goofy bastard”), we had herded Russ at gunpoint up into the cupola. We tied him up to Basil’s old flowered armchair and told him to keep it quiet. I locked him in and installed Brenda outside the door with the rifle. I didn’t want him running off and e-mailing the mastermind, putting us all in more danger.

“Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to.” She nodded, serious. “I’ll bring you up something to drink in a few minutes.”

Back in the kitchen, Dolly was prepping for the day as if nothing had happened. We opened for breakfast on the weekends, and Dolly cooked the breakfast orders. She was cracking eggs and mixing them up in a pitcher so they’d be ready to pour onto the griddle when a scrambled egg order came in. I was not doing any more business with Sunshine Acres, not that Hank would probably want my business anyway after Inky’s and my little nighttime escapade. So we were going to have to make do with what we had until I could get another supply of perishables in from Watertown. I thought if I begged and pleaded and paid a premium, I could get them delivered before eleven.

Sophie came in looking fresh as a daisy. “You look very bad,” she scolded me.

“Spiro is home.” Her face lit up and she headed for the hallway. I put out a hand to stop her.

“He’s not feeling too well. And he’s sleeping right now.”

“I will leave him to rest, then,” she declared. “I’ll go see him later.”

“Yes, that would be best.”

“And then I’m going to wring his neck until he tells me where my money is!”

I went into my office and checked my e-mail. There was the one I’d been expecting, the one from the unknown sender. The instructions were to bring it (still no clue what “it” was) to Riverfront Park at eleven this morning. I was to wait at the picnic table closest to the soda machines, and someone would contact me for the handoff. I was done with this business. Spiro was back, a bit worse for the wear, and as soon as he woke up I planned to pry the whole story out of him. The kidnapper, however, probably didn’t know that I had both his leverage and his henchman, so I had no intention of wasting any more time trying to figure out what the treasure was. I’d go down to the police station and turn myself in, and make a complaint against Jack Conway this afternoon. First I would try to keep my restaurant running for the next couple of hours.

I considered trying to grab a quick nap, but decided against it. I was already up and oddly alert, so I decided to leave well enough alone. My backup supplier in Watertown agreed to get me enough vegetables and dairy for the weekend. I sent off an e-mail to Cal and told her that her father was a little under the weather but that he would call her soon. I reiterated my admonition about being careful. The reservations for the evening meal were processed in record time. Upstairs, Brenda seemed to be enjoying herself. I handed her a trashy celebrity gossip magazine and a bottle of water and reminded her to stay alert in case Russ tried to make a break for it. He was being relatively quiet, but that might have had something to do with the gag we’d tied around his mouth.

I descended to the second floor and gave two other bottles to Inky, who had set up camp in the side chair and was watching Jerry Springer on the flat-screen TV with the volume turned low. “It’s research,” he informed me. A lot of tattoos were showcased on that program, and he was always looking for new ideas. He’d called in one of his artists from the shop near Fort Drum to watch his store downtown so as not to miss out on any of the drunk pirate business that would be coming in this afternoon and evening. Spiro had still not awakened, but was breathing deeply and evenly and seemed healthy enough.

I went to my room and ran a comb through my hair, then splashed some water on my face. I applied a light sunscreen, then put on some lip balm with a hint of color and a swipe of eye shadow and mascara. Looking decent—or as decent as possible after my all-nighter—would give me courage for my upcoming encounter. I dug out a spare purse and dropped in a few essentials. Still no wallet or cell, though. Those would have to be retrieved from the police station later on.

Back in the kitchen, Sophie stared at my shoulder bag. “Where you going?” she demanded. “Today going to be very, very busy.” A look of rapture crossed her face as she contemplated the day’s potential take. “I need you here.”

“Sophie, I’m going out to”—I paused—“run some errands. I’ll be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, you and Dolly can handle things back here, and you can have Lizzie manage the dining room. I think we ought to make her dining room manager anyway.”

She snorted. “Lizzie! What about Spiro? You said he was back?” she asked suspiciously.

“He is back, and he’s sleeping. I want you to stay downstairs and leave him alone.”

She snorted again and turned back to her breakfast.

I exited through the kitchen door and made my way through the short maze of streets to where I’d left my car on Vincent Street. No one seemed to be watching, so I darted over to my little blue baby and slipped inside. I drove it over to the Bonaparte House lot and left it there. If the police did show up, Sophie could truthfully say that she didn’t know where I was.

On foot, I made my way up Theresa Street and up past the tattoo shop and the Windlass Guest House to Riverfront Park. There were already crowds of people milling around, waiting for the ships to arrive. I found an empty seat at one of the picnic tables at the covered pavilion and fished around in the bottom of the large purse I’d brought, coming up with enough change to buy a Diet Coke. I fed my coins into the machine and pressed the button for the lime variety. The machine vended out a cold bottle, the condensation which formed confirming that it was already a hot day, and it was going to get hotter and muggier. I sat back down and waited.

A pair of young children dressed in their adorable beads and pirate hats, curly mustaches drawn on their little faces with their mom’s eyebrow pencils, ran around excitedly, fencing with their plastic swords. I felt a twinge of nostalgia as I remembered bringing Cal here when she was little. I think I still had the black skull-and-crossbones bandannas we had tied pirate-wise around our heads. The atmosphere was palpable with fun and excitement, the unmistakable air of a tourist town where people come to get away from their normal lives, where cares and troubles are left behind for a few days. It felt good to be a part of that in some small way, providing meals that tasted great and didn’t have to be cooked or cleaned up after by the consumer. A vacation, I mused. A vacation would be so nice. Of course, most people would consider spending a few months on a Greek island every winter a pretty nice vacation. But I was thinking about doing some real traveling after we closed up this season. With e-mail and the Internet and cell phones, I could leave all the after-season paperwork and closing up to the accountant.

Where would I like to go, I wondered. Maybe California. Well, maybe not. I might run into my mother. Not that I’d recognize her after so many years. How about Hawaii? Or Peru? Or Copenhagen? Cal would be in school, so she wouldn’t be able to come with me, but maybe I could convince Liza to take a month off for a girlfriends’ tour. Or, I allowed myself to fantasize a bit, maybe Keith could come with me. I blushed and sipped the cold soda, bringing myself back to the present.

My watch read a quarter to eleven. No one around me seemed to be my contact. Captain Jack would not show up to do this job himself. He’d send somebody else. The entire park was filling up with pirates of varying ages, sizes, and degrees of costuming. Nearly everyone had a bandanna tied around his or her head, and lots of brightly colored plastic beads around their necks. Two of my evening waitresses were hanging out over in the far corner of the pavilion, but I didn’t think they noticed me. They’d better be sober when they get to work tonight, I thought.

A man with a pair of binoculars pointed across the river to the Canadian side. “They’re leaving port! I can see them!” The crowd pushed toward the river side of the pavilion and spilled out into the park. I couldn’t help myself and stood up, craning my neck. The energy level all around me was building and I was feeling it too. The distinct boom of gunfire blanks sounded over the buzz of the throng. I went up on my tiptoes to try to get a better look, and I could just see the masts, each flying the Jolly Roger, coming into view. It wasn’t a long trip across the river and they’d be here soon. The noise of the crowd intensified as the ships approached. Children waved their flags and danced excitedly. By now only a few stragglers like me were left behind at the pavilion. I screwed the cap onto my soda and stowed the bottle in my big bag.

The tall ships glided up and dropped anchor about a dozen feet from shore, where the water was deep enough to hold them. A voice, amplified by a decidedly non-period bullhorn, advised: “Citizens of Bonaparte Bay—surrender or be taken with no mercy!” Squeals and shouts went up from the crowd as two dozen pirates descended rope ladders into prams that had been unlashed from the sides of the ships. They continued to whoop as they rowed into shore and began to mingle with the tourists, pausing long enough for photos snapped with digital cameras and cell phones. They dropped more beads over the heads of the children as they passed.

I spotted my waitresses over by one of the barbecue grills. One of them had her fingers tangled up in the strand of beads around the neck of one of the pirates and was boldly planting a kiss on him. He pulled back, then gave her a look that pretty clearly said that the kiss might be repeated and extended later on. I hoped she was having fun.

I was so engrossed in watching the spectacle that it came as a surprise to me when someone came up behind me and put a string of beads around my neck. I whirled around and was greeted by a black eye pencil coming toward me. Before I could protest, two lines had been drawn under my nose into what I assumed was a mustache. I looked into a face I did not recognize, brown eyes rimmed with black liner, a long ratty wig held in place by a red bandanna. The face was young, sprinkled with a few reddish blond hairs that tried to pass for a beard. “Come on now, and come quietly.” The voice was soft and urgent with just the hint of a crack. I punched out to push him away, but he grabbed my wrists and held on. He was surprisingly strong for someone as young and skinny as he was.

“Now, smile and get moving. Look natural.”

“Where are we going?” He didn’t answer, but transferred both my wrists into one of his very large hands and deftly wound a piece of clothesline around my wrists with the other. My shoulder bag was now dangling from the crook of my elbow.

“I have a gun, and I will use it on you if I have to.” He marched me down the steps of the pavilion, waving and smiling at the tourists and other pirates as he did so. A couple of thumbs went up, accompanied by catcalls. These pigs think I am enjoying being carried off. Well, maybe if I’d been the age of my waitresses and the pirate was cute, I would have. The forced march halted when we got to the beach and stepped over the side into a small rowboat, where another pirate was waiting. We shoved off and he started rowing out toward the ships. I considered going over the side. It was daylight and the swim to shore would be short and doable even for me, but I did not want to take the chance of being shot. And of course my hands were tied, which would make swimming next to impossible. There were also those lurking muskellunge and sturgeons to consider too. I shuddered.

Add one more bad decision to the mountain I’d already amassed in the last few days. Why had I thought I could do this? I should have brought somebody, anybody, with me. I could even have gotten one of the rent-a-cops in the crowd to sit with me. But I’d thought I’d be safe with all these people around, that by pretending I had the treasure in my oversized bag and telling the go-between I’d only deal with Captain Jack directly, I could draw him out. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Now get moving. And don’t try anything, or I’ll shoot you.” His voice cracked again and I thought furiously for a means of escape, but the cold metal cylinder of a gun pressed into the small of my back convinced me not to try anything. He prodded me and I began to ascend the rope ladder, not an easy feat with my hands tied together. “Hurry up!”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” I shot back. “It would help if you untied me.” He might have a gun, but there was a limit to what I could take from this brat who was young enough to be my son.

“Shut up and go.”

I reached the top edge of the boat and swung my legs over. I’d never been on one of these ships before and if circumstances had been different, it would have been pretty cool. The wood all around me was polished and beautiful. The masts rose up to magnificent heights, covered in yards and yards of billowing snowy sails. I could picture myself sailing up the river in one of these. It would be so nice at sunset, maybe with a cocktail and some handsome sailor to snuggle up to. Instead I had Junior here poking me again with a pistol.

“Down here.” He opened a hatch in the deck and forced me down the narrow dark stairs. He switched on a light—electric? The romance dimmed a bit. I’d expected the flickering chiaroscuro of an oil lamp. We were in some kind of holding area. Wooden barrels encircled with shiny bands lined the walls of the ship. The kid pushed me forward and opened a short door toward the front of the boat. “Get inside,” he ordered.

I complied because there didn’t seem to be any other choice. I found myself in a cramped little room with a low ceiling. “Now, stay here. Oh yeah.” He laughed. “I’m gonna lock the door behind me, so you can’t go anywhere.”

“Does your mother know what you’re doing?” If he shot me, he shot me. My limit had been reached today.

A look of sadness crossed his face, replaced by anger. “You shut up about my mother,” he snapped. “Just shut up!”

He stormed out and slammed the door behind him. The metallic grating of the key in the lock proved he’d kept his promise to lock me in. Now what, Georgie? I began to twist and turn my wrists in an attempt to loosen the knots binding my hands, but the rope stayed tight. The kid would never pass for a Boy Scout, but he could apparently tie a square knot. The room around me was empty, the walls bare.

My shoulder bag was still looped over my arm, though. The boy genius had neglected to take that away from me. I was more convinced than ever that I was dealing with a bunch of amateurs. Of course, I’d been abducted and was stuck here, so they knew something. I reviewed what I’d put in the bag. No pocketknife, not even a nail file.

I examined the ropes again. Definitely cotton clothesline, the kind sold in any grocery or hardware store and the same thing that was still strung between two trees out back of the Bonaparte House, though it hadn’t been used in a long time. I pictured Cal’s little purple bathing suit, the one with the polka dots she had loved so much as a little girl, hanging next to her big flowery beach towel. The line in my memory sagged from the weight of the wet fabric. Cotton clothesline stretches when it’s wet. I maneuvered the purse down my arm so that its handle lay across both wrists. The zipper was partly open and it was just possible to get my fingers inside to grasp the cap end of the bottle of Diet Coke.

Holding the container between my feet and extending my bound wrists, I managed to twist off the cap. My intent was to pour the liquid onto the ropes, but I succeeded only in spilling it on my hands. The bottle fell onto the floor of the ship and formed a large brown puddle. So I simply dipped the ropes directly into the puddle. The smell of the soda wafted up to me, and in this small room it was intensified to a sickly sweetness. I let the ropes absorb as much of the liquid as they would take, then tried to pull my hands apart.

The clothesline stretched. Not enough. Only the undersides of my wrists were wet, while the tops remained dry. I needed these ropes fully soaked if this was going to work. It proved impossible to turn my wrists over so my palms were facing up. Perhaps for a double-jointed contortionist, but not for me. Think, Georgie, think. Yes! I lay down on my back on the floor, and stretched my arms out above my head into the pool. No telling what, other than soda, was on this floor. I’d be showering until I was pruney when I got out of here. I laid my hands in the liquid, which was by now breeding all sorts of bacteria, I just knew, until the ropes wouldn’t wick up any more. My arms were stiff from being in that unaccustomed position so long, and soda dripped onto my face as I brought them back to the front of my body. I spat and sat up, arming the sticky yuck off my face. I was going to call Dr. Phelps and get myself on some antibiotics right after the shower.

With my legs tucked up under me, I began to work at the ropes. This time they expanded, and by twisting and maneuvering I made progress. A deep vibration began to rumble all around the walls of my prison. My jaws rattled, like a pair of chattering teeth in a joke shop window. It was loud as hell in there. A metallic grating noise—a chain scraping in its housing?—sent shivers up my arms. The anchor. Unless I was mistaken, we were under way.